Nation-Building

Steve points me to this response by Matthew Yglesias to those who would question his semi-defense (or non-attack) in regards Bill Bennett's recent statements. This is the important part (for me):

Recent years have seen a frightening rise in right-wing political correctness. If you criticize Israeli policy or the U.S.–Israel relationship, or even use the word "neocon," you're an anti-Semite. If you're against Al Gonzalez you hate Hispanics. If you're against Janice Rogers Brown you hate black people. If you're generally against the social-conservative judicial agenda you hate Christians. If you're against the Iraq War you hate the troops. Most generally, liberalism itself is defined as an anti-American creed, some kind of slur against the Heartland and its delicate sensitivities.

That's all crap, of course, but a defense of rational debate requires some effort at consistency of purpose. The rule that the criterion of acceptibility is not accuracy, but sensitivity merely leads at the end of the day to the hegemony of majority sensibilities, to the most dangerous identity politics of all, those of America's white Christian majority. [italicized bold, my emphasis, -R]

Yglesias is pointing to the big picture here. Garance Franke-Ruta's opinion that Democratic leaning bloggers should get as much mileage out of the Bennett flap as possible, Latin be damned, certainly makes sense in the short term. And in general I don't mind that much when people at Daily Kos admit that they are going to back the Miers nomination on instrumental grounds, Supreme Court nominations are, in this day and age, pure politics. On the other hand, as Brad DeLong's original defense of Bennett implies there are intellectual grounds to not attack him. Granted, for the Left that means ceding some short-term political points. The fact is that the broad majority of Americans probably found Bennett's offhand association somewhat offensive (signalled by the statements put out by the Bush admininstration), and some criticism on those grounds is probably warranted.¹ But some of the hyperboles that Bennett was condoning the genocide of black Americans goes too far, in particular light of the fact that 1 out of 4 detected pregnancies ends in an abortion in the United States in any case, a disproportionate number of them black (it shouldn't surprise us that some black pro-lifers accuse abortion rights folk of aiming for the genocide of their race, something Maggie Sanger would probably not have been totally averse to via negative eugenics).

For a small minority of Americans facts and intellectual consistency matters. The vast majority of Americans are either too stupid or ideologically blinkered to really care, but in a nation that is sliced down the middle, this small minority, often biased toward classical liberalism, might matter a great deal in the overall war.

Addendum: People have different ends for the ideal political order. Myself, an open intellectually vibrant culture is a necessacity for my utopia, so it follows that an instrumentally guided policy with subborns that culture is by definition something I will look askance at, because to uphold the ends of A by the means of !A causes logical difficulties.

1 - I myself don't find it that offensive, the fact is that black Americans and crime have a strong association no matter what people say in public. That being said, even John McWhorter, who isn't know for being particularly sensitive, had a hard time defending Bennett's off the cuff statement. The reductio ad absurdum explanation offered by DeLong, which I think is the most likely primary component (though the association of black people with crime is surely a background assumption), is too complicated and subtle for most Americans to understand. So if you say something that requires several nested layers of concepts, and what you are saying is easily misconstrued by compressing said concepts into one unsubtle layer, don't say it, because the general audience isn't going to be able to decompose the sound bite and place it back in its context.

Continue reading/discuss Three cheers for the child blogger! ...

Former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday he had no intention of ever running for president again, but he said the United States would be "a different country" if he had won the 2000 election, launching into a scathing attack of the Bush administration.

"I have absolutely no plans and no expectations of ever being a candidate again," Gore told reporters after giving a speech at an economic forum in Sweden.

Well, that's that I guess.

Continue reading/discuss No Go on Gore ...

via myDD comes a pretty solid dose of cold water to any potential Gore candidacy. His favorables are worse than Kerry. And while Hillary's unfavorables were about as bad at one point, she has steadily risen due to being in the public spotlight, whereas Gore has not. The bottom line:

... from day one, any Gore campaign would be facing an uphill battle to restore a positive public image, and thus would start at a tremendous disadvantage even tot he candidates who will not be national figures before the primaries begin. They will simply have to define themselves. Gore would have to re-fine himself, which is much more difficult.

The reason for this is the interview where Gore correctly identified the effect of the Republican Noise Machine and its corrosive effect upon the political discourse. I've reproduced the full text in the extended entry below. And make no mistake about it - Gore was indeed Gored. Brutally enough that even Joe Scarborough acknowledged it.

Where I differ though is that I think a Gore run in the primary - while being ultimately doomed - might do a great deal to bring backbone to the eventual nominee with respect to speaking truth to the media power. Just as did Dean's run, Gore could still help steer the debate towards recognizing the pitfalls inherent in our system today, and thus leave a legacy of laying a foundation for eventual change.

interview below the fold...

 

Two years after the election, Gore gave an extraordinary interview to the New York Observer that could be read as an explanation of what happened to his presidential campaign. Gore charged that conservatives in the media, operating under journalistic cover, are loyal not to the standards and conventions of journalism but, rather, to politics and party. Gore said:

"The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party. Fox News Network, the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh -- there's a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media.... Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this Fifth Column in their ranks -- that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what's objective as stated by the news media as a whole(....)

Something will start at the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it will explode the next day on the right-wing talk-show network and on Fox News and in the newspapers that play this game, the Washington Times and the others. And then they'll create a little echo chamber, and pretty soon they all start baiting the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they've pushed into the zeitgeist. And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and lo and behold, these RNC talking points are woven into the fabric of the zeitgeist(....)"

True to form, the right-wing media greeted this factual description with yet another frenzy of repetitive messaging portraying Gore as crazy. Speaking of Gore on FOX News, The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes said, "This is nutty. This is along the lines with, you know, President Bush killed Paul Wellstone, and the White House knew before 9/11 that the attacks were going to happen. This is -- I mean, this is conspiratorial stuff." Also on FOX, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said of Gore, "I'm a psychiatrist. I don't usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there's a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. He could use a little help." "It could be he's just nuts," Rush Limbaugh said of Gore. "Tipper Gore's issue is what? Mental health. Right? It could be closer to home than we know." "He [Gore] said it's a conspiracy," Tucker Carlson said on CNN's "Crossfire." "I actually think he's coming a little unhinged," The Weekly Standard's David Brooks, now at the New York Times, said of Gore on PBS. (p. 6-7)

Continue reading/discuss Gore and the Republican Noise Machine ...

There's a new book by a pair of political scientists entitled Off Center which seeks to analyze American politics to answer why even though most people are demonstrably moderate, the right side of the political spectrum has enjoyed such electoral success. The basic thesis of the book itself will probably be rejected with prejudice by a comitted Republicanist; however, principled conservatives should take notice, as the book is as relevant to them as it is to liberals. More importantly, as Kevin Drum notes in his succinct review, is that the book sets the stage for the following philosophical question:

do Democrats need to fight fire with fire? Or will the center eventually hold if Democrats figure out a more effective way of appealing to moderate voters?

I think that finding an answer to this question should not be a question of tactics, but rather of principle. Clearly, fighting fire with fire can only lead to Democratism at some point down the line; it is absurd to think that there would be restraint suddenly imposed from within.

If we are to renew the political climate in this nation, and build a truye American majority, we need to return to principles as the foundation for the conversation with the American polity.

Ultimately, there question of how to reachout more effectively to the center is not a new one, and it isn't even a secret. Those who argue the Democrats are not a party of ideas are simply wrong; those who argue that marketing those ideas is poor are probably right. But as long as there is some fascination with the tools used by the right to gain dominance - at the expense of conservative principles - those ideas will never have a chance at fair presentation.

NOTE: the book's author's are guest-blogging at Washington Monthly and explain their ideas in more detail.

Continue reading/discuss the center will rise ...

Listen: Al Gore addresses The Media Center's We Media conference at AP headquarters in NY (48 min, 20 MB MP3).

Well, talk about an Al Gore convergence today. Al gave a speech this morning about the decline of the media as independent arbiters of our public dialog. Full transcript worth reading at TPMCafe, but here's a central point, which echoes critiques I have made elsewhere:

The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.
[...]
Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to "glue eyeballs to the screen" in order to build ratings and sell advertising. If you have any doubt, just look at what's on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings, and on and on and on.

And more importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, the nation's fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America's industrial base, and a long list of other serious public questions that need to be addressed by the American people.
[...]
This was the point made by Jon Stewart, the brilliant host of "The Daily Show," when he visited CNN's "Crossfire": there should be a distinction between news and entertainment.

As I just mentioned, Gore lost the debate spin, but not the debates themselves.

I wonder. Is Gore positioning himself for a run in 08? We wont know for sure until after the 06 elections, so I have at least a year of speculation :)

Continue reading/discuss Gore on being Gored ...

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration. ... The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. ... [The President] would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.

-- Alexander Hamilton, Tuesday, April 1, 1788

In a nutshell, this is why the nomination of Harriet Miers must be opposed in bipartisan fashion. Literally, for the good of the Republic - as even the partisan right concedes.

Continue reading/discuss Federalist #76 ...

The Diary at Kos makes some interesting points, but the discussion is even better. Especially this link-rich comment, which I've reproduced below in extended entry. I confess that I've been enamored of Gore for a while - I've been a fan of his since Clinton's first term. And reviewing his policies, I have to admit that he's a far closer fit in terms of being conservative or liberal on an issue by issue basis to my own assessment and instincts than any other pol.

I'll keep an eye on him. He did the right thing by bowing out on 2004. But right now what we really need is competent government, and Gore (unlike Kerry) would also bring real vision and principle with him. The only time Gore was ever afraid to be Gore was in the 2000 election and it cost him a comfortable enough margin to win Florida unambigously. I think that since then he has spent the last five years returning to his skin. And he feels more comfortable there than ever before, especially since he isn't following Bill, but George.

So why not? if it's because you think he is a loser, well, read the links below. Gore lost the debate spin, not the debates.

 

Selective memories?! (4.00 / 2)

You mean, I have to remember his sighings in the first debate? Guess what, in real time no pundit noticed that. It took a couple of days till GOP or the media corps produced the spin. Just like with "inventing internet"...

Gore lost the debate spin, not the debates themselves.

Gore did not act that obviously annoying in the first debate. Just look at the first reactions and actual transcript objectively. It was a very delicate organised work of selecting the soundbits and ramming them through all MSM channels for whole weeks that formed those "debate memories". Perhaps the diligent activists were surprised themselves by the success.

And you know what? In 2004 Bush learned a lot from Gore. He learned to sigh when he could not really answer (pretending that the remarks are ridiculous, whereas Gore was reacting to really ridiculous talk). His "character" was different in each of the three debates. And he got everything both ways! Is there anyone else who can be that lucky?

Then there was the myth created that substance does not matter in presidential debates. Yeah, substance is irrelevant when outright lies of one candidate are kindly ignored, but trivial lapses of the other candidate (with whom he visited the Texas flood, how cramped are Florida school classes) are cruelly exaggerated. After all, it was Bush's math that was  fuzzy, but "fair and balanced" media corps decided otherwise!

Gore played seriously in the debate game run by clowns. Even the moderator was concerned to support the Bushie moderator. And let's not forget, the third debate started with a backhanded "apology" to Gore.

So yeah, the spin was memorably lost. But how much is this Gore's fault, and how much is this smallmindedness of scribes who were supposed to guide the debates objectively?

by das monde on Wed Oct 5th, 2005 at 01:52:30 CST

Continue reading/discuss Gore ...

Link goes to a fantastic and lengthy diary at DailyKos by a decidedly Purple kossack. Its a masterpiece, with some great comments spawned by it as well. Of course the very first reply typifies Democratism at its worst, and got about 300 4.0 ratings. Still, the Recommend list is impressive, I've put them in extended copy below as a sort of roster of who at DailyKos one might consider purple in their politics rather than knee-jerk blue. It says a lot that the diary even made the Recommended list at all; there's clearly a lot of latent dissatisfaction at the dominance of the "progressive" left. The leftists tend to be much more vocal, but what I like to call the Silent Significant Minority does remain active, and not exactly dormant, either.

In brief, here are excerpts of Arquebus' main points in the diary:

1. The average American is never, never, never going to believe that George W. Bush is a fascist, a sociopath, or a bloodthirsty maniac.

2. Most Americans believe this is a great country. Not could be, not should be, not would be but for the other side...but is.

3. To that end, the war in Iraq is not unpopular because it's immoral. Most Americans don't not support the war because of the lack of wmd's. They don't support it because we're losing.

4. A united America, conservative, liberal, independent, and totally apolitical, is all to the good.

5. Most conservatives probably know that Bush is a failed president.

6. The damage that this administration has done isn't the damage that a conservative government would do. No, this is plain old, boring incompetence.

7. Another 20 years of cold civil war will destroy this country.

8. Somewhere in the central midwest tonight, a middle-aged mother is getting home from work. She's not terribly political, but she watches the news. Turning it on tonight, her first response is `Bush did it again, put in one of his friends.' She generally votes the straight Republican ticket, but is increasingly frustrated with the direction of the country. What are you going to tell her? That she voted for Adolf Hitler last time? That she's a Bible-thumping psych-Christian who's too stupid to understand the theory of Evolution?

Brilliant. Patriotic. Passionate. Reality-based. Read the original for expansion on each of these themes, I only grabbed the lede to each point. So few people understand that this is what Howard Dean was trying to say all along! Except for the now-vanished regular readership of Dean Nation, that is. The same left-ist zealots who rallied around Dean solely because of his opposition to this war (mistaking it for opposition to all war) are the same ones who are tearing down this great Diary and who also took Senator Obama to task for his effort at speaking truth to netroot power by posting a Diary of his own.

 

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list accurate as of october 4th, 11:30 CST.

Continue reading/discuss Purple rising at DailyKos ...