Darth Nader

I haven't had time to sit down and think out the ways in which Ralph Nader's candidacy could hurt the Democratic nominee. Fortunately, the folks at Tech Central Station have, at least in terms of his potential impact on the Electoral College vote. Check it out. [link]

Quick Hit

Pat Buchanan has an article in the American Conservative that, oddly enough, I agree with. [link] Buchanan reviews "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror", a new book by Richard Perle. In the review, Buchanan posits that neo-conservatives may finally have been exposed as having lost touch with reality.

Perle claims that we and the terrorists are in a struggle that will either affirm or destroy Western civilization. But Buchanan's point is that in the struggle between terrorists and everybody else, the thing that we can least afford to do is panic:

In the war we are in, our enemies are weak. That is why they resort to the weapon of the weak—terror. And, as in the Cold War, time is on America’s side. Perseverance and patience are called for, not this panic.

In support of his argument, Buchanan draws some interesting parallels to WWII, and makes some common-sensical points about our and the terrorists' relative strengths and weaknesses. What struck me, however, was Buchanan's application of FDR's quote about fear; usually, the quote is truncated to "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." But as Buchanan recognizes, the rest of the sentence is relevant and should be repeated, often. It reads, "[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

In other words, let us react to, and prepare, for real threats, but let us not jump at shadows or, in the name of fighting terrorism, restrict our freedoms more completely than any terrorist ever could. To do the latter would be to succomb to the nameless, unreasoning and unjustified fear that Roosevelt was warning against.

First they came for the Jews...

So now President Bush wants a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage or civil unions. What ever happened to the traditional conservative notion of "that government governs best that governs least"? And what about "states' rights"? I guess they're okay as long as the state wants to discriminate against "those people", but as soon as the states want to do something progressive, states' rights be damned, we need a federal constitutional amendment!

But all sarcasm aside, this proposal is an affront to all Americans, not just those who are gay or lesbian (and I am neither, by the way). The proposed amendment classifies a distinct group of Americans and then attempts to systematically strip them of rights because of that status.

To which I say, not in my America! Not in my name and not by wrapping yourself in my flag! This is not the America that I grew up in, that I was taught to revere, or that I want my son to inherit. I will not stand for it.

And if you don't think that you need to be worried about this, consider the Rev. Martin Neimoller, who spent almost 8 years in concentration camps for his outspoken opposition of Nazi Germany. He said this:

In Germany they first came for the Communists
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

First it was Muslim (and Muslim-sounding) immigrants who were rounded up en masse after September 11 who were denied their civil rights. Then it was Jose Padilla, an American citizen who is languishing in prison despite having been arrested on American soil, and despite having never been charged with any crime. Now it's gays and lesbians.

Who's next? Me?

You?

It Depends What the Definition of "Volunteer" Is

You know, if the Republicans didn't tell such blatant lies, I might say that they were comically inept in, to paraphrase, "truth-telling program activities". But the lies are so blatant that I can't help but think that the Republicans have tipped over into venality.

This time around, in case anyone missed it, Talking Points Memo caught Marc Racicot, chairman of Bush-Cheney '04, lying on NPR this morning. [link] Specifically, in an interview with Juan Williams, Racicot said that President Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam, but wasn't selected. [link]

Racicot actually used the word "volunteer", which, as we'll see in a moment, is a blatant fabrication. He didn't say "Bush joined the Guard and took the risk he'd be called up" or anything like that. He said "volunteered." Which implies that our President, noble soul that he is, asked to be sent into battle. Get ready the B-roll of heroic action clips.

But here's the thing (and these days, it always seems like there's a thing, doesn't it?): the actual, documentable facts say otherwise. To wit, on his application to join the National Guard, President Bush was asked whether he wanted to go overseas, and he checked the box marked "Do not volunteer". [link]

So there you have it. Bush specifically states "do not volunteer" and now his campaign chairman would like us to believe that the President actually did volunteer. Anyone who can spot the lie, give yourself 5 points.

Look, I'm just going to say this once. I really couldn't care less whether President Bush avoided the draft or not -- lots of honorable people avoided the war, some for very good, and others for not so good, reasons. Whatever; it was 35 years ago, they were all young, and I don't think that it is an automatically disqualifying character flaw in politics now to say that you didn't want to go to Vietnam then. But if you avoided the draft, however you did it, BE A MAN AND ADMIT YOU DID IT.

I am tired of being lied to, and I am tired of being gamed by smarmy surrogates. But for God's sake, if you're going to lie to me, (and this is the kicker), is it too much to ask that you not lie about things that are instantly and easily verifiable? I mean, really, if you're going to lie to me, at least do so in a way that respects my intelligence.

"Volunteer" and "Do not volunteer" mean different things; even my two-year-old knows the difference between "do" and "don't". Is it too much to expect that the chairman of the committee to re-elect a sitting President should know the same?

Look for the Union Label?

I have been struck over the past week by the apparent decline in the political power of unions. In politics, it seems, the union label doesn't mean what it once did.

Gov. Howard Dean had managed to get high-profile endorsements from three major unions -- AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), SEIU (Service Employees International Union), and IUPAT (International Union of Painters and Allied Trades). On paper, at least, these unions represented high-powered political muscle, and more importantly, represented bodies who could get out the vote. Rep. Dick Gephardt had gotten more union endorsements than Dean. Yet neither candidate appears to have benefitted from their endorsements. Odd, isn't it?

At some level, a candidate rises or falls on his or her own ability to capture the public imagination, but one has to wonder, given the failures of Dean and Gephardt, just what are unions bringing to the table, if not their power to influence large groups of people to support a particular candidate?

I think that a large part of the problem is that unions, like many Democrats this time around, have decided to trade principles for electability. In other words, rather than endorsing a candidate whose views and record show support for labor's causes, the unions set out to be king-makers -- if you don't believe me, consider the shuttle diplomacy by the Dean campaign between SEIU and AFSCME, which resulted in a simultaneous endorsement from two rival unions. Each set out to be the power behind Dean's ascedency, but ended up only proving their own impotence.

More recently, the AFL-CIO decided to play king maker by endorsing Sen. Kerry, who has, at best, a mixed record on issues that are important to organized labor (to name two, Kerry supported NAFTA and giving President Bush fast-track negotiating authority; purportedly, according to the New York Times, Kerry has voted for every trade agreement since the end of the Cold War [link]). Of course, given Kerry's success in the primaries before the endorsement, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is too late to claim the mantle of king maker, so instead, he's trying to be the "guy who unites the party and delivers the White House into Democratic hands". In this vein, he declared the race over: "Today, we know the time has come to unite behind one man, one leader, one candidate." [link] Never mind that at the time he said that, fewer than 700 of the 4200 delegates at stake had been picked, and most of the Rust Belt states where labor has been most firmly entrenched have not yet had a chance to vote.

But if things go wrong -- that is, if Sweeney or AFSCME president Gerald McEntee can't deliver -- will Labor take any responsibility for the failure? To hear McEntee talk about the Dean campaign, the answer is clearly "no". Rather than take responsiblity, McEntee said of Dean, "I think he's nuts."

Moreover, when the chips were down, McEntee turned out to be a fair-weather friend. In addition to publicly pulling AFSCME's endorsement before the Wisconsin primary, McEntee trashed Dean publicly, despite Dean's dignified handling of the business of suspending his campaign. In an interview with the New York Times, McEntee had this to say:

I go to Burlington, and I meet with him. I'm telling you, I threw more ice-water on his head in about 25 minutes than he probably has ever had. And I said 'Don't go to Wisconsin, ok? Don't go in.' I told him to get out. I said, 'You can't win.' He said he's still going into Wisconsin. I said, 'We're not. We're off the train. If you think I'm going to spend $1 million to get you another point after this election is over, you're crazy.'" [link]

Thus is the enduring value of the union endorsement today. Of course, the candidates get some positive press on the day of the endorsement, but after that, I don't see that it helps all that much these days. But maybe I'm wrong -- just ask Democratic front-runners Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean.

What I want to know is...

Liz at Life as a Spectator Sport has a fantastic post on the social conservative agenda on gay marriage (the permalink seems to send you to her blog front page, so scroll down to February 18, 2004). [link]

Here's what she said that grabbed me:

We're going to see George Bush and the Republicans use the issue of homosexuality itself, not just gay marriage, as a way to divert attention from the sick economy, the increasing number of deaths in Iraq, the lies that got us into Iraq to begin with, and every other facet of his dysfunctional presidency. I've been wondering what he would come up with to scare the voters into keeping him in Washington. Now I know. Among other things, it's me, of all people (sorry, I know that's not grammatical, but it has more gut-level tension than 'Tis I').

I didn't realize I was that scary. I feel like stopping people on the street and asking, "Do I frighten you? If my partner and I got married, would that destroy your marriage? Would the fact that we could never have had children together make your relationship with your children any less significant?"

And I want to ask, "Will being afraid of me somehow create more jobs? Will it bring back the child or the spouse or the friend who died in Iraq? Will it balance the budget? What does it get you to be afraid of ME?"

We need to keep asking these questions in the days ahead.

"Will passing a constitutional marriage amendment get back the job you lost when your company moved its headquarters to Bermuda and its jobs to India?"

"Will denouncing me restore the Pell grant your college-aged child lost due to budget cuts?"

"Will calling me names bring back the money your school district no longer has?"

George, I'll still try to keep my discourse civil, but you just made the fight a personal one. You made me into some kind of monster, into a shibboleth to scare other people with. You made me, a pudgy middle-aged grandmother going gray at the temples and wobbly in the knees, into a weapon for you, and I won't have it.

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

I have been trying for the past three days to think of something to say about the end of the Dean campaign, but everything that I have written has felt forced, or petty or just plain dull. I'm working out a post on theme that "all politics are local" and Churchill's "This is not the end" speech, but I haven't yet been able to get it all out on paper, so watch this space, as they say.

In the meantime, I am posting an email that my wife sent to a colleague that captures the essence of what I believe happened and has to happen next:

I think I'm coming around to the view that apathy is the wrong answer. The amazing thing about the Dean campaign was only sort of about the candidate (a very good man, I believe, who was doing this for all the right reasons and was a great governor in VT, but to be brutally honest probably a flawed campaigner on the national stage) -- it was really about the grassroots involvement and the new sense of empowerment for so many people. I think if that gets lost, then we as a nation and the Democrats as a party will really have lost something. . . . In a nutshell - the idea is to start small and build big, which is what the religious/conservative right did when they hijacked the Republican party. If they can do it, we can too.

In the same vein, I recommend Joan Walsh's article in Salon.com [link]

Does "535" Mean Anything to You?

So here's a mental image for you: as of February 10, 2004, 535 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. [link]

There are 535 members of Congress.

So to picture how many people have been killed in Iraq, picture all the people sitting on the floor of the House chamber during the most recent State of the Union. Now imagine all of them dead.

On second thought, it might be best not to take that mental image too far...

Quick Hits

Hoover Digest has an interesting article about the war on terrorism. The premise of the article is that the world is engaged in a latter-day 100 Years War, which started with the collapse of European international dominance in 1918. According to the author, Clark Judge, the end of World War I had destroyed three empires -- the German/Austrian empire that dominated central Europe, the Russian empire that dominated Eurasia and the Ottoman empire, which dominated the Middle East. From the ashes of these empires came World War II (illegitimate totalitarian regime in Germany attempts to dominate Europe), the Cold War (illegitimate totalitarian regime in Russia attempts to dominate Eurasia) and now, the war on terror (illegitimate totalitarian fundamentalists attempt to dominate the Middle East). Judge notes in an interesting aside that in each case, the resurrected imperials have selected an Asian partner (Japan, China and North Korea, respectively) to complement its exploits, but he doesn't follow up on that point to see where it leads. [link]

Meanwhile, in view of the renewed focus on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or the lack thereof, Foreign Policy has an article revisiting and annotating a speech by President Bush on October 7, 2002 in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he made a detailed case for war against Iraq. As Foreign Policy points out, a comparison between the speech and declassified intelligence materials (the raw matter of intelligence, if you will), reveals that what the president said did not accurately reflect what U.S. intelligence analysts believed at that time based on the available intelligence. [link]

Finally, away from politics, for a moment, some of you may know that I have a professional interest in financial products, and have spent a fair amount of my career in the area of derivatives. Derivatives are financial products whose value is determined, or "derived" from the value of some other thing, say the price of crude oil, or the exchange rate of the Euro or the London Interbank Offer Rate (affectionately known as LIBOR). Derivatives, used correctly, allow someone or something that faces risk to pick apart the elements of that risk factor and then hedge against those elements in order to minimize or eliminate those risks. Used incorrectly, derivatives can spiral wildly out of control and cause grave economic damage either to the user or to a larger marketplace. Little wonder, then, that derivatives have been described as "Financial WMDs" and blamed for all manner of financial blowup from Enron to the recession. But now, Reason.com rides to the defense of derivatives. It's interesting reading, and well written. [link]

Winston Smith, please call your office

Joshua Micah Marshall excerpts an infuriating snippet from a recent White House press gaggle in which Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary says yet again that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11. [link]

Here's the offending statement:

QUESTION: They had nothing to do with September 11th, the Iraqis.

MR. McCLELLAN: Oh, I beg to differ. September 11th taught us that we are living in a dangerous new world.

It would seem, from that statement, that McClellan is stating outright that the Iraqis had something to do with 9/11. This is a lie.

As proof, I suggest that perhaps Mr. McClellan ought to read his own transcripts, particularly from the press gaggle on September 17, 2003. Some background might be in order. The previous Sunday, September 13, 2003, Vice President Cheney had gone on "Meet the Press" and suggested that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11. Fearing a public backlash, because no such link had ever been found, in the following days, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and then the President himself were forced to admit that no, there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11. [link]. At the press gaggle after the President's statement, this exchange occurred [link]:

QUESTION: Earlier today you said that the President made no connection between 9/11 and Iraq. You said that there was no indication that there was a linkage at all. Can you explain why the American people seem to know -- to believe, according to the polls, that there is a connection? Does the White House have anything to do with that, and are you going to do anything to disabuse the perception?

MR. McCLELLAN: You're right, if you're talking specifically about the September 11th attacks, we never made that claim.

So which is it, Scott?

The Assumption of Rationality

David Brooks's most recent op-ed in the New York Times questions the value of "false science" in intelligence analysis. [link]. Among the points that he makes (and I'm summarizing broadly here) is that for decades, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have promoted the notion that analysis can be systematized and rationalized through the application of scientific theories, including game theory. Brooks goes on to say that the fundamental premise of this line of thinking -- and, by extension, the pseudo-scientific tools used by the analysts -- is faulty, since the very act of systematizing analysis precludes hunches and non-quantitative political judgments that have proven in many instances to be valuable precisely because they incorporate a sort of "fuzzy logic" that the more "scientific" analysis can't replicate.

I will leave to the experts the question of whether or not the systemization of political analysis is the most effective means to an end. But I think that Brooks is on to something.

By way of background, when I was a college student studying political science, I spent a fair amount of time in my junior and senior years pursuing an independent study with Stephen Brams, one of the leading theorists on political game theory. Among other things, Dr. Brams had written two books using Bible stories to illustrate game theoretical concepts used to analyze conflicts. [In game theory, all interactions are forms of conflict, which simply means that each party wants something that may be incompatible with what one or more other parties want.]

Now, one of the fundamental underpinnings of game theory is that all of the players in a conflict are rational, with rationality defined to mean that they have particular goals, that they attach varying degrees of importance to their goals, from most desireable to least desireable, and that they will prefer to take actions that help them achieve their most desireable outcome. Assuming that you can tease out the parties' respective preferences and the available courses of action, you can construct a grid from which it is possible to determine the most likely outcome of any given conflict.

When I first began studying, I was uncomfortable with the assumption that all players are rational because it is a fact of life that not all participants in a conflict are always rational. But although I questioned the assumption privately, I never followed up on it, even though Dr. Brams's own work led me to an example that might have been compelling evidence that irrationality is a factor as well. I figured that I must be missing something, and that challenging one of the fundamental assumptions of the whole theory was cheeky and simplistic. Turns out I might have been wrong. More on that in a minute.

What does all of this have to do with David Brooks and the CIA? Well, it turns out that Brooks is asking the same question, in essence. Game theory and its siblings assume that conflict can be analyzed rationally, which means that all players are assumed to act rationally. In the context of superpower conflicts, this might have been a valid base assumption, but it's not clear that today, in analyzing the intention of terrorist groups like al Qaeda, such an assumption is as defensible. If it's not, then it calls into question the utility of the various tools that the CIA and other analysts may have been relying on.

Rather than tackle that question head on, let me come back to the less charged and more concise example of irrationality that I thought of based on Dr. Brams's biblical examples, which comes from Numbers, Chapter 20:

2 The community was without water, and they joined against Moses and Aaron. 3 The people quarreled with Moses, saying, "If only we had perished when our brothers perished at the instance of the Lord! 4 Why have you brought the Lord's congregation into this wilderness for us and our beasts to die there? 5Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place, a place with no grain or figs or vines or pomegranates? There is not even water to drink!" 6 Moses and Aaron came away from the congregation to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and fell on their faces. The Presence of the Lord appeared to them, 7 and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 8 "You and your brother Aaron take the rod and assemble the community, and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water. Thus you shall produce water for them from the rock and provide drink for the congregation and their beasts."

9 Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as He had commanded him. 10 Moses and Aaron assembled the congregation in front of the rock; and he said to them, "Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?" 11 And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank.

12 But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them."

Without going too deeply into game theory, the rational actions that are available to Moses are (1) obey the word of God or (2) do nothing. His preferred outcome is to placate the rebels and to affirm the sanctity of God's word. Game theory would show that obeying the word of God leads to the desired outcomes, while doing nothing leads to undesirable outcomes (rebellion and perpetuating the rebel's disavowal of God). How then, do you explain what Moses actually does, namely striking the rock? In a word, irrationality. Moses is frustrated, he's tired and he lashes out. In other words, he fails to act rationally. And of course, he's punished for it, severely.

The problem for game theory is that an analyst examining the situation before Moses acts by striking the rock would not necessarily have predicted that he would strike the rock, because the model doesn't account for irrationality. But, as Brooks points out, an analyst acting on a hunch might look at the characteristics of the leader in that moment and see that he was frustrated with the rebels and therefore prone to lash out. In other words, the hunch might change fundamentally the nature of the analysis delivered. It might even predict the actual outcome.

In the context of the Cold War, the assumption of rationality in game theory may have worked because the two principal actors -- the US and the USSR -- were fundamentally rational, in that they each preferred results that furthered their geopolitical goals, and tended to disfavor results that did not advance them toward their goals.

But in the context of terrorism, it's not always clear that the terrorists act rationally. It used to be that you could assume that terrorist groups acted rationally -- they hijacked a plane or carried out a targeted attack with the goal of freeing compatriots from prison, or forcing a withdrawal from some occupied territory or another -- but shied away from attacks that would get them in trouble with their patrons or that would bring about their own destruction. Al Qaeda and its brethren, however, preach the destruction of the West as the ultimate goal, and carry out attacks that provoke a massive and all-encompassing response by the target; in a word, their actions are not rational, if rationality is defined as taking actions that tend to advance you toward your ultimate goal.

As such, Brooks may be right that in analyzing for possible terrorist activity, traditional "scientific" tools won't help to analyze current events and predict future outcomes. Hunches may exactly what are called for, and retooling the intelligence apparatus to include people who can make educated guesses may be precisely what is needed.

Of course, a strong corollary to such an overhaul is that a system of controls needs to be implemented in order to, as much as possible, insulate the people doing the educated guesses from being influenced to produce certain pre-determined predictions. But that's a subject for another day...

Comment Update

My comment hosting service, Klink Family.com, has gone on semi-permanent hiatus while they upgrade servers and the like, and decide whether they want to continue hosting blog comments for free. In the meantime, I have moved to another commenting host. There are two problems, that I can see. First, the old comments appear, yet again, to have disappeared, which is a bummer. Second, the new system has html code that puts a line between the post and the comment link, which makes it look like the comments link is attached to the post below it, rather than the post above it. So remember, if and when there are ever comments, they go with the post above, not the post below.

Just thought you'd like to know.