Sarkozy, New Leader of the Free World?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has brokered a truce between Russia and Georgia. Granted, the timing was right for Russia to make an agreement, as they'd achieved their goals, and granted the truce is fragile and both sides are claiming the other is violating it.

None of that detracts from the fact that Sarkozy did what Bush should have done. Yes, the French have at least temporarily taken away the U.S.'s role as leader of he free world. And if you don't think that's a kick in crotch to U.S. conservatives, you've already forgotten about freedom fries.

Russia Invades Georgia

Russian troops have now moved through South Ossetia into Georgia proper. That is, they can no longer claim to just be defending a region that has declared independence and that has many Russian citizens; they have moved into territory that is indisputably Georgian, and that has no interest in either independence from Georgia or being a part of Russia. And Russia continues to reject Georgian requests for a ceasefire. Apparently Bush's "firm" talking to Putin didn't take. (Does Bush recognize that Putin was in the KGB, and as such surely considers himself a real badass compared to Vietnam-avoider Bush?)

And while a U.S. ally is invaded and Russia takes the opportunity to reassert its military strength in the world, Bush is sending obvious signals that he doesn't care to much, by continuing to place watching the Olympics above getting personally involved in resolving this crisis. His public statements that "we strongly condemn bombing outside of South Ossetia" implicitly approves bombing inside South Ossetia, and in any case is a very weak response. "Strongly condemn" is strong diplomatic language when applied to weak vassal states, but means "we're going to stand aside and wag our fingers disapprovingly" when applied to more powerful countries.

Bush's performance so far is a disgrace, and it appears he doesn't understand the dangers of a militaristically resurgant Russia. He continues to say that he and Putin "have got a good relationship." Bush is playing the fool while the fires of Cold War II are being lit.

Bush's Soulmate Attacks U.S. Ally

Vladimir Putin says, "War has started," as he sends troops into a separationist province of U.S. ally Georgia. If Bush really saw into Putin's soul, he should have seen this coming. Granted it doesn't sound like Georgia's just an innocent victim. The fighting is in the province of South Ossetia (which 95% of American adults can find on a map, given Google Maps and about a month) which has been essentially autonomous since the late '90s and wants to unify with North Ossetia, which is part of Russia. but which the new Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili (a household name in the U.S. because the U.S. media does such a bangup job of covering world affairs) apparently insists on forcibly reunifying.

I don't know about you, but I find a slight irony in the idea of a breakaway republic objecting to a breakaway province. Apparently Saakashvili (like Abe Lincoln) is irony challenged.

But apparently most South Ossetians have Russian citizenship, so Saakashvili should have known Russia would come to their defense.

So we have one leader who Bush thinks--or did think--was a good buddy, and another leader who's a close ally of the U.S. It seems as though Bush migh have put some effort into averting conflict here, but apparently he was distracted by trying to figure out how he could justify invading Iran (hell, Afghanistan's a mess, Iraq wasn't going so well, third time's the charm, right?).

OK, all a bit snide, but seriously, this is a fairly major foreign policy fuckup by the Bush administration. A resurgent and militarily successful Russia is not in U.S. interests, but by standing by with his dick in his hands, Bush appears to have been caught wholly offguard.

Can John McCain Win?

That's the question I've been pondering lately. I've been ignoring the polls, which I don't think will mean a lot until after the post-convention bounces, if any, have diminished, and thinking about historical factors, and for the most part they're not in John McCain's favor.

1. One historical factor is that we rarely elect sitting senators to the White House, and none since 1968, but since Obama's a sitting senator, too, we have to throw this one out the window. Whoever wins the election will make history on this count.

2. A second factor is the difficulty of a member of the same party replacing a very unpopular president. Only about 1/3 of the populace approves of the job Bush is doing, and McCain, being the candidate of that president's party, is inevitably seen by many as a continuation of the same. It's not fair, and I don't even think it's accurate, but it happens nonetheless, and it makes winning the election an uphill climb for McCain regardless of any other advantages he might have.

3. A third factor is McCain's age, which actually affects the race in two distinct ways. First, Johh McCain would be the oldest elected president ever. Of course we've broken that record before, most recently with Reagan, but it's obviously a rare thing, and it does seem the American public doesn't generally want presidents who are too old. All other things being equal, this might not be too big a hurdled, but other things aren't equal, because, second, we would be going back a generation, which is, if not unprecedented, exceedingly rare. We have now had two baby boomer presidents in a row, and the liklihood of stepping back to a pre-baby boom president is highly unlikely. The U.S. is, in many ways, a country that has traditionally looked forward, rather than backward, and this general disinclination to revisit future generations to select our presidents is but one example of that.

4. A fourth factor is that McCain is seen as an inisder, while Obama is seen as an outsider (and we can't plausibly both criticize him for lack of experience and claim he's an insider). Every president from Jimmy Carter on, excluding the first President Bush who won on the coattails of a very popular predecessor, has been an outsider, and has trumpeted that fact. Obama may be less of an outsider than Carter or Clinton, but McCain can't possibly compete on this angle--he is the establishment, at a time when we don't like establishment figures. (As to the wisdom of electing outsiders, I beg to differ with my fellow citizens.)

5. Fifth, incumbent presidents don't win when the economy is weak, nor does the person from the same party who would succeed them. It matters not if Phil Gramm is right that we are not in a recession--a majority of Americans believe we are, and their votes will be determined by their own beliefs, not Phil Gramm's. (And could Gramm possibly have done a better job of reinforcing the public perception of the Republican Party as out of touch on economic matters, with his claim that we're just a nation of whiners--my neighbor is on a six week layoff because of the slump in truck sales, and I don't think his financial concerns are merely hypothetical.)

6. Sixth, fundraising matters. It's not true that the biggest winner always wins, but there is a strong correlation, because the person who can spend the most is generally able to define the issues and candidate attributes most successfully. The fundraising differential is probably a function of the other factors listed, but it has electoral effects of its own. And while it's more than just a little bit legitimate to critique Obama for reneging on his pledge to accept public financing, I just don't think that issue will have legs--Republicans never successfully critique the Democrats for having too much money because they are, far more than the Democrats, the party of the wealthy. And as things stand, Obama has raised around 280 million to McCain's 111 million, a stunning differential.

7. Finally, the religious right has been essential in the victories of Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan (and, actually, beginning with Jimmy Carter before him). Despite McCain's promises to elect "strict constructionist" judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade, and in spite of being the graduation speaker at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, religious conservatives have not warmed up to McCain. James Dobson, for one, has said he wouldn't vote for McCain, and my religious conservative mother is very unhappy with his candidacy as well. The question is whether religious conservatives' devout belief in voting will overcome their McCain disdain. If not, look for Obama to pick up Virginia or Colorado--states McCain can't win without.

So can McCain overcome all that to win? I wouldn't bet on it. Keep in mind two things, however. First, campaigns do matter. In the equilibirium situation where both candidates run good campaigns, all the other factors determine the outcome, but if one candidate runs a bad campaign (cough, Dukakis!, cough). But so far McCain has shown the tendency to run the weaker campaign, mostly because he can't resist making jokes that are inappropriate in the particular context (but thank God he has a sense of humor). And Obama has seemed to move on relatively unscathed from what would seem devestating blows, particularly the Jeremiah Wright business. Republicans can justifiably wonder why the scandal isn't sticking, but for my part I'm glad it hasn't, as such scandals have never stuck on the Republicans before. (Let's face it, if Wright had suggested nuking the State Department, he would have been crucified by the right wing, unlike Pat Robertson, who actually did say it and suffered almost no fallout--the patriotism stuff has been a one-sided game for far too long.)

Second, it still remains to be seen whether there are enough moderates and liberals who won't vote for a black man to keep Obama from winning. I personally believe not (and, of course, an Obama loss would not be conclusive evidence, as there are other reasons to oppose him), and I expect that an Obama victory this fall will prove it.

In summary, McCain's only chance is a huge Obama misstep, or to find a scandal that will stick. It's not impossible, but at this point it sure doesn't seem likely.

I'm Angry

I've been disgusted and angry at the Bush administration for years now, but just recently my anger has boiled over to where I just want to blindly lash out. I hate what they have done to my country in the name of national security, and the passivity of the media and the public in response. All anyone has to do is say the word, "terrorism," and the media pansies grow afraid to critique, while any citizen who does is called unpatriotic and unAmerican.

But criticizing the government, even in a time of war, is not unpatriotic. The old claim that "politics stops at the water's edge" is just another authoritarian tactic to try to diminish the public's control over its government, along with the equally dismal "my country, right or wrong." Whenever I hear that I point out that the proper ending to that phrase is, "when right to be kept right, when wrong to be set right." There is no higher patriotism than to try to set one's country right when it is wrong.

In recent days the Supreme Court has handed the administration yet another defeat in it's effort to use the war on terror as a justification for shredding the Constitution, when it ruled that the Guantanamo Bay detainees had the right to habeus corpus. The despicable John Yoo parrots the administration's lies in calling every Gitmo detainee a "captured al Qaeda terrorist." And since we've never given any of them a day in court, how do we actually know they're terrorists? Perhaps Yoo, a law professor, missed the day due process was taught at law school.

And in response to the ruling, the administration says it needs to "rewrite the evidence" they have against the detainees. In other words, the lack of any evidentiary requirements for holding detainees means they didn't bother writing up the evidence in a legally satisfactory way. What more evidence is needed to demonstrate that any time government can lock someone up without due process they're going to abuse that power and lock people up without regard for evidence? Only authoritarian governments make a practice of locking people up without due process, and going to great lengths to keep them away from the reach of the law. This administration refused to treat these alleged terrorists as either criminals or prisoners of war, because in each case legal rights attach--they created a new category, "illegal enemy combatant," a term mentioned nowhere in U.S. law or the Geneva Convention, as a way of creating a black hole the law couldn't touch. Fortunately the Supreme Court, all that is holding back a police state, has mustered a bare minority willing to stand up for the rule of law.

As if that's not bad enough, it's now come out that they hid Gitmo detainees from inspectors of the International Red Cross. If Iran, China, or Cuba did this, we would denounce them. But Bush and Cheney seem to believe that because they are good people, in a good cause, their actions are legitimate. They don't see that your inherent goodness does not imbue your actions with justness, but that your actions define whether you are good or evil--and I'm now past the point of saying Cheney and Bush are just misguided. I believe they are evil men, doing evil things, and turning my country into one of the evil monsters of the world.

They also claimed they did not need warrants to engage in wiretapping, and that as commander-in-chief, Bush had unlimited constitutional authority to prosecute an undeclared war with no oversight by the Congress, the representatives of the people.

And no indictment could be complete without mentioning their support of torture. A tactic that has been condemned by nearly every knowledgeable person as both immoral and useless. John McCain, no friend to constitutional rights but a man who personally experienced torture, denounced it, as has, just recently, an experienced marine. I remember my shock at Donald Rumsfeld's response to the reports of torture at Abu Ghraib prison, when he said he hadn't read the report. The Secretary of Defense not bothering to read a report alleging that his troops had committed war crimes!

Of course such complaining could be tossed off as just more pansy-ass left-wing bitching, except I'm not a pansy-ass left-winger. I'm more libertarian than leftist, and I think there is an appropriate time for military action, as well as opposing quick withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But why take my word for it? Numerous retired military officers have criticized this administration, a list that now includes Major General Antonio M. Taguba (USA-Ret.), who says,

[T]here is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Slobodan Milosevic committed war crimes, and the U.S. helped put him on trial. It's time we do the same to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld. I do not want my country to be led by war criminals. I do want these men put on trial--and we ought to do it in the U.S., to demonstrate that we will clean up our own messes. If we do not, I hope they will be indicted by an international war crimes tribunal. Not that the U.S. would ever give them up, but it might remind our leaders that they are not above the law.

Of course every fascist-leaning right-winger, the Ann Coulters, Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys, etc., would scream bloody murder. But they spout about American ideals while having no recognition of the way they and this administration are actually treating those ideals with the greatest contempt. If anyone is truly anti-American, it's anyone who would shrink constitutional protections to their minimum, instead of stretching them to their maximum. They don't truly believe in human freedom and the rule of law--they don't understand anything but pure temporal power and the desire to force everyone to follow their moral code, a moral code that condemns premarital sex, homosexuality, and smoking pot, but venerates torture.

The hell with them all, and the hell with George Bush. The moment the next President takes the oath of office, the U.S. Attorney General should indict him, and then we can give the son-of-a-bitch the benefit of very due process of law that he so despises.

Barack's Blunder

Why did Barack Obama respond to Bush's speech to the Knesset? He is angry that Bush said,

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before...We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history (text of speech is here).

Because Obama is the only candidate who has suggested talking with Iranian president Mahmoud Amadinejad, he has claimed that this was an attack on him, even though Bush didn't mention anyone by name, or even link it to the presidential campaign.

Assuming he's right, it would be very bad form for a president to use a speech to another country's government as a direct campaign speech. But if this was a swipe at Obama, it was a very indirect one--it could just as easily have been directed at all of those who believe the U.S. is responsible for Muslim anger at us. I know a few of those people myself.

So it's strange that Obama jumped up to take credit for being the target of Bush's critique. The speech was barely covered by the U.S. media, and the first most of us heard about it was when Obama cried foul. There's no way this makes Obama look good--he is creating the linkage between him and appeasement in the public's mind by making a big deal of what would have passed almost unnoticed if he'd kept quiet.

If others had tried to make the linkage, Obama should have just agreed with Bush that appeasement is bad, but said he agreed with Winston Churchill that "talk, talk, is better than shoot, shoot." Better to be associated with Churchill than Chamberlain, but Obama blew it.

Hillary's Snake-Oil Economics

Whether or not Clinton would have gotten much of the economist vote anyway is debatable, but she's certainly thrown it away now.

"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists."

Of course economists are a pretty small demographic, and you can always pick up votes in the U.S. by being anti-intellectual (cough, George Bush, cough).

But it's not the pandering that bothers me. It's the pretense that economists would make people's lives worse, and that ignoring economic advice is the best way to help people. Because it's material well-being that she's talking about, and that's what economics is about--understanding how we can enhance humanity's material well-being. To wholly ignore economists when that is the question is no different than to ignore physicians when the subject is one's physical health, and to "put your lot in" with witchdoctors, herbalists, and faith-healers.

It's snake-oil economics, and it makes me angry because she will continue to blithely assume she cares more about people than economists do, while she actually harms them more than any reputable economist ever would.

She should take the time to look at Adam Smith, who showed us that free markets are for the benefit of consumers, not businessmen, or Alfred Marshall, who clearly saw that studying economics was the path to improving people's lives. As Todd Buchholz quotes Marshall in New Ideas from Dead Economists:

From metaphysics I went to Ethics, and thought that the justification of the existing condition of society was not easy. A friend, who had read a great deal of what are now called the Moral Sciences, constantly said, "Ah! If you understood Political Economy you would not say that. So I read Mill's Political Economy and got much excited about it. [Then] I visited the poorest quarters of several cities and walked through one street after another, looking at the faces of the poorest people. Next, I resolved to make as thorough a study as I could of Political Economy."

I began studying political science because I thought that was the science of human well-being. Later I realized it is actually the science of human conflict, and important and interesting in it's own right, but only when it is securely intertwined with economics--when it is political economy--can it honestly be about the well-being of humanity.

If only Hillary, or any of our presidential candidates, understood that.

We All Hate Bush

President Bush's disapproval rating fell to a new low--71%. It's not really surprising. People think there's a recession (there's not, barely), and the war that nearly everyone thinks he lied to get us into still isn't going spectacularly well. Plus, we're 7 1/2 years into his presidency, and we never like our president much at this point.

Personally, I'm still bitter about his steel tariffs. One of the few things I'd hope a Republican would get right, and he bungled that, too.

Is Authorization to Use Force Good Enough?

A question I've been pondering lately. Article I, section 8 of the Useless, I mean U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power "To declare War." But does that mean Congress has to say, "We declare war," or can they simply say, "We authorize the President to use force"?

Politically, an actual declaration of war seems a bolder step, so might be desirable as a way of limiting how often we actually go to war. Empirically, this doesn't seem to have happened, although perhaps if we insisted that nothing less than an actual declaration of war was legitimate it might.

But from a constitutional interpretation perspective, does the text demand that kind of interpretation?

Article I, section 8 also authorizes Congress to create tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court. Does that mean legislation creating a new Circuit Court of Appeal, or District Court, must being with the words, "We hereby constitute a Tribunal inferior to the Supreme Court?"

I've been telling students for years that we haven't declared war since WWII, but have been involved in many military conflicts since then anyway, implying that they're all illegitimate. And some clearly are...for example Clinton's insertion of troops into Yugoslavia without even consulting Congress, which really was nothing less than an implicit presidential declaration of war upon the Serbs (not that the action wasn't ethically justified, but that's not my point today). But in the Persian Gulf War, and in the current Iraq war, Congress authorized the use of military force against another country--e.g., they authorized acts of war. And I'm not sure why that's not constitutionally satisfactory.

Granted, Bush declared he had the authority to go to war anyway (he certainly had lots of presidential precedent), but in the end, Congress did give him authorization. And Congress has always declared war only in response to a presidential request for it, I believe.

I don't know. I have to grade 45 student papers on the President's co-optation of the war power, and now I'm not quite so sure what I think about it.

Bush's "Still Relevant" Moment

In 1995, after the Republicans had taken control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years, there was so much attention on the architect of the Republican's victory, and the new Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich that President Clinton was reduced to pleading that "The President is still relevant." As it turned out, he was right. The eager freshman Republicans were slow to learn that passing bills in the House didn't equal making law (see Fenno's Learning to Govern, and during the epic budget battle that shut down the government, Clinton outmaneuvered Gingrich and his supporters.

Now Bush is, I think, trying to prove he is still relevant, as his approval ratings fall, the end of his term nears, and the public (or at least media) focus on the race to replace him. And he's right--the president is still relevant, and always will be.

Bush vetoed a defense spending bill that gives him almost everything he wants, because he objects to a provision that would allow Americans to sue the Iraqi government for crimes committed under Saddam Hussein. The Democrats are miffed that Bush didn't give them a veto threat ahead of time so they could have negotiated on that measure.

But, although this is just speculation, I don't think that would have served Bush's interests as much as a veto. It's become clear to everyone that the Democratic majority is powerless to get anything done that Bush objects to. Smart observers noted shortly after last year's elections that they wouldn't have enough numbers to override a veto, but what was unclear was whether they had the cojones to push Bush to the wall on these issues by refusing to give him anything he did want and repeatedly re-approving bills nearly identical to those he vetoed to see if he had the guts to stand up to them, or whether the Republicans would consistently support him, given the voters apparent dissatisfaction with the war and with Bush.

It became clear last summer when Bush cast his first veto--on stem cell funding--and it not only stood, but the Democrats dropped the issue. The Democrats have also failed to force Bush to accept any restrictions or timelines on Iraq spending, and have at each opportunity chosen not to go toe-to-toe with Bush.

I think Bush is now kicking the Democrats in the face, letting them know just how much control he has. The Democrats have repeatedly chickened out--reaffirming the wimpy image many Americans have of them (even many who consistently vote Democratic). If they really believed their talk they'd stage a battle royale on one chosen issue where they believed the public would support them enough to make Bush back down.

They're supposed to be the loyal opposition, but they're so afraid of being called disloyal that they won't even be an opposition.

Michael Moore Hates America

I've just watched the documentary Michael Moore Hates America. I've long despised Michael Moore. Having seen parts of Bowling for Columbine and, unfortunately, Fahrenheit 9/11, it seems clear to me that Moore is deeply dishonest. Because his enemies are evil, any twisting of their words, any mis-representation of them, is justified. He's a pathetic fuck who probably doesn't actually hate America, but who hates being held to the standard of integrity he demands of others.

Michael Moore Hates America isn't a great documentary, but it's a good one. The film is made by Michael Wilson, who is able to poke fun at himself, and on film admits when he makes a mistake and begins to act like Moore, misrepresenting himself to get an interview (he then writes the interviewee to apologize). The film benefits from the participation of Penn Jillette, talking, of course, about bullshit. in this case Moore's bullshit. (If the "of course" puzzles you, check out Penn and Teller's "Bullshit.")

Wilson does an excellent job of dissecting Moore's lies, interviewing tellers at the bank were he, on film, falsely pretended to walk out of the bank the same day as opening an account, and showing how Moore dishonestly cut and pasted Heston's speech at the NRA convention in Denver to make it appear Heston was gloating about guns just to hurt people in Columbine.

The weirdest, and least convincing, part of the film is an interview with a psychologist who psychoanalyzes Michael Moore as a pathological self-hater. Psychoanalysis is a dubious thing at best, and psychoanalysis from afar is simply silly.

But the best part, the continuing thread throughout the film, is Wilson's fruitless effort to get an interview with Moore, so purposefully reminiscent of Moore's failed attempt to get an interview with Roger Smith in Roger and Me. Wilson attended a speech Moore gave and, during the question time, asked him for an interview. When he told Moore the title of the film was Michael Moore hates America, Moore attacks him, saying "it's people like you that hate America, people like you that are destroying America," and then dishonestly accuses Wilson of libel (the law clearly protects parody, particularly directed at public figures, and Michael Moore clearly knows that because that's what makes his films legally protected as well). Afterwards, some of Moore's fans come out and talk to Wilson, supporting his right to speak and, while saying they still support Moore, criticizing him for not answering Wilson's question.

But the most important message in this film is it's attack on Moore's message that the American dream is dead. I've had people sneer at me for claiming the American dream is still alive (although I'm a college professor who is the grandson of a failed tenant farmer). Ironically, Moore himself is an example of the American dream, but Wilson interviews other people who have made their own American dream, starting their own business, not necessarily becoming rich, but making a living for themselves. It reminded me of my 20th high school reunion, where what most surprised me was how many of my classmates owned their own small businesses. They were impressed I'd earned a Ph.D., but the truth is they'd worked harder and taken bigger risks than I had. Yet Moore insists that the corporations he hates so much are responsible for people's livlioods--which, bizarrely, is insulting to the very people Moore pretends to care about.

Moore's own words are used to highlight his foolishness, which is always the best way to show that the emperor has no clothes. If you see this in your video store, pick it up.