Spin

Stephen Colbert is the Best Revenge

Problem: Republican message-maker Frank Luntz realized that no-one likes Republican ideas (turns out)! Solution: get new ideas? No! Cover your bad ideas with enough misleading language, that no-one actually knows what you stand for! Well I don’t know about you, but when I saw this, I was livid. We expect a certain amount of “spin” in politics, but how dare Republicans use language to trick voters into supporting positions they actually hate. Spin should convince, not manipulate, but here we are. Well, then I remembered this interview. If Frank Luntz is going to spend his life deceiving the American people, we can at least comfort ourselves that he’s endured torture-by-Stephen-Colbert.

Specter of Torture Probe May Provide Cover for Health Care

While others have asked the comparatively tackier question — whether Ted Kennedy’s death itself will push Obama’s health care reforms forward — there’s reason to expect that, leading Democrats notwithstanding, Attorney General Holder’s decision to take the first steps towards prosecuting the perpetrators of torture couldn’t have come at a better time.

As Congress left session, Democratic leaders adopted the “wait and see” strategy for dealing with the poisonous climate of baseless lies and fears created by Republican opponents. Give it a month, let the board clear, and opinion-makers could try to regain control of the debate.

If that strategy is to succeed, Democrats could hardly have asked for a better way to clear the board. Last April, a slim majority of Americans favored an investigation into torture, and that margin seems fairly easy to grow. The Republican hegemony on national security is broken, courtesy Bush’s bumbling and deliberately divisive tactics; its former luminaries, and the torture probes’ key opponents, are wildly unpopular; and Obama can distance himself from the probes, if they start to head south, because the public already expects they’re proceeding in spite of, rather than because of him. Renewing the debate on torture also allows Democrats to play to their newfound strength — the war on terror, which more Americans now trust the Democrats to fight — and solidify it going into 2010.

Still, a probe over torture will have to be negotiated skillfully to remain popular, effective, and honorable. There remains little to be gained by prosecuting the footsoldiers who used torture. “I was just following orders” may be a poor moral excuse, but it’s a fairly good legal one, owing to the critical institutional role of the Office of Legal Counsel, and it has a way of inspiring compassion. A probe narrowly tailored to the architects of the plan, those with the real responsibility, could expiate our collective guilt over the Bush years, with few real political or legal “casualties,” while giving the Democrats a chance to rebuild their national brand and brace for the resurgence of the health care debate.

Whether this is deliberate or not, I don’t know. Democrats have a reputation for guilelessness, arguably stemming from a lack of skill rather than a surfeit of honesty. But…

National Review Highlights Five Health Care Freedoms “At Risk” — Do You Have Any of Them?

According to the National Review & Fortune, under the government’s proposed “public option” plan, you stand to lose five basic health care rights. But do you even have them, in the first place?

1. Freedom to choose what’s in your plan: Fortune & NRO worry that you’ll be forced to pay for a better, or worse, health plan than you want. First and foremost, that’s not right — any private plan you’re currently using would survive the creation of the “public option,” so it’s not clear how a government alternative would alter that. But as it stands now, most Americans get insurance through their employers, who offer between 1 and 3 plans at the beginning of employment. How much meaningful choice do you have, today, over the content of those plans?

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs: apparently, several states set a range of possible charges for insurance plans, such that an ill person can’t be charged much more than a healthy person for insurance. We’re told this is evil — but isn’t it just the basic definition of insurance? Risk spreading? And few plans today, anyways, will give breaks to low-cost insureds who maintain a healthy lifestyle. Healthy policyholders are how insurance companies make money, making savings lost minimal.

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage: This freedom may matter to richer people; but many Americans lack the freedom to enroll in any plan, at all. It’s true that the healthy and the reckless won’t be able to enroll in certain ultra-bare bones plans, but when these plans fail, it’s society that bears the cost, and is this such a loss, set against the gain of the many uninsured Americans who benefit from the option?

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan: NRO notwithstanding, under the health care bill, you can keep your old plan. S 102(a)(1)(A) preserves old plans effective when the bill is passed, as is, and affects subsequent private plans only by requiring them to meet minimum standards. Further, the mandatory improvements to care are sensible and helpful. Section 111, for example, bans discrimination against “pre-existing conditions.” This may not matter to some, but for those of us with even modest chronic conditions, this provisions makes a real difference. The “pre-existing condition” rule is the most commonly used weapon in the insurer’s arsenal: companies frequently try to deny coverage on its basis, even when a condition occurs within coverage.

To the extent that the bill would modify existing ERISA plans, too, NRO/CNN fail to mention that ERISA, like the public option, is a scheme that mandates minimum standards for employee plans. Government upwards modification of ERISA minima doesn’t preempt private schemes; it changes existing government standards, no private control lost.

5. Freedom to choose your doctors: here’s the kicker. No-one who has anything less than a “Cadillac” plan has the complete freedom to choose their doctors.

American health care is broken. It’s a deception to hold up the state of modern care as an ideal that stands to be broken.

The “Mob Ad”: Persecution Complexes and a Failure in Messaging, with Some Fair Points in Between

Despite its 2008 successes, 2009 has already been a grim year for Democratic messaging. Yesterday’s “Mob Ad,” which made the rounds on conservative websites, drawing outrage, is no exception.

Regardless of the ad’s factual merits, discussed below, the ad violates a prime rule of messaging, with no discernable excuse: it seems almost calculated to infuriate more people than it’ll convince. There are ways to capitalize on the GOP’s apparent inability to control its lunatic fringe, rapidly becoming its base (birthers, etc.): this ad was certainly not it. Indeed, it’s almost the most offensive way to make a mediocre point. Now is not the time to rest on our laurels. The public relations successes that powered Obama’s election need to be the rule, not the exception. Anything less gives the GOP a chance to capitalize on its own incompetence.

That said, I neither understand nor much respect the GOP outrage over the ad, which appears to stem from the misconception that it targets all Republicans who disagree with President Obama’s policies, rather than just the lunatic fringe. From the ad’s own context it clearly targets only the birthers and other GOP flash mobs, “grassroots,” “astroturf,” or otherwise, bent only on disrupting real policymaking without adding any real substance to the debate. No doubt there are Americans, of any party, concerned or otherwise disturbed by Obama’s policies, and more power to them for raising their voices. Disagreeing with the government is every American’s birthright and patriotic duty, and I would no sooner criticize someone for voicing their opinions, earnestly held, than I would retroactively mock myself for starting this blog. Still, the “Mob Ad” isn’t about them: Twitter notwithstanding, they are not the mob. As you can see by watching the ad, it’s about only the birthers, and people who use Nazi symbols or lynched dolls to make their points, and we should all be able to agree that everyone is better off without them.

Call it DHS-Gate redux, but this is another case of Republicans mistaking a criticism of the fringe for a criticism of the whole. No-one would deny Republican congressmen or constituents the right to raise valid concerns and contribute to the debate on health care, etc. But there are GOP mobs actively frustrating the debate. Not all of the “town hall” mobs are as benign as RedState suggests – again, there are the birthers, the “Obama’s a Nazi” crowd, and more. It’s okay for we Democrats to call them out for the distractions they are, but it’d be more than welcome for the GOP to save us the trouble, by throwing them under the bus themselves, rather than actively helping them. Until they do, it shouldn’t be anathema or a cause for outrage for us to call the GOP out on elements of their side that are hurting the country, and actively making their own party look bad, too. Criticizing the fringe needn’t always implicate the center, and in fact, it rarely does, when done tactfully.

And so we return to the beginning. This ad was not a model for tact, especially knowing, as its drafters should’ve, that the GOP has thin skin. As any first-year law student knows, the defendant takes the plaintiff as she finds him. In building its ad campaigns, the DNC should’ve predicted and avoided this little war, and should in the future scrupulously avoid even the appearance of condescending against dissent.

Guest Post: For a Brief, Shining Moment, Pat Buchanan Looked Reasonable

Thanks to John Casker for providing this guest post!

It’s amazing serendipity that ACG is looking for guest writers. I’ve spent the last four days fuming about two things: a Rachel Maddow clip that’s making the rounds, and the fact that for once I wish I had a soapbox to fume upon but don’t. Well lah-dee-dah, here’s a shiny, clean soapbox with nobody perched upon it. Thanks, A, for the opportunity.

First, the video in question:

If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, scroll to the last couple minutes, but it’s all relevant in my opinion. Coming to the defense of Pat Buchanan has never been high on my Bucket List, and generally speaking I’ve found Ms. Maddow to be a fun watch. Pat’s a gasbag who espouses some really vile things, and even when he’s staking out a moderate position he does it in cringe-worthy fashion. Maddow is articulate, relatively even-keeled, and not so hard left that I would feel embarrassed to introduce her to my parents.

However.

In the exchange above, Maddow deliberately ignores Buchanan’s point in order to get his goat; she’s not nearly stupid enough not to understand what he’s saying. The glee she has in asking him again and again “Pat, are you happy that we have a Latina on the Supreme Court?” is embarrassing; the question is no better than the classic “Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?” What Buchanan is clearly arguing is that this Latina isn’t qualified to be on the Supreme Court, so no, he isn’t happy that Sonia Sotamoyor is likely to be confirmed. NOT being willing to walk into her clumsy trap just so she’ll have tape of him saying he’s happy about it is, frankly, the principled way to go.

I’ll leave the legal analysis to ACG; for all I know she is qualified, and I’ve certainly not heard a cacophonous roar that she isn’t qualified à la Harriet Miers. The trouble is that Maddow barely touches qualifications other than Sotamoyor’s time served; aren’t appointed judges famous for keeping their jobs essentially regardless of job performance? Maddow keeps banging on this “108 of 110 justices have been white men” number, but that number is useless. For more than a century women and, especially, minorities were so thoroughly denied educational opportunities that of course there were no, say, black Supreme Court justices. That was a result of racist behaviors and policies, but it doesn’t change the fact that nominating a qualified black man or woman for the Supreme Court in 1830 would’ve likely been impossible. If we’re going to measure missed opportunities to nominate minorities, there’s no point in starting from any date before the civil rights era of the 1960s.  (Yes, because of racism, but racism from farther upstream.)

Meanwhile, if you ignore Buchanan’s inanity about the country being founded on the backs of white men (Caucasian exceptionalism? Can I trademark that?) he’s actually making a fairly straight-forward argument that he doesn’t have a problem with a Latino/a on the Supreme Court but that Sonia Sotamoyor should be refused strictly on her merits.

Excuse me while I choke back the bile at writing this: Buchanan is being the reasonable person here. Personally I’m in favor of affirmative action in some circumstances, particularly with respect to educational opportunities. Previously-repressed populations will remain subjugated by circumstance even if the institutional oppression is removed; whites have a centuries-old head start in a lot of ways, and it’s just to think about offering assistance to even things up. On the other hand, a seat on the Supreme Court bench has a high “minimum competency” requirement that has to be met for the good of the country, and Buchanan claims that Sotamoyor doesn’t meet it (again, the truth of that is another conversation).

Compounding Maddow’s logical problems are her incredible arrogance and condescension. She says Buchanan is “dating” himself with his unwillingness to express glee at a Latina’ confirmation. Awesome, old people are racists. Her headshakes alone are cringe-worthy. Liberals — don’t go for the cheap point when the clear facts of the matter are enough.

To be fair, though, if I’m going to rail about Maddow at her worst, she deserves to be seen at her best.

John Casker writes regularly for GeekUniversalis.com & Ashland Link. Want to guest write sometime in the next week? Send your name & idea to submissionstoacandidworld@gmail.com.

Lying to Protect Reagan’s Legacy

Truly remarkable.

Republicans Blame-Gaming their Way to 2010

Now that Al Franken is seated as the junior senator for Minnesota, apparently everything wrong with America is the Democrats’ fault:

Rarely has anyone managed to cram so much dishonesty into such a short period of time. No-one is trying to eliminate the secret ballot. And editorials in small-town newspapers notwithstanding, the true impact of the carbon tax remains speculative, even to its critics, and will be leveraged against corporations, not individuals. It’s beyond dishonest to suggest that the Obama administration has proposed or passed any personal, family-by-family tax increases.

It’s also curious for the GOP to use the Democrats’ current control of the White House & Congress as an excuse to pass blame for pre-existing problems of their own creation. Imagine the captain of the Titanic striking the iceberg and immediately running for the lifeboats, all the while heckling the first officer for failing to save the ship. Or, better yet, imagine Zap Brannigan. Turning around the Bush economy is a herculean effort, and that Obama hasn’t accomplished it yet doesn’t somehow redeem the politicians whose failures created the problem in the first place.

In the end, this is just what we’ve come to expect from the GOP – no new ideas, just blame, lies, and spin. They’re like the Michael Behes of politics: they can spot problems with the status quo, sure, but damned if they’re going to try to fix them, or acknowledge the solutions once they emerge. Like Behe and science, the Republican view of government is bolstered by failure. Small wonder they’re so bad at governing.

Rather than passing the buck – a Republican specialty – Michael Steele should be focusing on recovering from his party’s ideological & personal implosion.

Understanding Our Audience: Why Iran Isn’t Russia

The conservative attempt to contrast Obama’s light (but waxing) condemnation of Iran with Reagan’s (apparently) fierce criticism of the Soviet Union precisely misses the point. Assume, for the sake of argument, that Reagan’s “tear down this wall” speech somehow directly impelled popular and official moves towards freedom in Russia. This point still remains: Iran is not, nor has it ever been, the Soviet Union. For all our differences, the Russian people sought, and to an extent won, a western-style democracy. On the contrary, there is no indication whatsoever that popular support exists in Iran for anything resembling a western-style, secular, egalitarian society.

While Mousavi, and therefore his supporters, do back a liberalization of Iran’s profoundly discriminatory treatment of women, he remains a moderate, working within and for a theocratic state, and espousing many policies directly at odds with not only American wishes, but American values. As a result, official American support for Mousavi and the popular movement building would not necessarily find a sympathetic ear in the rebel ranks, while it would feed (and has fed) the establishment. At the end of the day, the Iranian people still want to be very, very different than us, even if they want to be freer while pursuing their own uniqueness. The opposite was true in Russia.

No doubt, if this were not the case, the calculus would change profoundly. But that is not the world we live in, at least for today.

Who’s Afraid of the White House Bully Pulpit?

Next week – in a reprise of candidate Obama’s late-campaign ’08 tactic – the White House will air on ABC an extensive primetime feature, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” laying out the Administration’s plans for healthcare. Some Republicans are bristling at the move, and for once, I understand their concern: when the government asserts itself in the marketplace of ideas, it necessarily co-opts the dialogue. Thus, a presidential candidate is far different than a sitting President, and when the President buys airtime to speak to the American people not as President, but as head of the Democratic Party, liberals and conservatives alike should be wary.

Notice I did not say “concerned.” The President violates no law by merely engaging in partisan advocacy. Indeed, an entire body of First Amendment law expressly permits the government to engage in vigorous partisan advocacy (the “government speaks” doctrine). We should only be “concerned if the government’s intrusion into the marketplace (1) hurts rather than helps the national debate, or (2) demonstrates an appearance of impropriety.

I’ll take the second issue first. Purchasing ABC airtime out of White House coffers would concern me. Although the Executive Office of the President is clearly a partisan (read: “political”) entity, it is first and foremost a government entity, and is in fact forbidden from active participation in partisan campaigns. Therefore I should hope that this airtime was purchased with Democratic National Committee funds, but because free databases only record expenditures by election cycle, I can’t confirm or deny the purchaser’s identity. We’ll have to wait and see (this kind of question is what traditional media is for).

More importantly, we should hope that “Questions for the President” will, in fact, allow meaningful questions for the President, thus furthering rather than limiting the public debate on health care. ABC has promised as much, and I hope they follow through.

One of the best things President Obama can do for this country is also the simplest: provide a more vigorous engagement between Washington and the public. This could be a step in the right direction. But, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, let’s take it farther.

Blogs and online fora are nice, but they’re clearly not the best way to foster intelligent debate. Rather, Obama should take a page from John McCain (my God!) and the British Parliament (oh, okay), and implement a formal, regular, and permanent “Question Time,” where the President would entertain and respond to questions from legislators in a free-form dialogue. This sort of “master stroke” would create the kind of moments that modern American politics seem built to avoid – unpredictable, honest, interesting, and accessible debate between opinion leaders, packaged for public consumption. No doubt it would be a risk for Obama’s White House, and probably yield an embarrassing moment or two over the years. But such a forum would incalculably enrich public discourse, provide a brilliant check against incompetent politicians and half-baked ideas, and form the basis of a true legacy. Honest engagement is no longer a republican virtue here in America: reviving it would be risky, to be sure, but that’s what leadership is all about.

Besides, Democrats always win fair debates, at least on TV:

Small Point – Sarah Palin a “Feminist” in Words, Not Deeds

Last week, David Letterman said some tacky things about Sarah Palin and her daughters, prompting some truly awful grandstanding on Palin’s part, a pointless protest, an eventual apology:

By reason of her seeming crusade on sexist jokes, for which I do not fault her, you may be tempted to consider Palin a “true feminist,” with an interest in advancing women’s rights and equality. Don’t. What she does is far more important than what she says, and I don’t know about you, but when you nominate for Attorney General a man who expresses himself thusly -

“If a guy can’t rape his wife, who’s he gonna rape?”

“There wouldn’t be an issue with domestic violence if women would learn to keep their mouths shut.”

- I seriously question not only your “feminist” credentials, but your very right to a political career in this century.

We can only hope Palin’s new Attorney General Daniel Sullivan, announced on her ridiculously stylized Twitter page, is more enlightened. Which is to say, enlightened at all.