I’m in lecture-writing mode today and am not really supposed to be looking at the blogs. But I couldn’t resist clicking on a link that my dad sent to me to Victor Davis Hanson at NRO Online. Hanson writes,
The
latest polls reflecting Obama’s near-collapse should serve as a
morality tale of John Edwards’s two Americas — the political obtuseness
of the intellectual elite juxtaposed to the common sense of the working
classes.
For some bizarre reason, Obama aimed his speech at winning praise from National Public Radio, the New York Times,
and Harvard, and solidifying an already 90-percent solid
African-American base — while apparently insulting the intelligence of
everyone else.
He goes on to explain that Obama’s speech was the worst speech ever and that all the non-brie eaters hate his guts now.
Did I miss a major story? Is Obama out of the race? So, I ran over to check the headlines at the Times. No headlines. The opinion writers both talked about Obama, but nothing about a "near-collapse." Herbert thinks it was the best speech ever, but many people might miss the point. Brooks is wondering why Hillary doesn’t resign already.
Maybe Hanson is confused.
Apt. 11d 
I really do think it is a bad thing in American life when a significant fraction of public voices and political activists are brazenly shameless about just making stuff up. Hanson either is just imagining a poll showing “near-total collapse” or he conducted a poll of himself and some other writers at the Corner.
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This poll, maybe, from his article:
“Over the past four days, I asked seven or eight random (Asian, Mexican-American, and working-class white) Americans in southern California what they thought of Obama’s candidacy — and framed the question with, “Don’t you think that was a good speech?” The answers, without exception, were essentially: “Forget the speech. I would never vote for Obama after listening to Wright.””
And, apparently he can’t count, since he doesn’t know whether the folks numbered 7 or 8. Oh, and I, personally, don’t know any random people. I wonder how he finds them?
I think the bigger point — that my assessment (or Laura’s or other non-random people who I might query) might not match the population at large is a valid one. I recognize that “people who I know” are not a random sample of the American population.
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Hanson may have been (greatly) over-generalizing from reports of Pennsylvania polls, which, at least as reported in the local paper, show Clinton with an increasing lead. For example: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08078/866068-100.stm
Of course, I wouldn’t call that shift a ‘near collapse’ and I think the poll was from before the speech.
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Where’s the cost to VDH et alii for just making shit up?
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I have no expectations when it comes to VDH and his crowd, but seriously, the stuff I’ve been hearing over the past few days from that part of blogosphere has bugged me the same way it’s bugged Tim. Where’s the polling data? Where are the studies that suggests that the speech has “cost” Obama the white working class? Where is anything that supports this allegation? I wonder if this is all a conscious plan on the part of the conservative commentariat, a build-it-and-they-will-come plan to keep chanting “collapse!” until the masses believe them.
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I’m certainly not sticking up for the dude, but if you want to see whether his sentiment is reflected by the general public, I don’t think checking the Times is the way to go. What did small town papers say about the speech?
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Mickey Kaus has written yards on this stuff so far. One of the things he brings up is that in this situation, polls may be very unreliable.
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Mickey Kaus has written yards on this stuff so far. One of the things he brings up is that in this situation, polls may be very unreliable.
The willful innumeracy among bloggers, especially academic ones, is what I’ve found most fascinating about this primary race. Everyone knows polls are bad, yet you see prof science professors trumpeting some 2% lead in a head-to-head poll with McCain as evidence of why someone deserves the nomination.
They can’t be that clueless, so I suppose they’re doing it on purpose? Don’t know if that’s better or worse…
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Kaus speculates that voters may be telling polls what they feel is the “correct” answer (i.e. Obama), while planning to vote differently on election day. We shall see.
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But, that’s not what VDH says (that the polls are unreliable). He cites “The latest polls reflecting Obama’s near-collapse . . .” and leaves us wondering what those polls might be (I’m voting that he’s referring to the one he conducted :-). And, isn’t it supposed to mean something to be a fellow of the Hoover institute? Or am I wrong? The article is just bizarre enough that you are left wondering what delusional world he is getting his data from. It sounds a bit like the Taming of the Shrew (remember, when the domination of Kate is proven through her agreeing that night is day).
Kaus’s idea isn’t new; it’s the “Bradley” effect, and was most recently discussed after the inaccurate polling results in the NH primary. It might be relevant in the sense that polling might not accurately reflect people’s views on Obama and/or on his speech, but it’s not relevant to the discussion of VDH’s weird cites to polls themselves.
The pollster reviewing the issue in the NYT says that the mis-estimates result from a sampling bias: “Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites. Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews.” There’s no way to correct for this type of problem in polling, ’cause it’s the interview it self (i.e. an “observer” effect) that skews the results. You can’t over-sample the lower-income whites who will talk to you, ’cause the one’s who talk to you are not a representative sample of those who won’t talk to you.
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Mickey Kaus is only barely behind VDH on the shameless-I-make-it-all-up scale of public discourse.
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While I still agree that VHD is exaggerating to charactize it as a collapse, there are polls that show a drop. See:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/people2/just_8_have_favorable_opinion_of_pastor_jeremiah_wright
That was the 2nd result for googling “Obama Wright Poll”. The first result was a nice bit of analysis by Barone.
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I showed about 10 minutes of the speech to my religion 101 classes, asking about whether politicians should discuss their ministers, how people (and their pastors) talk in church, etc. Most of the students had not seen the speech, or had seen just a couple of sound bites.
Some of my students liked him a lot, but others thought he was just making excuses, and several were outraged at the disrespect they thought he showed his grandmother by mentioning her in a negative light. (Now that I’ve seen this mentioned by Christopher Hitchens, I wonder if they got this from the media – but it seemed to be their own response.)
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What numbers actually constitute “some” “others” and “several”? (in AF’s class)
(unfortunately I have no opportunity to do these types of “experiments” on my own students).
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If it goes down to a McCain-Obama match-up, the Wright controversy is going to continue to be very dangerous for Obama’s candidacy. Even if McCain himself doesn’t exploit that relationship, dozens of nobodies are going to be putting together ads contrasting McCain’s story (years of torture at the hands of America’s enemies) with the Wright aspect of Obama’s story (two decades of sitting back and listening to Wright damn America). I would add that the Wright story has made McCain look a lot better to a lot of folk on the right, who had been preparing to take McCain like a big dose of castor oil.
(Incidentally, when my husband and I hear anything way out of line at mass, we do go up and talk to the priest, or my husband writes the priest an e-mail. If things were really bad, we wouldn’t hesitate to write the bishop. I don’t know that anyone has asked Obama if he talked to Wright about Wright’s conspiracy-mongering. Did Obama ever take Wright aside and point out to him that AIDS was not created in US government labs?)
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It’s hard to tell exactly – I didn’t do a survey – but in one class of 20, I got a sense most liked the speech, and we talked mostly about church issues. In the other class of 20, two people brought up the grandmother issue and a few others chimed in in agreement. They also wanted to know if the grandmother was dead or not (as it turns out, she’s not; I wound up wondering if he’d vetted it with her in advance, or what she thinks if not). I was really startled, because I expected everyone to love it. FYI, this is at a middle tier regional state university.
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How about McCain’s main man Hagee? That’s going to win him lots of Catholic voters, no?
Tim is of course right about Kaus.
Advancement in the conservative firmament seems to be the main cost of making shit up.
ianqui, what do you mean by small town? Most Americans live in suburbs. Further, it’s been a while since I had one in my hands, but the paper I grew up with in Baton Rouge syndicates heaps of content from the NYT. Presumably the owners and editors there know their audience when they buy the rights. That’s one of the reason people bang on the Times so much: because so many papers across the US pick up their articles and reprint them whole cloth. If the Times gets something wrong, many other papers will simply repeat the mistake.
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Doug,
McCain has chosen some odd folk to hang with. I think he doesn’t know the critters he is trying to court (maybe because he doesn’t like them), so he’s picking the wrong leadership. (That is a bad sign, of course, that he can’t be bothered to do some basic botany.) Out in real life, there’s a huge cultural overlap between Evangelicals and Catholics. Rank-and-file Catholics, for whatever reason, do not consume a lot of “Catholic” books, but apparently represent a huge proportion of customers of “Christian” (i.e. Protestant) bookstores. (Amy Welborn writes a lot about this.) There’s an enormous amount of cross-pollination going on. Lots of Catholics have read the Left Behind books, and Notre Dame trains Protestant philosophers for the big conservative Protestant schools. Conservative Protestant grad students want to learn about Aquinas and Augustine and such folk. Likewise my daughter’s school in Texas (which is run by the spouses of Protestant university faculty in a Baptist area) puts a very heavy emphasis on the historical Christian tradition, teaching Latin, Latin chants (in music class), observing the liturgical calendar, and teaching about Catholic saints like Catherine of Siena. These are not Episcopalians, by the by, but I believe mostly Baptists. The US religious situation is extremely fluid and dynamic, and I believe it is a mistake to think that there is one water-tight box full of Evangelicals, and another box full of Catholics. The boxes leak.
McCain’s most emotionally compelling story is that he loves his country and suffered for it. Obama’s most emotionally compelling story is that he bridges black and white in America and electing him can lead us straight to a race-blind paradise where you don’t have to feel guilty about being white anymore, since we’ve got a black president. It should be needless to say that their respective spiritual advisors have a very different degree of impact on their central narratives. I’d add that no one seriously believes that you can lead McCain anywhere he doesn’t want to go, whereas Obama is much more of a chameleon, so it is much more worthwhile to pay attention to what backgrounds he chooses to match.
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Doug,
I can’t think of the preacher’s name, but in 2000 there was a similar issue with Bush praising/getting the endorsement of some virulent anti-Catholic. At the time, it was enough to make me support McCain in the primary and was one of several reason that I didn’t bother to vote for president that year. This year, I’m voting McCain regardless.
As far as the Democratic race in Pittsburgh, Obama’s ads are everywhere on the TV and radio. I haven’t heard a single Clinton ad, though she’s spending a lot of time in the area. I don’t know what to make of that. The signs for both are out in the yards, though not in the numbers that there were for the mayoral race last year.
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McCain had some fantastic things to say about housing issues just recently. It’s a huge relief to hear a major politician say that he isn’t going to try to bail out an entire fraud-ridden bajillion dollar industry, keeping housing unaffordable, and sinking the entire economy in the process. And he’s from Arizona!
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“Obama is much more of a chameleon”
Evidence? (This is not at all the sense I got of Obama from reading his first book, btw.)
Also, Matt Welch on John McCain in today’s NYT. Matt’s a buddy from the old Central Europe English-language newspaper guild, but he’s also a serious libertarian, so it’s not like we’re in the same political choir. Here is what he wrote to newspaper editors back in January on endorsing McCain. “He is the third generation in a family whose basic bedrock belief is that U.S. military power alone can and must guarantee world safety. He told me personally that America’s percentage of global defense spending—currently more than one-half—is too small.” More of course at the link.
From MH, above, “This year, I’m voting McCain regardless.” Hey, if you’re up for 100 years of Iraq, there’s not much I can say.
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Doug,
The first sentence from your quote (“He is the third generation in a family whose basic bedrock belief is that U.S. military power alone can and must guarantee world safety.”) is the best summary of why I’m voting McCain. That is the core, everything else is just a debate on tactics.
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Doug,
As a lot of people have already said, when are we leaving Germany? It’s been 63 years already. As long as things are relatively peaceful, even 100 years in Iraq shouldn’t spook us. (That’s a big if, of course.)
The Welch quote doesn’t bother me at all. And it shouldn’t bother you, either, if you think that the US should be doing stuff like intervening in Darfur or improving military preparedness.
McCain’s weaknesses (which are undoubtedly extensive) lie elsewhere–stubbornness, being too willing to go it alone, etc.
As to Obama being a chameleon, of course he is. How else could you go from being brought up by white grandparents and a globe-trotting white mother to studying at Harvard to living and functioning as a black American? That’s quite a trick, no matter what the color of your skin.
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Concretely, McCain’s views on immigration give conservatives (and a large majority of ordinary Americans) toothache. Less concretely, a lot of conservatives think he seems a bit too comfortable as a member of the senate club, and a bit too pleased to have been the darling of the press and every liberal’s favorite Republican for so long. He does seem to be getting a much more favorable hearing from Republicans than in 2000. That may or may not have something to do with the fact that he is running much more heavily this time on his military service.
Doug, now it’s your turn to say something nasty about either Obama or HRC. Your pick.
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As far as the Democratic race in Pittsburgh, Obama’s ads are everywhere on the TV and radio. I haven’t heard a single Clinton ad, though she’s spending a lot of time in the area. I don’t know what to make of that. The signs for both are out in the yards, though not in the numbers that there were for the mayoral race last year.
I know, and I hope he keeps it up! I was visiting my parents in Ohio the week before their primary and there was major Obama fatigue from his relentless TV ads.
My quintessential swing vote mother decided to swear off Obama forever when she saw a commercial that featured hysterical supporters crying at a rally.
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“As to Obama being a chameleon, of course he is. How else could you go from being brought up by white grandparents and a globe-trotting white mother to studying at Harvard to living and functioning as a black American? That’s quite a trick, no matter what the color of your skin.”
How else? By expecting the world to be a chameleon that accommodates everyone, a world where you can be different and still belong. That’s Obama’s narrative, a world that permits him to be the 1/2 black editor of harvard law review and the 1/2 white member of a black church. In fact, I think an essential part of his narrative is he will be himself, and that they will alter themselves to accommodate him.
I’ve wondered if that’s why his appeal is so strong among the young, who always feel different, even when they’re just like everyone else.
That narrative “being different and still belonging” is the prominent theme in three teen/pre-teen movies I can think of off the top of my head (High School Musical, Bratz, and Sydney White). In each, the children fight out of the boxes they’ve been pigeon-holed into to make connections beyond the divisions. (and, it’s too easy to say mean things about Hillary, but each also has a blonde antagonist who tries to force everyone back into their boxes because she likes the old social order).
(BTW, I understand someone voting for McCain if they think that American military spending is too low, and that we can create a peaceful Iraq by leaving our troops there for a 100 years. Those are substantive policy issues, on which we clearly disagree. There are no “narratives” )
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“As far as the Democratic race in Pittsburgh, Obama’s ads are everywhere on the TV and radio. I haven’t heard a single Clinton ad, though she’s spending a lot of time in the area. I don’t know what to make of that. ”
I think she’s running out of money.
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Obama could blow it by letting his cautious side get the better of him. In my primary, I voted for Obama, but I also voted against Clinton because I think the country needs more than just carefully calibrated mini-initiatives. The 90s are over, and we need different solutions for different times. I don’t think that’s what she’s offering. Maybe I’ve missed it, but it seems she’s been leaning less on her half of the historic firsts the Democrats have on offer this time around. That lack of emphasis and a game plan that apparently expected her to put the nomination away on super Tuesday look like the strategic errors that have left her irreparably behind Obama.
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Apparently, if Obama is nominated, 28% of HRC backers say they will vote for McCain. There’s a small but significant number of Obama voters who say they will vote for McCain if HRC is nominated.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105691/McCain-vs-Obama-28-Clinton-Backers-McCain.aspx
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19% v 28% (for Obama supporters who’d vote for McCain & 28% for Clinton supporters). National sample, w/ +/- 2% sampling error (based on an n=about 6000).
In a parallel question, 11% of Republican voters say they won’t vote for McCain if he doesn’t pick a “substantially” more conservative running mate (w/ an additional 9% not voting).
The Gallup analysis also says that historically only 10% of voters cross-over and vote for the other party’s candidate.
These numbers are also intriguing in light of the article about Republicans voting in the PA primary in order to help McCain:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4527837
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Doug is saying “Obama could blow it by letting his cautious side get the better of him” kind of like saying in a job interview that your greatest fault is that you “work too hard.” :-).
Fortunately, I see no particular evidence that Obama is letting the “cautious” side get the better of him.
I remain confused about how Clinton made the strategic errors that left her in a deficit hole. When we call those errors strategic, I think we imagine that she really could have competed in Idaho, for example, if she’d tried. But, I’m pretty unsure about that. I think the math of the delegates just ended up working against her, just like the math of the electoral college worked against Gore in 2000. She ran well, but not well enough in a bunch of big states, and was destroyed in a number of other states (both small and medium sized).
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All this crossing over this year is reminiscent of 2000, when Republicans were aggravated by Democrats voting for McCain in open Republican primaries. There’s a lot of that in the air. We found (very churchy) Obama literature under our windshield wiper after Mass the Sunday before the big Texas primary/caucaus thing in March. The brochures invited recipients to vote for Obama in the primary and caucus for him. Interestingly, the word “Democrat” appeared nowhere in the literature, so it was essentially inviting every Republican and their dog to come vote for Obama. The only detail even vaguely hinting at his party affiliation was the blue background of the brochures.
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The “churchy” brochure touted Obama’s TUCC membership, naturally.
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Oh yeah, McCain’s not a chameleon. I guess that’s how Mr. Straight Talk ended up hugging the man who helped to spread vile lies about McCain’s own child during the 2000 campaign. Or how Mr. Straight Talk ended up talking about how you could take a casual jaunty stroll around a Baghdad marketplace–forgetting to mention, “as long as you had a combat brigade protecting you”.
Or how Mr. Ethics ended up fairly deep in the swamp of the S&L crisis.
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Also, Amy, you’re going to have to do better than the German occupation canard.
“On V-E Day, Eisenhower had sixty-one U.S. divisions, 1,622,000 men, in Germany, and a total force in Europe numbering 3,077,000.” That’s from the Army Historical Series, accessed here. After V-E day, there wasn’t a resistance. The highest figure I can find for US casualties for the 1945-48 period is 64 killed. (And this really is an outlier.) What are we up to now in post-fall casualties? Will we be out of there before it reaches a hundred-fold?
Consider that Saddam’s government fell in April 2003. We’re now nearly five years past that point. Five years after V-E day, the D-Mark was already inaugurated, the Basic Law written, and Adenauer elected Chancellor.
This is not to say that the occupation of Germany was without lessons that could have been used for planning for post-war Iraq:
“The tactical troops thought in terms of military security and therefore often followed different priorities than would have been most useful to military government. The public safety officer in Marburg, for instance, complained that he was having to spend most of his time explaining to the tactical troops why they should, besides protecting potential sabotage targets and checking passes, also supply guards for the $200-million worth of art work, 400 tons of German Foreign Office records, and 84 tank cars loaded with mercury, all of which were in military government custody.”
That, though, presumes a US administration that was interested in post-war Iraq or realistically planning for same.
Better analogies, please.
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PA has closed primaries and the deadline to register was this Monday, so whatever is done is done. In Pittsburgh proper, you may already have a fair number of Republicans and independents that are registered as Democrats because the Democratic primary winner is effectively the winner in local election (since the 30s).
I’ve read the polls and Amy P and BJ are talking about, but I hope that McCain’s people are taking those numbers with a big grain of salt. People say lots of things in the heat of the moment or for tactical advantage.
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MH: Well the second sentence (“He told me personally that America’s percentage of global defense spending—currently more than one-half—is too small.”) is helpful for a dose of perspective. More than the entire rest of the world, and it’s still not enough for McCain. Plus an open-ended, possibly 100-year commitment to Iraq. Plus real willingness to open a new war with Iran. Plus an apparent willingness to “roll back” the North Korean government. It seems the man never met a war he didn’t want.
In re cautiousness: I mean two things on this front. First, that Obama raises hopes so very high that they will be too easily dashed. I think that he could be a very good president; I don’t think he walks on water. Unfortunately, the media dynamic is to claim the latter, so as to make the downturn later that much more dramatic. Second, he hasn’t been using his seat in the Senate to do a great deal to get us out of Iraq. I’d like more leadership from what is, after all, quite a powerful public office.
Ok, it’s just getting entertaining, but it really is past the end of the working day Over Here, and I’m not turning on the computer tonight at home. Have fun being mean while I’m away.
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If the US casaulty rate was the same as now for a lengthy occupation, that would not be utterly intolerable. It’s not a happy thought, of course, but it may not be avoidable.
My much younger brother is finishing up (Inshallah) his second tour with the Marines in Ramadi, and he’s actually applying for officer’s training and thinking of making a career of it after he finishes college. He doesn’t have much chance of making it, but after all those months of sending care packages, I’m not very excited about the prospect of him spending the best years of his life rotating in and out of various sandy locales. On the other hand, it can’t be that bad out there, or he wouldn’t even be considering it.
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“He doesn’t have much chance of making it.” Hopefully, this means through officer training?
So now, I really want to hear from your brother on what he thinks of it over there, and how long he’d be willing to stay. I guess 2 tours, already. How many more? Any chance of getting his words on “how bad (or good, as the case might be) it is out there”?
(I think it’s a sign of non-overlapping circles that I know only one person who has served in the military, and all our jaws dropped with shock when she told us about her sting in Germany).
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bj,
Oops. I only realized how dire that sounded once I pressed “publish.” What I meant was that it’s really hard to get into officer training in the Marines, especially since he wants to fly. Most likely he won’t get in, and all us womenfolk will breathe a collective sigh of relief.
My grandpa was a WWII medic, his two sons sat out the Vietnam War in graduate school, but my generation has had a fair crop of military folk. On that side of the family, there are a total of nine cousins, five of whom are boys, and two of the five boys are currently serving. (A third boy studied a couple years at one of the academies, but found he hated it, so he transferred. I suspect normal ROTC would have been more his cup of tea.) Being in the military has certainly helped with paying for college, but none of them “had” to–by the time my brother and cousins were headed into the military, our family was mostly more than comfortably middle class (especially my cousins’ parents).
Maybe once my brother’s safely home I’ll be able to get some sort of guest post out of him. He’s a quiet guy, but quite the reader, and has a quirky sense of humor. Most of what I hear is at second hand. Last tour he was patrolling around an air base with a Hummer crew. This tour he’s been transporting Iraqi soldiers. There’s not a lot to do off duty, and at least last fall, one of his most pressing projects was building a small patio (it gets really muddy during the rainy season). Oh, and the quality of insurgent explosives found in caches was really poor. More recently, he was griping about the lousy reinforcements they had just got. He was a huge Tom Clancy fan as a kid, and on one memorable occasion, found a .22 at home and disassembled it. As a kid, he also loved going out with a buddy and blasting away at pumpkins. I suppose it was pretty much preordained that he was going to go into the military.
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Doug,
If the choice is between a nuclear Iran and war, I don’t want someone in the White House who isn’t willing to consider the latter choice. Sometimes, you have to choose between bad and worse. If it comes to that, I don’t want another Jimmy Carter.
As for the defense budget, if we can’t keep-up the current level of deployment without over-stretching, then in my opinion McCain is correct. You can’t just count up what the U.S. spends and compare it to our current and potential adversaries. The other side’s main tactic (only “successful” tactic) is to look like civilians to kill American soldiers and actual civilians. Terrorism is very expensive to defend against and very cheap to implement.
I agree that the occupation of Iraq was poorly planned. I think McCain will be a better president than Bush and will be better able to manage Iraq.
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Amy,
My prayers and best wishes for your brother.
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MH,
Thank you. He’s a good kid.
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Yes. Best wishes for your brother, Amy.
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“If the choice is between a nuclear Iran and war, I don’t want someone in the White House who isn’t willing to consider the latter choice.”
I think (and we know it’s the issue that liberals continually loose on) that the “other side” consistently underestimates the willingness of “liberals” to fight when necessary. I’m not going to speak for Obama and Clinton, but I’m a died in the wool liberal, but do not oppose war, on principle. I believe there are just wars, necessary wars. I think a democracy needs strong, stable, and well-supplied military to defend the principles for which it stands. I have no reason to believe that the left-leaning candidates I prefer do not share these beliefs.
What I oppose most strongly aren’t even “unjust” wars, but badly executed ones. Wars I believe are unjust are unfortunate, of course, but I do believe that our country has enough of a shared history of being right that we are unlikely to travel down the path of Nazi Germany (though I do want to remain forever vigilant to that tragedy). So, essentially, I think it unlikely that we will be evil, though we might be wrong.
But, we show a plentiful tendency towards badly executed wars, so badly executed that they leave tragedy in their wake, in spite of the lack of evil intent. How do we structurally prevent poor execution? I think the key is something that McCain has said (but I don’t see him following through on): shared sacrifice in times of war. If our leaders need to lead us into war, they need to convince us to commit to *shared* sacrifice. War requires sacrifices. Don’t lead our nation to war, hiding those sacrifices, or convincing me that they will all be made by someone else.
The neocons tried to convince us that there was a new way of fighting a war without sacrifice. They were wrong.
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And, to apply this practically to MH’s “If the choice is between a nuclear Iran and war, I don’t want someone in the White House who isn’t willing to consider the latter choice.”
I am not a pacifist, and have no reason to believe that either of the democrats are either. Thus, no reason to believe that they also wouldn’t consider war. The problem, in this as in many others, is whether war will be effective to producing the outcome we want (a non-nuclear Iran isn’t good enough, if preventing a nuclear armed Iran feeds a robust multi-headed hydra of shiite terrorism). How about a non-nuclear Iran at the cost of obliterating Iran itself? We probably have the military capacity to do it. But, is it worth it? the death of 65 million people and the destruction of one of the oldest civilizations on earth? I’m guessing that most Americans would answer no to that question.
Conservatives make a straw man assumption about the willingness of liberals to consider war that I believe to be completely wrong. there are pacifists among us, but far more pragmatists.
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That’s exactly the point, MH, if it comes to a choice between an Iran with nuclear weapons and war, we’ve already lost.
On the one hand, it’s not an easy problem: fission bombs are a 1940s technology that we’re trying to keep a 21st century state from acquiring. Over the longer term, that’s probably not possible. Still, attention to the problem, coordination with other nuclear powers, cooperation with international authorities, and all the other efforts have kept a lid on Iran’s nuclear ambitions to date. There’s lots of gritty detail of how this worked in the 1990s in Strobe Talbott’s book, The Russia Hand. The materials that Iran needs are constrained enough, and the technology is fiddly enough, that we can, if we want, continue on this path for a good while longer. The best estimates of Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapon technology that I’ve seen place it some five to nine years down the road. Incidentally, in the 90s that was also the estimate, and here we are ten years later and still no bomb. The present approach is working. (The alarmist estimates that I’ve seen are often from the same people who thought East Germany was potentially a G7 economy and that the CIA was systematically underestimating the strength of the Soviet system in the 1970s and 1980s. This is not a track record that inspires confidence.)
On the other hand, it’s not a hard problem. Acquiring the bomb is an expensive project for a developing country. That’s reason enough for any government to consider the alternatives. An overall more secure environment has given several medium-income countries reason to drop their nuclear ambitions over the decades. South Africa, Brazil and Argentina come quickly to mind. When would-be proliferators look at the costs involved and think, “what’s the point,” that’s good news for the US as a declared power, and one of the major overseers of the nonproliferation regime. But what those cases have in common is relaxation in the regional security situation. Any Iranian leadership right now will look at Iraq, which didn’t have nuclear weapons and got invaded, versus North Korea, which does and didn’t. The Bush administration’s record makes nukes look like a good insurance policy. (That’s just one of the ways that the current administration has been counterproductive on this issue.)
Further, deterrence is still important. If Iran were to deliver a nuclear strike on a US target (we’ll stipulate that that’s possible, even though I don’t think that is the case), it would be a tragedy of immense proportion. It would also be the end of Persian civilization.
I want a president whose assessment of the situation increases our set of options. I think that McCain would do the opposite. I want a president who’s interested in real results first. I think McCain’s interested in tough-guy posturing. I want a president who understands that the best conflict is the one that you win without fighting, and who knows that you have to leave your antagonists enough room to save face. (Think Khrushchev and Cuba.) I don’t think McCain would do either.
(Parenthetically on Iran, it only took us 16 years to recognize Bolshevik Russia. Re-establishing diplomatic relations with Iran is closing in on twice that, and starting to look more than counter-productive.)
On budget questions, it’s only sensible to tot up the costs and benefits. And tactics don’t mean much if the strategy is bad. What benefit are we getting from a perpetual occupation of Iraq on the installment plan? Is it worth $8B a month? Plus the irreplaceable lives? Plus all the other costs? Really, five years later, why are we still there?
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Doug,
Why would we want to establish diplomatic relations with a government that started by kidnapping American diplomats? Peace through pre-placement of hostages? The people who actually held the hostages are in the government right now.
I agree it is best to win without fighting. However, that option isn’t always there. I’d suggest that given Iran’s history over the past 30 years, it would be good to prepare for plan B in case the current effort fails and to make it clear that we are doing so.
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For the same reasons that we have diplomatic representation in Rangoon, Tashkent, Ashkabat and other homes of regimes that range from odious to despicable: there’s no better way to advance US interests on the spot than to have people on the spot. Iran has multiple power centers and various factions; we can’t do anything to help ourselves if we aren’t there. The US had an embassy in Berlin up until war was declared; the US had an embassy in Baghdad throughout the first Gulf War. It’s a bit like running relations with France in 1826 based on Jacobin crimes. The Iranians want relations, so we should be able to get something in exchange, but basically it’s past time to stop being silly.
In McCain’s rush to prepare for Plan B, it looks like there’s jolly little work getting done on Plan A. Further, given how much of our military is currently doing whatever in Iraq, it’s not like we’ve got this huge force anywhere that we can put to use doing something else. How many unsavory folks see this as an excellent time to tug on Uncle Sam’s beard and go, “Yeah, you and what army?” Yet another cost of GWB’s misadventure.
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Yes, we need embassies in bad countries to represent our interests. Which is why one of the oldest norms in international relations is respect for embassies. This norm, like most norms in IR, is based on reciprocity which is supported by the fact that diplomatic relations are in everybody’s interests. If you want to keep the ability to have embassies in odious regimes, you have to enforce the norm by not maintaining diplomatic relations with those who violate the norm.
And this is nothing like carrying a grudge against the Jacobins in 1826. By 1826, the Jacobins were one emperor with heartburn and one crappy monarch removed from power. The people who kidnapped our diplomats still run Iran. Not just the same regime, but in many cases the very same people.
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Since we mentioned Jacobins, and as a way to end my contribution to a long series of comments, I offer my song “French Regimes Since 1789.” Sing to the tune of “Twelve Days of Christmas.
Five French republics,
Four with no DeGaulle,
Three ousted kings,
Two emperors,
And a Vichy fascist regime.
Obviously, it isn’t much help with dates (and it doesn’t scan perfectly), but it has helped me.
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Like the song!
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I know some of you guys are going to hate this because of the Fox News connection, but here goes:
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/03/27/obamas-former-pastor-builds-a-multimillion-dollar-retirement-home/
I had been wondering in view of Wright’s and TUCC’s condemnation of middleclassness, what Wright’s level of personal consumption was, and now I know. It’s a rather unappealing combination, gross consumption using money made (in part) by feeding paranoia and hopelessness (Why strive to live a decent middle-class life if all these vast, malevolent government forces are conspiring to give you HIV, sell you drugs, and keep you down?). I know what Obama has said about TUCC’s day care centers, and HIV outreach, but it’s pretty hard to find a church that doesn’t have a significant degree of charitable activity. Plus, the financial transactions behind that house just smell funny. I suppose that Wright probably won’t have to pay property tax, because it’s probably TUCC church property. Ugh.
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Thanks Doug. That last line just popped in my head when I was reading something about French government. From that it was easy except for the fact that I can’t think of a plausible item for 6 and up.
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There probably aren’t six sainted Louis, which is too bad because it’s both alliterative and in the proper meter. I’m sensing a potential huge time sink here, but “burning martyrs” also scans properly. Francophiles might want to substitute “an Edict of Toleration” for the Vichy reference, but it’s not quite as amusing that way. Other possibilities include “Capetian kings,” Merovingians, Huguenots and guillotines. I see lots of fun here, but if I want to get anything else done this weekend, I’d better stop now.
Amy, Russel Arben Fox seems to know a good bit about Wright. Why not ask him what he thinks?
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I’ve stayed in a church whose minister vexed me – nothing as extreme as what Wright seems to be, but silly platitudes over real issues and presenting at shiny-and-new the last three months of NY Times editorials as insights. I felt attached to other congregants, I had a little responsibility on some committees, and time passed and there I was.
It does seem to me that Obama has had a lot of concern about racial identity – Steve Sailer’s article about his half brother who has almost no interest in the issue is interesting – and that that was likely a factor in his attraction to a church where there was so much churning about the whole thing. But it seems to me likely not a big deal going forward.
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“But it seems to me likely not a big deal going forward.”
The TUCC connection is instant campaign ad fodder, especially since there are extensive quotes in an Obama book detailing his early involvement with TUCC and what attracted him there. Particularly valuable is the fact that Obama recorded the audiobook, so the quotes will be available in his voice. I don’t think McCain himself will run the most pointed ads possible, but there’s already a McCain ad up that I think is pointing obliquely at Obama’s apparent ambivalence about the US. Third parties creating advertisements will be more direct.
On the other hand, McCain really knows how to annoy fellow Republicans. When he’s right he’s right (like his recent housing statements) but when he’s wrong, he’s so wrong.
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“but there’s already a McCain ad up that I think is
pointing obliquely at Obama’s apparent ambivalence about the UStrying to gin up anti-Obama sentiment and attack his patriotism.”There, that’s fixed.
This sort of thing has gone from the last refuge of a scoundrel to the first. Unless we think that McCain’s so unlikely to win that he’s already on his last refuge. Hm.
I wonder if he can be arrested for violating campaign finance laws? Wouldn’t that look great for the law n order party.
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The question remains, why should we make you president of a country that you don’t seem to like very much?
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Ah, because “in no other country is my story even possible.” Recognizing that your country, the only possibility at all for you is imperfect, does not mean that you don’t like it very much, merely that you believe in what it can be as well as what is.
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“The question remains, why should we make you president of a country that you don’t seem to like very much?”
Indeed. And I, for one, am not satisfied with the answers that McCain has given.
What is all this “national greatness” business? Is America not great as it is? Is the new generation not awesome? Why does he think they should all
be draftedengage in forced mandatory national service? This American who’s planning on voting for an American in American elections for American president to run the American government wants to know.(On the other hand, if the point of McCain’s tactic is to set up Republicans as the nativists and Democrats as party of immigrants and their descendents, go right ahead with that. I might even send a check, made out to the “Pete Wilson Republican Majority Fund.”)
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What? One of the reasons McCain wasn’t the first choice of many Republicans is because of his support for amnesty for those who immigrated illegally. Also, your comment is the first time I’ve read a “Republicans are going to draft you” comment since 2004. Congratulations on taking things down-market before the primaries have even ended.
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