Greed is Good

Jim Galley, Republican candidate for Congress, loves "traditional families" so much he decided to have two of them!

Politics vs. Policy

There's a fascinating conversation going on between Armando and Peter Beinart on the topic of the importance of developing a comprehensive Liberal Foreign Policy. Mr. Beinart argues that the failure to do so over the last 20 years is a primary cause of Democratic electoral misfortunes while Armando (and much of the dKos audience) argue that Mr. Beinart is ignoring the Politics of National Security at his own peril.

I'm with Armando on this.

I believe Beinart is following the same failed liberal pattern of believing that if you just come up with a really good policy, most people will recognize it as such and will dismiss the demagogary out of hand. Unfortunately, as many of us have become painfully aware, the world just doesn't work like that.

I feel safe in saying that, when it comes to nearly every issue of importance to the American people, the majority of those people think of it first in terms of politics before they begin to think of it in terms of policy. Until Democrats can develop a Politics of National Security that overcomes the multi-decade demonization of anything Democratic then no amount of reasoned debate on this will produce results.

Want an example? Let's look to Mr. Beinart himself. Just the other day I caught his appearance on the O'Reilly show. Beinart made a good faith effort to talk about policy and to explain how, in his mind, Democrats have failed to develop a comprehensive Democratic vision of foreign policy. He then tried to explain what his own vision was.

Did it make any impact on O'Reilly? Not really. O'Reilly just used Beinart's criticism of Democratic failures on policy to turn the segment into a political attack on Democrats.

Beinart could see what O'Reilly was doing and, again, he made a good faith effort to steer the conversation back to policy. But O'Reilly is the master when it comes to turning policy wonks into pathetic puddles (or poodles, as the case may be). Why? Because O'Reilly is a master of the political arena where emotion outweighs logic and received wisdom rules the day.

When it comes to policy, I find myself agreeing with almost everything Mr. Beinart is saying. But it is painfully obvious to me that he just doesn't comprehend how easily his "policy first" stance is being used as a tool to hurt Democrats, Liberals and Progressives.

The Dilemma

I think Kevin Drum hits the key dilemma for the Democrats in the area of national security:

So what is it that Beinart really wants from antiwar liberals? The obvious answer is found less in policy than in rhetoric: we need to engage more energetically with the war on terror and criticize illiberal regimes more harshly.

Maybe so. But this is something that's nagged at me for some time. On the one hand, I think Beinart is exactly right. For example, should I be more vocal in denouncing Iran? Sure. It's a repressive, misogynistic, theocratic, terrorist-sponsoring state that stands for everything I stand against. Of course I should speak out against them.

And yet, I know perfectly well that criticism of Iran is not just criticism of Iran. Whether I want it to or not, it also provides support for the Bush administration's determined and deliberate effort to whip up enthusiasm for a military strike. [emphasis added] Only a naif would view criticism of Iran in a vacuum, without also seeing the way it will be used by an administration that has demonstrated time and again that it can't be trusted to act wisely.

So what to do? For the most part, I end up saying very little. And Beinart is right: there's a sense in which that betrays my own liberal ideals. But he's also wrong, because like it or not, my words �? and those of other liberals �? would end up being used to advance George Bush's distinctly illiberal ends. And I'm simply not willing to be a pawn in the Bush administration's latest marketing campaign.

The Democratic hawks who criticized other Democrats for not getting on board the Iraq War effort (Beinart among them) made a fundamental error in judgment. They assumed that those who opposed the Iraq war did so because they were pacifists (i.e., "squishy Dems") who simply weren't serious enough to make the tough choices when it came to national security. Those types do exist among the anti-war left, but the large majority of people I have met in the anti-war movement were more anti-this-war instead of anti-all-war. And believe me, we resented it (and still resent it) when the hawks would repeat Republican talking points about our motives.

The decisive factor in my opposition to the war in Iraq was simply that it was George W. Bush who was pushing for it. I didn't trust him to make an honest case for war (because he was so obviously lying) and I didn't trust him to have the skills to pull it off (because his incompetence was manifestly obvious even then). I think it is safe to say that my lack of trust in George W. Bush has been proven correct.

I am anti-imperialist in the sense that I don't want America to impose its own vision of peace on the world. But I am not fundamentally against the use of military force to address problems in the international arena. Indeed, I think a legitimate case could have been made for some form of military intervention in Iraq, if for no other reason then to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions regarding inspections. And an argument can be made that a military strike against potential nuclear development in Iran is both reasonable and practicable.

But Kevin points out the fundamentadilemmama: how do you give weight to that option without giving support to the agenda of George W. Bush and the whole PNAC crowd?

I don't know the full answer to that, but I've come to the conclusion that sometimes it is better to let a bad, but tolerable situation persist than it is to support an administration that you are convinced will only make it worse.

It sucks, but there it is.

The Next Wave

Chris Bowers comments on how new social software systems, like MySpace, could become the next wave of online political organizing tools.

I feel pretty confident this will take off, even if Essembly or MySpace do not turn out to be the ideal platforms. With the rise of the netroots, it has been revealed that the demand for DIY political organizing is clearly very high. The political blogosphere, for all its free-wheeling nature, it ultimately not a very effective location for organizing actions and events. While Democracy for America and MoveOn.org have shown some promising ways to find like-minded members of their organization near where you live, those networking actions are still, generally speaking, limited to the events officially sanctioned by the parent organization. Eventually, platforms will be created for mass public use where anyone can begin organizing an political event they want. They will be able to find like-minded people in their local area, or build mini-national email lists and discussions around their actions. ...

One thing that appears to be different from this new wave of social software (MySpace, etc.) and the previous wave (blogging, etc.) is that the newer system has even less of the centralized aspect than does blogging. Chris picks up on this right away.

At least with a community like dKos, you have one place where you go to basically find out what everyone else is talking about. But with MySpace you have a true web of social connections with no central "place" where you go to find out everything that is going on. Instead you just have friends who connect with friends who connect with other friends and thereby create conduits for information to travel into new social regions. You have to have an element of trust that something useful will come your way.

It's the closest the web has come to an emergent social network: one that can produce a form of macro behavior without anyone centrally dictating that behavior. Even blogging still has some central control with the owner(s) of the blog having an overwhelming influence on the direction of the site. dKos is probably the closest the blogging model will ever come to being truly decentralized, but it is still, ultimately, Markos' space.

Ironically, I'm finding it difficult to get into the MySpace phenomena because my personal online grammar, the way I learned to interact on the net, just doesn't fit very well into this new social mold. I find myself wanting to find that "central place" where you go to find out "everything that is happening". But such a thing doesn't really exist. Instead, I need to just start making connections and hope that someday something will develop from it.

It will be interesting to see how this develops as a political tool, but my initial feeling is that those who want to use it as a deliberate organizing tool may be disappointed. I'm just not sure it is something that can be made to behave in a certain way. It is what it is and in order to make it work for you, you have to learn to work with it.

Wanting power for the wrong reason

I'd like to register a disagreement with a point of view that many Democrats may have and which Neil the Ethical Werewolf has given voice. The context of this is a discussion of what might happen when and if the Democrats gain the investigatory power that comes with being in the majority.

As I've argued before, massive investigations of Bush Administration malfeasance could be useful in doing long-term damage to the Republican Party.

The purpose of having the power of subpoena should not be to bring long-term damage to the Republican party.

It should be stopping the Republican Party from doing long-term damage to the United States of America.