Iraq intelligence: how hawks repent

Two repentant Iraq War hawks will probably be on the final ballot for the next president of the United States. Both Hillary Clinton and the cluster of plausible Republican nominees finesse their support for a very bad war by insisting that they were seduced by the “intelligence” community (that benign cyst on Washington’s body politick) and that, if elected, each will be better brief-readers than George W. Bush.  

Canadians, French intellectuals and Senator Rand Paul interject that they weren’t much impressed by the public arguments and testimony offered before the war even started. Still, repentant hawks insist that the private briefings about Saddam Hussein’s WMD program and, I suppose, his suicidal character profile were compelling. The war was all about the “intelligence.”

It’s easy today to not be George W. Bush in 2002. But confessing it isn’t terribly informative. Knowing Iraq’s history—and its dogged experts—inside out won’t tell her or him what to do or not do—there or anywhere else in the world. A better-briefed hawk won’t necessarily do what’s right or what works.

Fortunately, there are other benchmarks for assessing the candidates that would update the race and, hopefully, avoid making the future more dangerous than it already is: for instance, the temperament of each candidate and their distance from the temperament of the incumbent, Barack Obama.

Being against the Iraq War now is meaningless. Being against Obama’s conduct abroad is noteworthy.

Obama knows more now about America and the world than he did in Chicago when he came out against launching a second war with Iraq. Most recently, he opted for being called a hypocrite rather than going to war with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. He’s not generous with his country’s resources merely for the sake of his legacy.

Intelligence will keep accumulating to support the next president, but modesty doesn’t grow naturally in Washington. There is every chance that the next president will have a good mind and be as ruthless as Barack Obama. It would be reassuring, however, if even a couple of the front-runners embrace rather than run away from his sense of limits.

Maureen Dowd brings it all back

Once in a while, without a hand from outside "fact-checkers" or partisan "attack machines," the best journalists in the mainstream media light up the sky and show us what is at stake.

With one column, and its ghastly aftermath, Maureen Dowd reintroduces us to the people Mitt Romney would bring back to the White House—the warrior intellectuals of the Bush years. Her New York Times column Neocons Slither Back, and the next morning’s Politico summary of their outraged responses, should be read together.

Alone, Dowd’s column is merely a workmanlike reminder that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan rely on the same neocons George Bush used to intellectualize about shaping events around the world with US armed forces. It contained two rather unoriginal insults: suggesting that Paul Ryan relies on the words of his campaign manager, Dan Senor, a right-wing flack with a world view, and repeating Paul Wolfowitz’s concern that Obama should not be allowed to “slither” back into office without a clear position on Libya.

By next morning, five neocons were already on record accusing the outrageous Maureen Dowd of being a creepy, hate-mongering, and lazy peddler of anti-Semitic imagery. Apparently "slither" has Jewish copyright. It can be used by Jewish American hawks when questioning the "moral clarity" of a Kenyan-friendly president, but can’t even be repeated by an insolent Catholic feminist in the New York Times.

The accusation that Dowd was reviving a vile ancient stereotype about doltish gentile politicians being manipulated by “clever and snake-like Jews” is laughably self- aggrandizing, ineffectual, and uncivil. It tells us, however, that the neocons have lost none of their edge, that their menace is as fresh as a fall north wind.

Maureen Dowd is too smart to think and too good a writer to imply that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George Bush were stupid, innocent puppets of the neocons. She was simply reminding us that the staff a president assembles reflects on the character of the president, and doesn’t diminish his power.

This incident, however, does say quite a lot about the caliber of the public intellectuals Romney and Ryan are presently indulging. They misjudged the Middle East over the last decade and misjudge their detractors at home today.

Accusing someone of being anti-Semitic is going nuclear. It’s the polemist’s application of “shock and awe.” It’s designed to cower weaklings. Dowd, however, is still at it.

Rice and Noonan’s brush with perfection

There’s a grace that seems to descend on intelligent women who’ve worked for Republican presidents. Condoleezza Rice was at George Bush’s side through each of his Middle East adventures, and Peggy Noonan wrote speeches for the sunny side of the Ronald Reagan presidency. Both are listened to respectfully, whether they abandon their critical faculties or not.

Here’s the conclusion of Rice’s speech to the Republicans in Tampa—a speech that many judged as the finest and wisest of the convention:

“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have the experience and the integrity and the vision to lead us – they know who we are, what we want to be and what we offer the world.

That is why this is a moment – an election – of consequence. Because it just has to be – that the most compassionate and freest country on the face of the earth – will continue to be the most powerful!”

Here’s Peggy Noonan in her blog for the Wall St. Journal today, outlining what state of mind Mitt Romney should take to his first debate with Barack Obama:

“What Mitt Romney has to show is command, talent, resolve. He has to move with firmness, strength. Americans don’t really want someone they’d like to go out and have a beer with, they want someone who can help them afford a beer. First things first. Romney at this point should just forget likability—let’s just say he’s likable enough. He needs people to see certainty, guts, ability, and heft. Americans are tired of trying to like these guys, they want to respect them. They’d like to feel honest awe.”

Can you imagine Pat Buchanan or Dick Cheney imagining, let alone getting away with such complacent, romantic nonsense?

A black conservative academic may want America to be more compassionate, and any speechwriter for any president will want her words to suspend our disbelief and leave us in a state of awe. However, Rice and Noonan shouldn’t be able to utter such sugary platitudes about who Americans are and what Americans want in a president without being laughed at.

Maybe, it was only an awkward fleeting period in the emancipation of smart women. Let’s hope, however, that the next generation of powerful women who ride in the back seat with future presidents don’t come out of the experience as hero-worshippers and shameless flatterers.

Obama’s stump speech is too easy on Romney

The lamest hypocrisy at Romney’s convention was the sad-eyed talk about America’s lost illusions about Barack Obama. Do you remember those warm dreams Republicans shared with innocent swing voters on that starry night?  

For Democratic partisans, it was exhilarating to win again, whatever was in store. Sober Republicans also slept well knowing they’d wake up free of responsibility for fixing a metastasizing national calamity.

However, we should well remember that there was nothing gleeful or boundlessly optimistic about Obama that night. For many of us, he sounded as wary in victory as his inspiration, Abraham Lincoln, was in 1860.

What made that night inspiring and what Republicans still can’t honor was what had happened that day at the polls. That victory can’t be undone by what’s happened since, or by the Tea Party, the Super-Pacs, and a vengeful Republican restoration this November.

These days, Obama’s stump speech contains its own miscalculation about how to use the past to win the future.

Over and over, he completes his rebuttal of the Republican economic alternative with a sigh: “The thing is, we tried that before and it didn’t work.” Last weekend, in Ohio, he reinforced his complaint by describing the Republican platform as “tired, old ideas” and their convention as best-watched “in black and white.”

This in itself is tiring and, more important, counterproductive. Obama isn’t going to scare any but a handful of old faithful Keynesians by describing Romney’s prescriptions as passé. Buyer remorse over George Bush has been crowded out by fear about what could happen next.

Obama won’t scare necessary voters by describing the Republican alternative as an old shoe. And that would be a huge missed opportunity. Scaring Americans elected waves of Republican radicals in 2010. Scaring Americans could re-elect a moderate president this fall.

Gentle souls: hope is packaging; fear is what caught up with America in 2008 and 2010, and fear is what is driving American politics today.

Move on, Obama. "Forward" is not your option; it’s inescapable. Your opponent isn’t gambling with the past, but with the future. Your opponent isn’t a naïf from business, with a weak memory. He’s making political commitments that would make both Bushes blush. His reckless public record as a presidential candidate deserves greater personal attention.

Romney did not lift a finger to strengthen the hand of Republican moderates during the debt crisis last year. Romney has bolstered the extreme, essentially obstructionist “no tax” pledge of Grover Norquist. In every speech, he makes it more difficult politically for the federal government to operate a more affordable national defense and reform entitlements. He seems to buy the argument that hastening a managed national bankruptcy will make things better.

When Romney had a chance to strengthen his own moderate tendencies and his party’s dying moderate wing, he picked as his running mate a tear-it-down-and-see-what-happens extremist.

If Romney has the nerve in the upcoming debates to suggest that Obama should’ve listened more respectfully to Bill Clinton and old-school Democrats, Obama should point out that Romney could have put any number of genuine moderate pragmatists on his ticket, including Gov. Jeb Bush.

Obama, of course, needn’t get glassy-eyed about the Bush years.

George Bush, along with dozens of congressional Democrats, was too optimistic about tax cuts, cost-effective foreign wars, and unstoppable economic growth. Mitt Romney, however, doesn’t have any of Bush’s excuses.  

George Bush insisted that he was a compassionate conservative and promised—and delivered—greater support for education. Romney and his platform turn compassion into a boast, an obligation that can be assigned, no strings attached, to others to express.

People who refuse to learn from experience aren’t conservatives or reactionaries; they’re adventures. Obama’s moderation shines by comparison.

Is Canada’s advantage its majority government?

America’s republican system of checks and balances is receiving an awful beating recently from health reformers, economists, and currency speculators. Now, it’s even looking passé in the eyes of fiscal conservatives and parliamentary democrats to the north. 

This was brutally confirmed by Jonathan Kay, the thoughtful editor of The National Post, in his column “Why Harper Can Trim a Budget and Obama Can’t.” 

Click on:http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/29/jonathan-kay-on-canadas-parliamentary-advantage-why-harper-can-trim-a-budget-while-obama-cant/

Kay claims that Canada’s secret weapon is its Parliamentary system: Prime Minister Harper has a majority in the House of Commons and can get tough, necessary things done; President Obama doesn’t have a majority in Congress and, so, he can’t cut spending or raise taxes. 

Kay believes that—in the economic sphere—the broader powers conferred on Canada’s executive by Parliamentary majorities have been a blessing and have allowed Canada to enjoy stability and greater prosperity, at least over the last couple of decades.

A fresh Parliamentary majority—that’s doing what you want—can be a beautiful sight. I love roses, sunsets, and happy children too, but don’t be fooled. Life north of the 49th can be dangerous and frustrating as well.

The Canadian and United States federations do not hold their collective breaths between electoral majorities in the House of Commons or between those occasions the President easily assembles majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both countries carry on satisfactorily—or neither country would be intact today. 

Furthermore, majorities don’t just free up new executives to put their respective country’s right—to fix the errors of previous minority and majority governments—they also give them the same license to make their own mistakes. 

During the financial crisis of 2008-09, neither Bush, nor Obama, nor Harper enjoyed secure legislative majorities when they implemented massive stimulus programs and unprecedented bailouts. Nevertheless, they acted successful—well before the European governments of various designs.

Sure. Obama couldn’t possibly get a significant package of tax increases and spending cuts through Congress this year, or in 2010 or in 2011. The moderate conservative measures Kay welcomes in Canada now, however, would still be economically premature in the United States. Sometimes, marking time is common sense, not “gridlock.” 

Most important, let’s recall how the US budget got into a chronic $trillion-plus deficit in the first place.

Most of the deficit today that was actually created in Washington, rather than by the recession, was approved by massive majorities in Congress—majorities that happily did the bidding of President George W. Bush.

The War in Iraq, the Prescription Drug Plan for Senior Citizens, and the massive Income Tax cuts were not the grudging excretions of divided government.

Majorities, of course, are an essential part of the survival of the checks-and-balance systems of both democracies. If big issues can’t finally be resolved, countries decline, fall apart—or turn to brutes. Furthermore, the knowledge that the electorate will get fed up with excessive partisanship and will eventually want someone to decide often forces compromise—even “grand bargains.”

Nevertheless, let’s not romance majority government as an end state. At first, planners and reformers love working for them, but after awhile, majority governments stop listening carefully. They find it increasingly easy to talk big and, then, they start making big mistakes.