Reason Magazine - Topics > Barack Obama

Are Judges Activists Only When They Overturn Laws McCain Likes?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:56:00 EDT

In a speech to the National Rifle Association today, John McCain argues (accurately) that he's a much stronger defender of the Second Amendment than Barack Obama. A few excerpts:

For more than two decades, I've opposed efforts to ban guns, ban ammunition, ban magazines, and dismiss gun owners as some kind of fringe group unwelcome in "modern" America. The Second Amendment isn't some archaic custom that matters only to rural Americans, who find solace in firearms out of frustration with their economic circumstances. The Second Amendment is unique in the world. It guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. To argue anything else is to reject the clear meaning of our Founding Fathers....
But the clear meaning of the Second Amendment has not stopped those who want to punish firearms owners—and those who make and sell firearms—for the actions of criminals. It seems like every time there is a particularly violent crime, the anti-gun activists demand yet another restriction on the Second Amendment. I opposed the ban on so-called "assault weapons," which was first proposed after a California schoolyard shooting. It makes no sense to ban a class of firearms based on cosmetic features. I have opposed waiting periods for gun purchases.
I have opposed efforts to cripple our firearms manufacturers by making them liable for the acts of violent criminals....
Senator Obama hopes he can get away with having it both ways. He says he believes that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms. But when he had a chance to weigh in on the most important Second Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court in decades, District of Columbia v. Heller, Senator Obama dodged the question by claiming, "I don't like taking a stand on pending cases." He refused to sign the amicus brief signed by a bipartisan group of 55 Senators arguing that the Supreme Court should overturn the DC gun ban in the Heller case. When he was running for the State Senate in Illinois, his campaign filled out a questionnaire asking whether he supported legislation to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns with a simple, "Yes."

I think McCain (who also notes some of his differences with the NRA, including his support for background checks at gun shows and for campaign finance regulations that muzzle groups like the NRA close to elections) is actually too easy on Obama here. As I've noted, Obama has cited the D.C. ban as an example of gun control that's consistent with the Constitution, which makes you wonder what it would take to violate the Second Amendment as he understands it.

McCain adds that, even if the Supreme Court overturns the D.C. law, federal judges will continue to play an important role in determining which firearm restrictions pass constitutional muster. Hence supporters of the right to keep and bear arms will still need to worry about judicial appointments. That much is certainly true, but McCain runs into trouble when he tries to explain why his criteria for picking judges are superior to Obama's:

In America, the constitutional restraint on power is as fundamental as the exercise of power, and often more so. Yet the Framers knew these restraints would not always be observed. They were idealists, but they were worldly men as well, and they knew that abuses of power and efforts to encroach on individual rights would arise and need to be firmly checked. Their design for democracy was drawn from their experience with tyranny. A suspicion of power is ingrained in both the letter and spirit of the American Constitution.
In the end, of course, their grand solution was to allocate federal power three ways, reserving all other powers and rights to the states and to the people themselves. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches are often wary of one another's excesses, seeking to keep each other within bounds. The framers knew exactly what they were doing, and the system of checks and balances rarely disappoints.
Quite rightly, the proper role of the judiciary has become one of the defining issues of this presidential election. It will fall to the next president to nominate qualified men and women to the federal courts, and the choices we make will reach far into the future. My two prospective opponents and I have very different ideas about the nature and proper exercise of judicial power. We would nominate judges of a different kind, a different caliber, a different understanding of judicial authority and its limits. And the people of America—voters in both parties whose wishes and convictions are so often disregarded by unelected judges—are entitled to know what those differences are.
Federal courts are charged with applying the Constitution and laws of our country to each case at hand. But a court is hardly competent to check the abuses of other branches of government if it cannot control its own judicial activism.
Real activists seek to make their case democratically—to win hearts, minds, and majorities to their cause. Such people throughout our history have often shown great idealism and done great good. By contrast, activist lawyers and activist judges follow a different method. They want to be spared the inconvenience of campaigns, elections, legislative votes, and all of that. Some federal judges operate by fiat, shrugging off generations of legal wisdom and precedent while expecting their own opinions to go unquestioned.

McCain wants his audience to believe he will appoint judges who will strike down gun control laws that conflict with the Second Amendment. At the same time, he condemns "activist judges" who override the will of the people, as expressed by their legislative representatives, in the process "shrugging off generations of legal wisdom and precedent." But that is exactly what the Supreme Court will be doing if it declares the D.C. gun ban unconstitutional. Furthermore, that is what it ought to do, because the legal wisdom that long prevailed in this area—the idea that the Second Amendment protects no individual rights that a legislature need respect—was wrong. In this case, as in many others involving "constitutional restraint[s] on power," the Court can be true to its obligations only if it is "activist," rejecting the considered opinion of elected legislators and thereby checking "efforts to encroach on individual rights."

Jeff Jacoby made a similar point about the inadequacy of McCain's judicial philosophy in a recent Boston Globe column. A few years ago in reason, Damon Root made the libertarian case for judicial activism.

Obama on Medical Marijuana: Getting Clearer

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:30:00 EDT

Last summer, when Barack Obama repeatedly distanced himself from the Bush administration's policy regarding medical marijuana, he stopped short of explicitly promising to let states go their own way in this area. But two recent interviews seem to have eliminated any wiggle room on that question.

Until now Obama's firmest stand was the one he took on August 21 in Nashua, New Hampshire. Asked if he would continue the Drug Enforcement Administration's raids on medical marijuana users and their caregivers, he replied:

I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It's not a good use of our resources.

That statement still left open the possibility of prosecuting and raiding the people who supply patients with marijuana and are permitted to do so under state law. In a May 9 interview with Oregon's Willamette Week, however, Obama was specifically asked whether he would "stop the DEA's raids on Oregon medical marijuana growers" (emphasis added), and he said:

I would because I think our federal agents have better things to do, like catching criminals and preventing terrorism. The way I want to approach the issue of medical marijuana is to base it on science, and if there is sound science that supports the use of medical marijuana and if it is controlled and prescribed in a way that other medicine is prescribed, then it's something that I think we should consider.

That last part is rather vague: Who is "we," and what is it they're considering? The Obama campaign's response to questions from the Los Angles Times clarifies things a bit:

"Voters and legislators in the states—from California to Nevada to Maine—have decided to provide their residents suffering from chronic diseases and serious illnesses like AIDS and cancer with medical marijuana to relieve their pain and suffering," said campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.
"Obama supports the rights of states and local governments to make this choice— though he believes medical marijuana should be subject to [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] regulation like other drugs," LaBolt said. He said the FDA should consider how marijuana is regulated under federal law, while leaving states free to chart their own course.

It seems to me that Obama now has unequivocally promised to back off and allow states to make their own policy decisions about the medical use of marijuana within their own borders. He also seems to be saying the federal government should consider rescheduling marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act so that doctors can legally prescribe it. Even if that second part never materializes, on this issue Obama is much better than John McCain, who (as the Times notes) has repeatedly flip-flopped between federalism and drug-war dogmatism, with the latter at this point winning out.

Republicans and Tax Realities

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

In the 1980s, a Republican House member, fed up with bipartisan efforts to reduce the budget deficit, denounced Republican Sen. Bob Dole as the "tax collector for the welfare state." Newt Gingrich, who later became Speaker, had captured something essential about the party's mood. It was not against the welfare state. It was just against paying for it.

That remains the case today, as John McCain and his supporters make clear. He rules out tax increases to cut the deficit, while vowing to get tough on spending. But the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says that while his proposals would slow the growth of spending, total outlays would still rise faster than inflation. Result: a larger deficit.

Republicans used to argue that keeping taxes down was the only way to restrain spending. But as taxes have been cut under President Bush, spending has soared by 29 percent (after adjustment for inflation). Meanwhile, a $236 billion budget surplus has morphed into a deficit of more than $400 billion.

If we want to cut federal spending, apparently we have to do it directly. And if we don't want to cut spending, the least we can do is pay for it ourselves instead of running up debts for our children to pay.

But Republicans object to raising taxes in general, and one in particular: the tax on capital gains. Obama's plan to increase the rate applied to the sale of assets has provoked howls of outrage on the right.

McCain said it proves Obama "doesn't understand the economy." An editorial in The Wall Street Journal claimed that lower rates yield higher revenues and drew a damning conclusion: "Either the young Illinois senator is ignorant of this revenue data, or he doesn't really care because he's a true income redistributionist who prefers high tax rates as a matter of ideological dogma regardless of the revenue consequences."

You don't have to be a Democrat to doubt that logic. Conservatives regard Obama as a true-blue liberal who itches to expand the size of the federal government. Do they think he would forfeit money to do that just for spite?

As it happens, Obama is the one who is heeding data rather than ideology. Most economists believe that in the long run, the 2003 cut in the capital gains rate reduced revenue rather than raising it. For that matter, even the Bush administration's budget admits as much. Keeping the rate at 15 percent rather than letting it revert to 20 percent, it estimates, would cause a revenue loss of $79 billion over the next decade.

It's true that rates and revenues may sometimes move in opposite directions. When the rate rose in 1987, capital gains realizations dropped. But there's an obvious explanation for that transitory effect. In 1986, seeing the increase coming, people hurried to cash in capital gains while the rate was low.

It's also true that after the rate fell in 1997, realizations rose. But as University of Michigan economist Joel Slemrod notes, that increase began well before the cut—and they plunged after 2000, without any rate increase. Assessing the last two decades, the Congressional Budget Office reports that any positive effect on realizations is "certainly not large enough to offset the losses from a lower rate."

Sensible people might not mind the lost revenue if the change strengthened the economy. But chances are it does just the opposite, by encouraging taxpayers to jump through hoops to reduce their tax liability.

A low capital gains rate hinders the free market by inducing people (especially very wealthy ones) to find ways to take earnings as capital gains instead of ordinary income. In other words, it encourages them to do things that would not make economic sense otherwise. A modestly higher rate would discourage such wasteful avoidance.

Like all taxes, capital gains taxes are a burden. But given that the federal government spends nearly $3 trillion a year, taxes are a regrettable necessity. When we cut capital gains taxes, we have to raise other taxes to make up the loss. Or we have to borrow more money—which means raising taxes in the future.

Republicans may abhor the obligation of paying for the welfare state they helped preserve. But for the moment, the only real choice is between doing that job better and doing it worse.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

You Don't Have to Watch Dynasty to Cop an Attitude

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:02:00 EDT

Last month I mentioned that the conspiracy theorist Carrington Steele, author of Don't Drink the Kool-Aid: Oprah, Obama, and the Occult, wasn't the first person to worry that a Church of Oprah was rising. But I didn't realize just how unoriginal Steele was. The Christian outfit Lighthouse Trails Research reports:

Upon reading Steele's work ourselves, our editors discovered that the 80-page book was filled with verbatim passages copied from other writers material, which was presented as Steele's own authorship....

While we regret to issue this finding because we do believe that Oprah Winfrey's efforts to convert the public to her New Age beliefs must be exposed, we fear that Steele's book could negatively reflect upon and misrepresent long-standing and reputable ministries. In addition, because the author also plagiarized some secular sources (such as CNN, Fox News, and Rolling Stone magazine), we believe this book may, in addition to being a poor Christian testimony, be legally problematic.

There's a political angle:

Because the chapter on Obama did not contain any documentation that he was involved in the occult or the New Age, Lighthouse Trails asked Steele if there was political motivation involved. What's more, the chapter on Obama did not seem to fit in with the rest of the book. Steele said she was not politically motivated.

Fuel for future conspiracy theories:

When Lighthouse Trails spoke with Carrington Steele, she stated she had done both the writing and the research on the book without help or support from others. However, it was pointed out to her that she often said "we" and "us" in her interviews, and we wondered to whom she was referring. At this point, Steele said she could not answer that question, saying she was not at liberty to say. We found this response to be curious and disturbing.

Friday Funnies

info@reason.com (Scott Stantis) — Fri, 09 May 2008 07:00:00 EDT

The Audacity of Agnosticism

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:33:00 EDT

Over at The American Spectator, Sean Higgins argues that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is an agnostic. He notes that in his memoir, Obama pointedly says he did not have a religious epiphany at the moment he became a member of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's congregation; additionally, Obama was raised to view religion as a cultural thing, rather than a source revealed truth. Higgins closes with this:

His Republican opponent [for a Senate seat in Illinois] was the bombastic, erratic and quite possibly insane black conservative Alan Keyes. Obama crushed him in the general election, but says it was harder than it looked.

"[A]s the campaign progressed, I found him getting under my skin in a way that very few people have. When our paths crossed during the campaign, I often had to suppress the rather uncharitable urge to either taunt him or wring his neck," Obama writes.

How did Keyes do this? By questioning Obama's Christian faith.

"Christ could not vote for Barack Obama," Mr. Keyes once said, "because Barack Obama has voted...in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."

It touched a nerve in Obama and he was by his own account tongued-tied, irritable and tense during their debates. Keyes prodded Obama on the question of biblical literalism.

How could Obama believe the Bible's proclamation that life was sacred and yet support abortion rights, Keyes would ask? Obama gave "the usual liberal response" about separation of church and state.

"[Y]et even as I answered, I was mindful of Mr. Keyes's implicit accusation—that I remained steeped in doubt, that my faith was adulterated, that I was not a true Christian," Obama complains.

Well, it wouldn't have annoyed him that much if Keyes wasn't onto something.

Whole thing here.

I'm not convinced the "real" Christians can't be pro-choice, but I do think Obama's candidacy is forcing a discussion of the intersection of religion and politics that is very interesting and relevant to figuring out how pols govern.

A Narrative of the Life of Barack Obama

info@reason.com (Damon W. Root) — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:18:00 EDT

So far, Democratic frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has been compared to Abraham Lincoln, Robert F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. Is he the second coming of abolitionist Frederick Douglass as well? In the spring issue of The American Scholar, Nick Bromell makes the interesting, if ultimately unconvincing case that Obama is the only Democrat still adhering to the faith- and feelings-based liberalism espoused by Douglass:

If Douglass were alive today, he would be dismayed by the reluctance of most liberals and progressives to connect programs with values, values with beliefs, beliefs with feelings. He would insist on their knowing what kind of temperament underlies and what spirit animates their politics. He would ask why they find particular values enduring and sacred—a question that would set them on a path leading back to how they feel about the world and themselves and other people, back to a recovery of words that breathe life and passion into an otherwise static list of clichés.

Aren't Americans today impatient for liberals to rediscover what they stand for? Aren't they eager for a liberalism that speaks out of its deepest wellsprings, a liberalism that speaks reason from the heart?

Of course, Frederick Douglass was a classical liberal, a lifelong champion of natural rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and property. Too bad Obama seems so uninterested in following Douglass' lead on that third one.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily)

Hillary Rising

info@reason.com (Jeff Taylor) — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

One month ago Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) faced an uphill climb in North Carolina. A few days from Tuesday's primary, Clinton has clearly closed in on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and there are now whispers of a Clinton win among her state-wide supporters.

The Clinton campaign continues to set the bar low, intending to spin even a close loss to Obama as proof that superdelegates cannot trust the party's nomination to such a weak candidate. However, keep in mind how Clinton managed to make up ground in a state where some polls had her trailing by as much as 20 points. The Clinton campaign has largely lucked into its recent momentum.

Clinton must first thank the state's Republican Party. It's decision to put the most strident anti-Obama ad, one with a heavy dose of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, into the mix two weeks ahead of the primary has rebounded to Clinton's advantage. The ad was ostensibly directed at the two Democratic contenders for the governor's race, both of whom have endorsed Obama.

But a TV ad featuring Rev. Wright damning America from the pulpit presented rural white voters with an uncomfortable image of Obama while at the same time freeing Clinton from having to do that job herself. It was win-win for the Clinton team.

Incidentally, state conservatives will not soon forget John McCain's sanctimonious heartburn over the NC GOP ad. They did not like the Republican nominee much on the issues before the flap, and now they find him pandering—and soft to boot.

Better still for Clinton, Rev. Wright decided to drop by the National Press Club this week to reamplify his previous remarks. This kept the story fresh for another few days and led Obama—prodded along, rumor has it, by spot polling in NC showing the Wright issue sapping his support among well-educated white voters—to finally denounce his former pastor.

Still, the potential for huge numbers of newly registered voters to turn out for Obama next week has clearly troubled the Clinton camp. They were not likely to be turned off by the 24/7 focus on Wright. They were on a mission to vote. But the Clinton network had an answer for that.

The Institute for Southern Studies (ISS), a left-liberal outfit in Durham with a hair-trigger on all voting rights issues, claims that the answer was good ol' voter suppression courtesy of a group with connections to the Clinton campaign. A Beltway non-profit with the tongue-twisting name of Women's Voices Women Vote has made robo-calls around the state—as it did ahead of other primaries—telling potential voters that the "packet" they must sign to be eligible to vote will soon arrive in the mail.

But no such "packet" exists, and the deadline for registration has long since passed. As such, ISS finds this calling effort "misleading"—and with good reason. Turns out one of the group's executives is a frequent contributor to the Clinton campaign, amid other interesting connections:

Women's Voices Executive Director Joe Goode worked for Bill Clinton's election campaign in 1992 as a pollster; the group's website says he was intimately involved in "development and implementation of all polling and focus groups done for the presidential primary and general election campaigns" for Clinton.

Women's Voices board member John Podesta, former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, donated $2,300 to Hillary Clinton on April 19, 2007, according to OpenSecrets.org.

What is a Clinton campaign without a little funny business? The size of the turnout among black voters remains the great unknown for Tuesday; anything which dampens that turnout will be to Clinton's advantage.

One above-board factor the campaign can claim credit for is turning Bill Clinton loose to do his Bubba routine among small towns of displaced blue-collar workers. The former president remains popular with the NASCAR crowd and he never fails to skewer the Bush administration, noting, for example, that he left office with a federal budget surplus.

Much less important—indeed, bordering on the insignificant, despite the spin given it by consultants with the ear of gullible reporters—is Clinton's endorsement by North Carolina Governor Mike Easley. On paper Easley is a four-time statewide winner, including two wins as attorney general before his current run as governor.

But Easley's lame-duck year has been marked by political scandal in Raleigh, with one Democratic ally after another under investigation, and the former Speaker of the House now serving time in the federal pen. Add in the fact that governor's office is institutionally weak and that Easley has no campaign for another office in the field, and Hillary gets very little bump out on the campaign trail from this backing.

However, there is no denying that whatever the cause, Clinton is on the upswing while Obama seems to be treading water and is focusing on the insider game of locking down superdelegates. Weekend events and news coverage will be crucial for both candidates. As improbable as it seemed 30 days ago, Clinton has a shot to deny Obama a big victory. This would send the Democrats a loud-and-clear message: Pick me, I can win this thing.

Jeff Taylor writes from North Carolina.

Joe Trippi's Gut-Check Failure

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:39:00 EDT

From the current issue of Politics (formerly Campaigns & Elections and outlet for two damn fine cover stories by reasoners [about Mike Huckabee and the coming libertarian era]), Joe Trippi turns on the waterworks thinking about his experience with presidential washout John Edwards:

For the first time in thirty years of political work, I didn't go with my gut.
I didn't tell him what I should have told him: That I had this feeling that if he stayed in the race he would win 300 or so delegates by Super Tuesday and have maybe a one-in-five chance of forcing a brokered convention. That there was a path ahead that would be extremely painful, but could very well put him and his causes at the top of the Democratic agenda. And that in politics anything can happen-even the possibility that in an open convention with multiple ballots an embattled and exhausted party would turn to him as their nominee. I should have closed my eyes to the pain I saw around me on the campaign bus, including my own. I should have told him emphatically that he should stay in. My regret that I did not do so-that I let John Edwards down—grows with every day that the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continues....
My mistake was not seeing more clearly then what is so obvious to me now: He could have kept his agenda in the forefront by staying in the race and forcing Obama and Clinton to focus on those issues because he, John Edwards, would hold the key to the convention deadlock. And maybe, just maybe, a brokered convention would have stunned the political world and led to an Edwards nomination.

Whole thing, worth reading for many reasons (including real insight into campaign guys' heads), here.

Me, I'm glad John Edwards is out of the race—he's the Mountain Dew of phoney-baloney pols (to the extreme!) and while a brokered convention would be a good deal of fun (whether it'll ever happen is a very different question), Edwards' dumb Big Gummint ideas were cutting edge back when LBJ was taking craps in front of his cabinet members. Do we really need another moneybagged populist egging Obama and Clinton to go Ralph Nader on an already-flagging economy?

reason on Joe Trippi here.

Obama and Wright...

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:52:00 EDT

Atlanta-based columnist Ron Hart on Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright:

I am no stranger to what is said in a black church, which, since revealed by the Rev. Wright, can shock and amaze most whites. It is the same feeling of disbelief that blacks and whites grappled with when O.J. Simpson was acquitted in his trial in Los Angeles.

The Rev. Wright is simply ripping the scab off race relations, yet to be reckoned with by political leaders. Politicians pander to race for their own benefit, but they don't intend on getting past it because it is an effective tool. Without race and class envy, the Democrats really have no campaign tools.

The media continue their fascination with Obama, but this new religious stumble toward Obama's coronation clearly troubles them. Politicians bring religion into politics at their own peril. Yet somehow the media will spin it for Obama, and probably tie it to their belief that Obama was born in a manger.

Whole thing here.

Unionizing the Village in Order to Democrat it

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:53:00 EDT

The Washington Post's resident Labor toady, Harold Meyerson, is refreshingly direct today about our coming union/Democrat world:

[H]ow, Democrats wonder, can they secure the white working-class vote?
Well, they could start by re-unionizing it.
[bunch of numbers showing unionized whites voting Democrat, unlike their non-unionized co-racialists]
What do unions do that has such an impact? Chiefly, they remind their members what's at stake.

That's the ticket! Meyerson goes on to let slip what a Democratic-run Washington would do within the first 100 minutes of a Hillbarry Clinbama presidency:

Today, the party is united behind the Employee Free Choice Act, which, by enabling workers to join unions again without fear of being fired, would also greatly help Democratic prospects at the polls.

What is the Employee Free Choice Act, a.k.a. "card check"? Get ready to read all about it in the June issue of reason, care of David Weigel! In other words, subscribe today, for less than 20 bones a year.

The Paranoid Style Is American Politics

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:30:00 EDT

On Tuesday the lesbian assassin of Vince Foster won Pennsylvania's presidential primary. In the larger contest for the Democratic nomination, though, she still lags behind a jihadist sleeper agent who is simultaneously a secret Muslim, a secret Communist, and a secret Republican. Whoever wins their race will go on to face a brainwashed puppet of the Viet Cong, and whoever wins that race will then get on with the modern president's central task: serving the interests of Mexico. It must be true, I read it in my email.

There's a persistant political myth that paranoia is only a feature of the fringe, something common among alienated radicals and reactionaries but rare in the great American center. In fact, paranoia has been ubiquitous across the political spectrum. You can find it in nearly every faction and movement at every point in American history, not least among those establishment figures who think they're immune to conspiracy theories. (The most lurid and destructive tales of Waco were not told by militiamen after the raid was over. They were told by the media and the government while the siege was underway.)

In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, the historian Bernard Bailyn showed that the worldview of the patriots who would soon revolt against England included a strong belief, in the words of one colonist, that "a deep-laid and desperate plan of imperial despotism has been laid, and partly executed, for the extinction of all civil liberty." At the same time, Bailyn notes, British administrators "were as convinced as were the leaders of the Revolutionary movement that they were themselves the victims of conspriatorial designs." Colonial governors such as Thomas Hutchinson—a man John Adams accused of "junto conspiracy"—believed, in Bailyn's words, that "the root of all the trouble in the colonies was the maneuvering of a secret, power-hungry cabal that professed loyalty to England while assiduously working to destroy the bonds of authority."

After independence was won, the victorious patriots quickly found plots in their own ranks. If you didn't think the Jeffersonians were Jacobin pawns of the Illuminati, you probably fretted that the Federalists were conspiring to establish a monarchy. Nor did the hunt for subversive cabals end with the death of the revolutionary generation. The historian David Brion Davis has pointed out that the lead-up to the Civil War can be viewed as a clash between two conspiracy theories, one featuring a fearsome network of abolitionists and the other a hungry Slave Power.

And no, these passions haven't limited themselves to periods as violent as the war for American independence and the war between the states. It's telling that the 1990s, a time of relative peace and prosperity, were also a golden age of both frankly fictional and purportedly true tales of conspiracy. There are many reasons for this, including the not-unsubstantial fact that even at its most peaceful, America is still riven with conflicts. But there is also the possibility that peace breeds nightmares just as surely as strife does. The anthropologist David Graeber has argued that "it's the most peaceful societies which are also the most haunted, in their imaginative constructions of the cosmos, by constant specters of perennial war." The Piaroa Indians of Venezuala, for example, "are famous for their peaceableness," but "they inhabit a cosmos of endless invisible war, in which wizards are engaged in fending off the attacks of insane, predatory gods and all deaths are caused by spiritual murder and have to be avenged by the magical massacre of whole (distant, unknown) communities." Many bloggers with comfortable lives spend their spare time in a similar subterranean world.

Why all the paranoia? In part, of course, it's because there really are conspiracies out there. Power does attract the power-hungry. No, Hillary Clinton did not murder Ron Brown—but her explanations for her good fortune trading cattle futures do not bear close scrutiny. John McCain is not a deep-cover Manchurian Candidate, but he was a charter member of the Keating Five. Barack Obama is not a closet Islamist, but there are legitimate questions about his ties to the corrupt developer Tony Rezko. If politics is the art of compromise, then politicians will inevitably be compromised.

It also is often in a movement's interest to paint the opposition in the darkest possible colors, even when the stakes are small and even when the allegations involved are not completely true or relevant. More importantly, it is natural for the members of a movement to find such suspicions believable and to conjure up such theories themselves. It's always easy to think the worst about people outside your group, especially if they're already consciously working against your goals. This tendency becomes even stronger when a hierarchy is involved. The lower orders are inevitably suspicious of the elite, and the elite are always worried about the proles.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that one poll showed 15 percent of voters believing that Barack Obama is a Muslim. It shouldn't be a surprise that the stories anti-McCain conservatives used to whisper, that perhaps he collaborated with his captors in Vietnam, are now surfacing on the left as well. If Hillary Clinton somehow manages to take the Democratic nomination—an outcome that would probably require a conspiracy itself—you shouldn't be surprised when all the stories you heard about her in the '90s come roaring back, be they plausible or nuts.

Above all, you shouldn't be surprised when you hear these tales not just from that creepy-looking fellow manning the LaRouche booth near the bus stop but from ordinary, middle-class relatives and neighbors with ordinary, middle-class views. Welcome to America. Paranoia is a part of the political process.

The Four Scariest Words in the English Language—and Some of Them May Not Even Be English

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:37:00 EDT

I just received this mass email, with the subject line "Breaking ... Obama 'Swiftboating' Plan Revealed," courtesy of Human Events (all formatting in the original):

Below please find a special message from one of our advertisers, ExposeObama.com. From time to time, we receive opportunities we believe you as a valued customer may want to know about. Please note that the following message does not necessarily reflect the editorial positions of Human Events.

"President Barack Hussein Obama," those have to be the scariest four words in the English language!

I'm no fan of Obama (he can get my vote when he pries a gun from the dead cold hand of Charlton Heston), but I'm not sure that President Barack Hussein Obama is all that much scarier than the other two live options at the moment.

More at Expose Obama.

The Killer Elite

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:15:00 EDT

At this point in the news cycle, it is perhaps unnecessary to reprint Sen. Barack Obama's continuously reprinted comments about those bitter, clingy, armed, pious, and disaffected voters of Pennsylvania. But in case your interest in this never-ending race waned upon the exit of Mike Gravel, here is, once again, the Illinois Democrat explaining why the rural poor are supposedly swayed by conservative—rather than liberal—populism: "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Now, let's ignore that last bit of hypocrisy—if anyone has fanned the flames of anti-trade sentiment, it's Obama—and say that it's not too difficult to agree with The Economist's characterization of these comments as a bit "snooty." The claim that religious zeal (the Christian fundamentalism is implied) or gun ownership correlates to the number of shuttered Pennsylvania factories is pretty thin gruel. Recognizing this, both Obama's current opponents, Sens. Clinton (D-N.Y.) and McCain (R-Ariz.), pounced, calling the comments "elitist" and accusing their fellow senator of being hopelessly "out of touch" with the real America.

For its part, many in the media—excepting the conservative-leaning Fox News, of course—jumped into the breach to defend their beloved frontrunner. Consider the reaction of the pundits on CNN's The Situation Room, hosted by Wolf Blitzer, to the charge that Obama displayed a hidden contempt for the armed and religious. First, CNN's house windbag Jack Cafferty denied that Obama was trading in elitism. Rather, explained Cafferty, Obama was simply acknowledging that Pennsylvania is the Saudi Arabia of America. "What happens to [unemployed] folks like that in the Middle East, you ask? Well, take a look. They go to places like al Qaeda training camps." Regardless of whether gun ownership and economic desperation are causative, Cafferty (who has his own problems with inflammatory comments) denounced previous American leaders—cough, Bill Clinton, cough—that "shipped the jobs overseas and signed phony trade deals like NAFTA."

U.S. News & World Report Contributing Editor Gloria Borger weighed in with wrist-slap for Obama's "inartful" terminology. "But," she continued, "I think he's expressing a sentiment of mad as hell voters not going to take it anymore that we've seen throughout this election." The McCain and Clinton campaigns, Borger said, were after the same thing, which is to "portray Obama as this sort of effete elitist who doesn't understand the real working class people or Independent voters."

And, finally, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin sputtered that the whole thing was taken out of context. It was, he proclaimed, a "fake issue. I think [Hillary Clinton] is completely distorting what Obama said. And I think it's just shocking, frankly... I think [Clinton's attack] ad is a disgrace." Toobin declared that by dint of his family background, Obama was incapable of elitism: "Well, I just think it's remarkable that Barack Obama, this guy who grew up in a single family household with no money, who lived in Indonesia, who, you know, was—came from very modest upbringings, somehow he's the elitist." (While certainly not rich, it's worth reminding that Obama, the son of two university-educated parents, attended an "exclusive and prestigious" private school in Hawaii, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School.)

So in The Situation Room, there was consensus. The story was silly season stuff; a prototypically Clintonian diversion from the substantive issues.

While CNN scoffed at the thought of Obama not understanding the rural, white working-class voter, a number of pro-Obama bloggers and pundits were turning on his accusers. At The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan linked to a column by New Criterion editor Roger Kimball, and directed readers to "check out the photo" of Kimball wearing a bowtie and sporting turtle-shell glasses. What does this elitist buffon know from elitism?

Writing in The New Republic, Jonathan Chait railed at the "hypocrisy" of certain elite media figures, saving special ire for "George F. Will [who] decided to leap to the defense of the proletariat. Yes, that George F. Will."

In case you didn't immediately understand the source of Chait's sarcasm, he clarified that Will is "the fabulously wealthy, bowtie-wearing, pretentious reference-mongering, Anglophilic fop who grew up in a university town as a professor's son, earned two advanced degrees, has a designated table at a French restaurant in Georgetown, and, had he dwelt for any extended time among the working class, would be lucky to escape without his underwear being yanked up over his ears." Oh dear. Rumor has it that, in his Georgetown estate, Will has a shelf devoted to the novels of Evelyn Waugh, that poncy, ascot-wearing Brit (boo!) who wrote florid novels about fox hunting and buggery, which Will reportedly reads while consuming expensive French food!

So here we have a class-war version of the "chickenhawk" charge. Don't advocate for war unless you have served, don't speak for the peasants if you wear a bowtie and recommend Chesterton novels to your (probably foreign) friends. Members of the right-leaning bourgeoisie are incapable of spotting and deploring such condescension directed at those who typically vote for right-leaning candidates.

Chait writes that populist, fist-shaking pundits such as Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly, who bully guests and interviewers with references to their "real America," blue-collar credentials, "are multimillionaires who retain only the most remote connection to blue-collar life." This is true enough. But Obama's defenders use the very same line of argumentation in explaining away his "bitter" comments. So when critics such as Toobin tell Wolf Blitzer that Obama "grew up in a single family household with no money," it is perhaps worth mentioning that it should also be tough for Obama to retain his working-class connections—if he ever had any—when he earned $4.2 million in 2007.

Though it likely had little or no effect on yesterday's loss in Pennsylvania—potentially insulted voters were leaning largely toward Hillary Clinton anyway—it is not outrageous to think that Obama's extemporaneous bit of pop sociology was indicative of a generally condescending attitude towards the Other (that was the basic point of Will's column, which found precedent for such feelings in Adlai Stevenson's failed presidential runs in 1952 and 1956). That attitude will surely be revisited in the general election.

The inclusion of guns in Obama's complaint is, I think, especially revealing. A convincing argument can be made that xenophobia is more appealing to the dispossessed and downtrodden—They're taking our jobs! They're invading our country!—and a convincing case can be made that Obama has employed similar, though not explicitly xenophobic, language when railing against NAFTA stealing American jobs. But what does any of this have to do with guns, other than to signify that these are bitter country rubes that, to paraphrase What's the Matter with Kansas author Thomas Frank, foolishly vote against their own interests?

Nevertheless, Jeffrey Toobin told CNN viewers, what Obama said "was factually accurate." But is it? As Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "It turns out [gun owners] have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group. Nor are they ‘bitter.' In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were ‘very happy,' while 9% were ‘not too happy.' Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy."

So Obama's gun analysis was not only incoherent (how does one "explain their frustrations" by shooting skeet, anyway?), but based on lazy presumption and stereotype that's not that backed up by any data. And George Will might well be a fop, but his distillation of Obama's argument strikes me as reasonable: "Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program." In other words, Barack Obama thinks that, whether they know it or not, the gun-toting plebes of America are in desperate need of "change."

Michael Moynihan is an associate editor of reason.

Ten Years of Running and They Put You on the Woods Fund Board

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:59:00 EDT

Had enough of the Bill Ayers pseudo-scandal? Me too, but it just sparked an exchange between Cass Sunstein and David Frum that is too jaw-droppingly silly not to mention.

First -- this isn't the silly part -- Sunstein wrote in The New Republic:

Ayers is one of numerous people, in the Chicago area, whom Barack Obama has run across. Obama has much closer relationships with numerous conservatives on the University of Chicago faculty, many of whom have given money to Obama's campaign, and many of whom have talked to him at length and been at social occasions with him.

I know for a fact that Obama has actually played basketball with Richard Epstein, a libertarian on the law school faculty who has written some pretty controversial things on property rights and government regulation. I also know that Obama has had a number of conversations with former law school dean Daniel Fischel, a Reagan Republican who has written some pretty controversial things on corporations and government regulation.

Sounds like a reasonable point to make. But not to Frum:

Obama himself has equated Ayers' record of treason and violence to the intemperate talk of Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. Now Cass Sunstein goes further still - and compares unrepentant domestic terrorism to libertarian theorizing!

The point of Sunstein's comments, obviously, is not to "equate" Epstein with Ayers, just as the point of Obama's earlier comments, obviously, was not to "equate" Ayers with Coburn. The point is that Obama associates with a lot of very different people and that it's foolish to assume his loose connections to one of them define his politics. Serving on the same board as Bill Ayers doesn't make Obama sympathetic to Marxist terrorism any more than shooting hoops with Epstein makes him a libertarian.

If there's a legitimate story here, it isn't that Obama is one of the many Chicago politicians (even the mayor!) who have interacted with Ayers. It's that Ayers, after playing revolutionary for a spell, has managed to find a place in the Chicago establishment. The Weather Underground was made up of the children of the elite, and after all the shouting of the '60s and '70s died down those Weathermen who managed to avoid prison or self-immolation have often been able to return to high-status professional positions. I'd love to see a Marxist analysis of that class dynamic.

Zogby Says It's Hillary in Penn by Ten

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:38:00 EDT

Today's Democratic primary in Pennsylvania is underway. Yesterday, pollster John Zogby released a survey showing that among likely primary voters in the Keystone State, Hillary Clinton was up 10 points, 51 percent to 41 percent, over Barack Obama.

More here.

Over at Real Clear Politics, the average of polls has Clinton up by 6 percent:

Polling Data

Poll	Date	Sample	Clinton	Obama	Spread
RCP Average	04/17 - 04/21	-	49.3	43.3	Clinton +6.0
InsiderAdvantage	04/21 - 04/21	712 LV	49	42	Clinton +7.0
Zogby	04/20 - 04/21	675 LV	51	41	Clinton +10.0
Rasmussen	04/20 - 04/20	722 LV	49	44	Clinton +5.0
Suffolk	04/19 - 04/20	600 LV	52	42	Clinton +10.0
PPP (D)	04/19 - 04/20	2338 LV	46	49	Obama +3.0
Strategic Vision (R)	04/18 - 04/20	1200 LV	48	41	Clinton +7.0
Quinnipiac	04/18 - 04/20	1027 LV	51	44	Clinton +7.0
SurveyUSA	04/18 - 04/20	710 LV	50	44	Clinton +6.0
Mason-Dixon	04/17 - 04/18	625 LV	48	43	Clinton +5.0
See All Pennsylvania Democratic Primary Polling Data

The cable show chatter over the past couple of weeks has been that Hillary needs a double-digit win to pull super delegates her way. Not sure how much that matters but there's this non-bombshell all over Fox News this A.M.: Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker who is not liked by genre pioneer Frederick Wiseman, has endorsed Obama.

Hit & Runners, do you care who wins Pennsylvania? Why or why not? In one sentence or less.

Update: Libertarian Democrat and reason contributor Terry Michael says no matter what happens today, it's over for Clinton. Read about it in the Wash Times:

A rush toward Mr. Obama will get underway in the early morning hours of April 23, before we elitist Democrats grab our caramel macchiattos at Starbucks. By the time we reach Whole Foods in the late afternoon of the day after, and before we can put those French lentils with baby carrots into the microwave, the march of super delegates toward ObamaLand will be viewable on our 47-inch flat panel displays, presented by the best political teams in the cable babbling cosmos.

More here.

Obama's Favorite Terrorists

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:00:00 EDT

When William F. Buckley Jr. died in February, one of the things widely praised, by liberals and others, was his stalwart insistence on moral hygiene. Even when his conservative movement was small and embattled, he rejected the temptation to join forces with anti-Semites, the John Birch Society and other extremists. Later, he disavowed longtime confederates Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran for the sin of bigotry.

Buckley knew the importance of choosing allies carefully. But some people who expect such care from conservatives don't practice it themselves.

Among many liberals, extremism in the defense of "social justice" is no vice. When the folk singer Pete Seeger got a medal by President Clinton, no one cared that he was a veteran apologist for Stalin who still regarded himself as a communist. That indifference betrayed a double standard that conscientious liberals should reject.

By that standard, Barack Obama is a liberal, but not a conscientious one. I don't much care if he declines to wear a flag pin; I can overlook his wife's limited capacity for patriotic pride; and I defended his relationship with his former pastor. But his comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols.

When the issue came up in Wednesday's Democratic debate, the Illinois senator tried to duck it. "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from," he said. He added that to suggest "knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

Obama went on, "I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions. Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements?"

This exercise in moral equivalence is unconvincing, if not dishonest. Would Obama be friendly with someone who actually bombed abortion clinics and defends that conduct? Not likely. But he is friendly with William Ayers, a leader of the radical Weather Underground, which in the 1970s carried out numerous bombings, including one inside the U.S. Capitol. (Though the last person who should object is Hillary Clinton, whose husband pardoned two Weather Underground members.)

Obama minimized his relationship by acknowledging only that he knows Ayers. But they have quite a bit more of a connection than that. He's appeared on panels with Ayers, served on a foundation board with him and held a 1995 campaign event at the home of Ayers and his wife, fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers even gave money to one of his campaigns.

It's not as though Ayers and Dohrn have denied or repudiated their crimes. After emerging from years in hiding, they escaped federal prosecution because of government misconduct in gathering evidence, but they don't pretend they were innocent. In 2001, Ayers said, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

Dohrn has likewise rationalized the explosions, claiming that "our acts of resistance were tiny and symbolic." She even went to prison for refusing to testify about an armored car robbery involving her confederates. That crime was not tiny or symbolic to the two police officers or the security guard who were shot to death in the process.

All this is public record, and Barack Obama would have to be in a coma not to know it. Yet he showed no qualms about consorting with Ayers and Dohrn.

It's hard to imagine he would be so indulgent if we learned that John McCain had a long association with a former Klansman who used to terrorize African-Americans. Obama's conduct exposes a moral blind spot about these onetime terrorists, who get a pass because they a) fall on the left end of the spectrum and b) haven't planted any bombs lately.

You can tell a lot about someone from his choice of friends. What this friendship reveals is that when it comes to practicing sound moral hygiene, Obama has work to do and no interest in doing it.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Beer Drinkers Are Split in Pennsylvania

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:55:00 EDT

Via Extreme Mortman comes this poll from the Keystone State that shows Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) well ahead of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) among gun owners, bowlers, and hunters, but only tied among beer drinkers in Tuesday's Democratic Primary.

What explains that? Or any of this?

Zogby, btw, is touting a poll which shows Clinton up 6 points (48 percent vs. 42 percent, with 6 undecided).

Barack's Bitter Truth

myoung@reason.com (Michael Young) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has gotten much heat for suggesting that when people lose faith in Washington, they "end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms [and] gay marriage."

How strange, then, that during his questioning last week of the two most senior American officials in Iraq, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama took a minimalist view of what America could do to help Iraqi citizens regain faith in their government. Instead, the Illinois senator lowered the criterion for American "success" in Iraq, declaring that he could live with "a messy, sloppy status quo" in the country.

Obama's line of questioning was shrewd. With Petraeus he focused on al Qaeda, pushing the general to admit that the complete elimination of the group in Iraq was not necessary. Here's how Obama put it: "Our goal is not to hunt down and eliminate every single trace, but rather to create a manageable situation where they're not posing a threat to Iraq or using it as a base to launch attacks outside of Iraq. Is that accurate?"

"That is exactly right," Petraeus replied.

Obama then turned to Iran and questioned Crocker, the point man in the America-Iranian dialogue in Baghdad. As with Petraeus, Obama sought to lower the benchmark for what the United States should define as Iraqi "success." However, Crocker was less pliable. When Obama argued that it was unlikely that Iranian influence in Iraq could be terminated, Crocker responded: "[W]e have no problem with a good, constructive relationship between Iran and Iraq. The problem is with the Iranian strategy of backing extremist militia groups and sending in weapons and munitions that are used against Iraqis and against our own forces."

Obama didn't offer a convincing rejoinder to Crocker's protest. Instead, his time almost up, he cut to the crux of the exchange: a summary of his position on the war for an electorate that, he knew, would be listening to his every word. Obama's views were best captured in this passage:

And, see, the problem I have is if the definition of success is so high, no traces of Al Qaida and no possibility of reconstitution, a highly-effective Iraqi government, a Democratic multiethnic, multi-sectarian functioning democracy, no Iranian influence, at least not of the kind that we don't like, then that portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years.

If, on the other hand, our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo but there's not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence, there's still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it's not a threat to its neighbors and it's not an Al Qaida base, that seems to me an achievable goal within a measurable timeframe, and that, I think, is what everybody here on this committee has been trying to drive at, and we haven't been able to get as clear of an answer as we would like.

As the Lebanese commentator Hussain Abdul-Hussain bitingly wrote: "Obama's description of a post-America Iraq looked pretty much like post-1991 Iraq under Saddam Hussein: a country 'struggling along' but that was no ‘threat to its neighbors' and was not 'an al Qaeda base.'"

Indeed, but Obama was surely right in assuming that many Americans, perhaps a majority, have no problem with this. Saddam's brutality was never something they worried about. If you moved the goalposts a bit, Obama told them, failure would magically become success. The U.S. could head toward the exit in Iraq with its conscience clear.

The difficulty with Obama's appraisal was not just that it was based on a selective reading of the situation in Iraq, so that his assertion of how the U.S. had to realistically accept continued Iranian influence in the country somehow morphed into tolerance for Iran's systematic undermining of American interests there. The difficulty was not just that Obama over-optimistically assumed that his "messy status quo" could be sustained even if the U.S. removed most of its troops from Iraq (a point Crocker tried to make, before being cut off by Senator Joe Biden); the real difficulty with Obama's case was that it revived an American reading of Iraq that treats Iraqis as secondary characters in their own drama.

For the first two years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration was guilty of the same behavior. Iraq was about America and American power. Iraq's 2005 elections were the first real sign that Washington understood why the Iraqis mattered. Yet it was the 2007 surge that took this realization to new heights. U.S. commanders grasped that the security of Iraqi cities and civilians had to be the centerpiece of a new counter-insurgency strategy requiring U.S. soldiers to insert themselves more than ever into Iraqi society. Iraq's complex social dynamics were studied and, as effectively as possible depending on location, acted upon. For the first time the discussion in the U.S. seriously addressed what a pullout might mean in terms of Iraqi suffering.

That's why Obama's comments were so off-putting. He effectively told the Iraqis, once again, that they weren't worth anything to America. If violence and corruption were controllable, if al Qaeda was still around but was limited to Iraq proper, if Washington could stomach the Iranian manipulation of Iraqis, then it made little difference what the deeper aspirations of Iraqis in general were. Iraq could be a suppurating wound at the heart of the Middle East—a suppurating wound, Obama has tirelessly reminded us, which the U.S. helped create—but that counted for little when faced with the American urge to get out as soon as possible.

In his own defense, Obama might remind us that he's accountable only to his countrymen, not to the Iraqis; that the "good government" he has talked about in his campaign applies to embittered Americans, not to Iraqis embittered by the prospect of a precipitous U.S. departure. He might even be elected on that basis. But this would show that Obama, who has sold himself as a man of vision at home, is selfishly unimaginative abroad. Worse, because it is unlikely he will be able to much alter U.S. policy in Iraq, since Iran will not cede much more to the next administration than it did to this one, Obama's promises are potentially deceitful.

For as long as American leaders don't treat Iraqis as important in their own right, the Iraqis will have no incentive to tie their long-term interests to America's wagon. Should that matter? Both realists and idealists would probably answer in the affirmative. But where does Barack Obama stand? It's hard to imagine that Iraqis see in him change they can believe in.

reason contributing editor Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon.

Presidential Surveys Say...

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:28:00 EDT

From an AP/Yahoo poll:

In last November's Associated Press-Yahoo News poll, people preferred an unnamed Democratic White House candidate to a Republican contender by 40 percent to 27 percent. In this month's survey, McCain was essentially tied with the two Democratic rivals: It was McCain 37 percent to Hillary Rodham Clinton's 36 percent, and McCain 36 percent against Barack Obama's 34 percent....
Overall, 57 percent in this month's AP-Yahoo poll found Barack Obama likable, compared with 47 percent who said so about John McCain and 37 percent who thought so about Hillary Rodham Clinton. That's an increase since November of 8 percentage points for McCain and 6 points for Obama, while Clinton is 3 points lower.

More here.

McCain on Mortgage Bailouts

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:34:00 EDT

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has gone from knowing nothing about the economy to becoming a free-enterprise guy to sounding like an interventionist. Reports the LA Times:

McCain, in a campaign stop at a windows business in Brooklyn, said, "There is nothing more important than keeping alive the American dream to own your home, and priority No. 1 is to keep well-meaning, deserving homeowners who are facing foreclosure in their homes."

Well, you know what's coming next: McCain has announced a mostly detail-free plan to unburden deserving folks (of course!) of "a burdensome mortgage for a manageable loan that reflects the market value of their home." His plan, details to come sometime next week, will cost less than Hillary Clinton's or Barack Obama's, won't be a bailout for speculators or banks, blah blah blah.

That sort of turn is totally predictable. What's truly strange in the Times piece is this bit from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who was campaigning for McCain:

Bloomberg...recalled a visit several years ago to McCain's retreat outside Sedona, Ariz. He joked that the home and surrounding property were "relatively small" to be called a ranch and recalled that McCain's trademark ribs, which he grills himself, "were slightly on the well-done side." But Bloomberg said he "loved them anyways."

Question: How would McCain know if Boomer was campaigning against him?

Whole LAT piece here.

Reason Foundation's Mike Flynn on mortgage and big-bank bailouts here.

reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch wrote the book on McCain. Buy Myth of a Maverick now!

The New Franklin Roosevelts

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:00:00 EDT

FDR lives!

Last night Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the speaker of the House of Representatives and the majority leader of the Senate, received the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Distinguished Public Service Award at a dinner dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the New Deal. The organizers praised the politicians for "the parallels to be drawn between their present leadership and the New Deal period, when so much important and progressive legislation was pioneered with the cooperation of Congress."

It might sound odd coming from a libertarian, but I wish the Pelosi-Reid Democrats had more in common with Franklin Roosevelt. Not the Franklin Roosevelt who occupied the White House from 1933 to 1945, but the Franklin Roosevelt who aspired to the White House in the election of 1932. The Democratic platform of that year is a remarkable document, considering the way the party's candidate went on to govern. It isn't a libertarian manifesto—it endorses several subsidies and regulations—but it hardly embraces the enormous expansion in federal power that FDR would achieve. The very first plank calls for "an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance to accomplish a saving of not less than twenty-five per cent in the cost of the Federal Government." (It also asks "the states to make a zealous effort to achieve a proportionate result.") Subsequent planks demand a balanced budget, a low tariff, the repeal of Prohibition, "a sound currency to be preserved at all hazards," "no interference in the internal affairs of other nations," and "the removal of government from all fields of private enterprise except where necessary to develop public works and natural resources in the common interest." The document concludes with a quote from Andrew Jackson: "equal rights to all; special privilege to none." It sounds more like Ron Paul than Pelosi.

FDR's campaign reflected that platform. He accused Herbert Hoover of "reckless and extravagant spending," and he further denounced the Republican incumbent for believing "we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible." Even when he called for interventions in the economy, he generally couched his words in the old liberals' language of equal treatment rather than the new liberals' vision of enlightened central planning. In his famous Forgotten Man speech of April 1932—itself a sustained allusion to an essay by the pro-market sociologist William Graham Sumner—the Democratic candidate pointed to the wave of foreclosures sweeping the nation. Noting that Hoover had created a "two billion dollar fund...put at the disposal of the big banks, the railroads and the corporations of the Nation," FDR averred that the government should "provide at least as much assistance to the little fellow as it is now giving to the large banks and corporations."

Once in office, the new administration did indeed repeal Prohibition, and it eventually lowered some trade barriers as well. The rest of Roosevelt's anti-statist rhetoric resembles his actual policies about as closely as the last seven years reflect George W. Bush's promises to give us a smaller federal government and a "humble foreign policy." In 1932, a classical liberal could easily conclude that Roosevelt was closer to his views than Hoover, an old progressive who had displayed a lifelong love of central planning and government-enforced cartels, a man who bragged during the campaign that he had responded to the Depression with "the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic." Among other things, President Hoover had jacked up spending, installed agricultural price-support programs, pressured businesses to follow Washington's wage dictates, and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. But by the time a cerebral hemorrhage cut short FDR's fourth term, the federal bureaucracy's power had grown so enormously that Hoover was widely remembered as the last apostle of laissez faire.

Seventy-six years after Roosevelt's first presidential victory, we're again faced with the task of weighing a candidate's campaign promises and wondering what, if anything, they tell us about how the politician would actually govern. This isn't simply a matter of avoiding ill-informed projection, though both Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have a talent for attracting supporters whose views are diametrically opposed to the stated opinions of their candidate. Nor is it just a matter of sussing out dishonesty, though that's obviously a part of the equation as well: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has lied brazenly about everything from NAFTA to Tuzla, and it's hard to believe she's being upfront about her views on Iraq.

The truth is, would-be presidents don't always care about the issues that turn out to be most important. How did Bush flip his foreign policy views so easily? By not having strong convictions on global affairs in the first place, allowing neoconservative advisers to fill the void after the 9/11 attacks. It's easy to imagine, say, John McCain doing something similar during an economic crisis, given that he has already radically reinvented his economic philosophy twice in the last decade, shifting leftwards in 2000 and back to the right in 2008.

Come 2012, President Obama might be explaining why he is sending more troops to Tehran; or President McCain could be preparing emergency legislation to nationalize the banks. If so, our leader's former self will join Bush the humble non-interventionist and Roosevelt the budget hawk on the fringes of the nation's memory. A candidate's campaign persona: There's the true Forgotten Man.

Jesse Walker is the managing editor of reason and the author of Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America.

Sir Elton Comes Out for Hillary; Guess Which Song She Mentions

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:19:00 EDT

As someone who genuinely enjoys pre-knighted Elton John music from his '70s heyday, I can think of any number of Reggie Dwight-Bernie Taupin tunes that might cover this situation. None is mentioned below, though Sen. Clinton's invocation of "I'm Still Standing" below is the worst mention of a song by a politico since Sen. Bill Bradley once announced lunch for a bunch of New Jersey high school newspaper editors circa 1981 by announcing to the Springsteen-savvy crowd that "everybody has a hungry heart."

Sez the BBC:

Pop star Sir Elton John has raised $2.5m (£1.3m) for Hillary Clinton's US presidential campaign with a concert at New York's Radio City Music Hall.
Former president Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea joined the former first lady at the gig.
Senator Clinton, who is fighting Barack Obama to become the Democratic party's candidate, said: "I'm still standing"—a nod to Sir Elton's 1983 hit song.
The singer told the crowd: "There is no-one more qualified to lead America."
He also accused people who think Mrs Clinton is an unsuitable candidate of being sexist.
"I'm amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some of the people in this country, and I say to hell with them," he told the crowd.
"I love you Hillary, I'll be there for you."

More here.

I mention this story because a) I find celebrity endorsements/anti-endorsements genuinely hilarious (how many votes did David Crosby throw Bush's way by announcing he'd leave for Canada if the Texan beat Al Gore in 2000)?; b) I am genuinely interested in what sort of dinosaur rawk stars will come out for Barack Obama and John McCain (what are The Spokesmen up to these days?); c) I genuinely would have voted for Hillary if she had quipped instead, "I get high in the evening sniffing pots of glue," and d) It's a genuine opportunity to link yet again to the ultimate Shatnerian triumph of style, substance, and schmaltz, a.k.a. his dramatic reading of Elton John's "Rocket Man" (pronounced rock-IT maaan):

Petraeus at the Senate

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:28:00 EDT

From the L.A. Times' account of yesterday's Senate hearings on the Iraq War:

As expected, back-to-back Senate committee hearings spotlighting Army Gen. David H. Petraeus became a confrontation between two immovable forces. But there was no real decision at stake: President Bush is expected Thursday to endorse Petraeus' recommendation for a suspension of withdrawals in July, insisting that security gains over the last 15 months can lead toward a sustainable future, with continued U.S. help....
Democrat after Democrat, including the party's two remaining presidential contenders, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, questioned whether the costs of the strategy proposed by Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who also testified, were too high....
By keeping force levels at 140,000 into the autumn -- a few thousand more than before Bush announced the troop buildup in January 2007 -- U.S. officials can build on recent gains and the Iraqi government can gradually take over responsibility, he argued.

"This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable," he acknowledged. "However, it does provide the flexibility those of us on the ground need to preserve the still fragile security gains our troopers have fought so hard and sacrificed so much to achieve."

Petraeus refused to specify what might take place following a recommended 45-day suspension in troop reductions....

Not surprisingly, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) lauded Petraeus: "This means rejecting, as we did in 2007, the calls for a reckless and irresponsible withdrawal of our forces at the moment we are succeeding." Beyond the Dems, he was countered by several GOP senators, including Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, who noted, "Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient."

More here.

reason's current cover story on "The Trillion Dollar War" here. More on Iraq here.

Say a Prayer for the Free-Trade Democrat

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:37:00 EDT

Where have all the free-trade Democrats gone (long-time passing)? I noted earlier today that Hillary Clinton adviser Mark Penn got shitcanned for his ties to the Colombian government, specifically his work to push through a pending free-trade agreement with that country and these United States. Clinton, whose husband helped push through the North American Free Trade Agreement, is against the Colombian deal.

Given the demagoguery on the trade issue done during the Democratic primary in Ohio, it's worth dwelling on Clinton's and Barack Obama's trade positions, which suck. From the LA Times:

The Colombian trade pact sent to Congress on Monday by President Bush represents a win-win for the United States. Colombia already enjoys U.S. tariff preferences, and has since 1991; in exchange for making them permanent, Bogota would eliminate its tariffs on U.S. exports, which would greatly boost American manufacturers. To refuse the deal would alienate pro-U.S. governments across Latin America and push them closer to hostile leftist rivals such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. If Clinton and Obama make good on their promises to revisit NAFTA, meanwhile, it could spark a trade war with Canada and Mexico and reverse more than a decade of growth for all three North American economies.

Bill Clinton proved to Democrats that the party could both support sensible trade policies and win elections. It's a shame that his potential successors have forgotten that lesson.

More here.

Yet hardcore Dems seem hell-bent on pushing anti-trade as a defining characteristic of their party. Here's Talking Points blogger Josh Marshall talking about Penn:

Having your key campaign advisor also be an international man of mystery-cum-PR-lobbyist-cheeseball is fairly problematic. But for Hillary's sake, when her political future is on the line in a state like Pennsylvania, wracked by the loss of industrial jobs for decades, you think he could have waited a few more weeks before prancing off to help get a new free trade pact passed?

I think there's little doubt that Penn is a tool when it comes to having too many masters and all that, but do Democrats--whether in the rank and file or in the egghead brigades--really think that Pennsylvania's (or Ohio's, of Michigan's) lack of industrial jobs has anything to do with Colombia? Or even NAFTA for that matter? For starters, manufacturing employment peaked in the U.S. in 1979.

Blogger extraordinaire Alan Vanneman, a man on the Democratic side of the debate, plays out a different take--and one I wish were more popular across the politicial spectrum:

Yes, poor Pennsylvania, staggering under a 4.9% unemployment rate (February 2008). Poor Pennsylvania, with a per capita income of a mere $36,680 (2006 data), ranking only 18th in the U.S. A free-trade pact with mighty Colombia (2006 income per capita, a whopping $2,740) would surely blow a huge hole in the Keystone State's economy.

Hillary Clinton, Josh Marshall, and a lot of other "liberals" should hang their heads in shame at this disgraceful "Fuck the Latinos" campaign strategy.