Category: Politics

Sen. Craig Should Resign

I’m with Hugh Hewitt on this one. There’s no excuse for a United States Senator to act in such a way, attempt to use his Senate credentials to get out of trouble, and then fail to take responsibility for it. As little credibility as Congress has, that goes far beyond anything that is acceptable.

Undoubtedly had Craig been a Democrat, this story would be largely over, those criticizing the Senator would be labeled homophobes, and Craig would be already planning his memoirs — see disgraced New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey or Barney Frank — both of whom put their trysting partners on the government payroll.

That doesn’t change the right course of action: Craig should either resign on his own initiative or be forced out. Members of Congress have a duty not to allow themselves to be put in compromising positions (and this is one hell of a compromising position). Craig has tarnished the Senate, and his continued presence only inflames the scandal. Partisan concerns are immaterial, and even if they were material, Idaho is safely Republican.

Sen. Craig should resign immediately and allow the Governor of Idaho to appoint a replacement until next year’s elections.

“I Believe Iraq Could Have A Positive Future”

Democratic Congressman Brian Baird of Washington has a powerful op-ed in the Seattle Times arguing that our troops deserve more time to further the progress in Iraq:

As a Democrat who voted against the war from the outset and who has been frankly critical of the administration and the post-invasion strategy, I am convinced by the evidence that the situation has at long last begun to change substantially for the better. I believe Iraq could have a positive future. Our diplomatic and military leaders in Iraq, their current strategy, and most importantly, our troops and the Iraqi people themselves, deserve our continued support and more time to succeed….

…As one soldier said to me, “We have lost so many good people and invested so much, It just doesn’t make sense to quit now when we’re finally making progress. I want to go home as much as anyone else, but I want this mission to succeed and I’m willing to do what it takes. I just want to know the people back home know we’re making progress and support us.”

It’s interesting how the political winds have shifted in the past few weeks — the old narrative was that our troops had failed, the security situation on the ground was impossible and that the war is unwinnable. Now, the standard narrative has changed: the surge is working, but it doesn’t matter anyway because the Iraqis are too backwards for democracy. The only consistency in these shifting narratives is the urgent desire for failure — not because of what’s happening in Iraq, but solely based on domestic political concerns. The Democratic Party has staked their ground on failure in Iraq, and they lose if America wins. The radical partisans have put the Democratic Party in a condition where the only way for them to win is for the country to fail.

Rep. Baird, along with others, are wise enough to realize that the political script in Washington and the reality in Iraq are not even close to the same. What goes on in Iraq is almost never reported here — the media has no interest in adequately covering the conflict in Iraq, and it’s up to those independent journalists and soldiers on the ground throughout Iraq to provide the context which the media does not provide. The “surge” and its tactical changes have produced results. Combined with the grassroots anti-terrorist movements in Diyala and al-Anbar Province, the security situation in Iraq is slowly but demonstrably improving.

Rep. Baird also points out the humanitarian aspect to this conflict, something many of his follow Democrats would rather ignore:

From a strategic perspective, if we leave now, Iraq is likely to break into even worse sectarian conflict. The extremist regime in Iran will expand its influence in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. Terrorist organizations, the people who cut off the heads of civilians, stone women to death, and preach hatred and intolerance, will be emboldened by our departure. In the ensuing chaos, the courageous Iraqi civilians, soldiers and political leaders who have counted on us will be left to the slaughter. No American who cares about human rights, security and our moral standing in the world can be comfortable letting these things happen.

Rep. Baird is absolutely right, and he deserves credit for bravely standing against members of his own party and speaking out for human rights in Iraq. There is no doubt that the consequences of a US withdrawal would be disastrous — Iraq would see ethnic cleansing on the scale of other complex humanitarian disasters we’ve already seen — the world does not need another Uganda, Cambodian, or Darfur. Yet that is precisely what is bound to happen if the United States withdraws without fulfilling its moral and strategic duties to leave Iraq capable of defending itself.

The war in Iraq is not “Bush’s war”, it is not some partisan football, it is the most critical engagement of our time. To shirk our responsibilities towards the Iraqi people is to be the instigators of genocide. This country cannot even think of restoring American leadership while leaving our allies to be slaughtered. The Democratic Party continues to push for just such an irresponsible withdrawal — thankfully there remain a few members of that party with the intellectual honesty and support for universal human rights to see past the partisan blinders and realize what the stakes are in Iraq. Such people are putting principle and patriotism before party, and this country needs more leaders with the honesty and courage of Rep. Baird.

Congress’ Problem: They’re Not Being Partisan Enough

Or at least that’s what über-hack Glenn Greenwald argues — apparently seriously. He argues that the reason why Congress’ approval ratings are so low isn’t that they’ve done absolutely nothing but spend the last 8 months raiding the Treasury for their own interests, it’s that they haven’t spend enough time in pointless partisan witchhunts against the Bush Administration.

Of course, for those of us who don’t quaff Democratic Kool-Aid like it was going out of style, there’s another more likely explanation for why Congress’ approval numbers are in the toilet. It’s the same reason why the last Congress had low approval ratings: people are sick and tired of a “leadership” that does nothing but lines its own pockets. The #1 issue in 2006 was not the war in Iraq. It was corruption and ethics in government. Next year’s elections seem poised to follow the same model. The Democratic Congress has proven itself no less corrupt than the one that preceded it, and in fact, has done a worse job with reform. The same tide that swept the GOP out of power in 2006 is bearing down on the Democrats, but they’re too busy trying to torpedo the Bush Administration to care or notice.

The reality is that it’s not a lack of partisan zeal that’s hurting Congress (except among ultrapartisan Democrats like Glenn Greenwald), but a culture of corruption and a lack of ethics — and the Democrats in Congress are more interested in chastising the President than it fixing their own problems. The question of Congress’ approval ratings isn’t whether they’ll get better, it’s a matter of how low they can go. If the Democrats follow the advice of their own vicious partisans, we may yet see a Congress with single-digit approval ratings.

UPDATE: Then again, it’s not as though the Republicans are doing much better. The only think that might save the Democrats is that the GOP continues to miss the boat itself — although that bodes poorly for the state of American politics as a whole.

Hard vs. Soft

Milblogger Dadmanly takes a long look at both John Edwards’ and Rudy Giuliani’s recent essays in Foreign Policy. There couldn’t be a bigger difference in the approach of the two:

Herewith Edwards transposes familiar liberal “crime fighting” orthodoxy onto the challenge of terrorism. Poverty causes crime, therefore poverty causes terror. Never mind that most Jihadis come from educated and privileged elites – except of course for those unfortunates that get fooled into serving as “suicide” bombers or children or the handicapped used as bomb camouflage.

If that’s not perverse enough, Edwards goes ahead and heaps on the rest of progressive orthodoxy: education as the “cure” for poverty, “Clean water and sanitation are also necessary to improve health, education, and economic prosperity,” universal (as in, worldwide) access to drugs and medical treatment. Mention of the Global Development Act, described as a kind of bureaucratic solution for redundant and ineffective global development efforts. Think DHS for global poverty, a “Global Poverty Czar” and the like.

Guiliani takes a different approach:

Note that Edwards and Giuliani point to the same ultimate goal for the US, better relations with the world. For Edwards and the Democrats, the strategy is to do whatever it takes to bring that about: the US must change. For Giuliani, the key to better relations is a common basis and acceptance of democratic norms and human rights: those who oppress and terrorize must change, or be overwhelmed.

Ultimately, the debate between Edwards and Giuliani is the same debate that’s been brewing for some time now — should the United States take a more servient role to international institutions, or should the United States take a more aggressive role? Or, in a more simplistic fashion, should the US be a leader or a follower?

Edwards demonstrates that he’s a foreign policy lightweight. If more international aid were key to defeating terrorism, why is Egypt, the #1 recipient of US foreign aid still a source for Islamic radicalism and the home of both Mohammad Atta and Ayman al-Zawahiri? Why does Egyptian state television continue to push anti-Western and anti-Semitic viewpoints? If poverty is really the root cause of terrorism why do most terrorists seem to come disproportionately from the middle to upper classes?

Edward’s foreign policy ideas are drawn from the same stagnant well as the failed ideas of the early 1990s. Now that the world is more astutely aware of the danger posed by terrorist groups, returning to those failed policies would be nothing short of disastrous. As Mayor Giuliani points out, al-Qaeda’s history indicates that each time the United States showed weakness in the face of their provocations, they hit back harder the next time. Strength does not breed terrorism, weakness does, and even bin Laden himself has said as much.

Edwards’ foreign policy is as free of real substance as the rest of his campaign. While there’s a real debate about how the US should conduct its foreign power and relate to international institutions, that debate can’t be conducted based upon fundamentally faulty premises. Giuliani seems to understand the way in which the world works — not the way in which some would like it to work, and in terms of crafting American foreign policy, naivete is fatal. Giuliani’s view of the world is the more realistic one, and his choice of foreign policy course is the one most likely to preserve the security of the United States.

Why Fred Thompson Is The Candidate To Watch

Captain Ed has an interesting look at the potential campaign style of Fred Thompson. Of all the candidates in the Republican field so far, it’s my opinion that Sen. Thompson is the one to watch. The reason is that Thompson seems to have the right feel for the political situation in America, and isn’t afraid to stake out some difficult positions. As The Washington Post‘s David Broder explores:

Thompson, like many of the others running, has caught a strong whiff of the public disillusionment with both parties in Washington — and the partisanship that has infected Congress, helping to speed his own departure from the Senate.

But he says he thinks the public is looking for a different kind of leadership. “I think a president could go to the American people and say, ‘Here’s what we need to be doing. And I’m willing to go halfway. Now you have to make them [the opposition] go halfway.’

There have been few times in recent history where there was such wide distrust in government in this country. Both the Bush Administration and Congress are widely seen as corrupt, incompetent, and unfitting. The biggest issue in the 2006 election wasn’t Iraq — it was corruption. People are sick and tired of $200 million bridges to nowhere, pork barrel politics, empty promises, partisan gunslinging, and the infantile way in which our political classes conduct themselves. That general feeling of disgust is going to play just as big a role in 2008 as it did in 2006, and the anti-incumbent sentiment that killed the GOP isn’t going away under the Pelosi/Reid Congress.

The reason why Thompson is so strongly situated is that he has a strong anti-corruption message — he was the one responsible for taking down corrupt Tennessee governor Roy Blanton in the 1970s. He’s one of the few candidates who is seriously talking about key issues such as entitlement reform. His leaving the Senate actually plays well for him — the country is looking for an outsider, someone who is not tainted by the partisanship and incompetence of the last few years. His position on campaign finance reform puts him in the reformist camp, although it may grate on conservatives.

Granted, Rudy Giuliani shares many of those same traits, but Thompson has the benefit of having fewer issues with social conservatives. Thompson seems to be the candidate that presents the clearest threat to Rudy’s current front-runner status, and if he can build momentum, that race will undoubtedly heat up.

Sen. Thompson isn’t a shoo-in for the nomination, but he is the candidate to watch. Mayor Giuliani still holds the lead, but even without a formal announcement, Thompson is already in a strong second place in many polls in key states. If McCain were to drop out and endorse Thompson, that could shift the balance completely — although Rudy could also get that support. It all depends on whether Thompson can differentiate himself from Giuliani enough to get an edge — and that will likely mean reaching out to evangelicals and social conservatives while continuing to push his reformist message.

In terms of actual policy chops, Thompson is assembling a rather impressive resume. Those who paint him as just another actor play into the same mistake the left made with Reagan — like Reagan, Thompson’s commanding stage presence is matched by his commanding knowledge of policy issues. He’s no intellectual slouch, and behind that folksy style is a calculating political mind that could easily outclass the less prepared Democratic contenders like Obama or Edwards.

Thompson does have some negatives — his campaign has had a rocky start, and starting this late puts him at a large disadvantage in terms of fundraising and support. However, there’s also some advantage into a late start — it gives time for some of the smaller candidates to drop out, for the others to make mistakes, and has given him much free press.

Thompson is the candidate to watch in this early race, and he is certainly strongly in the running for the nomination. While Giuliani remains the frontrunner, that can change, and Thompson seems uniquely positioned to be the candidate that has a broad appeal with the political disaffected as well as the Republican base.

Karl Rove: Behind The Myth

The blogosphere is afire with the news that Karl Rove will be departing the White House in August.

If one actually understands what Karl Rove’s position within the White House actually is, that’s not a big surprise. For all the talk about how Rove was “Bush’s brain” and some evil Svengali-like character, the truth (as always) is far more prosaic: Karl Rove’s skills were in retail-level politics. What Rove did was brand a political candidate and sell him to the masses, and he was very good at what he did. I suspect that the reason why Rove is leaving is because there are no more elections to win — Rove won three elections and lost one, and that’s that.

Far from being a policy mastermind, Rove’s skills have always been in analyzing politics. His brand of retail-level political focusing was extremely successful. His policies have not — the White House mismanaged the steel tariffs, Harriet Miers, the Dubai Ports Deal, and other matters of policy that should have been handled with more finesse (or in the case of Miers was an absolutely idiotic move to begin with). Something tells me that many of those were moves backed by Rove, and that while Rove is a political genius when it comes to elections, his policy influence in the White House has been far less than expected.

Rand Simberg has an excellent piece taking apart the “divisive” meme surrounding Rove:

But no, in the minds of the MSM, it is George Bush who is the “divider,” not the Democrats and the left who have been vilifying him for over six years now as an election stealer, a warmonger, a chimpanzee, a torturer, a war criminal–despite his acquiescing to (in partnership with Ted Kennedy) much of the liberal political agenda, with an expansion of Medicare, federal control over education, a new amnesty for illegal immigrants, and a general expansion of government on almost all fronts. All of which was pushed by the evil mastermind, Karl Rove.

And the notion that it was Rove’s “divisive” campaign tactics that were the cause of the Republican loss of the Congress last year is an analysis so simplistic (and wrong) that it would be embarrassing to see it in a college newspaper, let alone the new crown jewel of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

I think that the real reason why Rove’s magic didn’t work in the last election is precisely the reason that Simberg gives: Rove is not, nor has he ever been, a conservative ideologue or a firebrand. He’s been fine with triangulation and co-opting left-wing messages: it’s how Bush got elected in 2000 (and only narrowly). That doesn’t work when the White House has put itself far to the left of the Republican base on key issues and the press and chattering classes have had 6 years of hateful attacks under their belt. However, the real secret is that the party in power usually loses off-year elections regardless, and all the talk about how there was a massive Democratic sweep and the country is moving left isn’t the case — 2006 was a bloodbath for the Republicans, but 6th-year elections usually are. Rove undoubtedly read the tea leaves wrong, but it may not have made much of a difference.

Rove has become an Emmanuel Goldstein to the left, even though most people have no idea what he did or how he did it — but for those who have an interest in how American elections are won, Rove’s tactics and methodologies are likely to far outlast his notoriety.

Read Our Lips…

Mitch Berg notes that the push for new gas taxes in the wake of the 35W bridge collapse isn’t being swallowed by Minnesota voters. I have a feeling that the pro-tax forces were all too predictable in their ghoulish push to raise taxes before the truth about what really caused the bridge collapse, and the voters are smart enough to see right through it.

This state doesn’t need more taxes — a lack of funds isn’t what caused the bridge to collapse. It’s looking more and more likely that a combination of factors — shifting piers on the river shore, design flaws in the nature of the bridge, a lack of redundancies, and the weight of redecking material all were part of the many factors that stressed the bridge beyond its breaking point. MnDOT had plenty of cash on hand, but no one apparently saw the need to expedite replacing the bridge.

In the last election cycle, Minnesota voters already approved a transportation amendment which substantially increased funding for transportation. The last federal transportation bill added billions of dollars more. The sheer greed of Minnesota state government in demanding more money rather than fixing the misplaced priorities that put mass transit over road safety is appalling. Mass transit is a nicety, but it is impractical for most Minnesotans. Funding a system for a minority while letting the roads that hundreds of thousands use daily fall apart is not sound management. Yet the proposed solution is to throw more money at the problem.

Across nearly every level of government, people are getting sick and tired of the ever more invasive and ever more self-serving attitudes of our elected officials. Taking this tragedy and using it to flog yet another tax hike to add more money to a broken system only proves why the Minnesota voter is rightly skeptical of this plan.

If there were an actual, demonstrable need for more money, it would be one thing. Yet when not one single bit of waste is being cut and priorities are not being reshifted to meet the needs of what Minnesota commuters actually do rather than what metro-area bureaucrats want them to do, then there is no reason to assume that more money into the bureaucracy will make our roads any more safe.

Voters see no reason to throw good money after bad — if Minnesota’s elected officials want to see our roads fixed, they’ll have to be willing to give up on their other pipe dreams first. When emergencies happen to real people, they have to tighten their belts and give up unnecessary spending — that’s part of being an adult. When we treat government like children and are always willing to raise their allowance no matter how badly they perform, we have to expect government to act like children. It’s time for government to grow up and learn how to act responsibly — and that means prioritizing infrastructure repairs over pushing the next mass-transit pipe dream.

Nick Coleman: Partisan Hack, And Proud Of It

Nick Coleman, having shamed himself already, digs the hole a little deeper with a full-throated apologia for all-consuming partisanship. While investigators piece together what really happened with the I-35W bridge, Coleman is already putting on his partisan pom-poms and taking aim at his carefully-crafted strawman enemies in a column that demonstrates that Nick Coleman is the undisputed mastery of partisan hackery in Minnesota.

Everything about this disaster — except the heroic efforts to rescue and recover the victims — has been steeped in politics. And the most calculated political effort has been the posturing and spinning by public officials trying to act commanding while making sure they don’t get pinned with responsibility for the collapse.

To Nick Coleman, everything is political — like the 12-year-old boy who thinks that the Boston Red Socks are the greatest team ever and everything involving the New York Yankees is pure evil, Coleman has his “team” and everything revolves around support that team. Blind partisanship is one thing when it involves baseball, but when it involves more grown-up matters, it’s simply infantile.

The reality remains that we don’t know what caused the bridge to fall — it may have been a design flaw that no amount of money could fix. It may have been a combination of factors, but to Coleman, there’s no sense of waiting for the facts when he can engage in a partisan witch-hunt.

If you think everyone should play nice about it, you are living in Pollyanna Land. We are in a bare-knuckled political brawl in this country, and the government is in the hands of government haters who want to starve it or, in the alleged belief of presidential ally Grover Norquist, want to “drown it.”

You can’t drown government. It is people who drown.

This is a typical left-wing strawman conveniently trotted out: it’s just as idiotic as calling all Democrats closed Bolsheviks that want to nationalize all industry: that sort of silly name-calling is counterproductive and insipid.

Certainly the President who has grown government at a nearly unprecedented rate, who has dramatically expanded entitlement spending, and has constantly rejected the very line which Coleman attributes to him is not the sort of radical anti-government activist that Coleman makes him out to be — but then again, to some, the facts are inconvenient things best ignored.

Again, reality must intercede. There’s no evidence that there was a lack of funding to fix the bridge — but you can’t fix problems that you don’t know exist. It’s clear that the bridge was structurally deficient, but nobody was suggesting it was in dire need of immediate replacement or that it was unsafe for use. There was no lack of funds that kept an unsafe bridge in operation, unlike Coleman’s simplistic partisan tale, but a bridge that was deemed safe that turned out not to be. For Coleman and his ilk, it isn’t a matter of learning the truth, it’s all about pointing fingers.

Coleman is nothing more than a ghoul — using this tragedy as an excuse for flogging his political agenda. Conservatives can point right back and ask why Minnesota government was paying billions for a light-rail boondoggle when bridges were decaying. Why Minnesota government was chipping in for a new stadium for a privately-owned sports team instead of fixing potholes. Why Minnesota government is now demanding more money rather than wisely spending the money that they had.

Conservatives aren’t anti-government zealots, they simply realize that government should be limited to doing the things that government should do — not subsidizing ballparks, blowing money on pet projects, and expanding its own scope. Infrastructure repairs are not politically sexy — no Congressperson gets their picture taken when a bridge is repaired. And as my Second Law of Public Policy states, if there’s no photo-op involved, politicians are far less likely to care.

This state doesn’t need partisan hacks like Nick Coleman. Partisan hackery is why Congress has the sort of approval ratings usually reserved for used-car salesmen and slime molds. What this state needs are real solutions — that means ensuring that the money that government spends is used where it is needed, not where it’s politically convenient. That means more money for road repairs and less for mass transit boondoggles. That means ensuring that our government does the job it must do before spending billions on other projects. That means analytically and dispassionately finding out what really went wrong on that bridge and ensuring that any bridges like it are reinforced or replaced.

Partisan hackery doesn’t build bridges, it burns them. We don’t need people sitting around and turning this tragedy into another idiotic political pissing match. It’s an utter waste of our time and resources.

Politics isn’t about cheerleading for your team, it’s about getting things done, and making excuses for slavish adherence to the political line in the midst of a tragedy is childish. Sadly, the reason we have such a dysfunctional system of government is because some people value pissant politics over real results — and that’s exactly what Nick Coleman stands for.

Disorder In The House

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) has a piece on Democratic House members violating House rules in passing an agricultural bill containing handouts to illegal immigrants. CSPAN happened to catch the incident on their cameras:

Essentially, what the Democrats did was try to change the results of a vote after the vote had been called — one of the most blatantly undemocratic things a party can do. House Republicans are livid over this breach of House rules, as well they should be.

The Democrats have ruled with an arrogance even greater than what they accused the Republicans of doing when the GOP had a majority in Congress. As David Freddoso notes, this sort of thing goes beyond even the chicanery involved in passing the 2003 Medicare bill — changing a vote after the gavel has dropped is absolutely against House procedure.

Nothing will come of this, but it will give political ammunition to the Republicans. With Congress’ approval ratings at a dismal 14-25%, the Democrats shouldn’t be so fast to pretend like they can pull stunts like this. The anti-incumbent sentiment that swept the GOP out of power in 2006 has not gone away, and if the Democrats want to run on the platform that the other side is worse, that won’t do them much better than it did the GOP in the last election cycle.