Somebody somewhere was saying that Obama should name a VP really soon to tamp down the clamor for him to name Clinton. But the air is going out of the Clinton balloon. Her speech last night managed to make McCain’s look regal and inspiring by comparison.
She lost, the focus turns to Obama vs. McCain. Her appeal is on the decline. Obama should just let it happen, if she chooses to “stay the course” Bush-style.
In the wake of Hillary Clinton’s somewhat unfortunate performance last night, some Democrats are rending garments, claiming that the Clinton-haters were right all along.
No.
During President Clinton’s term in office, the US balanced its budget, saw sizable economic growth, built a coalition to prevent genocide in Yugoslavia, was respected abroad, and ameliorated poverty. His administration is not immune from criticism on any of those points, but his achievements were real.
It’s fine to be frustrated with the things that both Clintons have done during this campaign. But don’t let it distract from what Bill Clinton did when he was in office. Policy matters.
Nearly two weeks of NATO bombing has failed to stop the Yugoslav Army’s brutal removal of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, and starkly revealed the limitations of an air-only campaign in trying to break President Slobodan Milosevic’s will to wage war. The capture of three American soldiers along the Macedonia border only made matters worse.
Suddenly, General Powell’s principles are looking a lot more attractive. ”This only affirms the Powell Doctrine,” said Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, who joined the growing chorus of those clamoring to send ground troops into Kosovo. ”This is more reminiscent of the gradual escalation and bombing pauses that characterized the Vietnam War.”
Even General Powell broke his usually self-imposed silence on continuing military operations last week, offering remarks that carried a distinctly I-told-you-so ring. ”The challenge of just using air power is that you leave it in the hands of your adversary to decide when he’s been punished enough,” General Powell told reporters before a speech in Blacksburg, Va. ”So the initiative will remain with President Milosevic.”
Thanks for sticking to your guns in the Bush era, guys. Real profiles in courage, the both of you.
Here’s an effort by a Republican columnist to provide some sort of intellectual justification for the usual GOP savagery, charmingly entitled “Michelle Obama is fair game.” (Hmm, “fair game,” when have we heard a woman targeted in those terms before?) We’ve already seen the GOP run an ad attacking Mrs. Obama in Tennessee.
You’d think that they might think better of this.
Cindy McCain, after all, had an affair with John McCain when he was still married to his first wife, stole drugs from the charity she ran in order to feed her habit, and, despite bankrolling his early political career with her inherited wealth, refuses to release anything more than a brief summary of her tax returns.
Do they really want to do this?
These are Republicans we’re talking about here, so obviously no moral argument will convince them to refrain from targeting a candidate’s spouse. Maybe, though, they can realize that these rules they’re setting up are not in their self interest.
I had always, maybe somewhat reflexively, argued that the atom bombs convinced a recalcitrant Japan to surrender, saving us from having to engage in an unfathomably brutal invasion. But I just came across this passage, from page 10 of this book:
<blockquote>Eisenhower had little, if any, influence on President Harry S. Truman’s decision. Not until the final Big Three conference at Potsdam in mid-July did he even learn that scientists and engineers working under the direction of the army had been trying to develop a bomb since the beginning of the war. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson informed him that the first bomb had just been successfully tested and that this revolutionary weapon would be used to force the surrender of Japan. Eisenhower strenuously objected. Japan was already defeated and making overtures for peace, he protested, and the use of such a devastating weapon might tarnish the image of the United States at the moment of its greatest international triumph. Truman’s mind was made up, however, before hearing Eisenhower’s arguments. Truman believed that the bomb would shorten the war and save the lives of American soldiers. Furthermore, accepting the advice of Stimson, he believed that the bomb could be a “master card” in international relations, a weapon of such awesome force that it would give the United States a decisive advantage in peace negotiations with the Soviets.</blockquote>
I have a lot to learn about how our decision was made.
Oh, good, an anonymously sourced article by Michael Gordon relating alarmist government claims that evil foreigners are nefariously coming to get us. What could possibly go wrong?
A grown-up wrote this more balanced article on a related story for the LA Times:
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s spokesman backed away Sunday from Iraqi officials’ accusations of Iranian interference, saying that a committee had been formed to determine whether there is merit to U.S. charges that its eastern neighbor is arming and training Shiite Muslim militants here.
But hours later, spokesman Ali Dabbagh told journalists that his comments at a news conference had been misinterpreted. In a telephone call with Reuters news agency, he said proof existed and the committee’s job was to compile the evidence to submit to Iran.
UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald says more or less the same thing as me, but with a lot more words. And evidence and context and the like.
Did anyone notice Bruce Fein’s op-ed in the Washington Times today? It’s as stark an indictment of the Bush administration’s approach to the law as anything I’ve seen in the mainstream media. It’s chock full of quotes from framers of the Constitution and revered jurists throughout US history.
He’s not happy:
President Bush’s signature constitutional idea is that he is the law. The idea is taking hold in a climate of post-Sept. 11, 2001, fear. Under the banner of fighting international terrorism, Mr. Bush claims unchecked powers historically associated with despots: torture; kidnappings; secret imprisonments; indefinite detentions of suspected unlawful enemy combatants; violations of the Constitution and laws with impunity; and, the authority to employ the military at any time and place of his choosing. On the domestic front, Mr. Bush disputes the power of Congress to oversee the executive branch for lawlessness, abuses, or maladministration. He signs laws while asserting a right to disobey those provisions he pronounces to be unconstitutional.
With few exceptions, Congress, the media, and the public have slumbered as the Republic has been dismantled brick-by-brick. A restoration is possible, but only through an aroused and enlightened citizenry. There are no quick fixes.
…
In sum, the president has proclaimed the White House an uncrowned kingship. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has assured him impeachment is off the table. And Congress and the American people remain preoccupied with earmarks, steroids in athletics, and “American Idol.”
Fein, of course, was a higher up in the Reagan era DOJ. It’s encouraging to see a genuine conservative– that is, one who is skeptical about excessive government power– speak out about the practices of the Bush administration. Bush retains a 61 percent approval rating among Republicans, though, because conservatism as a political philosophy is dead in this country.
I got a little obnoxious over at Ross’s place, and gave myself a time-out. I’ve gotten frustrated over there because he refuses to offer substantive views on anything. To me, a big part of the fun of the Internet is reading the thoughts of people who look at the world in an entirely different way than you do. That’s why Daniel Larison is one of my favorite bloggers.
Ross bills himself as a social conservative, but he writes exclusively about meta political issues and pop culture in his 2 or 3 posts a day at the Atlantic. It’s disappointing.
Really, as an instinctive centrist Democrat, I suppose I must have believed 5 years ago that conservatives might actually be right about everything. Not about blatantly obvious factual matters like the impact of tax cuts, but at least about national security, and maybe more. I think that, growing up in the 1990s, I absorbed that as the implicit message of the Clinton administration, at least from about 1995. When Bush was elected, I thought, “well, the silver lining is that they’ll restructure the military so that the Guard and Reserves never get tapped again like they have been in the Clinton administration.”
So, I was almost as wrong about everything as conservatives were. (I supported the Iraq invasion, too, and thought that liberals who opposed it had lost sight of the good things that America can do).
Ross’s implicit concession that everything he thinks is intellectually unjustifiable is yet another rebuke to me. Lesson learned: movement conservatives are a tribalist group, who believe in nothing that can be justified by rational argumentation.
President Ulysses S. Grant, who as a young army officer had served in Mexico under General Taylor, recalled in his Memoirs, published in 1885, that:
“Generally, the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.”
Grant also expressed the view that the war against Mexico had brought God’s punishment on the United States in the form of the American Civil War:
“The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.”
… sort of. He defends Obama on the Wright issue, but adds, “It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what … Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable, years ago.”
Wright is uninfluential because of his political views— after they’re aired in public, a week-long news attack on Obama ensues. Obama instantly criticizes the views his revered expressed.
Whereas John Hagee, Jerry Falwell, Rod Parsley, Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham, et al are influential because of their political views.
There is no moral equivalence here.
One party is pleased to cozy up to people who believe crazy things about the Middle East and whether gays should be stoned or merely arrested. The other party distances itself from the extreme statements of its pastors.
