“Freaking Blind”
Failure in Iraq has exposed the limits of American power. The knock-on consequences have made a nonsense of the president's national security strategy. Having asserted the right of the US to act pre-emptively against potential threats, Mr Bush now finds himself impotent to prevent the two remaining members of his "Axis of Evil" – North Korea and Iran – from, respectively, testing and building weapons of mass destruction. The administration that once rode roughshod over the United Nations now has to engage in horse-trading on the Security Council because unilateral military action is no longer a credible option.
Perhaps the supreme irony is that the Islamist terrorists continue to gather strength: financed by Saudi Arabia, trained in Pakistan and, increasingly, hatching their plots in Britain. Axis of Evil? This sounds more like the Axis of Allies.
Back here at home, the Bushies also took a Sunday spanking from none other than former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. One of the original field generals of the Gingrich Revolution, Armey lambasts his own GOP, stating firmly that the party stands on "the precipice of an electoral rout." The Democrats, he says, may indeed be reaping the rewards of the moment but "we have no one to blame but ourselves."
Nothing to offer. I kind of like that frank language from a guy like Armey (who by the way has been a stalwart civil libertarian since thankfully leaving office). Reading pieces like this you have to wonder how and when else can you have so much fun and still keep your clothes on?Rather than rolling back government, we have a new $1.2 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit, and non-defense discretionary spending is growing twice as fast as it had in the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, Social Security is collapsing while rogue nations are going nuclear and the Middle East is more combustible than ever. Yet Republican lawmakers have taken up such issues as flag burning, Terri Schiavo and same-sex marriage.
They're fooling only themselves. If Democrats take control of Congress on Nov. 7, they will form an accidental majority. They are not succeeding because of their principles or policy proposals, but simply because they have kept their heads down. Republicans, fearful of taking on big tasks and challenges, may be defeated next month by a party that offers nothing on the key issues of our day.
October 30th, 2006 at 3:10 am
A little further on in Ferguson’s piece:
“In desperation, the Republicans have dug out Bill Clinton’s old playbook. Yes, it’s the economy, stupid, all over again. Except that voters aren’t listening.”
With median real wages stagnant or falling, why should most of them listen?
“It’s true that the US economy seems to have avoided the hard landing that many feared after more than two years of interest rate rises.”
Oh, but you just wait. Some pretty canny forecasters are saying “Q1 recession, Q2 at the latest”. Soft landing? We have not yet begun to land. The property bubble is bigger in net over-valuation than the stock bubble was, and it started so soon and so dramatically after the stock bubble that stocks never really corrected.
“The “misery index” (unemployment plus inflation) is still well within in the political comfort zone.”
That index is obsolete, I think. When jobs go to China and India, costs of living drop (to the extent that corporations pass payroll savings on to consumers). However, the difficulty of making that same living increases. Tell a former phone support staffer that he/she isn’t showing up in the unemployment figures, and you might hear “Yeah–because here I am behind an AM/PM counter!” For now, people haven’t really started to rein back spending (a trailing indicator of decline, since free-spending habits die hard). What happens when they do?
“But voters tell the pollsters they’re unhappy: 55 per cent rate the economic outlook as “only fair” or “poor”. Gas prices may be down again, but who can expect that to last with the Middle East ablaze?”
Yep. With modern automotive fuel economies we’re still short of oil shock prices by a wide margin (that’s probably $100/bbl). Yet, as far as I can tell, most of the oil price increases in recent years are hedges by traders against long-term geopolitical risks to supply. (The other major factor–strained capacity–probably mirrors the same risk: if wells might soon be burning, or off-limits, why spend billions developing refineries or building new supertankers?) If Iraq really goes to pieces, and the chaos seems regionally contagious, watch out. The 70s all over again, maybe worse.
“And with house prices falling, the happy days of shopping sprees financed by home equity withdrawals are over.”
Maybe not quite yet, but we’re getting there. This will be very significant for the 2008 election. The U.S. may be climbing out of recession at that point, but it was doing that when Bush Sr. lost to Clinton.
In 2008, the campaign headquarters slogan will be “It was the *oil* economy, stupid!”
October 30th, 2006 at 3:25 am
“The elections a week from tomorrow will be dramatic; they might even shift the national balance of political power.”
Yes, but it’s been argued persuasively that they’ll shift it from reverse into neutral. Bush will end up using the veto far more.
“But by Thanksgiving the political focus will once again blur — at least until early 2008 when the presidential primaries begin to pop.”
Now, this I have to wonder about. Many of the Republicans about to be unseated are of the kind the GOP could use more of: relative moderates. Nancy Pelosi will likely become Speaker of the House, and the GOP, having been shifted rightward, might become even more bellicose on cultural issues. Public debate might cool, but perhaps not much, especially as the economy and Iraq go seriously sour. Expect a lot of intraparty strife.
October 30th, 2006 at 4:37 am
As I have said before, the key issue after the elections–assuming that the projections of Democratic victories don’t turn out to be pipe dreams–is what the Democrats are going to do about Iraq. We now have 100 American soldiers dead this month (frankly I don’t expect the average American to care much about Iraqi deaths, because the average American does not) and the voters are going to expect some action on that score, not a lot of talk. Let’s see what the anti-war movement does if there is not action pretty quick.
October 30th, 2006 at 7:11 am
Coopers notion of “betrayal” is a head scratcher. Peggy Noonan writes in the same vein in the Wall Street Jounal, about the faliure of Bush’s overreach in foreign policy. Yet at the time, Noonan spoke of the Axis of Evil speech with consternation; in that it wasn’t being hailed for it’s obvious revolutionary brillence, behaps Gettysburg Address for our age. It’s as if John Waters was writing of the Clinton era with a sense of betrayal, because the politics wern’t trashy enough.
If the Economy is a non issue for The Republicans, that’s because it’s a hopeless strech that they’ve done anything but bulldoze it, particuairly in the areas where Clinton’s watch had shown improvments. Some T.V. ads even try to hype “The Death Tax” con, a kanard still dear only to Pat Bucannon and a few other reactionary carnival barkers.
It’s not shocking to notice on immigration, the one issue where Bush DOES show a sense of reality, he draws the deepest scorn from his own. Put up that wall, Mr. W.
Noonan attempt to play the “competancy” card on Bush, She’s now mad at him that his mid eastern adventures where not better stage managed. Does She call for Rumsfeld’s resignation? Let’s not get crazy. Like Cooper, She just rather just jeer at the nominal left for awhile. That way, She can write pieces about Bill and Chelsea Clintons incestuous overtones; rather than school marm the liberals about fighting below the belt.
Indeed, few would have complained if we had successfuly turned the oil field of Iraq over to the corperations who have made it possible for W to avoid doing a day’s honest work in his life. Yet if you accept Ferguson’s premise, that true conservatism rests in a realistic and measured use of power; then it’s crap to claim Clinton delivered “nothing”, for his roll back of Milosovitch (for which Cooper placed the Dems in a hall of shame) was exactly what he’s talking about.
Of course, the brain trust that brought us War on the cheap with tax cuts for the rich are the same people who did all they could stright jacket the Clinton White House, while Cooper cheered on. Yet a buget surplus, diplomatic competency, these sorts of things are not bad for nothing.
I guess if the destruction of FEMA and it’s effects on New Orleans doesn’t illustrate that Cooper basicly talks nonsense, you are beyond hope. It’s the diference between goverment by people who don’t believe in goverment and goverment by people who do.
The Democrates need to advance the arguement on Iraq, not out of respect for Bush but out of common decency. Politicly it might be wise to let Bush implode, but it sets the bar too low.
At the same time, basic wisdom and fairness dictates we remember this catastrophe was created by George Bush and a Republican mind set; fed by an arrogence and stupidity that would get no where in Democratic Party.
October 30th, 2006 at 8:29 am
Wall’s had his coffee this morning.
October 30th, 2006 at 8:38 am
Democrats should listen to MB and Wall’s advice on Iraq……only if they want to lose in 2008 everything it looks like they may gain in 2006.
Did you guys bother to read Marc’s Right Face post. If so, are you just Freaking Blind?
October 30th, 2006 at 9:11 am
You’re point being…what? As far as I’m conserned, neither the sorta of stay the couse Dems or the let’s pull out Dems are much addressing the issues involved. The best the Bush loyalist (What Me Worry) can do is say, “hey, you never know how all this will look in twenty years.”
Stupid? Sure. Obscene? You betcha. But that shouldn’t let The Dems off the hook.
October 30th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Jim R – Please tell us your strategy for Iraq…other than the implication of previous posts that the media should just lie about what’s actually happening there on the ground because the American people aren’t responsible enough to handle the truth. Frankly, based on your run of recent comments I don’t think you have a clue nor really give a shit what’s actually going on there. I think for hard-core GOPers, it’s all about partisan wailing and whining, not any realistic cost-benefit analysis of Bush’s hubristic, incompetent “strategy” in the Middle East. In fairness, it’s would be hard standing up like men and taking responsibility for reckless calculations that led to a national security disaster and needless death. And the current crop of GOP pols – Bush, Cheney, Rove, et. al. – aren’t strong on manhood (other than the predictable symbolic gestures favored by empty suits.)
Here’s a worthwhile, if more predictable, commentary on the elections, including mention of the structural difficulties that face the existing Democratic electoral majority in actually gaining majority representation.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061106ta_talk_hertzberg
October 30th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Well of course Dick “Barney Fag” Armey likes to write that the Dems don’t have anything to say. Being in a party that believes the answer to everything is a tax cut for the rich and “Booga! Booga!Terror! Terror!” might make it hard to see the proposals that Nancy Pelosi laid out in her “100 Hours” spiel. Those planks, by the way, tested quite high on polling. Will they become law? Probably not, since Bush can veto and they will probably be sustained. But then you have the issue in 2008. You want redorm? Healthg Care? Middle Class tax cuts? Better vote for the Dem ticket.
Marc likes to make fun of the dems in Califiornia but look at Arnold. He cannot let people in on the fact that he’s a Republican. So he runs on Dem issues. Sorry but the GOP will need to go to the woodshed and lose its fatal attraction to the religious right and Club for gowth and return to its roots before it can be considered a serious party again.
Much like the Dems after 1968.
October 30th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
“I kind of like that frank language from a guy like Armey (who by the way has been a stalwart civil libertarian since thankfully leaving office).”
I kind of want to barf, given that Armey himself simply gave the administration a free pass on Iraq, saying that even though the intelligence looked “questionable,” the administration was nevertheless “Republican” (source: Corn’s new book Hubris). I don’t know how many ” stalwart civil libertarians”, of which I consider myself one, would have given the executive branch free reign in attacking another country without any accountability.
Or how many civil libertarians would have a shadow organization like “Citizens for a Sound Economy,” which has paid millions in corporate-raised cash in just the last months to put false and misleading ads up concerning taxation. I don’t believe that any person – a Washington lobbyist, to be exact – who is so attached at the knees with corporate America can be properly called a “conservative,” much less a “stalwart civil libertarian.” Real lack of standards these days.
Frankly, I don’t think that conservative disenchantment is a significant factor in this campaign season. In fact, polls bear this out. On issue after issue, liberal democrats are picked overwhelmingly over conservative republicans when these questions are put to registered voters who are surveyed.
Frankly, conservatives like Armey, Buchanon, Bracewich, Buckley….on and on….they had their opportunity to turn on this president when he unilaterally and unconstitutionally invaded Iraq in 2003 (or in late 2001, when the Patriot Act came up).
Instead, it is only now during this tidal wave of voter resentment do we hear the likes of Armey. Jumping on the bandwagon, and abandoning his good Texas friend because it is politically popular. For even those true conservatives, they are only now griping about their alleged betrayal. Give me a break.
October 30th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Frankly, I cringe really at using the term “conservative” to describe anyone simply by virtue of the fact that they hate taxes and government.
Robert Taft once opined that the three things that work to hold back the freedom of men are religion, government, and the corporation….I don’t believe that the intellectual father of conservatism would have fancied the kind of corporateocracy so avidly desired by this generation’s “conservative.”
October 30th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Remember that before his death, Barry Goldwater had a meeting with Bob Dole and told him that now he and the Senator from Kansas would be considered “Liberals” by the party activists.
October 30th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
“As I have said before, the key issue after the elections–assuming that the projections of Democratic victories don’t turn out to be pipe dreams–is what the Democrats are going to do about Iraq.”
With only slim majorities in both houses of Congress, the Dems still won’t really be able to do anything about Iraq. Anything they try is certain to be vetoed. With lots of moderate Dems gaining office at the expense of moderate Repubs, their chances of bipartisan support fade. Thus, they can lay out all the wildly popular 15-point phased withdrawal plans they like, feeling secure in the knowledge that it will be Bush & Co who “lost Iraq”, not them.
Nevertheless, if things get desperate enough, I suppose the Victory strategy for Bush & Co is to somehow stick the Dems with “losing Iraq”. I don’t think they can do that persuasively over the next two years, but if they can somehow just keep U.S. troops in Iraq that long, the torch passes (most likely) to a Democrat president, and THEN the GOP can make the charge stick, after that president orders a pullout. The charge doesn’t have to make any sense, of course. It just has to fly with their base voters.
Events might overtake any such well-laid plans. In a full-blown civil war, which might be coming soon, the U.S. will enjoy relatively safe harbor in only one region: Kurdistan. Which, as I’ve argued ad nauseum, is actually the “exit strategy”: Bush & Co limit themselves to muffled protests as the Kurds take oil-rich Kirkuk, and ethnically cleanse both that city and Mosul; most attention will be on the much gorier Sunni-Shiite conflagration anyway. They cut deals with Turkey to smooth tensions created by yet more Kurdish nationalism (deals which might involve “looking the other way” as Turkey starts developing a nuclear deterrent to match Iran’s nuclearization pace; the U.S. did something similar with Pakistan quite knowingly during the Cold War). Get the oil out through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline. Then America gets that “stable Middle East oil supplier” that Colin said was the real goal of this excellent adventure, plus a consolation prize in the democratic nation-building sweepstakes: even though Kurdistan is really two single-party Sunni Kurd states, they can call it one unified, secularly-governed, peaceful, free democracy, the Once and Future Model for Iraq. Watch closely as most Dems and many Repubs slowly sign onto this agenda, as the least bad of many bad departure options, while Bush & Co scream “don’t throw us into that briar patch!” — “it’s cut & run!” — “you’re losing Iraq!” Much better to stick the Dems with it, while reaping political profit. Any significant GOP legislators who go along with it can be forgiven later.
October 31st, 2006 at 6:41 am
Turner, don’t know how you do on the particuliars, but yes, like Vietnam, it will be a matter of the anti-war forces “losing it.” Those who can’t stomach that will merely cling to the “noble effort” line being developed over at Slate by the sodden, repugnant slug who may rightfully come to personify the whole tawdry debacle.
For some, that is. The rehabilitation of the Vietnam War took time, but through his loyal subordinates, Kissinger came back to fight another day.
October 31st, 2006 at 7:15 am
“They may even shift the national balance of power”.
Yeah, from the far-right faction of the business party to the center right faction. And by Thanksgiving there will be a big tickertape parade for the soldiers returning from Iraq…
Keep dreamin’ Cooper…
October 31st, 2006 at 7:08 pm
The problems with turnner’s “exit strategy”:
> much of the Kurdish north is a rugged, mountainous unmanageable no-man’s land (which is why Saddam ceded it)
> it doesn’t answer the problem of Iraqi-Iranian Shiite consolidation
> for purposes of world domination, the US needs to control the whole enchilada
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