The moral urgency of now seems decidedly less fierce than was the moral urgency of 2008.
Let’s review. For half a decade, conservatives were lectured by their moral betters that Gitmo was something akin to a western hemisphere Kolyma. That American treatment of prisoners rated somewhere between Pol Pot and Torquemada. That trying terrorists by military commission rather than by civilian juries was an injustice that would forever stain America. So our moral betters elected a president who would Change it all.
We’re now two years into that presidency, and the only thing that has changed is that the most prominent Gitmo prisoner is no longer getting a trial by military commission, he’s getting no trial at all.
I really, really, really love that the president has decided not to give KSM a military trial because it “would alienate liberal supporters.” It’s almost as though the years of bitching that liberals put into this wasn’t about rights or justice, but about preening and politics.
Apollo posted this at 11:14 AM HKT on Sunday, November 14th, 2010 as CHANGE!
The State of the Union Address generally devolves into a laundry list of policy proposals. The last few times that Obama gave it, Republicans had Bobby Jindal and Bob McDonnell respond. Brian Pick suggests some political Jiu Jitsu:
First, make it a table discussion with more than one responder. As a suggestion, include at least one governor to remind the audience that there are independent sources of authority, laboratories of policy that should retain their power to handle local problems (a big-city mayor could also do), and also include a legislator representing the opposition in Congress to directly address the president’s agenda on the federal level.
This also takes the pressure off of any one person to speak for the party, and signals that the opposition is having a frank conversation, not speaking press-release style through the great filter of lawyers and focus-group-tested language. Make good use of stars like Paul Ryan and Chris Christie who have shown they’re champs at off-the-cuff communication and aren’t afraid to take on big issues. Bobby Jindal would have been far better suited to this than talking into a camera solo.
Second, use resources the president doesn’t have. The president is limited by the tradition of giving his speech in the chamber of the House of Representatives, which only affords him a microphone, a teleprompter and an audience. Instead of trying to beat the president at his own game, use a modern-looking studio, where the responders can make use of supporting staff and visual aids like charts and video.
And this extra content should come from a well-coordinated rapid-response team who provide ammunition for the response.
The model for responding to a speech in progress is liveblogging. Certain people, by some mix of expertise, encyclopedic memory and quick wit, have proven they can tear apart a carefully-crafted speech in real time. Identify these people—bloggers, political operatives, think-tankers—and (with their advance permission) borrow their best arguments and lines.
A media team would be responsible for matching the president’s remarks to earlier video and quotes from the president, his advisers and top congressional allies that contradicted the president’s SOTU message. Anyone with a good memory and a well-ordered catalogue of video and/or transcripts can do this. What could be more damaging than showing that the speech just delivered contained flip-flops?
To respond to specific policy proposals and claims, have a team of stat junkies, economists and others who can call up relevant charts and other visuals to help the responders on-screen.
This kind of rapid counter-offensive would be much more entertaining than the president’s exhausting, conventional address, giving viewers a good reason to stick around afterward. And it would be much more effective than current efforts like sending out fact-check emails and post-speech press releases, the contents of which are read by only a tiny minority of people who saw the speech.
Don’t play to the president’s strengths. Use your own, leveraging all the media available to you that the president doesn’t have.
Good idea. Shall we take bets on it not happening?
Dear All Republicans, Conservatives and Tea Partiers bitching about the “tax increases” proposed in the Simpson-Bowles Report,
You are either completely ignorant about economics, blind to the actual content of the report, or complete frauds when it comes to actually doing something about the federal deficit.
I don’t normally laugh at people being harmed in crimes, but . . . c’mon! Don’t name yourself “Ironik” unless you’re willing to be struck down by irony.
Apollo posted this at 6:06 PM HKT on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 as Humor
I understand that “The Midwest” is not a clearly defined region, but David Brooks wrote a column claiming that it extends from New York to Arkansas. WTF? He writes about a lot of places, but I genuinely doubt that he knows what he’s talking about. If you can write that “central New York” should be included in the same geographic region as Arkansas, you either haven’t been to these places, or you’re a parody of east coast provincialism so preposterous that even St. Sarah wouldn’t believe it.
Here’s a good mocking of the Brooks column by Williams Easterly that points out how little Brooks knows about his subject. Particularly worth mocking is Brooks’s point that “The old industry towns in the Midwest were the epicenter of [the Republican victory].” Actually, it was the bustling suburbs and rural America that were the “epicenter” (I do not think that word means what Brooks thinks it means). With only a few exceptions, most of the blue specs remaining on this map in the midwest are in old industry towns. That’s why the red districts are so much bigger – they’re spread out burbs and small towns.
But the most clueless thing that Brooks says must be this:
On the one hand, people are living with the daily grind of getting by on $40,000 a year, but they’re also living with Xboxes and smartphones.
If you think that getting by on $40k in Indiana or Arkansas makes you some impoverished wretch who can’t afford an Xbox or smartphone, you really shouldn’t writing about such things. Brook’s observations in his “Red America, Blue America” essay regarding the different costs of living in different parts of the country were astute and interesting. He could probably get an education just by rereading his own work, but one suspects he’s too engrossed in his Balzac and speculating on what a long-dead Frenchman would say about Americans than to actually learn about the lives of his countrymen.
Apollo posted this at 10:30 AM HKT on Saturday, November 6th, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Buffoon Watch
It seems as though Clinton and Obama are very different beasts. Had Clinton had Obama’s majorities, he probably wouldn’t have passed something as unpopular as health care reform. Bill Clinton has many weaknesses, but indifference to the polls has never been one of them. When Hillarycare got to be politically toxic, Clinton let it drop and moved on. When Obamacare turned into political poison, Obama soldiered on.
The key difference between the two is that Clinton had no principles, while Obama has them. (From a right of center point of view, Obama’s principles are lousy, but he certainly has them.) This means that Obama’s reaction to the electoral rebuke is going to be different. We’ll see how Republican adapt, but their previous flexibility doesn’t give much hope.
Fortunately for the right, it looks like Obama has trouble learning from the recent past, too. In 2006, Bush tried to run against making Nancy Pelosi speaker of the House. That failed, largely because as the relatively powerless House Minority Leader, Pelosi could criticize, which is always easy to do, without being in charge, which means having responsibility. Attacking the then-House Minority Leader failed Bush and gave him a Speaker of the other party. Naturally that meant that Obama had to do the same thing with House Minority Leader John Boehner, which remarkably has given Obama the same thing it gave Bush.
Over a decade ago, Jack Pitney, our former professor, explained how the seven deadly sins sink politicians in Washington. Money quote:
Sloth. Contrary to the popular myth that Washington keeps bankers’ hours, people in the political community put in long days. Physical sloth is not their problem. Instead, many suffer from intellectual sloth, which sets in when they fail to rethink their assumptions. The D’Amato hearings on Whitewater and the Thompson hearings on campaign finance both embodied this kind of sloth. Each time, Republicans were expecting Watergate in reverse, where noble Republicans could take down a tainted Democratic president. Each time, they flopped.
Notwithstanding all their hard work, they failed to take account of one big thing: The other side had studied Watergate, too. The White House recognized that it could hinder investigations by providing evidence at a glacial pace, a practice called “slow-walking.” Congressional Democrats remembered that Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) was effective as chair of the Watergate committee because of his reputation for probity. Accordingly, they undercut the GOP chairs, hoping to make D’Amato look like a sleazebag and Thompson a shameless self-promoter. They succeeded.
Will history repeat itself? Or will people get new playbooks?
I’m not sure why Meghan McCain is a public figure now, but she should cut it out.
A few weeks ago Dorothy and I saw her book in a Barnes & Noble. I said, “I’m going to open to a random page and the first sentence I read will be stupid.” I opened somewhere in the middle, where, I take it, it’s talking about the 2008 campaign. The sentence I read was (this may not be verbatim, but it’s not far off) “I thought that after the convention the campaign would slow down.” What kind of moron believes that presidential campaigns slow down after the nominating convention?
This multi-zillionaire heiress has a published book, allowing her to make money off of objectively stupid thoughts. And she’s on TV shows. And has a gazillion people following her Twitter feed. Now that Christine O’Donnell’s gone, I hope all the people who are so concerned about the rise of moronic women in the Republican party will turn their attention to Miss McCain.
For all I rage against Fox News’ brazen partisanship, I don’t think I’ve ever seen something as pathetic as this coverage of the election by MSDNC:
Chris, that is an interview even Jon Stewart would have been ashamed of, I should correct myself: it’s beyond pathetic.
Umm, Rachel sweetie? When were you ever “with” the tea party? Chris – dick jokes? Really? Leave them to your leftist buddies over at Comedy Central, at least Stewart and Colbert are funny.
Jamie posted this at 11:16 AM HKT on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 as Journalism
After Goldwater’s debacle in 1964, Richard Nixon observed that Republicans couldn’t win the presidency with only the Goldwaterites, but also couldn’t win without them. For Republicans, the tea partiers are the 21st Century Goldwaterites.
Where both the establishment and the tea party (eventually) agreed, the candidates generally won: Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Marco Rubio in Florida, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire. Where the tea partiers went rogue and blew off the establishment, things got ugly: Carl Paladino in New York, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada. Two that are too close to call as of this writing are Ken Buck in Colorado and Joe Miller in Alaska, but both look like they’ve blown it.
Another random thought: Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzlies concept might need to be retired. The Mama Grizzlies lost (Whitman, Fiorina, Angle, McMahon, O’Donnell) or underperformed (Nikki Haley in South Carolina). Kelly Ayotte, who won New Hampshire going away, should be studied. Most of these women were viciously smeared—and even in a big Republican year, the smears worked.
Hubbard posted this at 9:57 AM HKT on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 as Politics
HENRY COUNTY, Ind. (WISH) – Henry County Sheriff’s deputies are investigating a bizarre case of right place, right time after a candidate for county council stumbled on a car crash with an unexpected political connection.
Republican candidate for Henry County Council 3rd District seat Steve Dugger tells 24-Hour News 8 he was out putting up last minute campaign signs in the small town of Cadiz when he stumbled upon a head on crash on State Road 38 Monday night.
Dugger pulled over and ran to the first car and to his surprise found his opponent Democrat Steve Holmes inside.
He asked Holmes if he was hurt. Holmes told him he wasn’t so Dugger ran to the other car.
Dugger then called his niece who is an EMT who lived nearby to wait with Holmes until help arrived.
We here at Federalist Paupers encourage everyone to vote, but remember to be Good Samaritans first. (H/T, Jon Chait)
Hubbard posted this at 12:18 PM HKT on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!
