Hmmm. Is it my imagination or are partisan Democratic pundits starting to become more circumspect about Iraq?

Joe Klein on Iraq:

There is a fair amount of creative thinking going on (outside the White House). What [Dennis] Ross is proposing is a variant on how it might be done. It requires a commitment to diplomacy and skill at execution that we just haven’t seen from the Bush Administration. My guess is that a Democratic Administration will provide it; my hope is that McCain–who is a frequent visitor to the region and knows how the diplomatic process operates–would proceed in this fashion, too, despite his witless “victory/surrender” rhetoric.

Again–as I’ve written in the past–the withdrawal has to continue without pause, but without specific timetable or end date. The chances are, no matter what we do, that Iraq will be a mess…or several messes. The best hope, if the withdrawal is done cleverly and responsibly, is that these will be contained messes. We owe the Iraqis our best shot at that; but we also need them to know that we are leaving, slowly, steadily, carefully, relentlessly.

Ostensibly, what Klein is reacting to is a piece by Dennis Ross in which he says [e.a.]:

McCain has a point: The eventual Democratic nominee will have to do a better job laying out a strategy for Iraq in light of a surge that has achieved at least some results. Sticking to a rigid timeline–no matter how popular a line that might be in the U.S.–may deny us a crucial political tool for affecting the future of Iraq and the broader region.

There is no denying that the surge has had an effect. It has fostered at least relative stability and has created greater space for political reconciliation, with initial steps having now been taken on legislation both for easing de-Ba’athification laws and for holding provincial elections. Whether these will actually be implemented, and in what ways, remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the surge has led to real improvements in local security.

What Klein is probably reacting to, however, is the very strong pushback against Barack Obama’s fatuous, childish “I have some news for John McCain and that is there was no such thing as Al Qaeda in iraq …”

The crowd behind Obama roared their approval (if the video is to be believed; I don’t believe it for a second. David Axelrod is a master at managing the impressions his candidate makes).

Obama sounded like a punk, though, and he got smacked around like a punk.

Obama’s attitude is shameful, and shamefully unserious.

Michael Yon has been blogging from inside Iraq for years. He has written thousands of words about the atrocities that al Qaeda in Iraq has committed against innocent Iraqis. This is what he wrote in August 2007:

The current controversy about the extent to which Al Qaeda is a threat to peace in Iraq is a case in point. Questions about which group calling itself an offshoot of Al Qaeda is really an offshoot of Al Qaeda is a distraction masquerading as a debate.

Al Qaeda is in Iraq, intentionally inflaming sectarian hostilities, deliberately pushing for full scale civil war. They do this by launching attacks against Shia, Sunni, Kurds and coalition forces. To ensure the attacks provoke counterattacks, they make them particularly gruesome.

Five weeks ago, I came into a village near Baqubah with American and Iraqi soldiers. Al Qaeda had openly stated Baqubah was their worldwide headquarters — indeed, Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed just a short drive away.

Behind the village was a palm grove. I stood there, amid the crushing stench of death, and photographed the remains of decapitated children and murdered adults. I can still smell the rotting corpses of those children.

And the blogger Engram has been relentless in making the case for the truth about the role of al Qaeda Iraq.

Hillary Clinton finally figures out how to challenge Barack Obama [e.a.]:

In an interview with ABC’s Cynthia McFadden, Sen. Hillary Clinton, when asked about the Barack Obama phenomenon, used a quote from Obama to describe her opponent. “I think the best description actually is in Barack’s own book” Clinton said, “where he said that he is a blank screen and people of widely different views project what they want to hear.” Clinton continued saying “he just hasn’t been around long enough.” Clinton continued saying “But with the blank screen it gives you a chance to just really infuse it with whatever you hope for, whatever you want without knowing.”

There’s more:

Clinton was asked her reaction to the many women around this country who say they feel sorry for her. “I think a lot of woman project their own feelings in their lives on to me.”

Very, very deft.

A complex human being, that Hillary.

Angelina Jolie recently visited Iraq, and she’s got strong opinions, not to mention a strong moral compass:

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won’t explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder?

She suggests that the surge has helped create progress that American forces and NGOs can build upon. And she issues a challenge:

I would like to call on each of the presidential candidates and congressional leaders to announce a comprehensive refugee plan with a specific timeline and budget as part of their Iraq strategy.

That’s an excellent idea, even if it does come from a famous femme fatale (who I’ve mocked relentlessly on this blog).

Life is full of surprises. Some overprivileged movie stars turn out to be serious—and seriously bold—people.

I know they mean well, but earnest policy types really need to get their heads out of the clouds or out of their policy papers or out of their own rear ends and take a good hard look at the deeply inhospitable media terrain in which they operate.***

On Sunday, Michael Signer published a piece in the WaPo that was picked up by a bunch of bloggers, and which he followed up with a post on Democracy Arsenal. Upshot: the media ought to cover the candidates’ positions on foreign policy more than it does, because foreign policy is very important.

Well, duh. Everyone knows that.

What we don’t know is how to make that happen in a cultural moment and environment in which the news media has taken a sharp turn away from any kind of hard news coverage and when audiences seem to long for a 24/7 diet of sensationalized entertainment.

We no longer have time to argue about whether or not this is what they indeed long for. Even if audiences wanted enlightenment rather than distraction, the train has left the station. Network and cable news organizations no longer talk about offering the news as a public service; they brag about their audience numbers. (And media critics often join in the horse race coverage.)

Media and news executives long ago came to the conclusion that unless there is breaking hard news that threatens to interrupt life for our nation, what we the audience really want in the “news” is reality-based distraction: fluff, drama, conflict, horse-race coverage, consumer news we can use, crisis-management advice, and stirred emotions. (It’s true that if it bleeds it leads, but we don’t want a diet too high in blood and guts.)

On this blog, I have spent two years elaborating the thesis that the most effective way for the “push” visual media (TV networks and cable channels) to reach a vast, diverse population (and electorate) under the current cultural conditions (which coincide with a time in the evolution of media when we’ve changed from a mass audience into a “mass of niches” audience) is through an effective combination of information and entertainment: infotainment. (Soft news works to get across some kind of information to “low-information” voters; the scholar Matthew Baum has written a book about it and continues to do research in this area.)

My suggestion is simple: Go with the flow. Don’t fight the trend against hard news.

Improve the quality and the information density of soft news. 

Whether your goal (like Signer’s) is to keep people informed about the foreign-policy issues that might affect them or your mission is to get more people interested in the wider world beyond their immediate environment (which is my obsession: it drives me crazy that Americans are so ignorant), it is long past time to stop criticizing the media for what it doesn’t do.

It is time to find effective ways to use the media—or to create your own media channels—to get people to pay attention to your cause.

I’m not saying this is the optimum situation. I would certainly love a more seriously informed electorate. Absent that likelihood (throughout history, most people have been ill informed; there’s no reason to believe that our generation is any different—who doesn’t love recess more than school?), it would be much more productive to work with what we have. And make it better for everyone.

——————

*** Here are some questions for Beltway-and-beyond policy wonks: Have any of you—especially those of you who sit in front of a computer monitor all day long—taken a look at TV lately? at what TV calls the “news”?

Have you watched Charlie Gibson or Katie Couric or Brian Williams for a week? Have you caught one of Keith Olbermann’s Special Moments of Stupidity? Have you listened to Bill O’Reilly rant and rave? Have you glimpsed Larry King puffing up Rudy Giuliani one day and Michelle Obama the next? Have you seen the “ladies” on The View go at it over politics? Have you tuned in to Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman, or Conan O’Brian? to Oprah? Dr. Phil? Judge Judy? Regis and Kelly? Ellen?

I understand that it’s beneath you to watch a lot of this stuff, but this is what you’re competing against when you want to get “foreign-policy matters” in front of the American people.

Rather than cluelessly belabor the obvious, it would behoove you to understand that this is how passive, “low-information” Americans (those who depend on TV for their “news”) learn about “the issues.” This is the stuff people watch, when they’re not watching American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc.

Foreign policy matters—unless they are sensational or catastrophic—cannot possibly compete against this stuff. Instead, TV reduces every “issue” to a hysterical “he said, she said” debate and every public figure to a caricature.

That’s reality. We can’t wish it away. What those of us who care about foreign policy issues should do is learn how to operate effectively in this environment.

I’m not suggesting it will be easy. But if Barack Obama can get and hold people’s attention, maybe there’s hope.

Make what you want of the new Pew poll about general election patterns of support for the three remaning candidates. I pass along the info, starting with the headlines:

Obama Has The Lead, But Potential Problems Too

Increasing Optimism About Iraq

You decide:

The three leading presidential candidates have divergent images, which are reflected in the words that voters use to describe Obama, Clinton and McCain. In general, the single words used to describe Obama are very positive, but the word “inexperienced” is used most frequently to describe the Illinois senator.

“Experienced” is the word used most often to describe Clinton, with the words “strong” and untrustworthy” also mentioned frequently. For McCain, the word “old” is used most often as a descriptor, far outnumbering mentions of “honest,” “experienced” and “patriot.”

As I write, Democratic surrogates are droning on in the background on CNN, spinning away on behalf of their candidates.

The stories of the day have Obama “under attack” from Clinton, McCain, and Bush—and he’s deftly fending them off. Or something.

Meanwhile, Clinton had her best month of contributions ever!

Bush whacks Obama!

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I’d like to ask you about another issue that’s kind of come up on the campaign trail, … that we would be better off if we talked to our adversaries, in particular, Iran and Cuba, you know, without preconditions. And as President, you have obviously considered and rejected this approach. And I’m wondering if you can give us a little insight into your thinking about this, and just explain to the American people what is lost by talking with those when we disagree?

THE PRESIDENT: What’s lost by embracing a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs? What’s lost is it will send the wrong message. It will send a discouraging message to those who wonder whether America will continue to work for the freedom of prisoners. It will give great status to those who have suppressed human rights and human dignity.

Baker endorses McCain, who whacks Obama!

Clinton whacks Obama!

Obama does a press avail!

Obama’s surrogate Jamal Simmons dials his candidate’s position on Iraq waaaaaaaay back. But Clinton’s surrogate James Carville makes it plain that Americans aren’t patient enough for a 100-year commitment …

Yadda yadda yadda.

Everybody who’s got a collection (or accumulation) of books has given some thought to how to arrange them. My rules were a little less neurotic but also way less amusing than Matt Selman’s:

RULE #1: THE PRIME DIRECTIVE – It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman’s living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR SURE it has been read by Matt Selman.

RULE #1: COROLLARY A: The living room books ARE NOT the combined book collections of Matt Selman and his wife. (She may have read some of them, but who knows, really.) This is only the collection of Matt Selman.

RULE #1: COROLLARY B: Writing in books on the living room shelves that Matt Selman has NOT read — I) Indexes. II) The ending part of the author’s acknowledgments that is just a list of names. III) Poetry that has been snuck into an otherwise interesting book. IV) Books written by my father that I told him I read. V) The super boring text in art books.

But there’s virtue in accumulating a huge library:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his thought-provoking and challenging book, The Black Swan:  The Impact of the Highly Improbable, tells the story of the writer Umberto Eco, who possesses a library of over 30,000 books (mine, by comparison, is a little over 2,000).  He separates his visitors into two categories:  1) Those who, upon seeing his library, exclaim, “Wow!  Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have!  How many of these books have you read?” Taleb explains the next category this way:

And the others—a very small minority—who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool.  Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.  The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there.  You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly.  Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books.  Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

…Note that the Black Swan comes from our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises, those unread books, because we take what we know a little too seriously.

More for home library owners here.

And something even more delectable—a reader’s guide to the unwritten—here.

When I see stupid stuff like this from a media outlet that is pretending to provide useful information to its viewers, it drives me up a wall:

 

Common Misunderstandings About Muslims

Are Muslim Women Oppressed? Why Do They Wear the Hijab? Find Out Below

Misconception: Muslim women are oppressed and forced to wear the hijab.

Truth:

Women often see it as empowering because they are not viewed as sexual objects but judged by their character.

The “truth” about the hijab has nothing to do with female empowerment or sexual politics.

Wearing the hijab is a religious custom practiced by some Muslim women.

(AP Photo )

Just as wearing a hair covering is a religious custom practiced by some Jewish women.

Somehow, the New Yorker artist who made the cover pictured below forgot—or didn’t want to—include a religious Jew in the picture. Some discussion here.

Peter Suderman had no Internet connection for a couple of days. He discovered that withdrawal from the blogosphere is … withdrawal:

Like most people who spend all day in front of a computer, I am hopelessly addicted to news and blogs. As many people have discovered, there’s something strangely compelling, in a narrative sense, about regular updates on your favorite news stories or from your favorite online commentators. Let me put it like this: I don’t watch soap operas, but I do read Matt Yglesias and The Corner—along with about a zillion other blogs and magazines.

But going without them, even for a relatively short period, is somewhat frightening. My mind starts to think about them, to wonder about what’s being written where and by whom—and there’s nothing there. I imagine it’s sort of like when one loses a limb and gets phantom itches (except not completely traumatic, and, obviously, entirely trivial in comparison).

I know what he means. I had hosting/domain issues earlier today and lost contact with my blog and freaked.***

———-

*** Except now I don’t worry anymore about losing all my content, because I use blogbackuponline.

That’s a free plug! ’cause I’m happy with the product.

[update: here's a nice piece, similar in feeling to mine, from Robert Poole at Reason]

Back when I was a snotty whippersnapper and I was contemptuous of anyone who didn’t think like me and my obviously morally superior cohort, I worked in the same down-at-the-heels prewar building on East 36th Street where the National Review had its offices.

When I read this tribute, I was reminded of just how culturally out-of-favor the NR was back then in the post-Vietnam era:

Before Rush Limbaugh; before conservative talk radio; before Fox News Channel; before the Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, the Heritage Foundation and even Ronald Reagan, there was Buckley and his magazine. He burst upon the scene in the early 1950s, articulating concepts and ideas that were largely dismissed in that era–and even more out of favor in the 1960s. Still, Mr. Buckley never wavered, and his brand of conservatism became part and parcel of the Reagan Revolution that followed.

I’m no Republican. Having grown up among Republicans, I had a lifetime’s worth of exposure. I don’t even visit the Corner unless I’m sent there by a link. I’m just not interested in what conservatives are saying. I’m interested in my own tribe, not theirs!

Nevertheless, I admire William F. Buckley for his style, his wit, his erudition, and his persistence and faith, with which he built a place where the loyal opposition could talk amongst themselves. My hat’s off.

This is what happens when you don’t stand up and forcefully repudiate a preacher of hate like “Minister” Farrakhan:

The state GOP on Monday issued a press release under the headline “Anti-Semites for Obama” that begins:

“The Tennessee Republican Party today joins a growing chorus of Americans concerned about the future of the nation of Israel, the only stable democracy in the Middle East, if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is elected president of the United States.”

The release cites Obama’s support from Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan and other controversial figures.

I would note only that even Walt and Mearsheimer were smart enough to immediately repudiate David Duke when he hailed their “Israel Lobby” paper.

Barack Obama abysmally failed the easiest test of the night by refusing to jump in and reject and denounce the support of the hateful Louis Farrakhan, who spreads his evil seed far and wide in the black community.

Obama’s failure was particularly notable because it happened on the same day that John McCain raced to denounce a surrogate who made inappropriate remarks about his opponents. Not only did Obama not reject and denounce Farrakhan, but he objected to being asked to do so. Then he made a joke of the fact that there’s no difference between denouncing and rejecting. He flashed a big smile in response to Hillary’s very effective attack on him. Obama tried to be reasonable, claiming that he can’t very well reject someone for saying he’s a good guy.

Sorry, Barack: Yes you can.

John McCain did it hours earlier on the same day. And his surrogate is a nobody, whereas your surrogate, a hate monger, takes the opportunity to spread his evil seed as far and wide as he can.

It’s pretty obvious that Barack Obama’s Jewish crew consists of the deracinated, not those of us whose families were hunted down to the farthest corners of “civilized” Europe, persecuted by their neighbors, and exterminated by people who fell in love with rhetoric just like Louis Farrakhan’s.

Andrew Sullivan picked up on it right away, and he is right to be concerned.

10.09 pm. Farrakhan. Does Obama understand that saying he has consistently denounced him is not the same as simply saying, “I denounce him”? A weak response - reminiscent of Dukakis. … Obama’s Farrakhan response suggests to me he is reluctant to attack a black demagogue. … Weak, weak, weak…. His worst moment in any debate since this campaign started. I’m astounded he couldn’t be more forceful. His inability to say by himself, unprompted, that Farrakhan’s support repels him and he rejects it outright really unsettles me.

I have not believed that Obama has an ounce of sympathy for a creep like Farrakhan. But Obama has now made me doubt this. If David Duke called John McCain a good man, would McCain hesitate to say he’d rather Duke opposed him? If this is how Obama wants to tackle this emotive issue, he needs to get real.

Sullivan’s readers told him he was wrong—that Obama carried himself well. In response, Sullivan explained why he felt the way he did:

I guess I am Marty Peretz sensitive on this. Proud to be. I’ve been to a Farrakhan rally and he is so disgusting I find Obama’s calm distancing insufficient. I also think this will be used against him and worry that it will become a distracting issue. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s unwise for Obama to raise the temperature on this issue. We’ll see. But he really disappointed me.

[e.a.]

I have been a consistent critic of Sullivan’s operatic Obama-love. I applaud him for his honesty here.

Barack Obama fucked up big time. His refusal, even when pressed, to forcefully denounce a preacher of hate marks him as a typical, weak-willed knee-jerk academic leftist who, in seeking to understand evil, accepts it.

It marks him as unwilling to face—and denounce—evil.

It marks him as unfit to be the commander in chief of a country at war.

I am of the left. I feel most at home on the left. I agree with many of Obama’s positions.

But I hope that John McCain drives a truck through Barack Obama. He will deserve it.

Andrew Sullivan’s worst nightmare:

Clinton aide: She and Obama could be running mates

Terry McAuliffe told a business group in Madison on Tuesday it ‘‘sure is’’ possible the former first lady and the Illinois senator could become running mates.

You can’t make this stuff up.

This innuendo about Samantha Power’s hostility to Israel should stop. It’s ugly, nasty, and unproductive.

A much more reasonable line of inquiry would be to ask both Ms. Power, who is devoted to internationalism and believes that much can be accomplished through international institutions, what she thinks of reports like this one, sponsored by the UN, which claims that anti-Israeli violence by the Palestinians is okay and perfectly understandable, because they are freedom fighters:

UN expert: Palestinian terror ‘inevitable’ result of occupation

The report by John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the UN Human Rights Council, will be presented next month, but it has been posted on the body’s Web site.

In it, Dugard, a South African lawyer who campaigned against apartheid in the 1980s, says “common sense … dictates that a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by Al-Qaida, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation.”

“While Palestinian terrorist acts are to be deplored, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation,” writes Dugard, whose 25-page report accuses the Israel of acts and policies consistent with all three.

If Power defends this report—or the mind-set that produced it—then there will be plenty of room to attack her, and her precious UN, for their grotesque moral equivalence.

Stephen Hayes, writing in the WSJ, suggests that Republicans ignore the power of Obama’s rhetoric at their own peril. And he nails Obama’s special gift:

Mr. Obama has the unique ability to offer doctrinaire liberal positions in a way that avoids the stridency of many recent Democratic candidates.

Now, if you’re Mickey Kaus, you believe that Obama using his quiet way of speaking to cover up and hiding his way-too-left tendencies.

I agree with Kaus—the heuristic cues about Obama’s way-leftiness are obvious to those people who are tuned in to political code, which is a tiny fraction of the electorate. Millions and millions of entranced and besotted fans, however, get deceived, plain and simple.

And that makes me deeply unhappy about Barack Obama’s expected candidacy: unlike Reagan, to whom he is being favorably compared, he is being fundamentally dishonest with the vast majority of potential voters.

The job of his opponent will be to dismantle Obama’s pleasingly vague idealism with a relentless barrage of detailed, specific questions on policy—and particularly on the “dumb” Iraq war (his signature issue) and what he, as president, would do about Iraq on Day One, Day Two, Day Three, etc.

But I like Prince whole, and according to Gawker:

Prince: Sex Machine Broken

It’s his hip. He needs surgery. He’s 49!

Ideologically Correct comedians don’t refer to Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name, or to the fact that his last name rhymes with Osama, says K.O.

Nor do they proclaim that BITCH IS THE NEW BLACK and tear down the MSM for being so obviously in the tank for Barack Hussein Obama.

On the other hand, Keith dear, he’s Jon Stewart—with an audience of 1 billion—and you’re not. Being his ideological policeman is such an important job, though. Isn’t it?

It buys goodwill from the press—especially if you’re John McCain.

The “straight-talk express” also carries the connotation of getting the talk directly from McCain’s mouth rather than from the mouth of a spokesman. He is gracious, personable, and likeable (or so I’ve heard from those who know him), and he talks willingly to the press.

We know all about the Clintons’ horrendous relationship with the press.

What I find most curious is that Obama reportedly does not make himself readily accessible to the press. Despite this, he’s got amazing press. Of course it’s also because of this that he’s getting amazing press. He is also being managed and handled. And he is being presented as an old school-style celebrity. His stardom operates on the scarcity model—namely: look, but don’t touch.

The Politico picks up on this theme today.

I expect that Obama’s rapid-response team will in fact come up with an appropriate response.

I should also note that there is one constituency to which Barack Obama has paid attention lately: the Jooooooos. And the Joooooooos’ reps at the New York Sun are watching him like a hawk (you’ll excuse the expression) on Israel.

In the context of discussing the media’s failure to cover foreign policy issues (a subject I’ve addressed repeatedly and elaborated on most recently here), whippersnappers Matt Stoller and Matthew Yglesias urge their fellow progressives to bring national-security issues into their politics.

Yglesias:

A presidential campaign knows it needs to check the national security box, so they organize one or more Major Foreign Policy Addresses and then kind of play duck-and-cover hoping that Republicans won’t attack them and when Republicans do attack them whining that you shouldn’t play politics with national security. But if we all take for granted that politics will be played with basic questions of economic growth and fairness, then why not play it with national security, too?

Stoller:

Look, if you want foreign policy to become a political issue, you have to make it a political issue. That’s an organizing problem. I didn’t see any attacks from any Democratic candidates against each other on North Korea or Russia, any attempts to draw distinctions, though I saw a lot of high-minded ‘major serious policy addresses’. …

And you can blame the press if you want, but if 97% of a campaign budget is going towards something other than communicating foreign policy ideas to the public, then what exactly is being done to fix this problem?

Readers may be surprised to note that while I often disagree politically with both Stoller and Yglesias, I agree completely with their positions on this matter.

Of course politics doesn’t stop at the water’s edge.

Of course national security is a domestic issue.

Of course Democrats need to give voters an idea of what they’re for in foreign-policy matters.

Unfortunately, though, bringing foreign policy to the fore (as it stands now among progressive thinkers) would expose Democrats’ huge vulnerability on this issue if they continue to say that they are for pulling out of Iraq and damn the consequences, which is what their position appears to be. (I’m not sure, because they won’t say.)

The impression that a lot of people have of the Democrats—even, and perhaps especially, during wartime—is that the party is profoundly unserious, in the ways that matter, about the outside world, about foreign policy, and about national security.

To be serious in the ways that matter requires, first of all, that you validate the notion that we are at war, with hundreds of thousands of troops sitting in hostile territory; that a wartime president is, most importantly, the commander in chief, mandated to keep America and Americans safe; that you validate people’s (i.e., the electorate’s) legitimate fears and anxieties about the dangerous world we’re living in (not entirely of our own making) and the many dangerous bad actors we face (some of whom are evil); that you acknowledge political Islam as a movement (even if it has various, and conflicting, manifestations—i.e., some Sunni-inspired, some Shia-inspired) that directly and deliberately challenges Western Enlightenment ideals and, even more important, Western notions about human rights for all.

To be serious in the ways that matter requires that Dems address terrorism as a tactic that we will face here at home. That was—or should have been—one of the lessons of 9/11, which, as readers will recall, preceded the Second Iraq War and was a clear signal about the wider world’s longtime unhappiness with and hatred of the U. S. of A.

The Democrats have utterly failed to address these legitimate fears. Many anti-war Dems have chosen to charge Republicans with fear-mongering rather than address people’s real fears. For example, in their politicking about the Iraq war—and about Bush’s supposedly looming attack on Iran—many Democratic partisans loudly and aggressively downplayed the threat from Iran as “Republican talking points.”

These are not serious arguments, and I believe they will fall way short with those voters who are concerned—at the reptilian-brain level—about “national security.”

From what I can tell, the Dems’ foreign policy narrative is that we have to clean up America’s image abroad, whereas the GOP’s narrative is (as always) about keeping Americans safe.

But, by all means, Democrats should foreground these issues. They just need a better pitch if they expect to win skeptical reptilian voters.

—————-

p.s. Most of the Obama fans that I know support him because they hate the war in Iraq. They don’t want to think about the war. They want to believe that Obama can get us out of there, put it behind us, and move on. He is encouraging them to believe that this can, and will, happen. It’s a cynical political maneuver.

If you personally don’t want to think about foreign policy, that’s all the more reason for you to vote for a person who does think about it, and has honest, smart, well-rounded advisers who come up with detailed plans, backups, fail-safes, etc..

It had to be said that Obama’s anti-Clinton strategy is a vigorous insider hit job, following almost exactly David Geffen’s talking points. And now her communications director, Howard Wolfson, has said it … in so many words:

Senator Obama’s entire campaign against Senator Clinton is negative. I think he has run against her as the status quo. He has essentially called her divisive. He has called her untruthful. He has questioned her credibility. He has said she will do or say anything to get elected. If that’s not negative, I don’t know what is.

Obama’s claim to be post-partisan is his most skillful sleight-of-hand in his bag of tricks. In fact, he mounted an insurgency against Clinton. In what way is that not “old-style politics”?

But the people want to believe—mundus vult decipi—and so they don’t ask questions.

Barack Obama is deliberately opaque in an era that demands transparency. Surprisingly, a lot of folks don’t seem to mind, because they like the guy. Susan Sarandon, an Obama supporter, “can’t wait to see what he stands for.”

Others, however, are made very uncomfortable by Obama’s lack of specifics.  Spengler, for one, is deeply troubled by the things he purports to know about Obama’s parents—all of which was news to me. And as Wretchard notes, Spengler is “uncharacteristically vituperative.” Like Wretchard, I also wonder why.

It does rather seem, for the moment, as if America might just be crazy enough to elect a crafty and talented radical-lefty law professor who figured out how to hide those views (as Mickey Kaus described Obama in early February in a talk with Robert Wright on bloggingheads.tv).

Rice uses the “n” word against Hillary Clinton [e.a.]:

Ms. Rice said Mrs. Clinton’s vote denouncing the Revolutionary Guards made her “part of the neoconservative drumbeat for war with Iran.”

Are we surprised? If so, we shouldn’t be.

You won’t see many stories like this in the news, but you’ll find them in print outlets:

Castro’s Cuba was no place for a socialist like me

My wife and I, as unreconstructed paleo-lefties who support Clause Four, free school meals and NHS dental provision, had long wanted to visit Castro’s Cuba. All the people whose views we respect had said that the Caribbean island was a progressive model whose policies on education and healthcare ought to be copied throughout the world. We went there last April desperately wanting to like the place — after all, if George W. Bush and other right-wing nasties hated Cuba so much, then the country must be on the right tracks.

But we returned home terribly disillusioned. Neither of us had been to a country which was so utterly decrepit.

There are smart restaurants, designer shops and modern hotels. Wander a few streets away, however, and you’ll witness scenes of incredible dereliction. Dilapidated buildings with wires hanging out, streets that haven’t been resurfaced for more than 50 years, balconies that look like they’re going to fall down at any minute. In my travels in the Middle East and Asia, I’ve certainly witnessed squalor, but nothing prepared me for the back streets of Havana.

Author Neil Clark was probably referring to images like this,

which are familiar to anyone who has seen the fabulous movie The Buena Vista Social Club.

But the romance with Fidel and the Cuban revolution lives on in the imagination of biens-pensants, patronizing Westerners, who consider Cuba the height of authenticity.

Daniel Day-Lewis and Helen Mirren also stole a beautiful moment from an otherwise brisk, businesslike, and banal Oscar telecast.

As did Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova:

Watching the Oscars paid off!

I loved the movie Once!

And the song “Falling Slowly”

And I love Glen Hansard for saying: “Make art! Make art!”

And I love Jon Stewart for bringing Marketa Irglova back out onstage to get her moment to encourage artists everywhere!

Wooohooo!

[[ update: I wrote this post yesterday [Feb 23] and because I was working on two different computers—don’t ask—it got lost in the ether. So I’m reposting it today, February 24.

In the meantime, last night I spoke to a journalist friend. He, along with most people I know, thinks that Bill Keller sat on the story for too long and then was forced into publishing it because of TNR. But this pov might simply have become the conventional “wisdom” among media insiders. Maybe, maybe not.

This explanation still doesn’t address how the NYT managed to do something that reflected so badly on the newspaper and missed its target (by insinuating that there was a sex angle to the story) .

One other note: it is a reflection of the awesome speed of media “stories” that this particular one—which captivated everyone for 24 hours—-is no longer hot. Indeed, on Sunday morning—a mere four days after the storm it unleashed—it barely gets a mention on Memeorandum.]]

On Thursday morning, after seeing the hundreds of links on Memeorandum to the NYT vs. John McCain “story” (or, rather, pseudo-event), I wrote:

Who will get hurt more—John McCain or the New York Times?

I also made a prediction.

That’s easy: the NYT.***

A mere two days later, we already know this to be a fact, and it is revealed by the New York Times itself:

McCain Gathers Support and Donations in Aftermath of Article in The Times

Senator John McCain declared the battle over on Friday morning, but by then his lieutenants believed he had already won the war.

Conservative radio talk show hosts who had long reviled Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential candidate from Arizona, had rallied to his defense. Bloggers on the right said that this could be the start of a new relationship. Most telling, Mr. McCain’s campaign announced Friday afternoon that it had just recorded its single-best 24 hours in online fund-raising, although it declined to provide numbers.Both sides traced the senator’s sudden fortunes to an unusual source, The New York Times, …

Ed Morrissey comments on the NYT’s weaselishness in its follow-up—a valid point of media criticism:

the flak taken by the Gray Lady has apparently resulted in a Soviet-style purge of the sexual allegations from their story.

But Megan McArdle gets at something deeper: the reaction of “the Swing Voter” (as opposed to insiderish media and policy types, and I include a lot of bloggers in this category) [e.a.]:

The Swing Voter [McArdle’s mom] is completely outraged by the New York Times story–she vows to no longer take the Times, nay, not even for the Sunday crossword. She is also now thinking seriously about voting for McCain just to spite the New York Times.I found myself offering a tepid defense of what really is a pretty indefensible story: to wit, that reporters in cases like this usually know more they can tell, because so many sources refuse to go on the record. The Swing Voter was unmoved. She feels like the Times, and the sort of people who staff the Times, feel that they are entitled to manipulate the election in order to get teh “right” results–that such a story would never have run about a Democrat.

I detect some anxiety from certain quarters, if one of the comments on Matthew Yglesias’s blog is any indication:

Have you read McMegan lately about the whole McCain thing? A few of her regular commenters have gone off the deep end on this. They are saying(along with McMegan’s mother as she points out) that they will vote for McCain just to spite the NYT. Teh Stoopid. It burns!!!

update: Confirmation of the “silver lining of the John McCain lobbyist scandal” … for John McCain .

’m forced to conclude that this backfired so badly on the Times—and seems to have worked to shield McCain from further inquiry—that it’s almost as if someone planned it.

Heckuva job, New York Times!

—————–

*** I first heard about the NYT’s hit job on John McCain on CNN, late Wednesday night after a long day. What I remember was Anderson Cooper characterizing the NYT’s story as long on innuendo and short on substance.

But we begin with the story that is already triggering an uproar. And it’s only been out there a couple hours. We’re reporting it precisely because of what people are saying about it and because of where it came out. It’s running in tomorrow’s “New York Times.”

The story chronicles the alleged concerns of some McCain aides on his 2000 campaign, eight years ago, about a number of potential vulnerabilities, specifically their fears about Senator McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist. …

And we would quickly add that the article gives no direct evidence of it one way or another. In other words, it’s a lot of innuendo.

This was an unusually sharp comment from AC, who is a very self-disciplined on-air personality. It made me pay attention to a story I would usually disregard (a front-page smear of some politician from the NYT? who cares? that’s business as usual for my hometown paper).

Tom Hayden visits Vietnam and is disappointed to find consumerism trumping the virtues of what was supposed to be a worker’s paradise.

 The fancy Diamond department store next to Independence Palace was filled with shoppers, gawkers and Santas wandering the aisles of Lego, Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret, Nike, Converse, Estée Lauder, Ferragamo and Bally. The nearby Saigon Centre bore a billboard proclaiming, More Shops, More Life.

Far be it from me to question the desire of Vietnamese to share our globalized consumer culture like everyone else, or to reject their aspiration to be the next Asian Tiger, or freeze them in memory as icons of selfless revolutionaries.

Far be it from him to question, but question Haydeb does. Or, rather, he sniffs:

Gentrification and consumerism, after all, have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen. It seems the way of the world. As I walked through the busy Christmas streets, however, I was gripped by the question of why the Vietnam War was necessary in the first place. Why kill, maim and uproot millions of Vietnamese if the outcome was a consumer wonderland approved by the country’s still-undefeated Communist Party?

I suppose it never occurred to Mr. Hayden that a consumer wonderland is what the people of Vietnam aspire to…shame on them. One question does nag at him, though [e.a.]

 is it possible that Marxism and nationalism won the war but capitalism and nationalism have won the peace?

Oh horrors!

What ever will happen next? Will someone be coming forward to denounce Fidel Castro? Mr. Hayden will be deeply disappointed, I’m sure.

I have.

So has Barack Obama.

Readers! Get out your hazmat suits!

So I got home late tonight and watched the debate, which I’d TiVoed, and started checking commentary on the debate, and then I checked up on the McCain vs. the NYT story.

And then I read on Contentions that it’s already over. Jennifer Rubin writes:

And a final thought on the New York Times story today: Who says McCain’s coziness with the media didn’t pay off? Aside from the fact he literally is raising money on the Times, the vast majority of the mainstream media, not to mention both liberal and conservative bloggers, took his side or at least were highly critical of the Times. Isn’t that the opposite of what the talk show hosts are saying (i.e. it never pays to cultivate the media)? I doubt any other Republican would have been as effective or adept at beating back a potentially very damaging story in less than 24 hours. (The news cycle pace still stuns me.) One of the other GOP contenders — you know, the mayor — certainly was not.

[e.a.]

Whoa.

Life outside campaign ‘08 continues apace.

General David Petraeus announced that he hopes to pull 21,000 troops out of Iraq by July. Also, he made it plain that al Qaeda is the main problem in Iraq:

General Petraeus, who has won international recognition for his counter-insurgency tactics, said in the wide-ranging interview this week that al-Qaeda remained his biggest concern in Iraq.

He is also keeping a close eye on Iranian links to Shia militias, revealing that he was “puzzled” by a decision by Tehran to postpone four-times a meeting in Baghdad between US and Iranian officials to discuss security in Iraq.

Engram has been saying this all along, and I recommend that you read his post today in its entirety.

Also: today comes the most idiotic foreign-policy advice ever from a whippersnapper who is not Ezra Klein. Behold the product of deep thinking from Matthew Yglesias:

For good reasons and for bad ones, the romance of thumbing one’s nose at the USA has powerful and important resonance for a lot of people around the world. Under the circumstances, it rarely serves our interests to get into dramatic confrontations with leaders who are far too puny to objectively threaten our interests.

Revisionist thoughts about marriage and babies from Lori Gottlieb at The Atlantic. Lest you find yourself 40 and unmarried and without a father for your babies, she counsels “settling” over being too choosy:

Whether you acknowledge it or not, there’s good reason to worry. By the time 35th-birthday-brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as “jokes” creep into public conversation: Well, I don’t feel old, but my eggs sure do! or Maybe this year I’ll marry Todd. I’m not getting any younger! The birthday girl smiles a bit too widely as she delivers these lines, and everyone laughs a little too hard for a little too long, not because we find these sentiments funny, but because we’re awkwardly acknowledging how unfunny they are. At their core, they pose one of the most complicated, painful, and pervasive dilemmas many single women are forced to grapple with nowadays: Is it better to be alone, or to settle?

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.

I would never presume to advise another woman what to do about her marital affairs. I have been known, however, to offer advice that helped me (I married at 26 and had my first child at 28; it worked for me!).

Ready? Spend your twenties figuring out what you want. (Don’t lie to yourself; that’s the key.) If, in your personal life, you go after what you really, really want, deep down inside—even if it’s not the thing that your friends or cohort want for themselves—you’ll have an easier time in life, which consists mostly of swimming against the tide anyway. It’s hard out there! Home (with your mate, or none) should be where you feel most yourself, and comfortable.

That is all.

I’m not a conspiracist. The universe is chaotic. I reject explanations for mysterious phenomena (natural or manmade) that tie all loose ends together to create a pretty, gift-wrapped package tied with a bow.

I am curious by nature, and persistent in looking for explanations. I try hard to resolve mysteries. Despite having reached middle age and having acquired some knowledge, I am convinced that I have never gotten to the bottom of any mystery, and equally convinced that I never will get to the bottom of any mystery. The universe is just too damn mysterious. Human beings are too complex to be fully “understood.” We do not behave rationally and logically, for one thing.

So: Whereas I look closely at human behavior (and especially at group behavior, since I was once a student of sociology) in order to detect threads that repeat themselves and thus point toward tendencies, I am deeply suspicious of ready-made explanations—of anything. If any mystery were as easily explained as a conspiracy suggests, the mystery (whatever it is) would long ago have been put to rest.

That said, it’s an entertaining distraction to think about the NYT vs. John McCain. Here’s the best conspiracy story about it that I’ve read to date (hey! it’s early in the morning), from the comments at Kevin Drum’s blog.

Is this inoculation? Are they putting up a sex/corruption story in order to protect against future stories that would be corruption only?

Bingo.

You gotta hand it to the McCain team. They played the NYT like a fiddle, and now they get the added bonus of slagging the ‘liberal New York Times’ for a couple of weeks.

Win-win. He may even shore up the conservative base by ‘declaring war’ on the same paper they’ve just spent 3 months negotiating with over this story.

The day is young. I’m sure better stuff will surface.