Jay Reding.com

Fareed Zakaria has an interesting piece on how French President Nicolas Sarkozy is in a position to make significant reforms in France. The fact that he’s won his first round against the French railway union suggests that Sarkozy isn’t afraid to fight his battles against the entrenched French union system. As Zakaria explains:

The street is an odd element in France’s Fifth Republic, very much part of the system. Charles de Gaulle created a political order that he accurately characterized as an “elected monarchy.” There are few checks on the president’s power. The prime minister tends to be significantly less important than key presidential advisers, and Parliament is a joke. The only real debate, opposition and counterbalance to the president comes from the street, and so it has become part of the French way of politics, one that the public seems to understand and accept. But this time, the president is banking on the fact that the public wants change, and will, for once, side with the palace and against the street. He appears to be right. Public sympathy is not with the strikers. Timing is everything in politics, and Nicolas Sarkozy’s greatest distinction might prove to be that he has arrived at just the right moment.

If he is able to win this battle, Sarkozy will be able to press forward with a series of reforms, each begetting the next. The cumulative effect of these changes could unleash a wave of optimism, which is itself hugely beneficial to a country’s economy. France would embrace the new global economy rather than fretting about it.

President Sarkozy is in a unique position to remake France into the engine of European growth, but it won’t be easy. Zakaria argues that France’s structural problems aren’t as great as they seem, but the opposite is more likely true. France suffers from the same demographic decline as the rest of Europe, and even solid growth can’t erase the gap between economic performance and future liabilities. That demographic shift also has cultural effects: France is already having trouble assimilating it’s Arab and Muslim populations, and those problems will only continue unless something is done.

The good news is that France isn’t over the edge yet, and Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be the right man at the right time. He has a daunting challenge ahead of him in reducing the barriers to entrepreneurial activity that keeps France’s economy from taking off. He’ll have to fight the political and union interests that have every interest in keeping the status quo no matter what. None of those things will be easy, especially in a country where unions might as well be another branch of government. However, if Sarkozy is willing to stick to his principles as he did in making overtime tax-free, he has a singular opportunity to restore vitality to the French economy.

Don Surber lays it on the line: we’re winning in Iraq, and the Democrats are stuck in the past:

The New York Times devoted a huge hunk of its Page One on Tuesday to the good news of the return to more normal times in Iraq. The story was illustrated with a photo of a wedding scene on the streets of Baghdad.

Violence has been cut in half. And while the nation is far from the tranquil democracy that many of us hoped for in April 2003, it also is a far cry from the chaotic mess it was just six months ago.

We are winning in Iraq.

Will someone please inform the Democrats?

He’s right: the signs are unmistakable. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been routed. Without the support of Iraq’s Sunni population, they have no hiding place. There’s nowhere for them to run in Iraq, and they can’t pull the same trick they did before and retreat back into the periphery around the major cities. The “Awakening” movements are everywhere and the Iraqis are no longer willing to tolerate terrorist oppressors in their midst.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq can still cause problems, but in a real tactical sense, they’ve been defeated.

The Shi’ite death squads such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army are similarly skating on thin ice. Moqtada al-Sadr is a tool of Iran, funded and armed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces. Yet now al-Sadr’s organization is being rolled up—at least those whose radicalism doesn’t allow them to follow his “cease fire.” Those are the ones most likely to cause problems. Getting rid of them diminishes the ability for al-Sadr to cause problems in the future. Al-Sadr is a thug, but even he has realized that attacking the Iraqi government has gotten him nowhere. His cease fire order is a political calculation—it’s no longer expedient for him to play the part of the revolutionary leader. That alone should say something about the conditions in Iraq.

So why don’t the Democrats get it? Why are they still trying to play politics over the war? If even The New York Times can see that things are getting better, why can’t they find a change in strategy?

The simple answer is that’s all they have.

The Democratic Congress has failed to achieve any significant legislative achievements. The most they’ve gotten is a minor increase in the minimum wage that has little effect, and most of the effect it will have will be negative. They’re playing to their base as a defensive posture: they think that by “ending the war” people will ignore their inability to get anything done.

That kind of political posturing doesn’t mean anything. The Democrats have become so invested in a narrative of failure that they can’t even perceive of anything different. They’re absolutely fixated on this one issue.

The more the disparity grows between the reality of Iraq and the Democrat’s defeatist rhetoric, the more desperate and out-of-touch the Democrats look. Right now, all the juvenile political games the Democrats are playing in Congress only makes them look even less like leaders and more like squabbling children. Attaching more conditions to war funding is a maneuver designed for nothing more than partisan politics. It hurts our troops, and if the Democrats keep playing these games they’ll only hurt the local economies around military bases when the Defense Department has to start firing support staff to keep in operation. If that happens, the Democrats will be in real political trouble.

The Democrats have been painting themselves in a corner for years now. That strategy has worked when Iraq has been on a downslide, but now that things are getting better, they have nowhere to go. They’re pretending like the situation in Iraq is the same as it was in 2006 because that’s when their strategy was successful. Yet the circumstances have changed, and the Democrats have not.

The Democrats are invested in a narrative, and their narrative is increasingly disconnected from the facts. (Not that it ever was.) Sooner or later, the American people are going to start to question why the Democrats seem to be so invested in American defeat in Iraq, especially when the situation seems to be stabilized. If the Democrats were smart they’d start changing their narrative to say that they were the ones who pushed Bush into conceding that the strategy of 2003–2006 had failed. Indeed, that’s precisely what Sen. John McCain is already doing. Yet to do that would be to alienate the hardcore antiwar constituency that has a chokehold on the Democratic Party.

The situation is getting better in Iraq, but the narrative in Washington remains the same. As our troops and their Iraqi allies rack up more and more victories against terrorism in Iraq, the Democrats keep wanting to pull the rug out from under them. It’s one thing to advocate for surrender in a war that’s going badly—it’s entirely another to do the same in a war that’s being won. The fact that the Democrats can’t seem to understand that demonstrates just how much the narrative has overwhelmed their common sense.

UPDATE: Michael Yon offers a note of caution. He’s right: even an enemy that’s been largely defeated can still cause plenty of trouble. All that it takes is a lucky strike in a crowded market with a car bomb for the old narrative to re-emerge. The story of counterinsurgency and democratization is often a story of two steps forward and one and a half steps back. Iraq has taken a giant step forward in recent months, but that doesn’t mean that they’re out of the woods quite yet.

The Supreme Court has decided to grant a writ of certiorari in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller which involves the DC gun ban. For the first time in 60 years, since United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court will visit the issue of whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms. As always, The Volokh Conspriracy will be following the case closely, and has some excellent commentary on what all of this means.

As seems to be the case with this Court, it all comes down to Justice Kennedy (now in the spoiler position formerly occupied by Justice O’Connor). Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Chief Justice Roberts are almost certain to advocate for the individual right position. Justices Ginsberg, Breyer, Souter and Stevens are highly likely to come down on the side of the Second Amendment being a collective right for the “militia.”

I think Orin Kerr’s prediction is right: Justice Kennedy will endorse an individual rights view of the Second Amendment but would support a relatively lax standard of review for reviewing restrictions on firearms. What that means is that he’d be likely to support regulations which have only a rational relationship with some state interest rather than requiring strict scrutiny of state gun laws.

A holding that the Second Amendment does confer an individual right to fireamrs, but that any law that has only a rational basis to some state interest would be a Pyrrhic victory for gunowner’s rights groups. It wouldn’t do much to change the status quo, and it would still allow for significant restrictions on gun owners. Instead of settling the issue, it would probably cause more lawsuits as gunowners and groups like the NRA litigate exactly what regulations do and do not infringe upon the Second Amendment.

This has to be the most bizarre campaign commercial I’ve ever seen…

Markos “Kos” Moulitsas has his first Newsweek column out today. Kos went with the surprising route, choosing a topic that broadened his reach to moderate voters and demonstrated his command of the issues and his willingness to listen to all sides.

Or not…

Instead, he did what Kos does best. Actually, all that Kos does: he attacked George W. Bush. His advice to Democrats? Run against the guy whose name isn’t going to be on the ballot. The same strategy of negativity and partisan idiocy that failed in 2004. In a climate where people are sick to death of the idiotic partisan in-fighting in Washington, the advice of Kos is to give them some more.

It’s the same old partisan hackery that makes The Daily Kos unreadable for anyone who doesn’t already drink the Kool-Aid. There’s no substance, no unifying theme, no desire beyond the mere desire for political power. The end that matters is winning elections. What’s the theory of government? Kos’ “libertarian progressive” meme was so intellectual inherent that most bong-addled freshman poli-sci students could see right through it.

Kos’ argument: that advocating a smaller government means that you hate government. Of course, his thesis is incoherent: since when has George W. Bush been an anti-government ideologue? Many prominent conservatives dislike him precisely because under his watch government has grown dramatically. His argument is that Democrats love government. Which is a great message, except it goes against the mainstream of American politics. His message of Democrats being the party of Big Government plays right into GOP hands. There’s no reason why competent government must mean more government, and given the incompetence of the Democratic field and the Democratic Congress, what Kos is pushing isn’t selling very well.

Compare Kos’ mount of anti-Bush red meat to Karl Rove’s inaugural column. Rove’s column spends more time talking about how a Republican challenger can define himself against Hillary than merely bashing the Democrats. Rove is also a political flack, to be sure, but at least he’s a political flack who knows that the way to win in politics isn’t just to bash the other side. In contrast, Kos comes off as the petulant kid who thinks he’s a political wunderkind but doesn’t have the skills to prove it.

Kos just comes off as another hyperpartisan hack, an attack dog for hire that’s brilliant at preaching to the choir, but doesn’t know how to be persuasive. He’s emblematic of what’s wrong with the Democratic Party these days: reflexively partisan, ideologically adrift, and increasingly extreme. Markos Moulitsas thinks he’s some kind of left-wing Karl Rove, but in comparison with the real thing, he’s just another shrill amateur.

The New York Times acknowledges that violence in Iraq has dropped precipitously, now reaching the same level as before the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarrah that kicked off massive internecine conflict in Iraq:

The data released Sunday cover attacks using car bombs, roadside bombs, mines, mortars, rockets, surface-to-air missiles and small arms. According to the statistics, roughly 575 attacks occurred last week.

That is substantially fewer than the more than 700 attacks that were recorded the week that Sunni militants set off a wave of sectarian violence in Iraq by blowing up a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006. And it represents a huge drop since June when attacks soared to nearly 1,600 one week.

American officials said other measures indicated that civilian deaths had dropped. Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for the command, said civilian deaths had dropped by 60 percent since June.

Military analysts said a number of factors explained the drop. They say, for example, that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi insurgent group with foreign leadership, has been greatly weakened by American military attacks.

Thousands of new Sunni volunteers have made common cause with the Americans. About 72,000 such civilians have joined the effort, American officials said, and 45,000 each receive a $300 a month stipend from the Americans to help with the effort.

Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, has ordered his militiamen to stand down. American military officials also say that Iran appears to be abiding by a commitment to reduce the flow of roadside bombs and other weapons into Iraq. Beyond that, many Iraqis appear to be exhausted by the sectarian violence and eager for a modicum of stability.

In essence, our nearly year-long process of changing our counterinsurgency strategy is paying off. The “surge” wasn’t just about increasing troop numbers, but about a major change of strategy away from protecting our own forces and towards protecting Iraqi civilians. At the same time al-Qaeda in Iraq’s sheer barbarity was alienating the Iraqis, the US was changing strategy to work better with the Iraqi people. The confluence of those two events is key to understanding why violence is down. Iraq’s Sunni population had finally had enough, and we were there to support them in their grass-roots effort to destroy al-Qaeda.

The majority of the credit does need to go to the Iraqis. In order for Iraq to be secure, the Iraqis need to stand up and fight against terrorism. That is precisely what Iraqi Sunnis have been doing—and as the murder of Sheikh Abu Sattar al-Risha demonstrates, their bravery comes at a cost. Even the Iranians are realizing that the costs of their proxy war against the US are too great. They’ve stopped their shipments of weapons to terrorists in Iraq and they’ve put Moqtada al-Sadr back on his leash.

Of course, anything could change in Iraq, but the signs of progress have become unavoidable. Violence is down, al-Qaeda in Iraq is severely disrupted, and life is returning to normal in many parts of the country.

Those who have protested this war have now painted themselves into a rhetorical corner. By arguing that Iraq is an unwinnable morass and the biggest foreign policy blunder in US history, any sign of progress undercuts their argument. Yet despite all the negative hyperbole, the situation in Iraq is undoubtedly getting better, and all the resources spent by al-Qaeda in training and equipping fighters in Iraq has diminished their resources and left them with nothing. Instead of radicalizing Iraqi Sunnis, the last few months have seen Iraqi Sunnis soundly rejecting al-Qaeda and embracing a course of democratic peace.

There remains much left to be done, but should these trends continue, the drawdown of forces scheduled for the next few months shouldn’t leave the kind of security vacuum that caused problems in the past. The Iraqis have rejected terrorism and embraced a peace, albeit an uneasy one. The transition from dictatorship to democracy will always be a matter of two steps forward followed by one and a half steps back, but Iraq is democratizing, if in baby steps. Far from a disaster, the war in Iraq may end up being the turning point in which radical Islamic terrorist suffered its first major defeat in its own back yard.

Robert Novak writes on the rumors flying around Washington that Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has “scandalous information” about Sen. Barack Obama. Allegedly, the Clinton campaign is holding on to the information for now and won’t be releasing it.

It’s a classic Clintonian strategy—and it probably has to do with Hillary’s sagging poll numbers in Iowa. Instead of the story being about how Obama is catching up to Hillary in Iowa, now the story is about what sort of dirt she has on the Illinois senator. In fact, she may be bluffing, but it doesn’t matter politically. The story is already making the rounds, and in the chance there is some dirt to be dug up (and there always is), the oppo people from all the other campaigns are going to be combing Obama’s record in order to find it. If there is something, Hillary can sit on it and look above the fray and let another candidate like Edwards discover it independently and leak it. She gets the benefit of getting the damaging information out without the trouble of doing it herself. It’s the sort of Machiavellian politics that the Clintons just love to play.

As for Obama, it was a mistake for him to run in this cycle. He had plenty of time to build up a national name for himself, running either in 2012 or 2016. Instead, he got too ambitious, and now a man who has never once had to run in a competitive local race is plunging himself into national politics against a well-oiled and vicious political machine. By the end of all of this, Obama will end up being such damaged goods that it may keep him out of national politics for the rest of his career. He still has a chance to beat Hillary, but only a slim one, and even then she’ll end up destroying him in the process. Hillary feels entitled to be President, and if she can’t have it, she’ll make sure that no other Democrat does.

While the Clinton camp is naturally saying this is all a Republican dirty trick, it’s the sort of political maneuver she’s famous for. Hillary’s claws are coming out, and the more Obama threatens her ascendancy, the more likely she will be to use them.