Cleared or Not Cleared?

There are conflicting reports out that Sandy Berger has been cleared of wrongdoing in the 9/11 documents/National Archive matter. Berger had recently disclosed that he was under investigation for removing documents, but the Wall Street Journal reported today that he had been cleared. The story was picked up by ABC Radio stations, including KYW News in Philadelphia, which is where I saw it, courtesy of Atrios. [link].

But according to NewsMax.com, the Archives is denying that it said any such thing [link], and indeed, no other mainstream press seems to be reporting the matter.

All in all, it's somewhat curious...

July Surprises

Yesterday, just a few hours before John Kerry gave his acceptance speech in Boston, Pakistan announced that it had apprehended Ahmed Ghailani, a "major" Al Qaeda operative connected to the 1998 embassy bombings, and one of the 22 people on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list.

If you think that the timing of the announcement was merely a coincidence, even if a convenient one for the Bush administration, think again. Here's what The New Republic reported on July 19, 2004 [link]:

But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told that they must produce HVTs [high value targets] by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections."

. . .

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed TNR that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Huq's] meetings in Washington." Says [National Security Council spokesman Sean] McCormack, "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Huq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July" -- the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston."

Still not convinced that the timing was intentional? Well, according to the New York Times, Ghailani was arrested on Sunday, yet the announcement didn't come until Thursday. [link] 

Hmmm.

[I wanted to note that I saw this on the TNR website this morning, then read about it again on Talking Points Memo [link], and recalled that I had read about this on TPM in May [link].  I guess that that means technically, credit for this lead properly goes to TPM.]

Barack to basics

I did some research on Barack Obama, to find out a little more on who this "rising star" of the Democratic Party is. Among other things, I found an article on Salon.com by novelist Scott Turow. [link] Turow first got to known Obama in 1996, and later worked with Obama when Turow was a member of the Illinois commission that was reexamining the death penalty in that state, and Obama was a state senator who was influential in getting some of the proposed reforms passed into law.

Turow had this to say about Obama:

Adding it all up, the smart money has to be on Barack Obama to win in November and thereby to become a pivotal American leader. To be young, black and brilliant has always appeared to me to be one of the more extraordinary burdens in American life. Much is offered; even more is expected. You are like a walking Statue of Liberty, holding up the torch 24 hours a day. Yet Barack Obama, who spent his early years coming to terms with his heritage, is in every sense comfortable in his own skin and committed to a political vision far broader than racial categories.

Because they work for George W. Bush, and therefore cannot be regarded as influential political figures in the African-American community, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice may be the first blacks in government whose race is an afterthought in the public mind. If he wins, Barack Obama will also answer to a constituency that is principally white. As a result, he may become the first black Democrat able to rise above race in the fashion of Powell and Rice, and in doing so become the embodiment of one of America's most enduring dreams.

Turow's instinct matches my own (and that of my brother-in-law, who apparently echoed my prediction about Obama to my sister before he read it on Laboville). Obama has a quality -- an obvious comfort on the dais, an ability to speak to people instead of at them, and a set of achievements outside of politics that give what he says a certain authenticity -- that is all of those separate qualities rolled together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Give him a term or two in the Senate, and you could see Obama as a sort of real world Jed Bartlet, proving that smart is not the opposite of electable.

What a novel concept!

Touching the Future

You heard it here first -- Barack Obama will some day run for President. And he just might win.

I have been following the Illinois Senatorial election sort of vaguely, in the background. Mostly, it has been the stuff of political farce. A candidate in the primary implodes over allegations in a nasty divorce. Then, in the general campaign, the Republican candidate assigns a staffer to literally stalk Obama and record every word out of his mouth. But instead of provoking Obama into an outburst, the tactic just makes the Republican candidate look bad. Then the same Republican's candidacy implodes over -- surprise surprise, allegations in a messy divorce. The Republicans scramble to find a replacement but no one who might have a chance, but no one, including Chicago legend Mike "Da Bears" Ditka is willing to jump in.

And why would they? Their opponent is Barack Obama, a tall, trim, well-spoken, Harvard-trained lawyer, who also happens to be black. At least, that's what I had heard in the punditocracy -- I had not ever heard the man speak, and didn't know much about him. But it turns out that he is a man of substance and a force to reckoned with.

I confess that I still don't know much about him (something I intend to rectify), but now, at least, I have heard him speak, and all I can say is "wow." He was coherent, eloquent, passionate, compassionate, and had something to say. I wish I had a transcript, because he had a number of good soundbites, delivered with oratorical flourish and no obvious reliance on a prepared text (as near as I can tell, he didn't look down at his notes once). Anyway, here are some of the soundbites that I had the presence of mind to copy down:

"...hope is a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too..."

"...The audacity of hope..."

"...If an elderly person cannot afford medication, that affects me, even if it is not my grandparent.... If a Muslim family is being rounded up without the benefit of a lawyer, that threatens my civil rights. I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper."

"...There are no red states and blue states. There is just the United States of America..."

I took the position in my last post that the oratorical skills of President Clinton are sadly the exception among modern politicians rather than the rule. And while I stand by that observation, I freely concede that Barack Obama tonight made a great case for being added to the short list of modern orators worth listening to any chance you get. I note, as well, that his position as the keynote speaker augers well for his future -- lest we forget, the last Democratic president made his national debut as the keynote speaker at the 1988 Democratic convention. It doesn't hurt that Obama is good-looking in a Tiger Woods sort of way -- sadly, it may be the case that the first black man to break the barrier to the Oval Office may have to be one who is black, but not "too black". I wish it weren't so, but if that is the case, Obama certainly looks and sounds the part.

But anyway, remember, you heard it here first.

Now That's a Speech

President Clinton just finished giving his speech at the Democratic National Convention, and I have to say that I was moved. Now, that's not to say that I haven't been outraged at the former President for putting his pleasure ahead of the party or for trying to play king-maker with Wes Clark. But no matter what you may think of the man or his politics, credit has to go where credit is due.

The man is a truly gifted orator, perhaps the best of our age.

It's sad, because that's a lost art in America. We don't give extemporaneous speeches anymore, and we don't celebrate the ability to get up in front of a crowd and say something meaningful or even just coherent. Interestingly, oration as a tradition seems to be alive and well in parts of the South -- of the speakers who I listened to this evening, I was most impressed by Clinton, Kerry's swift-boat gunner (Rev. Alston, I think his name was) and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Technically, she's an outlier, since she was raised in Chicago, but she did spend a number of years speechifying as a political spouse in Arkansas, so maybe she picked some of the Southern Baptist preacher style up by osmosis or immersion. But anyway, the person I was least impressed with was Senator Barbara Mikulski, who sounded wooden, and who is from only a nominally Southern state, Maryland. Similarly, although the Congresswoman from Ohio who co-chaired the platform committee (didn't get her name, and am too tired to look her up) spoke well, she didn't fire up the audience in the same way that Gore and the Clintons did. And finally, although President Carter spoke well, he never struck me as being of the same tradition as Clinton and Rev. Alston.

All in all, I thought that the first night of the Convention went well, and avoided the trap of incessantly criticizing the Bush Administration to the exclusion of articulating a positive message. Both are needed, but the latter is more desperately needed than the former; if the latter is compelling, the former will take care of itself.

Songs of Boston

So I'm sitting here watching the Democratic Convention in Boston, and I suddenly had the thought -- there are no good songs about Boston. About the only one I can come up with is "Charley on the MTA", a song that was written in 1949 for the campaign of Walter A. O'Brien, the Progressive Party candidate for Boston mayor. [A side note -- during the 1950s, the Progressive Party and any associated with it were presumed to be Communists. Although O'Brien was never himself a Communist, when the Kingston Trio recorded the song, just to be safe, they changed "Walter A" to "George" so that no one would accuse them of advertising for Commies. (special thanks to Discover Newbury Street for the history lesson).] The only other one I could think of was "Rock and Roll Band" by the band Boston.

In any event, neither of them are particularly adaptable songs that a political party could use the way that any number of New York songs could be adapted to the Republican convention's needs in New York, or, for that matter, the way that "Georgia on My Mind" was adapted for the Carter campaign in 1976. [For the record, there is also a Tom Lehrer song about the Boston MTA [link], but it's not very flattering, either.]

I'm taking votes, by the way, for good Boston songs that the Democrats could use to send the delegates home humming. Anyone?

You Say Either, I say F--- Off, Part II

Courtesy of whitehouse.org, a transcript of the congratulatory phone call from Vice President Cheney to Senator John Edwards. [link]

Undemocratic? Antidemocratic?

There are a lot of screeds against the Bush administration that go something like "Bush is stupid" or "conservatives are stupid". Usually, the evidence for the purported stupidity is that the conserviatives have obviously failed to see reason; if they had, they'd have enacted the Democratic agenda, or at least refrained from enacting their own agenda, which is either greedy or rapacious or both.

I've never thought that this was a particularly compelling argument. To the contrary, rather than convince anyone, it merely entrenches the factionalism that already exists. Let's face it -- if you're never going to convince me to become a conservative by telling me I'm stupid to be liberal, why should I think I can convince you to become a liberal by doing the same? But that's where much political discourse seems to be stuck these days.

I also think that the convervative-liberal dichotomy is largely irrelevant to the upcoming elections, since even many conservatives question whether President Bush is himself a conservative. It seems to me that a more compelling argument side-steps the conservative-liberal debate altogether and focuses on the ways in which the Bush-Cheney-DeLay wing of the Republican Party has embarked on a course of conduct that is inimical, and possibly fatal, to the values that underpin our republican (small "r") heritage. From DeLay's unprecedented efforts to subvert the redistricting process to Congressional arm-twisting to pass unpopular legislation to the White House's use of viscious personal attacks against its critics to simply lying, there is a pattern that most mainstream Republicans (that is, Republican voters, if not the Republican leadership) might just see as disturbing, if only someone would just connect the dots.

Fortunately, someone has. As George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now put it, if you only read one political essay this summer, you're not reading enough, but anyway, Jonathan Chait's essay in The New Republic should be the one you read. [link] Chait's thesis is not explicitly ideological. That is, he doesn't argue whether or not any particular position is correct or incorrect. Rather, he argues that the tactics used by the Republicans are anti-democratic and dangerous.

Bush and his allies have been described as partisan or bare-knuckled, but the problem is more fundamental than that. They have routinely violated norms of political conduct, smothered information necessary for informed public debate, and illegitimately exploited government power to perpetuate their rule. These habits are not just mean and nasty. They're undemocratic. 

What does it mean to call the president "undemocratic"? It does not mean Bush is an aspiring dictator. Despite descending from a former president and telling confidants that God chose him to lead the country, he does not claim divine right of rule. He is not going to cancel the election or rig it with faulty ballots. (Well, almost certainly not.) But democracy can be a matter of degree. Russia and the United States are both democracies, but the United States is more democratic than Russia. The proper indictment of the Bush administration is, therefore, not that he's abandoning American democracy, but that he's weakening it. This administration is, in fact, the least democratic in the modern history of the presidency. 

It's a powerful argument that you should encourage your friends -- particularly Republican ones -- to read.

The New Imperialism?

Over the past year or so, the word "imperialism" has taken a beating in the press. The general line seems to be "imperialism" is bad. But to paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, imperialism, as a concept, is not necessarily bad -- it's just drawn that way. In essence, the argument in favor of the "new imperialism" is that failed states threaten the world order either because they harbor terrorists or madmen with territorial ambitions, and it is incumbent upon richer, more democratic states to tend to these failed states if the successful states want to preserve a stable international order. For all of its faults, so the argument goes, the world order that existed under various empires was at least orderly.

One of the early defenders of the "new imperialism" was Sebastian Mallaby, an editor and columnist at the Washington Post who wrote about liberal imperialism in Foreign Affairs in March/April 2002. [link]. Mallaby admits that his thinking has "evolved" on this issue, and he recently penned a post-script that acknowledges that the label "imperialism" may be problematic. Nevertheless, Mallaby stands by the fundamental argument behind the concept of "new imperialism":

But what I don't regret is the argument behind my label. As bad as the recent experience in Iraq has been, we can't escape the fact that we will face more challenges like this: state failure does threaten our interests and we have to respond to it. Projects such as the International Reconstruction Fund I proposed in my Foreign Affairs essay no longer seem as far-fetched as they did then. . . We lack the tools and institutions to do what empires once did, and we need somehow to create them. [link]

I have been trying to decide whether I agree with Mallaby that empires provided a kind of world order that would be useful today. I don't know yet where I come out on the balance between imposing a stable international order and honoring self-determinism, but I'll let you know when I do figure it out. [I know that these days, it's rare for a blogger to say "gee, I don't know" since blogging tends toward instant and polarized opinion-formation, but there it is. I don't know.]

Vermont Yankee Update

A while back, Laboville noted that some spent nuclear fuel was unaccounted for at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Apparently, the missing fuel rods have been located, still in the holding pool where they were supposed to be. [link]

The mystery was solved when Vermont Yankee's owner, Entergy Corp., located records from another power plant indicating that it had sent a particular container to VY that could have contained the "missing" fuel. VY officials then searched for the container, and sure enough, located it in the pool. One watchdog group said that this raised a new concern, because earlier, VY officials speculated that the missing rods might be in a container welded to a bucket at the bottom of the pool. Leaving aside obvious questions about how nuclear fuel is stored -- the description of the second "container" calls to mind a hasty run to the local Ace Hardware just before closing (Excuse me, where do you keep the lead-lined buckets?) -- the fact that VY officials thought the fuel was in this bucket-container makes you wonder (a) how sure we can be that they're right this time; and (b) what IS in the bucket-container?

Anyway, thanks to all Laboville readers who diligently searched their attics and basements for the missing fuel rods. You may go back to searching for the real killer now.

That's what I was trying to say

Jesse Walker at Reason.com has an article entitled "10 Reasons to Fire George W. Bush (and nine reasons John Kerry won't be much better). I recommend it, even if I don't agree with all of Walker's conclusions regarding Kerry. [link]

Priorities

News that the President thinks that gay marriage is a "critical" issue facing the country got me to thinking that maybe the problem here isn't ideology, but that the President simply doesn't understand what a "critical" issue might look like.

First, I offer a definition of "critical":

Of or forming a crisis: crucial; characterized by acute, desparate or dire circumstances suggesting urgent response.

But I've heard that the President isn't a book learner, so let's try some examples, and see if we can't find a pattern of what's "critical" and what isn't:

Example: The steady pace of deaths in Iraq (American and Iraqi) makes it evident that the administration has no realistic plan to extricate ourselves and prevent the place from descending into anarachy when we do.

Example: The economy is still shaky, and hasn't begun to recover all of the lost jobs that existed when President Bush took office, let alone create new ones. Four months of 350,000 +/- job growth dents, but does not eliminate, the 3 million jobs lost since 2000; and what's more, it may not be a real trend -- according to recent reports, job growth slowed down again, significantly, in June. Also, as USA Today notes, as many as 300,000 of the million or so jobs added since April 2003 have been by temp firms, suggesting that the jobs being added don't really replace the jobs that were lost. [link].

Example: We continue to rack up staggering deficits that cause economists to talk about the "United States debt levels" and "banana republic" in the same sentence. For an example of this, consider an interview that Paul Krugman gave to Tim Russert, in which Krugman used the "banana republic" label and compared the U.S. economic policy to Argentina's. [link]

Example: The Medicare drug benefit "reform" was sold to Congress based on intentionally misleading numbers, with the result that it costs far more than Congress at the time estimated or understood. At the same time, as a result of the administration's tax cuts, there is less revenue, while other expenses are either mounting (homeland security, for example) or looming (the baby boomers will soon be in the 60s).

Example: "No Child Left Behind" continues to be underfunded, so students at failing schools continue to be shortchanged.

Example: Whom someone decides to marry has nothing to do with the stability or sanctity of my marriage; my wife and I aren't looking at Massachussetts and saying, well, that's it, I guess we ought to divorce. Moreover, I don't think I'm alone in that response.

Now, one of these things is not like the others...any trends coming clear here? Which makes me wonder -- what's so "critical" that we need to mess with the Constitution?

We are Experiencing Technical Difficulties. Please Stand By.

As one reader pointed out, the layout of the blog has gotten all Cheney'd up. I'm in the process of trying to fix it, possibly by upgrading to a new template that incorporates new Blogger features. Please bear with me over the next week or so as I try to iron out the bugs.

For now, by the way, the archives are located all the way at the bottom of the page, if you need to find something.

You Say Either, I say "F--- off"

Courtesy of Bill, who made this observation to me in an email:

CNN reports:

Cheney called Edwards Tuesday morning to to congratulate him. A spokesman for Cheney for described the conversation as "brief and cordial".

Does that mean Cheney DIDN'T curse out Edwards?

A note on subliminal messages in graphic design

In the course of my surfing recently, I visited the Bush-Cheney '04 website to see the new ad featuring John McCain. But that's not the point of this post. The point is that while I was at georgewbush.com, I noticed that the site spends most of its visual energy on John Kerry. For example, on the right is a picture of John Kerry and John Edwards under the headline "John Kerry: The Raw Deal". Meanwhile, in the center of the page, just below a not entirely flattering picture of the President, there is a headline that reads "Campaign Memo: Expected Kerry Bounce", a button for the "Kerry Gas Tax Calculator" and the "John Kerry Travel Tracker", which features a take-off on the interstate highway signs that reads "Travels with John". Below that are two ads about John Kerry, both of them negative, with the headlines "Yakuza" and "Pessimism". Finally, in the left column, there is a link to something called the "Kerry Media Center."

Contrast this with johnkerry.com, which features a picture of Kerry and Edwards shaking hands, and never once mentions or shows pictures of President Bush. Meanwhile, the ads that are available on the website are promoted by positive headlines ("Investing in High Tech", "A Realistic Path in Iraq", "Fighting for American Jobs", etc.)

So who's going negative and striking a tone of pessimism? I submit that it's not John Kerry. In fact, on balance, I think the Bush site's obsession with Kerry is a good thing for Kerry: first, there's the whole Captain Ahab obsession-leads-to-ultimate-destruction thing; and second, any publicity is good publicity -- as Huey Long may (or may not) have said once, "Say anything you want about me as long as you spell my name right."

***

One other note on graphic design: it's a small point, but I was struck by the placement of the picture of President Bush at a lecturn at the top of his campaign website. Most graphic designers will tell you that when you picture a person in profile, he or she should be facing into the center of page, because we interpret this as more inclusive. This is because the eye tends to look for and follow a logical path when taking in visual images, and will therefore follow the "gaze" of the figure in profile. If that gaze directs the reader toward the center of the page, the reader is therefore being "drawn into" the page and will be included in the action on that page. On the other hand, if the gaze is off the page (either to the left or right), the reader will follow the gaze off the page, and therefore outside the action taking place on the page. We usually interpret this as cold or uninviting. (To see this phenomenon at work, look at almost any fashion magazine; chances are good that the model will be facing the camera or turned slightly toward the center of the page.)

Given this, I find it interesting (and perhaps unconsciously telling?)that the profile of President Bush is facing off the edge of the page, instead of the other way.

The Court and the Terrorists

I have wanted to say something about the Supreme Court's decisions in the Padilla, Hamdi and Rasul matters, but I confess that my work schedule and personal life have prevented me from having the time to read the decisions fully and carefully enough to comment. In the interim, a number of commentators have weighed in with their thoughts, many of which I agree with, and some of which I don't. Anyway, the New York Times today has an interesting summary of the Supreme Court's changing center-of-gravity that also touches on the terrorism decisions. I recommend it. [