Rudy's Rhetoric

1999:

"When people overdo it about terrorism, terrorists actually win. You're sort of like becoming agents and instruments of the terrorists."

2007:

"They hate you!" says Rudy Giuliani in his new role as fearmonger in chief, relentlessly reminding audiences of all the nasty people out there. "They don't want you to be in this college!" he recently warned an audience at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. "Or you, or you, or you," he said, reportedly jabbing his finger at students. In the first Republican debate he warned, "We are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world, and it turns out planning inside our country, to come here and kill us." On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. "This is reality, ma'am," he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. "You've got to clear your head."

Concludes former FBI director Louis Freeh,

If you compare [Rudy's] remarks to what every politician and most of our citizens were saying on September 12, 2001, you would not find it noteworthy or unusual.

More:

• In one 15-minute phone interview in August, Giuliani compared the terrorism threat with Nazism or communism six times (Time).

• "If one of them gets elected, it sounds to me like we're going on the defense," he said. "We've got a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. We're going to wave the white flag there. We're going to try to cut back on the Patriot Act. We're going to cut back on electronic surveillance. We're going to cut back on interrogation. We're going to cut back, cut back, cut back, and we'll be back in our pre-September 11 mentality of being on defense" (Washington Post).
  

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Are Liberal Ideas Harder to Communicate?

Rudy Giuliani is a Republican who holds the Democratic position on abortion. He's also a Catholic, which digs his hole even deeper, since various American bishops have threatened to deny him Holy Communion, as they did to John Kerry in 2004.

Accordingly, most political strategists would advise Rudy to avoid the subject of communion at all costs, on the theory that there's no good way out of this minefield. A satisfactory answer would require either an encyclical or a Castro-length sermon, they posit.

Sorry, but that's dead wrong. Instead of obfuscating or tiptoeing around the issue, Rudy plunged headfirst into it, in the current issue of the New Yorker:

“They [the bishops] have every right to tell me anything they want,” Giuliani said to me. “But then I have every right to believe anything I want. And, ultimately, that sort of expresses both my political faith and my religious faith. They have a right to instruct me. And then, having my own conscience, and my own mind, and being my own individual person, I have a right to determine whether I agree with that or I don’t agree with it. Now, there are some people that look at religion differently. That’s the way I look at it. It’s a way that helps me understand morality better. It helps me understand God better. And ultimately it’s my relationship with God, my relationship with Jesus, that’s the important one. And I’ve got to figure it out. And if they help me they do. And if I don’t agree with it then I have to go with my own conscience.”

Thus, in just 152 words—to a reporter, no less—Rudy defused a tinderbox. He didn't pander, but spoke from his heart. Joe Klein would be proud.

Rudy’s homily is especially important because it disproves the conventional wisdom that Republicans are better communicators than Democrats, the thinking being that the nuance of clause-draped liberal ideas doesn't lend itself to sound bites (cf., "support the troops" vs. "pro-troop, anti-war"). As Stanley Fish has brilliantly elucidated, what matters is not the message but the messenger:

If you can't explain an idea or a policy plainly in one or two sentences, it's not yours. . . . Words are not just the cosmetic clothing of some underlying integrity; they are the operational vehicles of that integrity, the visible manifestation of the character to which others respond. And if the words you use fall apart, ring hollow, trail off and sound as if they came from nowhere or anywhere (these are the same thing), the suspicion will grow that what they lack is what you lack.

Indeed, a good communicator can always articulate his message, regardless of complexity and without compromising the integrity of his argument. Tom Friedman, a liberal columnist for the New York Times, is a master of this art, using simple metaphors, like The Lexus vs. the Olive Tree and The World Is Flat, to encapsulate big ideas.

Bear this in mind the next time someone carps that, say, Hillary Clinton's position on Iraq is too sophisticated to be simplified. It's not the position, it's the person, that's the problem.

Update: As soon as I finish praising him for being forthright, I read that he's clammed up. Asked last week at a town-hall meeting in Iowa if he is a "traditional, practicing Roman Catholic," Rudy retorted, "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not so good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."

Update (8/20/07): The more I think about it, the less I think there's a contradiction between the above two quotes. In short, some questions, like whether one is a good Catholic, are inappropriate, and it can be refreshing to hear a politician tell a questioner as much.

In fact, this is what Mitt Romney told a writer for the Atlantic Monthly last year, who asked if he wears Temple Garments—white underclothing, with the "Marks of the Holy Priesthood" sewn in, donned with reverence by the most faithful Mormons. "I'll just say those sorts of things I'll keep private," Romney sensibly replied.

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The Daily Digest

The Everglades

You gotta love America, where a feeling of financial inferiority keeps millionaires in Silicon Valley awake at night and toiling away for 12 hours during the day.

Ron Paul finally learns how to tailor his message to his audience. To the Ames crowd, he preaches babies ("Let me assure you, as an OB doctor . . . that life begins at conception. . . . [T]hat horrible ruling[,] Roe v. Wade, must be reversed") and guns ("I think 9/11, quite frankly, could have been prevented if we had had a lot more respect for the Second Amendment").

It's not exactly Myers-Briggs, but Owen Ullmann captures the competing mindsets of those who toil at the White House: "The high-energy, supercompetitive, and ultra-dedicated hotshots who wind up working at the side of a U.S. President can be divided into two camps. There are the ideological zealots and romantic dreamers who see a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reshape society to reflect their moral code. Sure, they love the perks and prestige, but results are what count. Then there are the self-absorbed opportunists who claim to be driven by a call to public duty. But they spend most of their time grabbing for that golden ticket to fame and fortune."

Esquire profiles John Edwards. Snippet: "Edwards served one term as a U.S. senator, 12 seasons as a rec-league soccer coach. He reads the sports pages first every morning, calls his wife at least four times a day, eats Cobb salads with diet soda for lunch, runs four to five miles on a treadmill whenever he's able, though he'd prefer to run outside."

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How to Retract a Misstatement

Misstatements on the modern campaign trail, when everything you say is YouTubable, are inevitable. The trick is how to get past them.

Mitt Romney (again) shows how it's done: first, promptly make public audio or video of the controversial remarks, then apologize without recrimination or qualification.

Misstatement:



Q: "How many of your five sons are currently serving in the U.S. military? And if none of them are, how do they plan to support this war on terrorism by enlisting in our U.S. military?"

A: "[O]ne of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected because they think I'd be a great president. And my son, Josh, bought the family Winnebago, and has visited 99 counties, most of them with his three kids and his wife, and I respect that and respect all of those and the way they serve this great country."

Retraction: "I misspoke there. I didn't mean in any way to compare service in the country with my boys in any way. Service in this country is an extraordinary sacrifice being made by individuals and their families. . . . I'm very pleased and proud of my boys and the help they're doing for their dad, but it's not service to the country. It's service for me. And there's just no comparison there."

Not only does this strategy benefit Romney; it also benefits the transparency movement.

Update (8/15): Media Matters catalogs the indifference of both the MSM and blogs to Romney's offensive remark. "In the end, it took nearly 96 hours for a big-time journalist," Chris Wallace of Fox News, to confront this "pro-war Republican with no military connection or tradition."

By contrast, when the news broke about John Edwards's costly coiffure, the media jumped on it.

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Haste Makes Waste

Earlier this week, before the the House passed a wide-ranging energy bill, three conservative nonprofits—Americans for Tax Reform, the American Conservative Union, and FreedomWorks—e-mailed their supporters an action alert asking them to defeat the bill.

Because I place a premium on writing, I couldn't help but to fisk the first two alerts (I used to work at ACU, so I won't critique the third):

1. From ATR:

Make no mistake, H.R. 3221 will raise taxes, reduce energy supplies and make prices of fuel and appliances sky-rocket under H.R. 3221.

"Under H.R. 3221" is risibly redundant.

H.R. 3221, by restricting offshore and onshore leases for oil production on federal lands, is crippling an industry that provides 2 million jobs to hard-working Americans.

There are two points here: (1) that the bill restricts domestic drilling, and (2) that the bill will cripple the jobs-providing oil and gas industry. The first point is strictly factual, and even though I agree the restrictions are bad, ATR offers no argument as to why. The second point is similarly unsubstantiated: where's the evidence that the bill will cost Americans their jobs?

Semantically, "H.R. 3221" should be moved to after "federal lands."

And, H.R. 3221, by mandating every utility in each state to have a percentage of its electricity come from a narrowly defined list of renewable energy sources, regardless if the state possesses the resources or not, will result in nothing more than a massive excise tax on rate paying consumers in states that cannot meet this standard.

Is that a run-on sentence, or what? Here's a quick rewrite: "Finally, by mandating that most utilities must generate a percentage of their electricity from a narrowly defined, federally regulated list of sources—regardless of whether the state possesses the sources or not—H.R. 3221 will result in a massive excise tax."

If your Representative votes for H.R. 3221, they are voting for a tax increase.

"Representative" is singular, so "they are" should be "he is."

2. From FreedomWorks:

Before the Congress leaves town for its August Recess next week, they will be debating a massive energy bill that would raise the price of energy and do nothing to increase domestic production.

1. "Congress" is singular, so "they" should be "it."
2. "Recess" need not be capitalized.
3. "The Congress" is stuffy and archaic; just say "Congress."

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The Art of Persuasion

One of my favorite quotes comes from Aristotle: "The fool tells me his reasons; the wise man persuades me with my own."

Recently, I learned that C.S. Lewis made the same point with equal eloquence: "Any fool can write learned language. The vernacular is the real test."

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The Subtle Bias of "Loophole"

Another word has lit up press critic Jack Shafer's radar for loaded locutions: "loophole." Shafer concedes the word's utility—it "compresses interesting findings from the complex worlds of campaign finance, taxation, or regulation"—but argues that it's often used to editorialize rather than report. He cites three recent examples, from the Post, Times and Chicago Tribune, respectively.

Headline: "Loophole Lets Candidates Skirt Donation Limit." Story: Presidential candidates are legally collecting contributions for both their presidential campaigns and for re-election to their incumbent office, thus allowing supporters to make double donations to them. To wit: "Candidates Exercise Maximum Fund-Raising Rights."

Headline: "Mexico Moves to Cut Back Tax Loopholes for Businesses." Story: The Mexican government wants to collect more taxes, so it's rewriting the tax laws. To wit: "Mexican President Calls for More Taxes."

Headline: "House Blocks Stores' Bank Bid; Senate May See Closer Vote on Bill Closing Loophole." Story: Under current law, firms can own and operate "industrial loan companies," a limited type of bank that competes with established banks, who fear the competition and are thus calling for restrictive laws. To wit: "Banks Make Progress in Winning Protection from Competition."

Shafer's argument is wonderfully libertarian, but he ignores the distinction between "natural" loopholes and man-made ones. "Natural" loopholes are unsolicited and arise after-the-fact. A typical example is so-called 527s, tax-exempt organizations named after that section of the United States tax code. Such groups emerged from a campaign-finance law that capped political contributions by individuals, while left non-PAC organizations, like 527s, free to raise unlimited amounts of money. The 26 U.S.C. § 527 loophole was thus a benign happenstance.

By contrast, man-made loopholes are lobbied for and deliberately slipped into legislation. These are the infamous loopholes—the myriad special preferences, credits, exemptions and deductions that make laws unbearably complex—and unlike their coincidental cousins, they're fully deserving of opprobrium.

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The Daily Digest

"The decision to adopt Hillary and drop Clinton has nothing whatsoever casual to it," observes Tod Lindberg.

David Frum notes three elementary mistakes in Bob Novak's memoirs: (1) Novak and Frum lunched, only once, at the Oval Room on November 21, 2001, not at the Hay Adams on September 19, 2001. (2) Frum began work as a White House speechwriter in January, not March, 2001. (3) Frum does not live in Georgetown, which Novak should know because he's been to Frum's house for dinner.

Check out the best of Reagan's TV ads from his 1984 campaign.

Does Daily Kos violate McCain-Feingold? According to a complaint filed with the FEC, "It surely spends at least $1,000 per year in hosting and based on what they charge (and get) for advertising, their support of candidates is certainly worth over $1,000 per year. Lastly, their self-identified purpose is to influence elections in the Democrats favor." David Freddoso draws the appropriate conclusion: "None of this is an argument for regulating Kos, but rather an argument for abolishing the silly campaign finance regime that that the Kos-krazies and their ilk have pushed on us for a generation now."

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Wisdom from Joe Klein's Politics Lost, Part 2

6. On John McCain:

It was one of the oddest qualities I'd ever seen in a candidate—entirely sincere and politically brilliant. . . . In one fairly dramatic example, McCain told me, unbidden, that the breakup of his first marriage was all his fault: "I've lived a very, very flawed life. I don't think people would think so well of me if they knew more about that part of it". . . .

"There aren't many of us who haven't done things we're ashamed of over the past 25 years," I said.

7. On Al Gore:

There was something about the vice president that simply demanded couchification. He was successfully analyzed by his opponents. He was unsuccessfully analyzed by his own consultants.

8. On John Kerry:

He proved weak, indecisive, and yes, aloof. At six feet, four inches tall, with a head of hair that came out of central casting and a sonorous baritone that slouched toward drone, he literally seemed to have his head in the clouds; there was a distressing, unfocused, soporific quality tot he man. The prevailing mystery of the Kerry campaign, especially for those who had known him longest—the Vietnam veterans he had led in war (and in peace marches)—was: Whatever happened to the courageous young leader who had risked his life to protect his crew in Vietnam and risked his political career to oppose the war when he came home?

9. On Bill Clinton

[A] womanizer of desperately bad taste.

10. On Howard Dean (paraphrased):

When the Democratic front-runner for president in 2004 said the capture of Saddam Hussein didn't make America safer, "the real problem was that Dean didn't seem particularly happy that Saddam had been captured—in fact, he seemed disappointed that the president's war effort had succeeded in any way."

11. On Mario Cuomo:

In 1982, I traveled through New York State with Mario Cuomo, who was more than 30 points behind Ed Koch in the Democratic primary for governor. The biggest issue in the race was the death penalty, and Cuomo was on the wrong side of it. And yet, at every stop, Cuomo insisted on explaining his position; if the audience didn't ask him about the death penalty, he'd bring it up himself. "You might well ask me how I'd react if a member of my family were the victim of a brutal crime," he would posit, in an eerie prediction of the question that would boggle Dukakis in 1988. "Well, my daughter was recently assaulted on the street in our neighborhood by a man who burned her breast with a cigarette. My son Andrew got into the car with a baseball bat and looked all over the neighborhood for the guy—and I've got to say, if I'd ever caught up with him ... [ellipsis in original] well, I can't guarantee what I would have done. But I'd be acting on my worst impulses, my momentary anger. One of the purposes of the state is to protect us from our worst impulses—and the desire for vengeance is one of the very worst. So, lock 'em up. Throw away the key. But don't succumb to our worst impulses, our vengeance."

12. On Democratic words that work (paraphrased):

Greenberg and Clinton devised a brilliant euphemism for spending money: "investing" in the future.

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Wisdom from Joe Klein's Politics Lost, Part 1

A month ago, I was asked to name the three most recent books I had read. I could only name two—Bob Woodward's State of Denial and One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century.

I explained that I am a voracious reader, but of newspapers, magazines and blogs, but I was chagrined.

Accordingly, I've since digested three books, all of which I'll blog about by quoting or summarizing the passages I underlined. Here's the first, which was inspiring, highly informed, balanced while retaining conviction, yet not wholly persuasive; that is, Joe's thesis works best if applied selectively rather than comprehensively. (Disclosure/self-promotion: as an editorial intern at Time in 2004, I did some research for Joe on this column.)

Here's the thesis (excerpts follow after the jump):

I am fed up with the insulting welter of sterilized speechifying, insipid photo ops, and idiotic advertising that passes for public discourse these days. I believe that American politics has become overly cautious, cynical, mechanistic, and bland; and I fear that the inanity and ugliness of postmodern public life has caused many Americans to lose the habits of citizenship. . . .

[What we need is] not just the intermittent bolts of unmassaged oratory but also the spontaneous moments of honor and cowardice, the gestures, the body language, the smirks and sighs—that gave us real insight into those who would lead us. It encompasses Bobby Kennedy quoting Aeschylus and Richard Nixon saying that we won't have him to kick around anymore.

1. On Ronald Reagan (paraphrased):

Once, when Reagan aide Michael Deaver handed his boss some questions Deaver had planted with a friendly audience, Reagan tossed the questions into the trash. "Mike, this won't work," he said. "You can't hit a home run with a softball.

2. On Republican vs. Democratic messaging:

Ronald Reagan had given his party the gifts of simplicity and clarity and, as we have seen, a coherent belief system that could be explained in sentence fragments. Military Strength. Low Taxes. Traditional Values. The Democrats, by contrast, were the party of the complex, clause-draped sentence: "We need to spend money on Head Start programs in order to... [ellipsis in original]". . . .

Democrats slouched toward public pessimism—the middle class was always suffering silently, the poor neglected, the environment degraded—but they were philosophically optimistic: humankind was improvable, reform possible, government could help make things better. Republicans, by contrast, were publicly optimistic—the United States was exceptional, the greatest country in the world, and anyone who said otherwise was unpatriotic—but privately realistic and often pessimistic: people were who they were, the poor would always be with us and there was no sense trying to change them. . . .

In public, Reagan's 1984 "Morning in America" was countered by Congressman Richard Gephardt's 1988 "it's close to midnight and getting darker all the time". . . . In 1968 . . . an academic named William Gavin, who would later become a White House speechwriter, sent Richard Nixon a memo about communications strategy: "Voters are basically lazy, basically uninterested in making an effort to understand what we are talking about." He went on to discuss the difference between intellectual and emotional appeals: "Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand."

3. On impressions vs. policies:

In the television era, fleeting impressions counted far more than cogent policies. Fleeting impressions were all most people had time for. Presidential politics was all about character... [ellipsis in original] or rather, the appearance of character. . . . [I]t wasn't about the economy, stupid.

It was about the appearance of caring about the economy, stupid.

4. "The best political advice I've ever heard," from William Bennett to a meeting of the Christian Coalition:

"Some of the people who follow me onto the stage are going to say things that you will find very pleasing. They speak our our 'virtues' and the vices of the other party. They will speak about 'us' and 'them.' But in America there is no 'us' and 'them.' There is only 'us.' And if a candidate tells you only thing that you want to hear, if he asks nothing of you—then give him nothing in return, certainly not your vote, because he is not telling you the truth."

5. On fund-raising:

"Do you want to know what I do all day?" he [Alex Sanders, the Democratic sacrificial lamb in the 2002 race for Strom Thurmond's South Carolina Senate seat] asked me. "I sit at a desk with a telephone. A woman named Ashley Newton sits across from me with pieces of paper called focus sheets and a stopwatch. She hands me a focus sheet and a phone number and some vital information about a potential contributor. I call the number. She starts the stopwatch. I have six minutes to make the sale. I'm supposed to make ten calls per hour. So I start out like this, 'Hello, my name is Alex Sanders and I'm running for the United States Senate. Have you ever heard of me in your whole entire life?' Then I chat with him for a moment about life at his horse farm or whatever. I tell him I know about the horse farm because I have a focus sheet with all this information. And then I say, 'I'm not calling to ask for your vote. It'd be a waste of time to ask for a single vote. My purpose is far more humiliating. It's the chemotherapy of a political campaign. It's painful... [ellipsis in original] Wouldja give me some money?' If they say yes, I tell them I have two more questions, and these are far more humiliating than the last. 'First, I am so sorry to have to ask but, when you gonna send the money? Can you send it today?' And then I say, 'Now this last question is so embarrassing that I can hardly bring myself to ask it, but... [ellipsis in original] How much?' And before they can think about it, I jump in and say, 'How 'bout a thousand bucks?'

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Guess the Writer

Creationists are “yokels,” Pascal’s theology is “not far short of sordid,” the reasoning of the Christian writer C. S. Lewis is “so pathetic as to defy description,” Calvin was a “sadist and torturer and killer,” Buddhist sayings are “almost too easy to parody,” most Eastern spiritual discourse is “not even wrong,” Islam is “a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms,” Hanukkah is a “vapid and annoying holiday,” and the psalmist King David was an “unscrupulous bandit.”

Answer here.

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The Daily Digest

The morning-after pill: abortion or contraception? William Saletan investigates.

Adam Liptak tracks down several double standards concerning the clemency for Scooter Libby and clemencies denied to others similarly situated.

Jim DeMint, a loyal Republican senator from South Carolina, knows how to spin. First, blame the sin, not the sinner: "The president’s intentions were good, the heart was in the right place, the legislation was bad." Second, conjure hope out of disaster: "If this [immigration bill] had passed, America would have lost all confidence in the Congress and the president. I think this is going to give us a fresh start."

The New Yorker's press critic, Ken Auletta, reports on an underappreciated aspect of Rupert Murdoch's genius: his discipline. "The Bancrofts [who own Dow Jones, which owns the Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch is seeking to buy] wanted a board that the family would control in perpetuity, with the power to hire and fire the editors and the publishers, and leverage to protect employees from Murdoch—an extraordinary proposition. It is a measure of Murdoch’s discipline that he did not explode at the implication that he was some sort of uncaged vulgarian or at the idea that the Bancrofts would control the paper after selling it. Instead, Murdoch said—gently, by all accounts—that he could not invest five billion dollars of his shareholders’ money in order to become a mere spectator. He proposed a board like the one he had established for the Times of London and the Sunday Times, where of the 15 members only seven have no ties to News Corp., and where he can theoretically hire or fire the editor only with the assent of the board."

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The Daily Digest

In a bunker under the White House on 9/11

The iPhone spin stops here.

Contrasting the energy policies of the libertarian Cato Institute with the conservative Heritage Foundation, Jerry Taylor concludes that Heritage is more hostile to the free market than is the Sierra Club, of all places.

Here's an apt, Luntzian turn of phrase: "political power." It's a spin-off of "government power," which conveys undefined but big authority. "Political power" sounds more specific, pairing the idea of power and politics to convey the inevitable when the latter is given too much of the former: corruption.

In 2000, 95 percent of Wyoming women who had abortions traveled out of state to get them. In Mississippi, the number was 60 percent, in Kentucky, 41 percent, and in South Carolina, 35 percent. Accordingly, argues Eyal Press, "[A]bortion-rights advocates ought to focus less on the specter of a Supreme Court reversal than on the reality of who is—and is not—able to exercise choice under current laws."

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"Defeatist" Smear Is Indefensible

An hour ago, blogger N.Z. Bear e-mailed his Rightblogs ListServ to decry "defeatist rhetoric" about Iraq. Here's what he wrote (reprinted with permission):

We must use whatever power we have to ensure that our wobbly political class doesn't rob the troops in the field of the chance to win. That doesn't mean blind obedience to the administration's position, but it does mean combating the defeatist rhetoric that is now beginning to come from even Republican corners.

I asked N.Z. if by "defeatist rhetoric" he means that there are no honest arguments for any form of withdrawal? He responded as follows:

Not at all. But when people say thin[g]s (a la Harry Reid) like "the war is lost," I'd call that defeatist. And I'd call [Senator] Lugar's recent call for withdrawal because he thinks the surge isn't working—after mere weeks—defeatist as well.

I'm open to being convinced that we've lost the war and have been defeated. But I've yet to see any genuinely serious arguments to that end...

Without wading into the question of whether the U.S. has been "defeated" in Iraq (I prefer to ask if our presence there is worthwhile?), I strongly object to the word "defeatist," because it implies that anyone who isn't Cheney-esque about the war is actually hoping for an American defeat. People can reasonably disagree about our prospects for victory, but to impugn the motives of those with whom you disagree in this way is vicious and vacuous.

I'll leave the last words to Senator Chuck Hagel:

I am not, nor any member of Congress that I'm aware of, Tim, is advocating defeat. That's ridiculous, and I'm offended that any responsible member of Congress or anyone else would even suggest such a thing.

Update: N.Z. responds:

My quick response, for the record, is that "defeatist rhetoric" doesn't necessarily mean the speaker wishes for defeat—it means that the rhetoric itself makes it more likely that we will be defeated (by encouraging our enemy / discouraging ourselves). I'm not interested in or trying to attack someone[']s motives or inner feelings—I'm interested in the results of their actions.

That of course doesn't mean I never want to hear anything bad said about the war, but I expect that if someone like a U.S. Senator is going to say something bad, that it should be clearly based in fact and constructive. (Reid and Lugar's comments both fail that test in my mind.)

This is an important distinction, but it leaves a couple questions:

1. What about Lugar's critique is un-factual and unconstructive? Here's what he said: "The president has the opportunity now to bring about a bipartisan foreign policy. I don’t think he’ll have that option very long.”

(Lugar added, “Those who offer constructive criticism of the surge strategy are not defeatists, any more than those who warn against a precipitous withdrawal are militarists.”)

2. What is the responsibility of a member of a Congress who strongly believes the war is lost? If he speaks out, then, according to N.Z., he hurts the troops. But if he holds his breath, he betrays his conscience and surrenders leadership. Note: now that we're more than four years into the war, the usual answer—that he should express his disagreement in private—is obsolete.

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The Daily Digest: Nanny State Watch

Do we really need a surgeon general? We do not, argues Cato's Michael Tanner, for "nowadays the surgeon general is little more than the 'national nanny,' nagging us to stop smoking, lose weight, and never leave home without a condom."

Speaking of the nanny state, a town in Louisiana is about to outlaw sagging pants. Penalties include up to six months in jail. Why don't they just outlaw puberty?

IBD rehashes the case for making English the official language of the United States, which would require all government meetings, publications and transactions to be done in English, with common-sense exceptions such as in health care and judicial proceedings.

Anne Applebaum observes the difference between Obama's first book—Dreams from My Father—and his second, The Audacity of Hope: Dreams was written 15 years ago, before Obama became a political candidate of any kind, whereas Audacity is his recent "elect-me-president" book. The result: the former is "written with real elegance" and "full of unexpected observations," while the latter is cliched-cloaked and platitude-puffed.

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Fred's Felicity

In 1998, New York socialite Georgette Mosbacher invited then-Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN), who was a single man about town, to accompany her on an overseas trip. Thompson couldn't go, but, as Newsweek's Holly Bailey reports, he summoned the full measure of his Tennessee charm in letting her down.

I am sitting here with a long face and broken heart as I contemplate sunsets on the Mediterranean, which I will not see. . . . We must remember the unspoken vow that all United States senators take upon entering the Senate: I shall have no money, and I shall have no fun. I, of course regarding myself as an unconquerable soul, am still determined to break the second part of that vow.

How can you not like a guy who writes like that?

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Mitt's Words That Work

Mitt Romney's various changes of heart demand a ready repository of finely tuned explanations. Rhetorically, if not factually, his answers are brilliant, employing what pollster Frank Luntz calls "words that work." This does not necessarily mean answering the question, but reframing it onto common or comfortable territory. Some examples:

1. On abortion, from the third GOP debate:

Q: You made . . . this decision on abortion, opposing abortion, relatively recently. Why should conservatives out there, people who oppose abortion believe you?

A: I’m not going to apologize for the fact that I became pro-life.

2. On his changes of hearts, from his announcement for president:

I haven’t always been a Ronald Reagan conservative. But then again, neither was Ronald Reagan.

3. On abortion, from an address earlier this week to the National Right to Life organization:

I proudly follow a long line of converts—George Herbert Walker Bush, Henry Hyde and Ronald Reagan, to name a few. I am evidence that your work, that your relentless campaign to promote the sanctity of human life, bears fruit.

4. On being Mormon, from the third GOP debate (my emphasis):

Q: [T]here was a recent poll here in New Hampshire. Ten percent said they wouldn’t vote for you because you’re a Mormon. And last week we saw that picture of that man who refused to shake your hand because you are a Mormon. What would you like to say to the voters out there tonight about your faith, about yourself and about God?

A: Well, President Kennedy some time ago said he was not a Catholic running for president; he was an American running for president. And I'm happy to be a proud member of my faith. You know, I think it's a fair question for people to ask, What do you believe? And I think if you want to understand what I believe, you could recognize that the values that I have are the same values you'll find in faiths across this country. I believe in God, believe in the Bible, believe Jesus Christ is my savior. I believe that God created man in his image. I believe that the freedoms of man derive from inalienable rights that were given to us by God. And I also believe that there are some pundits out there that are hoping that I’ll distance myself from my church so that that’ll help me politically, and that’s not going to happen.

Update (6/25/07): One glaring exception was Romney's answer to the question, "Knowing everything you know right now, was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?"

Well, I answered the question by saying it’s a—it’s a non sequitur, it’s a null set kind of question, because you can go back and say, if we knew then what we know now, by virtue of inspectors having been let in and giving us that information, by virtue of if Saddam Hussein had followed the U.N. resolutions, we wouldn’t be having this—this discussion. So it’s a hypothetical that I think is an unreasonable hypothetical. And the answer is, we did what we did; we did the right thing based on what we knew at that time. I think we made mistakes following the conduct—or the collapse of Saddam’s government.

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The Daily Digest

Tulips in Washington Circle

The caveats regarding the blowback theory of U.S. foreign policy, recently popularized by Ron Paul, cannot be overemphasized. Radley adds some I missed: (1) This isn't some fringe idea common only to crazy September 11 conspiracy theorists; (2) It doesn't suggest that we deserve or deserved to be attacked; and (3) It doesn't suggest we shouldn't retaliate or have retaliated against those who attack us.

Another online boat I missed: a wiki for summarizing the meaning, arguments for and against, and the status of federal bills. The Politico reports: "So far, WashingtonWatch has thousands of entries on each piece of legislation moving through Congress. They're written, edited and frequently rewritten, as is the wont with wiki-ers."

Speaking of ingenious ideas, NZ Bear, who previously brought us the magnificent Porkbusters project, is again proving why CPAC named him the 2007 blogger of the year. Soon after the electronic version of the immigration-reform bill was passed, the text made its way to NRO. But the file was a big and clunky PDF, so NZ "parsed it into a format that allows for easy browsing online." Features include an interactive table of contents, a highlights section, and the ability for anyone to comment on, and for anybody to link directly to, any section of the bill. As if that weren't enough, further proving that he cares more about getting things done than about who gets credit, NZ then teamed up with Heritage to make the text searchable.

Semantic insidiousness watch, courtesy of John Stossel: apparently, if you oppose school choice, you're "pro-education." Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of the Post, documents why the exact opposite is true: "If it were up to the children and their parents, there'd be no question that the District's five-year experiment with school vouchers would be renewed for an additional five years or more. That's the most emphatic finding of an independent evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program published last week."

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What Constitutes "Amnesty"? Or, for That Matter, "Judicial Activism"?

Within the past year or so, two terms have became verboten within the conservative lexicon: "judicial activism" and "amnesty." Both are so facile and, by now, shopworn, they have lost objective meaning and instead serve as mears to hurl at one's opponents.

So, in order to restore semantic sanity to the debates about the role of the judiciary and about immigration reform, let's try to unravel some definitions.

"Judicial activism" occurs when the judiciary overturns a law that enjoys overwhelming public support. Hence the phrase "legislating from the bench."

"Amnesty" is not automatically synonymous with earned citizenship. Instead, the operative question is how long an illegal must wait for legalized status.

If, after paying back taxes, fees and satisfying other conditions (like fluency in English, gainful employment and a clean criminal record), such status is conferred immediately, then that seems like amnesty. If such status must be earned over time, as with the 1986 bill that granted permanent residency after 18 months and citizenship after another five years, then I think invoking the scarlet noun minimizes the hardships associated with waiting.

For those who disagree—like Senator DeMint, who recently proclaimed, "I don't care how you try to spin it, this is amnesty"—I'd ask you to describe a solution, short of deporting all illegals, which is not amnesty?

By all means, I'm no expert on these subjects; this is just my admittedly uninformed opinion. What do you think?

Update (6/16/07): My litmus test for the "amnesty" label are the requirements for legalization. But as Time reporter Nathan Thornburgh observes, the more common test is legalization itself:

Whether you fine illegal aliens or stick them in English classes or make them say a hundred Hail Marys, at the end of the day, illegals would be allowed to stay and become citizens under this bill. That's amnesty.

In other words, anything allowing those who came here illegally to stay here legally constitutes amnesty. To avoid amnesty, illegals must get in the back of the line for legal entry.

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Why Ron Paul Is Bad for Himself and Good for the GOP

Here’s the now-infamous exchange (parts of which I'm omitting, signified by ellipses, to get to its essence) among Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), Rudy Giuliani and moderator Wendell Goler, during the most recent debate for the Republican presidential candidates:

Paul: They attack us because we’ve been over there. [For instance,] we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East. . . .

Goler: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

Paul: I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it. . . .

Giuliani: I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us he didn’t really mean that.

Paul: I believe very sincerely that the C.I.A. is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. . . . If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there.

For these arguments, many are now clamoring for Ron Paul's exclusion from future debates. This is not only unhealthy, but also sets a dangerous precedent. (What's next: baring a Republican who supports gay marriage?)

Dissent—in a debate of all places—invigorates discussion. And since Paul is the only one, out of 10 candidates, to oppose the war, his views merit inclusion.

Of course, not all dissent is worthy. Dissent for dissent's sake is a waste of time, which is precious with only 90 minutes and 10 people. But dissent that's grounded in conservative principles ("war is the health of the state"), or even some evidence, deserves a hearing.

Indeed, the idea that the U.S. invited 9/11 is not as radical as one might think. This idea, at least the nuanced, scholarly school of it, does not blame the United States for the attacks, but recognizes that it's both who we are ("They hate us for our freedom") and what we do ("We've been in the Middle East") that fans the terrorist flames.

Even if Paul sounds like him, Michael Moore he is not.

But if he's not a kook, then who is he? Well, some of his ideas are kooky, but the bigger problem is that he's a poor communicator, who suffers from a rhetorical Napoleon complex. In short, he's his own worst enemy.


Even a fool realizes that a format where you’re given one minute per question is probably the worst place to articulate perhaps the most controversial thing you could say to an American audience (you have blood on your hands for the deadliest attack on American soil in the nation’s history), especially one of Southern conservatives to whom the war on terror trumps everything. To wit, Paul’s above remarks were unnecessary (yes, he was baited, but he took the bait) and inappropriate (they require far too much time to explain, let alone convince someone of).

Since it’s fair to assume that a 10-term member of Congress is familiar with the cardinal rule of marketing—know your audience—the only explanation I can think of for these follies is that Paul likes controversy. And, to give him his due, as a going-nowhere candidate, he may be right to exploit the P.T. Barnum rule of publicity: all press is good press. If nothing else, his confrontation with Giuliani (it’s playing on YouTube as Ron vs. Rudy) has heightened his profile.

But Paul is seemingly oblivious to the alternative: instead of trying to ride his antiwar bona fides, he should emphasize his domestic agenda.

For example, when asked by both Giuliani and Goler to disabuse those who thought he had just likened Americans to cold-blooded mass murderers, instead of returning to theories of blowback, he might have simply said “No, I am not,” and pivoted back to why the Iraq war is hurting our national security.

What Ron Paul offers are deeply consistent, principled views on what the Constitution authorizes and does not authorize. Among Republicans hungry for a candidate who not only believes but also acts on fiscally conservative principles, this is his unique selling point.

Yet in listening to him, you'd never know this. You'd never know that he has never voted to raise taxes. Or that he has never voted for an unbalanced budget. Or that he has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership. Or that he has never voted to raise congressional pay. Why? Because Ron Paul is lousy at self-promotion—when, ironically, he has the most to promote.

So, instead of attacking Giuliani and asking him to apologize, both of which only fuel the perception that he is out of touch, Paul must focus more on himself. He's already nailed showmanship. Now he needs to master salesmanship.

Update (6/1/07): Finally, Paul declares, "It’s preposterous to say that I’m blaming America. That’s a complete distortion, like blaming a person for being murdered. No, I’m looking at the motives and reasons that elicit such hatred and willingness to kill."

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