A New Home

A Moment of Clarity is now over here.

Yes!

I am quite happy that Obama is the nominee, btw.

The most important issue the candidates aren't talking about...

...but fortunately for freedom-loving people everywhere, I am.

Oh, and Congress is talking about these issues, too. Which is good.

Guess Whose E-Mail Was Posted On Andrew Sullivan's Blog?

Mine.

David Stern's European Problem

While I certainly don't endorse Jim Caple's xenophobic rants about exporting NBA franchises to Europe, there is clearly a major practical problem with David Stern's desire for starting NBA franchises in Europe. This year in the NBA, we have had the fortune of experience the awesomeness of seeing many solid players playing for fewer teams, and it demonstrated what I have long believed to be a problem with the league: there are too many teams. However, I really don't endorse taking any particular franchise out of the NBA -- or, for that matter, moving storied franchises to new cities -- and while the desire for European integration is understandable and desirable on many levels, too many cities would lose out. A better approach, rather than moving a "critical mass" of teams to Europe, would be incrementally integrating already professional European teams into league play.

There are other problems, too. Many European countries have different sporting cultures than the United States. In all countries, the best athletes tend to play the most popular sports. Here, they play football, basketball, and baseball. Well, soccer is far more popular than basketball in Europe, despite basketball's increasing popularity.

Stern's plan for expanding the NBA into Europe is based on the assumption that European integration is inevitable. I think that is a good assumption; however, incremental integration would serve the league better in both the short and long terms. In the short term, American cities would not lose their franchises (and, ergo, not lose the benefits of having a professional sports team) and would encourage European cities to build future NBA franchises from the ground up instead of, say, having to deal with all of a sudden being the proud owners of the Grizzlies. In the long term, it allows future NBA prospects in Europe to develop a sense of identity associated with European teams, and also would facilitate a better scouting and development of young basketball talent that the youth sporting systems in Europe currently lack.

Remember, the real problem with expansion is not crossing national boundaries, but overstretching the talent pool by creating too many teams. Moving a given amount of current NBA franchises overseas will only exacerbate that problem. Rather, incremental integration would create a demand in Europe for better programs geared toward the development of talented young athletes more akin to our primary and secondary education athletic programs in the United States. Clearly, there is a talent pool across the pond, as demonstrated by the large number of Europeans already playing in the NBA. I think more talent can be developed, but full European inclusion into the NBA should happen only if basketball becomes more widespread in primary and secondary education athletics overseas -- something which a more incremental approach could facilitate.

The Three Trillion Dollar War

A book came from amazon.com today: The Three Trillion Dollar War by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in economics, and Linda J. Bilmes, professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and former assistant secretary of chief financial officer for the U.S. Department of Commerce. The book examines the long-term costs of the war in Iraq, both human and financial.

Clearly, they're ideological left-wing wimps masking as so-called "experts" who aren't willing to take the long view on Iraq. Sure, they have all these facts and figures to show that we're in some sort of "quagmire," but John McCain says we have to stay for 100 years if need be, and John McCain is an honorable man.

New Numbers and Old Social Science Truths

These numbers contradict my assertion that the Democrats will more solidly back their nominee than the Republicans this year. At the same time, that does not mean I am wrong on all merits: Republicans are always more disciplined than Democrats, and what matters is if Democrats are more disciplined this electoral cycle than they have been in previous cycles. It is likely they will be more disciplined this year than in 2000 and maybe even 2004, but not as disciplined as they were in 2006, I'd imagine.

There are other old truths of social science truths to consider here: the political nature of independent voters. It is incorrect to assume that "independent" means "moderate." Often, independets are more partisan than partisans -- they are more liberal than Democrats or more conservative Republicans, and they tend to vote more frequently for one party than party members. So Barack Obama's higher support among independents should not be seen as evidence that he somehow has broader appeal than Hillary Clinton. Nor should it be seen that he does not have broader appeal, either.

UPDATE:

I'd be interested in seeing results from the states that have held primaries compared with states that have not held primaries. Does Obama's approval ratings among Democrats and other voters increase with more visibility?

A great case

Jeffrey Rosen lays out a great case [pdf] for Obama.

This plays into my Dukakis-as-Obama's-Goldwater-with-Obama-as-Reagan idea.  Obama's ideology is essentially that of a liberal civil libertarian, just like Mike Dukakis (who ran as a technocrat off of the "Massachusetts miracle").  Similarly, Reagan's approach was essentially that of a conservative with economic libertarian roots, just like Barry Goldwater.  But Goldwater and Dukakis could be described as "kneejerks" in their positioning.  Their respective political ideologies formed the bases of their political positioning.  Not so with Obama or Reagan.  Obama's approach, like Reagan's before him, is consensus building with strong principled roots.  They weren't called "Reagan Democrats" for nothing.

Way too excited

This gives me pause.

As First Lady, Hillary Clinton proposed having television sets in public places playing public awareness type shows, such as demonstrating how to properly burp, breast feed, and care for an infant. I think the TV sets in public places idea is a little extreme, perhaps (Jonah Goldberg is totally foolish, however, to suggest that that's fascism), but the idea of having this kind of information be free to the public without acquiring much effort to access it is good.

But Michelle Obama gave a speech recently that is the ultimate Goldberg-bait:

"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

I'm all for positive liberty, but sheesh.

The people are not accountable to the President; the President is accountable to us. I like my usual life. I'm sure a lot of people do. I think people want to go back to a time and place when the country and the world made more sense. Like the 1990s.

And that, my friends, is why Hillary is losing. She failed to effectively counter Obama's idiotic assertions about Bill Clinton's political leadership. Her best arugment had nothing to do with experience. Her slogan should have been, "Remember the 90s."

Happy days are here again. That should be something nice to hear when we get a President who is committed to going back to the fiscal policy of the 90s. Instead, Michelle Obama is assuring us that her husband will come to our house force us to be Free.

McCain vs. Obama

The news about Obama's February fundraising raises questions about McCain's viability against the Illinois Democrat.

Over a short period of time, Obama has built an impressive campaign organization that defeated another campaign's organization that had essentially been set since 1992. It has also proven to be a considerably mobile organization that is able to compete in every state. In fact, Obama is the only candidate in the entire race to set up organizations in every state that has had a contest thus far.

Obama has a huge financial advantage over McCain, who has struggled to raise money. McCain will also likely be limited by federal matching funds, assuming he accepts them. This is likely given his problems raising money.

Obama's organization includes many more motivated volunteers, and he has more enthusiastic support from his own party than John McCain does from the Republicans.

Also, does anyone else think it's counterintuitive for McCain to suggest that Obama is nothing but talk when he has built his entire public persona on the notion of straight talk?

I just can't handle it. It's so straight.

Ezra Klein via Matt Yglesias.

Torture ineffective, undemocratic

My column in today's Lantern.

More on this later...

But I think Michael Dukakis might be to Barack Obama what Barry Goldwater was to Ronald Reagan. This has been a thought I've been bouncing around in my head for a little while, and there are plenty of gripes to be had about it. For instance, it was John Kerry, not Dukakis, who gave Obama the platform to launch his career in national politics, whereas Reagan appeared in a television ad on behalf of Goldwater. Also, this relies on the dubious historical idea that Reagan's campaign was somehow a continuation of Goldwater's (Goldwater was running against the New Deal; Reagan was running against the Great Society).

But, I promise, more on this later.

I don't usually link stuff like this...

But I think there's something to Otto Reich's thinking. The move to formally step down on Castro's part may be a test. How will ambitious people in the Castro brothers' inner circle position themselves at this point? What about anti-Castro forces? Other countries?

I want to know what the real motivation is. I don't want to drink to Cuban freedom tonight for nothing.

Misconceiving Politics and Posturing

Historian Jeffrey Herf of the University of Maryland at College Park wrote a thought provoking post at the too rarely updated Open University, one of the four featured blogs of The New Republic. It's his take on the Democratic primary and how foreign policy will shape the electio in November. His logic is valid, but the analysis falls apart at the premises. He writes:

In my view, the most remarkable aspect of the Obama’s campaign has been his ability to make the tone of his politics mask their substance as well as the willingness of highly educated voters to go along with this illusion. His voting record and his views on foreign policy place him firmly on the left-wing of the Democratic Party. His are the views of the left-liberal political and intellectual establishment echoed in print in The New York Review of Books and The Nation, and online via Moveon.org. His most frequent remark about foreign policy during the campaign is that he will withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible. Despite the fact that the surge has achieved many of its goals, the press has not challenged Obama–or Hillary Clinton for that matter–about the consequences of an American withdrawal in the face of apparent success. While the call to get out of Iraq as soon as possible is unifying for the activist young and liberal and left-liberal intellectuals, it is profoundly divisive in American society as a whole. Indeed, were either Obama or Clinton to withdraw troops from Iraq before the United States had achieved a tolerable end result, the bitterness and turmoil in our country could match that of the divisions over the war in Vietnam. “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” would not be just a clever slogan. Millions of people, with good reason, would believe it to be true. Were that to happen, partisan division could become so intense that the Democrats’ domestic agenda would be unlikely to survive the tumult. You could kiss goodbye to universal health care.

This is premised on the dubious notion that the surge has produced the desired effect. While we have achieved tactical successes, which should come as no surprise, the political climate in Iraq is still unfavorable to stability. The main rationale behind the surge was that it would create the desired political climate in Iraq, and the overall decrease in violence in the short term has not created that. You cannot "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" if victory is impossible. It is a similar problem to what we had in Vietnam. We could not have lost had we stayed, but victory was impossible. We underestimated Ho Chi Minh's ability to mobilize the North Vietnamese peasantry, and our misconceptions about the will power of the Vietnamese, based upon stereotypes that East Asians are inherently averse to fighting, premised our prolonged engagement. Guerrilla warfare is about persistence; living to fight another die matters more than victory at one battle. Concepts such as insurgency and terrorism are similar in their logic.

Herf's notions are also removed from the facts regarding public opinion in the United States. The Vietnam War weakened the Democratic Party substantially, not because of overall disapproval of the war, but because the party became divided between doves and supporters of the Johnson administration. With the alienation of many doves in 1968 and a united Republican Party, Humphrey's ability to win was compromised (he still came close). Across the whole country, public opinion was not divided between a hawk-dove dichotomy, but along a spectrum. Eugene McCarthy represented the doves who favored unilateral withdrawal. Frank Church and Robert Kennedy represented doves who opposed unilateral withdrawal. There were the pro-administration hawks, who supported the Johnson policy. Finally, there were the hawks who opposed the administration on the grounds that Johnson was not doing what was necessary to win the war, and this was the position held by many conservative Republicans. The current war, on the other hand, is more clearly divided along partisan lines, with the Democratic Party generally favoring withdrawal, and the Republican Party nominating a man who wants a prolonged U.S. occupation. Independents by and large hold the Democratic position, and the war was key to Democratic victory in 2006 and will likely play a role in a Democratic victory in 2008.

Herf continues:

A second, bizarre aspect of the primaries is that for reasons of their own, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama have stated the most obvious difference between them. It is, especially in foreign policy, that she is a centrist Democrat whose ideas are far “newer” than his while he is a left-liberal Democrat whose ideas are largely those of the Democratic orthodoxy of the pre-Bill Clinton Democratic Party. These are the same ideas that, except for the Carter interlude, kept the Democratic Party out of the White House in the three decades before Clinton’ election in 1992. If Hillary Clinton had stated this simple truth, she could forget about getting the support of the Democratic Party’s left-wing and thus would have little chance of getting the Party’s nomination. If Obama had stated this truth, then the post-partisan, unifying aura of his candidacy would evaporate. However fine a politician he may be, his political views are not those of the political center. The Republican Party will not be reluctant to bring this inconvenient fact to the voter’s attention.

As Herf states before, Obama is a liberal who has presented himself to be closer to the center, which is exactly what Bill Clinton did in 1992. In fact, in the 1992 primaries, Clinton ran to Paul Tsongas' left. And Clinton's first term domestic agenda included a laundry list of domestic liberal reforms, most of which, most notably universal health care and allowing gays in the military, were not achieved. Also, Clinton was not a foreign policy centrist. While humanitarian intervention has found acceptance in centrist circles, at the time the notion came predominantly from the left. Beyond intervention, Clinton was a strong supporter of Kyoto and the International Criminal Court when he could barely find support from either party for these measures.

In a sense, promoting political unity is an offshoot of Dick Morris' triangulation. When your back is against the ropes, and the other party has made tremendous gains, then it is wise to triangulate, hold the political center, and discredit your opponent's arguments. Obama wants to say he will reach across the table when his party is at a position of strength in hopes that this will create even broadbased support for his campaign and give him considerable political capital upon taking office.

Herf then suggests that the Democrats need to treat "radical Islamism" the way FDR treated fascism in the 1940s. This seems to be more about values than reality, however, as Osama bin Laden does not possess the destructive capabilities that Hitler had. Taking a stand against "radical Islamism" would be pure posturing, not to mention risky. To combat this idea would require more commitments overseas. However, the immediate (and overrated) danger is more attacks here in the future, so the actual focus should be on homeland security if any candidate hopes to gain anything off of the issue.

If Herf is concerned that liberal hawks are being driven out of the party, then I share it. Paul Berman and Richard Holbrooke should not be excluded from foreign policy discussions with the Democratic Party (I would say the same thing about Joe Lieberman if he weren't actively supporting the presumptive Republican nominee), for they weren't the only liberals who were wrong about Iraq. However, counterintuitive posturing in the face of reality in Iraq is politically dangerous, and suggesting that it has to be American power to counter the alleged "Islamist" threat is downright silly. After all, a staple of guerrilla, insurgent, and terrorist strategic goals is provoking the enemy into overreaction in order to gain the sympathy of the populous, and that is the tragedy of American military action in Iraq. International terrorism, like climate change and nuclear proliferation, is not a good reason to project national power, but instead to strengthen international institutions and laws. International terrorists are first and foremost criminals, not soldiers in a large and powerful fascist army.

Congress and Baseball

A few people have expressed frustration regarding the focus of one Congressional committee on Clemens' alleged steroid use.  However, I think this is an important issue.  Major League Baseball has a special anti-trust exemption no other corporation in the country has (I oppose it).  Furthermore, professional athletes are often the role models for young athletes, and they should be held accountable when they break rules to gain a competitive edge.  The point of sports for athletes should be to play fair, to do so with honor, and to have fun.  Being competitive is good, but it is moot without honor.  If holding a special anti-trust corporation to these standards is not the business of the Congress and the people, then I don't know what is.

In addition, Congress IS focusing on a lot beyond these issues.  The committee structure allows for a division of labor.  The Senate Judiciary committee is heavily investigation the issue of torture of enemy combatants, for example.  Also, Congress has accomplished plenty since the Democrats took over, but either the President vetoes meaningful legislation, or it is blocked by forty-one or more Senate Republicans (and Joe Lieberman).  Examples include applying the military rules of prisoner treatment to all government agencies (particularly the CIA), the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) expansion, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).  If a Democrat is elected President, and if more Democrats are elected to Congress, it is probably that much of that legislation will be passed.

Hillary at Ohio State

She had quite the posse with her yesterday, too: Gov. Ted Strickland, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, former Senator John Glenn, and Columbus-area State Senator Ray Miller.

I had the chance to meet Gov. Strickland after the event, joking, "Who says Democrats can't be clergy?" He laughed. He is an exceptional governor, and he's a true believer when it comes to Senator Clinton. "I think she's going to make history," he says.

I keep forgetting that Senator Clinton's strategy of focusing on Texas and Ohio is suicidal, just like Rudy in Florida! I mean, all the evidence is there. She's skipping Wisconsin. He skipped Iowa, New Hampshire (kind of), Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina, etc. And she has all these incredible endorsements. He had... anyone? She is absolutely decimating her opponent in the polls here in Ohio. Rudy, uh...

Clearly, it's a stupid comparison that the punditocracy is using in hopes of declaring Obama the presumptive nominee.

Big States

A lot of pundits unfairly compare Hillary's strategy to forego Wisconsin and focus on Ohio and Texas to Rudy's decision to skip many early states to focus on Florida. That's nonsense, of course. Her lead in the polls in Ohio and Texas are substantial, and the more her presence is made known in the states, the better her chances of solidifying victory are. A major politician like Hillary Clinton traveling with the state's governor (Ted Strickland) and former Senator/Mercury 7 astronaut/statewide hero/thesis subject of this college student (John Glenn) generates comparable free media to whatever free media Obama gets after a small primary victory.

This is problematic, sure, as many primary voters probably watch national cable news instead of local news. However, her substantial lead in the polls, her endorsements from major statewide politicians, and the fact that Ohio is a closed primary certainly give her an advantage that Rudy did not have in Florida.

Electability...

I think Ross Douthat has a point here, and so I'll sum up briefly and then add my own thoughts. Essentially, he thinks despite Obama having a higher ceiling than Clinton, he also has a lower floor. Given the way the press treats St. John of Arizona, who will have constant free media and usually be given free passes on most of what he says, Obama's tactic of keeping the press at arms length and avoiding media appearances is a little off base. Clinton's crawling-through-the-mud-until-51% strategy might actually, despite the conventional wisdom, might be more appropriate than Obama's unity approach.

But there is more to this issue. We don't have the breadth of knowledge regarding Obama's history that have with Clinton's, and if there are big skeletons in his closet, they have a greater potential at wrecking his campaign than any skeletons in Clinton's closet. I doubt that is the case, however, reporters desperate to find something to stain him may turn any non-scandal into an actual scandal. That happens all the time to Clinton, so she's developed an immunity of sorts.

I second this...

David Greenberg's argument from Slate. Obama's rhetoric about Republicans being the party of "new ideas" is confusing. The Clinton administration was a bastion of ideas, particular, as Greenburg notes, the fusion of populism and neoliberalism.

What Greenberg doesn't mention is foreign policy. Despite Secretary of State Madeline Albright's rhetoric about the United States being the "indispensible nation" of the world, Clinton really made an effort to see that international law and international institutions become the keepers of the global order. This is evident even in his political failures over issues about which he was (and still is) correct, such as Kyoto and the International Criminal Court. Also, despite his deeply regrettable failure to act in Rwanda, Clinton set the precedent and framework for future humanitarian interventions with our actions in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Of course, Clinton was an ideas man, and ruthlessly targeting your opponent over an issue on which he or she has the slightest vulnerability was a Clinton trademark (see Florida Democratic primary against Paul Tsongas, 1992). And that's what Obama is doing -- criticizing the perceived failure of Clinton on delivering long-term liberal reforms, such as the Clinton Health Care Plan, and the decline of Democratic officeholders during the Clinton years.

Of course, the decline of Democrats in Ohio started in 1990, two years before Clinton ran for President. The so-called Republican Revolution of 1994 could have been inevitable.