Irresponsible Speculation
So what if there were a Senator who wants to be Secretary of State and also sits on the Judiciary Committee. What that be the sort of person who might know about a Justice Department investigation into misconduct by another prominent member of the Democratic national security establishment . . . ?
Contrary to what a lot of liberals are saying, the timing of this is all wrong to be a Republican plot. You would want to leak it the day after the 9-11 report came out to try and bump that story off the front pages. This way you just ensure that Berger gets bumped by the report and then the convention. Besides which, the story would have been more damaging to the Kerry campaign if they held onto it until October or so — the closer to the election, the more awkward it is to dump one of your top foreign policy advisors. I smell an inside job.
At any rate, leaving soon for a TAP retreat to some godforesaken place from which I may or may not be blogging. Enjoy!
How To Lose Kansas
Good example from Max Sawicky. But of course it would be very odd for the California Democratic Party to adopt a strategy designed to win votes in Kansas. Gray Davis’ particular problems aside, postmodern California is a hot-bed of contemporary liberalism grounded in the politics of gender and ethnicity. On the other hand, one of the mainstays of left-wing criticism of Bill Clinton is his signing of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Do we really think that standing more rigorously in favor of transfer payments to unemployed black women is the way to gain the votes of white working class men? Or is it possible that, as I said in my previous post on the subject, the formula pioneered by DLC politicians who needed to run in the red states actually may know a thing or two about how to keep progressive politics viable in red America?
Cringe
A big Tom Daschle speech that’s supposed to start in a couple of minutes will allegedly contain the phrase “Doing Right by America . . . means paying as much attention to Middle America as we are paying to the Middle East.” I wish I shared the child-like faith of some of my liberal hawk acquaintances that sentiments like this are not only bad policy, but bad politics as well. In reality, however, I think this is probably a useful element of a winning message, at least in Daschle’s traditionally isolationist Plains stomping grounds.
Oliphant on Kerry
I mentioned the other day that I thought the Kerry campaign’s efforts to court swing voters were being hampered by the fact that loyal Democrats don’t seem especially enthusiastic about Kerry (as opposed to beating Bush) and it would be helpful to him if there was some more positive enthusiasm. I had the subject on my mind because I was eagerly awaiting the release of Tom Oliphant’s cover story in The American Prospect making the case for enthusiasm. Oliphant’s known Kerry a long time and argues that he has the right guts, brains, and work ethic to be president of the United States. Check it out.
Me Too!
I agree with Atrios and Tom Tomorrow that more people should be inviting me to hot A-list convention parties. I also feel that since I’m (a) a blogger, (b) going to the convention, (c) going to be blogging from the convention that I should get mentioned in more of these articles popping up everywhere about bloggers at the convention, even though I’m not technically going as a blogger, but rather as an American Prospect writer. The lines, they blur! More importantly — invite me to cool parties. (Also — is there anything convention-related the people, you know, want to read about? I don’t totally get what’s supposed to be interesting about a convention so I’m happy to take requests.)
Berger
Well, taking classified documents out of the archives is illegal whether it was done intentionall or not, so I guess Sandy Berger’s not going to come out of this looking to good. But none of the news coverage I’ve seen of this is clear on what I take to be a very important issue here — were the documents Berger lost (generous interpretation) or destroyed (ungenerous interpretation) unique copies of something, or just one set of papers among many. If it’s the latter, then it seems we can rule out any of the nefarious intent that Andrew Sullivan insinuates here. You don’t cover something up by eliminating one copy of the documents. Now my guess is that this isn’t what happened, because if it had we would have heard about it earlier from the 9/11 Commission as they complained about their inability to assemble a complete record. But that’s just a guess. If the documents were unique, Berger looks a good deal worse.
Like others, I’m pretty puzzled by this whole thing, which seems motiveless and self-destructive. Maybe Dick Holbrooke set him up. Who knows?
UPDATE: Thanks to commenter Keef, I see the 9-11 Commission saying that whatever Berger did it in no way impacted their investigation so either this was not a cover-up, or else it was an uncommonly stupid cover-up that involved leaving the original documents in the archives. To be clear, though, mucking around like this with classified documents is illegal even if there’s no malicious intent. Just as John Deutsch. Meanwhile, no one seems to have appreciated my Holbrooke set-up joke, even though he seems to be the only one who’s benefitting from all this.
UPDATE II: In all seriousness, Holbrooke really is the big beneficiary here and that’s a good thing. He’d be the better Secretary of State. Now the only thing standing between him and the job is Joe Biden and the question is what can Holbrooke do to get the nation more focused on the problem of stamping out plagiarism. . . .
The Case for Engagement
Everyone should read Greg Djerjian’s take on Iran policy. I think it’s quite right. To add a bit of emphasis, it’s something of a delusion to think that our problems with Iranian behavior on the nuke front, on the Iraq front, and on the Hezbollah front are somehow 100 percent an outgrowth of the problematic nature of the theocratic regime. In reality, there are plenty of reformers who are also Iranian nationalists and like to see things like a stronger Iran more capable of throwing its weight around the nation. There is nothing the Mullahs would like to see better than for the US to explicitly link the regime change issue with these other issues of Iranian behavior. Then they get to turn around and say to the population, “see — getting rid of us is part of an American plot to keep Iran weak, even the US president says so himself!”
We need to disaggragate these issues. It seems to me that Iran’s legitimate regional interests can be met in a way that does not involve in Iranian nuclear arsenal or fomenting instability in Iraq, provided these interests are discussed frankly by the parties concerned rather covertly and through back channels. At least it might be possible. Maybe if we start a dialogue on these topics it things won’t wind up getting worked out and then something bad might happen. But it’s worth a shot — the other options aren’t very appealing.
NEA vs. AFT?
I suppose this is something I should know, but I don’t, so does anyone out there know what the difference between the NEA and the AFT are? And if the Democrats are in hock to the teachers’ unions, which union are they in hock to? Etc.
Why Propaganda Is Good For You
I missed it last week, but Wonkette quotes a Fox News internal memo:
The President and the PM of Canada meet today and will make remarks at midday. Take the remarks, even if Jacko is singing on top of a truck with no pants on at the time.
Funny, eh? This is what I like about Fox.
Articles
Round two of Yglesias versus McGarvey on religion (based on the names it seems that one of us should be Catholic) is up, as is today’s column which takes a look at what happens when you elect a president who’s too dumb to know when he’s getting played by his Secretary of Defense. The results just might get you killed.
Focus!
The well-meaning David Adesnik writes:
Frankly, I’m still confused as to why top-ranking administration officials were so eager to distance themselves from the 16 words if Wilson’s accusations were so exaggerated.
Okay. This is the thing everyone really, really, really needs to understand. The statements of Wilson’s that now seem to be untrue pertain to things like Wilson’s role in exposing the bogosity of the Niger claims, and how Wilson got the job that put him in a position to play a role. The reason top officials have been eager to distance themselves from the 16 words is that Wilson’s op-ed helped bring to light the fact that the Intelligence Community believed, for a variety of reasons that don’t have a great deal to do with Wilson, that the claim should not be made. What the SSCI Report debunks about Wilson is the notion that he personally played some sort of grand heroic role here, it confirms that US intelligence does not believe and has not believed for some time that there was sufficient evidence for thinking that Saddam sought uranium in Niger. Of all the different sources for that claim, all but one — maybe, a British source that the Brits won’t tell us about and that appears to have come from French intelligence that the French intelligence agencies don’t believe in — have been debunked. As a result, American intelligence, while not able to categorically state that this never happened, doesn’t believe there’s a real evidentiary basis for thinking it did happen. This is why the administration distanced itself from the claim. Joe Wilson just isn’t very relevant.
Factual Clarity
This much we know:
- Joe Wilson’s credibility: Not so hot, but not totally destroyed.
- Niger Claim, strong version (Iraq got uranium): Dead.*
- Niger Claim, intermediate version (Iraq was likely to get uranium): Dead.
- Niger Claim, weak version (Iraq sought uranium, but couldn’t get it): Not so hot, but not totally destroyed.
- Exposing the identity of a covert CIA operative for partisan purposes: Still illegal.**
We do not know, however, the answer to some very interesting questions.
Fuck Giant
Will Wilkinson is right about this, very wrong about that, and lying when he describes Whole Foods as “nearby” to his house. I made essentially the same walk yesterday afternoon, and while going to the grocery store is fine, there are sharp limits on the quantity of food one wants to carry that distance.
More On Assault Weapons
If I may revise and extend my earlier remarks, Mark Kleiman has some further remarks on the subject. I’ll happily that I’ll happily endorse his first two points. On the relative importance of crime control vis-Ã -vis other domestic policy issues things get a bit airy and metaphysical. Substantively, there’s no actual trade-off between controlling crime and improving education or health care (indeed, with regard to the former there’s positive feedback between the two) so there’s sort of nothing to disagree about here. The point I would like to make is simply that the crime crisis that began in the late 1960s is largely over. It would be good — very good — to see further reductions in the incidence of crime, but the situation is no longer “out of control” with rates seeming to go ever-upwards. The health care glide path, on the other hand, has us pointed toward a total fiasco, so I think there’s a certain urgency there that’s missing on the crime front. That said, if people care to disagree, I couldn’t be happier. Better crime control policies would have a much bigger impact on my life than progress on the other two fronts, and will continue to do so for the near future. Now what I’d really like is for someone to pony up the cash for more frequent Green Line service on Metro. (Incidentally, in both DC and Boston the Red Line provides the best service and the Green Line the worst — coincidence or conspiracy?)
CFR Report
This sounds pretty convincing to me. It seems to me that a harder line policy vis-Ã -vis Iran probably would have been desirable at one time, but the upshot of the Iraq War has been to increase our need to secure Iranian cooperation on some regional issues while drastically reducing our “hard power” leverage relative to Teheran. Under the circumstances, though an engagement policy is unlikely to produce any really fantastic outcomes it seems preferable to the alternatives of drift or conflict. I’m open to persuasion on this front, though, not someone with really firm Iran-related convictions. Mostly I have deep suspicions about the motives and methods of the Iran hawks, though I’ll admit to the possibility that they’ve somehow stumbled on the right idea through an unsound method if someone can make that case.
Um…
So far, we’ve known that the Niger-uranium claim was based on (a) forged documents, (b) an Italian summary of the forged documents, (c) a French analysis of the forged documents, and (d) UK intelligence’s conviction that the claim was true. The UK was, in turn, basing its analysis on (a) forged documents, and (b) a mysterious second source. Today, via Laura Rozen the Guardian reports that the second UK source “almost certainly” came from France. Does that mean the second source was really the same forgery passed around again through a different route? Hard to say. It would be nice to hear from UK intelligence why, if Iraq tried to get the yellowcake, it didn’t succeed in getting the yellowcake. Assuming the attempt was made, knowing why it failed is pretty crucial to knowing what to think about it.
O.G.
Speaking of crime control, Mark Kleiman may have learned a lot about gang violence, but he has a thing or two left to learn about slang:
Sometimes indirect pressure is effective: in Lowell, Massachusetts, a wave of violence by Asian youth gangs was controlled by telling older figures linked with, but no longer active in, the gangs that if a gang engaged in deadly violence the gambling interests of that gang’s OGs (“older guys”) would be shut down.
Those are original gangstas where I come from.
Assault This
Even the not-so-liberal-anymore Washington Post editorial page wants the assault weapons ban renewed. A couple of salient points their pitch makes is that criminals almost never use weapons of this sort (they’re relatively big and expensive; crooks don’t actually fight pitched fire-fights in the streets where this sort of thing would be useful) or that the point of the second amendment is to protect the right to “military-style” weapons, it’s not some kind of hunter protection act.
The Case For Nader
Max Sawicky threatens “to make a case for Nader, for whom I will not be voting.” Restricting myself to foreign policy, I think I can make a pretty good one.
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