Category Archives: The Nation

My handy, all-purpose endorsement of everybody (almost)

Yes, dear readers, you’ve read this one before — probably. I cannibalized a blog post to construct this column — almost word for word. You’ll probably see me doing that more than once before the holidays are over. That’s partly because I’ll be doing double- and triple-duty with folks out of the office. But it’s also in keeping with what I intended when I started this blog; I had always meant to use it as a lab for developing column ideas. I just usually forget to do that.

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
SINCE MY COLUMN advocating a “single-payer” national health plan ran in this space last week, I’ve received a good bit of feedback along these lines:

Dear Mr. Warthen,
I think your article is right on target and has a very good insight of the realities of the inefficient American health system. However, it is my feeling that by mentioning that [Dennis] Kucinich is the only one talking about single payer, and in the same line that he is not viable and has seen a UFO you are delegitimizing him…. If you think that this country needs a health care reform, why not throw your support to Kucinich…?

Regards, Kethrin Johnson

Then, my regular blog correspondent Doug Ross wrote:

Again, I’ll ask you to put your proverbial money where your mouth is. If you think this is an important issue, don’t endorse candidates who don’t support single payer….

I get this sort of thing a lot, and I think it’s worth pausing to address. Doug was literally right — I think a national health plan is “an important issue.” It’s not the important issue. If there were anything that I would designate as the important issue in a presidential race, it probably wouldn’t be a domestic one. And I’d rather not judge on the basis of any single issue in foreign affairs either, if I can avoid it. (We found ourselves unable to avoid it in 2004, which made for a most distasteful endorsement.)
Health care is very important; so are other things. If I chose on the basis of one issue only, I would have to endorse everybody at least once. Just off the top of my head, it might go like this:

Health care — Dennis Kucinich in a walk.
Iraq (as a military operation) —John McCain, the only guy who stood up for the “surge,” which was based on the idea that he alone had been pushing for four years, which was that Donald Rumsfeld refused to send enough troops to get the job done.
Iraq (long-term strategy) — Joe Biden, who (along with erstwhile candidate Sam Brownback), has been pushing the federalist approach of transforming the nation into three semi-autonomous political regions with only a loose Baghdad government uniting them.
Immigration — Either Sen. McCain, who took all the heat on the recent failed comprehensive reform effort, or Hillary Clinton, who refused to demagogue on the driver’s license flap.
Afghanistan — Barack Obama, who had the nerve to say he’d go after the Taliban in Pakistan if necessary.
Pakistan — Sen. Biden, for articulating the fact that we needed a Pakistan strategy, not a Pervez Musharraf strategy.
Administrative ability — Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney or Bill Richardson, the only governors.
Most likely to be the UnParty nominee — Tough call, but I see three most able to lead us out of the vicious partisanship of the past 15 years: Mr. Huckabee, who seems to have governed Arkansas pretty effectively with a Democratic majority in the legislature; Sen. Obama, who has made his desire to be the president of all Americans a centerpiece of his campaign; or Sen. McCain, who, from confirming judges to campaign finance reform to immigration to fighting the use of torture, has demonstrated his willingness and ability to work with Democrats time and again. (See my blog for my UnParty Manifesto.)
Abortion — Either Mr. Huckabee or Sen. McCain. The Democrats walk in the door disqualifying themselves on this one (from my point of view; maybe someday a Democrat like Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania will have a shot), and none of the other leading Republicans can be trusted fully in this area.
Most likely to be the Energy Party nominee — Nobody. Sen. McCain has done some good stuff in the Senate (along with Joe Lieberman, who was my pick for the Democratic nomination four years ago), and I like some of the things Sen. Biden has said about a president’s role in leading on this critical strategic issue. But I don’t think anybody goes far enough. (You can also read about the “Energy Party” on the blog.)
Education — Ron Paul almost gets it by wanting to do away with the U.S. Department of Education; the federal government has no business trying to run our local schools. But then he blows it by wanting to give tax credits to pay people to attend private schools, which is none of the government’s business at any level.

You get the idea. You may notice that I have no scenarios in which I endorse John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Chris Dodd or Fred Thompson. That’s not to dismiss them completely. I suppose if I dug further into all their positions I’d find some single-issue excuse to endorse each.
But that’s not how we endorse, and that’s not how voters vote (I hope). Since
we can only choose one candidate, practical reality demands that we accept some compromises. The candidate you end up favoring might get just “Bs” and “Cs” on your unique grading scale in most subjects, while someone you reject might be at the top of the class on one issue, but flunk everything else.
On my own scale, for instance, Mr. Giuliani gets mostly Bs and Cs, with a couple of poor grades on personal deportment. He may not lead the class in anything that comes immediately to mind, but that doesn’t count him out entirely.
One good thing about primaries is that they force people who might otherwise surrender their thinking to a party to understand that even within a party, there can be great diversity of thought. Such choices compel us to acknowledge the necessity to compromise on some things, unless we’re fooling ourselves. For any thinking voter to find a candidate with whom he agrees on everything would a minor miracle.
Anyway, back to where we started: Rep. Kucinich gets an A-plus and a gold star on health care in my gradebook. But he flunks national security, which is a required subject.

McCain with the WSJ editorial board

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Here’s an account of what John McCain had to say to the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal the day before he came here to announce the endorsements of all the brass:

Mr.
McCain is 71. But the tired, sluggish, former front-runner you may have
read about was nowhere in evidence when the senator came to the
Journal’s offices yesterday. In his place was a combative
and–yes–straight-talking candidate with no qualms about rising to a
challenge or speaking his mind. In short, he looks once again like the
spry 63-year-old who nearly knocked off front-runner George W. Bush
eight years ago….

He said some of the same things he said here, but of course the interview was more wide-ranging, more like the session we had with him back in August.

And over in the horse-race department, it’s interesting that he tells folks up on Wall Street how important South Carolina is to his chances:

The
senator says he doesn’t worry too much about the electoral tactics, but
he does know what lies ahead. "We’ve got to win New Hampshire," he
says, or at least exceed expectations there. "And then I think we can
do well in South Carolina. In South Carolina we’ve got the base this
time. The Attorney General, the Speaker of the House, Lindsay Graham,
most of the base."

Whether
that’s true or not, Mr. McCain still trails by 15 points on average in
South Carolina. But assuming he can do well there, "then I think we’re
obviously very much in the game. What happens to Huckabee, what happens
to Rudy, what happens to Romney–all this stuff is in such flux now
that it’s very difficult to predict and so we’re not paying a lot of
attention, obviously." Still, he’s paying some attention, apparently.

It’s interesting how, whenever anyone takes a careful, dispassionate look at McCain, he looks good. But for the immigration issue, he’d still be the nominee apparent. There is actually a significant number of Republicans who would decide who should lead this country on the basis of that, rather than the broad range of critical issues, is amazing to professional observers from The Economist to the Journal to little ol’ me.

Of course, that’s just a bonus for the immigration hotheads, because they tend to be folks who don’t like professional observers any more than they like illegal Mexicans.

If McCain doesn’t make it, I’ll be able to do what he’s doing on the surge now — saying "I told you so." But I’ll get a lot less satisfaction out of it. Back when he stepped out front in an effort actually to solve the immigration problem rather than demagogue on it, I asked him why — trying to lead on that issue would only earn the enmity of those who find any practical, sensible approach to be anathema.

Of course, his answer was what it always is when he steps out of everybody else’s comfort zone on an issue — he saw it as the right thing to do.

The brass come out for McCain

A bit of perspective on our place in the world, by the numbers

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Energy Party consultant Samuel sent me this, which figures. Samuel is the guy who came up with the idea for the endowed chairs program, which bore impressive fruit yet again this week. He’s still the most enthusiastic cheerleader of that program, even after our governor replaced him on the panel that oversees it:

This video — really, sort of a powerpoint presentation, only on YouTube, is worth watching. There are some figures in it that I find suspect (I’m always that way with attempts to quantify the unknowable, which in this case applies to prediction about the future), but others that are essentially beyond reproach, and ought to make us think.

What they ought to make us think is this: So much of what we base the selection of our next president on — party affiliation, ideological purity, our respective preferences on various cultural attitudes — is wildly irrelevant to the challenges of the world in which this person will attempt to be the leader of the planet’s foremost nation. Foremost nation for now, that is. If we don’t start thinking a lot more pragmatically, it won’t be for long.

The case for John McCain: The Economist reminds us of what should be obvious

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As I believe I mentioned in the last few days (I forget where), I like to read British observers of American politics from time to time, because their perspective enables them to go straight to things that should be obvious, but which we forget over here amid the trees of day-to-day nonsense.

Therefore I read with particular appreciation this column from the most recent edition of The Economist, headlined "The case for John McCain." An excerpt:

Mr McCain’s qualifications extend beyond character. Take experience. His range of interests as a senator has been remarkable, extending from immigration to business regulation. He knows as much about foreign affairs and military issues as anybody in public life. Or take judgment. True, he has a reputation as a hothead. But he’s a hothead who cools down. He does not nurse grudges or agonise about vast conspiracies like some of his colleagues in the Senate. He has also been right about some big issues. He was the first senior Republican to criticise George Bush for invading Iraq with too few troops, and the first to call for Donald Rumsfeld’s sacking. He is one of the few Republicans to propose sensible policies on immigration and global warming.
Mr McCain’s qualities are particularly striking if you contrast him with his leading rivals. His willingness to stick to his guns on divisive subjects such as immigration stands in sharp contrast to Mr Romney’s oily pandering. Mr Romney likes to claim that his views on topics such as gay rights and abortion have “evolved”. But they have evolved in a direction that is strikingly convenient—perhaps through intelligent design. Can a party that mocked John Kerry really march into battle behind their very own Massachusetts flip-flopper?

Over here, many are quick to dismiss him as having no chance — to which I say, if John McCain has no chance, America has no chance. Besides, Republicans are in a hunt for something better than their "front-runners," which has most recently led them to Mike Huckabee, about whom Lexington wrote:

The weakness of the two front-runners is persuading many Republicans to turn to Mr Huckabee. Mr Huckabee is indeed an attractive candidate—a good debater and a charming fellow. But he is woefully lacking in experience. He knows next to nothing about foreign and military affairs, and his tax plans are otherworldly. A presidential debate between Mr Huckabee and Hillary Clinton would be a rout.

I hadn’t really thought about that, possibly because I don’t think like a Republican — I don’t sit up nights worrying about how to stop a certain person (a decreasingly relevant worry). It has occurred to me, and I don’t think I’ve noted it here, that she would beat Rudy Giuliani fairly handily, which makes it ironic that some throw away their principles because they think Rudy would win that match-up. (Think about it. Remember when he dropped out of the Senate race against her? Nothing’s changed about either candidate since then.)

But now that I think about it, I suspect Mrs. Clinton would tear up Gov. Huckabee without breaking a sweat.

S.C. Chamber chief on health care as a competitiveness issue

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Today, I had two opportunities to bring up health care reform. One was when I went for my annual physical at mid-morning. Dr. Richard Sribnick, one of my internist’s partners, stopped to chat while I was in the lab fighting off the dizziness that always hits me when I have blood drawn (the nurse thanked him for distracting me).

He thanked me for running his recent op-ed piece — Dr. Sribnick has played a leading role in South Carolina’s effort to save Darfur — and offered the guess that I was getting a lot of feedback on my single-payer column. Sure, I said — and what was his opinion? Bottom line, he doubts that it’s the best way to go. He said he’d been at a meeting about new Medicaid rules the night before at a local hospital, and he thought the system sounded pretty messed up from a provider’s perspective.

But… he said that if the choice was between our current state of affairs and single-payer, he’d choose single-payer.

Earlier, our editorial board had met with representatives from the S.C. Chamber of Commerce. It was their annual "Competitiveness Agenda" meeting, at which they share with us their priorities for the coming legislative session.

Anyway, since they had been talking yet again about how competition today is truly international, I asked new chairman Jim Micali, chairman and president of Michelin North America, Inc., how S.C. businesses were affected by the fact that they have to pay for employee health care, while overseas competitors don’t shoulder that same burden.

His reply is contained in the video above.

Urgent calls lead to action on Darfur (I hope)

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This morning, I received a copy of this e-mail:

Hi SC folks,
Today, as the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act was only one away from passing the Senate unanimously, Senator DeMint blocked the legislation from passage.

We are asking people in SC to make phone calls into his office to ask that he remove his hold. See below for a more details from Zahara Heckscher, our Divestment Campaign Manager.

Thanks,
Coby

Dear South Carolina Darfur Advocates,
As you probably know, Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act is a vital bill that protects the right of states such as South Carolina to divest public funds from companies that help fund the genocide in Darfur.

Senator DeMint of South Carolina is now the only Senator blocking passage of
this critical bill.

Please take two minutes to call his office right now.

Charleston
Phone: 843-727-4525

If that number is busy, or if you have time for more than one, you can call DC or any of the Senator’s offices where you have a contact.

Washington, D.C.
Phone: 202-224-6121

Message:

"I’m calling from __________(say your town and South Carolina so he knows you are a constituent) to request that Senator DeMint remove his hold from Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act . This bill is a critical bipartisan bill that puts pressure on the government of Sudan to end the genocide. We want to protect our state’s right not to invest in companies that help fund genocide."

Please shoot me a quick email after you call. If you learn anything interesting during your call, or if you know staff in his office, please let me know.

Please forward this message to others in SC
Thank you for all you do to help the people of Darfur.

Best,
Zahara Heckscher
Divest For Darfur Campaign Manager
Save Darfur Coalition

But before I’d even had chance to read that e-mail, our correspondent Rusty DePass had gotten on the horn to straighten things out:

I have talked with DeMint’s office (not with DeMint himself) and been
assured as I expected that he is completely in favor of this bill. He
does have some concerns, however, about the way Sen. Dodd wrote the bill
that may have prevented their respective staffs (not the two Senators)
from working out the problems. Jim has now been satisfied that those
concerns will be addressed as it moves forward and he has removed his
hold on the bill. What is happening in Sudan is truly a latter day
Holocaust.

So maybe now we’ll see some proper action.

Ditch the Farm Bill

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Yesterday, Senators rejected the Fresh Act, which sought to reform the mad waste embodied in the Farm Bill currently up for consideration. They said the sensible approach, proposed by that wild-eyed radical Dick Lugar, "just moves too far, too fast." Those are the words of Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

OK, so you don’t like the alternative. So just don’t pass a farm bill, say I. If any true needs go begging as a result, we’ll address them as they come. In the meantime, we’ll say goodbye to such scenarios as the one that the WSJ mocked Tuesday in "Green Acres" terms:

The Environmental Working Group has a map of New York City making the rounds on the Internet that shows 562 dots, each representing a Manhattan resident who gets a USDA farm payment. Who knew that growing cotton, corn and soybeans was such a thriving industry near Central Park? We don’t know the incomes of these people, but it’s a fair guess they’re not homeless.
What we have here is a real-life version of the 1960s TV show "Green Acres," but in reverse. In the fictional series, Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor play a fancy couple who flee Manhattan to live down on the farm among the pigs and goats, while she pines for the glitter of Times Square. In the 2007 version, they flee the farm for Manhattan and get a subsidy check at their Park Avenue penthouse. What a deal.

Hooterville was an absurd nightmare for Oliver Wendell Douglas, who learned episode after episode that everyone saw madness as perfectly normal. So it is with Washington and farm bills.

1962 NIE: No Cuban Missiles

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FYI, the WSJ notes today that the NIE of Sept. 19, 1962 said:

The USSR could derive considerable military advantage from the establishment of Soviet medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, or from the establishment of a submarine base there. . . . Either development, however, would be incompatible with Soviet practice to date and with Soviet policy as we presently estimate it.

That’s 25 days before the start of what we call the Cuban Missile Crisis.

So do you think the CIA is better at that stuff now, or then? And is it better than it was in 2005, when it concluded the opposite of what the latest NIE concluded? And is it better than the Israelis, or the Brits?

Someone on this post raises the yellowcake case to discredit MI6. First, like the NIE, that whole thing was a lot more complicated than either side’s shorthand version. Second, the British are historically seen as better at human intelligence than we are. The Americans do satellites, the Brits do people. And the latest NIE was based, in part, on humint.

Maya Angelou — when is HER show on?

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Poor Zac over at Clinton HQ sent this out today, with timing that invites (probably intentionally, but set me straight on that if I’m wrong, Zac) comparison to the Double-O show yesterday:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 10, 2007

Contact: Zac Wright

Dr. Maya Angelou Hits SC Airwaves for Hillary
‘My Girl’ Radio Spot Airs Statewide
(COLUMBIA) – Dr. Maya Angelou took her support of Hillary Clinton to the South Carolina airwaves as Clinton launched her fourth radio spot in the state, entitled “My Girl.” The 60-second spot began playing on radio stations across the state over the weekend.

In the spot, Dr. Angelou describes her personal support of Hillary and focuses on Hillary’s experience as an advocate for families.

A complete transcript is included below. The radio ad can be heard online at: www.hillaryclinton.com/hq/southcarolina.

Maya Angelou: Hello South Carolina, this is Maya Angelou. Let me tell you about my girl… Hillary Clinton.
As a child, Hillary Clinton was taught that all God’s children are equal, so as a mother she understood that her child wasn’t safe unless all children were safe.
I know what kind of president Hillary Clinton will be because I know who she is. Hillary Clinton has always been a strong woman and a passionate protector of families. For 35 years, that’s exactly what she has been doing.
Each generation of African Americans stands on the shoulders of those who came before. Today, the challenges facing us threaten the dreams we have had for our children. We need a president with the experience and strength to meet those challenges.
I am inspired by Hillary Clinton’s commitment and courage… a daughter, a wife, a mother… my girl.

I’m Hillary Clinton and I approve this message.

###

So, how does that match-up play out? Oprah vs. Maya? I think I’d choose the endorsement that Obama got, if I were running for the Democratic nomination.

You’re a mean one, Mr. DeMint

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And a good thing, too. But I’ve got to ask, is this the way to sell this? Grinch

… I promise to be your Grinch. What does that mean? I will stay "on guard," making sure they don’t try to slip anything past the American people.
$400 million dollar bridges to nowhere, multi-million dollar buildings
named after current congressmen and yes, believe it or not, a Hippie
Hall of Fame are all on their agenda to be snuck through before the
year ends…

Our junior senator is casting himself as the villain in a Yuletide drama over earmarks. Trouble with that is, I would think the guy who’s demanding some spending accountability would be the good guy.

Well, at least it’s an attention-grabber, and I suppose that’s the point. In this case, it’s also intended to be a money-grabber, as it’s a fund-raising gimmick for the senator.

Seems like there’s something contradictory in there somewhere — give me money so I can save you money — but then again, I guess that’s the whole basis of our economic system, and it would make more sense to me if I were a businessman. Which I’m not. Just in case you were harboring some serious delusions…

Can anyone (any viable candidate, that is) say ‘single-payer?’: Column version

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By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
CAN ANYONE among those with a chance of becoming president say “single-payer?” If not, forget about serious reform of the way we pay for health care.
It doesn’t even necessarily have to be “single-payer.” Any other words will do, as long as the plan they describe is equally bold, practical, understandable, and goes as far in uprooting our current impractical, wasteful and insanely complex “system.”
And the operative word is “bold.” Why? Because unless we start the conversation there, all we might hope for is that a few more of the one out of seven Americans who don’t have insurance will be in the “system” with the rest of us — if that, after the inevitable watering-down by Congress. And that’s not “reform.” Actual reform would rescue all of us from a “system” that neither American workers nor American employers can afford to keep propping up.
But the operative word to describe the health care plans put forward by the major, viable candidates is “timid.”
“Single-payer” is definitely not that — at least, not within an American context. Seen from the perspective of most advanced nations — which accept medical care as just another part of a nation’s infrastructure, like roads and post offices — it’s no big deal.
Not here, though — not by a long shot. Here, we have too many people preprogrammed to go ballistic at the mention of “single-payer.” That’s because of the identity of that payer.
It’s… well, it’s the government!
This column will now take a short break while libertarians run around shrieking until they turn blue and fall over… da-da-dum-dum, hmmm… readers might want to go look at the Sunday comics until we resume… da-dee-da-dahhh… Still screaming, so let’s get another cup of coffee… Ah, that’s good stuff…
OK, we’re back, and they’re still screaming, but we’ll just have to accept that they’re going to do that, and proceed.
“Government,” in America, is a word that we use for a free people banding together to do something that we can do far better working together than working separately. Some people don’t accept that fact. They seem to believe that “government” is some scary thing that intrudes on their lives from out there somewhere, like a spaceship full of aliens with ray guns that will turn us all into toads or something.
Those people are one of the two big reasons why you don’t hear any presidential candidates saying “single-payer” except Dennis Kucinich. You may recall recent reports that Mr. Kucinich had a close encounter with a UFO, and it was a positive experience, so I guess he’s just not scared of the aliens any more.
But the major candidates are. Or rather, they’re scared of being labeled as extremists. Also, they don’t want to offend the health insurance companies whose reason for being would disappear under “single-payer.”
Last week, I got a press release from a labor union that complained “that no Republican candidate has a plan to ensure all Americans have access to health care.” That’s true. But the union, which represents blue- and pink-collar workers in health care, was missing the fact that the leading Democrats are little better.
“Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been engaged in a bitter back-and-forth over whose health plan covers more people,” The Wall Street Journal reported last week. “Former Sen. John Edwards has jumped in, saying his plan is the best of all.”
But what they’re fighting over are plans that would pull varying numbers of the uninsured into the same overly expensive, wasteful, maddening system of private health insurance that the rest of us are caught in. Conveniently, they say their plans would be paid for by repealing the “Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.”
Maybe you could pay for a health plan that way — as long as it doesn’t provide real reform.
Make no mistake: A single-payer national health plan would cost a lot of money, and you would pay for it in new taxes. The good news is that most of us would probably still pay less than we currently pay in premiums.
According to the Web site of Physicians for a National Health Program, which promotes single-payer, “This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”
But when not even touchy-feely liberal Democrats have the guts to say it’s worth paying a new tax to make health care affordable for all, even when that’s the hottest domestic issue among voters (which would not be the case if the insured majority were happy), we’re in trouble.
Little wonder that Dow Jones’ MarketWatch reported last week that “Those who hope the 2008 presidential election will finally bring about drastic health-care reform may well end up finding it’s a case of politics and business as usual, experts say.” The same article noted that Hillary Clinton has received $1.8 million in contributions from accident and health insurers, followed by Barack Obama with $1.45 million, Mitt Romney with $1.09 million and Rudy Giuliani with $1.08 million.
That, by the way, is money that you and I and the guy down the street paid for health care that didn’t go to health care.
Given the odds against substantive reform — betw
een the government haters, the insurance industry and Big Pharma, all of whom have a demonstrated willingness to outlast the rest of us in any protracted political fight — the only way we’re going to see significant change is if a president is elected with a mandate for bold reform. Only a president is elected by the whole nation, so only a president would ever have that kind of juice.
Unfortunately, as previously noted, none of the viable candidates will say “single-payer.”
But I will: Single-payer. Single-payer, single-payer! Now, do you have anything better to say?

Dumb crook news

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No this blog isn’t turning into the John Boy and Billy show, but there’s a particular kind of Schadenfreude that law-abiding folks seem to share at news of a deserved comeuppance, and I just couldn’t resist passing this one on.

It seems that the ubiquity of camera phones has lots of crooks incriminating themselves. This story in the WSJ today led with this tale:

Last year, Morgan Kipper was booked on charges of
stealing cars and reselling their parts. He declared his innocence, but
his cellphone suggested otherwise: Its screensaver pictured Mr. Kipper
behind the wheel of a stolen yellow Ferrari.
Mr. Kipper, 27, joined a growing group of camera-phone
owners who can’t seem to resist capturing themselves breaking the law.
"As a criminal defense attorney, it’s very difficult when a client
proclaims his innocence but incriminates himself by taking photos of
the stolen items," says William Korman, the Boston attorney who
represented Mr. Kipper. The snap-happy chop-shop owner, who pleaded
guilty in April, is now serving a sentence of two-and-a-half to five
years and couldn’t be reached for comment.

OK, back to serious stuff now…

‘Abandonment of the Jews:’ Two views of the NIE from Jerusalem

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A certain regular correspondent whose first name is Samuel brought to my attention this piece from The Jerusalem Post. It’s by Caroline Glick, a writer with whom I am unfamiliar (maybe y’all will have time to read her past columns; I can’t do that on a Friday), and it’s headlined, "The Abandonment of the Jews." An excerpt:

The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on
Iran’s nuclear intentions is the political version of a tactical
nuclear strike on efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs.
The
NIE begins with the sensationalist opening line: "We judge with high
confidence that in fall 2003, Teheran halted its nuclear weapons
program." But the rest of the report contradicts the lead sentence. For
instance, the second line says, "We also assess with moderate-to-high
confidence that Teheran at a minimum is keeping open the option to
develop nuclear weapons."
Indeed, contrary to that earth-shattering opening, the NIE
acknowledges that the Iranians have an active nuclear program and that
they are between two and five years away from nuclear capabilities.

While I was there, I also glanced over this piece by David Horovitz, headlined "Bushwhacked." An excerpt:

But beyond the headlines, a close reading of the
material released from the National Intelligence Estimate offers little
legitimate reason for any sense of relief. Quite the opposite. Along
with the opening judgment that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program
in 2003 comes the immediate caveat that "Teheran at a minimum is
keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons." And then, just a
few paragraphs later, comes an undermining of the original,
headline-making assessment. The authors acknowledge that "because of
intelligence gaps" they can "assess with only moderate confidence that
the halt to these activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear
weapons program."
After that, the reservations and flat-out terrifying
assessments in this supposedly sanguine estimate flow thick and fast.
The authors state in their opening paragraphs alone: "We do not know
whether [Iran] currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." "We
cannot rule out that Iran has acquired from abroad – or will acquire in
the future – a nuclear weapon or enough fissile material for a weapon."
"We assess centrifuge enrichment is how Iran probably could first
produce enough fissile material for a weapon, if it decides to do so.
Iran resumed its declared centrifuge enrichment activities in January
2006 … [and] made significant progress in 2007 installing centrifuges
at Natanz."

It occurs to me that when your very survival depends on sound intelligence, you tend to look at these things a little harder, and more critically, than Americans do. Ms. Glick sums up the stakes for Israel in this passage:

Many commentators applauded the Annapolis
conference, claiming that its real aim was to cement a US-led coalition
including Israel and the Arabs against Iran. These voices argued that
it made sense for Israel to agree to negotiate on bad terms in exchange
for such a coalition. But the NIE shows that the US double-crossed
Israel. By placing the bait of a hypothetical coalition against Iran,
the US extracted massive Israeli concessions to the Palestinians and
then turned around and abandoned Israel on Iran as well. What this
means is that not only has the US cut Israel off as an ally, it is
actively working against the Jewish state.

What ABOUT a McCain-Huckabee ticket?

21 Replies

Mccain07

This piece by David Broder, which we ran on our op-ed page, intrigued me. Broder is of course the dean of national political writers, so when he says here’s a political combo that would work, I tend to take notice. I had meant to call attention to it on the day that it ran, but got busy and forgot.

So, for the sake of y’all’s discussion, here it is now:

Principles Amid the GOP Pack
By David S. Broder
Sunday, December 2, 2007
If the Republican Party really wanted to hold on to the White House in 2009, it’s pretty clear what it would do. It would grit its teeth, swallow its doubts and nominate a ticket of John McCain for president and Mike Huckabee for vice president — and president-in-waiting.
Those two are far from front-runners. They trail Mitt Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire and lag behind Rudy Giuliani in national surveys of Republican voters. But, in a series of debates, including last week’s CNN-YouTube extravaganza, McCain and Huckabee have been notable for their clarity, character and, yes, simple humanity.
From everything I have heard on the campaign trail, it’s obvious that they are the pair who have earned the widest respect among the eight Republican candidates themselves. McCain is the eldest and the most honored, not only for what he endured as a Vietnam prisoner of war but as a principled battler for what he considers essential on Iraq and other national security issues.
Huckabee, who previously was known only to those of us who cover state government and governors, has been the surprise discovery of the campaign season. His combination of religious principle, good humor, tolerance and clear passion on education and health care complements McCain’s muscular foreign policy and aversion to wasteful domestic spending.
The two of them seem often to be operating on a different — and higher — plane than the quarrelsome Giuliani and Romney, whose mutual contempt is as palpable as it is persuasive.
Fred Thompson appears perpetually grumpy — a presence hard to imagine inhabiting the Oval Office. The three House members — Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter — are exercising their lungs but running for exercise, happy to be part of the proceedings but with no hope of being nominated.
What sets McCain and Huckabee apart is most evident in the way they treat the contentious issue of illegal immigration. Both of them have been burned by it — Huckabee in a losing battle with his legislature over tuition breaks for children of illegal immigrants; McCain for his sponsorship of President Bush’s comprehensive immigration reform. Both now acknowledge — as everyone must — that the failure of the federal government to secure the southern border has produced broad public outrage.
But, unlike the others, who seem to take their rhetorical cues from the rabidly anti-immigrant Tancredo, Huckabee and McCain always remember that those who struggle to reach the United States across the deserts or rivers of the Southwest are human beings drawn here by the promise of better lives for their families.
After outlining the failed Senate effort to pass a bill that included a temporary guest worker program and a pathway to earned citizenship for the illegal immigrants already living here, McCain said, "What we’ve learned is that the American people want the borders enforced. We must . . . secure the borders first. But then . . . we need to sit down as Americans and recognize these are God’s children as well, and they need some protections under the law and they need some of our love and compassion." That answer was interrupted by applause.
Huckabee was asked to defend a bill he sponsored that the questioner said "gave illegal aliens a discount for college in Arkansas by allowing them to pay lower in-state tuition rates."
The former governor corrected him. The bill, he said, "would have allowed those children who had been in our schools their entire school life the opportunity to have the same scholarship that their peers had, who had also gone to high school with them and sat in the same classrooms. . . . It wasn’t about out-of-state tuition."
Romney was not appeased. He said Huckabee sounded like a Massachusetts liberal, giving the taxpayers’ money to people who are here illegally.
To which Huckabee replied: "In all due respect, we’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We’re a better country than that." He, too, was applauded.
I think we are that better country. And I hope the Republicans agree.
davidbroder@washpost.com

Romney vs. JFK

12 Replies

Almost 50 years ago another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for President, not a Catholic running for President. Like him, I am an American running for President. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

Mitt Romney said that today, in his much-hyped, high-stakes speech about … well, he said it was about "Faith in America," but of course it was about "Faith in Mitt Romney," and whether that would be a barrier to his election. Even if he hadn’t invited the comparison to the JFK speech, it would certainly be compared — particularly since it was offered under such similar circumstances, and for nearly identical reasons.

I’ve read and watched (well, sort of watched — more like listening while working) both speeches. Having done so, I wonder whether a fair comparison is possible. I find myself much more impressed by the Kennedy speech, but a great deal of that is a matter of style. Kennedy spoke with such unabashed authority and intellectual rigor, but then he led in a time when the alpha male, take-charge style of leadership was accepted and nobody apologized for it. He came across as Yes, I’m smart as hell; isn’t that what you want in a president? There’s also a slight undertone of being righteously ticked off at having to address the matter, combined with complete confidence in the rightness of what he’s saying.

By contrast, Romney’s delivery is blander, more tentative, less threatening, using tones that you might use in speaking to a class of schoolchildren (but then, I so often think today’s politicians sound like they’re speaking to a particularly slow group of third-graders). As he talks about religion, I’m reminded of how Mr. Rogers might have spoken had he been a televangelist. But this (aside from the hair) is not anything particular to Mr. Romney, I think, so much as it is what public life seems to demand today. He seems to be a little more ingratiating in his desire to be liked — again, in the modern mode.

Beyond that, the speeches in substance have much in common. Both express a fundamental belief in the separation of church and state. Both make historical references. But there are a couple of key differences. Romney feels compelled to "witness" in the evangelical manner to his personal belief in Jesus as the son of God and Savior:

There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

Kennedy in no way felt compelled to air his own faith in such specific terms.

This stands out in the Romney speech in particular in light of his assertion, immediately after he did that, that he doesn’t believe in doing such things: "There are some who would have a presidential
candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do
so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the
Constitution." Yes, I know what he’s thinking: He’s thinking of polygamy and other things from Mormon history. But if there is no religious test, why did he have to say what he did about Jesus? Because there was a higher priority for him than asserting the principles that Kennedy set out: Soothing the Christian right. He was explaining that he believes just what they believe; in other words, he was acting as an apologist for the orthodoxy of his faith. And within this political context, that struck me as unseemly.

Then there was the "multicultural" passage, in which he reached out and stroked everybody and told them that their religion was very fine, too:

And in every faith I’ve come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I’m always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life’s blessings.

Kennedy didn’t bother condescending thus to other people’s faith. As for his own church, he cited it and its teachings quite specifically and not in generic pieties, but he only did so insofar as it affirmed the bright line between its magisterial authority and secular power in America:

I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition, to judge me on the basis
of my record of 14 years in Congress, on my declared stands against an
ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial
schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have
attended myself)— instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets
and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out
of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in
other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of
course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948, which strongly
endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the
views of almost every American Catholic.

Overall, for what he was trying to do and his political and cultural context, I suppose Romney did all right. But I think Lloyd Bentsen would probably say that he’s no Jack Kennedy.

Here’s the text of the Romney speech as delivered, and here’s the video.

Here’s the text of the Kennedy speech, and here’s that video.

Hang in there, Hillary

5 Replies

At the otherwise civilized NPR debate, some of her rivals gave Hillary Clinton grief for doing exactly what she should have done — vote for the resolution aimed at isolating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

This, of course, is in keeping with the fad of the last couple of days, in which everyone projects what they wish the facts to be upon the rather mixed National Intelligence Estimate — you know, the one that said Iran stopped working toward a nuke over here, but over there it kept busy enriching uranium, putting it on track to have enough for a Bomb sometime between 2010 and 2015. (The Israelis, meanwhile, are more pessimistic than their friends over here.)

I’m still waiting for a reason why we should stop doing what we’ve been doing — working with France to keep the pressure on Iran to get it to abandon its nuclear ambitions — but I haven’t heard one yet.

This issue illustrates the flip side of the contradictory role that Mrs. Clinton plays in this election. She’s the embodiment of the hopes of people who want to continue the bloody partisan wars of the past 15 years, and Barack Obama offers the hopeful alternative to that.

Meanwhile, when it comes to actual policy — particularly foreign policy, which is the biggie when you’re talking chief executive in our system — she comes closer than Obama to the kind of Third Way approach once exemplified by her husband, Joe Lieberman, Tony Blair and others. (Example: The way she infuriated some in the base by her refusal to say she regrets her Iraq vote — that is the proper response for someone who is serious about occupying the White House.)

Anyway, when it comes to her Iran vote: You go, Hillary. Pay no attention to those boys.

Can anyone say, ‘single-payer?’

25 Replies

Day after day, I become more certain that we need to scrap our entire health-insurance system, and go to a single-payer national plan. It would cover everyone in a simple and straightforward manner that wouldn’t require a Ph.D. in filling out forms to navigate, it would put enough healthy (for the moment) people into the system to make it affordable for those who need care at a given moment, and would give us a gigantic bargaining bloc (forbidden in Medicare Part D, thanks to Big Pharma) for containing drug costs. In other words, it would make sense.

And here’s the really, truly amazing thing about it. Nobody, but nobody, in the political mainstream will stand up and suggest it. In fact, political candidates go to great lengths, through all kinds of gyrations, to avoid it. This is so even though I have only heard three credible reasons why not to at least suggest it, to get a conversation started:

The medical insurance industry doesn’t want it, because it does away with it’s reason to be.
Big Pharma doesn’t want it, because if we banded together, it would no longer be able to overcharge for the drugs it pays billions to advertise.
The idea of us banding together to act in our common interest offends some people’s ideology.

Yeah, I hear other objections — waits for procedures, reduction of choices — but those will be the features of ANY approach that works in lowering costs. The insurance companies have been telling what treatments we can and can’t have, and which doctors we can see, and which pharmacies and hospitals we can go to, for decades now.

Anyway, this little post isn’t about going into the details; this post is simply about the fact that we’re not even having a national conversation about whether to do this. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, who doesn’t count because he doesn’t have a prayer of being elected, nobody is out there touting this idea, so that we can at least debate it. And rest assured, we won’t be doing anything bold in this area unless someone is elected with a mandate to do so.

There are people laboring in the field out there trying to drum up support for HR676, which would create a single-payer system, but you don’t usually hear about them. The one advocate of the approach best known to people on this blog is our regular contributor Paul DeMarco, a Marion physician, is a founding member of a group called South Carolinians for Universal Health Care that is pushing for it (I believe, and Paul will correct me if I’m wrong, that the group is affiliated with Physicians for a National Health Program. Some of his fellow single-payer advocates came to see the editorial board yesterday. The video above shows Sabra Smith, a practicing nurse and PhD student at USC School of Nursing, talking about why she got involved with Dr. DeMarco’s group.

Is Romney the Republican Hillary?

2 Replies

Even as Hillary Clinton is being criticized for going negative on Obama (and Obama is apparently making the most of it), as I try to clean up e-mail from the past week, I see a similar pattern starting to emerge over on the GOP side.

It’s a testament to Mike Huckabee’s rising status in recent days that, even before the Des Moines Register poll came out, he was under attack by Mitt Romney:

This one, headlined FACT CHECK: HUCKABEE AND GIULIANI SUPPORT TUITION BREAKS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, came in last Thursday.
The second, headlined THOSE WHO KNOW HIM BEST… DISCUSS GOV. HUCKABEE’S TAX-AND-SPEND RECORD, came in on Friday.

And as we know, THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS among the sort of folk Romney is trying to win over (and trying to express that he is one of, which is the amusing part).

Of course, Romney wasn’t entirely alone in going after Iowa’s new front-runner. Here’s a release from Fred Thompson. Poor ol’ Fred just wants to get noticed these days, I suppose.

She Stoops to Conquer

7 Replies

Clintonista Robert Reich is a little disappointed in his old friend Hillary, as he writes on his blog in a post headlined, "Why is HRC Stooping So Low?"

… Yesterday, HRC suggested O lacks courage. "There’s a big difference
between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we’re
willing to fight for," she told reporters in Iowa, saying Iowa voters
will have a choice "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody
who’s walked the walk." Then asked whether she intended to raise
questions about O’s character, she said: "It’s beginning to look a lot
like that."

I just don’t get it. If there’s anyone in the race
whose history shows unique courage and character, it’s Barack Obama.
HRC’s campaign, by contrast, is singularly lacking in conviction about
anything. Her pollster, Mark Penn, has advised her to take no bold
positions and continuously seek the political center, which is exactly
what she’s been doing.

All is fair in love, war, and politics.
But this series of slurs doesn’t serve HRC well. It will turn off
voters in Iowa, as in the rest of the country. If she’s worried her
polls are dropping, this is not the way to build them back up.

To the extent that he’s got a point, it’s related to the point I was making back here. Obama continues to be, by comparison to his chief rival, the guy who’s following the high road. And it seems to be paying off for him, finally.

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: The Nation

My handy, all-purpose endorsement of everybody (almost)

McCain with the WSJ editorial board

The brass come out for McCain

A bit of perspective on our place in the world, by the numbers

The case for John McCain: The Economist reminds us of what should be obvious

S.C. Chamber chief on health care as a competitiveness issue

Urgent calls lead to action on Darfur (I hope)

Ditch the Farm Bill

1962 NIE: No Cuban Missiles

Maya Angelou — when is HER show on?

You’re a mean one, Mr. DeMint

Can anyone (any viable candidate, that is) say ‘single-payer?’: Column version

Dumb crook news

‘Abandonment of the Jews:’ Two views of the NIE from Jerusalem

What ABOUT a McCain-Huckabee ticket?

Romney vs. JFK

Hang in there, Hillary

Can anyone say, ‘single-payer?’

Is Romney the Republican Hillary?

She Stoops to Conquer