This piece blasting Frank Rich for being insufficiently anti-war illustrates the aggrieved attitude of frustrated entitlement on the left. Its message is: We've been right all along. We ate it when Kerry ran. Never again.

Yes, let's trash Frank Rich. No columnist has except Paul Krugman has so consistently devoted himself to ripping the Bush presidency, week after week, with a gusto that was quite entertaining before it got so repetitive. Rich's focus has gotten so laser-like he has even dropped the forced, framing pop cultural allusions (low point: The Day After Tomorrow captures the national mood) in favor of all-out scornful invective!

Rich is accused of "triangulation," the worst of Clintonian sins in the eyes of both hardcore liberals and conservatives - making this a shot across Hillary's bow as well. But triangulation is the only thing that might save the Democratic Party here - and the U.S. effort in Iraq. If some sensible pullout plan can be engineered that holds some promise of self-government and stability, it is the best course between the Bush's mindless "stay the course" and the left's strategically dangerous "get out now." But as Rich notes, the right will tag any such policy, no matter how sensible, as cutting and running. How can the Democrats address this problem? With some grownup Republicans fretting over this, bipartsanship holds the most promise both for an actual withdrawal policy and for a political way forward for Democrats. Unless the left, flush with Sheehanesque righteousness, makes that impossible.

Wash Your Bowl

Lemann's point of view is of the thoughtful, fair minded liberal intellectual meeting a man and a cultural phenomenon. Hewitt's point of view (at least as Lemann presents it) is that Lemann's approach is essentially dishonest, masking a tissue of political biases and attitudes.

Of course there is no real comparison between these takes. Hewitt is a hack whose political agenda determines everything he does. Lemann's journalism is interesting because it's unpredictable.

Lemann portrays Hewitt as unencumbered by reflection or doubt, genially multitasking his way through the day, spreading conservative memes via radio, the web and TV. But he bends over backwards not to condescend or dismiss - at one point going a bit too far in insisting on Hewitt's independence from the conservative echo chamber.

In most interesting part of the piece, Lemann watches Hewitt grill Dana Milbank of the Washington Post on his radio show. Hewitt is right about one thing: the MSM does tend toward self-deception. It purports to be fair and politically detached, but attitude - especially anti-Bush attitude - seeps into the coverage, which journalists then preposterously deny. Hewitt delights in exposing this, twisting his prey - even the redoubtable Milbank - into knots.

But if the piece illustrates one thing, it's the essential rigidity of the conservative media enterprise - something that will one day be its downfall. Hewitt's belief that politics determines everything - that it is everything - sounds little different from the guiding principals of various Marxist-Leninists and ivory tower liberals he despises. They had their day, he'll have his. With luck the Lemanns of the world will survive them all.

washyourbowl.blogspot.com

The conservative media machine has opened up a new front: children's books. There's a real book debuting called Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under my Bed!

From the press release:

The full-color picture book tells the story of two brothers who open a lemonade stand only to encounter a Kennedy-esque mayor determined to tax away their profits while a pants-suit clad Hillary outlaws sugary drinks and an ACLU lawyer confiscates their picture of Jesus.

"With left-wing books like 'Rainbow Fish' and 'King & King' flooding our nation's classrooms, 'Liberals Under My Bed' lets conservative parents share a story with their kids that reflects their values, while having fun doing it," says [publisher] World Ahead president Eric M. Jackson. "Not only is it important to teach kids about the American Dream, they must also understand that there are people out there who don't believe in freedom and traditional values."

Rainbow Fish a liberal plot to destroy America? Who knew?

washyourbowl.blogspot.com

Kevin Drum gets at a central failing of the Bush presidency (I know, there's a lot to choose from, bear with me) in this post about David Frum's critique of the mind-numbing repetitivenss of Bush's Iraq speeches.

Drum suggests several modest but substantive things Bush could do - encourage people to enlist, let gays serve openly in the military, come up with a real energy plan. Of course, none of these things will happen because each disturbs some segment of Bush's carefully-assembled, Rove-approved 51 percent majority (which ceased to exist not long after election day, but never mind that now):

If Bush isn't willing to take even a single one of these modest steps and run the risk of annoying even a single one of the interest groups that support him, why should any of the rest of us take his "central front in the war on terror" seriously? Obviously he doesn't.

True leadership sometimes means rising above politics. That confers credibility in tough scrapes like the Iraq war - a sense that the leader in question can see the world in three dimensions. But Bush is so vested in not doing anything that suggests political weakness or doing something his political enemies might want, he's trapped. It's bad news for Iraq, and for us.

Since before the whole Iraq mess began, the right has held a near-monopoly on emotion in the public sphere in the form of chest-thumping patriotic anger about 9/11. For a brief period that anger was a truly unifying national sentiment, but then Bush ... well, you know the rest. His politicization of 9/11 and the Iraq war has been both cynical and, well, sentimental to the core. Strip away all the arguments about WMD or terrorism or democracy and the whole Iraq war is just an emotional, gut-response by Bush&Co. They wanted to kick someone's butt, and Saddam was available. Their mastery of this post 9/11 psychological landscape - even in the face of their Keystone Kops performance in an actual war - has helped the GOP maintain its grip on power.

But politically speaking, do liberals really need or want to go head-to-head with Bush in a contest of righteous anger? As a short-term tactic, maybe it works because it does crystallize a lot of disquiet about Iraq. And as a genuine expression of grief it is entirely legitimate. But what does it really mean? Not much, Jonathan Chait argues:

The left seems to be embracing the notion of moral authority in part as a tactical response to the right. For years, conservatives have said or implied that if you criticize a war, you hate the soldiers. During the Clinton years, conservatives insisted that the president lacked "moral authority" to send troops into battle because he had avoided the draft as a youth or, later, because he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

So adopting veterans or their mourning parents as spokesmen is an understandable counter-tactic. It was a major part of the rationale behind John Kerry's candidacy. The trouble is, plenty of liberals have come to believe their own bleatings about moral authority. Liberal blogs are filled with attacks on "chicken hawk" conservatives who support the war but never served in the military. A recent story in the antiwar magazine Nation attacked my New Republic editor, Peter Beinart, a supporter of the Iraq war, for having "no national security experience," as if Nation editors routinely served in the Marine Corps.

The silliness of this argument is obvious. There are parents of dead soldiers on both sides. Conservatives have begun trotting out their own this week. What does this tell us about the virtues or flaws of the war? Nothing.

If liberals and Democrats want to call Bush to account for the shenanigans of the past few years, isn't the best course to be the grown-ups - the ones who see things as they are and offer powerful arguments to set them aright? This is not to discount emotion in politics, or even the occasional dose of Sheehan-style righteous anger, just to say that alone they won't win the argument - and might end up losing a lot of votes.

The Defense Department could respond to widespread abuse of its detainees by putting a stop to torture and holding the brass who enable it accountable. Instead, it's decided the way to go is to crack down on adulterers.

What else to make of the strange case of Gen. Kevin P. Byrnes, whom the Army pulled from duty because he had an extramarital affair with a civilian:

Having an extramarital affair can be deemed adultery and a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But such cases rarely go to court-martial and usually end in administrative punishment such as a letter of reprimand, according to military lawyers. Relieving a general of his command amid such allegations is extremely unusual, especially given that he was about to retire.

The Army has been hurt over the past year by detainee-abuse cases and has been accused of not going after top officers allegedly involved in such abuse. Army officials said relieving Byrnes was meant to show the public that the service takes issues of integrity seriously.

"We all swear to serve by the highest ideals, and no matter what rank, when you violate them, you are dealt with appropriately," said one Army officer familiar with the case. "Relief of command is a huge consequence. He's had an extraordinary career, but at the end of the day, the Army has to hold people accountable for their conduct."

Josh has been focusing on the latest Abramoff scandalette, especially his Guam clients' unorthodox method of paying him $326,000 in $9,000 increments, apparently to avoid IRS reporting requirements.

Abramoff's activities recall an episode from season 4 of The Sopranos. Carmela, fearing for her own financial security, swipes $50K that Tony has stashed in a backyard bin.

Here's how TWOP describes it:

Anyway, now we go to Carmela, who is counting out cash at her local bank. She's investing precisely $9,900, and the broker is nice enough to inform her that he's required to tell the IRS about any transaction of $10,000 or more. "Oh, really?" wonders Carmela, before opening her notebook to reveal that she's made four other identical deposits. "I want it in something safe," she adds. "Something old economy."

See also this recent story from USA Today:

BUFFALO — Bill Herberger, an 80-year-old former American Legion commander, didn't vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton when she won a Senate seat in 2000.

But when Clinton finished her pitch to save the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station from closure before the federal base-closing commission last month, the Swormville, N.Y., man and hundreds of other veterans, reservists and military family members roared their approval.

"I will tell you that I didn't support her, because I didn't think she'd be supportive on issues like this," Herberger says. "And I will tell you that I will vote for her next time. She's been absolutely marvelous."

Hillary and her people are really smart. At a time when the political center is up for grabs, they are seeding the media with messages linking her to the center. Will it work?

washyourbowl.blogspot.com

One of the striking things about Bush's Supreme Court choice is that he tends to tolerate, if not outright dislike, people with CVs like Roberts' – establishment types who followed well-trod paths to success, covering their walls with Ivy League diplomas, Phi Beta Kappa keys and the like. Bush has all but shut them out of the upper levels of the executive branch, surrounding himself instead with killer political operatives, loyalists and movement conservatives.

Bush has always been viscerally at odds with the Republican wing of the Eastern Establishment embodied by his father and grandfather. Roberts is one those guys that Bush would have resented in college and mistrusted afterward: the kind of man his family wanted him to be, when of course he wasn't. Of course this is the familiar psychodramatic explanation for the entire Bush 43 presidency.

Cliched as it may be, that explanation has been a pretty reliable predictor of Bush behavior - up to now. So what's going on here? Why is Bush acting reasonably rather than provocatively, and seemingly going against his own instincts – both his yen for ideological/political confrontation and his disdain for the establishment? Could the long-term necessities of establishing a legacy finally be trumping Bush's gut?

If she is indeed Bush's choice, Edith Brown Clement appears to be pretty un-Bork-like, and more Souter- or Kennedy-like - on other words, someone Democrats would find it hard to oppose. But she could also turn out to be a right-wing Souter. In any case nominating her would be uncharacteristically non-confrontational for the Bush White House. I thought they wanted a huge partisan nuclear conflagration. Though wearying, that usually seems to work for them, and they really need something right now to distract the masses from Rove, Iraq et al. So not clear what's going on here. Is Bush actually going to do something subtle?

Rove partisans are exploiting what appears to have been a round-robin of dishing between reporters and the White House over Plame and her role in shipping her husband off to Niger, and today's spin and leaks are weaving a giant fuzzball around it. Did Novak reveal Valerie Plame's name to Rove? Did he call Rove not vice versa? Were Cooper and Rove talking welfare reform or Niger? Was Karl just helpfully waving Cooper off the misperception that Wilson was believable? Did Judy Miller spill the beans or did someone spill them to her?

On the other hand, the liberal/Democratic line (i.e., Rove is a criminal/traitor) is premature. We don't know if he will be charged or someone else - or anyone. We don't know to what niche in the upper echelons of government Fitzgerald has traced the Plame gossip. We don't know what statutes are involved, or if the potential crime is revealing her identity or a subsequent cover-up or perjury - or something else.

Beyond the fact that this is a serious investigation that will likely end with someone being charged or copping a plea, there just isn't enough information publicly available to make a judgment from the outside on legal culpability. This basic absence of hard information is feeding the spin.

Does that mean Democrats should stand down in the face of furious Rovian spin? Well, no. But in their quiet moments they should take a step back and contemplate what we do and don't know, because there are probably more surprises ahead.

Daniel Drezner notes that with the disappearance of traditional forms of bipartisanship – and their replacement by occasional alignments between ideologues of both parties - it was inevitable that the open trade agenda would be undermined:

The shifting politics of trade and immigration are another, more prenicious example of this new bipartisanship, by the way. Trade was your classic centrist issue that generated support from centrists on both sides of the aisle. Today, liberal Democrats oppose trade expansion and relatively open immigration because they fear the effects on unions and the working class. Conservative Republicans oppose trade expansion and relatively open immigration because of fears about global interdependence and the loss of sovereignty.

The result: a weakening Congressional support for an open economy.

How can Democrats recapture the initiative on trade and put a progressive stamp on the issue? I don't mean blocking all trade agreements, but finding a way to incorporate progressive concerns into an open trade agenda. This is one of the biggest emerging issues of global governance for the next century - how do we encourage both open markets and better labor and environmental standards abroad, and transition affected communities at home?

Right now, options are limited. One way might be to defeat CAFTA in hopes of forcing the Bushies to the table the next time around (though that scenario is hard to imagine). In 2008, a Democratic presidential nominee will be obliged to elaborate a stand on the issue. But in the meantime, I don't think the issue should simply be ceded to the GOP.

And a tactical policy to oppose the most important agreements – those with developing nations – for all the usual reasons is no policy at all. That's not to say that these aren't genuine issues, just that their die-hard opponents in the Democratic camp don't really have workable solutions to them - except to kill trade agreements.

In the long run, that's a losing electoral strategy as well. Opposition to free trade is heavily interest-group driven, and the traditional urge to throw bones to dozens of groups is something the Democrats should think twice about before they make it a centerpiece of their economic policy. As Kerry found out, it's hard to integrate the anti-trade position into a forward-looking message for the Democratic Party.

Is Plamegate turning into Bush's obligatory Watergate/Iran-Contra/Monica second-term scandal? If Fitzgerald is targeting Rove, almost certainly, and depending on the timing it could consume the already apocalyptic Supreme Court fight as well.

Act like you’re winning no matter what. Then the perception may become the reality. Rove took Bush to campaign California the week before election day 2000 to try to create the perception he was comfortably ahead. When this works, Bush looks like a master. When it doesn't, Bush looks the fool.

But a war doesn't easily lend itself to such callow political tactics. The White House approach appears to be based on faith that left as they are, things will not go totally to hell in Iraq – not a concerted attempt to actually prevent things from going to hell.
Ed Kilgore elaborates on this point:

It's troublesome to learn that the White House thinks presidential spin on Iraq is more important to public support than the actual facts on the ground. All the "resolve" in the world won't help Bush if the insurgency cannot be quelled, and if the Iraqis cannot achieve a political settlement that will make it possible for a stable government to function.



washyourbowl.blogspot.com