Phatic Hiatus

Spreading, Not Imposing

This Newsweek editorial by Elanor Clift tiptoes cautiously around criticism of Obama's Afghanistan policy, suggesting a slowly awakening realization that Obama's surge there is pretty much indistinguishable from Bush's surge in Iraq. I've been wondering exactly how the difference would be parsed, or if someone influential on the left would simply refuse to go along and start proclaiming that the emperor has no clothes.

Here's the spin so far:

President Obama's speech in Cairo provided a nice counterpoint for discussion with its emphasis on a new beginning in how America interacts with the Muslim world. My buddies in the small seminar group to which I was assigned saw the speech as a strong signal that Obama understands that the fight against Islamic extremism can't be won by military might, and that American power must be projected in other ways. They had fun parsing his words, especially when he talked about spreading democracy but not imposing it. How different is this from President Bush's pro-democracy agenda? "If I spread butter on my toast, I'm not imposing butter," suggested one participant. In the Middle East, even a difference without a distinction matters.

I'm sure it's a high quality speech and all, billowed by Obama's trademark cascades of ornate rhetoric, but I'm not sure precisely how much coverage it can provide for a $100 billion war appropriations bill that essentially relocates all the surge troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to impose spread democracy.

Arbitrary Partisanship

The constant media reports of a massive sea-change toward Obama in the last election were never quite borne out by detailed statistics. More to the point, they occurred at the same time as a shift in the reverse direction (from social-democratic governments toward center-right governments) in Europe. This suggests that the real message of the last election wasn't anything more complicated than "It's a bad idea to be the party in power during a massive global recession". That doesn't make the results any less fatal for the Republicans, but it does suggest that the path out of irrelevancy might be outside of their control. Parties win until they fail, and then they lose until the other party fails.

The More Things Change....

After the Obama administration made a request for around $80 billion for continuing war funding, the Democratic Congress increased the actual appropriations for the second half of 2009 to $96.7 billion. Amortized over six months, that amounts to $16 billion per month. Some of that money is being extended into "security" operations in Pakistan. Even if that's good money, you can bet we'll be chasing it with bad money soon enough.

This is already around $4 billion more than the Bush administration was spending to support both wars in 2007, before we were in the middle of the worst economic crisis (say it with me) since the Great Depression.

Technically this isn't all for overseas operations, but the fact that Congress is padding out the operations budget with additional Pentagon appropriation requests isn't exactly a cause for pride.

I'm curious to see, when Americans finally realize how badly they've been duped, if Obama's poll numbers start to trend down to Bush levels. Probably not. He's black, after all, and the late night comedians don't make fun of him as often.

Satire: Weapon Of Convenience

Here's Ta-Nehisi Coates for the Atlantic, wringing his hands with the world-weary voice of adult reason, as the RNC childishly compares poor Pelosi to a James Bond villain.

And here's Andrew Sullivan for the Atlantic, one month earlier, cheerfully playing the same movie villain game with Cheney.

Debates over civility in politics consist, for the most part, of people on nominally different sides engaging in precisely the same behavior without ever possessing enough self-awareness to notice the parallels.

Nasty Piece Of Work

Currently headlined at Matt Drudge is something about Obama laughing about a joke by comedienne Wanda Sykes about Rush Limbaugh dying. I take Drudge with a grain of salt, usually, since he tends to blow everything out of proportion. But the link seems to substantiate this interpretation. Sykes really says she wishes Rush would die, and Obama really laughs his head off as though it's the funniest thing he's heard since the last inane joke at the same correspondents' dinner.

Never mind that the parsing of Limbaugh's remarks is blatantly dishonest, since Rush has explained a dozen times over that he feels Obama's policies are objectively harmful to the economy, such that opposing them would benefit the economy. This is just plain ol' ad hominem meanness. A few months back, the networks made a big deal about some oblique remark on the Limbaugh show regarding how the health care bill would be named after Ted Kennedy, which (though actually true!) might not have been adequately considerate of Kennedy's ailing health. It'll be interesting to see if any of them pick up on this far nastier jab.

I don't see why Obama gets a free ride on this. My mother and sister are convinced he's some kind of saint, and yet he seems to engage in exactly the same nonsense without getting called out. How is this not a double-standard? And more to the point, shouldn't a President who brags about softening the political discourse be held to a higher standard than an AM radio phone-jockey anyway?

Feel the post-partisan love:

It's also instructive to compare the kind of comedians that Bush invites (people who make fun of him, in some cases brutally) with the kind of comedians that Obama invites.

Obama's Secret Plan

Remember last election, when (up until September) the most important issue was the war in Iraq? Democrats argued that war would only create more terrorists, and that the money being spent on Iraq was bankrupting our economy. So far I'd give that a 50% accuracy rating, since it doesn't seem like there are any more or less terrorists today than there were 10 years ago.

But the former claim at least has some objective merit, in the sense we really are turning government revenue into munitions, which is basically an expensive way of burning money. How much money? Well, during the Bush administration, expenses immediately after the Iraq war rose to a combined $5 billion a month to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan. Not every year, every month. By 2007, that had risen to around $12 billion a month, with about $2 billion of that going to Afghanistan and the other $10 billion to Iraq.

How does this compare to appropriations under the Obama administration? Well, currently he's requesting $61 billion for Iraq (about $5 billion a month) and $69 billion for Afghanistan in the next fiscal year. That amounts to $130 billion total, or around $11 billion a month. That's $1 billion less than Bush was spending every month in 2008, but about $6 billion more than Bush was spending back in 2003.

So virtually all the cost savings in Iraq are currently being absorbed by Afghanistan. That might be strategically shrewd, or it might be a blunder. But both of the core arguments used by protestors (war creates terrorists, and war wastes money) seem like they apply to Obama at least twice as much as they applied to the pre-surge Bush policy. You remember, back when millions of people were protesting in the street.

Obama's plan to end the war is starting to look rather like Nixon's plan to end the war: Shift the war into a new country, and then delay the ultimate withdrawal for another five years.

By the way, as popular as Obama is with the European glitterati, he's still not winning the confidence of the Afghan government:

“With President Bush, we began this journey together,” Mr. Karzai said, adding that the two had “seven years of a relationship.”

By contrast, Mr. Karzai said that his relationship with Mr. Obama “had emerged” fresh in the light of the tension that existed about civilian casualties. That affected the relationship, he said, although he added that he now believed that things were starting to get better.

In a beautiful inversion of the politics of last summer, when Palin acted outraged over Obama's claims regarding civilian casualties, we now see the US government disputing identical claims, using pretty much the same argument used by the Bush administration. It's a good reminder that it really doesn't matter much who's in charge - the warmongering Republicans or the hippie Democrats - the same stories are going to be told by the same people, and the same money is going to be spent on the same policies.

Magical Thinking

Although I have some sympathy for libertarianism as a philosophy, I've never been able to stomach actual libertarians. Part of this is that they really don't seem to consistently practice their own philosophy, usually settling for a "socially liberal, economically conservative" approach that doesn't add up to a consistent advocacy of less government intrusion. But a bigger problem is the extent of magical thinking that surrounds some of their pet causes. Marijuana legalization, for example, is credited with being able to do all sorts of miraculous works, like solving global warming, rescuing the economy, and reforming health care. This sort of silver-bullet thinking is difficult to ground in reality, although at least in this particular case, there's not much point in asking the rhetorical "What are you smoking?" question! I don't  much care if marijuana is legalized, but I don't it will accomplish any of the above. Tobacco has been legal for centuries, and that hasn't turned the nation into a utopia.

I'm seeing signs that the Democrats are risking the same sort of monomania with gay marriage. Here, for example, is an article arguing that gay marriage will save the economy. And here's an article arguing that it can save the health care system. None of these arguments hold up to much scrutiny; the fraction of the country represented by gays who wish to be married is minuscule, if European experience is a useful guide. But it's quite clear that sexual liberty has become such a defining paradigm of the American left that it threatens to swallow nearly every other priority. The pressure on Obama is certainly building.

Another One Bites The Dust

Drudge links to this video from my own former Congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky, triumphant over the eventual absorption of health care by the government. It's hard to care too much one way or the other, given how incompetently the health care system is managed now, just like it's hard to care too much whether a moribund Chrysler is gobbled up by the UAW. In both cases, one struggles to see how things could get visibly worse. The challenges of health care are basically the same, regardless of where control of the system is located. Without rationing of services, there's really no way to control costs.

Still, it's fascinating to see how efficiently the Obama administration is subsuming entire swaths of the private sector, in an extension of the heavy stake already gained in the financial sector (Fannie, Freddie, AIG). At some point the talking points are going to need to shift from "Republicans are insane to keep accusing us of socialism" toward a more plausible defense along the lines of "a little bit of socialism doesn't hurt".

Can't They Even Pretend?

From Emily Bazelon at Slate.com:

Does Obama have to pick a woman to succeed Justice David Souter, who is reportedly retiring? I'm not convinced—if he picked a great black male judge, who would complain?

I suppose we should feel grateful that there's not yet a requirement that she be a lesbian.

The question is a serious one, though. As long as the new nominee is regarded as an affirmative-action pick, that's going to taint the reading of court rulings for a long time to come, and create the impression that a future Republican nominee will need to be picked for similar reasons for the sake of "balance". The greater risk isn't an unqualified liberal woman justice, since Obama has a substantial pool to pick from, but an unqualified conservative woman justice, since there are fewer obvious candidates. That nearly happened under Bush, so it's not so hypothetical.

In the long run, I think it would be healthier for the nation if the Obama administration (and supporters generally) went through the public pretense that they were picking the best person for the job, and then had it "just happen" to be whatever quota-filling demographic combination they privately desired. That provides cover for the Republicans to pick whomever they want, rather than needing to play by the same rulebook.

Cheese On Chinese Food

Obama administration, 2009 (Jeff Wozer, Rocky Mountain Sports):

The president covets exercise like rap artists covet rhyming dictionaries. Every day for 90 minutes he transforms into Barack Lalanne, alternating between lifting weights and cardiovascular training. If time allows, he’ll shoot hoops with fellow gym rats.

He’s a man without excuse, that rare breed of workout fanatic driven by “must” rather than “should.” A key quality for any president, especially one who is not only the leader of the free world, but the fat-free world.

Bush administration, 2005 (Jonathan Chait, LA Times):

What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy.

Given the importance of his job, it is astonishing how much time Bush has to exercise. His full schedule is not publicly available. The few peeks we get at Bush's daily routine usually come when some sort of disaster prods the White House Press Office to reveal what the president was doing "at the time." Earlier this year, an airplane wandered into restricted Washington air space. Bush, we learned, was bicycling in Maryland. In 2001, a gunman fired shots at the White House. Bush was inside exercising. When planes struck the World Trade Center in 2001, Bush was reading to schoolchildren, but that morning he had gone for a long run with a reporter. Either this is a series of coincidences or Bush spends an enormous amount of time working out.

It's astonishing to see how cross-training has suddenly become a sign of moral virtue, when just a few years ago it was dooming America to terrorist attacks.