Quote of the Month

"First of all, I think it's important to realize that I was actually black before the election."

President Obama, responding to David Letterman's question about whether or not opposition to his policies is rooted in racism.

The audience went crazy, and Letterman - to his credit - had a good follow-up: "How long have you been a black man?" Of course, the fact that he can come up with a good line is why he has this show.

One thing that continues to impress me about Obama is how comfortable he is in his own skin. He can go on Letterman, look completely relaxed, crack a great joke, and then explain how other presidents have dealt with the same kind of bitter, angry opposition, and how that is simply part of politics. This kind of equanimity, of course, is one reason he is president, and it stands in stark contrast to the rantings and ravings of the teabaggers and their demagogues.

It's also a stark contrast to George W. Bush, who, in retrospect in particular, was very uncomfortable with being president. Obama knows that he is up to the job. You have a feeling about Bush that initially he thot he was up to the job, but at some point he realized he was in over his head.

One thing that I am very much looking forward to is a video comparison of Bush at a press conference, in an interview, giving a speech, compared to Obama in the same positions. Can't wait for that.

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.

The Assholes and Idiots Theory Redux

For my 1,000th post, I wrote about something I like to call the "Assholes and Idiots Theory." The original post is a little long, so I thot I would provide a condensed version.

The Assholes and Idiots Theory is quite simple, and says that in every political party, movement, coalition, or sufficiently large organization, there are a certain number of assholes and idiots, and that one of the duties of the leaders of that party/movement/organization is to contain the assholes and idiots. The Assholes and Idiots Theory makes no distinction as to ideology; there are just as likely to be assholes and idiots on the left as on the right.

Assholes are people who believe that they have the right to impose their will on other people, regardless of how those people feel about it. Assholes tend to be addicted to anger; they're usually furious about something. They also tend to blur ethical or legal lines when trying to impose their will. One reason that there seems to be so much anger on the right now is that the last administration completely failed to contain either the assholes or idiots. Of course, the reason why is not hard to figure out: Bush & Cheney didn't contain the assholes or idiots in the GOP because, of course, they were both. They didn't just not contain the assholes and idiots: they appointed them.

Idiots are people who believe that they are smarter than reality, and that their ideas about how the world should work are absolutely right, whether or not there is any empirical evidence to support it, and even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Assholes and idiots tend to oppose compromise. This does not mean that people who oppose compromise are automatically either assholes or idiots; far from it. There are often very good reasons of principle and policy to oppose compromise on specific issues. The trick for leaders is knowing when people are opposing compromise out of principle or for good reason, and when they are doing so because they are either assholes or idiots.

People who are assholes and/or idiots will almost never admit to it. Which is why containing them is so difficult, but also why it is so important.

There are several strategies leaders, particularly presidents, use for containing assholes and idiots. Reagan had great credibility as a conservative, so he could compromise without completely alienating his base. Also, despite my strong feelings at the time, he was a decent human being, and not all that stupid. Clinton mostly contained the assholes and idiots because he had some credibility as a liberal on social issues (particularly race and feminism), and because he was just a damn good politician. Clinton also made it clear from the beginning that he would be willing to criticize those on the left. This was why the "Sister Souljah" moment was so important. Not that Sister Souljah herself was either an asshole or an idiot. But by criticizing her, Clinton read the public right; he angered some liberals, but not enough to lose them when it came time for the election, but he also scored points with moderates.

The assholes and idiots seem to be out in force on the right these days, although I see it that way because I'm a good liberal. Obama's strategy for containing the assholes and idiots among his opponents seems to be to stay calm and collected in contrast. Not a bad strategy, when your opponents are yelling and screaming. The most effective, but most expensive, weapon against assholes and idiots is time: idiots are eventually exposed as deeply wrong and in conflict with reality, while assholes eventually alienate too many people to have a base of support. Obama doesn't have much time in the health care debate, but he does have another three years before the next election. Which is crucial, because there is one crucial ingredient in using time to contain assholes and idiots. It is not enough that they prove themselves wrong. You have to prove that you are right. Which means that you have to be right.

Notre Dame, Obama, the Roman Catholic Church, USC, and abortion

President Obama has been invited to speak at Notre Dame at their commencement. He will be receiving an honorary degree. That's great. Very nice. Presidents speak at commencements all the time, and receive honorary degrees all the time. Perfectly normal.

Except that Obama supports a woman's right to choose an abortion, which conflicts with the doctrine of the Catholic Church. That's a bummer for some right-wing Catholics, who have stated their opposition. Unfortunately for them, 97% of the graduating class of seniors support giving Obama an honorary degree. Of course, the fact that George W. Bush supports the death penalty, which also conflicts with Catholic doctrine, didn't stop the university from inviting him and giving him an honorary degree.

My favorite part of the debate came in one of the letters to the editor in the NY Times. The letters were in response to an Op-Ed piece by Richard Allen (Reagan's National Security Advisor), who opposes giving the degree to Obama. Notre Dame gave a degree to Reagan when he spoke. Most of the letters disagreed with Allen, for the same reason I just listed. Then there was this letter, from a member of the Notre Dame class of 1958:

Next the traditionalists will want to vet the orthodoxy of Notre Dame’s quarterbacks. Well, maybe not if we’re 11 to zip and U.S.C. is coming to town.

Damn right! Orthodoxy would be out the window in a heartbeat if Notre Dame were playing like the pathetic losers they have been for the past couple of years and one of the best teams in college football were on their way (the USC-Notre Dame rivalry is one of the great rivalries in the country, because they are two of the only large private schools in the country. Neither is a state school, which is unusual for schools of their size. USC plays Notre Dame every season). Notre Dame hates losing to USC. There's a little bit of the Midwest-Southern California rivalry thing going on, too.

So I managed to get Obama, abortion, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, the NY Times, and USC football into one blog post! It's a good day.

The torture memos

The Obama administration yesterday released the memos from the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel justifying torture.

There is good news and bad news in this development. First, the good news is that Obama did the right thing in releasing the memos with minimal redactions. This is virtually unprecedented in American history. I'm sure that it never occurred to the Bush people that their successor would release these memos. In that respect, Obama is already breaking ground. Makes me proud that I voted for him and campaigned for him.

The bad news is that Obama made it clear that he does not intend to pursue prosecutions of the people who conducted the torture, at least not those who acted in "good faith." Many people on the left strongly disagree with this. Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent piece for Salon, on the one hand praising Obama for releasing the memos, and on the other hand criticizing him for not pursuing prosecutions. I disagree with Greenwald on one point. He writes that

there wasn't much political gain for Obama in releasing these documents.

I understand why he writes that; the right is strongly critical of him, while the left is just thankful that he did the right thing. I think it does benefit Obama somewhat in the short term, because it shores up his support from liberals. Not that he needed it, but he won't be criticized as much as he would have been if he had stonewalled. In the long term, however, I think Obama benefits substantially, because he has taken a good solid step towards rewarding Americans' faith in their government's ability to acknowledge its errors. Restoring even a tiny bit of faith in democracy is a Herculean task, and for that Obama deserves praise as well.

Andrew Sullivan has been all over this, as he has for years. He has done his adopted country a great service by relentlessly hammering home how despicable the Bush administration was.

Looked at from a distance, the Bush administration wanted to do two things at once: to declare to the world that freedom is on the march, and human rights are coming to the world with American help, while simultaneously declaring to captives that the US has no interest in the law, human rights, accountability, transparency or humanity. They wanted to give hope to all the oppressed of the planet, while surgically banishing all hope from the prisoners they captured and tortured. And the only way they could pull this off is by the total secrecy they constructed and defended. So we had a public government respectful of the rule of law, and a secret government whose main goal was persuading terror suspects that there was no rule of law at all. It is hard to convey just how dangerous this was and is.

What is key to remember at this juncture is that the release of these memos is the beginning, not the end, of the process of restoring the rule of law. I disagree with Obama's decision not to pursue prosecutions of the agents who engaged in torture, but I don't condemn him for it. First, it's not his job; the Presient does not make decisions about who to prosecute, although he clearly has influence. I usually agree with him on reaching out to people who disagree with him. This time, I think he did so not just out of concern for maintaining political peace. He is technically the boss of everyone at the CIA, and those are people you really don't want to piss off. On the other hand, you have to be prepared to piss them off; that's part of the job of the President.

But it's also clear that Obama is not foreclosing all options to hold people accountable. In a sense, I am glad that he is not proposing prosecutions for people who tortured, because I am not sure if that is the best way to hold people accountable for these atrocities. It may or may not be a good idea; I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know. But there are a number of avenues available to us, many outside the executive branch. Nature abhors a vacuum, as does a scandal. Ironically, by foreclosing the option of prosecution, Obama opens the door to many other possible solutions. Congress may appoint a special prosecutor; at the very least, I expect hearings to be held.

One great thing about Obama that I am appreciating more and more is that he has a very deep and abiding faith in both the American people and democracy. In both of these, he is the exact opposite of Bush and Cheney, who had so little faith in either. Obama cannot control what will happen now that these memos have been released, but he does not want to. He has given the American people permission to pass judgment, argue, and decide what should be done.

The worst news that we heard today is that what so many suspected was true; the Bush administration systematically authorized torture. The best news was that we heard about it from the President of the United States.

What was done in secret will be changed by what will be done in the open.

The American people are Obama's great secret weapon.

Latest bit of nonsense: Obama is "too busy"

A meme that I have been trying to avoid is the idea that Obama is "too busy" these days. The corollary is that, by taking on too many large projects at once, he is distracted from the most important ones. Does he really need to take on health care as he's fixing the economy, getting us out of Iraq, dealing with the Middle East, etc?

Yes, he needs to deal with all of these things. Matt Cooper at TPM has a good takedown on the whole issue.

The problem is not with Obama. He is clearly capable of multitasking. I remember him holding a press conference the day after the election and announcing Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. I was prepared to take a couple of days off, but not Obama! I have trouble just blogging about everything.

The problem is with the rest of us, particularly those in the media. They are used to a president with decidedly average intelligence, who not only didn't multitask, he barely unitasked. It was easy to follow Bush's policy innovations, because they were few and far between. Suddenly keeping up with the president is hard work, and they're not used to it. But instead of adjusting properly and figuring out how to deal with the need for more intellectual bandwidth on their part, they're blaming Obama.

Of course, Republicans are playing a part. They're having the same problem as the media: they're even more used to defending a president with not much going on. All they had to do was repeat the same talking points. Attacking a president with lots of initiatives is a completely different story. They don't want Obama to juggle juggle juggle, because that makes their jobs much, much harder. They actually have to think.

Obama is also in very good shape physically, which gives him another advantage, because he has lots of energy. He's also extremely disciplined, which is very different from not only Bush, but Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Reagan, for that matter.

We haven't had a president this smart, focused, and disciplined, taking on this many problems, since, well, I don't know when. Johnson had a huge war on his hands, and he shook up large chunks of society, but the economy was basically in good shape. Roosevelt had to deal with the Great Depression, but he didn't have to deal with war until his third term.

So if you hear Republicans or commentators questioning Obama's ability to handle many things at once, remember that defense mechanisms come in lots of different shapes and sizes.

Obama on signing statements

From the NY Times:

"WASHINGTON — Calling into question the legitimacy of all the signing statements that former President George W. Bush used to challenge new laws, President Obama ordered executive officials on Monday to consult with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. before relying on any of them to bypass a statute."

No comment necessary, except a big sigh of relief.

Obama Adjustment Syndrome and the OLC memos

I think I am suffering from Obama Adjustment Syndrome. The primary symptom of this syndrome is an inability to react to major policy initiatives from the Obama Administration in real time, because they come at you fast and furious. This was particularly acute last week, when I was sort of chilling after the Oscars. I blinked, and suddenly I missed Obama's major address to Congress, the not-quite-SOTU. So I started watching the video of that online.

Then all of a sudden there was the budget. OK, let me get a grip . . . Wham! We're pulling out of Iraq. Wow, that's great, can I get some details? . . . Bling! We're bailing out another one of the financial companies.

Plus there were a few other things that I'm sure were hugely important and that I have been waiting years for but that I can't quite recall.

Today it's the release of the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) memos. On this issue, attentoin must be paid to mcjoan at DailyKos, and Andrew Sullivan. And I must pay attention.

We cannot be thankful enough that the Obama Administration has begun to expose the criminal wrongdoings of the Bush Administration, and we cannot be too harsh in our condemnation of the crimes that were perpetuated by the Bushies, particularly Dick Cheney, David Addington, and John Yoo.

I have heard many calls for various levels of investigation into what happened under Bush. I have to admit that I have been somewhat reluctant to join the chorus, because I think there is a real temptation to "criminalize political differences," i.e. to make prosecutorial mountains out of the molehills of differences of opinion.

But when the conduct in question is criminal, then we have not just the right, but the responsibility to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute. We have done so before, during Watergate, and our democracy survived.

We are responsible in this respect not to ourselves or our constituents, but to our system of justice. We have certain responsibilities to democracy.

Democracy gives us the freedom to experiment with our politics, but then holds us accountable when those experiments fail. We are in such a moment right now.

In this democracy, we all have equal opportunities within this system, and we are all considered equal before the law. The problem with this is that we don't know how to ensure that all are equal before the law, and we have different opinions about what that means. Those in power tend to have very different ideas about what constitutes justice than those who are not in power.

The system works as long as enough of us believe that the system itself, despite all its flaws, is still better than any other system for giving us the closest we can come to equal opportunities. Essential to that ideal is the system of checks and balances. As long as most people have at least some voice within the system, they have an incentive to try and make the system work.

I have written before that the American system of democracy was designed to withstand the maximum damage that can be inflicted on it, either from outside, or from within. The Bush Administration's misdeeds have been one of the attempts to inflict severe damage on the system of American democracy. The release of these OLC memos demonstrates that. Unlike almost every other politician in our system, Bush and his cronies did not believe in the system of checks and balances. They did not believe that all people are equal before the law. They believed that the President, and, by extension, those who worked for him, was above the law. Perhaps the hideous implication of this idea is that it grants to the president the right to decide who is outside the law, who does not deserve the protection of the law. That is the definition of a dictatorship.

Investigating the abuses of the Bush Administration does not constitute "criminalizing political differences."

Criminalizing political differences is what the Bush Administration did.

Obama and rendition

Obama has decided to keep the program of "rendition," i.e. taking people off the streets in other countries, and transferring them to another country, for detention, interrogation, or prosecution.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea, and I was a little surprised when I read the article in the LA Times that the Obama administration is keeping it. There was some reason for optimism in the Times article:

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

I kept my ears open yesterday to see what other people were thinking, and, fortunately, what I read was positive. Andrew Sullivan, who has great credibility on issues like this, is not worried. He thinks that "The LA Times got rolled," by people on the right who want to argue that there is no difference, or very little difference, between Bush and Obama policies. That way, of course, Bush doesn't look so bad. The argument is that, once Obama sees the gory details of the war on terror up close, he will have no choice but to use the same techniques that the Bushies did.

Sulllivan isn't buying it.

What some on the far right seem not to grasp is that opposition to torture is not about being soft on terrorism. It is about being effective against terrorism - ensuring that intelligence is not filled with torture-generated garbage, that we retain the moral high-ground in a long war against theocratic violence, and that we can better identify, capture, kill or bring to justice those who threaten our way of life. Rendition and temporary detention are tools in that effort - tools that now need to be as closely monitored and assessed as they were once recklessly abused.

He also links to Hilzoy, who has apparently read the actual executive orders, and who makes yet another crucial distinction - between "rendition," which is the practice of moving someone from one country to another, and may be extradition, which is normal, and "extraordinary rendition," which is essentially kidnapping.

With a policy like rendition, my standard is this: how would I feel if another country did something like this to a member of my family? If another country issued an arrest warrant for a member of my family, and they were arrested, charged with a crime, and transferred to that other country, I would be worried, but not panicked. Even if they are a member of my family, if they're guilty of something, they should be tried in a court of law.

But if a member of my family suddenly disappeared, and I had no idea where they were, then I would be panicked and terrified. And I would not want that to happen to anyone else. By that standard, we as a country should not do it to citizens of other countries. I have faith that Obama has the same standard. So far, that faith is confirmed.

Restoring the Constitution

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers makes several excellent points about Obama's efforts to restore the Constitution. It's an excellent post, and deserves to be read in full (it's not very long). A reminder of how deep the corruption went:

[the Bush administration] didn't just break run of the mill laws -- they broke the central stuff that's laid down in the constitution. Their whole program was rooted in this violation of the constitution -- without that enormous breach, they couldn't have their expansive conception of executive power, upon which so many other things depended.

Democracy works because most of us - most, unfortunately not all - believe in the system, and respect the idea that the system is more important than us. But there are a few people who do not believe in the system of constitutional law, and are willing to subvert it in ways that the rest of us can barely imagine. I don't know if Bush was one of these people, but I do know that he tolerated them, and that Cheney and people on his staff were this type. I doubt Bush on his own would have trashed the Constitution as thoroughly as his Cheney and Addington did, but he sure enjoyed the benefits.

The reader points out that Obama's life as a professor of constitutional law has not gotten much attention (not as much as, say, his career as a community organizer), but that this is a key to his success. I completely agree. Lawsuits and court cases are won by three things; the facts, the law, and the ability of the lawyer to make his/her case. When it comes to repudiating Bush, Obama has the facts and the law on his side. But more importantly, he has the ability to make his case. He does so with a variation of the Powell Doctrine; he engages his opponent with overwhelming force, with the support of the American people, and with a clearly defined exit strategy. Because Bush isn't very bright, he wasn't able to build an intellectually robust defense of his philosophy of governing. Sullivan's correspondent again:

[t]his is one area where there is an enormous difference between Obama and Mrs. Clinton. She would not have moved to reestablish the proper constitutional role of the executive. She wouldn't have understood that it's the distortion of that role that's at the center of so many of our problems. Every single thing he's done points to an understanding that Cheney's distorted view of the executive is to blame for so much that's wrong, and there has been no hesitation, no wavering, in his response. He's gone in surgically and attacked it.

Liberals were frustrated at trying to engage Bush intellectually; he just brushed us off. Many liberals ended up forgetting the role that intellect plays in political combat; what good is being smart if your opponent ignores you and apparently gets away with it?

Obama never forgot this. Moreover, he is accustomed to winning debates on their intellectual merits in one of the toughest environments in the world. Because the foundations of Bush's ideas were so weak, Obama was able to dismantle them with a few strokes of his pen.

Republicans have no idea what has hit them. They will not have an idea for a while.

Sullivan's succinct response is worth quoting in full:

I agree. In fact, I'm staggered by how deep and profound the change already is. The antidote to the Cheney poison has been delivered. It will take some time to work through the system. But America is back.

I would only disagree with the last line, and I do so not because I do not think that America is back (although I appreciate the rhetorical power of the phrase), but because I don't think America ever left. The Constitution may bend, but it doesn't break.

American democracy is designed to withstand the maximum damage that can be inflicted on it, either by enemies outside or within. We have just witnessed that in action; both the infliction of severe damage, and the ability to contain that damage. What we will be witnessing for the foreseeable future is the recovery process. That requires, at the very least, five things: passion, political skill, commitment to the system of laws known as American democracy, wisdom, and strength. We are fortunate to have a president who has all five. But we are even more fortunate to live in a country where someone like Obama can not only flourish, but who the system calls forth at time of dire need. Like now.

Say goodbye

Second-favorite headline of the day:

Ex-President Bush and wife leave capital for Texas.

David Letterman says goodbye to Bush

David Letterman has been running a series called "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches." He plays a couple of clips of great Presidential moments - Kennedy's "eich bin ein Berliner," Roosevelt's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," and then he runs one of George Bush. HuffPost has the video of his latest. After he played this clip, Dave played a highlight clip. It's painful, but funny:

Bush's 43 Worst Appointees

Lest we forget the roll of shame, Think Progress lists the 43 worst Bush appointees. And just think, if they had wanted to, they could have added another 10 or 20 or 30.

Last working day of the Bush Administration

This is the last working day of the Bush Administration. Tomorrow is Saturday, then Sunday, then Monday, which is a holiday. Then Barack Obama becomes President, and George Bush leaves the White House, only to return as a guest.

Relish this moment, folks. We have waited a long time for this. It's 4:27 pm Pacific time, or 7:27 Eastern time, which means most of the regular White House staff have left for the day. If they're normal, which is open to debate.

I've been tempted to write that I'm not going to be blogging about Bush again, but of course I will, because there is so much damage to be undone. Besides the obvious policies to be reversed, there are the intangibles - the psychic wounds of the soldiers suffering PTSD, the damage to our standing in the world.

But the worst intangible damage that Bush has done is that too many people think that what Bush did was normal. He changed the debate in supremely unhealthy ways, and it is going to take years to change it back. Some people actually think that there is a debate to be had about whether or not torture is ever justified. The answer is no. Torture is never justified, regardless of the circumstances. But Bush opened up the debate, and made it seem like this is a subject on which honest people have honest disagreements. It isn't. There can be no compromise on some things. Torture is wrong. The President is not above the law.

In the economic sphere, Bush perpetuated two of the stupidest ideas ever to flourish in the American political system, the absurd notion that tax cuts pay for themselves, and that deficts don't matter. Many people still think those ideas are worthwhile. None of us like paying taxes, and taxes can be prohibitive. But we have long since reduced taxes to a reasonable level. 70% income tax is counterproductive and stifles investment. But the difference between 35% and 38% tax on investments is trivial. That difference is not trivial, however, when it comes to balancing the budget.

Many years ago, during the '88 campaign, between George H. W. Bush and Dukakis, I was struck by something as I watched one of the debates. Bush seemed, at one point, like a cornered animal, lashing out because he was threatened with a fatal blow. It occurred to me then that Bush represented a dying breed; the white American male who ascended to the highest ranks of power and prestige because he was born a white American male. Both George Bush's have seemed to believe that they actually earned their power, and the fact that they were born into privilege was irrelevant. I suppose it's a necessary myth for them, giving themselves permission to believe that they really deserve all their success.

They didn't, of course. The day is now gone when being a white American male automatically gives you entry into an exclusive club that denies entry to people who don't look like you. It's still a bit of an advantage to be a straight white guy, but nowhere nearly as much as it used to be.

But there are still lots of straight white American men who are going to be fighting to hold onto the privileges that they have grown used to, that they think of as their birthright. John McCain, who epitomized both the best and the worst of the straight white American male - the honest war hero, but also the erratic, immature son of privilege - was a champion of a dying way of life. The fight is not quite over, but the war has just about been won.

Goodbye, Mr. Bush. We won't miss you. There are enough of us straight white American men left to carry on the better parts of the traditions we represent. But we are thankful that you are taking with you some of the worst.

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.

Bush the quiche-eater

George W. Bush gave the last press conference of his presidency a few days ago. As expected, he was evasive of accountability and dismissive of criticism. No surprises there.

It's almost difficult for me to be outraged at this point, I'm just so happy that he's almost gone. But one last thing needs to be said. Conservatives have always said that one key element of their ideology is the emphasis on responsibility. Individuals are responsible for their own lives; governments should not try to impose extra burdens on them, but nor should individuals expect to be supported by the government. I'm sympathetic in some small doses to this argument, and I've seen more than a few liberals who seem to want to blame forces beyond their control for their own problems. I've been tempted to do that myself, and fallen victim to it. It's not a healthy approach to life. I try to avoid doing that.

What strikes me about Bush is how thoroughly he avoids accepting responsibility for his mistakes. This, of course, is not news. But I haven't seen much discussion of it in the context of conservative's firm belief that individuals need to take responsibility for their lives. In this respect, I suppose, George W. Bush was not a real conservative. Then again, there are many conservatives who are currently unwilling to accept responsibility for George Bush's catastrophic administration.

So maybe we should regard this whole idea that conservatives believe in "responsibility" as a myth.

Culturally, Bush is also a failure for refusing to take responsibility. Bush is from Texas, the land of "Real Men," tough guys who stand up tall for what they believe in.

But the ethos of the "Real Man," who was defined in the classic Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, had the same belief in the importance of taking responsibility. Real Men may not each quiche, but part of being tough is being able to deal with your own mistakes. Real men don't whine or blame others when they are obviously to blame. Real men take responsibility, and then they deal with the consequences. If they have to fix something because they screwed up, that's what they do. And then they learn from that mistake, and they make sure that they don't do it again. And then other real men respect them for being able to admit that they're wrong.

This is George W. Bush's great failure. Real men admit it when they fail. Quiche eaters argue and whine and try to come up with complicated theoretical reasons why they are the victims of society, or a tragic upbringing, or why they're oppressed and can't be held responsible for their own failures.

George Bush is a quiche eater. George Bush is not a real man.

Quote of the day

From a Daily Kos post about George Bush's response to the shoe-throwing incident:

Bush's opinions about "democracy" and "freedom" have always been on the far side of odd.

My version of this is "the wrong side of enlightened," but this works for me as well.

W.

So I saw W., Oliver Stone's attempt to make some sort of sense of the mess that is both George W. Bush's presidency, and whatever passes for his inner life. Christopher Caldwell writes a far more cogent and insightful review than what I will be writing, more interesting for the simple reason that he cares about it more than I do.

I liked the movie. I don't want to give the impression that I am damning with faint praise, because there are some artistically worthy elements. Richard Dreyfus is utterly convincing as Dick Cheney - I would be surprised if he doesn't receive an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Josh Brolin is effective as The Man Himself. What comes across convincingly is just how completely normal George W. Bush is. He's really just an average guy born into a family that had little use for "normal." But that idea, which we all know so well by now, is devastating on the screen. Sarah Palin picked the wrong possible person to succeed if she wants to be elected as a regular American.

Try as he might to make a profound film, Oliver Stone has constricted himself by virtue of his subject matter. It's hard to mkae a great movie about such an average person. It is surely possible to make a great movie about these extraordinary times. But this is all about W., and there just ain't much there there. It's the same reason TV doesn't show minor league baseball of Division III football - mediocrity is boring.

The fact that the characters around Bush are more intersting doesn't help. There certainly would seem to be more than adequate material for a fascinating character study of Dick Cheney, but I'm not into horror movies. Colin Powell has some stories worth telling and worth listening to, but not right now.

The disjunction between historically well-known people and actors is always a bit jarring, and more so here. Jeffrey Wright is a solid Colin Powell, but the real man has enough capacity for eloquence - as evidenced by his endorsement of Obama - that any impersonation is almost invariably less interesting. Thandie Newton, an actress whose performances I have always enjoyed, has a bizarre staccato impersonation of Condoleezza Rice that just does not work. Say what you want about the woman's policies, she is a smooth talker. James Cromwell portrays George H. W. Bush as more capable of arrogant disdain and parental disapproval than I would have given him credit for. The lesson there seems to be that one reason George W. Bush kept trying so hard to win his father's respect is that he never really deserved it.

Technically, it's a solid work. The cinematography is very good, as is the editing. It floats back and forth between the present and Bush's past, not really explaining much, but showing us what few dimensions the man has.

Caldwell ends with a quote from Nietzsche: “Truth has the fewest defenders not when it is dangerous to speak the truth but when it is boring.” I am not bored with George W. Bush, I just don't care about him any more. The opposite of love is not hate; it is apathy. I don't care that much about George Bush any more because he just doesn't matter. There isn't enough there there.

Sarah Palin is a Blithering Idiot. Part I

One of the perils of blogging is that occasionally you have to start by stating the blindingly obvious. Thus, the title of this post, which I am going to repeat.

Sarah Palin is a blithering idiot.

I don't quite mean that literally - she obviously has to be somewhat intelligent to get to where she is.

But she is a blithering idiot in very much the same way that George W. Bush is. She believes that she is absolutely right, and does not question that belief. She believes that she is qualified to be President of the United States of America, and does not question that.

What she does not seem to realize is that she is starting to make an absolute fool of herself. This is a slice of the interview that she had with Charlie Gibson of ABC News:




I only managed to watch about the first 10 seconds before I had to pause it and walk away, because it was just too painful. Her ignorance is breathtaking. What is even more astonishing is that she apparently thinks she can talk her way around being completely ignorant of the Bush Doctrine, and somehow get away with it.

She demonstrates two kinds of incompetence with just a few words: first, she's clueless about foreign policy if she isn't familiar with the doctrine formulated by the current occupant of the White House. And it's not that she's unfamiliar with the details - she's clearly never even heard of the Bush Doctrine. It almost makes me wish Gibson had asked her to compare the Bush Doctrine with the Powell Doctrine, but that would have been, I'm sure, even more painful.

Second, she's incompetent at trying to hide the fact that she's never heard of the Bush Doctrine. It's not that this is a concept that she's heard of, but can't quite remember the details. That might have even been understandable. She's never even heard of it.

Dear God, she's doing the impossible: she's making George W. Bush look enlightened and sophisticated. At least he sat in on meetings about foreign policy! Never thot we would see the bar lowered below the standard that Bush set.

Bush signs the housing bill

George Bush signed the housing bill today. Good for him. My take on it is here.

This is another example of how George Bush is just not a very good politician. He signed the bill, but Congress gets the credit for pushing the issue. Henry Paulson pushed for it, which is good. So Bush gets credit for hiring a good Treasury Secretary, and listening to said Secretary. But Bush is not going to get much credit for making this happen. From my perspective, it looks like Congress basically put a gun to his head. This is a serious crisis, and Bush has not provided much leadership on the issue. He's very much a lame duck.