Questions…
… so, Matt, what’s your book about? It’s a good question. The answer, in short, is that the theory and practice of progressive national security politics and policy. In particular, it advances the argument that the political problem for contemporary progressives has been a failure to convince the American public that the Democratic Party offers a coherent and viable approach to national security policy. It denies that the issue here is that liberals need to “get tough” or some such thing. Rather, the problem has been a failure to advance a principled and coherent alternative to Bush-style hegemonism.
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MidCity: The Truth Comes Out
Sommer Mathis lays the smack down on me for casting aspersions on the authenticity of the “MidCity” locution. Apparently, the name has a fairly lengthy lineage and referred to the broadish swathe of neighborhoods served by the Green Line which, during planning phases, was often called the “Mid-City Line.”
Hope At Last
I’d been getting depressed about the Wizards’ prospects for next season. The center of the team is Agent Zero, Professor of Gilbertology who, by all accounts, requires a steady diet of perceived slights in order to motivate himself. Recently, though, the slights hadn’t been coming. After being snubbed for the All-Star Game, he wound up as David Stern’s replacement for the injured Jermaine O’Neal. Then came the playoffs where I kept hearing national television commentators describing him as “underrated” and explaining to the fans that he, like LeBron James, is one of the best young players in the league. Then he’s named to the Third Team All-NBA and selected for the Team USA roster where he wound up not making the final cut allegedly due to injury. All-in-all, Arenas was at risk of getting too fat, happy, and satisfied. But now he’s bringing the bitterness:
“No joke, I felt like I was the 16th man on a 15-man roster,” Arenas said. “You are there to support your team and support your country and be happy to play but you know, I did everything they wanted me to do; but if I did everything they wanted me to do, why am I on the bubble of getting cut? I sacrificed. You’ve got LeBron being LeBron. You’ve got Carmelo being Carmelo. You’ve got D-Wade being D-Wade. Why can’t I be me? Why do I have to transform? I did that and now you are going to cut me?”
Right on! Fuck those guys. Let Gilbert be Gilbert! Yes, of course, it’s true that there was nothing actually unfair about this, but as long as Gilbert feels it was unfair we’re on solid ground. His apparent good attitude about being asked to transform himself into either a traditional point guard or a spot-up shooter (again, the right things to ask of him as a member of Team USA) was indicative of a distressing lack of egomania. Now we’re in good shape. Indeed, if I believed for a minute that Darius Songaila was going to add “toughness” to the team (that’s what the front office wants us to believe), I’d be downright optimistic.
Should I Be More Cynical
The very kind Tyler Cowen writes that this new site “will continue to offer my favorite TV and NBA reviews on the web, along with his regular incisive-but-I-wish-he-were-more-cynical-about-government-and-more-sanguine-about-the-transformational-power-of-economic-growth Democratic political analysis.” Cowen’s a libertarian, so I expect we won’t see eye-to-eye on this, but I actually think I am pretty cynical about government. I’ve learned a lot from my various libertarian friends, from my seminar with Robert Nozick, from libertarian blogs, etc. and I think public choice economics is a very important perspective. The upshot of this is that, as a general matter, I’m considerably less enthusiastic about regulatory solutions to policy problems than are most liberals.
Sadly, though, the upshot of my libertarian-infused cynicism has mostly been to push me left of where I used to be on domestic policy issues. It’s cynicism about government and the political process that, for example, has made me much more enthusiastic about labor unions and much more hostile to means-testing entitlements than I used to be. If I believed that the deliberative democracy people weren’t naive fools, I’d be much more sanguine about various “third way” approaches to things.
Charm City
Huh. Apparently there’s a Baltimore City Paper. Who knew? Said paper contains an article about The Wire, thus indicating that it’s a superior publication to the tawdry Washington City Paper. I’ve been avoiding the temptation to watch the review copy of the entire season that the producers sent to the Prospect offices since I’d like to take it all in at the proper pace, but the City Paper guy watched ‘em all and says “it’s the most gripping, ambitious season the show has produced to date.”
Goodbye to all That
It’s the last week in town for my friends Genevieve and Emily capping off the traditional late-summer exodus and consequent need to try and make some new friends somewhere. This got me thinking; I always tend to assume that DC is unusually transient in this particular way — lots of people leaving town every summer and lots of new people coming in every fall — but do I have any reason to think that’s the case? In retrospect, I do not. Certainly, there’s a lot of transience. But DC also just happens to be the only place I’ve lived during my time in the peak-transience age bracket. For all I know, LA or New York has even more churn.
Melo’s Game
What with moving and all, I haven’t really had the chance to follow the World Championships as much as I’d like. My sense, however, has been that Carmelo Anthony has morphed from being one of Team USA’s least-effective contributors, statistically speaking, in the NBA to being Team USA’s best player in the Worlds. Dave Berri crunched the numbers and that’s the conclusion he reached, too.
The Rain in USA Falls Rarely on the Plain
An amusing conclusion to today’s “Today’s Papers”:
Finally, the NYT reefers a big piece on arid conditions in the Great Plains, which have left “farmers and ranchers with conditions that they compare to those of the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s.” It’s the worst drought since … well, maybe 2003, “an extremely dry summer that … brought back memories of the 1930’s Dust Bowl” (NYT, Sept. 5, 2003). Or maybe 2002, when “farmers shrug[ed] and wonder[ed] if a new Dust Bowl [would] soon be upon them” (NYT, May 3, 2002). Or 1998: “a dry spell that officials say shows signs of developing into the costliest and most devastating the region has seen since the Dust Bowl years” (NYT, Aug. 12, 1998). Or 1996: “Coming after two years of low rainfall and a number of other weather problems, the ferocity of this year’s drought has slowly begun to evoke memories for some here of the Depression-era Dust Bowl” (NYT, May 20, 1996). Or 1988: “Since the spring’s dry weather evolved into the worst drought since the Dust Bowl, the farm policy has been turned upside down” (NYT, July 10, 1988). Or 1982: “And when the winds come, turning the sky dark with dust and burying fence rows under shifting dunes of soil and thistle, those who are old enough remember the bleak days of the Dust Bowl.” (NYT, May 14, 1982). Or 1980: “Is the nation in for a new Dust Bowl or at least a succession of scorching summers?” (NYT, July 17, 1980).
The thing of it is that before some clever rebranding, the area we currently know as the “Great Plains” was called “The Great American Desert.” It’s not genuinely a desert, but it really is quite dry. And, of course, an area that’s dry-ish most of the time is going to be subject to frequent droughts. Many Native American practiced agriculture, but the ones who lived on the plains/deserts generally didn’t and this was not a coincidence. The local climate has its ups and downs, but it’s a fundamentally marginal area that already stays viable mostly because of federal protections for domestic agriculture products. It seems a bit perverse to just encourage the empty-ish part of the country to get emptier at a time when housing is becoming increasingly expensive, but it got empty-ish out there for a reason. Before it was flyover country, that’s the part of the country you would try and pass through in a covered wagon before reaching the more promising terrain in Oregon.
Fear of a Ninth Planet
New column from me at The American Prospect Online, “Fear of a Ninth Planet” makes the case against denying Pluto it’s rightful status as a planet. I should perhaps note that despite enjoying the “reality-based community” phrase, I actual adhere to a fairly Kuhnian line about the nature and history of science which some folks would regard as unduly relativistic.
Circular Firing Squad
This is pretty sweet. Genuine rightwinger Steve Laffey is mounting a primary challenge to moderate Republican Lincoln Chaffee. If Chaffee loses the primary, Laffey will almost certainly lose the general. So the RSCC has decided to deploy some anti-immigration hysteria against Laffey
Good times.
Mmm…Trader Joe’s
“Would you sign a petition to convince Trader Joe’s to open in MidCity?”
I totally would if only we could stop referring to the neighborhood as “MidCity.” I’d really like a Trader Joe’s, but the speed with which the local business association and members shady real estate cabals have been able to foist this term on the world is distressing.
The Shrinking South
Ben Adler and Jason Zengerle both note Joe Biden’s odd theory as to why he can do well in the South as a presidential candidate:
You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state.
Atrios also chimes in. In Biden’s semi-defense, the article is a little unclear, but I think that was in answer to a question about whether or not Biden thought he could win primary elections in the South against the region’s native sons. Biden is arguing that the electorate in Democratic primaries in Dixie is heavily African-American and that, in light of Delaware’s large black population, he has experience with appealing to that demographic.
Three further points. One is that if Biden genuinely thinks he’s going to be president some day, he’s seriously deluded, but that sort of delusion is widespread in the Senate. Second is that Atrios and Zengerle are agreeing about something! Third is that I just looked it up and, interestingly, Delaware really was part of the Southern political bloc throughout the 19th century. By the end of World War I, however, that had ceased to be the case and the state regularly went GOP notwithstanding the existence of the “solid South.” Maryland has made a similar transition from being politically Southern to politically non-Southern, and a similar process is maybe taking place in Virginia as we speak.
A Paradox
Washington Post: “Maj. Charlie Burbridge, a British military spokesman, said the Iraqi army maintained full control of the camp, even during the looting, and had managed to eject the thieves by early evening.”
How do you maintain full control of something during looting? It seems to me that full control implies no looting, and that looting entails loss of control.
Incompetence and Israel
As you may know, a while back I cowrote an article with my colleague Sam Rosenfeld called “The Incompetence Dodge.” The subject was folks who supported the Iraq War, then came to recognize it was a disaster, and then came to blame its disastrous nature on the ineptitude of the Bush administration. This, we argue, is a mistake — a dodge — an effort to avoid culpability for the fact that the basic concept and premises of the war were mistaken.
As several readers have pointed out, we seem to be seeing a new variant of this as Israelis sour on Ehud Olmert in the wake of the Lebanon War. In this instance, I think the case against the “incompetence” theory is even clearer. Lots of people around the world suggested that Israel’s campaign was ill-advised. And, to the best of my knowledge, absolutely none of us who said that made any reference to Olmert’s competence or lack thereof in framing our critiques. Then the war turned out more-or-less exactly as the skeptics predicted . . . skeptics who had nothing to draw on but a general analysis of the situation.
Analogies
This Richard Cohen column reads almost like a joke. It’s 1938! It’s 1938! Appeasement! Appeasement! Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, at a minimum, pull this schtick off with a certain rhetorical flair. Cohen doesn’t even seem to be paying attention. In-depth diavlogging discussion of the use and abuse of historical analogies here.
In general, I’m against these kinds of analogies. Marx and Hegel aside history does not, in fact, repeat. Analogies to 1938 are especially pernicious. Adolf Hitler is, obviously, a very noteworthy historical figure and WWII a noteworthy period in world history. This is precisely because the things that happened during them time were extreme, weird, and largely unprecedented they idea that they’re constantly recurring or likely to recur is odd.
Positive Reenforcement
Hey, check this out (emphasis added) in the Times:
“What matters is that in this campaign that we clarify the different points of view,” Mr. Bush said from the press secretary’s lectern in the White House conference center up the street from the Oval Office. “And there are a lot of people in the Democrat Party who believe that the best course of action is to leave Iraq before the job is done, period, and they’re wrong.”
In calling the opposition the “Democrat Party” Mr. Bush was repeating a truncated, incorrect version of the party’s name that some Democrats have called a slight, an assertion the White House dismissed as ridiculous.
Have you ever seen that before in our precious MSM? I don’t think I have. Maybe if everyone agreed to write like that for a month or two the Republicans would have to knock that particular inane gimmick off.
Lessons Learned
I’ve seen more than one blogger note the irony of Kenneth Pollack and Daniel Bynum concluding their very pessimistic assessment of Iraq with the sentiment that “How Iraq got to this point is now an issue for historians (and perhaps for voters in 2008); what matters today is how to move forward and prepare for the tremendous risks an Iraqi civil war poses for this critical region.” I seem to recall something or other about a “threatening storm” playing a role and I’ll say nothing more on that.
The return of the Pollack/Bynum liberal hawk writing team does, however, remind me of a less well-known bit of Iraq-related writing they did back in 2003, “Democracy in Iraq” (PDF) published in The Washington Quarterly. They wrote the following:
Providing security is an essential task for intervening powers. Without internal security, the political process will be badly distorted if not entirely undermined, humanitarian relief becomes impossible, and economic recovery a will o’ the wisp. Even in places where the transition to democracy has been rocky, such as Bosnia, a strong international presence has had great success in preserving the peace. The Australian-led effort in East Timor was even more successful — if only because the situation was, in some ways, more challenging — and could provide a good model for a U.S.-led effort in Iraq.
By leading a multinational force of initially at least 100,000 troops with a strong mandate to act throughout Iraq, the United States and its coalition partners will have an excellent prospect of ensuring the degree of security necessary for a successful transition to democracy. In essence, the goal for the U.S.-led peacekeeping force would be to ensure that no group or individual uses violence for political advantage. International security forces will reassure Iraq’s Shi’a and Kurdish communities that repression at the hands of Iraqi Sunnis is at an end. Equally important, the presence of these foreign troops would reassure Iraqi Sunnis that the end of their monopoly on power does not mean their persecution and repression, minimizing their incentives to oppose the process. The presence of multinational troops could prevent small incidents from snowballing and thus could help create the expectation of peace within Iraq — an instrumental factor in making peace a reality.
Note the pointed absence of a call for 300,000 or 400,000 or 500,000 troops. Rather, “at least 100,000″ was said to be adequate. And if you look back at the record, you’ll find that this was entirely typical of hawkish writing at the time — the adequacy of a small force wasn’t an eccentric Rumsfeldian view; it was held by almost all of the hawks, liberal or otherwise, who backed the war. The people talking about a much larger force were overwhelmingly invasion skeptics who were not so much calling for such a force than simply raising (warranted) questions about the feasibility of the mission.
Away We Go?
Jacqueline Massey Paisley Passey suggests:
I realize that some of you will find this post depressing because you’ll realize that you don’t qualify as a high quality man and thus won’t be able to get a high quality woman. You have a few options: [...]2. Look in the developing world. If you’re literate with a home computer and an internet connection you are very wealthy compared to the rest of the world. Citizenship or legal permanent residency in a rich country makes you more attractive to women in poorer countries. Your value on the dating market is thus much higher there.
Cryptic Ned observes:
I thought her second suggestion was a good reminder. It’s amazing that virtually anyone who’s struggling in America could move to a town in the developing world and instantly have wealth and power w.r.t. everyone around him, and yet nobody does. Where’s our conquering, settler spirit?
Some people, however, actually do do this:
Years ago there was a series of long posts on the Thorn Tree by an ex-pat in Alma Ata. He was amazing because he was completely upfront about being a despicable person. He was entirely aware that he was living up to the worst of himself; he’d resigned himself to the trap of living well in a third world country. He hated Alma Ata, thought it was an ugly soviet concrete city. He hated Russians and Kazakhs alike for being racist peasant gangsters. He was bored shitless at his do-nothing job for some aid agency. He despised himself for whoring, couldn’t remember the last time he’d fucked a girl who liked him or could have refused his relative wealth and power.And yet, he knew he would stay as long as he could. He couldn’t resist the advantage he got just for being American; it was all too easy. In Alma Ata, he was important enough to include in the nightly drinking with the big boys. He was fucking more and more beautiful women than he thought he could even approach at home. He could live cheap and have a maid and a driver and eat well (except that he hated Kazakh food). He had no demands on him, no civic life in a land where he was an irrelevant stranger, no family to demand his attention, not even the daily chores of living.
Food for thought? Sounds like a bad dude. Surely this is the main theme of one of the many well-known vaguely contemporary novels I haven’t read. If so, let me know, I think I’d like to read that one.
Why Does Politics Matter?
Paul Krugman writes that politics matters for the income distribution, citing the long-term trends in inequality and their close correlation with long-term political trends. Brad DeLong says he thinks this is wrong, political changes can and do have a large impact on after-tax income distribution but the trends show up strongly in pre-tax income. “I can’t see the mechanism by which changes in government policies bring about such huge swings in pre-tax income distribution.”
I note for the edification of readers that one thing I’ve learned since arriving in DC is that a difference of opinion on this subject is a major divide within the progressive economic policy community. Most mainstream economists — including most liberals — agree with DeLong. Politics and policy affect the secondary distribution (after tax and transfer) and what happens with the primary distribution is just out there. Leftier economists tend to say this is mistaken.
I would side with Krugman on this. The trend data is too striking to be ignored. If you have a phenomenon and are having trouble identifying the cause, the thing to do is to try harder to identify the cause, not assert that the phenomenon isn’t happening. But what is the cause? I can think of some plausible stories.
Will: Kerry Was Right
George Will does the unthinkable and not only attacks George W. Bushs approach to national security, but even offers praise for John Kerry, saying he was right to say “that although the war on terror will be ‘occasionally military,’ it is ‘primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world’” while his critics are engaged in a “farrago of caricature and non sequitur mak[ing] the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional.”
A Football Dilemma
Watched the end of the Raiders-Vikings game and whaddaya know . . . football season is (sort of) here, ending the horrifying Summer Sports Nightmare brought about by the end of the World Cup and the way the Basketball World Championships appear to have been scheduled so as to make them impossible to watch in North America.
I’m ashamed to admit, however, that when it comes to the NFL I’m something of a sports bigamist. In NBA terms, my relocation to Washington, DC conveniently coincided with the Knicks stumbling from “disappointing” to Godawful and the Wizards rising from Godawful to “hey, this team is pretty good!” status so I somewhat shamefully shifted allegiances. I think, though, that this is an ultimately defensible move since I more-or-less plan to keep living in DC forever and in this day-and-age I don’t think it makes sense to ask people to support the team in the town they grew up in to the exclusion of the town where they actually live. Giants-Redskins dual loyalties, however, is totally untenable. If they played in different conferences, it might work. But it’s the same division. Last year, they managed to both make the playoffs and then not face each other in the postseason, which was a pretty ideal outcome from a bigamist perspective.
But I can’t shake it. I hope Clinton Portis recovers smoothly, but I also hope Eli Manning keeps his shit together under pressure….
Fluid Dynamics
Call me crazy, but I don’t see what kind of sense a ban on liquid travel on airplanes is. To be sure, letting people carry soda or shampoo onto an airplane could (apparently) allow them to conceal an explosive. And a bomb going off on an airplane would be a very bad thing. But by the same token, a bomb going off on a crowded Metro or Armtrak car would be quite bad. Hell, a bomb going off on a crowded airport security line snaking back and forth as everyone waits to have their bags searched for offending liquids woud be really point. At some point, common sense needs to kick in.
Dynamic Scoring
Scott Winship has more up on the Prospect website about the ideological proclivities of the netroots. It occurs to me reading his article that it’s worth keeping in mind that what “the netroots” is is, at this point, almost certainly something of a moving target.
Cohen’s Clarity
Richard Cohen has his good days and his bad ones, but bloggers tend to only quote him on the bad days. Today is a good one:
I share the concern of what would happen to Iraq if the United States pulled out precipitously. I share the concern over what will happen if the United States stays. I share the concern of those who say that no matter whether it stays or goes the outcome will be the same. I especially share the concern of those who say that the Bush administration does not have a plan to disengage and that rather than confront the immensity of its mistake — I pity Donald Rumsfeld if he should ever lose the gift of denial — it thinks that this or that adaptation to new conditions will somehow change the outcome. It will not. The end was set at the beginning. It is better that it come sooner rather than later.
It’s tragically difficult to get even people who think the right things about this to remember from moment-to-moment that this tragic farce is playing out day-by-day and shows all signs of continuing indefinitely.
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