A couple of days ago, Ross Douthat wrote a column arguing that the Iraq War had a transformational effect on American politics. I argued back that in the Obama Era, our foreign policy has changed little, while our domestic policy has changed a lot:
To believe that Iraq was responsible for this, you have to adopt the perverse view that a huge foreign policy failure was responsible for (a) a continuation of that very foreign policy, but (b) a repudiation of Bush’s completely unrelated domestic policy. That doesn’t strike me as very plausible.
Actually, it strikes me as quite plausible indeed. Post-Cold War American foreign policy has almost always featured more continuity than change from administration to administration, and this has held true even after failed or mismanaged wars. Presidents and parties may be punished at the polls, but grand strategy is rarely altered there: The same elites keep circulating, the same programs and alliances and commitments continue, the same basic ideas about America’s role in the world endure....Obama got us out of Iraq in just one [term]...and that was all that was explicitly expected of him: Ending the occupation was the break with the Bush era that the public wanted, and with that accomplished it’s not surprising that the Obama White House would continue Bush’s second-term policies on other fronts, or that the public would more or less accepted this continuity.
This is a reasonable point. For all the sound and fury, U.S. foreign policy is a pretty bipartisan affair and has been for a long time. Democrats and Republicans share most of the same basic framework about America's role in the world, with only modest changes of emphasis from one administration to the next. So Obama's continuity with Bush's foreign policy is hardly a surprise.
But you still need to make the case that Iraq had a transformative effect on American domestic policy. So what was it? Yes, the liberal blogosphere was initially energized by the war, but the plain truth is that the blogosphere's bark was always bigger than its bite. At a policy level, Obama staffed his economic team largely with familiar faces from the Clinton administration and followed their Clintonian advice. He passed a healthcare bill that was more conservative than Clinton's. He passed a financial reform bill that progressives almost universally derided as too limited. He repealed DADT, but that was obviously the end result of a long-term trend that was decades in the making.
No, what's really startling about Obama is that given everything he inherited—the Iraq War, the financial collapse, a scandal-plagued Republican Party, huge majorities in Congress—his "era" lasted a scant 24 months. He got a fair amount done in that 24 months, but as progressive revolutions go, it was a mighty short one.
Obviously we can't turn back the clock and see what would have happened without the war, but I simply don't see the transformative changes Douthat does. He makes a comparison with the domestic political consequences of the Vietnam era—"the hastened crack-up of the New Deal coalition, the birth of neoconservatism in its intellectual and popular forms, the undercutting of Great Society liberalism just as the grand welfare state project seemed about to be completed"—but this is telling mostly because he's right about Vietnam. It did have a huge impact. The Iraq War has had nothing like that. We got 24 months of modest liberal progress, and that's it.
Without the war, that progress would have been different. Maybe smaller. That's true. I don't want to argue the absurd proposition that Iraq had no effect on American politics. But considering what a debacle it was, I've mainly been gobsmacked at just how little effect it's had. Hell, as near as I can tell, the American public isn't really even war weary. If Obama declared war on Iran (after a suitable period of saber rattling, of course), I think the public would be on his side. And if the Iraq War hasn't even made us war weary, what are the odds that the rest of its impact has been more than minimal?
POSTSCRIPT: Let me put this another way. Suppose you slept through the past dozen years and woke up today. Somebody told you that we had a big financial collapse in 2007-08; a Democrat won the presidency; he passed a stimulus bill to pull us out of economic collapse; finally passed a version of healthcare reform; passed some other liberal legislation; and then lost big in the 2010 midterms. Would any of that—or anything else you learned about—make you shake your head in amazement and figure that you must have missed something? Like, say, a long and bitter overseas war? I don't think so. It would all seem like politics as usual.
In the LA Times today, classical music critic Mark Swed reviewed Yuja Wang's performance of Scriabin's Sixth Sonata. He says Wang played it for "beauty and thrills":
But she also raced through the sonata, treating it as something to be so fully mastered that it might lose its power to corrupt the spirit with its huge portions of musical decadence.
I love this. Not just because I don't understand a word of it. That's to be expected since I know essentially nothing about music. I love it because I can't even conceive of how someone might come up with that particular string of words to describe a musical experience. Where did they come from? What was going through Swed's mind when he put them down on paper? Did this thought occur to him naturally, or did he have to work hard on that sentence to make it express the way he felt? And did he really feel that the tempo of Wang's performance was somehow motivated by a desire to cut through the sonata's "power to corrupt the spirit"?
I have no idea. It's like reading Ulysses. Or perhaps a description of a cricket test. The words are demonstrably in English, and the syntax makes sense, but nothing else does.
Anyway, you can probably tell by now that I'm having trouble coming up with anything to write about today, so at this point I'm just blathering. But I sat down on the sofa with the newspaper a few minutes ago and then Domino jumped onto my lap. I didn't want to toss her off right away, so I gave her a few minutes of snoozing by reading the whole entertainment section,1 including Swed's review. And it just stonkered me, especially the sentence above. But let's give this post a veneer of seriousness anyway by turning it into a teachable moment. For those of you who know music better than me (a lot better, hopefully), read the review and discuss in comments. What should I have taken away from it?
1Nickel version: Jack Nelson was a great reporter; Lil Wayne's new album has a few good moments; the architecture of the new Perot museum in Dallas is "cynical"; American Idol needs some changes to reverse its declining fortunes; and next year's Oscars telecast will be on March 2.
Via Twitter, William Kramer points out something funny. Here's a review of Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig's The Bankers' New Clothesexcerpted by Amazon:
Maybe regulators will finally listen to Admati and Hellwig after the next financial crisis. (Kevin Drum MotherJones.com)
I'm perfectly happy for this snippet to be memorialized, since I know what Admati and Hellwig said and I happen to agree with them. Still, that sentence was written based solely on various internet conversations that were making the rounds a few weeks ago. As my post about their book said, "I haven't read it." Generally speaking, it's probably best for publishers' blurbs to be restricted to people who have at least pretended to read the work in question, no?
North Dakota won our Anti-Choice March Madness tourney last week, and for good reason. On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed the country's most restrictive abortion ban into law, making it the clear leader in what Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards recently called a "state-by-state race to the bottom on women's health."
The state now outlaws abortions at as early as six weeks gestation, but it doesn't stop there. Dalrymple also signed measures banning abortions sought because of genetic abnormalities in the fetus, like Down Syndrome, and another measure requiring that doctors who perform abortions at the state's one clinic have admitting privileges at a local hospital. (The admitting privileges rule has been used in other states, like Mississippi, to make it impossible for providers to meet the standard.) And if that wasn't enough, the legislature also approved a bill to include a "personhood" measure on the 2014 ballot, asking voters to decide whether all fertilized eggs should have the same rights as adults.
The state has only one Planned Parenthood office, which focuses on education and outreach and doesn't provide health care at all. But even that has drawn ire from legislators, who have tried to block Planned Parenthood from providing sex education to at-risk teens. It's gotten so bad there that even some Republican women in the legislature have come out and said that the state has gone too far.
I talked to Planned Parenthood's Richards on Monday about what's happening in North Dakota and other the states across the country:
Mother Jones: So, North Dakota. It can't really get any more restrictive than that, can it?
Richards: I can't even imagine what else they could think of. Just putting women behind bars? I don't know. I'm assuming part of the reason they keep doing bills on bills on bills is to leave no stone unturned here. But I have been encouraged to see the numbers of Republicans and members of the medical community who are at least speaking out publicly, which is really an important thing, like this rally by Republicans in the state. So at least there is bipartisan opposition to this, unfortunately just not in the legislature.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the first of two marriage equality cases, and the best argument the chief defender of California's ban on same-sex marriage could muster was that his side would ultimately lose.
Americans' understanding of marriage is "changing and changing rapidly in this country, as people throughout the country engage in an earnest debate over whether the age-old definition of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples," argued Charles Cooper, who represented Californians supporting Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage. He was trying to convince the justices that Prop. 8 does not violate the constitutional rights of same-sex couples. In doing so, though, he acknowledged that acceptance of same-sex marriage rights is galloping forward, and he argued that the Supreme Court should allow that process to continue without interference from the Supreme Court. In other words, Californians whose marriage rights were taken from them at the ballot box should wait patiently for the country to evolve as quickly as ambitious Democratic politicians. (On Wednesday, the court will hear a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans federal recognition of same-sex marriages performed in states when they are legal.)
It's never a good idea to predict the results of a Supreme Court case based on oral arguments, and the strongest presentation at the Court isn't always the one that wins. But from his first, hoarse remarks, it was clear that Cooper had walked into the heat of battle lightly armed. An experienced litigator who served in the Reagan-era Justice Department, Cooper took up the defense of Prop. 8 after California officials declined to back the law in court. He was supposed to argue that the state had a legitimate interest (other than simple bigotry) in banning same-sex couples from getting married, but he had difficulty finding one.
Ruben Diaz, a 69-year-old Democratic state senator from the Bronx, was one of the best-received speakers at the National Organization for Marriage's March for Marriage on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. His message, shouted out in two languages (with a sidekick yelling the English), was fairly succinct:
"One man! Un hombre! One woman! Una mujer! One man! Un hombre! One woman! Una mujer! One man! Un hombre! One woman! Una mujer! One man! Un hombre! One woman! Una mujer! One man! Un hombre! One woman! Una mujer! One man! Un hombre! One woman! Una mujer! One man! Un hombre! One woman! Una mujer! One man! Un hombre! One woman! Una mujer!"
You get the picture. Diaz is the Edith S. Childs of the anti-equality movement.
Though NOM's rally features the loud music and chants of a pep rally (also: bagpipes, grown men dressed like Buckingham palace guards, and dudes wearing red sashes), it has a different vibe: that of coping. With public opinion swinging wildly in favor of marriage equality, dozens of politicians in both parties following suit, and the Supreme Court poised on the brink of one (if not two) landmark decisions, the once dominant campaign against gay marriage is up against the ropes. Even a majority of young Republicans now believe same-sex marriage should be legal. The movement that conservative columnist George Will noted is "literally dying" decided to hold its rally in front of the Museum of Natural History—just a few paces, that is, from actual fossils.
NOM is attempting to convince its political allies, the media, the public, and perhaps itself that, despite appearances, it has been a good year for the anti-equality movement—that its argument is still a winning one.
On the National Mall, this happened in several stages. The first was grief. Diane Hess of Maryland was standing stage left with a sign that left little room for ambiguity. "Same sex marriage + the liberal media + Obama = the new Axis of Evil." From her perspective, the nation is totally screwed. "I do see us in a worse place, in a more godless place in 20 years," she said. Same-sex marriage is here, and it's only the beginning. "There is going to be a persecution of the Christian church." Sarah Stites, a student at Grove City College and one of the few actual young people at a rally was only a bit more bullish. "It seems to be heading that way," she said, when I ask about marriage equality. "I feel like people my age aren't getting all the information. They're being swayed by the media."
"Eventually there is gonna be a backlash," she remarked, "but I do think think we're going in the direction of same-sex marriage."
The second stage was doubt. As this line of thinking goes, everything you've been told about support for marriage equality should be questioned. "The Field Poll only said there was [38] percent support for traditional marriage," said NOM president Brian Brown, referring to a poll of Proposition 8 in California. "And guess how that turned out!" (Never mind that the survey was taken five years ago.) Martha Marsh of Maryland told me much the same thing: "First of all, I don't think the majority of Americans are behind same-sex marriage—I think a lot of politicians are for it." Wei Feng, who drove down from Rochester, New York, with his two daughters for the march on the Supreme Court, insisted that there's a "silent majority" that still opposes marriage equality. They'll speak up; just give them time.
The last stage of coping set aside the skepticism entirely and fixated on a fact-free assertion: young people really are on our side. "They are perpetually telling you in the media that young people are supporting same-sex marriage," Brown said at one point. "I'm gonna tell you something: That is not true." Never mind that the Pew study last week found that 70 percent of adults born after 1981 support marriage equality. Brown had something more powerful than a scientific survey: an anecdote. That is, a child: Grace Evans, an 11-year-old from Minnesota who became the next great hope of the anti-equality movement earlier this month when she testified before the Minnesota legislature in opposition to same-sex marriage. Evans, after explaining why her parents were awesome, posed a question to the lawmakers: "Which parent do I not need—my mom or my dad?"
On Tuesday, Brown showed a two-minute video of Evans' testimony on the big screen. When the audience had settled down, he got to the point: "The next time someone tries to intimidate you or they call you a name because you oppose gay marriage, think about that 11 year-old girl."
There is a sharp generational divide among Republicans on the issue. Overall, 56 percent of Republicans oppose legal gay marriage. But I asked the CBS polling team for a breakdown by age, and the result was that among Republicans under 50, a plurality of 49 percent supports legalizing gay marriage, versus only 46 percent who oppose it.
Republican leaders are painfully aware of this, I'm sure. They know they're losing the gay marriage battle, even among their own partisans. The only question is how to make a passably graceful U-turn without pissing off their base of angry old tea partiers too badly. It's going to be a challenge.
Sorry for the brief radio silence over the past couple of hours. I've been in a state of minor meltdown.
Here's the story. About a month ago I went looking for a draft of a magazine article I was writing and discovered it was gone. In fact, my entire folder of Word documents was gone. I blamed it on Windows, restored from backup, and forgot about it.
Today, I went looking for an image, and eventually discovered that several thousand files were missing from my folder of images. After a bit of sleuthing, I discovered that other files and folders were gone too. The culprit, it turned out, was SugarSync, a program I use to keep all my files synced between computers. Last Friday, after a long period of nonuse, I opened up my notebook computer and apparently SugarSync went nuts. At 4:45 it began deleting a seemingly random bunch of folders. At 4:55 it went to work on my images folder and deleted 4,661 images. At 5:55 it stopped.
I've restored them all. However, after a bit more looking around I discovered a couple of old folders missing. Apparently they were deleted so long ago that they're no longer on any of my backups. I just didn't notice it. And since all of my computers are synced, they've been deleted everywhere.
As you can imagine, there was minor panic involved in all of this, and I've been frantically looking around, trying to figure what other stuff might be missing. I also turned off SugarSync, but just discovered that it had turned itself back on while I was out of the house getting a blood test.
No permanent harm has been done. The old folders have stuff I don't need, and the newer ones were all backed up. But obviously I need to find a new syncing program. I certainly don't trust SugarSync anymore. Anyone have any suggestions? Does Dropbox allow you to sync existing folders, or does it still require you to put everything in its special Dropbox folder?
TPM's Sahil Kapur tweets about today's Supreme Court hearings over Proposition 8, the California initiative that bans gay marriage:
Just left Prop 8 case. Justices were very skeptical that the case even has standing. Flirted with throwing it out....There was a spirited debate on the merits as well. If they rule, it's too close to call. Kennedy divided, Roberts leaning for Prop 8....Roberts, Alito seemed especially eager to throw out Prop 8 case. Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, Ginsburg also skeptical. Scalia wanted to rule.
I hate this. Technically, there's an argument to be made that backers of Prop 8 don't have proper standing to sue in this case. And it's easy to say that this would be a fine example of conservatives being hoist by their own petard, since, as Erwin Chemerinsky has pointed out, they're the ones who have been so eager in the past to deny standing in cases involving civil rights, environmental protection, and the separation of church and state.
But this is a case in which lack of standing is purely artificial. The state of California, which would normally be on the hook to defend its own laws, has declined to do so. This decision means that a properly enacted constitutional amendment literally can't be defended in court, and that's just wrong. Like it or not, half the state voted for Prop 8, and one way or another, their interests deserve their day in court.
This is hardly the first case like this. National security cases get tossed out all the time on Catch-22-like grounds. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. Someone should have standing to defend Prop 8, and the case should be decided on its merits. The law may be an ass, but it should at least try not to be a coward.
Brad Plumer points out today that nothing bad seems to have happened after the payroll tax holiday ended on January 1. Why not?
One possibility is that many workers aren't even aware that their taxes have risen yet. A new survey from Bankrate.com finds that just 30 percent of Americans have cut back on spending as a result of the payroll tax hike. A full 48 percent of Americans didn't notice the change at all.
I'm skeptical. If economics means anything at all, it shouldn't really matter if consumers "notice" any specific aspect of their financial lives. All that should matter is the size and distribution of aggregate income. If that goes down, it should affect the economy.
At the same time, I don't think a fall in income is necessarily supposed to affect the economy instantly. Maybe we just need to give this a few months to kick in. There might be no need to invent a mystery here.
Also, I'd point out that people are notoriously bad at answering survey questions like this. I'd really like to see this question asked in a non-leading way, such as: "Did anything happen, good or bad, to your finances at the beginning of the year? If yes, what?" Then see how many people fail to mention that their payroll taxes went up. I'll bet it would be a lot higher than 48 percent.
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that was explicitly expected of him: Ending the occupation was the break with the Bush era that the public wanted, and with that accomplished it’s not surprising that the Obama White House would continue Bush’s second-term policies on other fronts, or that the public would more or less accepted this continuity.
spirit with its huge portions of musical decadence.
Prop 8....Roberts, Alito seemed especially eager to throw out Prop 8 case. Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, Ginsburg also skeptical. Scalia wanted to rule.
