Mr. Intellectual Honesty Is At It Again

A few months ago, I chided "Reality-Based" blogger Mark Kleiman for a post in which he simultaneously claimed that his side -- however defined -- had the edge in intellectual honesty while at the same time urging his allies to refrain from criticizing General Ricardo Sanchez, apparently even if such criticisms were true. I argued at the time -- and it still seems to me to be true -- that it's self-contradictory to trumpet your own intellectual honesty while at the same time urging your political allies to refrain from advancing what they believe to be

Well, he's at it again. A couple of weeks ago, he declared a "Cease-Fire" on Hillary Clinton, saying that "anyone looking for criticism of Hillary Rodham Clinton or her campaign will have to look elsewhere from now on" Why? Because, in his estimation, Obama had it won and Obama supporters should "aim their fire at John McCain."

Today he threatened to revoke his unilateral cease-fire, in a short post:

Yes, we've been observing a unilateral cease-fire.

But if you keep lying about our candidate, we might just have to start telling the truth about yours.

And that wouldn't be fun for anyone, would it?

To begin with, I am not at all sure that his fellow Obama supporters have been observing the cease-fire. Or maybe Kleimain means "I" here, and he's using the "Royal We." Nor am I sure he has the authority to declare cease-fires or the resumption of hostilities on behalf of the Obama campaign.

But leave that aside. Kleiman seems to be saying that there are true bad things about Hillary Clinton that Barack Obama supporters haven't been saying? And, as of a week ago, when he though it was in the bag, that he thought they shouldn't say. Where is the intellectual honesty in that? Shouldn't Kleiman just say what he thinks the truth is, rather than refraining out of short-term political expediency? And if we know that Kleiman will lie by omission, by refraining from saying bad things about Hillary, and if he urges others to do the same, why should we believe him when he says (or fails to say) stuff about other candidates? He's already admitted that political maneuvering takes precedence over telling the truth as he sees it.

His attitude makes perfect sense for Senator Obama himself, or for people officially-connected with his campaign. If he wins the nomination, he's going to need the support of Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton. At some point, it makes sense for him to ease off if he's got it won. Running up the score doesn't do him a lot of good.

But so far as I know, Professor Kleiman isn't officially connected with the Obama campaign. He's a Professor who happens to support Barack Obama. Which is, you know, perfectly fine. Call me an idealist if you want, though, but I think that Professors ought to think of themselves as Priests in the Temple of Truth. They might believe in a particular political candidate, and they should certainly feel free to advance arguments in favor of the person they support. But figuring out the truth and stating it ought to be Job One.

Heck, even if he supports Obama, he ought to be willing to criticize Obama if and when he thinks the Senator is wrong. And the same is true of supporters of Senator McCain, of course. Recently, McCain stated that "there's strong evidence" that thimerosal causes autism. "Nonsense on stilts," as Megan McArdle put it. So what should a McCain supporter do? And intellectually honest McCain supporter, I mean, and one not deluded into thinking that thimerosal causes autism.

An intellectually honest McCain supporter should say "I support Senator McCain for these four reasons, but he's spouting crap on this." Given his statements, there's absolutely no reason to believe that Professor Kleiman would take such an intellectually honest position were Obama to make a similarly nonsensical statement. He may think himself "reality based," but his statements about the "Cease Fire" make it clear that he values political outcomes ahead of telling the truth as he sees it.

Being Obama

If Barack Obama does win the Democratic nomination, we are undoubtedly going to be treated to a tiresome parade of complaints about imagined racial slights. Here's one: Saturday Night Live had Fred Armisen (who?) play Barack Obama in a recent skit. Ann Althouse links to this Washington Post piece about the ensuing outrage.



Why the outrage? According to the WaPo article, Armison is of white and Asian heritage. Oh gosh, can't have that, can we? Well, the sort of people likely to take umbrage at this sort of thng have taken umbrage:

Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune put the question bluntly: "Call me crazy, but shouldn't 'Saturday Night Live's' fictional Sen. Barack Obama be played by an African-American?" Ryan went on to conclude: "I find 'SNL's' choice inexplicable. Obama's candidacy gives us solid proof of the progress that African-Americans have made in this country. I guess 'SNL' still has further to go on that front."

You're crazy Maureen. But you aren't the only one. My favorite comment comes from Todd Boyd, a "Professor of Critical Studies" at USC:

Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California, says viewers might have a different reaction if the roles were reversed. What if, he says, "SNL" had cast a black woman to portray Hillary Clinton? "Do you think there's ever going to be a day when we start casting Queen Latifah to portray Princess Diana?" he asks. "We just don't have the same representations going in other direction.

You know, if I were a professor in a politically-driven pseudo-discipline, I would avoid being quoted in the newspaper, if only to avoid having people ask what a "Professor of Critical Studies" actually you know, studies. I suppose, though, that if you're going to pretend that being a community organizer is a real job, you might as well pretend that a Professor of Critical Studies is a real Professor. (Unlike Barack Obama, who is not, contrary to some claims, a Professor of Constitutional Law.)

But I digress. This gripe is so stupid on so many levels that it's hard to know where to start.

Well, start with the obvious: as the WaPo and Professor Althouse both observe, SNL has a long history of having blacks play whites, and vice versa. Eddie Murphy played white characters, and Billy Crystal played Sammy Davis, Jr. Heck, SNL did some skits where men impesonated women: Dan Akroyd as Julia Child, and Will Ferrell as Janet Reno.

As Professor Althouse says, the question for Saturday Night Live isn't whether a particular actor is the same race or gender as the person he or she is impersonating -- the question is whether the impersonation is funny. And you know, by the standards of modern-day SNL, I think that Armison's impersonation really is kind of funny. Not Dan-Akroyd-as-Julia-Child funny, but SNL hasn't been that funny in a long time.

But in Obama's case it is particularly dumb. As Paddy O, one of Professor Althouse's commenters put it: "How is Obama any more black than white? Is there some kind of one drop rule in effect?" Sure, Obama may choose to identify himself as "black," and he may have joined an Afrocentric church, but none of this alters the fact that his mom was white. In terms of pure ethnic background, it's no more inappropriate to have a white guy impersonate him than to have a "pure" black Obama imitator. If you are insisting on racial verisimilitude, why not go all the way and demand he be impersonated by a man of mixed race whose dad was Kenyan and mom was a white chick from the midwest? Fred Armisen is of mixed race, if not quite the same mix as Obama. In that sense, he is more appropriate than either an all-black or all-white actor.

Look, if somebody of importance actually says something racist about Obama, I'll jump on them with both feet. But this crap is just nonsense.

Patriotism Gap

Megan McArdle thinks this anti-Berkeley ad is weird:



She thinks it's stupid to run the ad on Fox News in D.C., because the Berkeley City Council is unlikely to be affected by the actions of Washingtonians. Well, sure.

But that isn't the point. It's a culture war thing. The whole point is to make people riled up about the fact that there are still "blame America First" leftists out there.

And if you want to tie it to the election, well, it's pretty obvious that the sort of people who boo National Guard ads in movie theaters are, in general, the sort of people who vote for Democrats. And of course Mrs. Obama played right into that when she made her unfortunate but revealing remarks about being proud of her country for the first time. Personally, I don't give a shit whether Barack Obama wears a flag in his lapel bin. But the Patriotism Gap is a serious problem for the Democrats. And stuff like the antics of the City Council of Berkeley only make it worse.

More Lefty Self-Congratulation

"What''s the matter with Kansas?" asks Mark Kleiman. His answer: witchcraft. Kleiman purports to think that Democrats need to stop treating Republican voters with contempt if they want to, you know, win elections. And so he commends a blog post from Tim Burke at Easily Distracted which does exactly that, at some length.

Burke starts with the classic telling but not necessarily representative anecdote: an NPR interview with a woman who works as an assistant manager at a store in Texas, a woman who (according to Burke) sounded "bone-weary about both politics and life." Apparently this particular woman has a bug up her ass about illegal immigration, and -- if the NPR interview accurately depicted her views, a possibly-dubious assumption -- she blames all her woes on illegal immigrants.

According to Burke, she is like the dirt-poor African peasant in Zimbabwe who believes that witchcraft is the cause of all his woes. Seriously, he says that -- I'm going to quote at length because my summary simply cannot capture the man's arrogance:

In the early 1990s in Zimbabwe, one part of my research concerned how the visible ownership of commodities performed or communicated wealth, and therefore aroused the dangerous jealousies of neighbors. This is a different kind of “mystery of capital” than what Hernando de Soto discusses. I am completely sympathetic to how southern Africans invoke ideas about witchcraft to explain how some people obtain wealth. Obviously it isn’t my own explanation, but there’s a sense in which it’s a completely reasonable attempt to connect the visible surface of material and economic life with the largely invisible mechanisms that move resources and capital around beneath the surface. How did your neighbor get a hold of bricks to complete one wall of his township house when you can’t get any? Where did the family next door get those new shoes, when you know that they don’t have any more access to wage earnings than you do? How did that man keep his job when you lost yours?

One story struck me as particularly potent. I was curious about zvidhoma, spirit beings who are basically the same as the tokoloshe that South Africans talk about. They’re said to be the tools of witches, able to exact invisible revenge on their victims by beating, wounding or causing illness in their targets. But on a number of occasions, I was also told cautionary tales about why you should never pick up what seems to be abandoned or unowned wealth or goods (like a bag of money or a wandering goat) because often these will have zvidhoma “stuck” to them who will then infest the unlucky soul who picks them up. Money and wealth circulate mysteriously, and carry hidden dangers. The people who get rich, in this worldview, are those who’ve learned to manage malevolent spiritual powers. If you’re not one of those people, you’ll just end up a victim if you chase after phantoms.

. . . .

That woman in Texas is probably not a Democratic voter regardless of whom the candidate is. Her key issue maybe ought to be health care reform, but she’s enmeshed in another kind of narrative, one where racial resentment, among other things, is lurking very powerfully just underneath the surface. But even that is a layer covering the real depths. What I heard listening to her was someone who basically thinks that she’s in a hopeless place because some great engine is churning mysteriously in the depths of history, that life is just bad now.

Right. That's the way to win over Red-State voters: tell them they're all a bunch of ignorant savages who believe in witchcraft. Condescend to them while claiming to do the opposite.

This post could only have been written by an intellectual. Ordinary people can believe dumb things, but this level of concentrated stupidity requires a very intelligent mind. Seriously, where to start?

To begin with, there's the blithe assumption that the typical "Red State" Republican voter is so badly off that the Zimbabwe analogy makes sense. Now, I don't deny that there are some people in the United States who struggle economically, or who are economically insecure in various ways. But still, the notion that this assistant manager's plight is analogous to the most destitute resident of Zimbabwe is a bit much. As is his assumption that she is typical.

As it happens, I live in a blue portion of a red state, but I do get out of the house from time to time -- attending state fairs and country music concerts and the like. Places where I meet and see likely Republican voters of the sort that Kleiman and Burke would like to attract. And you know, in the parking lot I see plenty of $40,000 SUVs and pickup trucks. Some of them even have indoor plumbing and electricity. Yes, there are people who have real economic problems. But there are plenty doing just fine, thank you.

Nor do I deny that there are plenty of people who believe screwy things. Not all of whom are Republicans -- I once had a conversation with a retired union member and lifelong Democrat who was utterly convinced that the oil companies had suppressed an engine which runs on sea water. Heck, John Edwards is trying to convince primary voters that a free trade agreement with tiny Peru will be an economic disaster for the United States. And he's one of these "competent" Democrats who presumably believes stuff based on evidence.

This assistant manager's concerns about illegal immigrants are not analogous to the belief in zvidhoma because, unlike zvidhoma, illegal immigrants actually exist. Moreover, it's not irrational for a person with fewer job skills to think that his or her wages and benefits are driven down, at least to some small degree, by illegal immigrants. The assistant manager may well exaggerate the size of this effect, but her view that competition from illegal immigrants affects those, like herself, who are in a more precarious economic position isn't obviously superstitious or irrational.

But all this is just a warmup. Because after comparing ordinary red-state Americans to destitute African peasants who blame their bad fortune on evil spirits, Burke goes on to assert that "competence" is a cultural value of unique importance to blue state intellectuals. Competence is not something that the poor benighted folks in red states care about, you see.

He really said that. I'm not making it up. Here's the paragraph I skipped in the block quote above:

I’ve written before in my blog about how “blue state” elites in the United States continue to walk into the trap of blandly assuming that competency, skill and experience are sufficient and universally appealing attributes for a political candidate in national elections, as long as that candidate also has generally liberal views. Following the Iowa caucuses, I’m returning to this theme, because it’s one claim that seems to rub a lot of my readers the wrong way and I’m desperately hoping that this time, the message gets across to Democratic voters.

He is saying that "'blue state' elites" who assume that competency, skill, and experience are desirable attributes are wrong in so believing. He values competence, of course, because he can see its importance, unlike the red state rubes:

Competency is something I value. I believe in it, I vote for it. It is what makes a leader (institutional, national, local) both legitimate and charismatic in my eyes. But that’s significantly because I inhabit social and economic worlds where competency has a very immediate and obvious impact on whether those worlds function well or not.

Are there social and economic worlds where competency isn't important? Burke inhabits an academic world, a world of words and ideas, and so he sees "competency" as a function of one's ability to manipulate words and idea. I have no doubt that, if asked to research a historical topic and write an essay about it, he would exhibit competence.

People from working-class backgrounds may be competent at different things, but it's profoundly condescending and demeaning to suggest they don't value competence like he (and his fellow blue-state elites) do. For example, I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that if the pipe under his sink develops a leak, Burke, like me, would call a plumber. I'm guessing he takes his car to Jiffy Lube when the oil needs changing. Odds are he has no clue as to how to safely clean a gun. A man who changes his own oil, does his own home repairs, and hunts regularly might consider Professor Timothy Burke to be profoundly incompetent at a whole range of important activities.

I hate to tell Professor Burke this, (well, actually, I don't) but I cannot, offhand, think of any social or economic worlds in which competency isn't important. From the local dry cleaner to the farm, to the grocery store, smooth operations require competence.

Now, I am a frequent critic of President Bush, and I certainly believe he's been incompetent in executing his duties as President. But it's not as if he ran for President in 2000 on a platform of incompetence. In fact, hearkening back to his father and advisors such as Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, he depicted himself as the more competent candidate. Going back to 1980, Ronald Reagan sold himself as the antidote to the feckless and, yes, incompetent Jimmy Carter. If there's anything close to a universal American value, it is respect for competence -- the ability to do things well.

I have a thought: maybe "red state" voters don't vote against the preferred candidates of "blue state" intellectuals because they believe in witchcraft or don't care about competence. Maybe they vote against them because they believe that blue state intellectuals like Timothy Burke look down on them. And maybe they are right about that.

Government = Santa Claus

I have often remarked to friends that modern liberals attribute to government the characteristics that small children attribute to Santa Claus. I wish I had said it here, on my blog, because if I had I'd have the perfect "gotcha" moment. As it is, I have such a moment, but those inclined to be skeptical can say (correctly) "but you never wrote it down."

Anyhow, believe me when I tell you that "modern liberals attribute to government the characteristics that small children attribute to Santa Claus" is a Cheerful Iconoclast aphorism. Well, I just saw this Hillary Clinton ad, via Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse:



I have seldom seen more vivid proof of one of my pet theories.

As Ann Althouse says, "Isn't this like when you get presents from family members and you know they charged it on your credit card?" Yes and no.

In truth, yes, of course. The recipients of these "presents" have to pay for them.

But in the mind of her target audience, the answer is no. The modern liberals that she's trying to reach think the government is Santa Claus. And so Santa can come up with these goodies, and nobody has to pay.

You know, there are a lot of libertarian-leaning people who tend to vote Republican who are very disaffected with George W. Bush and the Republican Party he has forged. This ad vividly reminds them of why they don't like Democrats.

Mike Huckabee -- The Anti-Corporatist

Some of our friends on the left seem convinced that Mike Huckabee is the genuine anti-establishment, anti-corporatist Republican candidate. Glenn Greenwald wrote a long (well, it's Greenwald) bit -- with five updates! -- about the anti-establishment candidates -- Ron Paul, John Edwards, and Mike Huckabee. Now, it's pretty ridiculous to call Edwards and Huckabee anti-Establishment -- Edwards is a trial lawyer with standard liberal "populist" views, and Huckabee is the ideological heir to George W. Bush. But it's interesting that he quotes, apparently approvingly, Huckabee's claim that he's not part of the "Wall Street-to-Washington axis, this corridor of power." Likewise, Jon Ponder claims that the members of the "corporatist Republican establishment" won't cede power to a Yahoo like Huckabee. Dave Neiwert has similar observations.

Guys, I'm sorry to tell you, but you have it exactly backwards. First of all, Huckabee is the direct ideological heir to George W. Bush. If you hate Bush, you should loathe Huckabee. He's even more of a religious fruitcake than Bush, and, in terms of policies, he seems not to differ from Bush a whit on, well, much of anything.

Sure, Huckabee talks like a populist anti-corporatist. But will that matter a whit in the end? Huckabee is the sort of big government Republican who will undoubtedly embrace all sorts of government programs, rules, regulations, and giveaways. As I noted in this post, corporatism isn't the result of bad people in office -- or not just the result of bad people. It's the result of structures and incentives. And I assure you that Mike Huckabee is not going to fundamentally alter the incentive structures that create corporatism. Nor will Hillary Clinton, or John Edwards, or Barack Obama, or anybody else with a plausible chance of winning.

The bigger the government we have the more corporatism we will have. And from the sound of things, Mike Huckabee wants a very big government indeed.

Obama's Free Ride

This Howard Kurtz article in the Washington Post has gotten some traction in the blogosphere. Kurtz's question: is Barack Obama getting a free ride from the media? Are they leaning in his favor? Hillary's operatives make the obvious claim: the media has been far more harsh and negative about her than toward him. One of Obama's people has a hilarious response:

Obama spokesman Bill Burton says the accusation of softer treatment is untrue but "the Clinton campaign whines about it so much, it becomes part of the chatter. No candidate in this race has undergone more investigations and examinations than Barack Obama has," he says, citing lengthy pieces in the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. "As Obama says, running against the Clintons is not exactly a cakewalk. Their research operation has ensured that if there's any information about Obama to be had, it's been distributed to the media."

Over at TPM, Greg Sargent doesn't take a side, but instead asks readers for their view.
Clive Crook, by contrast, states the obvious: "there's no question that Obama has been given an easy ride." But Crook suggests that this isn't a result of media bias per se -- or not just media bias -- but instead reflects deeper feelings within the populace as a whole:

But is this sentiment peculiar to the press, I wonder, or a feeling in the country at large? I suspect the latter. The United States may have doubts about Obama's policies (if it knows or cares) or lack of experience (compared with Hillary's such as it is), but it likes him. He is new, and the country is giving him the benefit of the doubt. When it comes to Hillary, there is no such instinct. She is asking for eight years in the White House--another eight years, as her claim of greater experience keeps reminding people--and people seem tired of her already.

I suspect that's a part of it. And you can add to that the fact that he seems like a fairly likable guy. And she isn't. Likable, that is. Well, she's not a guy either, but that's not my point. And the whole underdog-wins narrative is fun, too.

Pardon me for mentioning the obvious, but there's another thing going on as well. In our society today, the worst thing you can be accused of (other than child molestation) is racism. And this means that members of the chattering classes generally avoid saying things that may get them accused -- falsely or not -- of being a racist. In Obama's case, this translates into a certain reticence about critcism or investigation. It means pretending that being a "community organizer" is actually a real job, and writing fawning articles like this. It means paying very little attention to the fact that he is a member of what is effectively a black-supremacist church. But the thing is, Obama is black (or half black, and that means he is "black" by cultural argeeement), and he's not obviously insane, like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Obama is the affirmative action candidate.

And the worst part is, the Democrats can't complain, given their institutional commitment to pervasive racial preferences. This is what they asked for, isn't it?

UPDATE: Weird editing glitch fixed.

What About Those Universities, Cass?

Clive Crook links to this Cass Sunstein article discussing the phenomenon of "enclave extremism." According to Sunstein, there is strong evidence that hanging around with like-minded people causes people to become more extreme:

About 60 Americans were brought together and assembled into a number of groups, each consisting of five or six people. Members of each group were asked to deliberate on three of the most controversial issues of the day: Should states allow same-sex couples to enter into civil unions? Should employers engage in affirmative action by giving a preference to members of traditionally disadvantaged groups? Should the United States sign an international treaty to combat global warming?

As the experiment was designed, the groups consisted of "liberal" and "conservative" enclaves — the former from Boulder, the latter from Colorado Springs. It is widely known that Boulder tends to be liberal, and Colorado Springs tends to be conservative. Participants were screened to ensure that they generally conformed to those stereotypes. People were asked to state their opinions anonymously both before and after 15 minutes of group discussion. What was the effect of that discussion?

In almost every case, people held more-extreme positions after they spoke with like-minded others. Discussion made civil unions more popular among liberals and less popular among conservatives. Liberals favored an international treaty to control global warming before discussion; they favored it far more strongly after discussion. Conservatives were neutral on that treaty before discussion, but they strongly opposed it after discussion. Liberals, mildly favorable toward affirmative action before discussion, became strongly favorable toward affirmative action after discussion. Firmly negative about affirmative action before discussion, conservatives became fiercely negative about affirmative action after discussion.

Sunstein's particular concern in this article is the internet: according to him, it makes it a lot easier for people to form homogenous enclaves where opinions get radicalized. Arguably you see such enclaves in the form of Free Republic on the right and Daily Kos on the left. It seems clear that mutual affirmation by like-minded is a big part of what's going on at sites like this.

Professor Sunstein does ignore one salient point, though. While it's easy for people to seek out opinions that confirm what you already believe, people of a more (ahem) iconoclastic mindset can certainly find independent and thoughtful voices across the spectrum. And blogging encourages you to read people you disagree with, if only to hammer them.

But I wonder why it is that Professor Sunstein ignores one of the most obvious places where the like-minded can form enclaves: university faculties. University faculties lean well to the left, particularly elite universities. You can hardly expect university professors to be immune to this sort of effect. And you don't need a study to know that "disciplines" like "women's studies," "African-American studies," and -- my favorite -- "peace studies" have to be among the worst

From a practical standpoint, if you believe in freedom of speech, there's not a lot you can do about the whole problem of like-minded enclaves on the internet. I realize that, in Professor Sunstein's case, this is an open question, but for most of us the idea of a regulatory solution is anathema. But in the case of universities, it's easy to imagine policies that would increase ideological diversity. But Professor Sunstein doesn't mention that. I wonder why not.

Shouldn't Huckabee Go Back To Preaching?

My left-leaning Godless friends directed me to this old article regarding Mike Huckabee and his religious faith. It does nothing to belie the notion that Huckabee is one of those scary Jesus freaks:

The reason we have so much government is because we have so much broken humanity," he said. "And the reason we have so much broken humanity is because sin reigns in the hearts and lives of human beings instead of the Savior."

. . . .

"Government knows it does not have the answer, but it's arrogant and acts as though it does," Huckabee said. "Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed."

. . . .

I'm often asked why taxes are so high and government is so big. It's because the faith we have in local churches has become so small. If we'd been doing what we should have -- giving a dime from every dollar to help the widows, the orphans and the poor -- we now wouldn't be giving nearly 50 cents of every dollar to a government that's doing ... what we should have been doing all along."

Huckabee also explained why he left pastoring for politics.

"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."

Seriously, is it me or does this make no sense at all? If the "real answer" lies in accepting Jesus, and not in government action, then wouldn't Huckabee do more good preaching the Gospel than running for President, or, before that, serving as Governor? I just don't understand his basic logic here -- the real answer lies in accepting Jesus, not government. So that's why he's running for office? He's an ordained minister -- couldn't he do more, by his own logic, by preaching?

Romney's "Faith" Speech

I listened to Romney's "Faith" speech, and I read the transcript, and I have to say I really do admire how slippery the guy is. His thesis is that religion doesn't matter in politics, except when it does. We shouldn't ask people about their religious beliefs, except when we should. He was absolutely masterful in how he precisely he calibrated the level of attention one can give to his Mormon beliefs. All the weird or bizarre parts are ruled off-limits to discussion, but he gets to take credit for his "faith" in general. So no discussion of how some of us get to be gods of our own planet someday, or whether he wears the funny underwear, but he gets to talk about all the "values" stuff where he agrees with the Christian conservatives.

Here's a key passage, which nicely illustrates his balancing act:

There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church's beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.

Romney wants to stay the heck away from the "distinctive doctrines" of the Mormon Church, because Evangelical Christians would think him an apostate, and people not familiar with the more eccentric aspects of the Mormon faith will think he's a weirdo. Objectively, it's no weirder than any other religion, but, like Scientology, it's got a bad science fiction vibe to it. This hilarious video gives a primer:



Romney doesn't want to get into all that. Instead, he wants to focus on shared moral beliefs:

It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter - on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

There's a certain internal tension here, shall we say. As David Frum puts it:

To be blunt, Romney is saying:

It is legitimate to ask a candidate, "Is Jesus the son of God?"

But it is illegitimate to ask a candidate, "Is Jesus the brother of Lucifer?"

It is hard for me to see a principled difference between these two questions, and I think on reflection that the audiences to whom Romney is trying to appeal will also fail to see such a difference. Once Romney answered any question about the content of his religious faith, he opened the door to every question about the content of his religious faith.

The reason for that is that he thinks some Evangelicals won't vote for him if he doesn't believe that Jesus Christ is the savior. But he also wants to avoid getting into the nitty-gritty details of Mormon theology, because if he does he's screwed. Hence the "distinctive doctrines" dodge. (Also take a look at Marc Ambinder and Ross Douthat for similar thoughts.)

It's true that most mainstream American religions probably have a common core of moral beliefs, but that's because they're part of a wider American culture that tends to pound down the theological differences (i.e., "distinctive doctrines") that result in disparate outcomes. For example, some people used to use the the doctrine of the "Curse of Ham" to justify the enslavement of blacks and then racial segregation. That "distinctive doctrine" went away under the pressure of a wider American culture that found it repugnant. Similar Mormon beliefs regarding blacks have been modified, over the years.

The "distinctive doctrines" of various churches are relevant to a whole host of hot-button issues, including abortion, use of stem cells, etc. Within Islam, doctrines regarding jihad and the application of Sharia law are of great import.

The line that Romney wants to draw is a very difficult line to maintain. Nonetheless, he doesn't have much of choice. He's got a constituency of Evangelical Christians that he needs to vote for him. Now, I do think that urban elites tend to overstate how narrow-minded such people are, but there really are some folks who think that being a Bible-believing Christian is a necessary qualification for office. No Republican candidate for President can ignore that constituency in the primary, and in a fifty-fifty country, he needs almost all such people to show up and vote for him to win the general election. So Romney has to communicate to that group "I am one of you." But if they start asking questions about Mormonism, he knows they will conclude he's not. Hence the balancing act.

The one group that gets left out are the atheists and agnostics. Indeed Romney's arugment is that religion is necessary for the maintenance of a free republic:

There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adams' words: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people."

Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

This is actually a pretty common view. The idea is that if people don't have some religion, they'll just run riot. On this view, religion doesn't have to be true; it's just that it's necessary to keep people in line. This makes the "pick a faith, any faith" line seem reasonable. This is an empirical thesis that is certainly subject to testing. The obvious thing to do would be to look at the children of atheists and agnostics, correct for all the other variables, and see if they are more likely to grow up to be serial killers.

I suspect that the extent to which "human passions" are actually bridled by religion is at least somewhat overstated. And then there is the problem that religion, when taken too seriously, can inflame the passions rather than bridling them -- inspire people to murder doctors who commit abortion or fly airplanes into skyscrapers.

Ryan Sager appears to have been particularly stung by Romney's failure to even mention the possibility of good atheists:

The most remarkable thing about Romney’s address — and even folks at National Review picked this out, notably Ramesh Ponnuru — is that is wrote atheists and agnostics out of the American nation. Whereas even President Bush, whose own cynical politics have done so much to pit believers versus non-believers, has long gone out of his way to include “good people of no faith at all” in his vision of America. While the president’s need to qualify that phrase with the word “good” might be offensive, it’s a warm embrace of the faithless compared to Romney’s declaration that “freedom requires religion.”

Got that? Those of us who don’t believe in Christianity, those of us who don’t believe in God, those of us who don’t believe in the divinity of human-written holy books have no place in the American experiment, can’t be relied on to uphold the principles of our Constitution, and don’t have the morality necessary to keep a Republic.

I think that's the upshot of his thesis, Ryan. I think that's intentional. He's saying to the Christian Conservatives that they have a common enemy: secularists. He is trying to say that the differences between Mormons, Evangelical Christians, and Catholics don't matter, because there are these folks out there who want to take "In God We Trust" off the coins and destroy the Republic. From a purely political perspective, this is probably a good move in his part.

He's not losing many votes, because, while a few atheists and agnostics (like me) adopt a libertarian free market approach, most of the Godless embrace the Big State with both arms. Many substitute a belief in an omnipotent God with a belief in an Omnipotent state. Which is even worse, since religious belief has harmless manifestations, while statism does not.

Which is why, at the end of the day, Romney's musings on faith don't particularly interest me. So long as his religion doesn't motivate him to do something screwy or desstructive, I don't care what he believes. I'd much rather have a candidate who wears funny underwear and is bucking to be God of his own planet than one who wants to raise my taxes, increase the scope of government regulation, and take away my freedom. His feelings toward my atheistic beliefs matter not a whit, so long as he pushes policies preferable to the other candidate.

Mike Huckabee Phones God -- and Sully Freaks

Sully links to this blurry YouTube video of Governor Huckabee talking to God -- on his cell phone. Sullivan dubs it "horrifying," but I think that's going too far. It would be "horrifying" if Huckabee actually heard God on the other end of the phone, issuing instructions. I don't think he believes that God is actually on the other end, although with Huckabee you can't be sure.



It's my sense that Huckabee was just trying to be funny, although it's not nearly as successful as his Chuck Norris ad. But, while it's not horrifying, it is derivative: he's just copying an old Ellen DeGeneres act.



Was that horrifying too? Well, I suppose it was.

More On Gerson

In my last post, I talked about the way Michael Gerson is getting hammered by conservatives, but, predictably, he has a few defenders. Ross Douthat links to this Josh Patashnik defense of Gerson, over at The Plank. Patashnik thinks that conservatives are being unfair to Gerson by characterizing him as a statist big-government leftist. In fact, according to Patashnik, Gerson's actual policy proposals are pretty small-bore, despite his highfalutin' rhetoric:

Gerson doesn't want a massive new federal effort to combat social injustice; he wants a modest effort, but one imbued with an awesome new sense of moral purpose. It's Tommy Thompson's ideology wrapped in RFK's rhetoric. One can question whether this is really a unique political philosophy meriting a big book deal, but Great Society liberalism it ain't. To me--and I mean this in a good way--it seems more or less like run-of-the-mill centrism; he probably could have just joined the Republican Main Street Partnership or the DLC and been done with it, though that wouldn't have earned him very much money.

So what exactly is the difference between a small-bore government program with a modest budget that gets implemented because people kinda sorta think it might do some good and exactly the same program "imbued with an awesome new sense of moral purpose"? Does the grandiose rhetoric have any independent value?

I think that the reason for the conservative reaction to Gerson has a lot of roots. To start with, small government types are often tarred from the left with the "you don't care about the poor" brush. Most of the time, it's a stupid, irrelevant distraction from the real policy question about whether big government programs actually achieve their stated goal, but it is a quite common rhetorical strategy. To have that idiotic leftist mantra repeated verbatim by one who is supposed to be one of our own is infuriating.

Further, when Gersonian rhetoric is accepted by folks who are supposed to be conservative, it leaves fiscal conservatives and libertarians rhetorically disarmed when somebody comes along and employs the grandiose rhetoric in support of grandiose programs. Gerson and his ilk may not support massive big-government programs (although I am unconvinced that they don't), but they redefine the terms of the debate in a manner favorable to statist big-government liberalism.

There's also something else going on as well, I think. Quite a few conservatives and libertarian-leaners who have tended to vote Republican have already broken with George W. Bush. And yet, quite a few conservatives still have some residual loyalty to President George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Let's face it: Gerson's philosophy isn't that far from that of is former boss. Attacking Gersonism is a way of attacking Bushism without going after Bush.

I've already recommended Matt Kibbe's review of Gerson's book, and again, it is well worth reading in full. Kibbe thinks that Gerson is being stupid when tries to read small government types out of the movement:

It’s true that there has always been some tension on the Right between traditionalists and small-government proponents, but the coalition has also been conservatism’s greatest strength. By arguing that one must pick one or the other, Gerson is indicating a willingness to hack off a huge chunk of the conservative coalition — all the while claiming that this is the way to save it.

True. But isn't that equally true of Bush? Sure, Bush managed to win two terms in the Oval Office for himself, but he's managed to burn down the house Reagan built.

Consider the following passage, from a post by left-leaning blogger Publius at Obsidian Wings:

But 2008 is a new world. The modern conservative movement is both intellectually and practically exhausted. It’s still a powerful force, but the fires ain’t burnin’ like they were 20 years ago. There’s a window here to shift the course of the river – to enact not only a stable progressive majority, but to chart a lasting progressive course on the big issues of our day (health care, climate change, foreign policy).

Can you even imagine a paragraph like that being written tweny years ago? And why is the conservative movement in such shambles? Well, the reason is pretty obvious: the rise of "compassionate conervatism" and the presidency of George W. Bush, along with the Gersonian rhetoric Bush has embraced.

Which makes it all the more ironic that Gerson couches so many of his arguments in terms of what Republicans need to do to wine. Because Gersonism -- or Bushism -- is a sure fire way to get that "stable progressive majority" that Publius yearns for.

UPDATE: Minor editing glitch fixed.

Gersonism and Conservatives

I confess: I am going to break one of my own rules. In general, I make it a practice to refrain from criticizing books I have not read. But after perusing Michael Gerson's column archives at the Washington Post, well, readings of Heroic Conservatism are starting to look like a viable alternative to waterboarding. Still, the world doesn't need me to read the book and criticize it, because Gerson is absolutely getting hammered.

Start with the personal stuff: The Atlantic published an article by Gerson's former White House colleague Matthew Scully which accuses Gerson of self-aggrandizement and exaggeration of his own role in various matters. And of taking credit for other people's work. David Frum weighs in, saying:

I worked closely with Gerson and Scully, and I know both men well, as I do the third member of that once-intimate band, John McConnell. I witnessed the events Scully chronicled, and I can attest to the accuracy of Scully's account.

Frum then goes on to accuse Michael Gerson of plagiarism, which is a pretty serious charge. I mean, you've got to be pretty desperate to plagiarize David Frum.

While this bickering among former Bush Administration insiders is undoubtedly amusing, it isn't of great import. Of course Gerson is a climber who exaggerates his own importance and shades accounts to make himself look good. This distinguishes him not at all from his fellow members of the political caste.

In addition to the nasty, vindictive personal stuff, the book has attracted a lot of substantive criticism as well, particularly from conservatives. George Neumayr at Human Events referred to Gerson's "Heroic Liberalism," and characterized the whole Gersonian enterprise as a "cowardly retreat from conservatism." Jonah Goldberg asked "Why is This Man Called a Conservative"? Even Ross Douthat, who is the sort of squish who might be susceptible to Gerson's style of argument, penned a negative review for Slate, and he's had a couple of blog posts following up on it.

So what, exactly, is Gerson's philosophy? What is "Heroic Conservatism"? Well, as I said, I haven't read the guy's book, and I have no intention of doing so. But it's not clear that such exertion is really necessary. Gerson is the sort of intellectual who would only be so-classed because he's a member of the political caste. Gerson's "Heroic Conservatism" is a warmed-over version of Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism." In his column, he tells us that he cares a lot about the poor, and that people who disagree with him on this or that are uncaring.

In this column, for example, he goes after Dick Armey and Phil Gramm, before going after his real target: the libertarian-leaning wing of the Republican Party. Typical Gersonian rhetoric:

But the moral stakes are even higher. What does a narrow, anti-government conservatism have to offer to urban neighborhoods where violence is common and intact families are rare? Very little. What hope does it provide to children in foreign lands dying of diseases that can be treated or prevented for the cost of American small change? No hope. What achievement would it contribute to the racial healing and unity of our country? No achievement at all.

Ross Douthat quotes him as saying fiscal conservatives are "small minded, cold and uninspired," and Gerson's columns are imbued with this sort of rhetoric. Gerson is very comfortable sitting astride his moral high horse.

Gerson takes pains to distance himself from traditional big-government statist liberals, but, in practice, his arguments has exactly the same form as do theirs: I care about the poor and dispossessed, while you small-government types don't. He doesn't seem overly concerned about whether his favored nostrums actually achieve their stated goals, whether they have unintended consequences, or whether market solutions are indeed a superior alternative. But, for Gerson, it's not about that. Matt Kibbe's scathing review is worth reading in full, but he absolutely nails it, when he says of Gerson:

But what’s important to note is that it’s indicative of Gerson’s worrisome approach to governing. In his world, it’s not just about creating policy that works, but policy that makes him feel good. He doesn’t want government to get out of the way; he wants to use it to help him find meaning.

The urge to find meaning through politics is one of the most pernicious and destructive urges in human history. At its worst, it leads to atrocities: the Killing Fields of Cambodia, Gulags, death camps. In its most mundane form it leads to bad policies. It's what is wrong with liberalism in its modern sense, and, for that matter, a lot of what's wrong with the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Government Largesse: Some Strings Attached

Radley Balko links to this article about the Supreme Court's refusal to review a challenge to a San Diego program in which government officials searched the homes of welfare applicants. People were free to refuse to be searched -- but if they did, they couldn't get benefits. As Mr. Balko points out, the notion that applying for government benefits constitutes consent to a search is pretty broad:

I suspect the law-and-order response to the policy in San Diego would be something along the lines of "if they can’t prove they’re clean, they don’t deserve my tax dollars." Of course, if everyone who received any sort of government assistance had to consent to a search of their home, the Fourth Amendment would be pretty much null(er). For example, I’d guess there’d be quite a bit more outrage if these fishing expeditions/searches were being done on the homes of, say, middle class kids applying for government-subsidized student loans instead of low-income people applying for welfare.

There might be more outrage, but of course many of the same justifications for searching the homes of welfare recipients might apply to student loan recipients. In any case, this practice points to one of the often-unappreciated costs of the massive welfare state: it inevitably leads to increased government monitoring of the beneficiaries of welfare programs. And of course as people become accustomed to searches of all sorts, the willingness to object or resist declines.

The power to do something for you is also the power to do something to you.

Presidential Candidates Lie, and It Is (Sometimes) a Good Thing

Over at PowerLine, Paul Mirengoff says that he thinks Bush was lying back in 1999, when he started spouting on about "compassionate conservatism:"

When I first heard George W. Bush talking about "compassionate conservatism" in 1999, I figured (and certainly hoped) that it was at least 80 percent ad campaign and no more than 20 percent policy guide. Eight years later, it seems to me that, in practice, the Bush administration probably hasn't strayed too far to the wrong side of that proportion.

I must confess that I too thought it was PR: I thought that Bush was a straight-up Reagan conservative, and that the "compassionate conservative" crap was about getting votes from the soccer moms.

Unlike Mirengoff, however, I wish that Bush had been lying when he talked about being a compassionate conservative. But he wasn't! Bush managed to ram the prescription drug entitlement program through a Republican Congress at just the time when the "spoiled generation" -- the Baby Boomers -- are about to start retiring and getting sick and bankrupting us all. Bush gleefully signed the "No Child Left Behind Act," a bill with no real benefits that massively increases the role of the federal government in education -- something real conservatives have been trying for decades to reduce. And of course we have the near-miss of the Bush amnesty for illegals. He's gotten his way on plenty of those "compassionate" policies -- enough to do real damage.

And, worst of all, he's gotten Christian Conservatives -- who might have been a lost cause anyway -- used to the idea that big government is their friend, thereby fracturing the Republican coalition. And bringing us "serious" candidates like Mike Huckabee, who, despite having hilarious ads with Chuck Norris, manage to combine the worst elements of nanny-state big government tax-and-spend liberalism with know-nothing Christianist moralizing. Thanks, Bush!

So yeah, I too hoped he was lying back in '99. I was right, but it turned out that he was lying about the "conservative" part.

Mona over at Unqualified Offerings is outraged by Mirengoff's post, but for quite different reasons. She's mad that Mirengoff approves of the lying in the first place. As she puts it, "the point is, Power Line is not just conceding, but approving that a Republican presidential candidate lied to get elected." (Emphasis in original.)

I would be terrified at the thought of having a President who didn't lie, repeatedly and well, in order to get into the Oval Office. Because any Presidential candidate who isn't a good liar would have to actually believe all the nonsense that any person who wants to be President has to say.

What do we want in a President? We want a person who is reasonably intelligent, with an IQ of between, say, 125 and 150 -- no higher because super-geniuses tend to be erratic, but no lower, either. We want somebody who is intellectually curious about the world, well-informed on major issues, who has at least some substantive knowledge of economics and statistics and political theory. We want somebody who is a good manager, and who is good at picking people and evaluating their performance. We want somebody whose world-view is evidence-based rather than faith-based. We want somebody who can think for him or herself, who makes independent judgments about matters.

Note that this is very generic -- it's not about ideology, but about the general intellectual characteristics we would seek in a President.

It's my thesis that any person who meets these criteria will have views that will render the candidate unelectable if expressed openly. Consider the following propositions:

Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme designed to ensure support for big government, but we are stuck with it for the present. America's farmers are a bunch of welfare queens and farm subsidies should be abolished. Evolution is true, and creationists are a bunch of know-nothings. DARE is a waste of money and it should be defunded. Worse, the whole War on Drugs is pernicious. The attack on Iraq was a huge tactical blunder, but having gotten into the war, we need to do anything possible to avoid ignominious defeat. Free trade is a good thing, and the United States should unilaterally abolish all trade barriers. We shouldn't worry about opium being grown in Afghanistan.

All of these propositions are totally defensible in reasoned argument, but, if espoused bluntly, any one could render a candidate totally unelectable. I'm not saying that a qualified candidate would have to believe any or all of these claims, but most independent thinkers of requisite intelligence are likely to believe at least something that renders him or her unelectable.

And so we have a choice: we can insist on total honesty, and we can select a candidate so stupid, dull, or unimaginative that the candidate has no heterodox views. Or we can accept the fact that presidential candidates, like all politicians, lie. They lie frequently, openly, and with great skill. If they didn't, they couldn't get elected.

Free the Small Farmers -- And Everybody Else, Too

Given the vitriolic nature of much left/right "debate" on the web, it's nice to see a civil exchange between people who nonetheless disagree quite fundamentally. So I want to congratulate Libby Spencer at Newshoggers and Jim Henley for the tone of a recent exchange that nonetheless nicely illustrates the differing mindset between those who instinctively support the modern liberal regulatory state and those who are more skeptical of it.

Spencer points to this Nation article, which focuses on the travails of one small Michigan farmer in dealing with overbearing regulators, but which discusses, more generally, the issues facing small farmers (often organice) who embrace a direct-to-consumer model. Reading this article in The Nation, I got the momentary sensation I was reading Reason instead. Witness this passage, for example:

But as the re-emergence of a farm-to-consumer economy draws increasing amounts of cash out of the mass-production factory system, the new movement is bumping up against suddenly energized regulators who claim they want to "protect" us from pathogens and other dangers.

Wow, I thought you had to be a libertarian to put "protect" in sneer quotes like that. Still, there is the inevitable swipe at big business and the "mass-production factory system" of agriculture. So it's The Nation after all. Spencer reads this article and concludes that reducing regulations will do nothing but "allow the corporations to more easily foist off bad food." But the regulations have to be done correctly, which, according to her means that "they need to be enforced against the commercial facilities they were designed to oversee, not wrongly used to destroy privately owned competition."

Jim Henley responds, in a post amusingly titled "Wishing for a Free Range, Organic -- Pony." Henley's argument is that this sort of thing is the inevitable result of the regulatory/farm welfare system we now have in place:

Three-quarters of a century of regulatory-state agriculture has left us with a system of subsidized corporate farms who deplete the soil, abuse animals and enjoy a coziness with state agents while the same state agents hassle independent operators and crusading eccentrics out of business. It’s as if, my man IOZ would say, there’s a pattern.

The pattern is that reforms are put in place to regulate evildoers, but the evildoers soon harness the regulatory agencies to reduce competition. There's even a term for that: it's called "regulatory capture." The classic example is the Interstate Commerce Commission, originally created to regulate railroads that quickly turned into a way for existing enterprises to restrict competition.

But Spencer doesn't see it that way. According to her it is all the fault of Big Bad Bush:

I'm not unaware that Bush didn't build the bureaucracy singlehandedly, but he stacked the agencies with industry cronies, putting them in charge of oversight. Under his administration, regulations have been relaxed from previous safety standards for everything from consumer goods to coal mining. Enforcement against corporate entities is practically nonexistent.

In other words, her view is that it's bad people enforcing the regulations, not the existence of the regulations themselves that causes the problem.

So who's right? Well, as a person who leans libertarian, I am naturally inclined to agree with Henley, but that could well be confirmation bias at work. And yet, I think that the evidence leads to that view. It may well be true that regulators have been unusually compliant under Bush -- I honestly don't know enough to make such a global judgment -- but as I noted earlier, the classic example of regulatory capture is the Interstate Commerce Commission, an agency created over 100 years ago. Nor is it limited to just the ICC -- it happens in basically every field when an all-encompassing regulatory agency takes over. The "bad people" explanation gets weaker and weaker when something happens over and over again.

I also have to wonder whether Ms. Spencer read the article in The Nation with sufficient care. The farmer who is highlighted, Greg Niewendorp, had problems not with the federal bureaucrats appointed by the Evil Bush, but instead had difficulties with the Michigan Department of Agriculture, a state regulatory agency. And, as the article highlights, the regulatory difficulties of these independent producers involve both state and federal regulators. Which, again, suggests a more structural problem, rather than the "bad people" explanation that Spencer seems to favor.

And there is at least some irony here. Niewendorp, the farmer whose plight was highlighted by the article in The Nation, objected to a program which is supposed to test cattle for bovine tuberculosis. In general, I am not a huge fan of government regulation, but as health-and-safety regulations go, requiring that beef critters be tested for communicable diseases doesn't strike me as being that onerous or unjustified. Now, Niewendorp's claim is that he's just a small-scale producer and that his customers trust his practices. As somebody with libertarian procilities, I am more willing than a lot of people to let people assume this sort of risk. However, if you are the sort of person who believes in the case for lots of government regulation generally, I don't see how you can say that the guy ought not have his cattle tested.

Likewise, the article talks about small-scale producers who do their own butchering, and sellers of raw milk and cider:

Federal and state agriculture and health authorities say farmers are violating all kinds of regulations to meet fast-growing consumer demand, such as slaughtering their own hogs and cattle instead of using state and federally inspected facilities, and selling unpasteurized dairy products and cider without the proper permits.

Raw milk is a matter of huge controversy. Personally, I don't enjoy throwing up all that much, and as a result I am a big fan of of pasteurization. Silly me, but I think Louis was onto something with this whole "germ theory" thing. That said, I think that if people want to purchase clearly-labeled raw milk, they ought to be free to do so. Likewise, I think that if people want to purchase cows or pigs that were slaughtered by the farmer in his barn, rather than in a government-inspected slaughterhouse, you ought to be free to do so, so long as there is full disclosure. But if you are the sort of person who read The Jungle and who believes generally in the case for government-inspected slaughterhouses, I am not sure why you ought to make an exception for "local, organic" farmers.

Chuck Norris For President

This Mike Huckabee ad is all over the place.



Sully links to RedState saying it is "insanely good," as well as Ezra Klein, who (despite some criticism) calls it "The Greatest Ad Ever." Mathew Continetti at "Campaign Standard" thinks it "is funny and fresh, but in terms of substance it's lighter than air." Yglesias calls it "strange but funny."

Well, funny it certainly is. I have to say, though, that I agree with Ezra Klein: the ad is funny if you know about the whole phenomenon of "Chuck Norris facts." As a viral video it is incredibly good -- everybody's linking to it and embedding it, after all. But won't the average voter be a bit confused by Huckabee's claim that Chuck Norris moves the Earth when he does pushups?

"Undecided Voters" = Left Wing Activisits

Fresh off the Clinton-campaign mini-scandal regarding her planted questions, CNN decided to up the ante: via Glenn Reynolds, this link to a Hot Air video demonstrating that nearly every "undecided voter" asking a question at the recent Democratic debate was a left-wing activist of some sort.



Seriously, if CNN thinks that anti-war activists, union organizers, and other sundry Democratic Party agitators will ask better questions that randomly-selected average questions, fine. In fact, I rather dislike the whole "Town Hall" concept myself. But characterizing these people as mere "undecided voters" is so misleading as to be tantamount to a lie. Sure, they may well be undecided in the sense they've not yet formally endorsed a particular Democratic candidate, but they're not undecided in the ordinary sense of the term. They're activists!

Let them ask questions if you like, but identify their affiliation. I mean, all I want is the truth. Is it that hard?

By the way, while I don't like Obama, I do admire the fact that he didn't pretend that he didn't know the lady whose question was directed toward him. It was a softball, but he didn't try to pretend she was a stranger to him.

Live From VRWC Central

Always on the lookout for his readers, the intrepid Cheerful Iconoclast penetrated the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy last night, attending a black-tie dinner at a convention of the dreaded Federalist Society. The dinner, which celebrated this secret cabal's 25th anniversary, featured speeches from quite a few notables, including three Supreme Court Justices and President George W. Bush. It got covered by the AP and Washington Post, and undoubtedly by other outlets as well.

I loved this bit from the AP:

Inside the historic Union Station, crowd gave Bush a standing ovation complete with cheers and hollering. Supreme Court justices and members of the nation's judiciary and legal communities sipped wine and ate beef and veal medallions. Outside, a small group of protesters shouted "War criminal Bush" and "Stop waterboarding." The latter was a reference to a controversial interrogation technique that simulates drowning.

This is a great example of writing that's factually accurate but utterly misleading. It makes it sound as if the convention featured a sybaritic feast worthy of an Iron Chef. In fact, if the audience "sipped" its wine, because drinking it normally would have meant tasting it. The wine was a step or two above Thunderbird, but nothing I would buy myself. The Viognier tasted like Kool-Aid, and the Cab harsh and tannic. You can get better wines at the $5.00 bin at your local grocery store (if you live in a state that allows local grocery stores to sell wine, that is). As for the veal and beef medallions, it was difficult to tell whether the minute portion size was a blessing or a curse. Yes, they were described as gourmet tidbits in the printed menu, but they might as well have been mystery meat: overcooked nuggets of meat smothered in sauce. As it was, upon returning home, the Main Squeeze and I shed our formalwear and warmed up some leftover pasta, which I assure you far surpassed the night's repast.

It was banquet food. Better than your old school lunch, but certainly in the same genre. And not enough of it!

As for President Bush's welcome, members of the Federalist Society are nothing if not polite to their guests. It is certainly true that a poll taken in that room would probably make President Bush seem more popular than a poll of, say, the American People. But you would expect him to be more popular among self-identified conservatives. It is hardly news that a group of conservative lawyers gave a sitting Republican President a warm welcome.

However, Federalist Society members can and do differ among themselves about President Bush's policies. In particular, any number of libertarian-leaning Federalist Society members are harshly critical of some aspects of the Bush administration. Of course, in order to find that out, the reporters would have had to, you know, actually talk to people, rather than listening to the President's speech and dashing from the room when he finished. If one had approached me, I would even have been happy to express my candid views. I might even have shared a bite of beef medallion, and a sip of wine.

A Frightening Thought

Matthew Yglesias doesn't think that any of the potential Republican nominees have a chance at the nomination. This leads to a problem, since the Republicans have to nominate somebody.

And then he had a nightmare epiphany: "Brokered convention leads to Jeb Bush nomination."

All I can say is that if that happens, I will vote for the Democratic nominee, whoever it might be. Kucinich, Gravel, Clinton, Obama -- it just doesn't matter.

No. More. Bushes.

EVER.