August 27th, 2007
Here are some questions I’d like answered. As Dave Weigel observed of his queries, “It’s just a list of nags that the candidates might not have talking points for. And those are the sorts of queries they should be getting every day.”
For the Full Field
1. Do you believe that only [Mormons, Baptists, Catholics, born-again Christians, etc] go to heaven? Do you believe that only [Mormons, Baptists, Catholics, born-again Christians, etc] should go to heaven?
2. (A) Where do you get your news? (B) Do you read a newspaper on a daily basis? If so, which one or ones? (C) Do you read blogs? (D) If so, which ones?
3. Should using marijuana for medical reasons, as prescribed by a doctor, be illegal?
4. Everyone agrees that the tax code is too complex. How would you simplify it? Note: the question concerns tax reform, not tax cuts.
5. Running for president, especially in the age of YouTube, invites a massive amount of scrutiny. What aspects of a candidate’s life, if any, should be private? For instance, is it appropriate to report that a candidate’s children are not campaigning for him?
6. Name three things you did in your administration to increase transparency.
7. Why do you want to be president?
For the Democrats
1. What role, if any, would you task Bill Clinton with in your administration?
2. Do you send your children to private school? If so, why do you oppose giving vouchers to parents who are too poor to do the same?
3. What is the purpose of government?
4. Why or why not is the death tax good?
5. Should late-term abortion be legal?
6. You believe that abortion should be legislated at the federal level, via Roe v. Wade, but that marriage should be a state issue. Isn’t this a contradiction?
7. Did U.S. foreign policy contribute to the reasons for the attacks of September 11, 2001?
For the Republicans
1. Is it wrong for the GOP to nominate for president someone who is pro-choice?
2. Would you allow an abortion in the case of rape or incest, or for the health of the mother?
3. Why does defining marriage as between a man and a woman necessitate the denial of more than 1,000 rights to gay couples that the federal government grants to straight couples?
4. In arguing against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gays from military service, Barry Goldwater said that you don’t have to be straight to shoot straight. Do you agree?
5. Is homosexuality a choice, or is it biological?
6. Of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Jerry Fallwell said, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’” How did those “who have tried to secularize America” help 9/11 to happen?
7. Is global warming a naturally occurring or man-made phenomenon?
8. What is your exit strategy for Iraq? At what point do the costs outweigh the benefits?
9. What one cabinet position would you abolish, if any?
10. What role, if any, did Iraq play in the attacks of September 11, 2001?
August 23rd, 2007
“Jihadism is a mosquito bite compared to communism.” So says Lieutenant General William Odom, the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1988, in next week’s issue of Time.
It’s a provocative assertion, and Odom, who now works at the neoconservative Hudson Institute, is no dove. But is he right?
On one hand, whereas we could contain Stalin through the policy of mutually assured destruction, suicide bombers are, by definition, undeterrable. Indeed, despite a massive nuclear arsenal, the Soviets never once attacked the United States, whereas al Qaeda succeeded in inflicting the worst assault on American soil ever.
On the other hand, the Soviets were better armed, wealthier and more numerous than al Qaeda. As the New Republic’s Peter Beinhart has put it, “The U.S.S.R. was a totalitarian superpower; al Qaeda merely espouses a totalitarian ideology, which has had mercifully little access to the instruments of state power.” Does anyone doubt that if Osama bin Laden ever acquires a nuke, he would not use it?
Furthermore, the Soviets funded and armed the Koreans and Vietnamese, among other insurgencies. And if you want to compare Communism to al Qaeda-ism, it’s not even close: Communism oppressed billions—virtually all Asia, Latin America, parts of Africa and South America—whereas jihadism has under its boot, at most, tens of thousands.
So is Odom right? The short answer is yes: nuclear weapons, in the hands of a global empire, trump jumbo jets in the hands of 19 men. The long answer, to paraphrase historian Richard Pipes, is that the threat of jihadism is both less menacing than communism, in that jihadis are militarily weaker, and more dangerous, in that they are fanatics who are impervious to negotiation.
* Thanks to Chris Matthew Sciabarra, who helped me answer this very question in college.
August 23rd, 2007
Rudy Giuliani opposes gay marriage because he “believes marriage is between a man and a woman,” as his campaign Web site states. But he supports domestic partnerships, which he believes recognize “equal rights under law for all Americans.”
What’s the difference between a “marriage” and a “partnership”? 1,100 federal rights and responsibilities, according to the Washington Post.
The next question then arises, as Marc Ambinder has put it: “What rights should straight people have that gay people shouldn’t?”
This is political dynamite, and even as Rudy declines to specify, the way he has framed the distinction implies an answer. If, as he says, he supports “equal rights,” then the only difference between “marriage” and “partnership” is semantic—a kind of “separate but equal” doctrine. Anything beyond semantics, however, logically necessitates unequal rights.
In other words, either you support equality or you support discrimination.
Rudy seems to recognize this dilemma; as a campaign spokeswoman told the Boston Globe, “It’s about rights and benefits more than the title.” Indeed, this was a point Rudy made in 2004 on the O’Reilly Factor: “So now you have a civil partnership, domestic partnership, civil union—whatever you want to call it—and that takes care of the imbalance, the discrimination, which we shouldn’t have.”
To be sure, people can reasonably disagree as to whether such sweeping change should arise democratically or juridically. But procedural issues aside, if the difference between “gay marriage” and “domestic partnership” is just words, then what’s the big deal anyway?
Addendum: Even Charles Krauthammer, who is rarely at a loss for perspicuity, can barely muster up an argument. “I think it is a mistake for society to make this ultimate declaration of indifference between gay and straight life, if only for reasons of pedagogy,” he writes.
August 23rd, 2007
1999:
“When people overdo it about terrorism, terrorists actually win. You’re sort of like becoming agents and instruments of the terrorists.”
2007:
“They hate you!” says Rudy Giuliani in his new role as fearmonger in chief, relentlessly reminding audiences of all the nasty people out there. “They don’t want you to be in this college!” he recently warned an audience at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. “Or you, or you, or you,” he said, reportedly jabbing his finger at students. In the first Republican debate he warned, “We are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world, and it turns out planning inside our country, to come here and kill us.” On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. “This is reality, ma’am,” he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. “You’ve got to clear your head.”
Conclusion (courtesy of FBI director Louis Freeh):
“If you compare [Rudy's] remarks to what every politician and most of our citizens were saying on September 12, 2001, you would not find it noteworthy or unusual.”
More:
- In one 15-minute phone interview in August, Giuliani compared the terrorism threat with Nazism or communism six times (Time).
- “If one of them gets elected, it sounds to me like we’re going on the defense,” he said. “We’ve got a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. We’re going to wave the white flag there. We’re going to try to cut back on the Patriot Act. We’re going to cut back on electronic surveillance. We’re going to cut back on interrogation. We’re going to cut back, cut back, cut back, and we’ll be back in our pre-September 11 mentality of being on defense” (Washington Post).
August 18th, 2007
Veteran conservative activist Craig Shirley has called it “the height of intellectual dishonesty” to advocate repealing Roe while calling for the federalization of marriage. “[B]ehavioral issues belong at the state level,” he observes.
Indeed, the conservative position on gay marriage—to say nothing of the consistent position—should be a federalist one. This is also the strategically sound liberal position, as TNR’s James Kirchick argues:
[Federalism] appeals to conservatives who oppose gay marriage (like former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr [my link]) but agree that it is a subject best left for states. It also acknowledges that the president’s power to enact legislation on gay marriage is extremely limited. The most a Democratic president could do is repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. . . . which would be a considerable accomplishment and open the door to granting federal benefits to gay couples in states where such unions are recognized. But marriage laws themselves [would] still [be] within the purview of the states.
Related: “Why Can’t Democrats Explain Their Opposition to Gay Marriage?”
Addendum (8/22/2007): The gay rights movement is often compared to the civil rights movement. But one parallel often overlooked is the importance of incrementalism.
For example, in 1957, civil rights leaders derided the Civil Rights Act as a sellout and a crippling compromise. But as (historian?) Robert Mann observed in an op-ed yesterday, “By giving lawmakers confidence that voting for once-radical ideas wouldn’t make the sky fall,” the bill “paved the way for subsequent, stronger rights legislation.”
Indeed, the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, would never have passed in 1957.
The corollary: Same-sex equality won’t happen tomorrow. It will proceed, to borrow a phrase from political scientist Phil Klinkner, as an unsteady march.
August 16th, 2007
Redstate is the most prominent and influential group blog on the right. Its managing editor, Erick Erickson, works hard and does good work, and his success is evident in that Eagle Publishing recently bought the blog.
Three of Erick’s recent posts, however, evince a streak of overzealous activism that is misguided and gratuitous.
First, he posted a ridiculous and insulting interview with Ron Paul: instead of actually talking to Paul, he parodied him as a Martian.
Second, he attacked another straw man: instead of engaging Paul’s policy positions, he spewed venom on his supporters—”damn dirty liberal hippies in need of real jobs.”
Finally, today, he trained his ire on RNC chairman Mel Martinez, who yesterday chided Romney and Giuliani “for opposing and mischaracterizing the Senate immigration bill Mr. Martinez helped craft,” the Washington Times reports.
“It’s about leading on the tough issues,” Mr. Martinez told the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce … “It was easy to say, ‘This wasn’t good enough, this isn’t right, I don’t agree with Martinez’ … But at the end of the day, what is your answer? How would you solve this?
Erick argues that the party chairman must never attack fellow Republicans, and so he is demanding that Martinez be fired, and is urging Redstate’s readers to call their state parties to this effect.
The irony, of course, is that Erick is attacking a Republican for attacking other Republicans.
Moreover, Erick’s outrage—he calls Martinez an “incompetent fool”—is wildly disproportionate to Martinez’s alleged offense (a mild rebuke on its own, but especially mild when compared with Lindsay Graham’s bigot remark).
Related: “A 12th Commandment: Principle Before Party.”
August 15th, 2007
Many of us are frustrated with the war in Iraq. No one doubts that serious mistakes have been made, and everyone is anxious for a panacea.
The problem is, instant gratification is not a strategy. Instant gratification, while emotionally pleasing, will only require our future return to mop up the metastasized mess.
First, consider the calls to cut our losses and redeploy. Presidential candidate and New Mexico Governor, Bill Richardson, wants to “bring all the troops home … in six months, with no residual forces.”
But as Richardson’s colleague, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, retorts, “It’s time to start to tell the truth” about such withdrawal. “If we started today, it would take one year—one year—to get 160,000 troops physically out of Iraq.” Indeed, 19 years ago, it took the Soviets nine months to extract 120,000 men from Afghanistan, and they were simply going next door.
Slowing things down further is the staggering amount of stuff we would need to take with us—or destroy or sell if we couldn’t, lest it fall into the wrong hands. According to Time magazine, the U.S. currently has 45,000 ground-combat vehicles in Iraq, spread out across 15 bases, 38 supply depots, 18 fuel-supply centers and 10 ammo dumps. Equally daunting, equipment re-entering the United States must be inspected for any microscopic diseases.
Moreover, the price of pulling out prematurely is gigantic and grave. In the north, Kurds and Arabs would do battle for oil wells, as Kurdistan drifted toward independence, instigating skirmishes with, and possibly an invasion by, Turkey. In the south, an emboldened Iran would stop pussyfooting and uncork its influence, establishing a theocratic Shiite foothold, with neighborhoods controlled by militias like the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army. The middle of the country would erupt in a bloodbath.
Those who contend that Iraq cannot get much worse than it is now would do well to remember that this was the same refrain about Lebanon before civil war enveloped that country and about Somalia before the U.S. rushed out in 1993. In short, the only thing standing between the shaky stability of present-day Iraq and an ethno-sectarian inferno scorching the Persian Gulf is the United States armed forces.
We should also honor our humanitarian obligation to leave Iraq more stable and more secure than we found it. To paraphrase Colin Powell, We broke it, so we own it; now we must fix it.
Finally, retreating without a decisive victory would perpetuate our enemies’ perception of us as a paper tiger. Early evacuation might also trigger an arms race among our friends and allies, who would no longer trust the weak-kneed U.S. to defend them, and it would surely endanger our diplomats around the world, who would become tempting targets for every would-be, tin-pot terrorist who questioned American resolve.
So, where do we go from here? Iraq today is at a crossroads. Prudence dictates that we stay the course until at least September 15, when Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, will deliver a report detailing our progress, or lack thereof.
In the meantime, preventing the country—and thus the Gulf, and thus the world—from slipping beyond repair will take patience and cause pain. But whatever our instincts may demand, a brighter future for the Iraqi people and vindication that American lives have not been lost in vain is still very much possible.
August 14th, 2007
Published on TechRepublican, August 15, 2007.
Rudy Giuliani is a Republican who holds the Democratic position on abortion. He’s also a Catholic, which digs his hole even deeper, since various American bishops have threatened to deny him Holy Communion, as they did to John Kerry in 2004.
Accordingly, most political strategists would advise Rudy to avoid the subject of communion at all costs, on the theory that there’s no good way out of this minefield. A satisfactory answer would require either an encyclical or a Castro-length sermon, they posit.
Sorry, but that’s dead wrong. Instead of obfuscating or tiptoeing around the issue, Rudy plunged headfirst into it, in the current issue of the New Yorker:
“They [the bishops] have every right to tell me anything they want,” Giuliani said to me. “But then I have every right to believe anything I want. And, ultimately, that sort of expresses both my political faith and my religious faith. They have a right to instruct me. And then, having my own conscience, and my own mind, and being my own individual person, I have a right to determine whether I agree with that or I don’t agree with it. Now, there are some people that look at religion differently. That’s the way I look at it. It’s a way that helps me understand morality better. It helps me understand God better. And ultimately it’s my relationship with God, my relationship with Jesus, that’s the important one. And I’ve got to figure it out. And if they help me they do. And if I don’t agree with it then I have to go with my own conscience.”
Thus, in just 152 words—to a reporter, no less—Rudy defused a tinderbox. He didn’t pander, but spoke from his heart. Joe Klein would be proud.
Rudy’s homily is especially important because it disproves the conventional wisdom that Republicans are better communicators than Democrats, the thinking being that the nuance of clause-draped liberal ideas doesn’t lend itself to sound bites (cf., “support the troops” vs. “pro-troop, anti-war”). As Stanley Fish has brilliantly elucidated, what matters is not the message but the messenger:
If you can’t explain an idea or a policy plainly in one or two sentences, it’s not yours. . . . Words are not just the cosmetic clothing of some underlying integrity; they are the operational vehicles of that integrity, the visible manifestation of the character to which others respond. And if the words you use fall apart, ring hollow, trail off and sound as if they came from nowhere or anywhere (these are the same thing), the suspicion will grow that what they lack is what you lack.
Indeed, a good communicator can always articulate his message, regardless of complexity and without compromising the integrity of his argument. Tom Friedman, a liberal columnist for the New York Times, is a master of this art, using simple metaphors, like The Lexus vs. the Olive Tree and The World Is Flat, to encapsulate big ideas.
Bear this in mind the next time someone carps that, say, Hillary Clinton’s position on Iraq is too sophisticated to be simplified. It’s not the position, it’s the person, that’s the problem.
Addendum: As soon as I finish praising Rudy Rudy for being forthright, I read that he’s clammed up. Asked last week at a town-hall meeting in Iowa if he is a “traditional, practicing Roman Catholic,” Rudy retorted, “My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not so good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests.”
Addendum (8/20/2007): The more I think about it, the less I think there’s a contradiction between the above two quotes. In short, some questions, like whether one is a good Catholic, are inappropriate, and it can be refreshing to hear a politician tell a questioner as much.
In fact, this is what Mitt Romney told a writer for the Atlantic Monthly last year, who asked if he wears Temple Garments—white underclothing, with the “Marks of the Holy Priesthood” sewn in, donned with reverence by the most faithful Mormons. “I’ll just say those sorts of things I’ll keep private,” Romney sensibly replied.
August 11th, 2007
The Politico’s Ben Smith reports from the latest Democratic debate:
Obama, like Clinton and Edwards, was unable to explain his opposition to same-sex marriage in principled terms, referring to it as a matter of “semantics.” Obama cast his opposition as a matter of strategy and priority—he would not have advised the civil rights movement to make the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws a top priority in 1961, he said.
Clinton called her opposition “personal,” but didn’t explain it. And Edwards took back an earlier comment that his “faith” had led him to oppose same-sex marriage—but didn’t elaborate on the source of his current opposition.
“Their reasons for opposing equality in civil marriage tonight became even less clear,” Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said in a statement after the debate.
It’s times like this when you gotta admire the forthrightness of Ted Kennedy, who, in reference to the Marriage Protection Amendment, thundered, “A vote for this amendment is a vote for bigotry, pure and simple.”
Rob Bluey goes into more detail here.
August 7th, 2007
Published on Redstate.
Legislation: H.R. 3162, the Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007.
Background: Established in 1997, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP, pronounced “s-chip”) is a partnership between the states and federal government to insure poor children. The program is up for reauthorization by September 30, but big-government liberals want not just to renew it, but also to expand it.
The problem is, the expansion contradicts SCHIP’s original, limited intent.
First, it redefines eligibility by recognizing people up to 21 as “children.”
Second, it extends coverage to a family of four with an income of $82,600—hardly a “low-income” group.
Third, by removing the requirement for reauthorization, it transforms SCHIP from its current block grant status into a permanent entitlement, like Medicaid, which is automatically funded every year, regardless of congressional approval.
Thus, what’s being proposed is not reauthorization but repudiation. SCHIP was intended to insure kids. Now it’s being exploited to encompass adults and even wealthy families. Instead of distorting language and creating new entitlement programs, we should reaffirm sensible age, income and reauthorization parameters.
Furthermore, the proposed expansion crowds out private insurers in favor of government health care. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill will cause nearly two million people to abandon market-based medicine for Washington-based mandates.
In order to avoid caricature, this debate is not about whether to insure poor children. This debate is about how to insure them: not via welfare-style coverage, but via market forces that have facilitated the world’s most advanced drugs and cures.
Finally, at a time of ballooning deficits, expanding SCHIP makes a mockery of fiscal responsibility. According to CBO estimates, the bill will cost nearly $60 billion over 10 years, which is 10 times President Bush’s budget request.
Moreover, in order to finance all this, smokers would be hit with an extra half dollar in taxes for every pack of cigarettes they buy. Such a sin tax is inequitable and regressive.
Democrats are picking up where Hillary Clinton left off 14 years ago. Their Hillary Care-lite legislation deserves the same fate as hers: ignominious defeat.
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