Politics In Vivo – Political and Cultural Commentary, and Whatever Else…

On the basis of one obscure article from 2006, I adopted a crude stereotype of Middle East culture that has persisted, knowingly and proudly, to this day. Here it is: Like young people everywhere, young Middle Easterners love fast food, particularly American fast food, and even more particularly, KFC. Cannot get enough.

2006 was the year that Syria saw its first KFC opening, which was in fact the first-ever licensed American food franchise in the country. It was also, due to a confluence of international incidents, a year of extremely high tensions between Syria and the U.S., leading to a level of anti-American animus that was far beyond even the usual high baseline level.

How would this cultural imposition by the Great Satan play out then? Would 2006 Syrians treat the Colonel Sanders-led invasion as just further evidence of America’s desire for military hegemony in the region? Or would they put politics aside and just enjoy the delicious chicken? I think you know the answer:

The US flag serves as a doormat to an office and nearby merchants announce "we boycott American goods", but some Syrians can’t seem to keep away from American fast food at the new KFC fried chicken restaurant.

"I oppose American politics totally, but what does food have to do with it? Politics is one thing, and food is something totally different," Tareq Mashnouk, a 26-year-old fashion designer, said.

Amen, Tareq.

"To be honest we were surprised they opened this American restaurant in the midst of our political situation," said Tareq Farzat, 25, adding that he liked his Chicken Burger Combo and would definitely return to KFC with his friend Kalam.

Despite his sub-optimal order preferences which we’ll forgive because he was new at this, Tareq #2 makes a strong point.

It’s true that there were some holdouts who denied themselves delicious chicken due to the Colonel’s conspicuous political affiliations, but:

Many others seem pleased with the KFC experience and trust American brands. "This tastes good, and we’ll definitely come back to eat here when we’re in the mood for chicken," said a 45-year-old woman.

This anonymous 45-year-old woman, with her unimpeachably sensible argument—it tastes good and so she’ll return when she’s in the mood for chicken—cemented my anecdotal KFC-Middle East stereotype for good. For ever.

But today friends, it somehow grows even stronger. Behold, Gaza City, from the NYT:

The French fries arrive soggy, the chicken having long since lost its crunch. A 12-piece bucket goes for about $27 here — more than twice the $11.50 it costs just across the border in Egypt.

And for fast-food delivery, it is anything but fast: it took more than four hours for the KFC meals to arrive here on a recent afternoon from the franchise where they were cooked in El Arish, Egypt, a journey that involved two taxis, an international border, a smuggling tunnel and a young entrepreneur coordinating it all from a small shop here.

“It’s our right to enjoy that taste the other people all over the world enjoy,” said the entrepreneur, Khalil Efrangi, 31.

You’re goddam right Khalil. The piece spins a theory that the Gazans’ love of KFC stems from their broader deprivation due to the Israeli blockade and severe trade restrictions, making them crave everyday items that are not otherwise very special.

Perhaps, but I think this is more on the mark:

Ibrahim el-Ajla, 29, who works for Gaza’s water utility and was among those enjoying KFC here the other day, acknowledged that the food was better hot and fresh in the restaurant, but he said he would be likely to order again. “I tried it in America and in Egypt, and I miss the taste,” he said.

Exactly, Ibrahim. You miss the taste. Ibrahim doesn’t need overdetermined psychological theories to explain the allure of the Colonel’s secret recipe.

The illicit delivery menu from Egypt is unfortunately limited to "chicken pieces, fries, coleslaw and apple pie" because other items like special sandwich orders "could be too complicated." That’s understandable, but nonetheless it’s scandalous that Tareq #2′s counterparts in Gaza can’t even get their beloved, sub-optimal Chicken Burger combos. Freedom deferred is freedom denied.

There is a happy ending though. Well, certainly not for the prospects for Middle East peace, or for the unimaginable carnage and depravity in Syria to end any time soon, or for the Israeli blockade to be lifted, or for Hamas to give up violence and stop immiserating its own people. Just in terms of the chicken, I mean.

Adeeb al-Bakri, who owns four KFC and Pizza Hut franchises in the West Bank, said he had been authorized to open a restaurant in Gaza and was working out the details.

Huzzah, freedom deferred no longer. The Colonel once again acting as the tip of the sphere for the army of democ….well whatever really it’s just chicken.

I really enjoyed Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker profile of Eric Cantor. From the piece you get the sense that Cantor doesn’t quite understand how he allowed his public image and that of his party to get so rotten. He’s never considered himself as particularly unreasonable or radical, but now it’s dawned on him that after orchestrating and enabling three years of congressional dysfunction and obstruction, the country sees him as kind of a sleazeball. The piece is tinged with pathos because he’s upset and perplexed about that.

Well boo-fucking-hoo for him.

But another part of the piece really caught my eye. Congressman Raul Labrador, Tea Party leader and strong opponent of any sort of bargaining or compromise-seeking with the White House, explained to Lizza why he felt justified in his posture of permanent defiance despite the president’s clear victory in November:

"I agree that the President won, and I agree that the President had a mandate to propose what he wanted to propose. It doesn’t mean that my mandate is the same as his mandate. I won my election as well.” Many House Republicans said the same thing after the election. “We’re the first branch of government,” Labrador said. “We don’t have a king. We don’t have an emperor.”

And who can say he’s wrong about any of that?

In 1990 political scientist Juan Linz wrote an influential essay called "The Perils of Presidentialism"  (pdf), in which he argued that presidential democracies are inherently brittle and historically tend to devolve into dictatorships, because there is no clear, consistent source of governing legitimacy among the separate branches. He notes how unique the U.S. is as "the only presidential democracy with a long history of constitutional continuity."

But what is most striking is that in a presidential system, the legislators, especially when they represent cohesive, disciplined parties that offer clear ideological and political alternatives, can also claim democratic legitimacy. This claim is thrown into high relief when a majority of the legislature represents a political option opposed to the one the president represents. Under such circumstances, who has the stronger claim to speak on behalf of the people: the president or the legislative majority that opposes his policies? Since both derive their power from the votes of the people in a free competition among well-defined alternatives, a conflict is always possible and at times may erupt dramatically. There is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved, and the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate. It is therefore no accident that in some such situations in the past, the armed forces were often tempted to intervene as a mediating power. One might argue that the United States has successfully rendered such conflicts “normal” and thus defused them. To explain how American political institutions and practices have achieved this result would exceed the scope of this essay, but it is worth noting that the uniquely diffuse character of American political parties—which, ironically, exasperates many American political scientists and leads them to call for responsible, ideologically disciplined parties—has something to do with it.

Matt Yglesias wrote about this a few years ago and noted that whereas when Linz wrote the essay in 1990 our two political parties were still somewhat ideologically diffuse, there is now total coherence, with every single Republican in Congress more conservative than every single Democrat, and vice versa.

This process of partisan sorting into ideologically homogenous parties is not necessarily a bad thing, and it’s quite natural. You see above that to Linz and other political scientists, our long history of party incoherence is pretty confounding and endlessly exasperating.

So now that we’ve got complete ideological coherence, and a sufficient number of legislators like Mr. Labrador who claim just as much legitimacy to speak for the people as the president, are we seeing Linz’s analysis come true? Are there more dramatic conflicts and increasing threats of erupting crisis?

Sure seems like it! Bush v. Gore, unprecedented debt ceiling showdowns, regular government shut down threats, fiscal cliffs, sequesters, filibuster abuses, attempts to change state electoral vote apportionment, voting rights abuses. We still do end up defusing these crises before they lead to true constitutional breakdowns. But the problem with government-by-permanent-crisis is that it only takes one mistake in which we don’t find a way to defuse things in time….

The fear is that this recent period of extreme dysfunction is not just a contingent symptom of Obama-derangement, but rather it’s a manifestation of a structural problem that has always been latent in our system of government. For the first time ever our national parties are coherent and disciplined enough to make serious mischief, and they restrain themselves from provoking actual constitutional crises only because of entrenched norms against such behavior. But norms break down, as they have any other time a country tried to sustain this type of governing arrangement.

The slightly good news is that though there is unprecedented party coherence, as the Cantor article makes clear, intra-party factionalism is still alive and well in the U.S. House of Representatives. Although that leads to lots of legislative gridlock, and it makes Mr. Cantor’s job as majority leader very difficult, perhaps ironically it’s also helping to keep the old Republic together. Maybe by consistently failing to harmonize the factions in his caucus, Cantor is doing a more noble task than he realizes.  

With a few exceptions, the president’s twenty-three executive actions on gun control were predictably mild, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that they’re unlikely to have a clear impact on gun crime rates, let alone do much of anything to prevent Sandy Hook-style mass killings. But it does not follow that these measures—along with whatever incremental steps Congress ends up taking—are not worth doing. That’s because gun homicides are literally less than half the story here. Here’s a chart of all U.S. gun deaths by cause, from 2006:

A solid majority of gun deaths are suicides. This unsettling fact seems to be completely absent from the official debate, and it’s hard to understand why: These preventable deaths are just as traumatizing and destabilizing to a family or a community as gun homicides are, and seem to me to require as vigorous a public health response as any other cause of preventable death.

Another reason we should be focusing more on this side of the problem is that some of the gun control measures currently being discussed, while having a mixed record when it comes to reducing gun crime, have proven quite effective at reducing suicide rates.

In 2006 the Israeli Defense Forces began a policy whereby soldiers were no longer allowed to take their firearms home with them on weekends. As a result, weekend suicide rates among soldiers dropped by 40%. Interestingly, the weekday suicide rates stayed the same, indicating that soldiers were not just postponing their suicides until the weekend was over and they had their gun back. That’s because suicidal intentions can be transitory and circumstantial, the product of a crisis moment aligned with easy opportunity. Absent a ready method—such as a loaded firearm within reach—a large percentage of these soldiers made it through the moment and the impulse subsided. 

Similar "means-restriction" policies have been studied by the U.S. Department of Defense, in an attempt to decrease the staggering suicide rate among active-duty soldiers and veterans. The NRA, bravely protecting the Second Amendment rights of our suicidal soldiers, successfully lobbied for a law last year barring commanders from asking troops about their private weapons even if there was cause to believe a soldier was at high risk of suicide. Mercifully, the most recent defense authorization bill amended that provision to allow these sorts of conversations and interventions by commanders and mental health professionals if suicide is suspected.

So while adding minor delays into the process of legally acquiring a gun—with universal background checks and waiting periods, for instance—almost surely won’t deter or frustrate the plans of hardened criminals, they could be particularly effective at saving otherwise law-abiding citizens who are in the depths of suicidal thoughts. And despite the NRA’s fundraising-driven hysteria, such delays are not a significant impediment to recreational shooters, hunters, or collectors.

But what about the impetus for this whole debate, the mass shooting in Connecticut? While the empirical record on the effects of gun control on ordinary violent crime is thin (making particularly important the president’s executive action directing the CDC to research the causes and prevention of gun violence), it does seems reasonable to assume that simply finding a way to slow things down at each step could indeed help prevent some mass shootings at the margin: lengthening the planning and procurement phase leading to a potential massacre would at least increase the odds of someone—law enforcement, friends, family—discovering the plot in time.

But even if you’re a fatalist about mass shootings, let’s not be blithe about the tremendous failure of public policy and wasted human capital represented by the 17,000 gun suicides each year in this country. 

I know it’s not shocking to point this out, but the gender double standard at work in Susan Rice’s removal from Secretary of State consideration is really extraordinary.

In this NYT piece detailing the rise and fall of her candidacy, we learn that her "blunt-speaking style — which helped cost her the job — had always been, for Mr. Obama, a part of her appeal."

Ms. Rice…has so often been criticized as being an unusually undiplomatic diplomat, direct to the point of rudeness. But friends and former White House aides say that Ms. Rice’s style is a reflection of Mr. Obama’s own: impatient with niceties, uninterested in small talk or long dinners, focused solely on results.

Of course, Mr. Obama has somehow managed to ride his debilitating weakness of blunt speaking and focus on results to become a celebrated two-term president, while the same "style" cost Susan Rice a promotion. Strange.

Dana Milbank also has a hatchet job in the Post about Rice’s long dubious record of advocating forcefully and passionately for her positions, including the following troubling incident:

Among those she has insulted is the woman she would replace at State. Rice was one of the first former Clinton administration officials to defect to Obama’s primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. Rice condemned Clinton’s Iraq and Iran positions, asking for an “explanation of how and why she got those critical judgments wrong.”

Huh? Can you find the alleged "insult" or "condemnation" there?

Milbank also bizarrely passes along criticism of Rice from the Russian foreign ministry, who Milbank evidently feels deserves a voice on American cabinet appointments. Well the ministry wants it known that they believe Rice is “too ambitious and aggressive,” and her appointment would make it “more difficult for Moscow to work with Washington.” Too ambitious? Outright sexism from the Russian government is not surprising, but why are its views being transcribed as serious critiques by the Washington Post?

Maybe Ambassador Rice is more impolitic than is ideal for the nation’s top diplomatic post; I really have no idea. But that is simply not the usual standard used to judge presidential appointments. As someone stated so eloquently:

I believe there are significant numbers of the American people who do take into consideration the consequences of a presidential election, and that is the earned right of a president, under anything other than unusual circumstances, to pick his team.

Oh, that would be John McCain, speaking in 2005 in support of John Bolton’s nomination to the job Susan Rice now holds. McCain of course initiated and led the effort to sink Susan Rice’s candidacy, using the Benghazi incident as the stated rationale for his opposition. Makes sense, seeing how the United Nations Ambassador is traditionally held responsible for leading U.S. intelligence and security in North Africa.

When John Bolton came under intense pressure during his UN confirmation process for his own blunt-speaking style and impatience with niceties:

McCain secretly tried to shepherd his nomination to the United Nations — a nomination that was held up in Congress over Bolton’s controversial anti-UN statements and policies.

"He was very active behind the scenes," said Bolton, who was ultimately sent to the UN via a presidential recess appointment. "He thought I was the type of ambassador that ought to represent the United States at the United Nations."

How thoughtful. It’s very important to point out that there is no comparison between Rice and Bolton when it comes to their relative impolitic instincts. Bolton was not just a "unusually undiplomatic diplomat", he was a serial bully and abuser of subordinates, and a propagandist who pressured State Department intelligence officials to distort their analyses on Iraq to make the case for war.

From Wikipedia’s summary of his confirmation hearing for the UN post:

On April 20, it emerged that Melody Townsel, a former US AID contractor, had reported to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bolton had used inflammatory language and thrown objects in the course of her work activities in Moscow…Townsel told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff that Bolton had made derogatory remarks about her sexual orientation and weight, among other workplace improprieties. […]

I’ve never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton. … I don’t have a second, third or fourth in terms of the way that he abuses his power and authority with little people," former State Department intelligence chief Carl W. Ford Jr., said. Ford also characterized Bolton as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy", implying that he was always ready to please whoever had authority over him, while having very little regard for people working under him.

But a post to the loathsome United Nations is one thing. Republicans would never want someone with Bolton’s sociopathic tendencies to run the State Department, right? Right?

Republican insiders are discussing likely people for top Cabinet posts in a Romney administration…. John R. Bolton, the U.N. ambassador during the George W. Bush administration and specialist on arms control and security issues, is said to be a leading candidate for secretary of state.

“’If he accepts it, I will ask John Bolton to be secretary of state,’ said former House speaker Newt Gingrich."

But Milbank tells us that Susan Rice once "appalled colleagues" by giving the middle finger to (legendary ill-tempered diplomat) Richard Holbrooke. Outrageous! Kind of like that time Vice President Cheney told Senator Leahy on the Senate floor to go fuck himself, later smirking that "I thought he merited it at the time." Oh that’s just lovable rogue Cheney being Cheney! His orneriness didn’t seem to hamper his rise to the vice presidency, or the Secretary of Defense, or the White House Chief of Staff.

Bluntness and an eschewing of niceties is seen as the mark of gravitas, ambition, and serious leadership when emanating from the likes of Mr. Bolton, Holbrooke, or Cheney. For some reason Susan Rice is not accorded the same generous intrepretation. I do wonder why.

You’ve probably read a dozen times already that the GOP lost because it has failed to recognize and address its growing demographic irrelevance. Simply put, a party that appeals exclusively to older white men from the country is not long for this world. (Bonus mind-blowing statistic of the day: Before the election, white men constituted 53% of House Democrats, and 86% of House Republicans. After the election it’s 46% for Democrats, and 92% (!!) for the GOP.)

So what to do? Well, expand the tent, right? Republican party reformers or those just sick of losing know that this starts by figuring out how to somehow "embrace Hispanics"; by which they mean, at a minimum, dropping the overt demonization and nativist fear-mongering. Nice idea. Many go further and insist that the party must liberalize its stance on immigration. Another nice idea. Some think they just need only to keep pointing frantically at Marco Rubio and Susana Martinez and saying, "See? See?"

Unfortunately, all of these are deeply insufficient solutions to the GOP’s problem. Republicans don’t primarily have a demographic crisis, they have an ideological crisis.

David Frum, whose every fear and prediction about the Republican death spiral has been proven true, is characteristically shrewd on this issue as well:

Any idea that the immigration issue – and the immigration issue alone – would enable Republicans to staple a good chunk of the Latino vote to the conservative coalition – without changing anything else – is a dangerous self-deception.

It’s necessary of course to refrain from insulting Latinos, or, for that matter, anybody. But the crying need in the GOP is for a more middle-class orientation to politics, one that addresses concerns like healthcare as well as debts and deficits. But the ideas that dominated the past four years won’t become more attractive if all conservatives do is translate them into Spanish.

Exactly right. The simplest proof that the Republican problem is policy rather than identity, is that Barack Obama won the Asian-American vote by a margin of 73-26. What can explain this? There has been no sustained Republican campaign to antagonize Asians or restrict their immigration opportunities. Asian-Americans are disproportionately wealthy and college-educated, and own a disproportionate number of small businesses. So why are Republicans at a devastating 47% deficit?

I think there are a few good reasons which also help explain the Latino gap, and why neither are going to be easy to solve for Republicans any time soon. 

First, I believe there is some ethnic spillover from the GOP demonization of Latinos. Other minority groups, while not affected directly, are bound to see this hostile dynamic and think, "Hmm the GOP doesn’t seem very welcoming or inclusive. Perhaps we could be the target of their next nativist freakout."

But mostly, it’s the policies.

Minorities and immigrant groups are disproportinately urban. Like all other metro-area residents, immigrant and minority families are preoccupied with local school quality, effective public transportation, access to health care, and affordable higher education to ensure opportunities of upward mobility for their children. Republicans have exceedingly little to say about any of these topics. While good on school choice, the GOP is completely silent on issues of urban poverty. It has overt disdain for the very idea of public transportation, and its most recent nominee told a roomful of young people to just borrow money from their parents to afford college. Also, the highest uninsured rate in the country is among Latinos (41%). GOP insistence on repealing Obamacare while offering nothing as a replacement, along with their pledge to cut 30% from Medicaid spending, is simply more evidence that the party has no interest in allaying the anxieties of struggling Americans, particularly those in and around metro areas. Recall that one of Mitt Romney’s signature middle class proposals was to zero out the capital gains tax for low and middle income people, as if immigrant and minority bank accounts are overflowing with capital gains!

This is why Republicans are in trouble. They can’t simply assert that they’re now "embracing" Latinos and other minority groups, then just wait for the big tent to swell with brown faces. Addressing the issues above would require a complete reorientation of the party’s platform and goals. If such a drastic pivot were even possible, it would likely spell worse electoral doom in the short term: First, Democrats have a decades-long head start on these issues and would be happy to have an excuse to outflank Republicans on the left; and second, any precipitous change would alienate the base of older white rural men it relies upon currently.

The party is stuck: can’t reform too far, can’t stay the same. I expect it will quickly come around on no-brainers like the DREAM Act, and maybe even comprehensive immigration reform if it gets cover from respected leaders like Jeb Bush. But this battleship isn’t turning so quickly. As the new congressional makeup shows, the party is older, whiter, and more male than ever before, while the Democratic coalition becomes broader and more representative every year.

This is even before we consider the social and cultural chasms. Republicans must contend with a 23-point under-30 gap, an 11-point gender gap, and its needless throwing away of the 5% of the electorate that is gay. Some of this is eminently doable, some will take far longer as we simply wait for old mores to die out.

Republicans can take heart: there is no such thing as a permanent majority in American politics. Eventually things will return to an equilibrium clustered around the median voter, wherever that median happens to lie. But it could take a while. In the meantime Republicans can rest easy that Democrats still don’t know how to convince people to vote in midterm elections. And the clever gerrymandering of Congressional districts will make the GOP House majority far more robust than it should be. That’s about it for good news though. On the rest, buena suerte!

Update: Ha, well, that was quick.

A little while ago I wrote about Jonathan Haidt’s research on how liberals and conservatives appeal to completely opposite moral categories when they assess and interpret policy arguments, and that these divergent cognitive styles explain much about our rancorous and intractable political environment. 

Well I’ve found the ultimate rorschach test for this theory. What is your reaction to the following campaign ad (from the race for the lone South Dakota congressional seat)?

So who’s life experiences reflect your idea of an accomplished and qualified leader? Are you sneering with contempt along with the narrator that Matt Varilek has prestigious (elitist) graduate degrees, substantial (suspicious) international experience, a fun (frivolous) social life, and has committed his professional life to a major environmental policy issue (radical conspiracy)? Or are you rolling your eyes and half enraged/half amused at Kristi Noem’s overt anti-intellectualism, her embrace of parochialism as a qualification in itself, and all that stuff about raising the family and balancing the books on the family farm?  

It’s been shown using the "Big Five" personality trait framework that liberals tend to score far higher on "openness to new experiences," which encompasses intellectual curiousity, creativity, and a preference for novelty and variety. Conservatives score higher on measures of "conscienciousness" and are more organized and dutiful.

In Haidt’s moral framework, this translates to conservatives scoring high on the moral categories relating to authority, loyalty, and sanctity (holding things sacred). Liberals score high on preventing harm and providing care.

Matt Varilek is clearly open to new experiences (Milan! Morocco! 150 lb Jager ice luge!), intellectually curious, and is interested in mitigating what he sees as a grevious harm (climate change). If you don’t share his behavioral and moral cognitive style, you think he is from Mars. Likewise, Kristi Noem is dutiful, conscientious (balances the books!), values the social structures she was born into (loyalty, authority) and doesn’t seem interested in ever leaving her home state. If you don’t share her cognitive framework, you think she’s from Mars.

This is all pretty fascinating to me. In the public square we all think we’re arguing with cool rationality about concrete policy decisions, weighing the empirical evidence, and trying to compromise in good faith with others, all of whom are clearly just waiting anxiously and openmindedly to be presented with a superior argument and thereby enlightened forevermore. Instead, much of what we’re doing is just finding ways to rationalize and to affirm our ingrained moral and behavioral identities. It’s the confirmation bias, stupid.

But take heart, dear reader. We aren’t necessarily doomed to an endless future of increasing polarization and mutual incomprehensibility. Social attitudes, moral emphases, the scope of the Overton window—all of them do change; but it’s mostly on a generational time scale. During an individual lifetime hardly anyone is interested in reassessing, reorienting, or repudiating their core moral or behaviorial identity, no matter how slam-dunk wonderful you believe your counterargument to be. But there’s always hope for their kids.

My quick reaction to the debate is that Romney cleaned the president’s clock. One thing I noticed was that their performances were an inversion of their respective party conventions. Romney completely erased his whole insipid convention theme about makers and takers and became a compassionate moderate Republican pragmatist. And Obama completely forgot how to make a confident and passionate case for liberalism, which his own convention did so well.

Obama was listless and a bit rambling, and bafflingly, he seemed unprepared to defend his domestic policy record. He looked down the entire time, sometimes nodding during Romney’s criticisms as if to say, “Yep fair enough.” He missed about fifty opportunities to attack; I don’t know if that was a calculated decision or what but it meant he lost nearly every single exchange on points. He seemed like he didn’t want to be there.

Romney was extremely prepared and crisp and fluent. His policy knowledge is extraordinary; for instance I’m quite sure he knows more about Dodd-Frank than the president. Some on Twitter have said he seemed too aggressive or too eager, but I didn’t see that.

Of course, he reinvented most of the domestic policy agenda he and Paul Ryan have been campaigning on. The president wasn’t ready for that at all. If I were Obama I’d have said, “Apparently as of tonight the Republican nominee doesn’t want to cut taxes, champions regulations on Wall Street, loves federal education spending, loves green jobs, loves Massachusetts health care reform, and won’t touch Medicare. Maybe he should run some of this by his running mate, or by Mitch McConnell, or by the Tea Party Caucus in the House. It might be easier if he just votes for me.”

He didn’t challenge nearly enough though, and as Romney shape shifted into a centrist before our eyes, the president just went along with the wonky conversation as if it was a Brookings panel discussion.

His only hope is that since the debate was so incredibly BORING and tedious, few independents actually watched all the way through. I barely made it and I love this stuff.

Obama underestimated his challenger, which is understandable after two months of incredibly inept campaigning. I don’t know if Romney will keep up this Massachusetts-vintage version of himself (which he should have stuck to from the beginning, including never picking Paul Ryan), but either way I imagine we’re about to hear a LOT more about that 47% video of his.

Foreign consulates under assault and businesses attacked and burned down? State-condoned riots and protests? Frenzied mobs destroying private property? U.S. leaders urging calm?

I’m talking, of course, about the territorial dispute between China and Japan, and the very frightening and violent turn it has taken in China over the weekend:

Tens of thousands took part in marches in dozens of cities Saturday and Sunday that were officially condoned and disturbingly xenophobic. “Declare war on Japan!” thousands shouted as they marched past the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. Some waved portraits of Mao Zedong, and pelted the embassy gate with eggs and bottles as rows of military police looked on. […]

In the southern city of Guangzhou, a crowd smashed the windows of a building housing the Japanese consulate. In the neighbouring city of Shenzhen, police used tear gas, water cannons and pepper spray to disperse an estimated crowd of 10,000 that attacked a Japanese department store. In all, demonstrations were reported in 85 Chinese cities.

Mobs are attacking Japanese restaurants and torching Japanese cars. Chinese businesses are posting "Japanese not welcome" signs. You can see a scary photo gallery of the racism and violence here.

I have no special insight into this dispute. However, an important reminder that no nation or religion or ethnicity has a monopoly on identity-based freakouts or mass hysteria. And no government is above using this dismal fact to strengthen its own political position.