Brendan Nyhan

Crooked Timber’s Henry Farrell slams senior liberal intellectual Alan Wolfe as a source of “ideas journalism of all kinds except that kind which actually has ideas” (ouch):

[I]t seems to me that Alan Wolfe doesn’t come in for anywhere near as much flak as he deserves. Not that he’s a [Dinesh] D’Souza, or anything like him, but he is Gertrude Stein’s Oakland in human form, a sort of Lowest Common Denominator of liberal wuffle. Wolfe is the source of relentless waves of book reviews, opinion articles, magazine squibs and monographs; in short, of ideas journalism of all kinds except that kind which actually has ideas. I have a friend whose cure for writer’s block is to pick up the latest Wolfe emanation in the New York Times Book Review or wherever it might be, and use it as a class of a purgative. As he reads it, he gets increasingly furious that this sort of guff can get published by apparently serious journals; this anger serves as a spur to his own creativity. It may be that sometime, somewhere, Alan Wolfe has said something that is both interesting and true; if so, I have yet to see it (readers who believe that they have spotted insightful Wolfe articles in the wild should of course feel free to point to them in comments).

Tell us what you really think! Farrell is not quite as brutal as Matt Taibbi’s Thomas Friedman takedown, though. If you missed it, here’s an excerpt from the most savage review in recent memory:

Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It’s not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It’s that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it’s absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that’s guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.

Perusing the Project Vote Smart list of all the presidential candidates, which includes the crazies, I found someone named Jack Grimes from the United Fascist Union party. At least he’s clear about what he stands for!

Here’s a selection from the U.F.U. website, complete with the best candidate headshot ever and praise for Saddam Hussein (!):

Welcome to the United Fascist Union’s Website.

The United Fascist Union was incorporated in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1996 as a non-profit political club to promote the economic theories and political ideologies of Benito Mussolini and Saddam Hussein.

Jack Grimes

Since that time our Director, Jack Grimes has appeared on television and done hundreds of radio shows for the United Fascist Union and has ran as a Presidential Candidate in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential Elections.

On this website you can read Mr. Jack Grimes’ Statement of Candidacy for the 2008 U. S. Presidential Election as well as a FAQ sheet for the United Fascist Union which will explain to you why it is important that you vote for our candidate and help us establish a Corporate State.

Fascism is the one economic theory that has been proven time after time. It can raise the standard-of-living and improve the quality of life for all citizens fortunate enough to live in a Fascist Country. This should be a very good reason for importing these ideologies to America as everyone deserves a better quality of life than they have had under the oligarchy of the mega bankers and billionaire elite.

I’m not a fascist, but I want that hat!

Update 9/6 1:53 PM: Someone (maybe Grimes) posted a comment below endorsing him and calling 9/11 a hoax. Yikes!

Last week’s New York Times Magazine featured a compelling article about the “Norfolk Four,” a group of Navy men who apparently were pressured into false confessions for a rape and murder despite no physical evidence linking them to the crime. A fifth man later confessed and was linked to the crime by DNA evidence. But under pressure from investigators, he apparently changed his story from saying he acted alone to saying he acted with seven accomplices. As a result, the Norfolk Four remain in jail.

How compelling is the evidence that the four men should not be imprisoned?

[T]he Norfolk Four count a growing list of supporters, including four former Virginia attorneys general, one of them a Republican, who have no obvious motive for suggesting that the state perpetrated a major miscarriage of justice. Richard Cullen, who was appointed a U.S. attorney under President George H. W. Bush and attorney general by former Gov. George Allen, said the “totality of the scientific evidence” and “the crime scene being inconsistent with the prosecution theory” convinced him that the four are innocent.

The problem, however, is that Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia went to great lengths to signal that he was not a liberal Democrat during his campaign, and being tough on crime is part of that persona:

Governor Kaine, a Democrat, will be under enormous pressure to reject clemency for the three defendants serving life sentences and a fourth who was released after more than eight years in prison. Two of the defendants were convicted by juries, which governors are loath to second-guess (Dick and a second defendant pleaded guilty and were never tried), and the victim’s family is adamantly opposed to a pardon. Moreover, a pardon would probably be seen as a tacit repudiation of the police and prosecutors. Cullen, who advised Governor Allen on clemency matters, said he decided to speak out in part because he believes that Kaine should be free to grant clemency without being attacked by Republicans.

And sadly, we all remember what happened when another ambitious Southern governor came under pressure to prove his toughness on crime. Bill Clinton interrupted his 1992 presidential campaign to preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, an African American mentally retarded man who saved part of his last meal for later. Let’s hope Kaine can muster the courage to rise above politics and pardon these men.

In the latest post-9/11 attack on dissent from the GOP, RNC chairman Mike Duncan has sent an email to supporters charging Democrats with wanting the US to lose the war in Iraq:

From: “Robert M. (Mike) Duncan”
To: [email protected]
Subject: Democrats Hope America Loses?
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:03:46 -0400 (EDT)

Dear Brendan,

The Democrat leadership believes failure by our troops in Iraq — the central front in the War on Terror — is essential for them to win elections in 2008…

…and that any positive sign of progress in Iraq is simply a “problem” for them.

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, driven by polls and politics, declared “This war is lost,” even before the President’s new strategy began. Reid also has bragged, “We’re going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war.”

And Democrat House Majority Whip James Clyburn said that a positive report in September from General Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker would be “a real big problem for us (Democrats).” Meaning the Democrats’ desire for an arbitrary troop withdrawal — and their party’s 2008 electoral fortunes — would be in jeopardy if our troops succeed.

Brendan, America’s national security should not be kicked around like a political football. Republicans believe winning the War on Terror is vital to our country’s national security. The RNC needs your help to get this message past the liberal media filter and directly to voters. They need to know about the Democrats’ “surrender and defeat” politics.

Please click here to make a secure online contribution of $1,000, $500, $100, $50 or $25 to help spread the word about the Democrats’ political rhetoric and defeatist agenda.

It is unconscionable that Democrat leaders are hoping for our troops to fail so their party can gain a political advantage. And it is unacceptable that the leading Democrat presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both claim to support our troops yet voted against providing them with the resources to sustain their mission and keep them safe.

Your urgent online contribution of $1,000, $500, $100, $50 or $25 to the RNC today will help get the facts about the Democrats’ true defeatist agenda and their efforts to put politics above the War on Terror past the liberal media filter.

Our President and our Party are counting on your help. Thank you.

Best wishes,

Robert M. “Mike” Duncan
Chairman, Republican National Committee

P.S. The Democrats are hoping our troops fail in the War on Terror in the craven desire that it will boost their party’s electoral fortunes in 2008. We must immediately get the word out at the grassroots level about their defeatist agenda. Click here to make a secure online contribution of $1,000, $500, $100, $50 or $25 to support the RNC’s efforts to get this message past the liberal media filter and directly to voters today. Thank you.

I’ve updated my timeline of GOP attacks on dissent since 9/11, which is posted below the fold.

(more…)

Just a few weeks ago, big liberals were saying that Alberto Gonzales was “irreplaceable” and “indispensable” and promising near-apocalyptic horrors if he were fired, impeached, or decided to resign. So why has the President “grudgingly” accepted his resignation?

Here, for instance, is Josh Marshall calling Gonzales “irreplaceable” in The Hill because “the Democratic Senate is never going to give the president another Gonzales”:

Impeaching Gonzales, even in his currently debilitated state, would still require the support of almost 20 Republican senators. Not a likely prospect. But if Gonzales goes, the Democratic Senate is never going to give the president another Gonzales — another ethically compromised loyalist who will run the Justice Department with the guiding principle of protecting the president. And that makes him, for the president, quite literally irreplaceable.

Along the same lines, Sidney Blumenthal called Gonzales “indispensable” because “[l]osing [him] would raise the curtain on this era’s “White House horrors”:

Losing Gonzales would raise the curtain on this era’s “White House horrors.” So Bush throws executive privilege over everyone he can. The yes man has become the indispensable man.

So who gets confirmed? And do the “horrors” come out? Marshall doesn’t acknowledge his previous claim that Bush needs Gonzales in a post on the resignation this morning.

How absurd has Dateline NBC’s exploitation of the “To Catch a…” genre become? It sounds like a Dateline Hollywood parody, but they are hunting iPod thiefs:

Perhaps hoping to capitalize on the distinctive “To Catch a Predator” format while softening the show’s unpleasant edge, “Dateline” producers are applying the show’s hidden camera style to a variety of other topics. In March, Mr. Hansen investigated e-mail swindles in “To Catch a Con Man.” In April and again in July, he hunted for criminals who exploit personal data in “To Catch an ID Thief.” The most recent iteration, titled “To Catch an iJacker” and broadcast Aug. 1, tracked down missing iPods.

Any chance of filming “To Catch a Desperate Network Executive”? We’ll pitch an sensationalized new show (stoning the child molesters to death when they show up at the house? put them in a real version of The Running Man?), and then see which networks show up to hear it.

Ezra Klein makes an important point about the discrepancy between obsessive fact-checking of possibly phony narratives (such as those of Scott Beauchamp) and the relative lack of attention given to false or misleading claims about policy:

Indeed, it’s a shame that so much attention is given to untrue narratives — which, really, can only be protected against so much, and are published because readers love them — and so little offered to untrue arguments. The Weekly Standard, which led the charge against Beauchamp, is a locus of bullshit, from flagrantly untrue portrayals of Iraq to discredited supply-siderism, but somehow, such quackery never attracts The New York Times’ notice. We demand truth in our colorful tales but accept lies in our serious arguments about public policy. It’s infuriating.

A case in point is President Bush’s latest suggestion that his tax cuts increased revenue:

Through tax relief, we cut taxes for American families and reduced tax rates on dividends and capital gains — energizing small businesses to invest and expand. And since we lowered these important tax rates, the economy has created more than 8 million jobs, increased wages, and grew tax revenues that will lead to a surplus.

Nearly every economist disagrees with the implication that tax cuts increase revenue, including numerous administration economists, but why quibble with these details when we could be arguing about whether Beauchamp’s squad ran over dogs in Iraq?

(For more on Bush’s numerous suggestions that tax cuts increase revenue, see my previous posts on the subject, our work at Spinsanity, and All the President’s Spin.)

TNR’s Britt Peterson presents the right take on Unity ’08 — a third-party presidential candidate has no chance:

Of course, Unity ’08’s coherence problem may be the least of their hurdles. As John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader can attest, the deck is stacked against third-party candidates. Getting on the ballot in all 50 states, securing a podium at the debates, facing voters repelled by the idea of feeding a spoiler, and managing to win in the electoral college’s winner-take-all system is well-neigh impossible for an outside contender. “The American political process is, in effect, hypergerrymandered [against third-party candidates],” Micah Sifry, author of Spoiling for a Fight: Third Party Politics in America, tells me. Even Perot, in some ways an incredibly successful third-party candidate (and, incidentally, another one managed by Hamilton Jordan), who was able to buy his way onto ballots in all 50 states and the debate stages, won 19 percent of the popular vote but not a single electoral vote.

It’s doubtful that Unity ’08, even if it’s able to spend at a Perot-campaign level (certainly easier if Bloomberg signs on), will fare any better. “We’ll go through the period during the election season where it sure would be fun to imagine the possibilities,” says Stephen Rosenstone, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota and an author of Third Parties in America. “And we will be told, if that campaign goes forward, that this is the exception. [But] all the previous candidates: they, too, were going to be the exceptions.”

The best part, though, is the response of the Unity ’08 guys, who compare this election to 1860, the last time a third party presidential candidate won the presidency (Lincoln):

Bailey and Rafshoon have an answer: This is the most important election ever, so all bets are off. But might the current situation, brought on by a vastly unpopular Republican President, send voters to the opposition party, rather than to a Democrat/Republican ticket? Not always, they say. “There is a tendency also to say that it’s never happened, there’s never been a third-party candidate. Not true. Not true,” Bailey says. “At a moment of truth for the country–and that’s where we think we are–in 1860, the country elected a third-party president. It was Lincoln. And the Whig Party went out of existence.” Right on cue, Rafshoon quips, “There was no real crisis then, was there?” Sure, it’s nice to see a Democrat and a Republican joking together–just like it would be nice to see the end of partisanship in America. But Gerry and Doug’s show doesn’t seem ready for primetime.

To make an obvious point, there’s an important difference between “a moment of truth for the country” and being on the brink of civil war. The fundamental reason that a third party candidate could win in 1860 is that race had deeply split the parties. There is no cross-cutting issue that is even remotely comparable to race in this election.

Update 8/24 11:34 AM: Phil Klinkner correctly points out by email that the Republicans superseded the Whigs in 1856 and were not a true third party by 1860.

It’s great to see Barack Obama reminding voters that he has more experience as an elected official than Hillary Clinton or John Edwards:

On the campaign trail, Obama gently reminds voters that Clinton and Edwards are not so experienced: She is a second-term senator who has never run a government or business. Edwards served one term in the Senate.

“I’ve been in public office longer than Hillary Clinton has,” he said Monday, counting his seven years in the state Senate and not counting Clinton’s three decades in public life with her husband. “I’ve been in public office longer than John Edwards has.”

However, the AP’s Ron Fournier, who is apparently no longer content to write news reports since returning from his failed Hotsoup.com venture, still frames Obama as inexperienced in the story. After opening with the lede that “Barack Obama knows it’s a stretch to think of him as president,” Fournier even goes so far as to offer advice to the candidate:

Obama could close the stature gap by producing more detailed plans for lowering health care costs, taming the federal debt, resolving the Iraq war and addressing other issues. Edwards, so far, has the edge on the so-called policy primary.

It would help had Obama spent more time overseas. Clinton has made several trips to Iraq and other foreign spots.

…He has a relatively thin resume, but it’s not without accomplishments – working across party lines to change ethics, death penalty and racial profiling laws in Illinois. Ethics and nuclear proliferation are his signature issues in the Senate.

Many political journalists seem to think they should be political consultants. But no one asked for Fournier’s opinion on how to overcome the so-called “stature gap” and it doesn’t seem appropriate for him to offer it in an AP report.

Also, lest Fournier forget, it’s not his job to define the important issues that candidates should address. It’s not even clear how well he understands them. For instance, the major fiscal problem this country faces is looming federal deficits in the future due to President Bush’s tax cuts and increasing Medicare costs, not “taming the federal debt,” which is reasonable by historical standards as a percentage of GDP.

The Guardian reports that Bush administration officials refer to anti-war Democrats as “Defeatocrats”:

The speech was aimed primarily at what White House officials privately describe as the “Defeatocrats”, the Democratic congressmen trying to push Mr Bush into an early withdrawal.

If true, it’s another indication of this administration’s poisonous attitude toward dissent.

PS Maybe the White House should send a “rally squad” to the floor of Congress to shout down Democrats who criticize the war…