Author Archive for Jason Dobbins

Ross Douthat is not a fan of the White House’s decision to require Catholic-aligned organizations to provide its employees with insurance coverage for contraceptives. He argues that it’s not just a matter of religious freedom, but that this government politicization of morals is a dangerous precedent:

The Obama White House’s decision is a threat to any kind of voluntary community that doesn’t share the moral sensibilities of whichever party controls the health care bureaucracy.

The Catholic Church’s position on contraception is not widely appreciated, to put it mildly, and many liberals are inclined to see the White House’s decision as a blow for the progressive cause. They should think again. Once claimed, such powers tend to be used in ways that nobody quite anticipated, and the logic behind these regulations could be applied in equally punitive ways by administrations with very different values from this one.

The more the federal government becomes an instrument of culture war, the greater the incentive for both conservatives and liberals to expand its powers and turn them to ideological ends.

Right, I would never want an adminstration to just impose its moral sensibilities whenever it has control of the health care bureaucracy.

Which is why I did not like it when Douthat wrote in favor of the Bush adminstration’s intervention in the Terry Schiavo case against the wishes of her husband. Ross’s insistence in that case that the federal government encroach on a voluntary community (marital couple), just because that community didn’t "share the moral sensitilities" of the party in power seemed wrong to me.

Ross is also a long-standing advocate for the Bush administration’s ban on the use of public funds for embryonic stem cell research. Here too he seems to have had no problem with the party in power imposing its moral sensibilities on society. I might have warned Ross at the time, to no avail, that "the logic behind [the stem cell ban] could be applied in equally punitive ways by administrations with very different values."

Here is my real gripe with the Douthat line. He calls the White House regulation an "attack on conscience," and I have seen several opponents similarly decry the rule as forcing Catholics to "betray their conscience."

Whenever religion demands some special privilege or special exemption from public policy, or special state protection or innoculation against modern norms (or in its more sinister manifestation, protection from "offense"), the issue of "conscience" is inevitably invoked. The implication is always that the beliefs and morals of organized religion should be given special consideration above those of secularists. I find this a very tiresome disparity. Because, we on this side have consciences too. We believe that the wide availability and destigmification of contraception and the attendant liberation of women from the animal reproductive cycle represents one of the greatest moral and economic triumphs of humankind. Wheresoever these rights are not respected, we find political and cultural backwardness, economic stagnation, and sexual pathology. In fact, we on this side believe that teaching a doctrine that resigns women to be slaves to their reproductive cycle is not "conscience," but unconscionable.

Now, forcing female employees of Catholic-aligned institutions to go pay full retail price for birth control is not quite the same thing as consigning them to an animal reproductive cycle. But it does show how attenuated the church’s argument has become, and how much "conscience" ground it has already conceded. "Contraception is such a moral evil that my conscience requires some of you to go pay full retail price for it!" It doesn’t really have an Old Testament gravitas ring to it.

And where exactly is this contraception culture war that Ross invokes? It seems to be occurring largely in his and Timothy Dolan’s mind. Elsewhere in the 21st century, there’s not much debate as to whether birth control is ok or not. Catholics are more than welcome to adhere to or preach retrograde contraception norms among their co-religionists. But evidence suggests that no one is listening, including Catholics themselves. 98% of Catholic women say they’ve used contraceptive methods banned by the church. It’s a dead letter.

To me this is likely to be one more in a long line of issues in which the church has been forced to assimilate or abandon its doctrinal inanities when they have come into conflict with scientific or historical fact, or modern moral norms. The church has retreated so thorougly on creation, on evolution, on geology and cosmology, on gender norms and antisemitism. May its psychosis regarding sex and women’s bodies pass along as well, despite the ostensibly inviolable consciences of its flock. Remember, we too have inviolable consciences and principles, and the rejection and stigmatization of this piffle in the public square cannnot occur fast enough.

Unlike David Frum, I was very disappointed in Mitt Romney’s victory speech in New Hampshire last night (transcript here). If Romney was awakened from a cryogenic freeze, and was asked to give a speech without being told anything about the national circumstances or about the president other than that he was a Democrat, this is the sort of speech he’d deliver.

Our campaign is about more than replacing a President; it is about saving the soul of America. This election is a choice between two very different destinies.

President Obama wants to “fundamentally transform” America. We want to restore America to the founding principles that made this country great.

He wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society. We want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity.

This President takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America. [..]

I want you to remember when our White House reflected the best of who we are, not the worst of what Europe has become.

That America is still out there. We still believe in that America.

And cue the weak-on-defense music:

Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy. He believes America’s role as leader in the world is a thing of the past. I believe a strong America must – and will – lead the future.

He doesn’t see the need for overwhelming American military superiority. I will insist on a military so powerful no one would think of challenging it.

He chastises friends like Israel; I’ll stand with our friends.

He apologizes for America; I will never apologize for the greatest nation in the history of the Earth.

Doesn’t this just seem so tedious and anachronistic? Europe, appeasement, defense, Europe, thank you goodnight. They’re just rote themes that could be trotted out against any Democrat at any time in history. Much like Republican economic prescriptions remain exactly the same for all time, regardless of the circumstance. Boom time? Regressive tax cuts! Historic recession? Regressive tax cuts!

I found Romney’s unusually large focus on Euro-bashing—following a primary victory which makes him the presumptive nominee—to be in bad taste, and poor politics. The only explanation is that he was aiming his message at South Carolina primary voters, after which he’ll switch to general election mode for good. But that speech sure seemed general election-like, with its broad themes, vacuous platitudes about American awesomeness, and attempts at stark contrasts with the president, without even hinting that any of his primary opponents exist. We have to wonder, is this Romney’s general election message? Can this be all he’s got?  

His foreign policy critique is a rehash of fabricated talk radio tropes—Obama apologizes for America, appeases our enemies—that just doesn’t square with the president’s record, or the high marks he gets from the public in this area. He’s of course banking on his economic critique of the president, which may or may not be compelling depending on how things go over the next ten months. But if the recovery continues apace, and more importantly, it is perceived as improving come November, Romney will be left with nothing but a very contrived and unconvincing cultural critique. Maybe we’ll hear about arugula again.

The president’s favorability rating has been hovering over 50% for most of his term. (George W. Bush left office in the low 30s.) In the worst economy of our lives, and amid the most rancorous partisan political environment anyone can remember, people still like this president. (It’s Congress they absolutely loathe.) They also know him. Trying to redefine him as an effete Europhile who wants to transform the country into a socialist dystopia will not work. Plus, Mitt Romney is not exactly the ideal messenger for this sort of cultural attack. He and the president come from the same educational milieu and probably share the same broadly cosmopolitan cultural values (which I believe they both obscure in interesting ways). George W. Bush could bury his patrician past with his drawl and his down-home mannerisms. But Mitt doesn’t seem to realize that he will be the John Kerry in this race.

Romney needs to claw away 97 electoral votes from Obama’s 2008 total. If he tries to get there using the tepid, tired playbook of Euro-bashing and American jingoism, well he better hope the employment market improves by 2013, and that Bain is hiring. 

The authoritarian impulse is alive and well in your modern GOP. The party which in other contexts implores us to hew to the mythical “original” meaning of the constitution, has shown itself during the primary campaign to be utterly contemptuous of that document when it comes to nuisances like the rule of law or separation of powers. To wit:

Newt Gingrich is continuing his outrageous campaign to subvert one of the most sacred and revolutionary democratic principles, that of the independent judiciary:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is doubling down from Thursday’s Fox News debate on his vow to abolish federal courts if he disagreed with their decision.

According to The Hill, in a conference call with reporters, Gingrich indicated that it was in the president’s power as commander-in-chief to deem any Supreme Court ruling irrelevant if he or she in the White House disagreed. […]

Gingrich also backed his position to subpoena judges or abolish courts entirely if he thought their final rulings were wrong.

At the last Republican debate he repeated this bold plan to transform the U.S. into a banana republic by making the rule of law subservient to executive caprice.

Ron Paul, god bless him, was the only candidate to challenge him on it. The recent polling suggests that Gingrich will likely be slithering back into his private life as an influence peddler soon enough. But I find it outrageous that the recent front-runner for the Republican nomination could express such overt constitutional contempt without opprobrium of any kind.

The next item is a more general critique but I think recognizable to us all. In the recent debates the most popular refrain from the candidates when asked about military or security policy has been that they would “listen to the commanders on the ground.” This sort of language serves as a very easy way for politicians to signal to military fetishists that they are tough and like tough things such as men with epaulets. And to be fair, one hears this tiresome deference to the “commanders on the ground” from both parties. But I think it can be fairly said that it’s the liberty-loving GOP most enthralled with the idea of civilians “listening to the generals”—rather than the other way round—in the conduct of war policy.

Just yesterday there was a very important corrective to this inversion from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Martin Dempsey. General Dempsey was asked if his advice on extended troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014 will be heeded in Washington. His surprising and brilliant response:

I’ll probably make news with this but I find some of those articles about divergence or control of the generals to be kind of offensive to me. And here’s why. One of the things that makes us as a military profession in a democracy is civilian rule. Our civilian leaders are under no obligation to accept our advice; and that’s what it is. Its advice. It’s military judgments, it’s alternatives, it’s options. And at the end of the day, our system is built on the fact that it will be our civilian leaders who make that decision and I don’t find that in any way to challenge my manhood, nor my position. In fact, if it were the opposite, I think we should all be concerned.”

Here is one case in which listening to the generals would be wise indeed.

This might all be dismissed as campaign nonsense. However, in a week in which we’ve lost the great Czech champion of human freedom and democracy, as well as his ghoulish diametric opposite in North Korea; and as we watch Egypt descend into violent martial law, with the heroes of Tahrir Square beaten and shot and gassed by generals who do not recognize the legitimacy of civilian rule; and as the rule of law remains nothing more than the morality of the strong in so many parts of the world; we should shame from public life such demagogues as Mr. Gingrich, who seek applause lines from credulous voters by selling them a subversion of the very principles they claim to venerate.

There are plenty of reasons of morality and justice for Americans to hope for the swift demise of the Syrian regime, and for its smug, chinless leader to be escorted to the dock, followed by a lifelong retirement in prison.

But virtues and values notwithstanding, it’s national interests that all the realist kids want to hear about these days. So let’s talk interests.

The main U.S. strategic interest in the ongoing Syrian uprising is Syria’s star role in the regional “Resistance Bloc” consisting also of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. What are they “resisting?” Well they would say they’re resisting the big bad U.S-Israeli axis of imperialism; colloquially known as the Great Satan and the Little Satan. Of all their resistance activities, none is undertaken with as much ardor as their often violent, mostly rhetorical opposition to the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

That the regimes in Iran and Syria maintain their power only through coercive repression always left it an open question as to exactly in whose name they were “resisting”. They have a very old game of deflecting blame for all domestic ills on hidden foreign plots and conspiracies, and they claim legitimacy by arguing that they alone can win justice for Palestinians and dignity for Muslims.

With the Arab Spring in late bloom, it has been interesting to see if and how the resistance bloc coalition might fray, as its members are forced to choose between support for regimes or for the people demanding the end of the regimes. Any result that weakens this coalition would be a tremendous boon to U.S. interests in the region.

This choice is particularly acute for Hamas and Hezbollah. Both are grassroots movements with mass popular support and experience in coalition government. They are far more attuned to their respective local constituencies, and are credible because they are seen as taking seriously the importance of democratic legitimacy and accountability. But with their main arms and cash conduit in Damascus under threat of being toppled, who will they stand with?

Hamas, whose senior leadership is based in Damascus, is nothing if not politically astute, and has calculated (correctly) that it better not be caught clinging to its erstwhile sponsor at the expense of the very people on whose behalf it claims to be “resisting.”

Haaretz has learned that Hamas has made a decision to abandon Damascus without letting the Syrian authorities know. The decision was made by the organization’s senior leadership in the wake of the harsh criticism voiced against top Hamas officials in Gaza and abroad because of their ties with the Syrian regime. […]

The Arab League’s decision to suspend Syria from membership of the organization and impose economic sanctions on Damascus tipped the scales, with Hamas finally deciding to covertly evacuate all its activists from Syria and leave behind only the organization’s highest-ranking officials so as to preserve a low profile of activity there.

Iran, which hasn’t wavered in its support for Assad, is not happy with Hamas’ abandonment of Damascus:

Iran had applied intense pressure to Hamas in an effort to persuade it not to leave Damascus, threatening even to cut off funds to the organization if it did so, Palestinian sources have told Haaretz.

The Iranian pressure also included an unprecedented ultimatum – namely, an explicit threat to stop supplying Hamas with arms and suspend the training of its military activists.

And how about Hezbollah? For now Hezbollah seems to have chosen to stick with old team. Regarding Assad, Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah told a large crowd in Beirut that he would “stand by a regime that has stood by the resistance for a long time.”

His invocation of Syria’s support for “the resistance” sounds a little discordant when the “resistance” most people think of today is that which is bravely battling and dying out on the streets against the Assad regime.

Understandably, the opposition forces in Syria are not happy with the prospect of anyone taking the side of the regime, and they have warned the old resistance bloc superfriends that they are watching closely:

Burhan Ghalioun, the chairman of the Syrian National Council, told CNN in an interview airing Tuesday that Iran is “participating in suppressing the Syrian people” by backing al-Assad. […]

“I hope that Iranians realize the importance of not compromising the Syrian-Iranian relationship by defending a regime whose own people clearly reject it and has become a regime of torture to its own people,” Ghalioun said. Tehran must understand “that this is the last chance to avoid an unwanted fate to the Syrian-Iranian relationship,” he said.

As for Hezbollah…Ghalioun said, “The Syrian people stood completely by Hezbollah once. But today, they are surprised that Hezbollah did not return the favor and support the Syrian’s people struggle for freedom.”

You notice the chairman is not exactly burning bridges here. This is for the unsettling but banal reason that most Syrians, including opposition members, strongly dislike Israel, are deeply distrustful of the U.S., and agree broadly with the military and political goals of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran. It’s likely that a more representative government in Damascus would not be any more amenable to coexistence with Israel than Assad is.

The Syrian National Council is basically offering to keep the old resistance bloc intact, if only they all agree to disavow Assad. Hamas is on board. I don’t know why Iran and Hezbollah don’t take the deal, unless they are so sure that Assad will survive this.

But from a U.S. perspective, this in-fighting is great. It will be a fine day if and when Assad finally tumbles, but it will be extra special if a new government is seated that feels scorned by the old alliances and distrustful of the motives of Iran. Disrupting this four-headed supply chain of reactionary hate and violence would be a major strategic victory for the United States and reform-minded allies in the region.

UPDATE: Forget my assessment on what the Syrian opposition thinks of Iran and Hezbollah. Instead, read this interview with the head of the Syrian opposition, Burhan Ghalioun (quoted above), transcript here. It seems I misrepresented his position.

On Iran:

The current relationship between Syria and Iran is abnormal. It is unprecedented in Syria’s foreign policy history. [...]

Our relations with Iran will be revisited as any of the countries in the region, based on the exchange of economic and diplomatic interests, in the context of improving stability in the region and not that of a special relationship. There will be no special relationship with Iran.

This is the core issue—the military alliance. Breaking the exceptional relationship means breaking the strategic military alliance. We do not mind economic relations.

On Hezbollah:

As our relations with Iran change, so too will our relationship with Hezbollah. Hezbollah after the fall of the Syrian regime will not be the same. Lebanon should not be used as it was used in the Assad era as an arena to settle political scores.

How much of these positions actually make their way into a new post-Assad representative government remains to be seen. But wow, these are truly transformative policies; let’s hope he speaks for many, many of his countrymen.

This article on President Obama’s failure at managing the U.S.-Pakistani relationship by Kapil Komireddi was recommended and endorsed by David Frum, so I gave it a close read, and I was surprised to find it consisting of mostly hysterical ad hominem bunk. The central conceit seems to be that the Obama administration is omnipotent, yet instead of using this omnipotence to help usher in a strong civilian democratic rule in Pakistan, Obama insists on using it to cosign Pakistan’s backslide into military authoritarianism. The failure of all former U.S. presidents to meaningfully change the balance of power between militarists and civilians in Pakistan is not mentioned in the piece.

Komireddi spends half of his piece blaming Obama for the recent forced resignation of Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani. It is true that Haqqani was a great champion of civilian democratic rule in Pakistan, and during his time in Washington he was often the only bright spot surrounding the fraught U.S.-Pakistani relationship. I’m sure the generals hated him. But unfortunately he was not the vanguard of some imminent Pakistani Spring in which the liberal secular pro-Western democrats would assert themselves and ride the army and the ISI and the Islamists out of town once and for all.

That’s because for all his personal and professional attributes, Haqqani as ambassador didn’t mean that Pakistan had civilian rule. As even Komireddi tellingly admits, "[Haqqani's] forced resignation puts an end to the pretence of civilian rule in Pakistan." (italics mine) It was pretense, and it’s always been pretense. The generals were always in charge. This is tragic and lamentable but it’s not Barack Obama’s fault.

Komireddi accuses the U.S. of marginalizing Haqqani due to his outspoken support for civilian rule and for curbing the influence of the military.

Why would the White House choose to belittle a man championing civilian rule in Pakistan? Isn’t that also the objective of the Obama administration? The answer increasingly appears to be no.

Nonsense. The U.S. loves Haqqani’s peaceful democratic vision for Pakistan, but because that vision does not accurately reflect all parts of the government he was supposed to represent, his effectiveness as ambassador was somewhat attenuated. It would be a lovely world in which Husain Haqqani was in charge of civilian and military policy in Pakistan. But it’s not our world, and it’s no help for the U.S. to pretend that he actually had the ear and the confidence of the true power-brokers in Pakistan.

Komireddi undermines his own thesis about Obama’s unique role in emboldening Pakistani perfidy when he diagnoses the real source of Pakistan’s problems, which, shockingly, predate Barack Obama’s presidency:

Since the 1950s, when Gen. Ayub Khan mounted the first military coup, Pakistan’s army has etiolated the country’s evolution in every imaginable sense. Rooted in a culture of grievance and malevolence that is the foundational basis of Pakistan, the army has waged wars against India, suffused young minds with a fervor for jihad, sponsored terrorism, spread xenophobia and racism, carried out genocide against millions of its own citizens, stolen and smuggled nuclear secrets, foisted the vile Taliban regime upon the defenseless people of Afghanistan, and assumed complete ownership of Pakistan.

Those sound like really tough problems! Yet, Komireddi thinks that these sixty years of entrenched military rule buttressed by Islamic extremism, nuclear promiscuity, and terrorism sponsorship; in fact a military rule so entrenched as to be said without exaggeration to have "assumed complete ownership of Pakistan," could have been undone by a U.S. president throwing his rhetorical support behind a particularly talented and sympathetic Pakistani ambassador! Boy we really missed an opportunity there! 

Well to be fair, he has other ideas for how President Obama could have won the day if he wasn’t so willfully in cahoots with Pakistan’s military. He could have "corraled the army with fresh ultimatums" following the embarassing revelation that Osama bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Abbottabad. Komireddi does not mention that in the wake of the bin Laden operation the U.S. withheld almost $1 billion in military aid to Pakistan. Yet the relationship has only deteriorated further since then. I don’t know how Komireddi is so sure that more and stronger U.S. ultimatums would miraculously produce a more compliant Pakistani military, and one that suddenly stops caring about hating India or wanting control over Afghanistan. Komireddi’s ideas come straight from the toughness-seriousness-boldness school of intractable problem solving. 

Nonetheless, he is certainly right that the Pakistani military and ISI’s double-dealing with the Taliban and complicity in violence against Americans in Afghanistan is scandalous. As to the former, Pakistan has seen a strategic interest in supporting the Afghan Taliban for a long time. Not even ten years of war has changed this calculus. Ten more years won’t either. At least the killing of American troops will be mitigated by the upcoming drawdown. But that is bad news according to Komireddi:

Then, in a craven abdication of American responsibility to the citizens of Afghanistan, Obama talked about the need for nation-building at home. […]

As the fighters currently enjoying Pakistani hospitality in the country’s northwest make their way back into Afghanistan [following the U.S. withdrawal], the gains made over the last decade will wither away. Thus will the tremendous sacrifices, of both American troops and Afghan civilians, be honored.

Ah yes, the only way to honor sacrifice is with unending sacrifice. That’s a tidy aphorism but a really terrible basis for military strategy, and an immoral one. One may disagree with the administration’s decision to bring the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan to a close after ten years. But I’m curious: what would acquit Obama of the charge of craven irresponsibility? Another troop surge? Another trillion dollars? Escalating the current nebulous proxy war with Pakistan into a real war? If your principles of justice and sacrifice require you to advocate embroiling America in a hot war with an major Asian nuclear power, you need new principles.

Are there things the U.S. could do to help foster a less military-centric ruling order in Pakistan? I don’t know, I’m sure there’s something. But in the post-9/11 period, two successive administrations, with opposite foreign policy visions and opposite rhetorical styles, have been unable to do so. I find it very likely that a long string of future administrations will encounter the same difficulty. Then, as now, it will not be Barack Obama’s fault.

Say it with me Mr. Komireddi, slowly and tearfully, Good Will Hunting style: it’s not Barack Obama’s fault.

I rewatched the brilliant and hilarious political satire In the Loop last night, in which midlevel officials in the US and UK governments stumble fecklessly toward war with an unspecified Middle Eastern country. This time around it reminded me of the current farce surrounding the ever elusive, ever imminent, ever "on the table" Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Will they or won’t they?

Like our fumbling minister above, I’ve been seeing the same sort of equivocation regarding Iran in the media for several years now, ramped up to eleven ever since Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic cover story last year in which he concluded that there was a "better than 50 percent chance" of an Israeli attack by this past July. We’ve missed that deadline of course, but the speculation, the recrimination, the preparation, rages on.

A new IAEA report accuses Iran of having carried out secret tests "relevant to the development of a nuclear device." In response, the US, UK, and Canada have announced new sanctions targeting Iran’s banking and oil sectors. This week Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak hinted that the time for climbing the mountain of conflict may be approaching:

Barak, speaking on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS program, indicated that Israel’s patience was wearing thin — and provided an ominous response when asked about the growing speculation of an Israeli military strike.

"I don’t think that that is a subject for public discussion," he said. "But I can tell you that the IAEA report has a sobering impact on many in the world, leaders as well as the publics, and people understand that the time has come."

Even before this latest IAEA report, Israel has been in serious preparation and training for an unspecified long-distance air conflict:

In late October, six Israeli Air Force squadrons sent aircraft 1,500 miles across the Mediterranean for a joint exercise over Sardinia with the Italian and German air forces. This is just one of over a dozen such exercises that have taken place in the last three years, in which Israeli pilots have trained in flying long distances over unknown terrain and facing fighter pilots and anti-aircraft batteries of foreign forces.

The U.S. official position on an Israeli attack seems to be deep ambivalence. It does seem clear that the U.S. does not want the Israelis to act unilaterally. Unlike previous Israeli attacks on nuclear facilities in Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007), the geopolitical stakes with Iran are much higher, and retaliation—economic or military or both—is inevitable. The U.S. will share public blame for any Israeli action whether it was involved or not, and it would not be difficult for Iran to target U.S. personnel and interests in the region if it so chose.

With all the conspicuous preparation underway, it’s no surprise that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Israel last month to urge closer coordination:

Panetta publicly stressed during his visit that the United States is “very concerned” about the Iranian threat but emphasized that countering that threat “depends on the countries working together.” Panetta demanded that Jerusalem warn Washington in advance of an attack on Iran, but he did not receive clear assurances it would, according to American diplomatic sources.

Panetta also warned of the potential economic fallout of a military strike. "There are going to be economic consequences to that (an Iran strike), that could impact not just on our economy but the world economy," he said. He said the U.S. focus was on diplomatic pressure and sanctions.

I hope that is true. Panetta’s palpable public opposition to a strike hopefully means that the administration’s private opposition is even more forceful. One sign that there might be more bluster than substance here is that this debate has always seemed a little too public. Israel doesn’t take to broadcasting its military intentions prior to action. There were no public threats or preparations before the Osirak reactor strike in Iraq, nor the Syria strike in 2007. They just happened. When the real business of sensitive national security needs to be done, Israel doesn’t put its defense minister on CNN to announce it first. When everybody shuts the hell up, it’ll be time to worry.

Speaking of not shutting up, I’ll leave you with more from In the Loop—behold the great Malcolm Tucker (extremely NSFW):

The rise of modern Republicanism as a Christianist cultural-resentment club has corresponded nicely with the hibernation of true conservatism. As a quaint historical artifact, here is something close to the essense of true conservatism; the parable of G.K. Chesterton’s fence:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

Now, here is Rick Perry, on reforming institutions:

“I don’t believe that Washington needs a new coat of paint — I think the whole place needs to be overhauled,” Mr. Perry said, speaking to applause from more than 100 people on the floor of the Schebler manufacturing plant here. “I’m a true believer that we need to uproot, tear down and rebuild Washington, D.C., and our federal institutions.” […]

“Americans know there is a season for everything under the sun,” Mr. Perry said. “And this is the season for tearing down and rebuilding again, for uprooting the broken branches of government in Washington, and building a new government that’s smaller and more humble.”

We’ll ignore for now the rather pagan-tinged assertion about seasons and suns. Perry also wants to turn Congress into a part-time legislature, as well as term-limit all federal judges; all part of his modest proposal to uproot, tear down, and rebuild our entire system of government. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more radical platform from a legitimate presidential candidate. I do not consider myself a conservative, but even I am terrified at the insouciance with which Perry aims to remake the world. So much for the Republican fear of policy “uncertainty”!

Perry’s plan to abolish whole executive departments is another example. He famously could not recall his full list of intended targets, but that is most likely because he has no idea what those departments do. You can better understand this behavior when you realize that Rick Perry and his ilk do not have considered policy proposals, they have only moods.

When you declare yourself a “true believer” in the rectitude of your own conclusions, analysis and doubt are the enemy. A man with such a temperament simply reaches for the sledgehammer without wondering what happens after he swings. This, I remind you by way of Chesterton, is not a conservative impulse. It’s a frightening mix of utopianism and nihilism; we need a good word for it.

Republicans are not too enthralled at the prospect of a Mitt Romney White House. While his polling has been remarkably consistent, and his fundraising and organizational strength far ahead of his rivals, he can’t seem to crack 25% in the polls. He’ll still win the nomination, but it seems it will be bestowed grudgingly.

What’s the problem? Well, we are told that it’s his lack of demonstrated fealty to “true” conservative principles. And the flip-flopping of course. Here is Erick Erickson, Republican gatekeeper:

Mitt Romney is not the George W. Bush of 2012 — he is the Harriet Miers of 2012, only conservative because a few conservative grand pooh-bahs tell us Mitt Romney is conservative and for no other reason. […]

Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee. And his general election campaign will be an utter disaster for conservatives as he takes the GOP down with him and burns up what it means to be a conservative in the process.

Erickson, truly the Edmund Burke of our time in his ability to ascertain “what it means to be a conservative,” is so distraught that he’s giving lowly Jon Huntsman another look, who he thinks might be “more faithful in his conservative convictions than Mitt Romney.”

I don’t understand all this unease and this obsession with divining convictions. It’s true, here we have a guy who caters and tailors his views to match whichever constituency he is courting at the time. We all know about his moderate technocrat phase in Massachusetts, and his subsequent repudiation of that phase and his slow rightward march as he looked to national office.

The important thing to note here is that as regards “what it means to be a conservative,” it’s not Romney who flits in and out of that immutable state, it’s the conservative elites that keep changing the damn definition. It’s not Romney who’s unmoored, it’s the Republican overlords, who code policy positions as variously canonical or heretical, depending on what the Democrats are doing.

Reagan raised taxes, George W. Bush spoke compassionately about immigration, conservatives innovated the idea of the individual mandate. Now the Repubican mood is such that one dollar of extra revenue is too much, anything short of a sci-fi border death fence is amnesty, and healthcare for all is synonymous with fascism. I’m sure there are other examples. It’s true that Romney has floated rather promiscuously around many sides of these and other issues, but a big reason for that is the “true conservative” position is a perennially moving target.

If I was a Republican kingmaker like Erickson, I’d think: “Well who knows what previously verboten notion will become the new conservative dogma in a few years from now; and who can tell which bedrock conservative belief we will have to abandon because Barney Frank decides to embrace it? Who can we trust to be willing to flop every time we impetuously decide to flip?” Under the circumstances, a consistently principle-averse chameleon is exactly the sort of person I’d want in office. If I had a bunch of loony unstatic policy preferences, I’d be thrilled that there’s a guy out there who’s shown time and again that he’s ready and willing to morph and mold his way into my loony mercurial heart. Republicans should be grateful!

Of course, the fear of Romney-like ideological maleability is that once you help get the guy in office, there’s no way to know how the “real Romney” will govern, and no way to ensure that he won’t wake up confused one morning and think he’s head of the United States of Massachusetts.

But this implies that there is no way to constrain a politician once he is in office, and that’s mistaken. In a way, the behavior of a totally cynical flip-flopper is much easier to predict than that of the true-believing ideologue. All you have to do in Romney’s case is figure out which constituency he is beholden to, and you know that his behavior will conform to reflect that. If he becomes president, this constituency foremost will be Congressional Republicans, along with all sorts of base activists and interest groups and donors and Republican governors and business types whose support he will continue to rely upon.

In Massachusetts he had a liberal constituency and a solid Democratic legislature, so bam, Romney was a socially moderate technocrat. He governed like he said he would govern. Who cares what he “really” was? Now his task is to appeal to the current—shall we say unbalanced—Republican orthodoxy; so viola, he’s aligned himself with all of their priorities. In the White House he’ll govern the same way, because he will be constrained politically by the very same constituency, particularly if his party has a majority in one or both houses of Congress.

Just as right-wingers probably have nothing to fear from a Romney presidency, progressives really have no reason to look forward to the idea, notwithstanding the likely accurate suspicions that “deep down” he is more moderate and more reality-based than his competitors. Progressives can be thankful that he doesn’t indulge the worst instincts of his party, but he’ll likely govern as a standard conservative, whatever that word happens to mean at the time.