Brendan Nyhan

The Economist’s Democracy in America blog offers an amusing suggestion for re-assigning General Peter Pace, who called homosexuality acts “immoral” in an interview with the Chicago Tribune:

TROUBLE ahead. The Chicago Tribune reports on an interview with General Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff:

“I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,” Pace said in a wide-ranging discussion with Tribune editors and reporters in Chicago. “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

“As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else’s wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,” Pace said.

Perhaps this is the man to lead America’s tentative dialogue with Iran.

Walter Dellinger and Christopher Schroeder (a professor at Duke Law) conclude their New York Times op-ed today on Congress’s power to regulate military activities with a nice summary of why debate supports the troops:

One final debate-stifling claim deserves mention: the argument that even to debate our troops’ mission in Iraq somehow undercuts and endangers them. Surely this has it backward. Four years have passed since the Iraq war resolution was passed, in very different circumstances for purposes no longer relevant. We certainly owe those who put their lives on the line every day a renewed determination of whether their continued sacrifice is necessary for the national interest.

As President Bush’s unpopularity and incompetence have become more clear, prominent conservatives have tried to disassociate him from the movement by arguing that he is not a true conservative. Even Jeb Bush blamed the GOP’s defeat in November on the party not being conservative enough.

But Joseph Bottum, a prominent social conservative, has the appropriate response to this argument in an article published in First Things:

The common turn among commentators, once they’ve recognized Mr. Bush’s weakness, has been to declare the betrayal of some form of authentic conservatism. In book after book–from Bruce Bartlett’s “Impostor” and Patrick Buchanan’s “State of Emergency” to Jeffrey Hart’s “The Making of the American Conservative Mind” and Richard Viguerie’s “Conservatives Betrayed”–a number of self-declared conservatives have announced the apostasy and treachery of George W. Bush. Thus Mr. Bush is an ideologue where sincere conservatives are pragmatists. Or Mr. Bush is a spendthrift where true conservatives are budget-balancers. Or Mr. Bush is an expansionist where genuine conservatives are isolationists. Or Mr. Bush is a religious believer where real conservatives are religious skeptics.

Some of these commentators, particularly the economic conservatives, have valid complaints, though like the rest of us they must face the fact that things would have been even worse under a Democratic administration. But their conclusion that the White House has flown under false colors is ludicrous. In all that he has tried to do–reform education, fix Social Security, restore religion to the public square, assert American greatness, appoint good judges–Mr. Bush has proved himself a conservative. Of course, along the way, he has also proved himself hapless. The problem isn’t his lack of conservatism. The problem is his lack of competence.

David Brooks is a great pop sociologist, but he’s not much of an empiricist. Jon Chait administers the necessary beatdown:

David Brooks’s column in yesterday’s New York Times tries to wedge TNR into a larger theory of the change in American liberalism. He has some kind words for us, and his theory is at least somewhat correct, albeit shallowly rendered, but the evidence he musters actually subverts his own point.

The really weird part of the column is the first paragraph. He begins by citing a 1981 Michael Kinsley article called “The Shame of the Democrats.” This article, he writes, “began the era of neoliberalism,” which is now dead, because it is the sort of article TNR has stopped publishing.

I know the article very well, having read it several times. Its point was to attack the Democratic Party for surrendering to Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, and for failing to use its leverage in Congress to fight for traditional liberal goals of preserving the progressivity of the tax code and maintaining social benefits for the very poor. “The Democrats have done practically nothing to mitigate the general unfairness of Reagan’s scheme,” Kinsley wrote, “Instead, they have concentrated on saving or inventing various special goodies.”

In other words, Kinsley was attacking the Democrats from the left. If this is Brooks’s definition of neoliberalism, then he need not fear: Neoliberalism is alive and well at Daily Kos.

In any case, in recent years TNR has run countless stories along precisely those same lines–attacking Democrats for capitulating to regressive tax cuts…

So the opening of Brooks’s column, which is the frame upon which he hangs his entire thesis, is wrong to the point of absurdity. It would be as if I were trying to identify a change in Brooks’s style by citing some old column he wrote about Hipster Yuppies or Patriotic College Students or Firefighters Who Shop at the Gap and wondered why he doesn’t write that sort of piece anymore.

Brooks also criticizes TNR for failing to offer detail about its policy recommendations. Chait defends the magazine before zinging Brooks:

Like I said, I could see the case for even more detail. But what an odd complaint coming from David Brooks! This is the creator of National Greatness Conservatism, a governing ideology whose one specific programmatic detail was a call for more national monuments.

How unpopular is George W. Bush? As I mentioned, he’s not far above Harry Truman, the most unpopular second term president ever. University of Wisconsin prof and Pollster.com blogger Charles Franklin illustrates the comparison with yet another excellent graph putting Bush’s approval ratings in historical perspective:

Matthew Yglesias makes a common liberal claim about Dick Cheney’s popularity:

Substantively, the man is a horror. Conveniently, he’s also wildly unpopular. I mean, he’s got to be one of the least-popular major American political figures ever. It seems to me that “When Dick Cheney criticizes the House Democrats, that’s how we know we must be doing something right” is along the right lines. I mean, I think the period during which Cheney and his “gravitas” were well-respected around the nation is long behind us at this point.

While it’s true that Cheney is wildly unpopular, he’s actually not any more unpopular than President Bush at this point. For instance, the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll (March 9-11) has job approval for Bush at 37 percent and Cheney at 34 percent. In part, that’s a reflection of the fact that President Bush’s approval is heavily concentrated among conservatives, who at this point may like Cheney more than Bush. More importantly, Bush is the most unpopular president at this point in his term since Harry Truman in 1951. It would be hard for Cheney to do much worse.

Update 3/13 10:10 AM: Yglesias put up a new post linking to this one, and one of his commenters points to the latest New York Times poll, which does show a favorability gap (different than the job approval numbers above) between Bush and Cheney — 30% of respondents said they have a favorable opinion of President Bush and 18% said they had a favorable opinion of Cheney. However, the 18% number is out of whack with most favorability polls on Cheney. The most recent poll I can find before the NYT one that asked favorability questions about both men is USA Today/Gallup from Feb. 9-11, which shows 44% favorability for Bush and 37% for Cheney. So there may be a favorability gap between them of reasonable proportions.

Update 3/13 8:25 PM: A fellow graduate student points out that fewer people may express an opinion about Cheney, which turns out to be right. Cheney’s favorable/unfavorable ratio in the NYT poll is 18% favorable, 48% unfavorable, while Bush’s is 30%/55%. In short, among those who express an opinion, Cheney’s favorables are worse, but in absolute terms more people actually have an unfavorable opinion of Bush.

Via Drudge, an all-time great weird news article:

Israel is replacing its ambassador in El Salvador after the envoy was found outside the embassy, drunk, wearing only bondage gear, officials said.

…Haaretz website reports that police found Mr Refael in the Israeli embassy compound two weeks ago.

He was inebriated, his hands were tied and he was gagged with a rubber ball in his mouth.

In spite of his drunken state, the naked figure was reportedly able to identify himself by his full name and job title.

As part of his ongoing capitulation to the conservative movement, John McCain has sadly begun to make false claims about the revenue effects of tax cuts, as Jon Chait points out:

The old McCain called President Bush’s tax cuts fiscally and socially irresponsible, a giveaway to the rich in a time of rising inequality. The new McCain was recently interviewed by National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru and asked if there were any circumstances, including the guarantee of spending cuts, under which he’d consider repealing the tax cuts he denounced and voted against. He replied: “No. None. None. Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues.”

We all know that? In fact, economists know that this is not true. Conservative economists know this isn’t true. Even conservative economists who work in the Bush administration have admitted this isn’t true. As former Bush economist Alan Viard, now at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said: “Federal revenue is lower today than it would have been without the tax cuts. There’s really no dispute among economists about that.”

Indeed, Bush administration economists have repeatedly stated that tax cuts don’t increase revenue since 2001.

One of those economists is Harvard’s Greg Mankiw, who bad-mouths McCain on his blog:

The interviewer, however, did not ask [McCain] the natural follow-up questions:

1. If you think the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts increased revenue, why did you vote against them?

2. If you think tax cuts increase revenue, why advocate spending restraint? Can’t we pay for new spending programs with more tax cuts?

I doubt that, in fact, Senator McCain believes we are on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. But unfortunately, fealty to the most extreme supply-side views is de rigeur in some segments of the Republican party.

But what Mankiw doesn’t mention is President Bush and Vice President Cheney’s expressed “fealty to the most extreme supply-side views,” which Mankiw conspicuously failed to change during his tenure as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005.

Indeed, during his Senate confirmation hearing, Mankiw was asked about claims that tax cuts were self-financing, and he disavowed them, saying “I remain skeptical of those claims.” However, he also stated that he thought the administration had not made such claims, which was — and is — false:

[T]he most extreme advocates of tax cuts, I think, sometimes paint an excessively rosy picture out of what they can get out of them. I don’t think this administration has done that.

To my knowledge, Mankiw has never publicly acknowledged the truth, either during his tenure as CEA chair or in the period since.

Now that he is no longer part of the administration, will he admit that Bush and Cheney have repeatedly suggested that tax cuts increase revenue? Shouldn’t Mankiw have asked his question #2 to President Bush? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander and all that…

PS Mankiw is now advising Mitt Romney — does this mean Romney won’t make similar claims?

A quick roundup of the latest attacks on dissent from the political world.

1. Media Matters reports that CNN’s Michael Ware said a timeline “is only aiding the enemies” of America:

[A]nyone setting timeframes like that without real preconditions, anyone trying to put artificial deadlines upon this conflict is only aiding the enemies, so-called, of America, Al Qaeda and Iran. It allows them some leverage to know when to put the pressure on, to know that the clock is ticking, and to know where the pressure points are.

So, in terms of the battle day-to-day here, General Petraeus isn’t looking more forward than five or six months. He’s trying to make this surge work. But in terms of the broader strategic framework, it serves only America’s enemies

2. MM also notes that CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck compared withdrawal supporters in Congress to suicide bombers:

Here’s what I don’t know. How do these people in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, who want to have it both ways, how do you sleep at night? How do you do it?

If your bill goes through, I hope you can’t go to bed any single night without the images of body bags of our American soldiers coming off those planes. I hope they dance in your head every single night, because you will be just as responsible for their deaths as anyone who has ever strapped a bomb to their chest and screamed, “Allah Akbar.”

3. Last but not least, two top Republicans called a timeline “a road map for the terrorists” that gives “encouragement to our enemies,” respectively:

GOP leaders tried to keep the debate focused on Iraq policy, saying the House proposal would restrict commanders on the ground. “Arbitrary timelines are little more than a road map for the terrorists, a tool they’ll use to plot their maneuvers against American men and women in uniform,” Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said.

Other Republicans warned that the Democratic proposals are reckless, lending “encouragement to our enemies in this battle of wills,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a leading Bush ally.

In a Washington Times story about how bad the last week was for President Bush, White House spokesman Tony Snow had some trouble coming up with the appropriate metaphor for the situation:

Mr. Snow criticized what he called “throwing unrelated stories in the same pot.”

“I think there has been an attempt to try to use this as a great big wheelbarrow in which to dump a whole series of unrelated issues and say, ‘Ah-ha,’ ” he said.

It almost sounds like they called Ted Stevens by mistake.