PMC Commentary

Dear Mr. Chait: Wanna bet?

Chait, on "What Obama Is Really Trying to Do in the State of the Union Address":

Everything about Obama’s messaging--the image of vigorous unilateral action, the laser focus on jobs, the small but popular policy initiatives attached to it--serve the goal of patching up the president’s standing and framing the Washington story in the most favorable terms possible. The State of the Union address is not an effort to fundamentally reorient the administration’s strategy. It’s a campaign to mend the political damage from the botched Obamacare launch.

I agree with Chait's final point, for to disagree would be to deny the undeniable. Yet Chait writes approvingly of the administration's non-reorientation strategy, meaning more non-belligerence, and there I'm in violent disagreement.

Not to be too soap operatic, but like sands through the hourglass, Obama's time is being steadily sucked into oblivion. He now has a mere nine months to recapture the electorate's interest in all things governmental--and by that I mean responsible governance--before facing another, and final, two years of the opposition's barbaric depredations. This is it, nine months, a very narrow opportunity to retake the House and fortify the Senate. And touting new EPA regulations, filibuster reform, Dodd-Frank rules or minimum-wage hikes for the federally contracted won't do it. These are not the platforms of popular enthusiasm.    

As godawful as SOTU addresses have been for years, some people do still watch--thus tonight is the night to really blow their minds. Lay into Republicans, which is to say, lay into the problem of irresponsible governance--that which has so alienated the populace, which nonetheless awaits direction on a way out of this mess and still harbors some hope that it can be accomplished. That, after all, is Obama's virtuosity. It's regrettable that he hasn't been playing much lately.  

Regrettable for us, but even more so for Obama in presidential retirement, as he watches President Hillary Clinton get historic credit for presiding over the barbarians' collapse. There will be something profoundly distasteful and even metaphysically unjust about that, for it's Obama who's suffered their depredations and has earned the right to finish them off. But he's got to do it. And he can only do it by laying into them.  

If he takes a pass on this, he'll regret it. History will show that this eight-year president was cooked after two, because he failed to strike back when it mattered the most.

Wanna bet, Jonathan?

 

The vox populi about Vox

The New Yorker's George Packer takes a bemused look at Ezra Klein's new digs, Vox Media, which self-blurbs as "one of the fastest-growing online publishers, focused on lifestyle brands that connect with passionate audiences ... [and] is solving the problem of developing high-value digital journalism, storytelling, and brand advertising at scale."

Packer's sarcasm about such empty techno-hipsterism may write itself, but David Carr, the NY Times media correspondent, helps Packer along. Writes Carr: "Everything at Vox, from the way it covers its subjects, the journalists it hires and the content management systems on which it produces news, is optimized for the current age." Observes Packer: "Surrendering to jargon is a sign of journalism’s dismal lack of self-confidence in the optimized age of content-management systems."

Klein's mission statement--that he wants "to create a site that’s as good at explaining the world as it is at reporting on it"--seems straightforward enough. It conceals, however, two enormous problems that worldly explanations can't solve: only readers in least need of explanations will visit his site, and virtually all will arrive leaning to the left--meaning those most in need of rudimentary enlightenment will continue clicking on RedState.com, Breibart and Glenn Beck.

Independent voters will, in the meantime, stay glued to reality-TV shows. 

Hence the already enlightened will become a trifle more enlightened, those of aggressive ignorance will only wallow in more, and that great and holiest of electoral grails, the swing voter, will remain tuned out--until he's influenced by the last 30-second political ad (courtesy the Koch brothers) of the next campaign.

 

I'm with NR and Bill Kristol. You go, boys.

In view of John Boehner's historically lilliputian guidance of his enormously backward caucus, I'm experiencing some serious skepticism about the House leadership's immigration-reform proposal. For starters, to even call it a proposal is an act of political generosity; "the document," notes the NY Times, is only about a page long, hardly "a blueprint for action." But more than that, the knives came out, instantly, and the prospect of a battling Boehner remains highly improbable.

National Review editorially slammed the House leadership's gentle push toward long-term political health, arguing, as all pseudoconservative voices have become wont to do, that this year's elections are of supremest importance. To rock no boats, to entertain no thought, to countenance no divergence from the GOP's singular anti-Obamacare screed is the smart play.

That's NR's rather insistent advice, and the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol couldn't agree more. Any intelligent action on immigration reform is "one of the few things that could actually disrupt what looks like a strong Republican year," he told the Times, thereby teeing up for Republicans an absolutely disastrous 2016--assuming Democrats refuse to hand them the gift of compromise in 2015. And of course the quite possibly developmentally disabled Senator Jeff Sessions is already working with his House counterparts to sabotage Boehner's designs.

Again, I doubt it comes to this, but Democrats would, I think, be wise to hold firm in 2014. Any immigration-reform bill that could squeak through this reactionary House would, by definition, be a setback for judicious, visionary reform. Ameliorative legislative efforts in 2015 would be doomed, coming so soon after what Republicans would hail as their immigration triumph for all times, which in turn could complicate the Latino vote in 2016--now safely, and overwhelmingly, Democratic.  

 

Pissing on care

Today three Senate Republicans--Coburn, Hatch, and Burr--offered up a mandate-abolishing healthcare bill they humorously called a "real alternative" to Obamacare.

It's officially called the CARE Act, for Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment, wherein choice again means chancey, it again ain't affordable, Republicans again evade responsibility for better healthcare access and private insurers are again empowered to screw the hell out of the 'Patient,' which actually precedes 'CARE,' meaning the real acronym is P-CARE, as in, they're peeing on it.

The CARE Act would require insurers to offer policies to anyone who has proof of "continuous coverage" ... But those with pre-existing conditions that fail to maintain continuous coverage at any time could be denied coverage.

Nearly 90 million Americans have a pre-existing condition. That's quite the crack to fall through.

And with that, I'm taking the flu I've had since 6 a.m. and going to bed, perchance to dream of that undiscovered country in which Republican pols offer something serious.

 

Someday, a liberal vacuum?

Salon's Brian Beutler looks at the "historical and political context of the GOP's unique predicament." Long story short: the party bet on both a wealthy white and a socially conservative base that is diminishing in electoral numbers, and now it's trapped by its own shortsighted design. The GOP is entombed by the very "ideological rigidity" of the base it cultivated, making it "hard for Republicans to appeal to voters outside of their core constituencies."

"But," as Beutler notes, "it wouldn’t be all that hard if Democrats had retreated into equally rigid reactionary leftism." And this the Democratic Party has not done.

Both parties have become more ideological over the years, but only one has become culturally extreme and inflexible. One of the consequences is that the country’s policy commitments have become more conservative than they might have been if this polarization had been symmetric. But another is that Republicans have a hard time tacking left without bumping into a niche that's already been filled.

And that leaves a political circumstance that has long interested me.

Democrats have assumed identification as the nation's de facto conservative party. At their political core is the preservation of what preceding, center-left generations accomplished (Social Security, Medicare and Medicare) while tinkering, and not all that vigorously, with marginally progressive policies once also endorsed by many conscientious Republicans (e.g. extension of unemployment benefits). On deficit spending (Keynesianism), the reactionaries have Democrats sorely intimidated.

Thus, as Beutler asks, if it is "voters outside of their core constituencies" they want, just where can Republican pols go? The Dems have a lock on any authentic conservatism, which also permits of incremental progressivism. Republicans are boxed in.

But it also opens the question of an authentically liberal vacuum, 10 or 20 years down the road. This could portend internal Democratic battles similar to the GOP's Establishment vs. tea-party brawl. Or it could launch a new party, which is particularly conceivable--in that yesterday's two-ideology system of stalwart liberalism vs. staunch conservatism is perhaps evolving into tomorrow's unsustainable disequilibrium.

 

A Paulian preview

With Sen. Rand Paul moving up in the ranks of Christie-attritioned presidential candidates, it is only prudent to again take note of his campaigning incoherencies, of which he vomited at least two yesterday on "Meet the Press."

First, "Tyranny is a strong word, but it makes people sit up and take notice." Translation: I'm going to demagogue the bejesus out of the last, wholly untyrannical eight years, simply because throwing words around like "tyranny" promises loads of popular appeal. In Paul's telling, Obama's imaginary tyranny will seamlessly morph into Hillary's actual tyranny, which doubtless she's plotting in, say, faithfully executing laws on the books, such as the Affordable Care Act.   

Paul's second eruption was even more pathetic, even more demagogically reaching. Asked David Gregory, Is Bill Clinton's Lewinsky scandal "fair game" and "something that Hillary Clinton should be judged on if she were a candidate in 2016?" To which Paul ultimately answered: "Yeah--no, I'm not saying that.... I would say that, with regard to his place in history, that it certainly is a discussion."

So yeah--yes, he is saying that, because the wickedly pious conservative base needs something to wrap its unChristian malice around. Eight years of a model husband, model father and all-round model Democratic citizen in the White House have been horribly depressing for the morality thugs. So, for them, how invigorating the reintroduction of presidential blowjobs will be.

Three years of this. Three years before eight more.

 

SOTU: an outdated ritual

Once a year I'm cursed by agreement with George Will, this unhappy occasion being, as Will puts it, the "undignified ... unedifying ... unnecessary ... vulgar State of the Union circus." Said circus is, as you know, again coming to television screens everywhere tomorrow night, and again I'll swear I won't watch it, only to find myself cracking under the pressure of ritualistic civics.

The frequency of my curse is entirely George Washington's fault. His fellow framers constitutionally specified with no specificity whatever that presidents shall "from time to time" gloss over the actual state of the union, which Potus 1 interpreted as once a year. Thus it has been ever since. But it was Potus 28, Woodrow Wilson, who revived the monstrosity of oral glossings, dead since Jefferson, because, in his megalomaniacal mind, he knew better than Jefferson (as well as all the assembled framers, for that matter). Plus, the professorial Wilson could never resist an opportunity for hearing himself talk.

Yet Will, being both himself and priggishly Wilsonian, likewise couldn't resist in his SOTU-bashing column the opportunity of distortion through omission. He disparages this constitutional requirement as one merely of 17 words: "[Potus] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union." Though Will does not, Article II, Section 3 continues, however: "and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

It's those 14 additional words that make the SOTU address so exceptionally excruciating these days for those of us not yet willingly detached from reality.

President Obama will stand there tomorrow night, recommending a host of necessary measures to his House majority hosts of ideological nincompoops and for-the-fun-of-it obstructionists. However necessary, even these recommended measures will be artificially modest in scope, for the White House sees little point in bluntly asking, What is to be done? What should be done? What would any competent, responsible Congress do?  

I, for one, and for millions like me, believe that's a big mistake--all this false comity, emotional restraint, and programmatic modesty. At this presidential point Obama has nothing to lose and everything to gain by simply letting 'er rip--by delivering a ruthlessly honest assessment of the unnecessarily decrepit state of our union, and demanding accountability for its legislative sponsors.

Now that would give George Will something substantive to chew on, and better yet electrify Obama's increasingly indifferent base. But of course the president won't go there, and Will and I will be left with yet more reason to belittle the SOTU circus.

Prove me wrong, Mr. President? Please prove me wrong.

 

The WSJ, funnier than The Onion

You've probably already seen this, but just in case ...

In a 1/24 letter to the WSJ editor, venture capitalist Tom Perkins erased any lingering belief in the necessary correspondence between the successful business mind and a functional human brain:   

Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its "one percent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich"....

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?

Some might be tempted to comment and even condemn at this point; to perhaps mention, oh, a few historical incongruities between the Holocaust's mass slaughter and the nonexistent Occupy Movement's once-occasional chanting and banner-waving; and to note, in a most pointed way, that Mr. Perkins is, manifestly, an idiot.

But given Perkins' Proof--that there is, in fact, no observable relationship between the successful business mind and a functional human brain--I really don't think any comment is necessary.

 

The Koch brothers' Great Leap Forward

This year is a breakthrough year for anarchic conservatism, for Charles and David Koch have turned Maoist. 

Gone is the laissez-faire, Nietzschean conviction that out of chaos comes order; in are the experimental, Marxist concepts of central planning and tight control from atop.

"This year," reports Politico, the spidery Kochs "are rolling out a new, more integrated approach to politics." In progress is a Kochian defection to central control, for only a crisp concentration of planning can rein in the kind of "headache-inducing freelancing by affiliated operatives" that plagued them in 2012.

In brief, the glories of competition and piecemeal autonomy severely hindered the billionaire brothers' earlier revolutionary efforts; thus it occurs that the competitive instinct and independence down and throughout the organizational chart are, in the contemporary idiom, for the wacko birds.

The Kochs will take the dictatorship of the plutocracy, thank you very much.   

And their Long March begins today, from the posh Palm Springs, California. Provisioned only with knapsacks of Grand Passion Caviar and vats of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, whither the Koch brothers?

 

Yet another shooting

Time for another "national conversation" about the splendor of strict constructionism?

Howard County [Maryland] authorities say three people have been confirmed dead at the Mall in Columbia and the mall remains on lockdown as police investigate reports of an active shooter.

In the Second Amendment's case, conservatives' strict construction means ignoring the constitution's pointed reference to the permissible regulation of arms, so that won't work.

So just what the hell is their constitutional defense of this continual slaughter?

 

The long long-form debate

"It wasn’t so many years ago that people assumed the Internet would make long magazine-style stories obsolete," writes Jonathan Mahler, of New York Times Magazine and Bloomberg, in a NYT op-ed. Yet desperate nostalgia for a "dying art," better online resolution and "the simple and honorable intention to preserve a particular kind of story ... with scenes and characters and a narrative arc" seem to have rescued long-form journalism. More than that, there now thrives what Mahler calls a "cult of long-form"--an intense reverence for length itself. "[S]tories are too often celebrated simply because they exist. And are long."

There is, I think, a certain academic prejudice at work here. If a piece is long, it follows that it must be thoughtful. If it's longer, it's deeply thoughtful; if it's unbearably long, it's brilliant. Of course there's no necessary alliance between length and insight, as any reading of, say, biblical parables or secular aphorisms quickly reveals. Nonetheless professionalism demands prolixity; only the unemployed scholar would competently say in 500 words what could drearily be said in 15,000. In the academic community, just as a PhD confers intelligence, prattling confers a powerful analysis.

Many fresh journalists hatch from this community, hauling the ancient professorial prejudice with them. In an undeniable way this is, for the eager long-form journalist, an immensely practical good. If an idea can be adequately "fleshed out" in 1,000 words but the editor requires 10,000, then the call goes forth for 9,000 words of sheer excess, something akin to smooth cocktail-party chatter--the much-vaunted and highly revered gift of gab.

Yet on rare occasion such "excess" is, for the reader, pure pleasure. I'd take 100,000 words of Proustian reminiscence over a 5,000-word magazine piece on human memory, any day, just as I'd avidly reread David Halberstam's thoroughly entertaining monograph on basketball, The Breaks of the Game--a sport I don't follow and know absolutely nothing about--before I'd read a Sports Illustrated piece of any length.

Because, at least to me, it is style that matters.

Jonathan Mahler says "the function--the purpose--of 'long-form'" is that of "allow[ing] a writer to delve into the true complexities of a story, and also to bring readers closer to the experience of other people." Yet the "true complexities" of most any story can be reduced to 500 words of bullet points--hence the pricelessness of the briefest of book reviews, which effectively relate in a few paragraphs what the weightiest of tomes often manage to intellectually murder in 900 pages.

On human behavior, twisted psychology and the eternal struggle for power, a mere 1,000-word piece rather poorly written can be a dreadful trial for the reader; yet all three volumes of Shakespeare's Henry VI are but an unblighted joy--and endlessly "informative" about human psychology.   

Why? It's not the length or complexity of the thing. It's the style.

 

Huckabee's pitch was actually as good as any

I've now read several analyses of Mike Huckabee's exemplary wisdom on the fairer sex, whom the Mike Huckabees of this world continually prove superior. Paul Waldman's analysis is probably the best I've yet read--he ascribes Huckabee's partywide attitude to the rather simple unity of "ignorance, contempt, and Puritan morality"--and I highly recommend it.

Still, an explanation of Republicans' embedded simplicity seems to me even simpler than what Waldman suggests. And the explanation comes most effectively in the form of a question: What else do they have to talk about?

No, really. What are their policy solutions to unemployment? Economic growth? A cleaner environment? A cooler environment? Improved access to healthcare, in lieu of Obamacare? Education, from kindergarten through grad school? A more responsible, accountable Wall Street? Income inequality? A deteriorating network of infrastructure? International relations, short of Boltonism?

Do any Republican ideas leap to mind? Of course not. Because the Republican Party is utterly bankrupt in the idea department. Its alleged policies consist only of repeating IRS IRS IRS and Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi and, in a kind of schoolyard debate fashion, insist that it's actually Democrats who "insult the women of America."

Which is as clever as Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi.

 

2014: D'Souza's America

Gerald Molen, Dinesh D'Souza's co-producer of such paranoid absurdities as 2016: Obama's America and the upcoming just plain America, has invented, I must confess, a brilliant defense of his indicted partner. Some unspecified they--but we know who they are--are "criminalizing dissent through the selective enforcement of the law," says Molen. And he has more to say:

In light of the recent events and the way the IRS has been used to stifle dissent, this arrest should send shivers down the spines of all freedom-loving Americans.

When American citizens begin to suspect that people are being arrested for alleged minor violations because of their vocal dissent against their elected representatives or rulers, it breeds disrespect and contempt for the law and suspicion of those officials.

If this unfortunate action against Dinesh is intended to deter the release of his upcoming film, America, that effort will fail.

Now that's an enchanting piece of propagandistic humbug for you, with an inspired bit of Howard Hughes movie salesmanship thrown in. (By God no tyrannical government would stop Hughes from exposing Jane Russell's enormous breasts in, coincidentally enough, The Outlaw, even though Hughes had not exposed Jane Russell's enormous breasts in The Outlaw. But oh what a marketing gimmick.)

Molen rattles off the villainous IRS (that would be Obama's IRS), he associates D'Souza's plight with "all freedom-loving Americans," he conflates his counterfeit suspicion with the real thing and thus fosters throughout society the paranoia with which he's genuinely afflicted, he refers to "rulers" rather than presidents (nice touch), he breeds disrespect and contempt for the very system of law he claims to honor and which his co-producer so contemptuously thumbed his nose at, and, as already noted, he sells a shitload of movie tickets to boot.

All in one statement. Damn, that's awesome. Molen invents precisely the America that he and D'Souza will be selling in the summer of 2014 to throngs of the incurably gullible. You gotta admire that.

 

The GOP and preemptive self-destruction

I don't know how they do it.

Chris Christie will in extreme probability be battling indictments as well as impeachment as conservatives begin gathering to select their next presidential sacrifice, their singular hope of any respectable showing then being uniform support of some Christie-like Jeb Bush. Yet today the WSJ's Washington Wire is nearly effusive in its speculation about, believe it or not, a John Bolton run.

The paper anticipates Republicans' 2016 to be "far feistier" than their deranged melee of 2012, and it asks with a drooling innocence normally reserved for non-journalistic institutions, "is there opportunity in running as the party’s resident hawk?" 

The WSJ also quotes--with some favor, it seems--Hugh Hewitt's charmingly suicidal endorsement of Bolton: "He will make the others on the stage squirm, just like Newt did." Which is kind of the whole point of conservatives needing to discourage the warmongering Bolton from running, but, there you go.

Or rather there they go, piecing together yet another campaign season of historic alienation. I really don't know how they do it.

To answer the WSJ's question about the political opportunities that await Bolton's insane jingoism, last September, according to Pew Research, only 29 percent of Americans favored U.S. intervention in Syria; 36 percent, according to Gallup. Many of those thus favorably disposed were Democrats, naturally, leaving a Republican contingent of scattered VFW and American Legion outposts.

But yes of course, why not encourage Bolton to make other GOP candidates squirm over a profoundly unpopular ideology?

I just don't know how they do it.

 

Finally, a little justice

You may have read that conservative grifter Dinesh D’Souza was federally indicted yesterday on election-fraud charges that are all too characteristic of the pettiest graft. He allegedly conned four others into contributing $5,000 each to a U.S. Senate candidate, on condition of personal reimbursement. 

This is a no-no, since campaign finance law frowns on modest, three-card-monte political contributions. Some morbidly corrupt billionaire is permitted by law to hand the pathologically corrupt Karl Rove millions and then tens of millions more in a third-party scheme of Gilded Age whoring, but peanut vending is indictable. That's just the way it is. 

At any rate D'Souza's indictment stumped the Times: "It is not clear ... what led investigators to Mr. D’Souza in a fund-raising case involving relatively small donations."

Good taste?

I mean, come on. D'Souza, having scripted the wildly successful cinematic abomination of 2016: Obama's America, is now pimping a sequel, AMERICA.

It’s at great moments of peril [moments of great peril?] like this that we need to regroup and rediscover the first principles of what made America great.... President Obama looks at America as an oppressive force ... while I and millions of others around the world have a different view: that America has been a great blessing to its own people and to the world.

If that fails to make you want to indict his maudlin, Noonanlike ass simply to keep the world's most wretched writing off the screen, then you're either brain dead or, redundantly, a card-carrying Republican.