Subtly, thy name is Bush

By now, you've surely heard that Bush-Cheney '04 has stooped to using Adolf Hitler as a campaign image in its latest ad. The ad in question shows clips of various prominent Democrats, including Al Gore, Howard Dean and Adolf Hitler, giving speeches in which they appear to yell and rant.

Okay, this part is old news. What is truly new and bizarre, however, are the twisted justifications being trotted out by Bush supporters to defend a tasteless and insensitive campaign commercial.

Here's the pitch, as penned today by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal:

The ad, called "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-Eyed," is available on the Bush campaign Web site. It is a medley of clips from the Angry Left, including rants from Al Gore, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Dick Gephardt and Kerry himself (though Kerry looks downright lethargic compared with the others). The Hitler images--as the Kerry campaign must have known full well--are from a pair of ads the far-left, pro-Kerry outfit MoveOn.org posted to the Internet a few months back. In other words, the Bush campaign is not comparing Kerry to Hitler; it is criticizing Kerry's supporters for comparing Bush to Hitler.

Get it? It's doubly-ironic, see? We're not showing you pictures of Hitler interspersed among images of Democrats so that you'll associate Democrats with Hitler (that's just an added bonus). We're showing you images of Hitler so that you can see how wrong it is for the other guy's troops to use images of Hitler.

Right. And Bill Clinton didn't inhale.

But let's unpack Taranto's so-called logic a bit further, shall we? Of course to do that, we'll need to get some basic facts straight, which admittedly is not something that the WSJ editorial staff is all that familiar with.

First, MoveOn is not connected to the Kerry campaign. In fact, at the time that the contest was held, Howard Dean was the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination and John Kerry was a distant third. What this fact suggests is that MoveOn is not so much pro-Kerry as it is anti-Bush. It's a small point, but it makes the "things posted on MoveOn's site are attributable to Kerry" argument a bit more strained. For all we know, the Hitler ads were made by supporters of Dennis Kucinich who now support Ralph Nader. In any event, the link to Kerry is tenuous.

Second, MoveOn did not create the ads in question or do anything other than post them, briefly, on its contest website. John Kerry's campaign, I hasten to note, had absolutely nothing to do with the Hitler ads, either. Once again, the link to Kerry is tenuous at best.

Third, MoveOn quickly and forcefully repudiated the ads, and apologized for putting them on its website. Here's what they actually said:

None of these was our ad, nor did their appearance constitute endorsement or sponsorship by MoveOn.org Voter Fund. They will not appear on TV. We do not support the sentiment expressed in the two Hitler submissions. They were voted down by our members and the public, who reviewed the ads and submitted nearly 3 million critiques in the process of choosing the 15 finalist entries.

We agree that the two ads in question were in poor taste and deeply regret that they slipped through our screening process. In the future, if we publish or broadcast raw material, we will create a more effective filtering system.

In other words, MoveOn said "we don't believe that it is appropriate to use images of Adolf Hitler in campaign advertising", or words to that effect.

Contrast those three facts with these:

First, after MoveOn took the ads off their contest website, one of the only places to find them was on the Republican National Committee website.

Second, the Bush campaign itself created and is promoting the latest commercial to use Hitler's image, not some third party or surrogate.

Third, at the time, the RNC and others were apoplectic that anyone would stoop to using Hitler's image, calling it "political hate speech", "vile" and "heinous". Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the RNC, called for the ads to be immediately removed from circulation (despite the fact that one of the biggest circulators was the RNC itself). [link]. Now, they say, " likening the other fellow to Hitler may be noxious, but it's undoubtedly political speech, fully protected by the First Amendment." [James Taranto]

But now back to James Taranto's incoherent logic. Here's what he says:

Kerry had the opportunity for a Sister Souljah-like moment here. He could have said: "I categorically reject any comparison of the president to Hitler, and MoveOn was wrong to disseminate these ads. But two wrongs don't make a right. I call on President Bush to withdraw his ad." Instead, he tacitly approved of his backers' Hitler analogies, thereby validating the substance of the Bush ad, if not its choice of images.

Once again, the facts say otherwise. For example, Kerry's campaign sent an email to supporters (including, apparently, Taranto, since he quotes it) that says, "The Bush-Cheney campaign must pull this ad off of its website. The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong." Anyone who can find the part where Kerry is "tacitly endorsing" the use of Hitler's image, please raise your hands.

But more importantly, must President Bush wait for John Kerry to do the right thing? Taranto says that Kerry's failure to make the "Sister Souljah" statement shows that Kerry "lacks courage". Logically, therefore, if Kerry did make such a statement, it would courageous. And doesn't that indicate that Taranto knows that the ad is wrong...?

View from the Sidelines

Liz at Spectator Sport has a post about the Congressional race for the North Carolina Fifth. [link] The Republican candidate is Ed Broyhill, of the Broyhill furniture family. Liz reports that Broyhill is running ads that repeat these claims as to what he belives in (from his website):

•in the right of the unborn, the right to pray in school and the right to worship as we wish without government interference.
•it is our duty to uphold and defend our Constitution. I support Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.
•in supporting a limited federal government and a free enterprise system that encourages economic growth.
•we must fight and win the war against terrorism. I will stand firm with President Bush to win the war against terrorism.

According to Liz, he ends his ad with this statement: "I will work in Congress to preserve our conservative Christian values."

I confess that I don't get the linkage between most of Broyhill's list and "Christian values". Yes, abortion has been a conservative Christian issue for years, but gun control? Free enterprise? The size of the federal government? What is particularly "Christian" about these things?

I guess my fundamental question is why conservative politicians seem to be able, with impunity, to mix conservatism and Christianity and call the whole thing "Christian values"? I'm liberal and I'm Jewish, but that doesn't automatically make the values I hold "Jewish values"; I must make that case on my own. Similarly, it seems only right that if politicians insist on talking about "Christian values", they ought to have to explain how their values really are "Christian". If they can't, they and their purported values ought to be disavowed by the Christian mainstream for misappropriating the religious mantle.

What it comes down to is forcing politicians claiming that mantle to answer the hard question, "what would Jesus really do?" Somehow, I don't think he would advocate the right to keep and bear arms as a primary objective or propose smaller governments that kill social welfare programs. After all, aren't clothing the naked and feeding the hungry Christian values also? In the circumstances, Broyhill's conservatism (to use just one example) would seem to conflict with his Christian values. But if that's the case, why isn't the Christian mainstream repudiating his hijacking of their religion?

I certainly don't mean to say, by the way, that all mainstream Christians have gone down without a fight. Based on what I read (Liz's post is just one example; there are others), there is a strong liberal wing of American Christianity that is struggling with this issue. It's just that from the sidelines, it looks like the conservative side of the house is winning the battle for attention.

I also don't mean to belittle or disrespect Christianity; to the contrary, I think that the question "What Would Jesus Do" is a profound one that more Christian politicians ought to ask themselves, but only if they're prepared to answer it honestly and then act accordingly.

"That's a wonderful suggestion, Ms. Jones. Perhaps one of the men would like to make it?"

Today's title comes from caption of a marvelous New Yorker cartoon, which shows a board room full of men and one woman; the chairman of the board is addressing her following her suggestion. That cartoon came to mind this evening because of this comment in Talking Points Memo by guest blogger John Judis, on June 24 [link]:

Thanks to all the people who wrote in response to my first attempts at blogging. As Josh will testify, I was a bashful bride who had to be wooed with flattery. But I am glad I did it. I learned something about the vitality of this medium. It is an important replacement for the vanishing soapbox, union hall, and neighborhood pub.

Judis's use of the soapbox analogy struck me as awfully familiar. In fact, here's what Laboville had to say just one day earlier:

The reality of the modern world is that we no longer gather on the village green, or in the great halls in town, to discuss and be challenged by the ideas of our day; those conversations have moved online, and are now carried on by the bloggers and their readers. And so while I may occupy but a small soapbox, it is the only soapbox I've got, and I thank all of you for helping me make the most of it.

Of course I'm not saying that Judis stole it from me or that the thought is even particularly original. I'm just saying that it's nice to know that the cognoscenti and I are in tune. And maybe someday, my soapbox will be just as big as Josh Marshall's...

Not Fit to Print

There is shocking news out of Washington today: The Vice President said the "F" word to Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Or at least, I think he did, since the New York Times, where I first saw the news, was typically coy in reporting it. [link] The headline reads: "Salty Language as Cheney and Senator Clash", and the body of the article describes the interchange thusly:

Congressional aides said the argument occurred just after the photograph was taken. Mr. Leahy was mingling on the Republican side of the aisle, they said, when he spotted the vice president, who was included in the picture because of his role as president of the Senate.

Mr. Leahy approached Mr. Cheney to chat, the aides said. When Mr. Cheney recoiled, Mr. Leahy made a jocular remark, on the order of, "What, so you won't talk with Democrats?''

The vice president is said to have replied that he did not appreciate Mr. Leahy's personal attacks on him. Mr. Leahy, in turn, told Mr. Cheney he did not appreciate being called ''a bad Catholic''- a reference to Republican accusations that Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were "anti-Catholic'' because they refused to confirm a judicial nominee, William H. Pryor Jr., who opposed abortion. Mr. Leahy is the senior Democrat on the panel.

At that point, the aides said, the vice president turned and stalked away, using an obscene phrase to describe what he thought Mr. Leahy should do.

The key phrase here seems to be "an obscene phrase to describe what he thought Mr. Leahy should do." Now, I'm just guessing, but it sounds like the Vice President invited the Senator to engage in an act (physically improbable though it might be) of self-copulation. There. Was that so hard to say? Even kids could read that one and not immediately catch on, so what's the Grey Lady afraid of?

Of course, Newsday had fewer qualms about its reporting of the incident, although it did use dashes for certain letters in order to maintain its air of being a family publication. Here's how it described the incident: "Cheney then responded, "F--- off" or "F--- you," the aide said." [link]

I note, by the way, that if the Times' description is accurate (even though oblique), the latter of the two phrases cited by Newsday probably isn't correct, since it would be inconsistent with the transitive nature of the statement implied by the Times' description (i.e, that the Senator should do something).

Unless, of course, the Vice President was propositioning the Senator, which would be a much much much bigger story.

Special thanks to Bill for tipping me off to the Newsday account.

Man oh Mandamus

The Supreme Court has decided Cheney v. District Court [link], putting behind it (at least for now) some of the controversy that the case engendered for the Court.

Some quick observations:

First, as much as I think that Justice Scalia acted inappropriately in not recusing himself from this case in the face of the duck-hunting flap, a 7-2 decision (which this was) takes some of the wind out of the argument that he would improperly skew the process. The fact is that a broad majority of the court felt that the Court of Appeals decision was flawed, and said so.

Second, although the media will surely make this out to be a broad victory for the Bush Administration, this case turned on a fairly narrow legal principle, and did not grant the Administration's petition, but merely gave guidance to the appellate court on the proper scope of its mandamus powers and directed it to reconsider its previous ruling. In essence, the Supreme Court punted. Now, obviously, that has political implications since the follow-on litigation is likely to drag on until after November, but in principle, the Supreme Court did not vindicate the Bush administration's argument.

Third, I was struck by the paradox that is presented by the Federal Advisory Committee Act ("FACA") in this case. In essence, the dispute boils down to this: the plaintiffs sued the government claiming that Vice President Cheney's energy task force had de facto members who weren't government officials, and therefore the make-up and deliberations of the task force must be publicly disclosed. If the plaintiffs are right -- that is, if the task force contained de facto members who were not government officials -- they are entitled to a broad range of documentary material. The problem is in proving that they're right, because one of the threshhold matters is determining who was on the committee both officially and de facto. In order to prove that threshhold element, the plaintiffs claim that they need a broad range of discovery that would tell them who is on the committee. In other words, to figure out whether FACA entitles them to broad discovery, they need the same broad discovery to see if FACA applies in the first place. Hence the paradox.

The Administration's position is equally curious. The Administration argues that in determining whether FACA applies, the court must begin and end its analysis with the administrative record -- primarily, the Presidential order creating the task force and the report of the task force upon the completion of its work. As a result, they argue, no further discovery is warranted. And since the administrative record does not establish that there were any de facto members, the case ought to be dismissed.

But here's the problem with the Administration's position: it means that the Administration never has to prove its affirmatve defense, since it can, in theory, preemptively manipulate the administrative record to scrub out any references to non-governmental members. It seems to me that to have any kind of meaning, the applicability of FACA ought to involve "burden-shifting" -- that is, once the plaintiffs have met the initial burden of showing some minimal basis for applying FACA, the government would have the burden of showing that FACA doesn't apply. This only makes sence since the government is the party that possesses the relevant evidence. I suspect that that was what the District Court in Cheney was trying to do, since it approved very broad discovery by the plaintiffs but invited the government to make particularized objections based on executive privilege and undue burdens in complying. That effort may have gotten lost in the procedural wrangling, however.

In any event, the drama will continue to play out in the District Court, so stay tuned...

This post was edited slightly after it was originally posted, mostly to clean up grammer and typos, but also to clarify the argument somewhat.

Laboville enters the terrible twos!

Yes, it's true -- Now Entering Laboville has been online for 2 years! I would like to take this opportunity to thank my regular readers (both known and unknown) for taking this endeavor seriously enough to read it, think about it and in some cases, to respond to the points that I have raised or arguments that I have floated. I haven't always agreed with your points of view, but I have valued them all the same.

Blogging is not something that one does for either glory or profit. Even so, I do it because it is important, in these times, that we maintain what Howard Dean called "The Great American Conversation". The reality of the modern world is that we no longer gather on the village green, or in the great halls in town, to discuss and be challenged by the ideas of our day; those conversations have moved online, and are now carried on by the bloggers and their readers. And so while I may occupy but a small soapbox, it is the only soapbox I've got, and I thank all of you for helping me make the most of it.

Philosophy is where you find it...

Recently, the management of my office building posted a sign by the delivery entrance that reads "All Exits Are Final". I have no idea what problem they are trying to address, but in an abundance of caution, I think that I will be avoiding the delivery entrance of the building for a while.

[Laboville has been in radio silence for a while, as I dealt with a few personal matters. It looks like things are clearing up and I'll have more time to blog. See you soon.]

Flip Flop

No time to post at length today, except to say this: President Bush has routinely tried to portray Senator Kerry as a flip-flopper, willing to say whatever's politically expedient.

Jim Hightower has turned the camera on George, however, and come up with before/after comparisons where the President changed his position 180 degrees. It's an interesting read. [link]