Brendan Nyhan

David Broder’s latest column on the utopian third party group Unity ’08 contains this damaging admission:

I contacted [Unity co-founder Douglas] Bailey recently to ask what had happened to this bold gamble, and he was the source of that 35,000 figure for the number of people who have lent support to the scheme. They obviously have a long way to go before they can claim to be a viable political force, but they are making slow, steady progress.

When I called Bailey, it had been just a week since the group announced that anyone who was interested could sign up at http://www.unity08.com as a voting delegate to a national convention planned for June 2008. Most of the sign-ups came before that formal start, Bailey said, in response to last year’s publicity about the formation of Unity08.

As Whiskey Fire points out, this is a tacit admission that the group is failing to take off:

So they’re not making “slow, steady progress.” They got an initial rush and now nobody cares. Jeez, I bet a smart young advertising professional could get more than 35,000 people to sign an online petition for “Federline ’08.” Or “Aphids ’08.” Or the “Dysentery Ticket.” Or the “Nigerian Inheritance Party.”

Shocking! Who could have seen this coming?

Just so no one forgets, here’s what Unity ’08’s co-founder predicted in December — 5-20 million participants in the party’s online “convention” and their candidate ahead in the polls:

We’ll take it, certainly, if that’s what we get. But think about this: By the time we have this convention, we’ll have 5, 10, maybe even 20 million people on the Web site having this convention. Let’s say it’s 10 [million]. That’ll be more people than have chosen the nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties, because they will have been chosen by the early primaries. It may not even break a million that have chosen those candidates.

That person will probably leap ahead in the polls then, because everybody’s going to have them on the cover…. There may be people who wanted to get either one of their party’s nomination and didn’t get it; there could be new people; there maybe people from other disciplines than politics.

Only 4,965,000 to go!

During President Clinton’s first term, former Rep. Bob Dornan (R-CA) was the worst of the worst among the scandalmongers. He routinely said things like this on the House floor (9/26/96):

There are all sorts of ricochets flying around, like the center of the new book by Roger Morris called `Partners In Power.’ In the middle it has a brother who went to prison for cocaine under a cocaine pusher named Lassiter who got pardoned, saying my brother has a nose like a shovel. Guess of whom he was speaking, Mr. Speaker?

Rule XVIII prohibits me from telling the million or so people in our audience. Use your imagination. Who has a shovel for a nose in Federal Government today?

So it was almost painfully ironic to read Dornan simultaneously bemoaning the difficulty of protecting one’s reputation from scurrilous attacks (10/8/94):

Mr. Speaker, it has often been said, and rightly so, that if a man loses his good name he loses everything. And with the advent of attack-dog journalism it has become harder and harder for those of us in public office to defend our good names and reputations. When accusations are made they are front page news. When those accusations turn out to be false, the corrections — if you get one, that is — will be tucked away deep in the bowels of some obscure section that nobody reads. As former Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan said after being acquitted on bogus charges, “Where do I go to get my good name back?”

Cry me a river. Thankfully, Dornan has been consigned to the dust-heap of history, having lost his re-election campaign to Loretta Sanchez in 1996, a 1998 rematch against Sanchez, and a 2004 primary campaign against Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA).

In honor of the magazine’s sale to CanWest, a Canadian company, the editors of The New Republic have provided PDFs of the magazine’s best Canada-related articles, including a famous 1986 contest to see if anyone could come up with a more boring headline than “Worthwhile Canadian initiative” (which actually did run on the New York Times op-ed page). Here are some of my favorite submissions from Michael Kinsley’s column on the contest (PDF):

Trade, A Two-Way Street
Beyond the News, Larger Issues
University of Rochester Decides to Keep Name
Surprises Unlikely in Indiana
Prevent Burglary by Locking House, Detectives Urge

But Kinsley picked the two best ones — here’s the (hilarious) conclusion to the column:

For its brilliant counterpoint of overexcited adjective with mundane and obscure subject matter, I was tempted to award first prize in this competition … to the lead headline on the “Washington Talk” page of the Times, May 13: “Turbulent Days for Donald D. Engen.” That middle initial is an especially bravura touch, I think. It fills the reader with an urgent desire not to know who Donald Engen is and with disbelief that his days could be all that turbulent. But in the end, the judges chose a months-old subhead from the Times science section: “Debate Goes on Over the Nature of Reality.’ Further examples are welcome, but somehow, I don’t think that one will ever be topped.

From 2001-2004, I worked for Benetech, an award-winning social entrepreneurial technology non-profit. Over the last year, exciting things have been happening. My boss Jim Fruchterman, who founded Benetech, won a MacArthur “genius” award back in September. And last week its project Bookshare.org, an online service that makes books accessible to people with visual and reading disabilities, was profiled on the CBS Evening News. If you know someone who could benefit from Bookshare or if you’re interested in supporting Benetech, please contact me for more information.

Via Drudge, the Boston Globe has obtained a Romney campaign presentation containing some clichéd anti-Hillary demagoguery — “Hillary=France”!

The plan, for instance, indicates that Romney will define himself in part by focusing on and highlighting enemies and adversaries, such common political targets as “jihadism,” the “Washington establishment,” and taxes, but also Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, “European-style socialism,” and, specifically, France. Even Massachusetts, where Romney has lived for almost 40 years, is listed as one of those “bogeymen,” alongside liberalism and Hollywood values.

…Enmity toward France, where Romney did his Mormon mission during college, is a recurring theme of the document. The European Union, it says at one point, wants to “drag America down to Europe’s standards,” adding: “That’s where Hillary and Dems would take us. Hillary = France.” The plan even envisions “First, not France” bumper stickers.

Classy.

Has anyone noticed the contrast between Hillary Clinton’s position on responding to attacks from political opponents and her position on responding to insurgent attacks in Iraq?

On the one hand, the experiences of Michael Dukakis and John Kerry have convinced Clinton and other like-minded Democrats that the best response to domestic political attacks is to strike back fast and hard. “When you are attacked,” she said, “you have to deck your opponent.” To do otherwise, they argue, creates the perception of weakness, potentially encouraging more attacks. As a result, Clinton’s campaign arguably overreacted in their counter-attack against Barack Obama and David Geffen, drawing more attention to Geffen’s comments, linking Democrats with Hollywood moguls, and generally looking hyper-sensitive.

But in the debate over Iraq, Clinton and other Democrats take exactly the opposite perspective. She opposes President Bush’s plan to counter the insurgency with an increased US troop presence. And she rejects the argument that the US should not withdraw because doing so would create a perception of weakness that would invite further attacks.

It’s a strange juxtaposition.

It was bound to happen. For years since 9/11, Republicans have suggested that anti-war dissent helps al Qaeda. Now Josh Marshall, an influential center-left blogger, has reversed the charges, arguing that “It’s hard to imagine that there’s anyone in this country not under active federal surveillance who has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda than Dick Cheney”:

Why complain about anything Dick Cheney says? The man is simply too big a fool to hold any job of responsibility in the national government. Think of his history of failure, terrible judgment, reckless endangerment of the country. It’s hard to imagine that there’s anyone in this country not under active federal surveillance who has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda than Dick Cheney.

I know that seems like hyperbole or a throwaway line. But it’s actually very true. Is America stronger now than it was before the Cheney era? Does al Qaeda have more fertile ground for proselytizing or less?

Marshall returned to this theme in a later post:

How many American deaths is this goof [Cheney] responsible for? And who in this country has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda and make the US more vulnerable to attack?

The problem is that this sort of rhetoric inevitably slides into demagoguery. Saying someone is “advancing” the terrorist agenda carries insinuations of treason, particularly when comparing Cheny to people under federal surveillance. And we just don’t know what al Qaeda wants.

The dystopian outcome is that both sides start framing every move by their opponents as advancing the al Qaeda agenda, and we spend all our time trying to mind-read terrorists in the mountains of Pakistan rather than having an actual debate about the best anti-terrorism policy.

Undeterred by the exposure of his use of a phony Abraham Lincoln quote, Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney has redoubled his attack on dissent, as Greg Sargent pointed out. In a column last Tuesday, Gaffney dredges up a new Lincoln quote attacking “agitators” during the Civil War who were arrested for fomenting rebellion and uses this as the pretext for another vitriolic attack on dissent as treasonous:

It is fitting that we reflect carefully on Abe Lincoln’s insights and strong words, not just because this is the time of year we celebrate his remarkable life and momentous presidency. His views are all the more salient as congressional “agitators” once again justify their vehement opposition to the incumbent president’s war efforts with denunciations of “a wicked Administration of a contemptible Government.” Now, as then, they threaten the adequacy of the military force needed to “suppress” a violent insurgency. Whether we choose to recognize it or not, today as in 1863, the very “life of the nation” hangs in the balance if we fail to defeat the coming nexus of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Islamofascists.

These parallels were the subject of an extraordinary December 2003 Insight Magazine article where the paraphrase of Lincoln’s views was inadvertently transformed by a copy editor into a quote. Improbably, and unbeknownst to me when I wrote my column last week, the article’s author was none other than a colleague at the Center for Security Policy, J. Michael Waller. The full article (which can be viewed at http://fourthworldwar.blogspot.com/2003/12/when-does-politics-become-treason.html) should be required reading for those who wish to participate responsibly in a debate about where to draw the line between legitimate dissent and unacceptable treachery, if not actual treason, on the part of legislators ever-more-stridently opposed to the present war effort.

As Mr. Waller observed, there clearly is a distinction to be drawn between constructive disagreement about the conflict in Iraq and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The former can be compatible with a genuine commitment to the troops and to their success, as well as their safety. It would, however, require the dissenters to propose other strategies for victory — not simply the use of code-words for defeat, like “redeployment” and “regional diplomacy.”

It is highly ironic that many of those most critical of President Bush for not having a “plan” for post-invasion Iraq are conspicuously quiet about what would happen after their plan for retreat is adopted. They seem irresponsibly unconcerned about the prospect that, after America capitulates, there would be genocidal mayhem in Iraq, creation of a new safe-haven for terrorism there and a general emboldening of our enemies around the world.

Such behavior is even more intolerable when compounded by today’s “agitators” demeaning the troops they profess to support — notably, by comparing them to Nazis, terrorists, rapists and the killing fields — and threatening to deny them (through one device or another) the means required to accomplish their mission. In the offing are new legislative initiatives aimed at limiting the authority given to the president in 2002 to achieve Iraq’s liberation and tying his hands with respect to the growing threat from Iran — even that the regime in Tehran is currently posing to our troops fighting next door in Iraq.

These critics, particularly members of Congress, must be held accountable for such destructive dissent. Our enemies believe their strategy for achieving a political victory by wearing down the United States is succeeding. They are redoubling their efforts as they perceive the rising power of irresponsible anti-war “agitators.”

Abraham Lincoln understood the difference between constructive dissent and treacherous agitation. There is no mistaking his determination to “silence” the latter through means he judged to be constitutional. The question occurs: Will it take some further, even more catastrophic attack here at home — an attack made more likely by the irresponsible behavior of today’s agitators — to silence their defeatism and reunify the country behind a necessary program for victory?

In this passage, Gaffney comes very close to calling for treason prosecutions for those war opponents who fail to propose alternative strategies for “victory.” He comes dissenters to Confederate “agitators” who actively sought to overthrow the Union; suggests they are engaged in “unacceptable treachery, if not actual treason” unless they oppose withdrawal from Iraq; and suggests it will take another 9/11 to “silence their defeatism.” It’s awful stuff.

And lest anyone think Gaffney’s views are irrelevant, check out this question from the most recent AP poll:

14. Do you think it is right or wrong for opponents to criticize the war in Iraq?
-Right, 63 percent
-Wrong, 34 percent
-Not sure, 3 percent

The question is imprecisely worded (some people could be saying “wrong” because they support the war), but it’s still troubling that 34 percent of Americans say dissent against the war is “wrong.”

Note: For more on Gaffney’s historical claims, see Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher and Greg Sargent at TPM.

This year’s Hollywood is out of touch moment from the Oscars — Gwyneth Paltrow’s (pre-written) award introduction began with “Thanks to cell phones, almost everyone in the world is now a cinematographer.” Um, “almost everyone”? There are approximately 2.2 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide, but how many of their phones can take video? More importantly, World Bank estimates show that approximately 1.3 billion people make less than $1 a day and another 1.6 billion make $1-$2 per day. Call me crazy, but I don’t think many of those people are taking video with their cell phones.

Mitt Romney is apparently trying to lock down the social conservative vote among nine-year-olds:

Republican Mitt Romney recited a schoolyard ditty Thursday to underscore his argument that traditional marriage is essential for improving education.

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage,” the presidential hopeful told a crowd of about 175 people gathered at a private club.

Maybe next week Mitt will attack Hollywood’s moral standards by saying “I see London, I see France, where are Britney’s underpants?”