It seems to me that this year, more than any other time that I remember, the current field of GOP candidates accurately represents the many, many faces and special interests of the Republican party quite completely.  One by one, the republican grandees and commentators that – to me – make the best case for the republican party and conservative policies, are getting thrown out as RINOs and what’s left is pure, distilled essence of republican.  As a result, there is no (credible) candidate who I look at and say, well, I hope he wins. He wouldn’t be too bad. I don’t remember that ever happening before. Worse, each candidate seems to represent some kind of grotesque archetype – a liberal caricature of a GOP politician.

The front runner represents Big Money. In liberal propaganda, Big Money is the core constituency of the party – all the other constituencies were bolted on later to make up for the fact that the Big Money constituency is too small to be a powerful force… if they didn’t have all that money, anyway.

There is the edge-of-sanity libertarian. I personally find the basic ideas of libertarian thinking very appealing but, for some reason, the basic libertarian ideas aren’t good enough for people who make a career out of libertarian politics. The good ideas have to be rolled up in a big ball of crazy before they are ready to be rolled out on the national stage. The best thing you can say is that at least you can believe what he says – unlike the previous guy. I still don’t get why libertarians think they belong with the religious conservatives. I’m eager to see this riddle solved.

There is also the crony capitalist, the-object-of-power-is-power insider who seems (to this outsider) to be the antithesis of everything that republicans say they stand for. But, hey! He talks a good game and has proven – more than all the others – his partisan credentials. If a win-at-all-costs brawler is what you look for in a president, then this is your guy.

The apocalypse-is-nigh vote is actually split this year. One is just a straight-down-the-line religious conservative who genuinely seems to speak for the largest republican constituency: poor, uneducated white folks. The other just froths (and scares me a little). A win for one of these guys might finally resolve the What’s the Matter with Kansas? tension that has been bugging liberals for years.

Then there is the good old boy. When liberals close their eyes and imagine the face of the republican party, this is who they see – and they are a little bit afraid. Maybe those folks should be allowed to secede after all. They are not quite like us.

Last and, for once, least there is the guy who seems to stand for old-fashioned, sensible, conservative thinking which, of course, dooms him to obscurity.

I should probably also mention the fallen heroes of the race. There’s always one candidate who tries to be jes’ regular folks. They always fail spectacularly. Celebrity clowns are rarer.

I’m poorly qualified to comment on what republicans should be looking for in a presidential candidate and I’ve never really understood what makes libertarians find common ground with social conservatives and wall street types and the Christian right. I think this is the election where the republicans finally make up their mind. Are we for government intrusion into people’s private lives? Or are we against it? Are we serious about this deficit reduction thing? Or not? Do we really think massive cuts in entitlements (and taxes!) will make America a better place? Or is that just smoke and cover for rich-get-richer policies? Do we really care about the breakdown in family values or are we going to choose the serial adulterer? Will true believer Christians vote for a – erm – unorthodox believer? And, most fundamentally, do libertarians, social conservatives and big business belong together in the same party?

We are gonna learn the answers to all these questions and more soon, I hope. I’m excited (and just a little bit scared) to find out.

Most critics of the critics, like Chait in New York Magazine, rattle off a list of accomplishments that Obama achieved and that liberals should be grateful for. It’s the usual list of left-leaning wishes like health care reform and the draw-down in Iraq that allegedly could not have been achieved by anyone else but, still, none of that addresses my dissatisfaction.

In the centre, conservatives like David Brooks and Douthat claim that centrists are disappointed that Obama wasted his time on health care when he should’ve been focussing on the economy but, nope, that’s not it either.

Conor Friedersdorf comes closer with his continuing observations that Obama has institutionalized some of the Bush/Cheney excesses like starting wars without congressional approval (even wars that I, in principle, might approve of) and the detention and even assassination of american citizens without judicial or congressional oversight. That comes closer to the source of my discontent but it still misses the mark.

An insidious version of the we were dupes narrative says that we, fools all, projected our hopes and dreams on Obama who, like the Mirror of Erised, reflected them back at us. Instead of supporting Obama, we were supporting idealized versions of ourselves. Our disappointment was inevitable when we found that Obama fell short of our impossible aspirations. This narrative infuriates me but I struggle to explain why it does not apply in my case.

Until today, even I could not have articulated where Obama fell short of my expectations. You could’ve listed all the obvious accomplishments and advances and I would have nodded but said… yes……but….but…

Today, Friedersdorf hit the nail firmly on the head.

Here’s Obama circa 2008, via Lawrence Lessig, via Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic:

“If we do not change our politics — if we do not fundamentally change the way Washington works — then the problems we’ve been talking about for the last generation will be the same ones that haunt us for generations to come.”

“But let me be clear — this isn’t just about ending the failed policies of the Bush years; it’s about ending the failed system in Washington that produces those policies. For far too long, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, Washington has allowed Wall Street to use lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system and get its way, no matter what it costs ordinary Americans.”

“We are up against the belief that it’s all right for lobbyists to dominate our government–that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem, and this election is our chance to say that we’re not going to let them stand in our way anymore. Unless we’re willing to challenge the broken system in Washington, and stop letting lobbyists use their clout to get their way, nothing else is going to change.”

“Unless we’re willing to challenge the broken system in Washington, and stop letting lobbyists use their clout to get their way, nothing else is going to change.”
“If we’re not willing to take up that fight, then real change–change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans–will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.”

And here’s Lessig’s version of Obama’s promise:

I was convinced by Obama. More than convinced: totally won over. It wasn’t just that I agreed with his policies. Indeed, I didn’t really agree with a bunch of his policies–he’s much more of a centrist on many issues than I. It was instead because I believed that he had a vision of what was wrong with our government, and a passion and commitment to fix it… In speech after speech, Obama described the problem of Washington just as I have, though with a style that is much more compelling.

This is it exactly.

When Obama took the throne he was overwhelmingly popular and he could’ve used some of that popularity to hold congress’s feet to the fire to bring about some change we could believe in. He didn’t.

Starting with the stimulus bill and continuing through the long-drawn out health care bill everything was passed with the usual scuzzy compromises – the special deals for the conservative democrats in the mountain states and the reach around for the public sector unions.

He campaigned heavily through the primaries and the general on ending the Bush tax cuts for those earning more than a quarter of a million dollars and on closing Guantanamo. On both those issues, it wasn’t the evil pubbies who did him in, it was the craven politicking in his own party. Either could’ve been a good moment to show that things would be different in Washington. He could’ve whipped out some soaring rhetoric on the presidential megaphone and marshalled some of his popularity into heat for Pelosi and Reid. Instead he played it safe and let the political wheels spin.

In the end his popularity just leached away. What a waste! Instead of investing his political capital in good causes, he hoarded it like a miser. If he had spent some of it to bring the changes he promised, he would have earned interest on his investment ten-fold. Instead he let it moulder in his safety deposit box where it eventually withered away.

The biggest tragedy of all was the way he let the pubbies win the war of words over health care reform. How on earth were the pubbies able to distort a message about controlling healthcare costs into a story about pulling the plug on grandma? Since when have republicans cared about grandmas? Leaving responsibility for selling health care reform in the mouths of Pelosi and Reid was negligence of the worst kind.

Still, if the economy picks up a bit over the next year, I expect he’ll be re-elected. This time around, instead of soaring rhetoric, I expect he’ll pull out the dirty tricks. People will still pull the lever for him with heavy sigh that at least he’s not as bad as the other guy.

/heavy sigh. Time to renew my green card.

“If we do not change our politics — if we do not fundamentally change the way Washington works — then the problems we’ve been talking about for the last generation will be the same ones that haunt us for generations to come.”

- Barack Obama, 2008

42 million with no health insurance? Oh well, at least 260 million have it. That’s pretty good right?

12 million illegal immigrants? Send ‘em back where they came from. Been here 25 years? Got kids who are grown up and can’t go to college? Should’ve thought of that before you came here.

Liberals tend to think of those numbers as actual people and imagine each one as having hopes and dreams and frustrations and families and lovers which makes it so much harder to come up with sensible policies that don’t leave someone, somewhere out in the cold.

I don’t think you can govern efficiently when you imagine every decision about health spending as someone’s grandma who can’t get a hip replacement and every deportation order as a family being torn up by the roots. Liberals would be so much better off if they could just think of people as statistics.

Despite my earnest belief that it’s better not to care, I was pleased to see Gingrich’s gaff [Gaff. n. when a politician accidentally tells the truth] on immigration.

Here’s Conor Friedersdorf, talking about Newt’s slip up last night.

Is it inhumane to deport an illegal immigrant who came to the United States 25 years ago, established roots, obeyed the law, raised his children here, and now has American grandchildren? Yes, emphatically so. But I suspect that when Newt Gingrich made that assertion during Tuesday evening’s GOP debate, he upset a lot of conservative Republican voters.

Short of calling immigration restrictionists “racist,” the quickest way to upset them is to say that they’re “heartless,” as Rick Perry once put it, or that they suffer from a lack empathy or compassion. That’s the sort of thing liberals are always saying when they attack immigration restrictionists, who resent the accusation even more when it is made by their fellow conservatives. I can imagine how they feel. For the most part, these immigration restrictionists are just as humane as anyone. They give to charity, do volunteer work, help out people in need.

Talking of Newt, I’d like to call to everyone’s attention that I predicted him as the next Republican presidential candidate about two years ago. Sure, he’s a pompous, hypocritical windbag responsible for much of the animosity in american politics today but, to a lot of people, I bet he’s that guy who “presided” over the huge boom in the 90s and stuck it to that upstart Clinton in the Lewinski Affair.

The man is odious but he deserves some credit for speaking a rare truth on illegal immigration. Unfortunately for him, that probably cost him the support of the people most likely to vote for him.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called “universal jurisdiction.” Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

Ronald Reagan’s message urging the senate to ratify the convention on torture.

I’ve long been a fan of bloggingheads.tv. They host one-on-one debates on politics, education, science, the arts…everything. Their gimmick is that the debaters must be civil and address each other’s points. A refreshing change from the shoutfests on Sunday morning tv.

About one in ten debates is very good. This, between Glen Greenwald and David Frum, is one of the best. Frum blathers a little but that’s understandable. Greenwald is scarily good.

Watch the debate.

On United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States reaffirms its commitment to the worldwide elimination of torture. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law

George W Bush

Bush and Cheney made a bunch of claims about Iraq that weren’t true…most people didn’t believe them until they sent Powell up to make a big speech at the UN…

…remember?

Their source – curveball – has finally spoken up. Not only was he lying all along…everyone – CIA, German handlers, everyone who had anything to do with him – suspected he was lying at the time. Everyone except Powell. No one told Powell. Powell’s not happy.

Responding to the Guardian’s revelation that the source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or “Curveball” as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq’s secret biological weapons programme, Powell said that questions should be put to the US agencies involved in compiling the case for war.

In particular he singled out the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency – the Pentagon’s military intelligence arm. Janabi, an Iraqi defector, was used as the primary source by the Bush administration to justify invading Iraq in March 2003. Doubts about his credibility circulated before the war and have been confirmed by his admission this week that he lied.

Powell said that the CIA and DIA should face questions about why they failed to sound the alarm about Janabi. He demanded to know why it had not been made clear to him that Curveball was totally unreliable before false information was put into the key intelligence assessment, or NIE, put before Congress, into the president’s state of the union address two months before the war and into his own speech to the UN.

“It has been known for several years that the source called Curveball was totally unreliable,” he told the Guardian . “The question should be put to the CIA and the DIA as to why this wasn’t known before the false information was put into the NIE sent to Congress, the president’s state of the union address and my 5 February presentation to the UN.”

American Public Opinion on Foreign Aid

Just based on what you know, please tell me your hunch about what percentage of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. You can answer in fractions of percentage points as well as whole percentage points.

Mean……………………………………………………………27%

Median………………………………………………………….25

What do you think would be an appropriate percentage of the federal budget to go to foreign aid, if any?

Mean……………………………………………………………13%

Median………………………………………………………….10

Source: WorldPublicOpinion.org (November 30. 2010)

Note: In fiscal year 2009, bilateral foreign aid totaled $22.5 billion: 0.6 percent of federal outlays.

DiA: More generally, which party do you find more credible when discussing America’s fiscal challenges?

Mr Bartlett: The Republicans don’t have any credibility whatsoever. They squandered whatever they had when they enacted a massive UNFUNDED expansion of Medicare in 2003. Yet they had the nerve to complain about Obama’s health plan, WHICH WAS FULLY PAID FOR according to the Congressional Budget Office. The word “chutzpah” is insufficient to describe how utterly indefensible the Republican position is, intellectually.

Furthermore, Republicans have a completely indefensible position on taxes. In their view, deficits cannot arise from tax cuts. No matter how much taxes are cut, no matter how low revenues go as a share of GDP, tax cuts are never a cause of deficits; they result ONLY AND EXCLUSIVELY from spending—and never from spending put in place by Republicans, such as Medicare Part D, TARP, two unfunded wars, bridges to nowhere, etc—but ONLY from Democratic efforts to stimulate growth, help the unemployed, provide health insurance for those without it, etc.

The monumental hypocrisy of the Republican Party is something amazing to behold. And their dimwitted accomplices in the tea-party movement are not much better. They know that Republicans, far more than Democrats, are responsible for our fiscal mess, but they won’t say so. And they adamantly refuse to put on the table any meaningful programme that would actually reduce spending. Judging by polls, most of them seem to think that all we have to do is cut foreign aid, which represents well less than 1% of the budget.

There is a general agreement about risk, then, in the established regulatory practices of several developed countries: risks are deemed unacceptable if the annual fatality risk is higher than 1 in 10,000 or perhaps higher than 1 in 100,000 and acceptable if the figure is lower than 1 in 1 million or 1 in 2 million. Between these two ranges is an area in which risk might be considered “tolerable.”

There is more chance that you will be killed by a kitchen appliance than by a terrorist.

Back when I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh there was one thing in particular he used to say that I agreed with. Over and over he said that liberals defined themselves largely by the worthiness of their objectives and the sincerity of their motives. The actual results of their policies didn’t matter at all. Thus liberals support the minimum wage because they care about the well being of workers at the bottom of the wage scale. That many of these workers lose their jobs or fail to find jobs because the minimum wage priced them out of the labor market was a matter of no concern to liberals. All that mattered is that they cared.

Bruce Bartlett (Treasury official under Bush I) on conservatives.

One of the reasons I became a conservative way back when is because conservatives lived in a world where one’s actions are defined by their consequences, not one’s motives. Conservatives also prided themselves on being reality-based and fact-based in their analyses, while liberals often seemed to live in a dream world disconnected from history, institutions and ideology, among other things.

Bruce Bartlett (drafter of the bill which became Reagan’s signature tax cutting bill) on the Tea Partiers.

Today, however, conservatives have largely adopted the liberal operating assumption and now also define themselves by the righteousness of their motives. This fact became very obvious to me this week when I examined the knowledge that tea party demonstrators on Capitol Hill had on the subject of taxation. As I recount in my column below, most of those in the crowd grossly overestimated the level and burden of federal taxes, thinking that they are many times higher than they actually are.

Bruce Bartlett (one of the founders of ) supply-side economics on the Tea-Partiers answers to a survey prepared by David Frum (economic speechwriter for Bush II).

Tuesday’s tea party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times higher than they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median was 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944.

Bruce Bartlett on taxes under Obama.

According to the JCT, last year’s $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. [snip] No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama’s policies.

Bruce Bartlett on the gap between perception and reality.

Perhaps these people haven’t calculated their tax returns for 2009 yet and simply don’t know what they owe. Or perhaps they just assume that because a Democrat is president that taxes must have gone up, because that’s what Republicans say that Democrats always do. In fact, there hasn’t been a federal tax increase of any significance in this country since 1993.

Bruce Bartlett’s recommendation to Tea-Partiers.

Whatever the future of the tea party movement in American politics, it’s a bad idea for so many participants to operate on the basis of false notions about the burden of federal taxation. It only takes a little bit of time to look at one’s tax return to see what one is actually paying the Treasury, calculate the percentage of one’s income that goes to taxes, and compare it to what was paid last year and the year before. People may then discover that their anger is misplaced and channel it into areas where it is more likely to bring about positive change.

I am sincerely grateful, therefore, to Daniel Larison in The American Conservative for still being very angry. I am glad he won’t let it rest.

Of course the new administration will try to make the best of it, claim progress and take credit for anything it can. That is in the political self-interest of this administration. Having inherited a mess that the political class has convinced itself was improving, it would not be advantageous to be the one overseeing the unraveling. The rest of us are not burdened by such considerations.

I don’t think it is particular noble to destroy another people’s country on the basis of unfounded, paranoid fears that its small, economically weak, militarily inferior government posed grave threats to the global superpower. There are many words that come to mind to describe this, but noble is not one of them. It is not especially noble to do this with no meaningful plan for restoring order and governance in the wake of the invasion. There is no nobility to be found in the afterthought of poorly constructing a democratic regime whose elections served as the trigger for massive bloodshed. Likewise, there was not much nobility when our government belatedly recognized its incompetence and failure long after it could do the civilian casualties any good and proposed a plan that would temporarily reduce violence long enough for the previous administration to get out the door.

My anger is still there but is deep below the surface but I am glad that Larison is still able to rouse it back up and remind me. I don’t want to forget.