Given their apparent lack of regret for A.M. Rosenthal's effect of Central American coverage in the '80s, their obsessions with Scaife-invented Clinton "scandals" in the 1990s, and Judith Miller's Iraq War gamesmanship, they should change their slogan from "All the News that's Fit to Print" to "Non, je ne regrette rien."

Posted at January 7, 2008 9:36 AM in response to Kristol's First Times Oped: Neoconservatism For Idiots

The teachers' strike _was_ a critical event, but it came a little late (1968) to have created neoconservatism.

A better starting point might be Norman Podhoretz's infamous February 1963 "My Negro Problem--And Ours" piece in Commentary (available here in .pdf form), which in many ways laid the intellectual groundwork for the later reaction to the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike.

Posted at January 7, 2008 9:30 AM in response to Kristol's First Times Oped: Neoconservatism For Idiots

American politics is a lot more dynamic than you make it out to be.

You're entirely correct that no candidate taking these views will be elected in 2008.

But the way to make it possible for a candidate with these views to be elected in the future is by pushing the Overton Window.

Barry Goldwater lost by an enormous landslide in 1964, but movement conservatives didn't say "well I guess that means conservatives can't win, better spend the rest of our lives backing Nelson Rockefeller!" They worked for the long haul.

But progressives simply put their beliefs aside, figure that if they won't win now they won't ever win, and put their time and money behind candidates who pursue policies that, in their heart of hearts, they know are bad.

The longest journey begins with a single step. And, pathetically, no matter how bad things get, progressive Democrats are unwilling to work for their beliefs.

Posted at December 13, 2007 1:53 PM in response to Obama Talks the Talk, But Where’s the Walk?

Well, it would start with dramatically reducing defense spending and signing on to Kyoto (or its successor) and the International Criminal Court (without any restrictions on the prosecution of US nationals).

It would also involve changing our Middle East policy. The Israel Lobby should have a voice, not a veto.

Free trade absolutism should be replaced with a fair trade vision.

We should move toward international nuclear disarmament (including the US), not merely selective attempts at anti-proliferation.

Dennis Kucinich's idea of a Department of Peace might also be an important step in the right direction.

Posted at December 13, 2007 12:59 PM in response to Obama Talks the Talk, But Where’s the Walk?

I believe you both: I think there are plenty of reasons for voters to be suspicious of all of these candidates on foreign policy. All seem happy to subscribe to the hawkish, beltway consensus.

Does anybody want to step back from the relatively easy job of bashing the other candidates and explain why they honestly believe that there's a snowball's chance in hell that their own candidate will conduct a progressive foreign policy?

Posted at December 13, 2007 12:20 PM in response to Obama Talks the Talk, But Where’s the Walk?

Let's face it: the anti-war credentials of the big three Democratic candidates are all very, very weak. Of the three Obama was the one with the early courage to speak out against the war...but he did so far from the halls of power. Both Edwards and Clinton voted for war. Both Obama and Clinton have done little to halt their party's endless string of Senatorial capitulations to the Bush administration. Each of the three seem best on the war when they are least able to actually do anything about it. None of the three are willing to promise that our troops will be home by 2013.

I can't decide what I find more depressing: the endless desire of surrogates and supporters of all three candidates to change the subject to the other two candidates (because frankly the negative arguments are better all around), or the willingness of progressive Democratic voters to play along rather than insisting on an actually progressive candidate.

Clinton, Obama, and Edwards and their supporters all richly deserve each other. America deserves better.

Posted at December 13, 2007 12:08 PM in response to Obama Talks the Talk, But Where’s the Walk?

Of course that's not the way it works in practice.

Three-quarters of the public wants us out of Iraq. Neither major party's leadership does, however. So next November we'll once again have to choose between two pro-war candidates or "waste" our vote by voting our conscience and supporting a minor party candidate.

Posted at December 3, 2007 4:03 AM in response to Ease up, Dr. Krugman

I think what he wants is what Kucinich is proposing: single payer.

Of course, we all know that's not "serious" and that "serious" proposals reform the system, because in America employers pay for health insurance from private providers.

How the hell did we go from being a country founded on revolution to one that supports the irrational status quo in healthcare (and college football championships, presidential caucuses/primaries, the electoral college, etc. etc.) simply because it is the status quo?

At any rate, the answer to the problems in our health insurance system is actually pretty simple: end it, don't mend it. The difficult part is the politics.

Posted at December 2, 2007 2:35 PM in response to Ease up, Dr. Krugman

The first impulse of our court stenographers over at the New York Times and the Washington Post seems to be to bury the Politico's investigation of Giuliani. So much for the theory that if a scandal includes sex and/or money the media cares.

So now, although we're not only in Day 2 of this (potential) scandal, we're also in Act II, wherein we discover if anyone feels it's in his (or her) interest to keep this story alive...and whether he or she has the wherewithal to do so.

If I were in the Giuliani camp, I'd be very nervous, but I'd still be putting my money on laying low and having this just blow over (in part because there's really nothing else to bet on at this point).

Posted at November 29, 2007 2:25 AM in response to Giuliani's Tenure: How did the Candidates Run Their Shops?

If you take away the states of the Old Confederacy, American party / electoral politics would look basically like Canada's or Western Europe's -- especially if you factor out the distorting effect that Southern conservatism has on the national political discussion generally.

Though I see where you're coming from, the other big difference between this country and Canada or Western Europe is the extent to which the two major parties have made themselves quasi-official entities and have essentially excluded minor parties from American politics.

If you look at Canada or any of the countries of Western Europe, small parties play key roles in promoting new ideas and preventing political sclerosis.

Through ballot access and electoral laws that favor them exclusively, the two major parties have made this impossible in the U.S. And I suspect this would be the case, South or no South.

Posted at September 11, 2007 8:37 AM in response to Crank Politics