FLORIDA AND CONNECTICUT

The two most important states in the WH '08 race? No! Well, maybe — but Florida's ever reddening and Connecticut's steadfast blueishness makes this unlikely. But the confluence of two major streets in the District? Now, that I can do.

A month or so ago, on the way back from the Orlando Letelier monument on Sheridan Circle, I walked smack into the nexus of two fairly major state streets in NW Washington. Having plenty of shots (and batteries) left to kill on the digital camera in my possession, I tried to get a panorama view. Weeks later I'm trying to piece it together in Photoshop, with few skills left over from my OC days.

So here is the more-artistic narrow B&W version:




And if you want to see the taller, larger full-color version, there is this:




It's not my everyday DC (that is to say, I don't cross this intersection too often), but it's somebody's everyday DC (and it's pretty much par for the course in the NW quadrant). And if it's not all that great to look at — though I bet you'll get a kick out of trying to figure out that 6-way stop — then it's at least kinda fun.

NOTE — Click on either picture for the full panorama. Just making sure, that's all.

UPDATE — Parenthetical remarks added later for clarification.

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posted by WWB at 10:06 PM |

 
THE WEEK IN REVIEW

Reliable bullet-points? Check. An imperative first-person narrative? Affirmative. Glaring omissions? I'm sure of it:

• Sunday — Started late, missed the Sunday shows. NRO's BB gets locked out of his apartment. Watch "Rocky IV" on cable for the third time in three weeks. Be amazed at the number of montages in said movie. Leave for female friend's house for a real dinner. Get very ill along the way, be unable to finish eating. Stave off exhurlation. Take two Tylenol PMs, try to sleep early. Stay awake until 11:30. Drudge has the worst radio show.


• Monday — Throwing together of latest DCist monument profile: Jeanne d'Arc. A big nap. Reading extensively from Nexis printouts on a 2002 midterm race, then later Klosterman. Cut out TV almost entirely. Take suit to the cleaners. Early attempt at sleep, recovering from aknowledged self-imposed illness over the weekend. Late actual sleeping.


• Tuesday — Sleepy tired beginning. Reading while I should be searching. Slow news. All Schiavo, about which I have an opinion apparently contrary to the public, but which I only partly care about. Focus on task at hand. A bit of laundry. Get the suit back. Watching online video speeches. Researching, writing. Talk on the phone with one of a handful of former executive and federal speechwriters I've worked with. Hammering out a floor speech for the first time in my life. Listening to podcasts.


• Wednesday — Raining. Collect everything, catch the third empty cab I see on 14th. Editing ahead of time. Getting lots of help to finish a not-big pile of stories. Worrrying, a bit. Showering at work, the donning of my suit. Realization that my fly won't zip. Printing of materials to hand over. Rain. Sugar-free Red Bull. Pleasant cab ride. Interview. A pretty good conversation in a federal building. I did as well as I could, and maybe then some. Won't know for a week or two. Purchasing of alcohol. Consumption. Purchase of alcohol for me. Consumption. Discussion with friends. Evangelizing about The Decemberists. Sleep.


• Thursday — Have to cab in -- late morning. Find two (count 'em, two!) articles on TNR from the sometimes-oddball, sometimes-hilarious Gregg Easterbrook, both based on the Cardozo High mercury panic across the street from me. Rememeber again that the Red Lake Nazi story is getting scant coverage, mostly because no live camera caught that unfolding the way Denver-based helicopters captured the Columbine massacre live in the a.m. Continued to study two-year-old political happenings I missed via printouts. Listen to more podcasts, fall asleep.


• Friday — Wake up early, into work before dawn. Realize that Terri Schiavo is on a death watch more imminent than the Pope's. Notice that there is increased coverage of the Pope's declining condition. Assume this means either Frist is in trouble for '08, or nobody who opposes tube re-insertion really cares, or it's late in the week and I haven't been paying attention. Realize today is mother's birthday, will have to call later. Withdraw from all previously plotted weekend activities. Play "Picaresque" extensively, then "The Bends." Have a drink, or two. Plan to write about both the new Decemberists album and Radiohead on the blog before the weekend is out.

Posting this (and then about an hour later, revising and expanding).

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posted by WWB at 7:27 PM |

 
GREAT SPAMS OF THE INTERNET

From: Brokerage H. Reproved
Subject: Of whom do I have the honour? :)

Have at you!

Yanta kai

According to the Internet, "yanta kai" roughly means "goodbye" in the aboriginal Australian language Anjumarla. I do believe this is the first aboriginal-influenced spam I have received. May it also be the last.

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posted by WWB at 7:15 PM |

 
PUBLICK OCCURRENCES, BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTICK

Warning: Explicit partisanship follows.
If you don't like it, come back later when I'll return
to subjects like baseball and the weather.
For those of you who need to catch up, this post is a reply to this one by Frank at Non-Fat Latte Liberal which was a reply to this which was a reply to this. Got that? It's about all the intro I can give you; it would take too long to recap. Now to the ugliness.

I. DOMESTIC POLICY

Frank, or as I'll call him, NFLL, writes:

My main claim is that there is a tectonic shift in the platforms of the two parties, and I know where they're going.

That's quite presumptuous. If he's so certain, he'd better be working on a book instead of just throwing the ideas at a weblog.

First Bill claims that Big Government Conservatism is Conservatism. Bill fails to mention why. It is most definitely socially Conservative. But economically?

I said it is a variety of conservatism, not that it is Conservatism™. He points out, as I might have given more time, that the most popular Google results for a search on "national greatness conservatism" are in fact critical of the idea. He takes this as an argument that this brand is not real "conservatism." This debate is sometimes obscured by semantics. Allow us to define libertarianism as being primarily anti-state (economically), whereas conservatism is primarily pro-tradition. I say there's a reasonable argument that national greatness conservatism is conservative enough to be called such, but not conservative enough to become right-wing orthodoxy.

Big government is the siren song of politics, and those in power hear it much more keenly than those in the minority. Bush's "National Greatness Conservatism" is the first step on a slippery slope.

He's right about the "siren song of politics," but he doesn't actually demonstrate that it will necessarily keep going this way, he simply asserts it is so. To the contrary, after some thought, I think "big-government conservatism" is nearing exhaustion.

In short, it's a dated idea. It was a reaction to the relative meaninglessness of the Clinton years, viz. peace and prosperity lead to toward decadence, so let's instead reassert our "confidence and sureness of purpose," in the words of chief proponent David Brooks. No more global Communist threat? Well, let's go to Mars! Then 9/11 happened. If we wanted a purpose, well, great — we got one all right.

Even Brooks has not advanced the "national greatness" argument in awhile. (He's too busy writing columns about decaf coffee for the New York Times.)

More to the point of exhaustion, I'd wager deficits have tempered the public's appetite for big tax cuts: We've already got them and Bush seeks only to renew the ones from his first term. Nor will people be interested in creating new government programs. I don't quite buy Grover Norquist's "starve-the-beast" theory, which says deficits will lead to large cuts. I wish. Just yesterday a number of moderate Republican Senators "jumped on the Democrats' no-Medicaid-cuts bandwagon," as Ian at the OC observes, which scuttled Bush's attempt at deficit reduction.

The government may not shrink as much as I'd like, but it probably won't get much bigger.

II. FOREIGN POLICY

Let's go back to NFLL:

"Ambitious" foreign policy, as Bill tactfully puts it, is, I claim, liberal foreign policy. Not to say that the Dem's have embraced it (but they will have to). But it comes from the liberal tradition.

Well, if Democrats can claim fiscal conservatism, as they clearly aim to, then Republicans can adopt an a policy from the "liberal tradition." (By which I assume he means promoting democracy abroad.) It's not so simple, though. If you asked Jon Chait or Peter Beinart at the New Republic if this was liberal, they would say yes. If you asked Gail Collins and her cohorts at the New York Times, they would either disagree or change the subject.

NFLL is too sanguine in asserting that Democrats will come around to embrace an interventionist foreign policy that relies on revolving coalitions (so-called "unilateralism") rather than first pass the UN's "global test." It's always possible another Clinton will come along (wait a second...) whom Democrats would follow into war similarly, but even if the rank-and-file agreed, the left would still kick and scream and stage die-ins at the White House. Republicans don't have this kind of pressure from within their tent (Pat Buchanan is a marginal figure in mainstream conservative foreign policy; his fellow paleocons at the Washington Times and Human Events are pro-war all the way).

Beinart, who is apparently getting an exorbitant amount of money to write a book making the case for hawkish liberalism, has his work cut out for him. His problem is that this foreign policy in the "liberal tradition" is rather unpopular among those who call themselves "liberals." Just read an issue of The American Prospect. Or the Washington Monthly. Or The Nation. Or the New York Times.

Anyway, I don't completely agree that this is only in the "liberal tradition." Yes, we want other countries to enjoy the benefits of freedom and democracy, but we have gone out of our way to make that so in two countries so far because of our own self-interest. Tyrannies are breeding grounds for hatred and spawn terrorist movements; ending tyranny undercuts those movements. Also, Democracies tend not to go to war against each other. Pre-emptive war is a defensive measure, albeit in a roundabout way.

III. THE BIG TENT

Yet one scenario in particular makes NFLL's argument compelling — the much-discussed potential breakup of the conservative-libertarian "marriage." Widely-read blogger Pejman Yousefzadeh (somewhere along the upper spine of the Long Tail) made the argument for keeping the marriage together in a recent essay for TechCentralStation. I agree with him, and I believe there are a lot of us out there.

The marriage has been strained by the Iraq war (and even Afghanistan, in some quarters) and a few predictable disagreements such as gay marriage. But are libertarians ready to side with a left that supports racial preferences in hiring and academia, "progressive" taxation, the status quo for Social Security, or greater federal control of health care? Bush is far from pure on some issues, such as federal involvement in primary education, but he's much closer on these things than the Democratic congressional leadership.

It seems more plausible to consider that libertarians have already split on this issue. One can be a left-leaning libertarian or a right-leaning libertarian, and this distinction existed for a long time before 9/11. Those of us to the right believe libertarians should support the current Republican foreign policy because, essentially, if we agree that the United States is the best current example of liberty under a constitutional republican framework, we should support giving others the chance to exercise the same freedom, even (and sometimes especially) when it means fighting a war that will incur casualties (and resentment in some otherwise-friendly corners) to do so.

A number of writers based at QandO.net have lately been popularizing the word "neolibertarian" to describe non-purist libertarians (like me) who are pragmatic on domestic issues and hawkish on foreign policy. Here's an attempt to outline the foreign and domestic general principles of neolibertarianism:

When given a set of policy choices [on domestic matters],

• The choice that maximizes personal liberty is the best choice.


• The policy choice that offers the least amount of necessary government intervention or regulation is the best choice.


• The policy choice that provides rational, market-based incentives is the best choice.

In foreign policy, neolibertartianism would be characterized by,

• A policy of diplomacy that promotes consensual government and human rights and opposes dictatorship.


• A policy of using US military force solely at the discretion of the US, but only in circumstances where American interests are directly affected.

This is basically silent on social issues (how we mediate conflicting personal liberties) but it's a good start. I don't have a crystal ball, and I don't know if the Republicans will move in this direction, but I think there's a reasonable chance.

There is a lot that I didn't get to in this post, and may be subject for more excruciating polemics along the lines of this one. I'll close out with this: Frank interprets liberals too charitably. He thinks New Republic liberals are par for the course, but the New York Times editorial page is much more representative of modern liberalism. If he thinks I've left alone something particularly relevant, I'm sure he'll keep this going.

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posted by WWB at 1:18 PM |

 
YOU'RE JUST FINISHED, THAT'S ALL

Marc Cooper on the left and Jonah Goldberg on the right have recently both argued (persuasively) that George Lakoff's faddish notion about Democrats improving their electoral chances by substituting euphemisms for unpopular phrases is no recipe for success. Though Lakoff's book "Don't Think About an Elephant" is apparently selling well, and it has been much talked about, I'm not even convinced it's much of a fad.

To start with, euphemisms and dysphemisms are nothing new in politics. Think "choice" for "abortion" (a liberal example of the former) and "death tax" for "estate tax" (conservative, the latter). But as much as I've read about the term in connection with Lakoff's book in outlets right and left, Lakoffisms like "public protection attorney" for "trial lawyer" and "poison-free communities" for "environmental protection," I never see them used except in articles about Lakoff.

And I tested the hypothesis: Punch poison-free communities -lakoff into Google and you get 16 total (7 real) results. Try "public protection attorney" -lakoff, and you get 6 results (likely 7, after this is posted). In Nexis, nothing comes up for poison-free communities andnot lakoff in any U.S. newspaper for the past 90 days. The final permutation yields just one result, and it's a letter to the Bergen, NJ Record. It begins:

"Maybe we would better appreciate the role that trial lawyers such as Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., serve if we call them "public-protection attorneys" vs. corporate lawyers who choose to defend the corporation, often placing public well-being at risk."

So in other words, he just failed to mention George Lakoff. Like so many other fads, this will be quickly forgotten. And if all of his ideas are this original, he'll go down in the annals of one-hit wonders along with Right Said Fred and Dexy's Midnight Runners.

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posted by WWB at 5:49 PM |

 
SOLIDARITY

See BallWonk for details.

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posted by WWB at 6:45 PM |

 
WALL STREET JOURNAL TO DC BUREAU: DROP DEAD

This past week, I noticed that Shailagh Murray of the Wall Street Journal (sub. req. and not available on Nexis) is now Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post.

Every so often, you'll see a major Washington correspondent jump from one paper to another: in April 2004, Peter Wallsten of the Palm Beach Post Miami Herald became Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times. The previous fall, Robin Wright of the LAT became Wright of the Washington Post. This kind of thing is usually unremarkable. But Murray's move is not a unique event. Consider:

• The "Political Capital" column by Alan Murray, formerly co-host of CNBC's "Capital Report," has magically disappeared from recent editions of the newspaper.


• Abracadabra: John Harwood is all but reduced to writing the just-the-facts "Washington Wire" column.


• "Washington Wire" used to run on the front page on Fridays. Poof! Now it's on A4. [UPDATE — I'm corrected in an e-mail: this happened early last year. A leading indicator, maybe?]


• Gerald Seib's "Capital Journal" column? Now you see it, now you don't!


• Biggest of all, Al Hunt (also seen Saturdays on CNN's "Capital Gang") recently left the Journal to head Bloomberg's DC bureau. That's pretty big, but I've seen nary a mention of this anywhere.

In journalism, we like to say three makes a trend. This is five major changes [mostly] since the beginning of 2005. Clearly something big is happening at the Wall Street Journal. And it's not a good something.

Some reporters have arguably abused the "news analysis" medium by including what appears to be personal opinion. (One is the NYT's Adam Nagourney, who has earned such "admirers" as "Adam Nagourney." But the WSJ's political reporters are were a damn sight better.

If the WSJ's reporters can't share the knowledge they've gleaned by writing news analysis, why bother pay to keep a Harwood or a Seib around? Why not just hire recent J-school graduates? Maybe that's exactly what they're doing.

Hey Romenesko, get any interesting e-mails lately?

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posted by WWB at 6:04 PM |

 
T.G.I... COULD CARE LESS

I'm busy the rest of today and most of tomorrow with OSF (new interview up today), DCist (happy hour on the Circle at 5PM), baseball tickets (on sale tomorrow) and a variety of other writing projects for audiences both mass (relatively speaking) and micro. Except for the part aboutnot having to go to work, I'll be busy enough that it might as well still be the middle of the week.

But check back later in the weekend (Sunday is as good a guess as any) when I'll be asking what seem to be an interesting set of questions -- more interesting than inadvertently trolling for hits by blogging about Dan Rather and talking up Jack Shafer's designs on the CBS Evening News, at any rate.

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posted by WWB at 1:39 PM |

 
SOME SAY

Washington Post headline and subhead, this a.m.:

Grudgingly, House Accepts $284 Billion Bill
Some Say Spending Package for Local Transportation Projects Is Too Small
Didn't anybody say it was too large?

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posted by WWB at 5:20 AM |

 
CAN THE NETWORK NEWS BE SAVED?

With Dan Rather's slow motion sacking reaching its not-so-thrilling climax last evening (I intended to watch, but got the TV schedule mixed up, and wasn't all that disappointed to realize I'd missed it) everybody seems to be talking about either Memogate or the decline of the establishment news organizations (or in blogosphere parlance, the MSM).

It got me thinking again about a Jack Shafer column from earlier this week proposing a vastly different approach to the nightly news than anyone has ever attempted:

• First, CBS should target serious news consumers, the sort of devotees who follow breaking news all day through news radio, cable, and the Web. Dedicate the program to breakingest of breaking news and ditch the news-you-can-use and heart-warming features unless they're stupendous.


• Next, reduce the number of commercials. Right now, about eight of the 30 minutes of an evening news slot are ads, which makes the program too short and too frequently interrupted to be compelling. ... [O]ne reason the network's morning "news" programs have gained viewers steadily since 1998 is that viewers have realized that they often program big blocks -- up to 20 minutes -- free of commercial interruption. Advertise the CBS Evening News as the program that gives hardcore news consumers two minutes more news per half hour. Cutting ads will reduce revenue, of course, but it will build audience, which is the longterm problem the program faces.


• Swing a deal with CNN to rebroadcast a refreshed version of the CBS Evening News in the 10 p.m. slot. One reason behind the evening news fade is that it's still scheduled for an era when moms stayed at home and cooked for dad, who didn't have a long commute. ... A 10 p.m. cable slot for the CBS Evening News would similarly appeal to busy people.


• Next, CBS News should partner with a premier daily newspaper ... to give viewers a taste of tomorrow's news tonight. The networks already use the morning New York Times as a cheat sheet for the evening program. Why not use it as a preview of tomorrow's news?


• Next, hire a brainy and thoughtful commentator. Eric Severeid (good), Bill Moyers (bad), and Bill Bradley (uneven) once delivered interesting commentaries on CBS Evening News. In our increasingly opinionated world, CBS would seem futuristic by going retro and including a video columnist.


• TiVo and other technologies have destroyed the concept of "appointment viewing." CBS should respond by putting the goddamn broadcast on the Web. Computers and television aren't converging—they've converged—and I want to watch the news 1) when I want to watch it and 2) on whatever monitor I'm looking at.

That's a TV show I would watch. Timely, realistic, flexible, affix any number of adjectives you want, it sounds like it could be a gripping broadcast. The myriad innovations alone could inspire the kind of fierce brand loyalty today exhibited only among Fox News viewers.

Unlike many young professionals in this suburb-highway-city-highway-suburb (repeat!) information economy, I am in front of a television set in the early evening. And unless I'm working (in which case I'm listening to music) I often (too often) watch cable news. So mark me down as one of thosee "serious news consumers" Shafer mentions. Sometimes I wonder if there are really that many of us out there; blog readership is still miniscule compared to the TV viewing population, and "American Idol" has ratings Dan Rather would have given up moderating a Saddam-Bush live debate for.

Potentially, this model could do (at least) two things: 1) introduce the average viewing public to a sharper (more serious, more exciting) news broadcast, thereby creating/enabling more serious news consumers than ever before and 2) get the MSM-suspicious (and CBS-loathing) right-wing bloggers to watch the CBS News. Either one would be a major achievement.

It may be just crazy enough to work. After all, what's on the broadcast news right now doesn't.

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posted by WWB at 12:41 PM |

 
MEET THE PRESSER

I've just returned from the coldest, windiest press conference ever. Coming up the hill about twenty minutes ago, I noticed the satellite vans were back. When I reached the summit, I saw why: a live press conference under way, starring an EPA spokesman in a drab-green windbreaker and stiff EPA-branded one-size-fits-all baseball cap.

About five or six TV cameras lined up facing him in the manner of a firing squad; perhaps ten members of press stood on either side, barking questions and scribbling notes in their notebooks. And that was about it — no civilians present.

So of course I walked right up and wedged myself into the pack, behind a reporter for the local CBS affiliate. I recognized him, but just now I can't find him on the WUSA 9 News Team page. Evidently, I don't watch enough local news (C-SPAN aside, natch). He looks a bit like Giancarlo Esposito, if that helps.

About the cold and the wind: earlier in the day a blizzard was enveloping the city. Not a few hours later, the clouds have parted to reveal a sky as blue as July. But the temperature remains December-frigid with a southerly blasting 30 miles an hour. It was difficult to hear, so I cupped one hand over my ear:

It turns out the EPA had found another piece of mercury inside the school since the third known spill, and EPA spokesman-guy was holding a curious heavy-metal specimen throughout, adding that he'd give us a close-up in a bit. This new mercury sample was contentious.The reporters looked aghast, shocked, disgusted — and the cameras weren't even a factor — these were the print journalists.
Esposito-guy got combative, demanding to know when that particular mercury was found. EPA guy didn't seem to know at first, drawing more sighs, eventually conceding it was from Monday'. Esposito was vindicated.

We didn't learn much else: in particular, we learned that they don't know when the school will re-open. (Starting today, the students are attending classes held at the University of DC until further notice.)

Afterward we all got to crowd around for a close look at the vial. As EPA-guy took it out of the plastic ziploc bag, seeing his clumsy knit gloves, I had a vision of him dropping it and everybody scrambling backwards ass over tea kettle, cameras and notebooks and all, fearfully. The speck of mercury was so tiny that EPA-guy had to hold a white piece of paper behind the container to make it visible from a few feet back. I wandered around trying to get a closer view, and also into many a camera shot. I'll probably be on local TV in a little while, over and over and over again.

UPDATE — I was wrong! He is on the WUSA page — it's 6PM anchor Bruce Johnson. But does Bruce Johnson (A) look like that much like Bruce Johnson (B)? I report, you decide.

(A)                                          (B)
And I just saw him on the 5PM newscast. If it replays, I'm off-camera between Johnson and the visible TV camera. Even edited into the segment, he does seem to be needlessly arguing with EPA guy. Best of all, though, they cut away to the live studio anchors while he's still asking a question! He must be on thin ice with the producers.

SECOND UPDATE — And I forgot to mention, there was another mercury spill at another schoool in the District yesterday. Seriously.

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posted by WWB at 4:42 PM |

 
AND THE RAIN AND THE SNOW, AND THE WIND THAT BLOWS

Yesterday it was 70 degrees and mostly sunny out. I opened both my balcony doors as wide as possible and left them like that until nearly 8PM. Today it's 28 degrees and the snow is coming down sideways. Federal agencies are still open at this hour, but it's only just noon. Area schools are closing early.

And in case you missed it, everyone's favorite thermometer ingredient made an unprecedented third appearance at Cardozo H.S. this weekend. I'm beginning to suspect poltergeists.

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posted by WWB at 12:04 PM |

 
GOD AND MAN AT THE BALLPARK

Washington Post baseball columnist Tom Boswell, who hasn't looked like his accompanying picture for at least a decade, waxes poetic (as he is wont to do) about yesterday's game:

The breeze at game time, as the Washington Nationals took the field for the first time, was 5 mph, just enough to flutter the nerves that weren't already dancing. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then what does 34 years produce? What is the tingle along the spine when a sport comes back to life after a third of a century in its grave? Resurrection is too strong a word, but resuscitation hardly does justice to the power of the emotion.

Is resurrection really too strong? Perhaps not. Here's Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon telling Boston Magazine what he thinks of being compared to a deity, as noted by the Nats Blog:

"It's incredible. What more can you ask for? Even being mentioned in the same sentence as Jesus or God ... I mean, those guys are awesome. I'm just a knucklehead."

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posted by WWB at 11:28 AM |

 
MERCURY RISING

As the Little Man from Another Place once said, it is happening again:

A week after a mercury spill at Cardozo High School, firefighters are back for what looks like another mercury spill on the third floor.

D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman Alan Etter says crews are getting high mercury vapor readings. He says additional tests are needed, but it's worse than last week.

Etter says some students who were on the third floor may have to be decontaminated. Those on the first and second floors were not exposed, and readings show no mercury contamination there. Authorities are still determining how many people might have been exposed.

The fire trucks, the police and the local news cameras are all back. I talked to a news producer on my walk up this afternoon who said it might be left over from last week. If so, why didn't the EPA find it over the weekend? So, here we are again. And this is after Cardozo was declared a Superfund site. Anyway, I can't be bothered to go out and take more pictures right now. The one above-right is from last week, but it looks about the same. If anything, there are more vehicles parked on Clifton street than last time. (UPDATE — My related post at DCist.)

One reason I can't be bothered is because I'm watching the Nats' first spring training game on ESPN, against the Mets at Space Coast Stadium in Melbourne, Florida. It's 3 to 3 in the top of the 4th. I've never been a big fan of televised baseball, but there's a world of difference when you actually have something invested in one of the teams here. Peter Gammons even deigns to write some nice things about us today.

And in other sports news, the Blazers fired Mo Cheeks. Not a surprise that this would happen, but the timing caught everyone off guard. I've turned down the sound on the TV and am listening to the press conference live right now at Oregonlive.com. Everyone's heaping praise on him andd calling it "difficult decision" and a "sad day," as one would expect. Cheeks doesn't seem to be there, as you would expect also. Check out Oregon Sports Fan for updates.

Lastly, there's one more untimely passing to note from Oregon: Hatoon, the crazy-but-harmless bag lady who had been a fixture around the University of Oregon campus for decades, was struck and killed by an automobile at the edge of campus. Too bad. Hatoon had a student body card and was allowed access to pretty much everything a student was. There's a good story in that, if someone went digging.

So: It's been a huge news day, if you're me.

OVERDUE UPDATE — Nats take it, 5-3. As DB notes, "The Nats are undefeated! Enjoy it while it lasts..."

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posted by WWB at 1:45 PM |

 
FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT

While I believe I have previously made clear my intent to avoid partisan political considerations on this weblog, it so happens that I have been provoked by Frank, AKA Defcon1, AKA the man responsible for Non-Fat Latte Liberal. And so I must respond. Bear with me, or skip this post and come back later, when I'll return to blogging about neighborhood chemical contamination and encounters with people famous only to those of us who watch C-SPAN.

° ° ° ° °
Ahem. Frank argues that he would never vote Republican because George W. Bush "betrays the conservative values" that put him into office, and furthermore that this is a "lasting shift, not an aberration." This is rather amusing, because Frank is a "Liberal," even if a rather moderate one. Since when is he a defender of conservative values?

Anyway, let's dispense with his arguments, such as they are: Complaints that George W. Bush is not a conservative boil to two claims: 1) his foreign policy is ambitious, interventionist, and promotes freedom for others above certain national interests, and 2) he is fiscally reckless, increasing the size of government while running up large deficits. Both are in error because they are based on too-narrow definitions of conservatism.

On the first point (on which Frank probably does not disagree greatly with me) 9/11 changed a lot. Maybe not "everything," but close enough. Many foreign policy "realists" and not a few isolationists reappraised their approach to foreign policy. I was one; at the time I was essentially a libertarian anti-interventionist. When supporting Bush in 2000, I frequently pointed to his position against using U.S. troops for nation-building. Plenty of liberals and not a few libertarians see an insurmountable conflict between promoting freedom abroad and defending national interests, but 9/11 helped me to reconsider, as it surely did George Bush, that it is in our interest to promote freedom. The left talks about the "root causes" of terrorism, but the U.S. military is actually out there uprooting those causes.

On the second point ... well, look: You will never catch me defending Bush's farm bill, his steel tariffs, his deficits, or his general philosophy on government. But there exists a strain of conservatism that argues government can be used to further conservative ends, and that seems to describe George W. Bush. Before "neocon" became synonymous with "warmonger" (circa 2002) this was largely a neoconservative position, often espoused by writers at the Weekly Standard. David Brooks called it "national greatness" conservatism, claiming the U.S. is a great country, and great countries do great things. Great things (wars of liberation, trips to Mars) tend to cost a lot. I remain a small-government conservative, but I do believe big-government conservatism is legitimately conservative.

Moreover, Frank leaves aside entirely the question of whether Democrats would be any better on matters of fiscal responsibility. Certainly, Democrats have enjoyed the rhetorical high road during the last few years on . Some have argued that the Democratic party is now the party of fiscal conservatism. But Democrats haven't had to prove their fiscal restraint, because they haven't had access to the federal credit cards in several years.

We can, however, look back to 2003 when every Democratic presidential contender was proposing massive and massively expensive taxpayer-funded health care plans. Dick Gephardt was first out of the gate with a proposal that would have cost $700 billion. Kerry wanted to spend $290 billion. Bush offered a plan that cost $100 billion. That same year, Democrats criticized Bush's Medicare prescription drug package. But the complaint was not that it cost too much, but that he had stolen their idea. (Not unlike how Bill Clinton stole welfare reform, which we'll get to soon enough.)

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Now to the point that Bush's big-government ways represent a "lasting shift" among conservatives. I don't buy it, and not just because Frank doesn't make a coherent argument. He says that Bush "isn't backing down" from his big-spending ways, but he has backed off on a few things, such as the steel tariffs. Frank also seems to expect that Bush would cut back on the prescription drug bill, but after spending so much "political capital" to get it passed, that's an odd thing to think. And has he already forgotten Bush's recommended budget for next year, which freezes non-discretionary spending? (It won't get passed, but it's nice to know the president cares.) And so Frank declares:

It's clear to me that the right is frantically searching for more big government Bush style conservatives. That's why there's so much talk about Condi 2008 with a field already crowded with what Goldwater would call dream candidates.

This makes no sense at all. A "frantic" search for more big-spenders? On what evidence? I don't think we know precisely what Condoleezza Rice's views are just yet. As Secretary of State we may well get to see her views a bit more, but probably not on fiscal matters. Meanwhile, how a GOP field of fiscal conservatives means the end of fiscal conservatism makes no sense. And more:

McCain? Not a snowball chance in hell, too conservative.

If all he's getting at is that McCain is a fiscal conservative, then I won't really disagree. McCain made my day a few years back when he berated his colleagues for "spending money like a drunken sailor."

While it would probably be wrong to call him a liberal per se, McCain is at least very, very moderate. McCain is largely responsible for the spectacularly wrongheaded campaign finance "reform" of a few years ago (which Bush regrettably signed, out of has advocated higher taxes on tobacco products, and more. McCain is only a conservative on foreign policy. He was for invading Iraq before George Bush, and come to think of it the Weekly Standard was quite infatuated with him.

But the Weekly Standard represents just one of several competing philosophies within the conservative movement. At this year's CPAC meeting here in Washington, the fiscal conservatives were especially vocal about Bush's deficiencies on this point.

In recent elections, conservatives have stayed home when they didn't like the candidate. That's how his father lost in 1992, and the same phenomenon hurt Bob Dole in 1996. But this year, many people didn't trust John Kerry on terrorism. He never demonstrated that he "got" the war. Having nothing to say about the defining issue of the day, he kept talking about Vietnem. Had there been no war against Islamic terrorism to consider during the past election cycle, I believe many Republicans would have registered protest votes. Frank would have been on more solid ground had he argued that Republicans will go along with big government so long as the Democrats remain weak on foreign policy. Even so, the fiscal conservatives aren't going anywhere. If they break away and deny another Republican the presidency, the party will correct and libertarians will probably make a comeback not unlike 1994.

And he's not just wrong about conservatism — he's wrong about liberalism as well (not to mention proper capitalization):

Clinton never betrayed Liberal Ideological precepts. Remember Liberalism isn't Socialism. We don't believe that larger Government is desirable as an end in itself. We don't call for a welfare state, we simply believe that government CAN help people, reforming welfare doesn't contradict our ideology anymore than private schools do.

What is he talking about? and it a The left vehemently opposes school vouchers, just as they opposed welfare reform. Most eventually got over welfare reform, especially when it worked. But it would be a mistake to forget that left-wing ideology held that removing the "safety net" of welfare would prove disastrous. Today they argue this will be the case with Social Security. Assuming it gets passed (and depending on what gets passed) I expect they will be wrong again.

Frank seems to think the DLC is the Democratic Party. But the DLC didn't get its favored candidate installed as chairman of the party. MoveOn did.

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Frank's argument that Bush "betrayed" conservatism calls to mind John Kerry's complaint last year that Bush was not a "real conservative." This struck me as rather disingenuous. Was Kerry arguing that Bush was the liberal, and that Kerry himself was the real conservative? Is that what I don't think Frank is being disingenuous, but I'm a little confused as to what he's getting at. I have a theory or two, but I'll wait for a response.


UPDATE — To read David Brooks' 1997 essay making the case for "national greatness" conservatism, click here.

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posted by WWB at 2:15 PM |