This Would Be A Good Time Not To Freak Out

So Scott Brown won the race to replace Ted Kennedy as a senator from Massachusetts. It's a bit odd for me to write that sentence, because I have a cousin named Scott Brown, and he isn't in politics, and lives about as far away from Massachusetts as you can in this country (he lives out here in Southern California). He does have a tough job; he does PR for Chrysler.

I have to admit that I didn't see this one coming, but in this respect, I think I am in good company, that company being pretty much every other Democrat in the country. I wasn't following this race until very recently; again, like all my fellow Dems, I suspect. Also like my fellow Dems, I am going to be looking for an explanation, although I am going to try to avoid any kind of intra-party blaming. I am not going to take sides in a moderate-vs.-progressive flame war.

My take on it is that Democrats took the voters of Massachusetts for granted, and if there is one thing that can be said to be an iron law about politics in a democracy, it is that voters hate being taken for granted. It is said that you should not speak ill of the dead, and, of course, a death is a time to remember mostly good things about a person. But I think Democrats, in all their praise of Kennedy, forgot that he was, besides being a great senator, an alcoholic womanizer who got his Senate seat because of his family. My gut tells me that many people voted for a Republican because they really were desperate for a change. I can understand that. I have had many experiences with feeling suffocated by an overwhelming sense of liberal superiority. I went to an elite East Coast liberal arts college in the 80's - I get why lots of people find liberals often insufferably arrogant.

I've also heard that Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign and Scott Brown ran a brilliant one. I didn't follow it, but I'm going to accept that as fact. I don't know the minutiae, and I'm not that interested.

What I am interested in is the future, and I think that still looks good for Democrats. They still have a brilliant and charismatic leader; they still have large majorities in both the House and Senate. What they don't have - yet - is a strong record of accomplishment.

Obama has been compared on many occasions to Reagan, and it's instructive to remember how bad Reagan had it in the early 1980's. Inflation, unemployment, and interest rates were all very high. The recession was horrible. There were serious doubts about the future of this country. Reagan, to his credit, beat inflation, high interest rates, and unemployment. He was also, of course, responsible for a horrible deficit and many other ills. I don't know how much credit goes to Reagan for all of that, and how much goes to people like Paul Volcker, who was chairman of the Fed at the time.

I find the comparison with Reagan apt for another reason: Democrats didn't realize it at the time, but they were losing their ideological legitimacy. America was still in the throes of the post-60's era. Liberals were winning most cultural debates - feminism, civil rights, challenging authority, etc. - but they were losing the battle over the role of government in society. Reagan touched a nerve when he told people that government had gotten too big. It took Democrats several lost elections to realize that. I think they went too far in accommodating conservatives in this regard, but they needed to make a correction.

Today, Obama faces the same challenge: conservatism as an ideology has run out of steam, intellectually, politically, and morally. Obama's problem is that he doesn't have a cadre of people articulating the replacement. That will be the subject of my next post.

Quote of the Day

"Well, no one said it would be easy."

-Andrew Sullivan, in his excellent assessment of Obama's first year. He makes the very good point - which should be obvious - that one of Obama's great achievements this year was preventing a second Great Depression.

He also mentions that the right is furious at Obama because they sense that he is changing the dialogue to a degree similar to how Reagan changed it. Except, of course, that Obama is swinging the pendulum back towards government activism, rather than away from it.

It has been said of FDR that he saved capitalism from itself. I think Obama is doing the same thing - he is preserving capitalism despite the best efforts of capitalists to wreck things.

What is driving conservatives nuts is that Obama is turning out to be better at saving capitalism than Republicans. That's gotta hurt.

Dropouts

Two people just dropped out of political races: Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, withdrew from the race for the Democratic nomination for governor of California. DeDe Scozzafava, the official Republican candidate in NY's 23rd Congressional district, withdrew because of an ideological battle raging in the Republican party between moderates and conservatives. She was losing that battle to the Conservative Party candidate.

Other than the timing, the races are pretty much mirror opposites: one's a Democrat, one's a Republican; they are on different coasts; one dropped out days before the election, the other dropped more than a year before the election. One's a Federal election, but for a single district; the other is a statewide election, but it's California.

Easily the most important difference, tho, is what it says about the politics within each party. Scozzafava was already nominated to be the Republican party nominee in the election; she was ousted by someone who is not technically a Republican. The party of the Establishment was the site of an insurgency. Newsom, on the other hand, withdrew in favor of someone who has not even announced his candidacy yet: Jerry Brown, aka "Governor Moonbeam," a man who could have been described as having an "alternative" approach to governing, had the term been around when he was running California in the late 70's and early 80's. Among Democrats, a man who was at once both a scion of the party (his father was also governor) and a symbol of its flakier elements, is now an elder statesman. As I've always said, irony is 9/10th of the law.

I'm not really going to miss Newsom, although I will miss the competition within the Democratic party. I hadn't spent any time paying attention to his policies yet, but he strikes me, at least from this distance, as smart and competent, but not the most responsible guy around, and not one for reaching out to members of the opposition. The great challenge for the next governor of California is going to be fixing the broken politics of California, which will require rather extraordinary dealmaking skills. Brown has so much history that is so far in the past that even the ghosts of his scandals and strange media interludes have disappeared. He and Linda Ronstadt appeared together on the cover of Newsweek in 1979. There are many voters in California who don't remember this because they weren't born yet. Heck, there are voters in California who don't know who Linda Ronstadt is. A governor dated a mainstream pop star? And the controversy would be . . . ?

There's no word yet on whether or not anyone will rise to challenge Brown. Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of LA, bowed out of the race a while ago, and I don't think he will be tempted to get back in. He seems intent on actually getting the things done that he said he would get done. Dianne Feinstein has wanted the office for literally decades, but she'll also be about 96 when the race starts, and what Democratic Senator would want to leave DC while Obama is in office? Fabian Nunez, former Speaker of the Assembly, is young and ambitious, but he had a bad habit of spending campaign donations on things like "office expenses" at Louis Vuitton in Paris. Not really a great idea.

I know even less about the various personalities involved in the fracas in upstate New York, but boy am I having fun watching it. Doug Hoffman is the nominee of the Conservative party and, now, the Republican one, sort of. So Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty, neither of whom, I am willing to bet, has ever set foot in the district, made announcements about who the representative in Congress should be. This had the rather bizarre effect of pissing off the Republican county leaders in the district, but energizing people on talk radio. That's a neat trick. How welcome do you think Ms. Palin and Mr. Pawlenty are going to be in those Republican county offices in 2012? If Mr. Hoffman loses, they will be persona non grata.

The big winner in all of this so far, even before the election, is President Obama. First, he scored points for bringing a Republican into his cabinet: the former Representative, John McHugh, accepted Obama's invitation to be Secretary of the Army. Now Obama gets to watch Republicans engage in a little fratricide. The icing on the cake, of course, will come if the Democrat wins the election.

Obama and the Olympics

Chicago is not going to host the 2016 summer Olympics. I wasn't terribly surprised; I think I would have been more surprised if Chicago had been chosen. Since 1980, the US has had the Olympics four times: Lake Placid, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City. We are not exactly suffering from a shortage of Olympics in this country, and Brazil made what was to me the very strong argument that it had never been held in South America. Tokyo was another contestant, but it was just held in Beijing, another Asian capital, and the Olympics were held in Tokyo in 1964. Madrid was the European representative, but Barcelona hosted the Olympics in 1992. Rio had to be the prohibitive favorite.

President Obama had campaigned for Chicago, but to no avail. Of course, now people are wondering about the political implications. Conservatives were thrilled that Obama suffered a defeat on the international stage.

But Obama was damned if he did, and damned if he didn't. If he hadn't gone to Copenhagen and Chicago had lost, conservatives would have been critical of him for not making the effort, and they would have blamed him for the loss. They would have said that he doesn't really care about America, that he only wants glory for himself, that the Olympics wouldn't matter to him because he'll be, at best, a lame duck in 2016, etc. If he hadn't gone, and Chicago had won, conservatives would have said that America didn't need his sales pitch, that we can do fine without him. If he had gone and Chicago had won, they would have said he was wasting his time, that Chicago would have won whether or not he was there. Conservatives would have done everything possible to either blame him for the loss, or deny him praise for the victory.

I think most fair-minded people will say that at least Obama gave it a shot. "Fair-minded people" being people who don't automatically hate Barack Obama. Which, in my opinion, is actually the vast majority of the American people.

Regime change in Iran?

Now that we know that Iran has a weapons site dedicated to creating nuclear weapons, Republicans are upset and demanding "regime change." As Josh Marshall points out, that does not necessarily translate into military action. But don't these people ever learn? Didn't our last attempt at "regime change" in that part of the world, and, in fact, next door to Iran, not really work out so well?

Naturally, these Republicans are disdainful of diplomacy. One reason for conservative opposition to diplomacy is increasingly obvious to me: they're not very good at it.

Kyl v. Stabenow

Jon Kyl, Republican senator from Arizona made a bit of a mistake today. Michael Kinsley famously said that a gaffe is what happens when a politician tells the truth. Kyl, in this case, said something that is undeniably true. Speaking of health care and requiring insurance companies to cover certain conditions, he mentioned that he does not need maternity care. So forcing him to pay for it will make his policy more expensive. Good thing he has health insurance - I think he's going to need surgery to extract his foot from his mouth. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when he has to meet with his female staffers. To say nothing of his wife or daughters.

Debbie Stabenow, Democrat senator from Michigan, came right back with the perfect response: "I think your Mom probably did." Wow. She's going to be a feminist hero for the next election cycle. At least. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the next conversation she has with her campaign treasurer. I think she probably got a few clicks of the PayPal button for that line.

But other than a moment of good political theater, this illustrates a couple of things. First, it illustrates that Jon Kyl does not understand the basic principle of insurance: the point is to spread the risk. Of course he can't get pregnant. Of course, he can GET someone pregnant, and if he doesn't believe in paying for maternity care, I think we need to ask him some questions about how he feels about men being responsible fathers. But there's also almost no chance that he will get breast cancer, and there are other diseases that he can't get. There are, however, diseases that he can get that women can't - does that mean that women shouldn't pay for prostate cancer coverage? We do make adjustments for insurance coverage based on things like smoking, but that is a personal choice, not a result of genetics.

Second, it also illustrates a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives. The classic liberal criticism of conservatives is that conservatives are not compassionate. I'm not sure that's the case; I've known some conservatives - notably my grandparents - who cared very deeply for their loved ones. The difference seems to me to be a matter not of compassion, but of imagination. Conservatives do not seem very good at empathizing with someone with a different point of view. This explains why conservatives are very compassionate towards people who are like them, but not so much towards people who are not like them. This is why conservatives are willing to use torture. They feel the pain of people who died on 9/11 - mostly Americans, like themselves - but they do not feel the pain of the people being tortured.

This is also why Jon Kyl doesn't want to pay for maternity care - he doesn't empathize with women who might have to go through childbirth. I have a feeling, however, that he is going to be empathizing with women on this score in short order. There are many, many women who are not going to let him forget this comment. It has to be one of the most sexist things I have heard in a long time.

It feels almost trivial to be pointing this out, but it does seem to highlight a basic difference: liberal brains are wired to empathize with people who different than they are, and conservative brains are wired to empathize with people are similar to them. This applies to "liberal" and "conservative" as we currently understand them in American political discourse; there are philosophical definitions of each that do not necessarily mesh with this distinction.

There are strengths and weaknesses of each; conservatives are more self-reliant, and forge tight bonds with each other, while liberals appreciate differences and are better at forming political allegiances across all kinds of differences. Conservatives don't deal well with people unlike themselves, but liberals can overcompensate and become hypersensitive to differences.

Fortunately for liberals, the ability to understand and empathize with people with different perspectives confers a substantial advantage in politics. Particularly when there are more and more people like that, both in this country and around the world, who are demanding to be treated as equals.

Finally, Some Substance on Health Care

It has taken a while, but we finally have some substantive discussions going on about health care. A real, honest-to-goodness Canadian writes in The Denver Post about the differences between the US and Canadian health care systems (thanks to my Uncle Lenny for forwarding it to me). Bottom line: Canada spends less money for better health. She takes apart all of the myths about the Canadian system. My response is simple: ADT (About Damn Time). Most of the stories and myths about Canadian health care that I've heard are strictly anecdotal, the "I heard about this one guy who came to America because he couldn't get the surgery that he needed in Canada" variety. So it's nice to see some myths debunked.

Of course, many conservatives will dismiss this out of hand, but it will also give liberals more ammunition, make them more confident, and maybe even convince a few independents. Probably the strongest point in the piece is the one about doctors not needing any kind of pre-authorization to practice the medicine that they think is appropriate.

I have a question for conservatives about health care in Canada. Supposedly lots of Canadians are unhappy about health care in Canada, and they are coming to the United States. Where exactly are all these Canadian? Presumably they're coming across the border to Seattle, Detroit, Buffalo, and other border cities. Can we please get some statistics from conservatives proving that Canadians are coming to the US en masse for health care? Because if we can't get those statistics, I'm going to call it a myth.

Next, Patrick Appel, who is performing quite ably in the absence of his boss, Andrew Sullivan, writes a superb post about malpractice insurance and tort reform. This is another bogeyman of the right, largely derived from anecdotal evidence: there are too many frivolous lawsuits from ambulance-chasing lawyers, and the result of all those lawsuits is that malpractice insurance rates are going through the roof, which drives up health care costs. Maybe not so much.

Malpractice payments account for less than 1% of the nation's health care costs each year. Since 1987 medical malpractice insurance costs have risen just 52% despite the fact that medical costs have increased 113%. The size of malpractice damage awards has remained steady since 1991. Adjusted for inflation, the average malpractice payment has actually decreased since then. The number of payments for malpractice judgments of $1 million or more has never exceeded one-half of one percent of the annual total number of malpractice payments dating back to 1991.

The specific subject of the post is tort reform in Texas, which was supposed to solve the problem by limiting the size of malpractice awards. It hasn't, and there hasn't been the promised reduction in health care costs. The basic idea, which we also have in California, is that certain awards for damages in these suits are limited. The idea is that if the insurance company only pays out $250,000, instead of $5 million, malpractice premiums will decline. It hasn't worked out that way. The unintended consequence is that it is now more difficult for some patients to sue, because it's not worth it for the lawyers to sue, since there is a cap on how much money they can make.

I've always thot that the solution to absurdly high malpractice awards is to implement a better solution for disciplining doctors. Appel quotes a reader who wrote in with stats about how many doctors are disciplined. It's not much. Physician, heal thyself.

We owe Sarah Palin and the other wackjobs on the right a big thank you, because their ranting and raving have finally brought these arguments out of the woodwork. Rationality will eventually prevail, but it takes longer to deploy calmly constructed arguments than it does to throw out insane lies and bizarre innuendo. Palin, Glenn Beck, et al. have a slight advantage in this debate in terms of timing, because it takes them no time whatsoever to make something up and throw it out into the public discourse. Liberals, on the other hand, have to take the time to actually think and research and write. Fortunately, liberal arguments end up being much more persuasive, at least to people willing to listen to them.

Where Were the Tea-Baggers During Bush?

Wendy Kaminer at The Atlantic asks a good question: "What Constitutes A Police State?" Lots of the people protesting against Obama are making the bizarre and absurd claims that he is trying to impose some kind of a police state. This would be laughable if there weren't so many of these people, and they weren't so serious. The fact that many of them are carrying guns is also a little worrisome.

But where were these people during the Bush administration?

Driving civil libertarians crazy is probably not a goal of this month's town hall protesters, but it may be one of their signal achievements. Having openly applauded, tacitly supported, or simply ignored the Bush/Cheney national security state and the unprecedented expansion of unaccountable executive power, the right wing now defends freedom against the spectre (and it is only a spectre) of universal health care?

Of course, the real threat from Obama is that he might affect their God-given right to all the health care they can get, and their right to buy and keep all the guns that they want.

How do the town hall protests define repression? Apparently it comprises any government regulation perceived as a threat to any constitutional right or federally mandated benefit that the protesters enjoy.

All of this is fairly obvious to me, but it's nice to see it all put together in one piece.

Health Care: Who Will Take Care Of You?

One basic divide in the health care reform debate is a simple question: who will take care of you? Will it be the government, your company, your family, you, your doctor, your insurance company, or something else? How you answer that question defines where you stand on this issue. If you think government is or will be more capable of taking care of you, you're probably in favor of the "public option," and you're probably a liberal Democrat. If you think the government will completely botch your health care, and let you rot and waste away, but you trust your company or your insurance company, you're probably opposed to Obama's plan, and in favor of the status quo.

This is one thing I haven't heard from Obama, and that I wish I did: his plan is about giving you the option to choose who will take care of you. If you think your insurance company will take care of you, great, stick with them. If you think the government can do a better job of it, then we want to give you that option. Obama and his minions, like Kathleen Sebelius, do keep on repeating the line about "choice and competition," but it's starting to sound like a cliche. Here's how I would sell it: we believe in giving Americans the greatest possible freedom to choose who will take care of them. Liberals deserve their choice, conservatives deserve their choice.

The hard part of the sales job, but one of the most rewarding, would be reminding people that the reason they have any freedom in the first place is because of their government. Freedom is not something that you just wake up to every morning; it has to be fought for and won, and it has been. By the government of the United States of America. This is the same government that gives its citizens freedom of speech, of assembly, and of religion.

Conservatives like to think of freedom these days in terms of how far they can distance themselves from government; freedom means being free of regulation, of "Big Brother," etc. This would be a good time to remind them that it is government that gives them their freedom in the first place, and that doing so requires a great deal of hard work, and an equal amount of deep and difficult thinking.

Ignoring the Whole Foods Boycott

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal about health care reform. Many liberals were upset about some of his ideas, and are proposing to boycott Whole Foods.

I actually agree with this right wing commentator, that a boycott of Whole Foods is ridiculous. Full disclosure: I worked at Whole Foods for several months. I was only there on probation, I was never fully hired. But I liked it, I still admire the company, and I still shop there. I realize that the prices aren't the most consumer-friendly, but I love the atmosphere, and their mac and cheese is to die for.

I object to the boycott of Whole Foods for one reason: I object to the idea of boycotting a company over the expression of ideas of one of its employees, even if it is the CEO. I make a clear distinction between the expression of ideas of one of a company's employees, and the company's practices. I have no problem boycotting a company over the practices of the corporation as a whole. For example, if I ever have an opportunity to boycott Blackwater, I'll probably do it in a heartbeat. But, then again, I seriously doubt I will ever have the opportunity to even consider spending money with Blackwater, so that's mostly besides the point.

For me, this is a test of tolerance. John Mackey is perfectly free to express his ideas. I don't agree with all of them, but some I find somewhat intriguing, like this one:

- Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

That makes sense to me. One of the biggest problems with healthcare right now is the consolidation of the healthcare insurance industry. I'm all in favor of more competition here. He also endorses Medicare reform, which I might agree with if he had provided any kind of detail. His ideas mostly run to the conservative side of the argument, which is not surprising for an Op-Ed in the WSJ, but is somewhat surprising for someone many of whose customers are dyed-in-the-wool liberals. This article may be reasonable from a political perspective, or at least not extremist, but maybe not such a great idea from a marketing angle. But just on the basis of content, I don't see much worth boycotting here.

Beyond the content, boycotting Whole Foods because the CEO wrote an Op-Ed you disagree with is just childish. A boycott is the LBO (large blunt object) of a debate - it's a baseball bat as opposed to a scalpel. If you're claiming to have a superior argument, the best way to prove that is to present a better argument, which would presumably be a more nuanced one, as well. There's not much subtlety in a call for a boycott.

A boycott is also a terrible idea tactically, because it deprives you of the opportunity to engage the other in a meaningful debate. You are therefore depriving yourself of an opportunity to prove the other person wrong. A boycott should be a weapon of absolutely last resort, when all other reasonable means of persuasion have failed. It should not be the first thing that comes to mind. It is, unfortunately, a great example of a knee-jerk reaction.

I think Mackey's great mistake here is that the article just isn't very well-written. He starts out with a quote from Margaret Thatcher. Again, not surprising for the WSJ, but also again, a great way to piss off the kind of people who shop at Whole Foods. Doesn't this company employ PR people? I can see giving the man points for principle, if he's willing to alienate customers to air his true beliefs, but I also think that's a fairly stupid management practice.

He touts Whole Foods' approach to health care. All well and good, and expected from a CEO. Pat yourself on the back for treating your employees well - that's what CEOs are supposed to do: promote the company. I didn't stick around long enough to partake of the health insurance, but that's just me. I do remember that the employee stock ownership plans were quite popular.

But then he crosses the line in two places. First, he claims that there is no "right" to health care. That's a philosophical issue, not just a policy debate. Here he's opening himself up to the charge that, as someone who never has to worry about whether or not he can afford health care, he is denying to others what is available to him just as a function of his individual wealth. That makes him look heartless and cold. He writes:

A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America

Apparently he missed the parts about the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and the line about about how we the people came together in order to form a more perfect union to, among other things, "promote the general welfare." I'm not sure how he missed that last part if he claims that he read the Constitution closely - it is, after all, in the Preamble. Personally, I think helping our fellow citizens take care of their health, particularly when they themselves are unable to do so, is a key part of "promoting the general welfare" through a "more perfect union." Maybe I'm just a bleeding heart liberal.

Mackey's biggest mistake, however, was in the final part of the piece, when he mixes two things he so far hasn't, and really shouldn't: marketing his own company, and articulating his own personal political philosophy. He tells us that a key part of health care reform is eating healthy and taking care of ourselves. All well and good - except that he writes it in a way that - surprise! strongly suggests we would do well to shop at Whole Foods. So we should all be free to make our own choices, but we should also be responsible, and we should make our own choices about how to be responsible in a way that directly benefits Mr. John Mackey.

Someone call Ron Paul - he now has competition for Best Libertarian. Oddly enough, however, Mr. Mackey's libertarianism has a puritanical streak - everyone should do what they want, but they should listen to my advice about how they should live their lives. It seems like Mackey really can't decide whether or not he is a free-market conservative or a do-gooder liberal. Finessing that contradiction, of course, makes perfect sense for the CEO of Whole Foods - he believes in giving people the power to do the right thing for themselves, and he believes in his right to make a profit by doing so. It works perfectly fine as the guiding principle of a corporation. It does not work as the guiding principle of government, because government exists in large part so that we may do things collectively that we cannot do as individuals, and that we cannot do collectively at a profit.

I still have a great deal of respect for John Mackey as the CEO of a company. Well, maybe a little less, now that I have reason to question his politics/marketing savvy. But this is just one episode, and Whole Foods is still a great place to shop for certain things. But if I were Mr. Mackey, I would spend some good money on a better PR firm and a political consultant who has a good grasp of how to explain libertarian concepts, particularly to liberals, without sounding like a pompous, arrogant, self-serving jerk.

Healthcare Reform: Latest Battle Of The Culture Wars

I haven't been blogging much about healthcare reform because it has felt overwhelming. It's an all-or-nothing proposition. Part of my feeling has been that this healthcare reform bill will set the stage for other reform efforts. This establishes the framework, but there will be lots of opportunities for changes later on.

Now that we are in the final stages, it feels like a good time to step up to the plate. The policy details are out there and are being hashed out in Congress, mostly the Senate Finance Committee at this point.

Outside of Washington, the debate is getting nasty, with some very loud protesters from the right shouting down their opponents. The right is arguing that these people are just upset. Andrew Sullivan noted the lack of attention to detail in these protests:

Look: if these people were yelling: "End the employer tax break!" or "More Cost-Controls!" or "Malpractice Reform!" I'd be more sympathetic. But this is blind panic and rage.

The protesters don't care about the policy details of healthcare reform because for them, this is not about healthcare reform. This is the latest battle of the culture wars.

Conservatives have lost just about every battle of the culture wars since the 1960's. They lost the battle over civil rights; a black man is now president. They lost the battle over feminism; a woman was a major-party candidate for president. They are losing the battle over immigration and assimilation; a Hispanic woman was just confirmed for the Supreme Court. They have lost the battle over abortion. They have lost the battle over separation of church and state, particularly in the classroom. They have lost the battle over gay rights, and, although they have won most of the battles over gay marriage, they will lose that battle over the long term. They have lost the battle over traditional family structure and sex in general. They have lost the battle over basic cultural norms. They have lost the battle over environmentalism.

About the only battles conservatives have won have been over gun control, crime, capitalism vs. socialism/communism, taxes, and lower regulation. But Democrats have largely given up trying to win the gun control debate, crime is down, and no one has cared about the capitalism/communism divide for years. Conservatives are still winning the battle over taxes, but it's turning out to be a Pyrrhic victory, as deficits are soaring and states can't balance their budgets. Lower regulation led to a loosening of standards, which allowed financial predators to take advantage of too many consumers, and wreaked havoc with financial institutions. Conservatives lost the foreign policy culture wars - diplomacy vs. "peace through strength" when Bush & Co. completely botched Iraq. There's still free trade, but that's not popular with anyone right now.

This is why the healthcare debate is so heated. This is not about healthcare. When conservatives scream about "government," they are screaming about liberals and what they feel is liberal control of government. Of course, since liberals actually believe in making government work properly, conservatives are justified in feeling that liberals have more influence over government. Funny how that works - people who take something seriously and want to improve it tend to have more faith in it.

Conservatives feel besieged because they have lost the culture wars on so many fronts. William F. Buckley famously said that the purpose of conservatism was to stand athwart history and yell "Stop!" But of course history doesn't stop, and to pretend otherwise is to set yourself up for constant disappointment.

Several commentators have pointed out the irony of older people, who are presumably on Medicare, a successful government medical program, protesting "government takeover of healthcare." They are not protesting government takeover of healthcare. They are protesting government, period. They are channeling years of frustration at losing so much ground to liberals in so many aspects of life in general. Years and years of built-up vitriol is spewing out over this one issue.

It doesn't help that conservatives haven't had a successful president since Reagan. They're frustrated that W. was such a failure, but they can't take their frustration out on him or the GOP, so they take it out on Obama.

It also doesn't help that so many conservative policies have failed. Cutting taxes is supposed to lead to higher economic growth, which therefore makes up for the taxes lost when they are cut. That's the original justification of supply-side economics, and it has been a miserable failure. Nation-building in Iraq? Uh, no.

The one thing that might make a difference for conservatives, that might make it easier for them to be civil when engaging in the debate about healthcare, would be if they had any good alternatives. But they don't. This just adds to the feeling of helplessness. It's impossible to deny that healthcare costs are spiraling out of control, particularly when the victims are so many business owners. But who are conservatives going to use as the target for their anger? Drug companies? Insurance companies? Those are supposed to be examples of the free market at work. They can vent at lawyers, a key Democrat constituency, and their penchant for suing for malpractice, but even taking on that won't solve every part of the problem with rising healthcare costs.

So they invent reasons to be angry. Sarah Palin makes the incredibly bizarre - even for her - claim that Obama's plan will result in government bureaucrats euthanizing her Down's syndrome baby. This is beyond ludicrous, but she apparently believes it. This has no relation whatsoever to reality. None. But this debate is no longer about reality for Sarah Palin and other conservatives. It's about trying to retain some shred of dignity as liberals win yet another victory.

The solution, and I'm sure Obama knows this, is to stay calm and cool. Let them freak out. Let them make fools of themselves. At some point a healthcare reform bill will pass. It won't be perfect. Lots of liberals will bemoan the lack of some feature or other. But it will pass, it will start to change how we deal with healthcare in this country, and then we will start to debate about how to change it.

All's Well That Ends Well: Obama, Gates, Crowley

Talk about not wasting a good crisis: by inviting Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Sgt. James M. Crowley over to the White House for a beer, Obama not only turned this into a "teachable moment," he made everybody, including himself, into a good guy.

One bad thing about a situation like this is that it's incredibly easy for everyone to be right, and therefore to see the other guy as wrong. One good thing about a situation like this is that it's incredibly easy for everyone to be wrong, and therefore to prove the other guy as right. It's easy to question why a man would be handcuffed in his own house; it's just as easy to question why that man would raise his voice to a cop.

One problem may have been that egos and respect were working on monumentally different time scales. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a professor at Harvard, has worked very hard for his entire life to establish himself as an eminent scholar of African-American studies, and is therefore both personally and professionally heavily invested in the idea of raising the profile of African Americans. In terms of respect, particularly from a representative of mainstream society like a cop, he thinks in terms of years, lifetimes, generations, centuries.

But Sgt. James M. Crowley is thinking in terms of minutes and seconds. When something goes wrong on a cop's beat, there is an implicit possibility that he or she has failed in their duty to protect the neighborhood. For most people, the difference between when they make a mistake at their job and when they are held accountable for it may be hours, days, or weeks. For a cop on the beat, it may be instant.

These perspectives intersected and clashed partially because each of them was caught in the other's timeframe: the professor, thinking in terms of lifetimes, was caught up in an instant; the cop, acting at a moment's notice, ended up arresting one man who suddenly represented millions.

Obama was caught in the crossfire because he is expected to exist in both worlds, and think in terms of both moments and generations, often at the same time. He has to react as fast as the cop to a question posed at a press conference; he has think in terms as grand as the professor while doing so.

Fortunately for all of us, Obama realized that this wasn't just a zero-sum game; it was potentially a negative-sum game. It could have easily turned into constant recrimination, blame, and charges of racism and elitism. The setting was perversely perfect for partisan inflammation, taking place as it did in Cambridge, ground zero for conservatives' claims of liberal elitism. By refusing to blame either, Obama gave each of them something only he could do: permission for both of them to be right. The decision to invite them over for a beer has a nice symbolic value: alcohol is, after all, a mind-altering substance, a symbol of male bonding, and a great way to relax. Let's hope Obama buys a six-pack of the most famous beer from Boston: Sam Adams.

Obama and the "Birthers"

One rumor/conspiracy theory that has consistently plagued Obama has been the idea that he is not a United States citizen, and therefore not the legitimate President of the United States. Some people believe that he was not born in Hawaii, as birth certificate clearly indicates. I'm not going to bother to link to that birth certificate, first of all because its easy to find, but, second, because, even if I did, members of the "birther" movement don't believe that it's real.

One objection to this idea is obvious: where's the counter-evidence? If he wasn't born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, where was he born? Birthers, of course, will answer that the fact there is no evidence of him being born somewhere else is just proof of a very effective conspiracy of silence.

It seems utterly illogical for millions of people to dismiss clear and obvious physical evidence of such a simple fact. But there is a certain reasoning behind it. Twisted and bizarre reasoning, but reasoning nonetheless.

One of the basic problems with American democracy is that every four years, a new president is elected who has been chosen by a large chunk of the populace, but who has also been rejected a large - but (usually) smaller - chunk of the populace. So the people who rejected the president have to deal with the fact that their understanding of reality clashes with that of tens of millions of their friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens. This requires some occasionally painful mental adjustments. The most difficult such adjustment led to the Civil War.

Liberals have had a particularly difficult time of this of late. From for the 40 years from 1968 to 2008, a Democrat occupied the White House for just 12 years. Democrats developed what was, for me, an unfortunate coping mechanism. It usually boiled down to a simple phrase: "The American people are stupid." Ronald Reagan and the George Bushes, particularly the latter one, were not great men, and Reagan and W were not very bright. The only kind of people who could vote for someone stupid like this must be stupid themselves. But they were elected by a majority of the American people (except in 2000). Therefore the American people must be stupid.

That idea seriously rubbed me the wrong way for a long time. I don't like intellectually condescending attitudes like that because they're obnoxious and wrong, but also because they are highly counterproductive politically. It just doesn't work all that well to say to someone "You're really stupid, would you please consider voting for my candidate or supporting my cause?" This is why Democrats developed a reputation for being arrogant elitists.

As unfortunate as that attitude may have been, at least it was within the bounds of normal political discourse. It may be disrespectful to dismiss a whole class of people as beneath you intellectually, but at least it's not completely deranged.

The birthers are rational in their own way. The problem is that they won't admit their reasonings, because they're deeply offensive. A fair amount of this reaction, if not most of it (or all) can be attributed, in my opinion, to racism. Certain people just don't want to admit that a black man is president. Casting doubts about his legitimacy is a way of expressing fundamental opposition to his presidency without looking like you are racist. The fact that the circumstances of Obama's birth - a foreign father, a young mother, born in the newest state, literally on the geographic fringes of America, both parents dead, an interracial marriage at a time when that was illegal in many states, no other children from that marriage, which dissolved fairly quickly, and then a childhood spent in a Muslim country - Indonesia - that most Americans couldn't find on a map. Most unfortunately, for Obama, the details of his birth, parentage, and childhood play into conspiracy theorists' hands almost perfectly.

What must drive the birthers absolutely nuts, however, is that for members of Generation X, Obama's history isn't all that unusual. A romance between an American and a foreign exchange student? The details may be different, but I doubt there is a teenage boy in America who hasn't been intrigued by a girl in his high school/college/hometown with a foreign accent (for the cinematic version, see Shannon Elizabeth in American Pie). Years spent in a foreign country? That goes on the resume. It's also great cocktail party conversation. All of the things that make Obama a foreigner, strange, "other," for the nutjobs on the rights are accidents of birth that make him cool for Generation X, Y, the millenials, and the hipper Boomers.

For the GOP, the "birthers" represent a major problem. This is an excellent example of my Assholes and Idiots Theory. Leaders in the GOP are completely failing to contain these people. It's just not a good idea to let complete lunacy infect a party trying to come up with anything resembling a coherent governing philosophy.

At some point, some Republican leader - or at least some Republican elected official - is going to have to stand up to these folks. My suspicion is that it will be one of the senators from Maine, Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe. They're both moderates, so they have room to alienate hardcore conservatives. At least they're moderates in today's GOP. They're both fairly secure in office. As Republican women senators, they are familiar with being slightly outside the political mainstream. They represent a very old state, with deep Yankee traditions. There would be a certain geographic irony of either of them defending the birth of someone born as far away as possible in the U.S. from their state.

It might be John McCain. He, after all, had his own issues with being eligible for president because of his birth - he was born in the Panama Canal Zone (to American parents). He's still got that whole "maverick" thing going on, occasionally. It could be a matter of honor for him to defend the man who defeated him.

Somehow or other, these people have to be contained.

Daily Kos hate mail: a classic

Kos has a great feature that he's been running for a couple of months. Every Saturday, he collects the most abusive hate mail that he has received that week, and posts it, thereby holding up various conservative idiots for ridicule. I think it's a brilliant strategy. One of Kos' great virtues as an activist is that he makes it clear that he thinks progressives/liberals/Democrats should not be afraid of conservatives/Republicans, and he makes it equally clear that he has nothing but disdain for liberals who ARE afraid of conservatives. I strongly agree with him on this, and am very thankful that he makes this effort. Every now and then I think he's a tad intemperate, but that's trivial.

In these posts, he usually has a solid collection of incoherent screeds, riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, almost always including some gay bashing. The last couple of weeks have been a little thin - apparently word has gotten out that sending Kos this kind of garbage does not do the Fox News causes a lot of good. But this week he got a classic. It reminds me of a contest I heard about years ago. The idea was to create the ultimate tabloid newspaper headline. I think the winner said something about an alien having Elvis's baby on the moon (plus other elements) - they managed to work in just about every National Enquirer cliche. This email works in just about every hate mail cliche possible. Great entertainment value. Kos also includes a poll about this email, just for added fun.

GM, Chrysler closing dealerships

GM and Chrysler are closing lots and lots of dealerships, roughly 2,000, all told.

No one is surprised by this. Many people have known for years that GM and Chrysler have too many dealerships. GM has several thousand more dealers than Toyota, but sells roughly the same number of cars.

From a political perspective, what's bizarre about this is that this failure is actually an argument for the conservative principle that excessive government regulation is bad for the economy. In this case, dealers across the country were protected by state and local laws that made it difficult for them to be closed. Dealers obviously wanted to be protected from the vagaries of the market. The free market. So they relied on government regulation to protect them. And yet I somehow don't think that many of them were Democrats.

My guess is that many of these dealerships were profitable for themselves, but not profitable for GM and Chrysler. Let's say you have a dealership that has been around in rural Kentucky for 50 years. The dealership probably owns the land and the building, so there is no mortgage or rent. That saves a large chunk of overhead right there. They probably have a great credit history, so their cost of capital is low. They pay taxes, sponsor Little League teams, and are generally good citizens in the local community. The police department buys their cars from this dealer. The wife of the dealer is on the board of the local hospital. So that dealership has no incentive to close, even if they are not profitable from the perspective of the manufacturers. But they and the local politicians have every incentive to make it difficult for any car manufacturer to close them.

When a parent does too much to protect their child from the unpleasantness of the real world by, for example, buying them expensive toys or paying their rent after they have graduated from college, we say that the child is spoiled.

It's a very harsh thing to say, but these dealers were basically spoiled children. Their parents, GM and Chrysler, were protecting them from the unpleasantness of the real by absorbing their costs, by, for example, taking their unsold cars back.

The great irony is that if everyone involved had let the free market work properly, many of these dealers probably would have gone out of business a long time ago, and others would have either taken up their business or bought them out. The process of winnowing out the unprofitable dealers would have been much slower, but also much less painful. Instead of taking place over years, however, the process is now taking place over months. If dealers had gone out of business when GM and Chrysler were financially healthy, they could have individually negotiated good buyouts from them. GM and Chrysler could have easily handled 50 to 100 or 200 dealers closing over the last 10 or 15 years. At $1million a pop, 200 dealers would be $200 million a year. That's probably what GM spends on laptops in a given year. Or, rather, spent.

But now that Chrysler is in bankruptcy, with GM likely to follow, the dealers may get nothing or very little. Bankruptcy changes the game. Imagine a spoiled child whose parent is suddenly unemployed. The kid's support is cut off, but she is totally unprepared for it, having never had to worry about it before. So she whines and complains and slams her fists. Guess what the Chrysler and GM dealers are doing.

I don't have a lot of sympathy. Yes, it sucks that many people who were responsible, hardworking people will lose their jobs. I have sympathy for them. They've done everything right, and now they are victims of forces beyond their control. But so are all of us.

But I don't have much sympathy for the dealers. They knew the rules of the game: if you open a business, you agree to play by the rules of capitalism. One of those rules is that the better competitor will win.

If this is an example of the conservative idea that excessive regulation is bad for markets, it is also an example of one of the core failings of conservatism. Conservatives argue that the free markets work because individuals are allowed to act according to their own best interests, and they understand what those best interests are better than the government.

What this argument ignores is that in every capitalist transactions, there is both competition and cooperation; the parties both have an interest in common, and an interest in conflict. If I buy a car, the car dealer and I both have an interest in me buying a car. But the dealer has an interest in charging me the highest price possible, while I have an interest in paying the lowest price possible. So each of us has an interest in distorting the rules governing the transaction to fit our needs. The dealer has an interest in blocking competition; this is why we have antitrust laws. I may have an interest in hiding the fact that I have, for example, a bad credit score, or the fact that I just lost my job (speaking hypothetically here).

That's what happened here: the dealers distorted the free market. They acted according to their own best self-interest. But what was in their best self-interest was contrary to the best self-interest of the car manufacturers. The manufacturers didn't object, because they had no reason to suspect that they would have to close down several hundred dealers all at once. They assumed this because they assumed that the free market would work as it is supposed to. Which, ironically, it did. Just not the way conservative theorists think it does.

The final irony is that this is one of the basic organizing principles of liberalism. Markets encourage efficiency, but, left to their own devices, capitalists will distort just about any market. One essential purpose of government is to regulate competition so that the distortions do not ultimately cause the markets to cease functioning properly. In this sense, the government is taking a capitalist role: the government represents the people in the country as a whole acting in the best interests of the country as a whole. There is no other mechanism for all of the people in a particular area, or affected by a particular industry, to act according to their own best interests, except through government.

So conservatives are right: if free markets had been allowed to work perfectly, this would not have happened. But conservatives are the starry-eyed idealists here, who live in their own fantasy land. Liberals are the grounded realists, and, essentially, the better capitalists.

I've said it once, I'll say it again: Irony is 9/10th of the law.

Hoping for a conservative "Sister Souljah" moment

Andrew Sullivan asks a question about conservatives - who will "Sister Souljah" them? It's a good question - regardless of what you think about Clinton's "Sister Souljah" moment, he went on to win the presidency. Twice.

He has a dream:

I'm waiting for the first leading Republican to do to these grandstanding goons what Clinton once did to the extremists in his own ranks: reject them, excoriate them, remind people that they do not have a monopoly on conservatism and that decent right-of-center people actually find their vision repellent. And then to articulate a positive vision for taking this country forward, expanding liberty, exposing corruption, reducing government's burden, unwinding ungovernable empire, and defending civic virtue without going on Jihads against other people's vices.

Who will take care of this? Who will marginalize these idiots?

The answer is simple. Someone with a chance of winning. Clinton was able to criticize a black woman because he had a very good record on civil rights, so he could legitimately claim that he was disagreeing with the content of Sister Souljah's comments, not being subtly racist. The conservative who can do the same will be someone who has a solid conservative record, but is also attractive to the mainstream, and has a chance to win a major race, like a governor's race, if not the presidency.

Who is this person? Where are they? We may not know that for a long time. Years, at the very least.

Did they have Darjeeling at the tea parties?

There were tea parties across the country today. Not the kind with scones and raspberry jam. These tea parties were supposed to remind people of the original Boston Tea Party, the one that started the American Revolution. Except that these people have taxation WITH representation, so it's not clear what the parallel is.

The big liberal blogs have been all over the story all day. Daily Kos provides a comparison with the original. TPM has a great photo gallery of some of the protests. HuffPost had several posts.

The point of all these is to protest taxes and the government in general and Obama. From some of the pictures, these protests attracted a fair people from the fringe of the radical right.

Andrew Sullivan tried to take these protesters seriously. He linked to an incredibly cool graphic of exactly how and on what the federal government spends money. He summed up the salient point well:

it seems odd to describe this as anything but a first stab at creating opposition to the Obama administration's spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush's.
. . .
All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed as performance artists in a desperate search for coherence in an age that has left them bewilderingly behind.

It's almost trivial to describe these protesters as whackjobs. Obama is a fascist/socialist? Huh? There were people on the left who used that kind of language to describe Bush. Both Bushes. And they were ignored, particularly the second time around, even though W. was a much worse president than his father. They were ignored because the vast majority of liberals and Democrats - the 99% who are sane, rational people - realized that the crazies tainted the movement. Apparently the right did not learn this lesson.

I'm going to imagine for a moment that these folks are serious about cutting spending. Where have they been for the last 8 years? One of the largest items in the budget is interest on the debt. At the end of the Clinton administration, we were running a surplus. If we had kept doing that, we would have eliminated a huge chunk of the interest we pay on our debt, which would have made cutting taxes or dealing with this financial crisis even easier. Somehow this never comes up.

If these folks really wanted to cut the budget, they would have protested against Bush. But of course they didn't. And now that Obama is in office, with the horrendous problems he inherited from Bush, they're blaming him? Please.

They're angry about government spending, but of course they couldn't protest Bush, because they somehow see themselves as agreeing with him, even though he did the opposite of what they believe in. So Bush pissed them off, but they couldn't protest against him, so they are taking all their anger that was inspired by Bush, and aiming it at Obama.

Can you say dysfunctional?

This feels like one of those moments at a party when someone does something really embarrassing but doesn't realize it, so everyone else pastes uncomfortable smiles on their faces, waits for the moment to pass, and then doesn't say anything. Until maybe a few days later, when there is a hushed whisper here and there. And eventually the person somehow doesn't get invited to quite as many parties. Right now, many, many Republicans are incredibly embarrassed by this spectacle, but they're not saying anything, and they won't for a while. At least not in public. But this will have a strong impact on how many people vote.

What's unfortunate for those mainstream Republicans is that events like the ones today are great networking events. Thousands and thousands of business cards and phone numbers and emails were exchanged at these parties today. Which means that we have not heard the end of the tea partiers. It took many years and several devastating electoral defeats before the Democrats finally dealt with their nutcases. As Sullivan keeps writing, it is going to get worse before it gets better.

Obama is a socialist: discuss, debate, or ridicule?

Conservatives keep trying to call Obama a socialist. This is, of course, ludicrous. I don't know the precise definition of "socialism." And I'm not going to try to find out what it is, because I seriously doubt that there is one definition of "socialism." For now, let's just say that "socialism" means the government controls at least some of the means of production in a country, and heavily regulates the rest. Right now there is a raging debate about whether or not banks should be nationalized. I don't know.

What I do know is that Obama is not a socialist. He is not interested in the government controlling or owning large companies. Not his cup of tea. Harold Meyerson of the WaPo, and once upon a time of the LA Weekly, has a great and wonderful column about this topic, with some of the history of socialism in this country, and some of the history of socialism used by Republicans as a slander against Democrats. Meyerson argues, quite convincingly, that the villains in this drama are capitalists. Then again, it's easy to be quite convincing when the arguments in your favor consist of most of what's happening in the world.

So, for conservatives searching for the culprits behind this transformation of capitalism: Despite our best efforts, it wasn't Bernie [Sanders] and it wasn't me. It was your own damn system.

But don't worry, he reminds us, Obama, like FDR before him, will save capitalism from itself. After which salvation, of course, conservatives will be just as ungrateful as ever.

One aspect of this attempt to pummel Obama with this vaguely ominous criticism is that they seem to be using it because their standard bogeyman for years - "liberal" - apparently is no longer working. Maybe the fact that Obama is not in the least bit afraid of being called a liberal has something to do with it.

Conservatives have their own definition of "socialist." It is roughly this: a socialist is someone who is going to take things from me - my money, my freedom, my guns, my superior socioeconomic position bestowed upon me by the accident of birth - and give it to someone less deserving. That "less deserving person" is someone who they think don't works as hard as they do, and who whines a lot.

The irony of their own status as whiners is utterly lost on conservatives. As are many instances of irony.

Obama and conservatives, Part I

President Obama has moved very decisively in the first few days of his presidency to undo the legacy of the Bush Administration. How decisively he has moved I do not think has been appreciated. Scott Horton at Harper's has a good description of the impact (it's also nice to be able to link to Harper's, which has not been quite as pervasive a presence on the Web as The Atlantic).

On the other hand, even as Obama reaches out to traditional conservatives, he smacks the neoconservatives across the face, defining them and their conduct as far outside the mainstream of American culture.

He cites Obama's line from his inaugural speech that

We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

I thot this was one of the best lines of the speech. Horton makes an excellent distinction between "traditional conservatives" and "neoconservatives." Traditional conservatives believe very strongly in the rule of law; neoconservatives, not so much. At least "neoconservatism" as we have seen it the last few years. Traditional conservatism is not dead, but traditional conservatives have not had something or someone that they could believe in besides George W. Bush. Most of them still don't trust traditional liberals. By governing resolutely from the center, Obama gives those traditional conservatives permission to believe in him. They place a high value on values like competence and the wisdom that comes from experience. Obama offers this in spades.

Very little has been noted about the cultural difference between Obama and Clinton that stems from their personality differences. One reason that conservatives didn't like Bill Clinton is that, in terms of his personality, he was very much a child of the '60's, in two respects in particular: although he works very hard, he is not particularly personally disciplined, and he is sexually promiscuous.

Obama, on the other hand, is not a child of the 60's - he wasn't there when students were marching in the streets. He has moderate and average personal tastes. He and Michelle are not prolifigate in any way, and they obviously have a wonderful, solid, traditional marriage. It doesn't hurt that it's obvious why Barack is in love with Michelle - she's tall, beautiful, brilliant, and emotionally very secure. She's a good mother. What's not to love?

So Obama's cultural baggage - or lack thereof - combined with his "traditional" view of American government - i.e., a firm belief in the rule of law - renders him a perfectly acceptable figure for many "traditional conservatives."

Republicans have not yet figured this out. And they aren't going to figure it out for a while. Ha!

Bush's Top Ten Mistakes - from a conservative perspective

Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, has a list of George Bush's Top Ten Mistakes. I found it at the Washington Times Website, so you know it's conservative squared. One of his points is that Bush had "An ineffective management style." Wow. Some reality from a conservative talking about Bush. Maybe there is some hope. He also believes that Bush made a mistake by "[n]ot taking charge during Katrina." Guess all those millions of Americans expressing horror at Bush's disastrous handling of that disaster penetrated Lowry's ideological armor.

And there's more:
"Not reading enough history." So maybe there is something to this desire for a well-educated, articulate, intellectually curious president.

"Underestimating the power of explanation." Whoa! Again with the yearning for an intellectually engaging leader.

"Ignoring health-care reform too long." This is icing on the cake. An actual disappointment about a key policy initiative.

Lowry's conclusion reveals his own delusions:

Oddly enough for a president denounced as an executive monster by his perfervid critics, many of Mr. Bush's mistakes involve not being active enough or taking a stronger hand. How that came to be so with a president who believed so deeply in strong leadership should long occupy Mr. Bush, and fair-minded historians.

Lowry has apparently missed the bazillion blog posts and essays and Op-Ed pieces and books and TV shows and movies by liberals criticizing Bush precisely for not being engaged in the details of actually governing the United States of America. That was why so many people were so critical of how he handled Katrina. How many examples could we find? How many days were there in this spectacularly awful Administration?

But I have to give Lowry credit for being willing to criticize Bush, even at this absurdly late date. I'm sure he's going to get his share of vituperative emails from the remaining true believers. Maybe there is some hope for conservatives to start an honest examination of their failures.

Or maybe the circular firing squad is just getting started.