So much for that whole plagiarism thing

It's obvious by now that Hillary's whole "plagiarism" charge was not only a spectacular failure but a serious miscalculation that backfired on her rather badly. Kos makes it clear just how bad. Nail, meet coffin:

"Worst. Political. Attack. Ever."

And as for that whole "change you can Xerox " line, a comment at Talking Points Memo reframes it rather well:

"FYI, we at Xerox make mostly printers and multi-function devices, not copiers. So yes, Obama, like Xerox offers 21st century color multi-function devices."

Hillary is a smart, competent woman. She is not doing herself any favors with this kind of attack. For her sake, I really hope she stops.

Making it official

I think the time has come for me to make an official commitment. I've given this a great deal of thot. I've consulted my friends, family, and constituents.

I am officially endorsing Barack Obama for President.

Just in case there was any doubt.

My reasons are many, including the fact that I've already given him money and spent several months campaigning for him. I think that, while Hillary would be a good President, Barack would be a great one. He brings people together. I went to an Obama rally at UCLA - that's quite a commitment for me. I'm not worried about any kind of backlash. I'm not worried that he will get into office and millions of people will discover that he's human, that he can't wave a magic wand and solve all of our problems overnight.

As Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek, we are at the end of the conservative era. Conservatives are out of ideas. Hillary might win the election if she's the nominee, but I think Obama can put it away. I think conservatives will be recovering from this election for a long, long time.

I think Obama can break our collective addiction to anger.

I strongly encourage my readers to support Barack Obama for President.

On strategy: Chess v. Boxing

Dylan Loewe has a great post at The Huffington Post about the differences in strategy between the Obama and Clinton campaigns. His thesis is that while the Clinton campaigning was boxing, throwing jabs, the Obama campaign was playing chess, plotting several moves ahead. Good analysis.

That satellite we shot down

So the Navy shot down a satellite as it was plummeting to earth. Good for them! I'm sure they enjoyed the target practice.

But there are some concerns. An Op-ed piece in the LA Times explains just why this wasn't a good idea from a diplomatic perspective. Because, after all, we are proving to the rest of the world that we can shoot down satellites, which means that we might shoot down a satellite that is not one of ours. Personally, I don't think the militarization of space is a good idea.

And then there are some issues about just exactly why we did this. Supposedly it was a threat. Gail Collins, in her wonderfully dry way, asks the right question. According to Gen. James Cartwright of the Marines,

“It affects your tissues and your lungs. You know — it has a burning sensation,” General Cartwright said. “If you stay very close to it and inhale a lot of it, it could in fact be deadly.”

But Collins considers the hypothetical in a little more detail:

Let’s think about this for a minute. If you were, say, sitting on the porch reading the newspaper when a satellite plummeted into the backyard, emitting foul-smelling fumes, what are the chances you’d decide to stay very close to it and inhale a lot of it?

I'm sure I would. How often does a satellite fall in your backyard? Me, I'd be snapping pictures like crazy and then selling them to the National Enquirer. But I'd probably be taking the pictures with a telephoto lens.

Dear Senator Obama: Please Plagiarize THIS!

Dear Senator Obama:

I noticed that you and your good friend Deval Patrick have been comparing notes and sharing ideas. I take this as another sign or your excellent collaborative skills. I'd like to offer another line you can use:

"We must never again allow deregulation to become a lowering of standards."

But I wouldn't mind getting the credit. Thanks, and good luck!

John

Substance, Substance, Substance

Hilzoy, an excellent blogger at Obsidian Wings, has a great article about all of the obscure but important legislation that Barack Obama has sponsored in the Senate. I have to note one caveat about Hilzoy's analysis. She posted this a while ago. It's from October. October 2006. That was before the Democrats took back the Senate, and before Obama decided to run for President. She makes this point:

I have been surprised by how often Senator Obama turns up, sponsoring or co-sponsoring really good legislation on some topic that isn't wildly sexy, but does matter. His bills tend to have the following features: they are good and thoughtful bills that try to solve real problems; they are in general not terribly flashy; and they tend to focus on achieving solutions acceptable to all concerned, not by compromising on principle, but by genuinely trying to craft a solution that everyone can get behind.

And this is something that I hadn't thot of:

a lot of people are going on about how Obama has not sponsored legislation on any of the Vital Issues Of The Day. Personally, I think that he'd have to be delusional to introduce, say, his own solution to the health insurance crisis: no bill on such a topic introduced by a freshman senator from the minority party would have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding, and the only reason to introduce one would be to grandstand. For that reason, I think that his failure to do so tends to speak well of him.

So in his first year and a half in the Senate, Obama had already found a number things that he wanted to change. Most of them are the kind of issues that don't affect a lot of people, at least not at first, but are actually very important, and could become life-altering. Like Nonproliferation, which Hilzoy describes as "the poster child for issues that people ought to care about, but don't." Or avian flu. Or helping hospitals to develop programs for disclosure of medical errors.

This may be part of why people don't realize that Obama is actually a very substantive kind of guy. He is, in part, a policy wonk. But you don't get crowds riled up talking about regulating genetic testing. That stuff is really boring for about 99.9% of Americans. But that is the nuts and bolts of democracy.

I've read Hilzoy every now and then, but I am going to pay more attention to her blog from now on. Particularly since I just discovered that she is a professor of philosophy.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

On Nader

A friend asked me what I thot of Ralph Nader's exploratory committee. My first reaction is that I look back on his run for President in 2000 from the perspective of 8 years' distance. Nader made the argument that there was no difference between the Republicans and Democrats, between Gore and Bush. After 7 years of Bush, that argument is hard to take seriously. Bush leads a party that tries to deny the existence of global warming - Gore has made that his raison d'etre. I think we can safely assume that Al Gore would not have invaded Iraq or used torture.

But, again from the perspective of 8 years away, I can better appreciate Nader's position. To me, the argument that there was no appreciable difference between Dems and Republicans was hard to understand - I can see lots of profound differences. But I'm a total political junkie, and I pay very close attention to politics, so my perspective is different from a lot of people's.

But the key point that I think Nader missed is that Clinton had to deal with a Republican Congress. The President does not propose legislation - he takes what Congress sends him. In his first term, Clinton fought Republicans successfully on some key issues, particularly on the budget. He raised taxes to balance the budget, and did so despite fierce opposition from the GOP.

In 1994, the Republicans took back Congress. They had not been in control of the House for 40 years. The Democrats were completely blindsided - they had no idea what hit them. Clinton had no plan on how to deal with a Republican Congress. He had to fight them, and did, sometimes successfully - he won the showdown over shutting down the government. But Newt Gingrich set the agenda for a large chunk of Clinton's presidency.

So when Nader claimed that there was no significant difference between the Democrats and Republicans in 2000, I think he was ignoring the fact that the Republicans were setting the agenda. If one party controls one house of Congress and the other party controls the other, each party has a chance to pass their own legislation and force the other to deal with it. A Democratic House can force a Republican Senate to compromise. The Republicans controlled both - Democrats could do nothing but fight back. Sometimes they fought back successfully, sometimes they lost, sometimes they gave in.

Nader is right about one thing: sometimes the Democrats caved because they were just scared of Republicans, and were unwilling to fight on principle. A great example is the Defense of Marriage Act, which was an anti-gay piece of legislation. Clinton signed it because he didn't want to be defined as "anti-family." Politically, it was expedient. But as a matter of principle, it was horrendous.

Ralph Nader's campaign for President in 2000 fits into one of the basic templates that define American democracy: the eternal conflict between compromise and principle. There will always be people who prize ideological purity above compromise, and there will always be people who compromise too easily. Nader does not believe in compromise. But he has the luxury of not being an elected official. Clinton compromised because he had little choice. But Clinton also had to compromise, in part, because of his personal failings. He never had a strong mandate. He never won a majority of the popular vote (Ross Perot helped him out there in both elections). And, particularly after Monica Lewinsky, he did not have much moral authority.

I didn't agree with Ralph Nader's decision to run for President in 2000, and I still think it was a mistake, although now I have a better understanding of why he did, of why he was frustrated with Democrats. I think he took away enough votes from Gore to make Bush President, which has been an unmitigated disaster. This time around, I think he has even less justification for running, essentially because Obama has two qualities that Clinton lacked. First, Obama has the moral authority that Clinton lacked. Second, Obama is not afraid of Republicans. Obama understands that if he is not afraid of Republicans, that he can set the agenda, and force Republicans to react to him. Hillary does not understand that. She still reacts, often out of fear, to Republicans, and does not try to set the agenda on her own terms. Obama claims that he can change the terms of the game. I get the impression Hillary isn't even sure what he's talking about.

Finally, I have one particular issue with Ralph Nader. As I said above, I think he has some responsibility for Gore losing. Not complete responsibility - Gore did not run a particularly good campaign, and, let's face it, the man is not a great politician. What bothers me about Nader is that he refuses to take responsibility for Bush being President. Doesn't even seem interested in discussing the possibility. This strikes me as arrogant and self-righteous. I have a great deal of respect for Ralph Nader's career - he's done a lot of good for the world. But taking a position of ideological purity carries its own risks. That kind of position gives someone like Nader a license to pass judgment on other people. Passing judgment on others is an exercise of power. As such, it is subject to the laws of power. Specifically, it can corrupt. Ralph Nader has a great deal of moral authority as a result of his long career. He deserves it. What he doesn't seem to appreciate is that that moral authority, like any kind of power, carries with it a certain amount of responsibility. I think his ego has gotten in the way of his ability to affect real and substantive change.

Conservatives and Obama

There's a meme floating around that Obama is nothing but a great talker. He gives great speeches, but how much content is there? I see the word "vague" attached to him. This is particularly true of conservatives. A conservative film blog that some friends of mine run, Libertas, had a post about this.

I think this is great. Why? Because they are underestimating him. Conservatives are making the same mistake about Obama that liberals made about Reagan. For years, I had no idea why people voted for Reagan. The man was a B-movie actor who could barely remember his own name. Why was this man President? I once saw an old clip of him, from the 60's, talking about defending America against communism. It was amazing - he was very articulate and passionate. I realized that he actually had thought about the issues and cared about them very deeply. By the time I heard him, he had his message down pat, and he was an old man, so I never saw the passion that had inspired so many people. But a couple of minutes of black and white footage changed an opinion that I had had for over 20 years.

This is the same mistake that conservatives are making now: they assume that Obama is just the same old liberal, with better speaking ability. What they don't appreciate is that behind the flowery rhetoric is years of thinking. Behind the passion on display is years of walking the streets, working hard, asking questions, debating. Why was Martin Luther King so effective when he said that he had a dream? Because he had it for his whole life. Why could Abraham Lincoln express the sorrow of a nation in a few sentences at Gettyburg? Because what he cared about was holding the country together, which he knew was worthwhile because he had spent so long thinking about it. And because he had spent so long working on it.

So I am happy to see conservatives dismiss Obama as an empty suit. Keep on underestimating him, folks! We'll see you in November.

Hillary and 9/11

There is one thing that I thot of recently that particularly bothers me about Hillary. She claims that she can stand up to Republicans. Of course, she didn't do that when Bush was pushing to go to war with Iraq - she voted for it.

But what particularly bothers me about this is that Hillary is a Senator from New York, and she is on the Armed Services Committee. As a Senator from New York, she represents the victims of 9/11. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, she is supposed to have added credibility on military matters - that, after all, is presumably why she is on the committee.

So she was in a unique position to oppose the war in Iraq. She could have claimed the moral authority of being a representative of the victims of 9/11. Rudy Giuliani certainly claimed a certain kind of moral authority by virtue of his position as mayor of New York.

But she didn't. Chuck Schumer didn't either, but he's not running for President.

50 Cent in the FT

There's a fascinating interview with 50 Cent in the Financial Times. Yes, the rapper 50 Cent, in the Financial Times, the English equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. This seems somewhat incongruous - doesn't the Financial Times cover things like bonds and tax policy debates? Yes, but it's also broadened its perspective quite a bit, particularly in the weekend edition. The FT is becoming what I call a "world newspaper." In America, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are effectively local newspapers that have gone national, both in terms of their reporting and availability - they cover stories well outside of New York, and can be bought just about anywhere.

The Financial Times has taken this to the next level. They routinely cover stories from all parts of the world, and not just from a financial perspective. Culturally, their reporting is particularly wide-ranging. It's a strange blessing of globalization. On the one hand, it allows readers from all over the world to experience different cultures just by reading a newspaper. On the other hand, all of those different cultures are covered from the perspective of a former imperial power. On the whole, I think it's a net positive. Bankers in Geneva will presumably benefit from a positive appraisal of the business acumen of 50 Cent.