Joe Klein has a very good take down of David Broder’s recent column:
David Broder has a very strange column today, praising a paper by the conservative scholar William Schambra in which the author criticizes Barack Obama for being interested in…policy. This is something I’ve noticed over the past twenty years: the Republicans–some of whom used to give a good faith effort to figuring out how best to govern–have lost all interest in policy. They care about power, and are willing to do just about anything to retain or gain it.
The argument against policy is that it’s…just…too…hard. Presidents like Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama believe in the possibility of rational public responses to chronic problems like health care or climate change. Their dreams are led astray by the realities of politics–lobbyists and craven pols who impose the fatally flawed as the enemy of the good. This is an argument neither new nor coherent.
I hadn’t thought of this angle, that Broder’s point is completely ridiculous because….what the fuck is the alternative to enacting policy?
My reaction to the column was different: it heralds the official Village recognition of National Affairs, a new high-brow winger publication that we’re likely to hear a lot about over the next couple years. Bobo drooled all over the thing a few weeks ago too. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Broder tells us that the “advisory board is made up of noted conservative academics from James W. Ceaser to James Q. Wilson”. The focus seems to be on policy and social science rather than wanking about Burke and Hayek. So let me ask you this: is there anything to conservative social science research beyond pro-voucher propaganda, pseudo-scientific attempts to justify white supremacism (Murray, Sailer, Saletan), and concern trolling liberal programs?
r€nato
They could maybe look into the connection between straight porn and homosexuality.
In fact I can think of several GOP pols who would like to submit grant proposals to research the topic in public men’s rooms…
Brian Griffin
No, there’s not. because to go beyond those topics (much like developing policy) would require actual research and actual work.
Much easier to simply coast on long-cherised and time-worn views. After all they’ve earned that free ride.
Brian Griffin
some expect hard work to lead to more opportunity; some expect it to lead to a reward. the former work on policy; the latter become pundits.
Tonal Crow
Sure. There’s plenty of “research” that wingers allege “supports” free market fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, hatred for gays, and any number of other pernicious social phenomena. Just ring up the “Family Research Council” for a boatload of the most deliciously pseudo-scientific claptrap this side of the climate-change denialists.
Nellcote
Playboy makes you gay which leads to Communism?
r€nato
proving that government can’t do anything right, by appointing cronies, donors and various politically-correct fuckups to run things.
Tonal Crow
@Brian Griffin:
Yes. Especially when you can “justify” your laziness by ringing your Burkean Bells.
Michael
About 4 years ago, in the wake of Schiavo and Katrina, I cooked up an appropriate line for the GOP:
“Shut up and govern”.
By my thinking, they were more eager to do things to belittle liberals than in doing their jobs, and obtaining crushing power was the goal
Once I realized that this was a feature and not a bug, I made my change.
Michael
Being a Big C Conservative is an incredibly lazy act. You never have to fix anything, and inaction is a positive.
Brian J
Perhaps there is. Mark Kleiman has had a piece interesting posts about James Q. Wilson, now at Pepperdine University, who has argued that visiting nurse services for new mothers can yield massive benefits for both the mother and child and society as a whole. It can be both a health care policy and a crime policy, since it reduces the chance a child born into a low-income family will lead, well, a life of crime. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like the sort of policy that would cost a great deal, even as it yields lots of benefits. It is indeed as we could get something for nothing. Plus, assuming there are enough sane Republicans left, it’s conservative enough so that they could actually vote for it along with Democrats.
Granted, stuff like this actually involves using…wait for it…government, so perhaps there’s not much support for it either in academia or in government. But I’d say there’s definitely at least a few people in both are trying to solve social problems from a conservative point of view.
mclaren
The alternative is: your gut.
Don’t think. Just go with your gut.
Hey. It worked for the previous administration.
Well — “worked” is an exaggeration. But it is an alternative.
asiangrrlMN
@r€nato: Maybe it’s because I’m imbibing bourbon at the moment, but you made me guffaw. Ta!
Zifnab
Is this a new blog for old people or did they just iterate on the Weekly Standard and the National Review? I mean, I’m sure Broder and Chris Mathews and the Politico will be wanking all over this. But are we really worried that another right wing noise maker is going to step into the spot light and do what the WSJ or the WaPo op ed sections aren’t already trucking out full time?
Be afraid of what? This isn’t change, it’s more of the same.
geg6
Doug, dood. Seriously? Conservative social science research? Talk about your oxymorons. Unless you consider Glen Beck or Pat Robertson social scientists.
jl
I did due diligence and read both pieces, because I did not want to drag this high class blog into a blogger ethics dispute even though I am a commenter.
Klein has ‘issues’ as we all know from a recent report of his acting out a recent garden party.
Clicking on that Broder link was tough, since everything he writes has a definite old ‘man smell’ and sometimes I sense the wafting oder of stale pee one gets in a rest home. Which is odd, because there are a number of people Broder’s age who do not come off that way at all.
Probably Broder always had a tendancy to write like a prissy hysterical old man, even when he was young, the nature of his writing is just more pronounced now.
My take is that this is Broder cleaning up Rove and making it smell like a rest home, which is much preferable, more respectable and professionally run, than a debauched political criminal lying in (or through, depending on how you want to interpret the gerund) his own filth.
The knock on the evil progressives in Broder’s column is a give away, in my opinion. That was a favorite tactic of the Bush-Cheney-Rove team. Smear experience and expertise. The gilded age was where it is at. Everything since then has been a disaster. It is a view that makes J.P. Morgan seem like a liberal, and Broder is passing it off as mainstream prissy-hysterical-old-man-stale-pee cred for the Village.
calling all toasters
It’s called “conservative social science” because it’s not actually social science. Kind of like “comedic genius”– not actually genius.
jl
I think you need to distinguish between conservatives doing social science and conservative social science.
There are a number of conservatives doing social science, who manage to maintain their integrity. Conservative social science is a crock.
James Q. Wilson identifies himself as a conservative compared to most of academia, but according to his wikipedia article, he said he is more liberal than most people in the country, and he voted for JFK, LBJ and worked on Hubert Humphrey’s campaign.
I have read that James Heckman is a ‘stolid conservative’, though I have never known him to make a public statement on his politics. He is a Nobel (Memorial) prize winner in economics, his work is in economic statistics, and he has integrity. He is certainly advocating programs that would get laughed out of CATO, or Heritage, or AEI in things like early child development programs, and community investment programs to improve educational achievement, based on his statistical research. But, then, I do not even know if he would agree with the ‘stolid conservative’ tag.
If Wilson is part of this new tank, I say, give it a chance. We can judge if it is corrupt from the beginning (Heritage), or starts out on the straight up but then rots (AEI).
kay
@Brian J:
Except.
Conservatives objected, rabidly and nonsensically, to just such a provision in the House health care proposal.
They portrayed funding programs like the ones you describe at the local level (they’re administered, necessarily, of course, through county health departments) as “Obamacare workers usurping parental rights”.
Death panels got all the press, so we were spared Sarah Palin weighing in on “Healthy Beginnings”, which is what my local county home visits program is called.
General Winfield Stuck
Not much. I still think we are living with the effects of Bush and Cheney’s neocon fantasies. The wingnuts who rose to prominence in blogs and general punditry had there appetites whetted for Power as you say, at least on the world stage with Bush’s Iraq fiasco. They are largely no longer interested in domestic policy lest it be military spending and research imo.
Their domestic policy they have nurtured and preached for has gone down in AIG flames and though people are always for tax cuts when you ask them, they have seen the results of too much of it and it doesn’t have the same punch. so that payoff isn’t working like it used to.
Every society has a portion of it’s people who crave power and expansion more than anything else. Our western friends and allies have gone down that bloody immoral road and want no more part of military imperialistic pursuits. We have not, except by proxy through tinkering in the internal politics of other countries for business exploitation, but the hunger of the right wing for more direct foreign adventurism has largely been unrequited until Bush came along. It is couched always in national security fearmongering of this or that small country posing us existential danger, but is rooted in economics and the rush of being exceptional and right and bending other nations to that hubristic faux ideal.
You can see it in Rich Lowry’s little opus on Obama’s actions in the UN today and yesterday, declaring O as naive and weak.This need to extend the length of your average wingnut pecker by force of will on others is a cancer right now on the body politic, and will take some time to unwind, but even then it is will remain a danger if those who would pursue get back into power.
This is kind of a stream of consciousness babbling comment that I’ve been thinking about since reading Lowry’s nonsense, the little Starburst wanker.
r€nato
@asiangrrlMN:
the least you could do is not bogart the bourbon ;-)
r€nato
best comment in the thread over at Swampland:
OK I only went 5 comments down but that’s pretty good.
jl
Here is particularly idiotic passage from Broder.
“The reason, Schambra says, is that this highly rational, comprehensive approach [progressive -ed] fits uncomfortably with the Constitution, which apportions power among so many different players, most of whom are far more concerned with the particulars of policy than its overall coherence.”
You see, my either innocent and deluded, or arrogant social engineering comufascist thug freinds here at this ninny liberal blog Balloon-Juice, the founders and framers who started this country knew better.
Benjamin Franklin knew that debates about expanding the territory of the US would be messy and unpleasnt compromises would occur, so he said ‘What the heck, we don’t need to system for adding new states, we will make it up as we go along, and make it up just before a crisis”
And Jefferson knew that money and speculation would mess up any land plan, so after he sobered up, he threw his drunk dream for a national land ordinance in the trash, and peed on it. He said “What? Some kind of rigid scheme for settling land, and setting aside land for schools and to raise revenue for public finance, that is crazy Big Government. Hell these rum dum Congressmen are going to do whatever they want anyway, when land speculators bribe them with borrowed money! Forget it!”
And Alexander Hamilton said “You know, forget that idea I had for a plan for national finance. Heck you need stability for that, Maybe England can do it but it won’t work here. We’ll just fix up the national finances as crises pop up, any old which way that will keep us going until the end of the month, when we all get paid anyway, by our corporate overlords who tell us what to do.”
See. Broder is just appealing to us to do things in our uniquely American Way. He is just asking us to Come to Our Senses and Be Reasonable and Realistic.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
“Naive and weak”. They’re so screwed if he succeeds with his approach to foreign policy, even on the edges.
I feel as if every one of those “naive and weak” columns, and there have been tens of them, just reek of fear. Not fear of any real threat, but fear of their whole approach being discredited.
After the economic melt-down, and all the gaping holes in The Dogma that mess exposed, losing cred on their basic premise of a belligerent foreign policy would almost be too much for them to bear.
Heresiarch
I don’t get it.
You praise Klein now, but we all know that next week he’s going to defend FISA violations, or declare that we mustn’t investigate torture allegations, or come up with some awful false equivalency.
I can’t take him any more. He’s just an old man, dedicated to puffing out as many words as possible into the internet.
jl
Same thing with that crazy Big Government postal service idea. Glad old Ben Franklin shot that one down. Dude, talk about oppressive one size fits all utopian government schemes.
I bet Franklin read Broder just in time for him to throw that nutty post office idea in the trash. Maybe he did. How old is Broder anyway?
cbear
Potentially.
If they are at some time in the future able to develop the metrics that might accurately predict my chances of being assaulted and forcibly cornholed by groups of crazed wetsuited goopers within a certain area or neighborhood…thus allowing me to avoid that locale–then I’m all for it.
jl
@cbear: I think Murray is working on that now.
Slaney Black
Decisionism.
Wiki don’t really do it justice. On the highbrow end, there’s Scalia’s “it doesn’t matter what the rules are, as long as they’re bright-line rules” – and on the other side you got “I’m the decider.”
asiangrrlMN
@r€nato: MINE MINE MINE! Get your own!
Slaney Black
Wait, you read the whole back-catalog of the Public Interest?
JK
Nobody does condescension and contempt quite like David Broder:
Martin
Wetsuits protect us from societies darker impulses, and dildos amplify the effect but also make us gay. The second wetsuit sets everything on the right course but not until the autoerotic asphyxiation and tax cuts for the wealthy are applied are we fully protected. It’s been suggested that having a clergy member masturbating in the corner makes the effect permanent, but more research is needed on that.
Mark S.
@General Winfield Stuck:
I think if you sat people down and explained to them the neocon agenda, they would recoil in horror. The vast majority of the country don’t give a shit about projecting American power all over the globe. That’s why there are entire think tanks devoted to finding and promoting the next Hitler, even when that potential Fuhrer poses absolutely no threat to us.
On a somewhat related topic, this made me sick today:
Of course, absent a draft, we don’t have anywhere near that many troops. How about that training of Afghan troops? That’s not going so well, either.
General Winfield Stuck
The GOP is just waiting to make their big comeback after, once again, a democrat president patches up the Titanic, and we can get back to important stuff like how to make baby jeevus stop crying over gay marriage and stopping Hollywood libtards causing teen pregnancy/
When that starts, we will know that America is back in the saddle.
Martin
Sounds about right. That was Shinseki’s number, and in a lot of ways Iraq was easier. We can either admit to the reality of the situation or continue with the clap louder strategy.
It doesn’t make me sick, but let’s recognize the situation and decide. Are we willing to build a coalition that size (I think Afghan has about 150K to put in the pot, if you count police) and deal with Pakistan as well or not? If not, then let’s admit that and get out.
someguy
Interesting that James Q. Wilson is on board a project aimed at justifying white supremacy and concern trolling. I’d always thought of him as a fairly serious sociologist. Didn’t know he was one of the white supremacists. Guess I oughtta look into the racial roots of broken window policing – maybe it refers to a different kind of defenestration.
Delia
@Martin:
500,000, huh? Even if the Afghans kick in 150,000, it’s not clear which side they’ll be fighting on. I guess if Congress doesn’t do health care and lets the bankers go on robbing everybody blind, they might be able to sign up enough enough people for the service if they promise their families free housing and health care in return. There’s a plan.
Jason Bylinowski
@calling all toasters: WHAAAAA?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Samuel Clemens.
Lenny Bruce.
Richard Motherfucking Pryor.
How could these master storytellers be an example of anything other than pure genius? I’m askin.
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?
someguy
@ Martin – we should cut and run. We’re just wasting money and blood on Bush’s failed imperialist project. Not like there’s any significant terror threat anyhow.
Col. Klink
So let me ask you this: is there anything to conservative social science research beyond pro-voucher propaganda, pseudo-scientific attempts to justify white supremacism (Murray, Sailer, Saletan), and concern trolling liberal programs?
Yes, you have groups like the Discovery Institute trying to convince us that although the world may not be 6,000 years old, it is certainly no older than 7,000 if you do the math right, divide by 3.14 and consider it all intelligent design. You also of course have flat tax studies demonstrating that every problem that ailes mankind could be solved by a low flat tax on those making a billion dollars a year or more. Finally, you have studies proving without a doubt that global warming isn’t man made at all, it’s just God loving ExxonMobile a little more each and every morning. Aside from that, nah, that’s pretty much it.
General Winfield Stuck
Just wait till we send in the Red State Strike Force. Them hardened puppies of war will save the day. Also, You Betch’a/
Martin
@Delia:
So, you’re suggesting that we should be just as successful with 100,000 troops?
The situation that McChrystal is suggesting is that we’re trying to launch a 100,000kg payload with a 20,000kg boost rocket. Now, we can sit here and let that rocket burn and say we can’t afford a 100,000kg boost rocket, but we aren’t going to do much more than just sit here watching the rocket burn. It can burn for 20 years and the payload won’t be one inch closer to orbit.
So, rather than just sit and watch, let’s choose between turning it off or buying the bigger rocket and at least do what we set out to do or move on to something else.
I’m not arguing for one or the other, just that if McChrystal is right, then what we’re doing is worse than either. Let’s have the honest debate, choose, and move on.
TenguPhule
At some point, we will have to put an end to GOP insanity before it puts an end to us.
Delia
@Martin:
I was being sarcastic, supposing they could get their recruitment up to the half a mil total by increasing the hardship on the American population. I don’t see how else they’re going to do it, short of a draft.
Mark S.
@General Winfield Stuck:
No, we need Red State for its mad fund raising skillz. Besides, we won last time with just John Rambo.
Martin
Well, that I actually disagree with. I think there is, but I’m not entirely sure what we should do about it or even what we can do about it. Personally, I think had we dumped 10% of the money that we blew in Iraq into hiring and training people to inspect inbound shipping, track down expired visa holders, and that kind of stuff, we’d probably be in a lot better shape against that threat.
I supported the initial foray into Afghanistan, but boy howdy did we drop the ball there at the end of 2001.
chrismealy
DougJ is just killing it lately.
Martin
Oh, I don’t think it’s at all possible without Obama building a massive coalition, and I suspect that ship sailed long ago. But if 500K is the magic number, and others agree with that, then we should embrace that number and have that discussion.
Among other things we need to learn to accept that some problems can’t be solved – or at least that some problems have a window in which they can be solved and if we miss that window, we need to accept that we blew it.
cbear
@Martin: I’m not sure I agree with your thesis, however elegant it may be.
I live in perpetual fear of finding myself in close proximity to goopers, of almost any stripe, in virtually any public or social setting that lacks a clear avenue of escape, and I seriously doubt that the prescense of clergy (masturbating or not) would afford the level of protection I deem neccessary for maintaining the sanctity of my nether regions.
I believe, if current trends continue, that it may become neccessary to somehow brand goopers so that normal human beings can immediately recognize them as a threat and avoid any interaction with them. Perhaps the proper authorities could clip or notch an ear with a distinctive mark at voter registration locations throughout the country???
Bill E Pilgrim
@Brian J:
Visiting nurses for newborns and mothers are a staple of health care here in France. I can’t for the life of me imagine that conservatives would touch it with a ten foot freedom fry.
“Perhaps” academia and Congress are against government programs and conservatives are in favor of them? I admit to being utterly baffled by this point in your post.
Martin
I don’t know. I think it’d be easier to spot the two wetsuits and a dildo in the canned vegetables aisle at the Hyvee. I propose we put out a line of Carrie Prejean and Ronald Reagan wetsuits and Precious Moments dildos and try to free market our way into this.
MikeJ
Agree completely. And we should remember that if we need 500k today, we probably needed 500k 1, 3, 5 years ago.
Linkmeister
Undoubtedly there are terrorists who’d like to do us harm. Given that the FBI has taken down three terrorist plots in the past week, I’d say Kerry & Clinton’s law enforcement style of fighting the bad guys shows promise. Last I looked, the FBI didn’t have rockets, unmanned drones, and aircraft carriers. They still seem capable of getting the job done.
Anne Laurie
Well, yeah, but boring office work like that never sent tingles down Rich Lowery’s leg or produced any Bruckheimer-style war pr0n for the Fighting Hellmice, did it? “We”, meaning the Bush administration (or the Cheney Regency, if you prefer), had a choice between the difficult, adult options and the easy, adolescent fantasies. Somebody should photoshop a cover for the new National Affairs with Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz reenacting the “You fvked up — you trusted us” scene from Animal House.
cbear
@Martin: I like it. I’ll get on the phone to my Chinese manufacturing sources first thing tomorrow. We could be up and running in 45-60 days/
Should we let Cole in on the deal since he has inadvertently facilitated our connection?
tc125231
@Tonal Crow: Actually, no. No such thing as research is really possible for those who reject the empirical process, and who truly believe that they are entitled –not only their own opinions –but their own facts.
(Credit for this insight goes, of course, to Moynihan.)
Mike G
Conservative social science
Given the Repigs’ hatred of the concepts of ‘social’ and ‘science’, I’d expect such to be about as efficacious as ‘Christian Rock’.
jl
@Bill E Pilgrim: Several countries have special nursing services for maternal and prenatal care, and postnatal and even most early pediatric care.
And Conrad just read TR Reid’s new book The Healing of America, and Conrad was amazed that most of these countries do not have government run health care. He was simply Amazed. Conrad said This Is Huge!
So, looks like we are set, the old Crone Conrad has seen the light (so he says).
Of course, Conrad may have such contempt for the American public, he may be stupidly and cynically trying the fool the public into thinking that his corrupt proposal will give us that free s o s h u l i s t furren health care those poor welfare queens ordinary poooooor peasantlike naive Americans want so much.
But, no. Conrad can’t be that crooked and stupid, can he?
Calouste
@JK:
Yep, and the Bush/Cheney cabal got things done because they didn’t care about Democracy and representative government. Not that they got good things done, or even the bad things they did done well, but they got the things done they wanted.
Mwangangi
@DougJ top
I don’t know if I can co-sign your warning about National Affairs. If everyone were to follow your advice, someone might get carried away; and that’s how realignments happen.
^needs to be in the list of terms^
Chuck Butcher
National Affairs is, in the half dozen articles I read, a hodge podge of Republican/Teabaggery talking points wearing suits.
Why is the middle class screwed?
What’s wrong with capitalism in the US today?
And on and on – no wonder BoBo has a hard-on
hypusine
After 5 years of mostly lurking and fuming, I’ve made the commitment to not just mock but also to try equitably engaging folks who are making no sense to me. Or, honestly, are probably poisoned with bigotry or bias. I followed the link and tried to reasonably engage Broder’s readers who were, based on the comments I scanned, uniformly Obama haters. Here is a link to my comment, which I formulated hoping to anticipate commenter concerns while presenting arguments. I’ll continue my “winger” outreach program – humans, after all – so please make recommendations if you’re inspired. Text:
http://comments.realclearpolitics.com/read/1/459926.html
Commenter: hypusine
Bill E Pilgrim
@Chuck Butcher:
That’s disarmingly honest for an arch conservative, even if inadvertently so. It makes it sound like it’s only that our form of capitalism has avoided “becoming associated” with corruption in the mind of the public, not that it’s actually not corrupt. Like it had a good PR department, that’s all.
The notion that ours is not “crony capitalism” is hilarious, in light of the 1% oligarchic ruling class we let develop over the past few decades.
As far as having kept us “relatively free of populist anti-capitalist sentiment”, wave goodbye to that one, guys.
Sly
Your initially assessment is correct, and there’s no need to make any qualifiers in terms of it being more pronounced or not. He was as much a useless starfucker in the 1970s as he is today.
As for Conservative Social Science, the latter half of the 20th century almost relegated every trope of pro-Imperialist and pro-Colonial dogma that had infested sociology, anthropology, and history to the 9th Circle of Hell where it belongs. Modern Conservative Social Science has been limited to a relatively very few writers who are renown more for controversy than their academic work (Andrew Roberts, Ernest van den Haag, Robert Nibset, Peter Berger, etc).
FearItself
Conservative social scientists? Don’t they also do some work in
evolutionary psychology?pseudo-scientific attempts to justify sexism?Bill E Pilgrim
Digby has a very long and satisfying post regarding Ezra Klein’s interview with Conrad, showing how he doesn’t have even the vaguest clue what he’s talking about regarding how France works:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/stooge-d-nd-by-dday-sherrod-brown-sez.html
Satisfying but infuriating of course, as she mentions in her last line.
Davis X. Machina
Yes he certainly was. Just ran across the young Broder in Perlstein’s Nixonland ooh-ing and aah-ing over the New Nixon’s neat not-yet-a-campaign airplane as the Dickster was fighting the 1966 mid-term elections.
WereBear
I find the concept an oxymoron, since wingers hate both society and science. Their answer to social problems is that children should be beaten until their will is crushed, and adults should forgoe all sources of pleasure unless they are in church.
Not a promising line of inquiry.
Yes, I just finished Republican Gomorrah, why do you ask?
Xenos
@Martin:
You could call it a full Shinsecki – a number that is liberal in terms of resources and conservative in terms of planning for effectiveness (like Colin Powell’s Iraq I planning), and which is politically indigestible. By focusing on the indigestion we can ponder the guaranteed disaster we will buy for ourselves if we proceed with half measures. By presenting the Full Shinsecki as necessary, one politically undermines the recklessness of the neocons.
Boy did the White House hate Shinsecki…
harlana pepper
“Democracy and representative government are a lot messier than the progressives and their heirs, including Obama, want to admit. No wonder they are so often frustrated.”
Soo, I guess the point is there is no point in trying to improve the abysmal conditions of the state. It’s just too “messy” and upsets people like Broder. That said, I have yet to see a “frustrated” Obama. The man has the patience of Job.
bob h
No there is no substance to conservatism, no there there. Except as you say to enable white privilege.
liberal
@Martin:
Actually, there’s a simple way to make the terrorist threat go away: not getting involved in military adventures overseas, and returning to a kind of foreign policy outlined in two speeches, one by Washington and one by Quincy Adams.
liberal
@Martin:
Not only easier terrain, but actually fewer people! Iraq, about 28M; Afghanistan, about 33M.
Iraq of course has big problems with religion and ethnicity; but of course Afghanistan does, too (at least the ethnicity part).
linda
the ap propelling the propaganda:
Separately, ACORN employees and volunteers have been involved in a number of voter registration fraud cases. Many of the group’s offices are in heavily Democratic inner city neighborhoods.
ericblair
@Bill E Pilgrim: It makes it sound like it’s only that our form of capitalism has avoided “becoming associated” with corruption in the mind of the public, not that it’s actually not corrupt. Like it had a good PR department, that’s all.
Well, that is Broder’s interest: the snow job seems to still be working, so everything’s OK.
redoubt
@Chuck Butcher:
Six words: “malefactors of great wealth” Teddy Roosevelt
SadieSue
To go sorta OT: what happened to the BJ dictionary entry for FTW? Not only should it be there for newbies (I knew many of the other abbreviations/references when I started reading here but that one threw me for months until I got the bright idea of, uh, you know, googling it) but also because what was there a couple of days ago was really funny (something along the lines of “the only abbreviation used on BJ in which the ‘F’ does not stand for fuck”).
And big round of applause for everyone working on the dictionary – it’s a riot (& a great idea) & it’s really fun to watch what is being added as well as watching the definitions change from snark to ones with references, something that could only happen in the reality based section of the blogosphere. =D
Xenos
@linda:
Actually, they have not. Really. The refusal of the GOP and the W. White House to accept that lead in part to the US Attorney firings scandal.
Scrutinizer
I agree with you about military adventurism, but this isn’t the beginning of the 19th century. The world today isn’t dominated by the British Empire, and the US isn’t a third or fourth rate power that owed its victory in the Revolutionary War to French intervention. Washington and Adams were primarily concerned with not getting involved in the French-Brit wars because the US was fundamentally weak, and we didn’t want the Brits to make a stronger effort against us. Washington abrogated the Treaty of Alliance to do so, and we passed the Neutrality Act to avoid having to go to war against our erstwhile allies, the French. Adams, likewise, was responding to British pressure to declare our intentions, and chose to say, “Hey, nothing to see here, babe.”
Responsible foreign policy is hard, yes, but we can’t afford to turn our back on the rest of the world and live and act only within our own borders. We do have the ability to put the jingoism of the neocons behind us, and act as a responsible member on the international stage.
ed
This is how They (Republicans) think. Here’s what a recently prominent Republican (who was damn close to the President) had to say about why we shouldn’t tax rich people:
Actual quotes from someone who was technically President of the United States. Swear to Moloch.
Got it? We don’t need not stinking policy. Policy doesn’t work because, uh, it just doesn’t !
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/8/10/85654/8173
ed
There ya go.
Nick
“what the fuck is the alternative to enacting policy?”
The magic of the free markets, obviously.
Conservative policy involves letting people compete and the loser be damned. Social programs wrongly take out the moral hazard that helps keep people acting prudently.
Bob In Pacifica
James W. Ceaser? Isn’t a Ceaser like a Czar?
ppcli
This is nothing new for Broder: If I had the stamina to wade through Broder columns I would be able to track down the classic column where he panned a Gore speech (or perhaps a debate performance) because he said all the policy details made him feel like going to sleep. One of the many media inanities that helped give us eight years of The Decider.
rumpole
Shorter david broder–
Power is easy. Policy is hard. Makes me have to read stuff (no pictures)?
liberal
@Scrutinizer:
Irrelevant, because the same principles still hold.
ricky
What is absolutely frightening about this post is that Jokeline is attacking Broder. This indicates a Civil War is in the offing in the Village. Talking heads must be sent in to mediate before concensus is lost and we are plunged into
carnagecoverage.IndieTarheel
@asiangrrlMN:
Daffy Duck would make a perfect mascot for this crew, wouldn’t he?
scarshapedstar
Sure. You got your scientifical proofs that gay marriage will reduce the birth rate to negative infinity, and your studies showing that supporting abortion rights makes Democrats the real racists.
danimal
@liberal:
Add Eisenhower’s parting words on the military-industrial complex and I’m in total agreement. We blow up foreign countries because it’s profitable for the “defense” industry. Foreigners resent us for blowing up their children, and the cycle continues.
Sly
Not really. Not even remotely, the way I see it.
Conservative policy involves massive subsidies to campaign contributors and the establishment of rules to promote monopolization in their favorite markets. Insurance, Defense, Banking, etc. The unwashed masses can fuck off and die.
This is what politicians say when they tout their “Fiscal Conservative” street cred. Kent Conrad will no more give up agribusiness subsidies than Tom Harkin, yet Conrad is the serious budget hawk and Harkin is the pinko-commie shitbird.
ricky
@ppcli:
As a Texan with some experience in cattle country, one does not “wade” through Broder columns without boots, and it is best to step around them unless they are old and dry.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@harlana pepper:
This is why “The Simpsons” can never be canceled; no matter how unfunny it gets, it’s dead-on in its depiction of a large swath of Americans. This column could have come straight out of Homer’s mouth: “You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is ‘never try’. “
SGEW
@liberal:
Come now. One doesn’t have to be a totalizing post-structuralist in order to recognize and acknowledge the importance of the historical context in which speeches were made. While George Washington’s statements have intrinsic value, and can certainly “stand on their own,” it would be somewhat . . . reductive? oversimplified? . . . to completely ignore the very relevant contemporary context.
For example, “Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of [our military opponents] in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren,” is a very fine statement, one that I whole heartedly support as an ideological principle of human rights. It can certainly stand on its own merits (and it has been especially relevant in light of recent events). However, I believe that it’s still important to be cognizant of its context in order to fully appreciate its intentions, its provenance, and its own influences, without which it loses some measure of value.
Right?
tc125231
@jl: Actually, he could be. In such considerations, you should take the Warren Beatty film “Bullworth” as your reference point.
Fulcanelli
@Martin:
Wow. Now that is some twisted shit. But when you consider what passes for ‘serious’ political opinion from the right wing it dovetails nicely and succinctly explains the ‘effin mess we’re in after 28 years of wingnut political dominance.
The mind boggles… Also.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Shorter David Broder: Say what you will about the tenets of liberalism, but at least conservatives have an ethos.
With people like Broder it really is all about fear of the DFH’s. It is ironic that Klein, who once aspired to be Broder’s Villager Sith apprentice, is now throwing rocks at him from a safe distance. I think this is how realignments happen.
(BTW, the realignments phrase should be in the lexicon)
The Other Steve
I’m a bit late to this thread, but.
David Broder has a good point.
Sometimes to accomplish big things you have to look small.
Xanthippas
This is a better take down, from from Stephanie Griffin at Balkinization.
cmorenc
Usually, David Broder is the paragon of inside-the-beltway GOP-leaning vapid mush parading as the conventional wisdom of a press-corps elder statesman.
TODAY HOWEVER is a rare instance of Broder nailing an important point spot-on accurately, and WADR DougJ you’ve badly misrepresented what Broder said, and superimposed stuff he didn’t say or imply at all.
BRODER’S POINT IS SIMPLE: The political system of the US, most particularly the way its constitutional design of separation of powers has played out, tends to inherently work against Presidents trying to implement large-scale policy fixes for social problems (especially of the sort that Progressives are inclined to wish for), and is more hospitably compatible to Presidents oriented toward smaller-bore momentary problem-management. The problem is the nature of the Congressional legislative process and incentives/power to hold hostage embedded therein, which cause legislation which initially contains a clear, effective design to become corrupted, twisted, and barnacle-encrusted creature as it moves through the process.
Broder even cites health-care reform as a prime example of this process at work.
Broder may be annoyingly vapid and simply dead-wrong much of the time, but frankly, even though his analysis does imply that the institution of US government is more friendly-compatible with a nonactivist conservative-inclined President rather than an activist liberal-inclined President – he is spot-on as to why so many ambitious reforms go to Congress to die or emerge as ugly toad versions of what they started as.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cmorenc:
To the extent that this is Broder’s argument, it is a strawman argument. The Obama White House has quite evidently and deliberately been staffed with people such as Rahm and Biden who have experience in Congress, and Obama more so than either of his two immediate predecessors, or indeed any Prez since the Ford administration, is working within the paradigm that the President proposes and Congress disposes.
This is most obvious in the case of the health care debate, in which Obama has gone out of his way not to repeat the top-down debacle of the Clinton health plan by staying out of the way except to request a general set of goals, and leaving Congress to debate the means whereby those goals are sought. So Broder is concern trolling an imaginary Obama administration that he made up in his head. If you take Broder’s argument on face value, it is that the President shouldn’t bother even proposing anything of significant scale to Congress. Funny how Mr. Broder didn’t have anything like that to say back in the days of the so-called ‘unitary executive’, when Congress was rendered moot by the GWB administration. I call bullshit on that argument.
binzinerator
Jesus effin’ Christ, is there anything that’s more useless than David Broder?
There are bigger assholes, yes. And shitbags who are far more deserving to DIAF, yes.
But a bigger fucking waste of Earth’s oxygen? Nope.
DonkeyKong
Broder, Roves favorite squab gobbler.
binzinerator
@Martin:
That number reminds me of a quote from General Leclerc in Barbara Tuchman’s book March of Folly on how many men he would need to retake Vietnam:
“It would take 500,000 men to do it, and even then it could not be done.”
cmorenc
@ThatLeftTurnInALB
The above passage is a prime example where both you and DougJ have invented and inserted contentions Broder NEVER said or implied ANYWHERE in his column. ALL Broder said was that the inherent design and structure of Congress tends to be a more problematic and ideal-corrupting obstacle to Presidents inclined toward big-picture progressive-minded legislation than to Presidents inclined more toward small-bore incremental fixes. NOWHERE did Broder say or imply this means that progressive legislation is inherently counterproductive and therefore the ambitions of activist progressive-minded Presidents are counterproductive, whereas those of small-bore conservative-minded Presidents are productive. Now somewhere in another column, another day Broder might well reflect those additional sentiments – but today’s column was simply an astute, true observation about structural process.
Max Baucus + Health Care Reform Legislation comes very close to a self-sufficient one-Senator proof of Broder’s central point. Progressive blogs (especially Kos, but also here) are full of observations fuming about the exact sort of structural obstacle Broder is pointing out.
Just because Broder is usually a vapid soft-edged shill for the GOP version of conventional wisdom doesn’t make him always wrong. Let’s reserve that dishonor for the likes of Glenn Beck, who’s a million times more toxically polluting to public discourse and understanding than David Broder, who actually only gets read by a relative handful of folks (granted, some pretty powerful folks among them).
cmorenc
To reiterate, I am decidedly NOT any fan of David Broder. However, sometimes his longstanding study of the institutions of Congress actually do bear useful insights.
The solution of course is for Obama to finally get around to using Rahm Emannual to get down and dirty, sort of LBJ-style with some of these democratic Senators who are creating such prickly obstacles.
But despite the Clinton debacle, the Obama attempt at HC reform illustrates the hazards of throwing the ball entirely in Congress’s court to come up with an initial legislative draft. The result has been a paralyzing mess so far. Only recently Obama has shown signs of realizing that some intensive hands-on work on his (and his staff’s) part are needed to apply some hard persuasion to problematic members, in addition to Obama’s redoubled efforts to promote HCR to the public.
jl
I disagree with cmorenc. I think Broder is saying that because it is so hard to implement rational policy plans though Congress, the appropriate strategy is to just give up and explicitly adopt a ‘fix it up as it breaks’ strategy, not guided by anything much other than whatever is needed to get through emerging crises.
Broder just says that. Subtract the pomposity, and that is it. And it sounds silly when stated baldly like that.
He could have said you need to adapt your policy making to the compromises necessary to get things through congress, or that some approaches to policy making were incompatable with the current congressional process.
But he didn’t say that. He explicitly regurgitated the Rove line bashing rational policy making (dressed up with the code word ‘progressive’ to fit in nicely with Village scapegoats) and said the best thing to do is to fix things up as they fall apart (with no further suggestions as to any rationale for that rather risky approach).
Bender
Unsurprisingly, Broder and Klein both miss Schambra’s point here. Broder is close, but he thinks too small in an effort to make a particular point about health care. As per usual, Joe props up the frailest of strawmen and then whacks it down with enough partisan animus to assuage the lefty crazies who bugged him yesterday about what a squishy moderate conservative he is. Hey, it’s a living, right?
Schambra’s article had nothing to do with what Klein regards as “policy” and the desirability of Obama’s being “interested” in it. That’s a child’s cartoon of Schambra’s essay, which I have no doubt that Klein never so much as scanned. Of course, all presidents are interested in policy as defined by Klein.
Schambra asserts that Obama takes a “policy approach” to governance, kind of a Grand Unified Theory of proactive and comprehensive reform, informed by “social scientists,” that seeks to reshape large chunks of society — education, labor, environment, health care — as a system, because the theory sees all these as being interrelated (Didn’t anyone but me have to read “Policy vs. Programs in the 1970s” in college? No? Good for you, then.). Obama’s system of “czars” is an update of the “New Partnership” of Carter and the “Policy Wonkery” of the early Clinton years.
The opposite approach, if this helps, would be to look at government as a more reactive means to solve particular problems that arise in a policy area. Testing shows the schools are failing? Pass an education bill. Enron scandal? Pass Sarbanes-Oxley. Wait for the next compelling warning of a bad thing to happen and try to solve it. Not surprisingly, this approach is more “Governs best = Governs least” Republican.
Klein’s misinformed beef seems to form when Schambra writes that among the practical problems Obama has is that a policy approach in a representative republic still requires the buy-in of some elected representatives who risk their valuable careers at the public trough to solve problems that often don’t exist (yet) for a theory of interdependence which they don’t understand or intentionally ignore. “What’s in it for me?” becomes an monkey wrench in the cogs of the “system” that eventually bastardizes it to the point where it’s not what it was supposed to be, or kills it outright.
Klein’s counter-examples of important programs passed by various Presidents — as if Schambra’s assertion was that no President can get a bill passed in Washington — prove that he doesn’t get the point. A few bills can be passed piecemeal, but democracy is a time-consuming hindrance to a comprehensive, policy-approach agenda that gets only three years to be formulated, to be debated, to be implemented and to work — before the next election cycle.
There was plenty in Schambra’s article over which Klein could feign some spittle-flecked outrage. Shame he didn’t read it.
Mnemosyne
And what was Bush’s system of “czars”? He actually had more than Obama does, after all.
This was actually helpful, because it pointed up to me once again that Republicans don’t believe in prevention. We’ve seen over and over again that they would rather try to fix problems after they happen than prevent those problems from happening in the first place. Teen pregnancy increasing? Throw more money at useless “abstinence” programs instead of doing what has been scientifically proven to work, preventing those pregnancies with contraception.
Tonal Crow
@tc125231:
Of course. That’s why I quoted the term “research”, and referred to it as “claptrap”.
jl
I disagree with Bender too. I don’t see any overarching symbiotic strategy tying together Obama’s policies on global warming, the financial crisis or health care.
These are three simultaneous crises that are developing on different time scales, and with different patterns of chronic dysfunction, and acute crisis.
Each one requires different levels of comprehensive policy analysis to solve.
Health care may require the most carefully designed comprehensive policy. Global warming less, and financial reform least of all (though I think it does requies something stronger than what has been proposed). Obama has said that all three need to be addressed sooner than later, and that health care cannot wait. I agree with that. What is common between them, under that reasoning, than saying that each problem should be addressed with a fact and analysis based policy? Nothing that I can see.
Of those three, health care is the only one that really requires, in my opinion, a very carefully crafted sweeping reform. And in my opinion, is the only issue for which Obama is taking that appraoch.
Health reform involves fixing broken health insurance and healthcare pricing systems. The problems with health insurance have caused for at least exacerbated the problems with healthcare pricing. These problems may not be ones that can be fixed piecemeal. I do not think they are. We can look to over 20 other high income countries that have decided to tackle the problems of providing affordaable and reliable healthcare in the world of modern medicine. At some point, they all had to commit themselves to comprehensive reform.
I still thik Shambra and Broder are doing high toned concern trolling, with little substance behind their words. Sorry, I am still not sympathetic to their line of reasoning.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cmorenc:
I think the precis that DougJ and I are reading is a dog-whistle embedded in Broder’s piece, which emerges when the latter is read in the context of Broder’s larger body of work and in his particular choice of essay to highlight in this piece. Since quotations from the latter constitute about half of the total word count, saying ‘David Broder didn’t say that’ is sort of missing the point – David Broder didn’t actually write half of the words in the piece, William Schambra did.
You are choosing to ignore that context and read this particular essay in splendid isolation. You’re welcome to do that – context and framing are highly subjective – but I think you are wrong. I’m particularly curious as to how you read Broder’s choice of the headline for his piece ‘Mr. Policy Hits a Wall‘ in combination with the smugness and condescention which is explicit in his closing sentences: ‘Democracy and representative government are a lot messier than the progressives and their heirs, including Obama, want to admit. No wonder they are so often frustrated.‘ as anything other than ideological condemnation. If Broder is hiding up his sleeve some notion of how ideoligically similar goals could be pursued by more constructive and effective means, then he is doing a darn fine job of hiding them, nor are they to be found elsewhere in his written work. If this essay isn’t a middle finger to the left, then it really doesn’t have any semantic content at all.
And note that my critique above is essentially that Obama’s administration has, contrary to how many people are choosing to interpret the fight over health care, not hitting a wall, because steamrolling over Congressional opposition was never in my view part of their plan (a statement that I’m willing to back up if you desire with links to past comments I’ve made on this blog about the nature of intended WH – Hill relations under this administration).
So again, Broder is postulating a WH failure to achieve their will that does not exist except in his conception of how Obama should be ordering people around. There is at least as much evidence to support the proposition that Obama never intended to do anything other than take the leash off of Congress, let them run around as they wish, and then clean up anything nasty they happened to roll around in afterwards. And that doing so is based on a reading of the failures of the Clinton and Carter administrations to work constructively with Democrats on the Hill which Obama is taking pains to avoid, while Broder is ignorantly conflating the contrasting tactics of different Democratic administrations which are strikingly different in their approach to handling Congress. What I take away from Broder’s essay is that he can’t tell the difference between the last 3 Democratic administrations, because from his point of view ‘those people’ (i.e. anybody to the left of him) all look the same.
Lumpenprole
Check out John Dean’s “Broken Government.” He says “no.” There is no “public” policy on the right beyond the slogans. Furthermore, it’s a feature of their ideologies rather than a bug. They rule rather than govern. The decision making process retreated behind closed doors in the era of GOP dominance. They were famous for their lack of civilty, contempt for transparency and so on. The public space existed only for PR campaigns that are agitprop narratives, not for arguing policy. These people thought that the Schaivo debacle actually meant something. Just recall how much Alberto Gonzales had to say before the Jud Comm. Nothing at all. He just kept repeating that he worked for Bush. That’s pretty much all he could say. He makes me do things for reasons I won’t discuss. There’s no policy to discuss.
See also Cheney, Dick – “So?”
chuck
Just remember, the scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m competent at my job.”
cmorenc
Here’s Broder riffing on Schambra:
@ThatTurnLeftAtABQ:
First, not only is the above passage from Broder/Schambra a spot-on description of how the attempt to create and move a Health-Care bill through Congress so far has run into difficulty from within the Democratic Senate majority and the health-care lobby (completely aside from the cynical attacks from the GOP side and right-winger ideologues) – but in fact this is exactly the phoenomena that so many progressives have fumed loudly about on various progressive-leaning blogs over the past several weeks.
Second, it is historical fact that frustratingly often (ever since the Nixon era) progressive ideas and proposals have foundered on the shoals of Congress – look for example how John Dingell D-Mi was able to use his committee leadership position to bottle up any proposals to increase auto efficiency standards. Ditto Max Baucus currently on Health Care reform. We’re not even talking about the GOP’s role here in torpedoing progressive goals, we’re talking about supposed core members of the Democratic coalition in Congress.
Third, that Broder likely (and Schambra almost certainly) want to draw the inference from the above facts that pursuit of broad progressive ideals by Presidents and in Congress is hopelessly counterproductive and ought not to be undertaken at all (nor the fact that the leap to this inference is simply incorrect) – DOES NOTHING to undermine the validity of their original observations, which amount to: the inherent presence of parochial self-interest and institutional obstacles will always make achieving progressive goals more difficult than we think it should be.
So: if the way health-care is playing out in Congress so far is a quintessential example of how Obama simply isn’t playing the game Broder’s way, how’s that working out for him so far?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@cmorenc:
The answer is that it is working out just fine so far, thank you very much, once you understand that Obama is an ideological centrist with a proclivity to compromise for the sake of process and a President who is working to give Congress the room it needs to go about the business of making sausage.
The idea that health care has already gone off the rails is a construct in the minds of folks who are ideologically different from Obama and read him as a blank canvas onto which they project their dreams (the left) or fears (the right), or from folks who expect him to be an imperial President, like GWB only from the left rather than the right. I submit that such folks didn’t do a very good job of paying attention during the election campaign – what we are getting now from Obama is no big surprise IMHO, despite all the carping in left blogistan.
Broder on the other hand is just making mischief for mischief’s sake – that is what Villagers do when a Dem is in office, regardless of how things are actually going.
jl
@cmorenc: I agree with a lot of what you say. You sound like you could write a much better column than either Broder or Shambra. Both of whom seem to saying that rational policy analysis should simply be abandoned. And by ‘rational policy analysis’ I mean trying to ascertain the facts of the matter and using some kind of coherent reasongin to put together a proposal as to what to do.
Their argument boils down to, something is hard to do, so therefore you should never even try to do it.
Sorry, that will not work for healthcare, global warming or the financial system.
I do nost suspect your motive in your argument. You make sense and try to back up what you say. Broder and Shambra do neither, and I do suspect their motives.
Steeplejack
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Excellent post.