James Taranto is an idiot

There was a point in President Bush's State of the Union address when he said that the Patriot Act was due to expire next year, and a group of Democrats applauded. Here's what James Taranto, of the Wall Street Journal, had to say:

The al Qaeda Cheering Section

The most telling moment in last night's speech came after the president noted that "key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year." In response, notes the New York Times, "some critics in Congress applauded enthusiastically." If Osama bin Laden watched the speech, one imagines him applauding too.

Perhaps the applauders were hoping to embarrass President Bush by provoking a Howard Dean-like outburst ("You sit down!"). Instead, the president let them clap, then turned toward the Democratic side of the chamber and addressed them directly when he read the next line of his speech: "The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule."

When Taranto was called on it, here was what he responded:

Welch's specific complaint is about our headline, "The al Qaeda Cheering Section." But was our characterization really unfair?

Let's say you're at the stadium watching the Super Bowl. It's late in the second quarter, and the Patriots are driving toward the end zone, but time runs out before they can score. The guy sitting in front of you begins clapping and cheering wildly. What do you make of his behavior?

Sure, it's possible that there's some complicated explanation. Maybe he's a devotee of the Patriots who thinks the team's clock-management strategy is disastrous, and he's applauding the Pats' failure because he believes it will spur the team to shape up in the second half. Or perhaps he doesn't like football at all and is clapping in anticipation of the halftime show.

But a normal person would assume he's simply rooting for the other team. Now, again, maybe the reason he's doing so isn't entirely straightforward. Possibly he doesn't care one way or the other about the Panthers but is a Dolphins or Bills fan and is cheering the bad fortune of a divisional rival. (Blogger Steve Sturm suggests--righly, we'd say--that this is the best explanation for the behavior of the cheering Dems.)

I suppose, in the bipolar world that the Wall Street Journal's editorial page editors live in, it really is the case that either you're with us or you're against us. But out here, in America, it's a bit more complex than that. The flawed thinking is epitomized in the choice of analogy. A football game is indeed all about two mutually exclusive results, so that if you cheer for one team's failure, chances are good that you are in fact rooting for the other team. Taranto's absurdist alternative explanations (you're a Bills fan, you're upset with the team's strategy for managing the clock) are straw men that he knocks down in a triumph of anti-intellectualism over logic.

The fact is, the Patriot Act isn't about mutually exclusive results; it's entirely possible (or, dare I say, patriotic) to approve of the ultimate goal of the Patriot Act -- preventing new terrorist attacks -- but disagree with the way in which the administration has settled on to achieve that goal because the costs are too high. To use a less simplistic sports analogy, imagine the Pats are down by two with a minute thirty left in the game and are in field goal range. Instead of going for the sure but vulnerable 1 point lead, they decide to fake the kick and try for a touchdown. Now, it's not a bipolar result anymore -- a cheering fan might indeed be rooting for the other team (since faked kicks are rarely successful, and his team is leading by 2), but he also might be rooting for the Patriots to achieve their ultimate goal, which is to win the game.

Actually, the more apt analogy for the impact of the Patriot Act might be Bentre, the Vietnamese village that inspired an Army spokesman to say "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

In any event, if I cheer because the Patriot Act is set to expire, it's because I don't think its necessary to destroy the Constitution and everything it stands for in order to save it. I imagine that the Democrats who applauded on Tuesday would tell you the same thing.