Kubler-Ross

Denial

Nancy Pelosi: "It’s still a very exciting initiative, ranks right up there with Social Security and Medicare, and we are meeting with our members at the caucus and different groups of the caucus to hear how they perceived the best way and how they would prefer to go forward. But we will go forward."

Anger

Katrina Vanden Heuvel: "The Obama White House needs to take immediate, bold action [...] Jettison those on the White House economic team whose slow, timid response to the crisis of unemployment and to Wall Street's obscene excesses helped create the conditions for the tea party's inchoate right-wing populism [...] After a year of being knifed by the GOP at every turn, isn't it time to give up on faith in genteel post-partisanship? Go after those who oppose your common-sense tax on big banks to recoup the taxpayer-funded bailout money"

Bargaining

President Obama: "I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on"

Depression

Gail Collins: "It’s very hard to write when one is crouched in a fetal position under the bed. Maybe if I remove the pillow from over my head …"

Acceptance

Lanny Davis: "It's the substance, stupid! [...] We liberals need to reclaim the Democratic Party with the New Democrat positions of Bill Clinton and the New Politics/bipartisan aspirations of Barack Obama—a party that is willing to meet half-way with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big-government solutions."

A Joe Biden With Balls

Almost no one remembers Adlai Stevenson. He was the Democratic nominee for president two times, in 1952 and 1956. He was liberal, intellectual, cultured, erudite and brilliant. He badly lost both elections to Dwight Eisenhower, who was simple, solid and dull. Joseph Alsop, the then-famous journalist and Cold War liberal, was not a fan of Stevenson. When, after disappointed with Adlai’s losses, Alsop heard up-and-comer John Kennedy speak, he gushed, "At last, a Stevenson with balls."

I’ve been thinking about Joe Biden lately, the Democratic senator from Delaware and soon-to-be chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Joe Biden makes me think of Adlai Stevenson. Why? Because he’s no Jack Kennedy. Joe Biden may be the only highly placed politician in Washington who is making sense when it comes to Iraq, but Jack Kennedy he ain’t.

Conservatives have lost all credibility regarding Iraq. They’ve been fighting a rear guard action against reality, but even the modern conservative movement, a movement which has mastered the art of willful self-delusion, cannot hold back reality forever. There is some comfort in the knowledge that even conservatives eventually have to deal with the real world. That, of course, is the real point of the last election. Does anyone – anyone?! – still think that Iraq can be made stable, unified and democratic? Isn’t it finally clear to everyone that the social conditions in Iraq are just plain hostile to stability, unity and democracy? Now that the Iraqi Civil War is starting in earnest, things are so bad that even the Bush administration is beginning to take notice.

And what are the Democratic alternatives? For the most part they’re various versions of bringing the boys back home, the only differences being the timetables and troop strengths. Does anyone really think this is a good idea? Isn’t it clear that an abandoned Iraq will descend into full scale civil war? It would become the sort of breeding ground and training camp for terrorists that Saddam’s Iraq never remotely was. It would be a disaster, a disaster which Republicans and Democrats would both be responsible for.

There is, of course, a lot of buzz surrounding James Baker’s Iraq Study Group and its recommendations, one of which is to get help from Syria and Iran, not exactly countries we would want to have more influence in Iraq and in the region. This is not exactly a happy outcome either. But it is marginally better than either staying the course or cutting and running. The group’s other proposal is that American forces withdraw to Iraqi strongholds, islands in a sea of chaos and civil war. This is a plan that tries to have it both ways, it stays the course and cuts and runs all at the same time. Thus Bush can claim to be keeping Iraq intact while reducing American casualties. This is politics masquerading as foreign policy.

And then there’s Joe Biden, who for the last few months has been pushing a plan for Iraq that may actually be workable and whose outcome may actually be tolerable. It allows each of the three major ethnic groups, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, almost complete autonomy within their respective areas, with rules for sharing the national resources, like oil. There would still be a national government, but it would have almost no real power. Think of it as partition lite. If the three groups could be brought together to negotiate such a settlement and an international army could patrol the borders there might actually be peace. What makes Biden’s plan so appealing is that it consists of neither pig-headed stubbornness nor irresponsible abandonment. It is a plan that recognizes that you can’t have a military solution unless you have a political solution. It is, in a word, a wise plan.

Bosnia adopted a very similar plan in 1995 and it has basically worked. The three ethnic groups there, Serbs, Croats and Muslims hammered out an agreement they all could live with. American and European troops have been keeping the peace there since. Guess how many of those troops have been killed there in the last 11 years. That’s right, none. Bosnia as a unified country is a fiction, but it’s a peaceful fiction.

But it doesn’t seem like a plan as reasonable as Biden’s has much chance given the political mood in Washington these days. Particularly since Biden himself doesn't have a lot of credibility. Why not? Because he voted for the Iraq War back in 2003 and he hasn’t exactly earned any glory for political courage since. He only recently recanted that vote. Before that his courage was sufficient to merely criticize the conduct of the war. It’s clear that Joe Biden never really supported the war, even when he voted for it. So why did he vote for it? Because he’s no Jack Kennedy. He had the wisdom to see the war was a mistake but he lacked the courage to vote against it. He decided that appearing strong was more important than being strong. And many other leading Democrats made the same cynical calculation. Now Joe Biden is wiser than most politicians in Washington and he almost certainly will do some good as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, but he’s not the sort of man who can lead his party or his country out of the wilderness.

George Bush has the courage of his convictions, but that’s all he has. What good is it to stick to your convictions when your convictions are dead wrong? Joe Biden has good ideas but insufficient courage. What good are good ideas if you don’t have the courage to stand up for them? It may not seem fair to compare one of the best Democrats to one of the worst Republicans, but consider that each is symptomatic of his party’s flaws. The cliché has it that Republicans believe in the wrong things and Democrats don’t believe in anything. Republican foolishness has caused them to fail as the party in charge and Democratic cowardice has caused them to fail as the party in opposition. Where are we as a country to turn? What we desperately need is a Democrat with courage and strength. What we need is a Joe Biden with balls.

Imaginative Solutions II: The Wrath of Ahmadinejad

In the latest episode of foreign policy wonks spinning their wheels in Iranian quicksand, Dennis Ross wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, wondering what would happen . . .

"... if we could threaten collective sanctions that the Iranians would see as biting? What if those were combined with possible gains in terms of a deal on nuclear energy, economic benefits and security understandings if the Iranians would give up the nuclear program?"

Genius. The stick and the carrot. Why didn't anyone think of this before?

I didn't really bring up Ross for his astonishingly stale proposal. I brought him up because in his essay, he reiterates two propositions that have become conventional wisdom on a nuclear Iran. Unfortunately - or fortunately - the conventional wisdom here is wrong.

Let's start with the first proposition, what you might call a middle east 'domino theory' if Iran becomes nuclear:

"The Saudis -- fearing an emboldened Iran determined to coerce others and to promote Shiite subversion in the Arabian Peninsula -- will seek their own nuclear capability, and probably already have a deal with Pakistan to provide it should Iran pose this kind of threat. And don't expect Egypt to be content with Saudi Arabia's being the only Arab country with a nuclear 'deterrent.'"

This prediction - there isn't enough to call an analysis - is incorrect for many reasons. Unlike Saddam's Iraq, which had a repressed Shiite majority and an ugly border dispute that precipitated a long war with Iran, Saudi Arabia is not in the type of strategic competition that would require going nuclear if Iran does. And Egypt will not go nuclear simply out of pride or envy. There are many barriers - economic, political, and technical - that prevent Saudi Arabia and Egypt from going nuclear. And if Israel's 30-year old arsenal has not pushed either of these countries over the nuclear edge so far, what is it exactly about Iran, a fellow muslim country, that would push them now?

The second proposition is much more familiar because it's been used before: middle eastern madmen cannot be deterred! Ross opines:

"with an Iranian president who sees himself as an instrument for accelerating the coming of the 12th Imam -- which is preceded in the mythology by the equivalent of Armageddon -- one should not take comfort in thinking that Iran will act responsibly"

This scare tactic, used so effectively in mobilizing opinion for the Iraq war, simply goes against all available facts. Those who use it would be hard-pressed to come up with examples of strategic, or even tactical, irrationality by the Iranians. What we do know is that Iran is a country with thousands of years of history and culture and that its president was popularly elected. We also know that the real power in Iran resides with the mullahs, who have proven quite capable of managing the country and holding on to power for the past 3 decades. We might not like the ideology of the Iranian government, but that doesn't mean they're suicidal madmen.

In my general defense of rapprochement with Iran, I have yet to discuss Iran's sponsorship of terrorist groups and its threat to Israel in detail. Stay tuned for a future part III.

Iran and Imaginative Solutions

In yesterday's Washington Post, Mark Helprin, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, asks us to "think imaginatively about Iran". In this case, Helprin's "imaginatively" means "to strengthen -- in numbers and mass as well as quality -- the means with which we fight, to reinforce the fleet train with which to supply the fighting lines, and to plan for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates. And even if we cannot extricate ourselves from nation-building and counterinsurgency in Iraq, we must have a plan for remounting the army there so that it can fight and maneuver as it was born to do". Apparently "imaginative" does not rule out "insane".

To be fair to Helprin, he's not alone in his core view - what I would call the 'throw-more-troops-at-the-problem' approach. In fact, this is the exact line on Iraq of Democrats who voted to authorize the war but are looking for a way to weasel out of that vote. If only we had sent more troops! By the same logic, we should be sending a half-million troops to overthrow the Iranian government and eliminate their WMD capabilities. At least the WMD case would be based on facts not fantasies.

For the sarcasm-impaired, I'm not advocating a military solution to the Iranian problem. The fact remains, however, that Iran presents a quandry that needs imaginative solutions, because the current approach is failing. So here's my 'imaginative' solution: rapprochement. Cut the axis of evil talk, start a direct dialog with Iran, and bring them into the international fold so that when they get nukes in 2010 or 2020, they're no different from Pakistan or India.

Why not? What is so fundamentally incompatible about Iran that precludes normalized relations? they're not communists bent on world domination. They have a government that is remarkably similar in structure to the current best hopes for Iraqi democracy - a civilian elected government subject to religious veto power (Sistani, anyone?). They call the US the 'Great Satan' because the US supported the Shah, then supported Saddam during the Iraq-Iran war, and continues to support Israel now. But the first and second reasons can be eliminated with an apology, and the third at least minimized with Israel unilaterally imposing a two-state solution in Palestine - something Israel is finally heading towards after two decades of appeasing rabid settlers intent on a land-grab.

I'm aware that the statements I make above are controversial and subject to debate. But you only need a little 'imagination' to see that what I'm suggesting is not completely unreasonable. The Neocon prescription of aggressive and muscular foreign policy seems to be an utter failure. Perhaps it's time for something less ideological and more pragmatic. After all, the world did not end when North Korea went nuclear.

Outsourcing Jobs and Importing Goods

Every once in a while, president Bush takes wildly unpopular but principled stands on policy issues. Last week, it was the DPW ports deal, apparently opposed by some 70% of the public. And yesterday, it was job outsourcing to India, an issue equally susceptible to nationalist and populist demagoguery. I've already commented on the ports deal a few days ago, so let me try to set the record straight on outsourcing in this post.

To hear Pat Buchanan or Lou Dobbs (who will surely spontaneously explode from self-importance one of these days) talk about it, outsourcing is the beginning of the end of the American economy. Greedy corporations send good jobs overseas while American workers are forced into unemployment or low-paying jobs. It's a "race to the bottom" and America is being suckered by the rest of the world through "unfair trade".

But let's inject a dose of reality. We've been living under pro free trade administrations for the past quarter century or so (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II). And if the protectionists are right, we should be observing the negative effects on the economy by now.

Well, here's a little chart I made in Excel that shows the trends in US output and disposable (after tax) income over the past 30 years. Everything is per capita and adjusted for inflation. The chart also plots the unemployment rate (in December of each of the years, right axis). The data are from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics, both official sources of US economic data.

Where is the devastation? Certainly nothing shows up in the aggregate picture. The US economy is chugging along just fine, average incomes are rising, and despite the "giant job-sucking sounds" from China and India, the unemployment rate looks pretty good.

Of course I'm over-simplifying. Nothing in the chart above informs us about income distributions or sectoral disruptions. In fact, nothing in it proves that the US economy benefited from free trade and outsourcing. But it does provide prima facie evidence that the US economy is doing fine, and it puts the burden of proof (with real data, not anecdotes!) on the protectionist side.

While I'm at it, let me point out two additional facts that are completely uncontroversial from an economic point of view:

• There is no economic difference between importing goods and outsourcing jobs. If you prefer, think of 'outsourcing a job' as importing a service. It's hypocritical to buy imported computers, electronics, cars, and clothing then turn around and criticize a company for outsourcing its call center or tech support department.
• There's no difference between jobs lost through trade (outsourcing, importation) and jobs obseleted by technology. 10 years ago, knowing HTML and writing simple web pages was a job that paid reasonably well. Rather than being outsourced, HTML programming was obseleted by software that automatically generates web pages. Except for those HTML programmers, the rest of us are better off for it. The story with outsourcing is no different.

Huh. I'm 2 for 2 in supporting Bush policies on this blog. I promise this will change soon :)

Ports: Policy and Politics

There is little new that I can add to the policy discussion of a Dubai-owned company taking over management control of 6 American ports. Dubai has been firmly in the "with us" column since 9/11 and provides significant support to US military and intelligence operations in the Middle East. The takeover has been vetted by multiple US government departments at the bureaucratic, rather than the political, level and has been approved without objection. And the 'management' of a port is at least one step removed from actual port security implementation, a job that still falls to the Coast Guard and US Customs. The only argument against the takeover that has some validity is that you're placing managment control of the ports in the hands of a country whose population has significant anti-US sentiments, thus possibly increasing the probability that radical elements will infiltrate the system. Naturally, this small increase in risk must be balanced against the strategic cost of slapping an Arab ally in the face by rejecting such a high-profile takeover. As serious policy discussions continue, the initial "hell no!" knee-jerk reaction will appear less and less justified.

The politics is a little more interesting. The Democrats, torn between their traditional resistance to xenophobic reaction and the rare opportunity to appear tougher on security than the President, have clearly opted for the latter. Politically, it's probably the correct choice. If the deal fails, they can claim credit for 'securing our ports'. If the deal goes through, they can use the issue to innoculate against appearing 'weak on security'. The very definition of win-win.

The Republican response, by contrast, has been a political disaster. For 5 years, congressional Republicans have toed the administration line on all matters of security and foreign policy. To think that they can distance themselves from the administration on these issues now is a joke. Some, like John McCain, appear to have taken this fact into account when they formulated their response. The majority of others, however, appear to have lost sight of their long-term political interests in their rush to appear 'tougher' than the Democrats.

Which brings us to the time extension for further review of the deal, offered so considerately by the Dubai company itself. Many commentators see this as nothing more than a chance for the White House to back-pedal and save face in some way - that the deal is dead. Nothing could be further from the truth. The extension is indeed a chance to back-pedal and save face, but for congressional Republicans. With the extension in place, the Republicans can justify scuttling any Democrat legislation regarding the deal - "We'll get a chance to review, what more do you want?". After a month or two of going over the same info the US agencies went over when they approved the deal, the Republicans will announce that it's Kosher (maybe they'll add a condition or two that Dubai will happily accept). And to look like they did something 'tough', they'll probably introduce legislation to increase spending on container inspections and port security by US Customs and the Coast Guard.

So my prediction is that the deal will go through, and that the Republicans will sustain some damage at the polls because of it, but no where near the damage they'll sustain if they decide to really fight the administration on this issue.

O Happy Day!

Tuesday was one of the happiest days of my life. Mostly because the American TV press does such a bad job. Let me explain.

They generally report the facts of given story correctly, but they do a terrible job of analyzing that story. For example, let’s say a senator criticizes the president. Does the press consider whether the senator’s criticism is valid? Barely. Do they consider the long term policy effects? Maybe. Or do they consider the senator’s partisan and electoral motivations and the short term political results? Almost exclusively. All that matters is the horse race. The only things analyzed are the cynical personal motivations of the players in question and their marginal political gains.

One of the many other things the cable press does badly is choose stories. How many stories do I have to see of missing pretty white girls? Or judges giving short sentences to child molesters? Or newlyweds getting lost at sea? This is not news, this is sensationalism.

But every once in a while bad TV journalism is just what’s needed. As everyone knows, last Saturday, Dick Cheney shot his 78 year old hunting buddy in the face. By actual journalistic standards, this is a minor story. Even the attempted half-assed cover-up is a minor story. But that didn’t stop the cable political talk shows from jumping up and down all over it. And thank God! Because bad TV news is the only venue that can do justice to such a wonderful story.

On Tuesday John Stewart’s the Daily Show churned out 15 minutes of solid gold humor. At one point the screen had a banner that read “Vice President’s Bullet Intercepted by Man’s Face”. I can’t remember the last time my heart was filled with such unadulterated joy! To be fair, my reaction was partly partisan. But mostly I could not believe what an incredibly funny thing it was that the Vice President had shot a 78 year old man in the face. Seriously.

But it isn’t news. But it is a profound moment in American pop culture. It ranks up there with Elvis rocking-n-rolling on Ed Sullivan and George H. W. Bush puking all over a Japanese state banquet. And it touches a chord in our consciousness in the same way. And where better does such a story belong than on a show like Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, where they show things like poodles pedaling tricycles? When ultimately meaningless but bizarre and hilarious and compelling things like this happen only bad TV journalism can give the story the treatment it deserves.