American Review

The unforgivable sin

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 00:23:59 +1000

With seemingly nothing beyond the pale for Republicans where contraceptive and reproductive rights are concerned, Nicole Hemmer wonders what Todd Akin did differently:

Why did the GOP unite so solidly against Akin, while letting other offenders off?

It wasn’t his affronts to women or science or the Romney campaign. It was that Akin made his remarks while he could still be replaced, and Republicans saw an opportunity to salvage a winnable Senate seat.

Sound cynical? Consider the following:

Akin’s position on abortion matches the GOP platform. Akin holds that no woman should have access to abortion even in cases of rape. That may seem like a fringe position, but since 1984 the party’s platform has included support of the Human Life Amendment, which would outlaw abortion and makes no exception for rape or incest.

Republican legislators already differentiate types of rape in abortion policy. Okay, Akin isn’t going to win any support with the phrase “legitimate rape”. But the idea behind it — that the type of rape matters — has the backing of several prominent Republicans. High on the list? Vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, who co-sponsored a “forcible rape” bill with Akin. They added the word “forcible” to a bill concerning insurance coverage of abortion procedures. The language meant that victims of statutory rape would not be covered.

The Republican Party is a science-free zone. Akin’s belief in the magical properties of the female body leaves him — and his party — open to ridicule. But that’s not a deal-breaker in today’s GOP, where presidential candidates hesitate to embrace evolution or climate change. Even Ronald Reagan once said trees cause pollution. Scientific literacy is not a prerequisite for electability or popularity in the Republican Party.

Side-tracking the Romney campaign isn’t cause for resignation. Otherwise Romney would have had to abandon the ticket ages ago. The Massachusetts governor steps on his own message at least once a week. He did it again on Friday with a joke about the President’s birth certificate. The campaign spent the rest of the day answering questions about birthers rather than the economy.

[Read more]

"Americans disagree about important issues. But the division is not simply between rich and poor..."

Thu, 31 May 2012 13:05:32 +1000

“Americans disagree about important issues. But the division is not simply between rich and poor voters, or religious and secular, or rich and poor states. Each of these factors is important, but the true differences lie in subsets of the population: rich versus poor voters in poor states, high-income religious versus high-income secular voters, red states versus blue states among rich voters, and so forth.”

- Andrew Gelman’s Red State, Blue States, Rich State, Poor State (2008) lays out America’s electoral divides.

"Here is some positive and even practical advice on what to do about a country whose private economy..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 12:22:47 +1000

“Here is some positive and even practical advice on what to do about a country whose private economy and culture are still highly resilient, but whose ability to address public problems is being destroyed…”

- James Fallows gathers together some recommended reading on one of the United States’s more intractable problems, the filibuster.

"I don’t think there’s a more quintessentially American institution of civil society than the..."

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:49:07 +1000

“I don’t think there’s a more quintessentially American institution of civil society than the Methodist Church. An 18th century offshoot of Anglican Protestantism, American Methodism is infused with the cultural, institutional, and political character of the United States. And nowhere is this more clear than in the governance structure of the church. First and foremost, the congregants are sovereign. Everything — and I mean everything — can ultimately be put to a popular vote. Second, there’s a Constitution, which not only requires a supermajority of the legislature (oh yes, more on this in a sec) to change, but also must be ratified by the provincial bodies. At the national level, there are three branches — a legislature (the General Conference) that can write/amend a body of laws, an Executive (the Council of Bishops; there’s no singular pope-like figure), and a Judiciary (the Judicial Council). And while the Council of Bishops is obviously restricted to clergy members, it is ultimately popular elections (either direct or indirect) that populate all of the positions.

More fascinating is the federalism of the system, which looks something like a cross between American federalism and the structure of the 19th century American political parties. Churches are grouped into conferences, with each conference headed by an elected bishop. The conferences serve as provincial governments. Each conference has an annual meeting (confusingly called the annual conference), which is attended by all pastors and an equal number of delegates elected by the individual churches and which serves as the legislative session for the year — ordaining clergy, setting budgets, goals, and policies. And, of course, every four years, the annual conference selects delegates to the national general conference. The general conference — the meeting of the national legislature — is the only entity that can make general policy (theological, governance, or otherwise) for the church.”

- Matt Glassman, who also includes an H.L. Mencken quote:

Whenever a reporter is assigned to cover a Methodist conference, he comes home an atheist.

At The Nation, historian Rick Perlstein says that he can sum up...

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:40:08 +1000

At The Nation, historian Rick Perlstein says that he can sum up his books in four words: “Republicans, crazy; Democrats, stupid.”

"This seems to be a pattern running through Republican attempts to unseat Obama this campaign season...."

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:35:00 +1000

“This seems to be a pattern running through Republican attempts to unseat Obama this campaign season. Conservatives are convinced that the President was given a free pass by a napping media in the 2008 campaign. They believe he was insufficiently vetted, and that both reporters and the campaign of Republican nominee John McCain failed to draw the public’s attention to parts of Obama’s biography that the right considered troubling. After three years in office and with two books penned by the President readily available in stores across the United States, many on the right are still firmly convinced that Obama is a mystery man about whom the American public knows little.”

- screwrocknroll:

My new piece at American Review could, in one sense, be read as concern trolling, but it wasn’t written in that spirit. Springing off the Joe Ricketts story, it’s a discussion of how so many Republican electioneering attempts thus far in the campaign have been targeted against the president as conservatives imagine him to be, which, I believe, is something different to how the rest of America sees its president.

I find the conservative take on Obama, and the Obama presidency, rather interesting. Not so much the really out there stuff — birtherism, Kenyan anti-colonialism, etc. — but the things that run-of-the-mill base members believe. What makes it all such a mess is the overlap between the right wing fringe and the Republican mainstream, and how difficult it is to separate the two. For instance, many conservatives believe Obama is a dunce (the teleprompter, the idea that he relied on affirmative action for his education) and an arrogant fraud (the “celebrity” thing). Undoubtedly that’s a belief that, for a lot of people, is motivated by uncomplicated racism — but for many others it arises from a sincere failure to understand the appeal of the man or his policies, and so, to these folks, accusations of racism look like an attempt to silence criticism of the president.

I’m also fascinated by the constant accusations on the right that Obama has wantonly disregarded the Constitution. That’s because those accusations are so similar in tone to the ones the left made against George W. Bush in his presidency. I’m not going to fall into the trap of false equivalency: the left had an immeasurably better case than the right does. And though some of the right’s criticisms are grounded in fair concerns about the Administration’s foreign policy and anti-terror tactics, for the most part, they’re fairly groundless. But then, perhaps the left mixed in a lot of groundless accusations against the Bush administration along with its multitude of very real concerns?

The reason this happens is that America is a nation founded on an idea*. The only problem is that no one in America can agree on what that idea is, although they all think they’re personal conception of the idea is a universal one. And there’s a widespread belief that the Constitution is a pretty good attempt at capturing the idea. (The Declaration of Independence is an even better one.) So if you’re someone for whom the policies of a president like Barack Obama do not accord with your ideas of what America should be, then it makes sense that you will consider them in breach of the Constitution — the document that explains what America should be.

Anyway, this is venturing into territory I haven’t fully thought through. But my column is here. Read!

——

*This is a piece of American exceptionalism of which I firmly believe the truth. I can think of few other nations to which this applies; the states of the old world are ethnic entities, while few new world nations share such ideological origins. Australia, for instance, was founded out of a desire to preserve the colonial outpost’s Britishness, and we’ve spent our entire history trying to imagine what being Australian might be. See here for more of my discussion on this.

“The Internet will be forever grateful for the...

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:43:13 +1000

“The Internet will be forever grateful for the introduction of the term ‘black metrosexual Abraham Lincoln’.”

Right you are, Adam Serwer (“Jeremiah Wright is Not the Silver Bullet”).

[Slate video screengrab from here]

"Jimmy Carter did indeed make a gutsy go/no-go call. It turned out to be a tactical, strategic, and..."

Thu, 03 May 2012 15:06:35 +1000

“Jimmy Carter did indeed make a gutsy go/no-go call. It turned out to be a tactical, strategic, and political disaster. You can read the blow-by-blow in Mark Bowden’s retrospective of “The Desert One Debacle.” With another helicopter, the mission to rescue U.S. diplomats then captive in Tehran might well have succeeded — and Carter is known still to believe that if the raid had succeeded, he would probably have been re-elected. Full discussion another time, but I think he’s right. (Even with the fiasco, and a miserable “stagflation” economy, the 1980 presidential race was very close until the very end.)”

- James Fallows is unimpressed with Mitt Romney’s contention that “even Jimmy Carter” would have given the order to kill Osama bin Laden.

"In fact, one of my arguments is that through all of these waves of change, the two big traditions..."

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:26:15 +1000

“In fact, one of my arguments is that through all of these waves of change, the two big traditions are not liberalism and conservatism — which are loose phrases that change their meaning in different periods — it’s the Hamiltonian and the Jeffersonian traditions. These two views go back to Alexander Hamilton, who was the first secretary of the Treasury and to some degree was prime minister for George Washington during his administration, and Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton’s bitter enemy. Around these two figures, from the very early years of the republic, coalesced two views of the proper role of government in the economy. Neither view is laissez-faire. Both the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians are willing to use government for their particular purposes, but their purposes differ.

The Hamiltonians are nationalist — they see the nation as more important than the states and the cities, which are just components. Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, through even to Eisenhower and Nixon, want government, business and banking to collaborate often on a very large scale for national economic development. And in different periods they are denounced by the left or the right or the center — so this isn’t a liberal or conservative thing.

The Jeffersonian vision is not a vision of an unregulated free market; it’s a vision of local communities made up of small banks, small businesses and small government. And so the Jeffersonians, a category which includes William Jennings Bryan in the late 19th century and a lot of populist conservatives today, are perfectly willing to have the government intervene to protect small businesses and small banks against big businesses and big banks. One of the major forms of protectionism and privilege throughout American history — which continues today — is the popularity of special privileges for small businesses, even though they may be very inefficient from a Hamiltonian point of view in terms of the national economy.”

- Michael Lind talking to Salon’s Toby Ash.

"The evening is a result of the fact, feature or bug, that our nation’s capital is located well..."

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:12:56 +1000

“The evening is a result of the fact, feature or bug, that our nation’s capital is located well outside our nation’s media, entertainment and financial capitals, forcing those who call the political capital home and consider themselves terribly important to prove their importance by tricking actual famous and important people into attending a party much lamer than a random Wednesday night back where they live.”

- Alex Pareene, “No one gets lucky at Washington’s prom,” Salon, April 30, 2012

zainyk: Karl Rove has issued his first election map of...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:14:05 +1000

zainyk:

Karl Rove has issued his first election map of 2012.

Solid/Lean EVs:#Obama 284, #Mitt 172, Toss-up 82

What is this? A ploy by Rove to lull Democrats into a sense of false security, a genuine indication of a forthcoming Obama landslide, or just an artefact of a Republican base that hasn’t yet coalesced behind its candidate.

(The answer is almost certainly the last. Don’t expect South Carolina to remain a toss-up for long.)

"When The Interpreter, the Lowy Institute blog, which I edit, started in late 2007, it was with the..."

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:57:00 +1000

“When The Interpreter, the Lowy Institute blog, which I edit, started in late 2007, it was with the ambition that it could be part of a belated rise of Australian political blogging. Belated because political blogging had taken off in the US in the early 2000s, to the point where prominent US bloggers were finding bigger audiences than some mainstream media outlets. But it has just never happened in Australia the way it did in the US. To borrow a phrase from a European observer who has similar frustrations about blogging on that continent, Australia has political blogs, but it doesn’t have a political blogosphere.”

- Editor of the Lowy Interpreter blog Sam Roggeveen says that the Australian media’s focus on Twitter means reporters miss out on the importance of a vibrant, American-style blogosphere.

This is an essay from “The China campaign,” our newly-released May issue of American Review. The entire magazine is available for iPad at Apple’s iTunes store, but we’ll be putting select articles up on our website over the coming weeks and months.

The Wall Street Journal reports a Pentagon prank: WASHINGTON—In...

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:44:00 +1000

The Wall Street Journal reports a Pentagon prank:

WASHINGTON—In a Pentagon hallway hung an austere portrait of a Navy man lost at sea in 1908, with his brass buttons, blue-knit uniform and what looks like meticulously blow-dried hair.

Wait. Blow-dried hair?

The portrait of “Ensign Chuck Hord,” framed in the heavy gilt typical of government offices, may be the greatest—or perhaps only—prank in Pentagon art history. “Chuck Hord” can’t be found in Navy records of the day. It isn’t even a real painting. The textured, 30-year-old photo is actually of Capt. Eldridge Hord III, 53 years old, known to friends as “Tuck,” a military retiree with a beer belly and graying hair who lives in Burke, Va.

The Veepstakes circus

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:11:42 +1000

The Veepstakes circus:

Blogbook editor Jonathan Bradley takes a look at the inevitable fuss and carry-on in the press as Mitt Romney starts his hunt for a running mate:

The fun thing about the Veepstakes is that it gives the media something to talk about in the interminable months between the end of the primary season and the conventions that mark the beginning of the fall campaign. That this period coincides with the summer is particularly serendipitous. As I’ve mentioned before, America gets slightly silly during the summer months, and nothing is conducive to silliness like the speculation surrounding a candidate’s choice of running mate. [Read more]

Five simple ideas from the Antipodes

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:01:00 +1000

Five simple ideas from the Antipodes:

If I were in big-think mode, I might say something about the contrasts a superficially similar society, like Australia, offers to the modern United States. How much more egalitarian the culture feels, in a thousand detailed ways that remind me of the age-of-abundance California of the Pat Brown era. And this despite the heightened local concerns about a “two-track economy” and the distortions created by a Gold Rush-scale resource boom in the mining areas. How much less poisonous the disputes over the role of government seem — what they call “Medicare” is like our Medicare, but of course it covers everyone, of all ages — despite flamboyantly contentious Parliamentary politics. (Plus mandatory voting! Hard for an American even to contemplate.) How much more authority the “mainstream” media still have, as was true for America back in the Walter Cronkite era … [Read more]

James Fallows has just returned to the United States after spending a month in Sydney. He came home with a list of five Australian ideas America should adopt for itself.

Caught in the Rush

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:56:58 +1000

Caught in the Rush:

Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Sandra Fluke have damaged Mitt Romney, writes Nicole Hemmer, while the talk radio host has wriggled away relatively unscathed:

For radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, April is shaping up to be far from the cruellest month. In March, Limbaugh was on the ropes, caught in a maelstrom of his own making. It began when he called a young law student a “slut” and a “prostitute” for her advocacy of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.

An outpouring of outrage followed: public outcry, fleeing advertisers, rumours of the show’s demise. The backlash surprised most observers. This was, after all, the man who mainstreamed neologisms like “feminazi” for advocates of women’s rights and “info-babe” for any newscaster of the XX-persuasion.

Intense as it was, the squall passed quickly for America’s most popular rightwing radio personality. Check the scorecard. A month after the event, a grand total of two stations have dumped the program. The 600 sponsors who fled the show have now mostly (if quietly) returned. Limbaugh claims ratings are up.

While The Rush Limbaugh Show seems to have escaped largely unscathed, the Republican Party is still surveying the damage. Recent polls suggest the toll could be quite high. Likely nominee Mitt Romney was neck-and-neck with Barack Obama in early March. Today he’s nine points behind nationally and lagging even further in key swing states. [Read more]

"The comment seemed all too apt, an apparent admission by a campaign insider of two widely held..."

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 11:09:05 +1000

“The comment seemed all too apt, an apparent admission by a campaign insider of two widely held suspicions about Mitt Romney: that he is a) utterly devoid of any ideological convictions and b) filled with aluminum powder.”

- David Javerbaum, “A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney,” The New York Times, March 31, 2012

"The U.S. military has many virtues, but it is not good at running other countries. And it is not..."

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:02:38 +1100

“The U.S. military has many virtues, but it is not good at running other countries. And it is not likely to get much better at it with practice. We have a capital-intensive army that places a premium on firepower, and we are a country whose own unusual, melting-pot history has made us less sensitive to the enduring power of nationalism, ethnicity, and other local forces.”

- At Foreign Policy, Stephen M. Walt lists the top 10 lessons the US should learn from the Iraq War.

The underdog frontrunner

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:57:02 +1100

The underdog frontrunner:

John Barron:

Mitt Romney’s chirpy “Mornin’ y’all!” to potential voters at the Farmers Market in Jackson, Mississippi this weekend raised a few eyebrows, as did his claim to have eaten “a biscuit and some cheesy grits” for breakfast.

To some (who took it way too much on face value) it was simply awkward pandering; to others with a greater sense of irony, it showed Romney has a sense of humour; others saw Romney finding a new gear: one that could just possibly see him cruising towards November.

Something unexpected has happened since Super Tuesday: Romney suddenly seems quite comfortable playing the underdog in the Deep South… [read more]

The right opponent

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:14:00 +1100

The right opponent:

Edward Okulicz says Mitt Romney should have targeted Rick Santorum, not Newt Gingrich, early in the Republican race:

Mitt Romney still looks the favourite for the Republican nomination, but his strategy of taking aim primarily at Newt Gingrich might have made his quest harder than it needs to be. By attacking Gingrich and taking some of his votes, Romney may have in fact made it harder to win the nomination than if he had kept Gingrich afloat through a few more contests. Effectively, the primary election has taken on an almost non-monotonic quality.

A non-monotonic election is one in which the leader faces a number of candidates whose supporters’ preferences are asymmetrical, and the ease of winning at the end is determined partially by who ends up second. It is an uncommon occurrence, but occasionally found in elections that use the alternative vote.

Let’s picture a jungle primary, of the kind that’s used in Louisiana, for instance. If you are the frontrunner in a jungle primary, and have a plurality but not a majority of the votes, the first round of voting will decide your opponent. You would want to face the more polarising candidate: the one who is less likely to pick up supporters from the excluded candidate. Your best strategy is to hope the more polarising candidate comes second so you face them at the end. A middle-of-the-road candidate, acceptable to some of your supporters, as well as those who supported the candidate who came third, could pick up enough to topple you. [Read more]