Democrats Stumbling over Free Trade

A blog about capitalism + democracy leading to peace is, more generally, a blog about politics, economics, and security. So naturally, I’m interested in how leading Democrats view the economy, a subject Bloomberg’s Matthew Benjamin has examined. His conclusion: Democrats are offering nostrums from the past, drawing from independent Ross Perot’s 1992 “giant sucking sound” campaign against jobs lost to free trade.

Democratic candidates focus on voter discontent over lost jobs, stagnant incomes and the growing gap between rich and poor:

 60% in an April Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll said there will be a recession within a year. “The issue driving the anxiety is not the number of jobs but the kinds of jobs being created," says Matthew Slaughter, Dartmouth professor of economics. “Real income growth for many Americans has been quite poor in recent years, with a lack of strong earnings growth along all parts of the income distribution," Slaughter says.

 75% in a December Bloomberg poll said the widening gap between rich and poor is a serious concern. John Edwards is “very concerned [that] 150 million Americans . . .combined earn what the top 300,000 earn," says Leo Hindery, Edwards’s economic policy adviser. From 2000 through the first half of '07, high-paid workers at the 90th percentile of earnings saw their income rise 6.4 percent, while salaries for those at the 10th percentile fell 2.9 percent, according to an Economic Policy Institute study.

 Assertions that global trade harms American workers have been a staple of Democratic campaigns since 1988, when Dick Gephardt won the Iowa caucuses by blaming U.S. economic woes on Japanese and South Koreans. Gephardt, 66, is now a top economic adviser to Hillary Clinton. In 1997 Clinton said, “The simple fact is, nations with free-market systems do better. . .Those nations which have lowered trade barriers are prospering more than those that have not." But in 2005, Clinton voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. And this June, she announced opposition to the free trade deal with South Korea.

 Obama has had the least to say about trade. He recognizes the benefits of lowering tariffs, according to his top economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist. "However. . . we need to be mindful about those left behind," Goolsbee says.

Another "Sicko" Anti-U.S. Health Report

John Stossel, who took apart the World Health Organization’s lowballing of U.S. health care, similarly registers his low opinion of another health ranking, this by the Commonwealth Fund. The Commonwealth Fund compares the U.S. medical system with five other wealthy nations' systems—Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Great Britain—and concludes, "Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms."

Stossel notes:

 The report concedes that if insured, “patients in the U.S. have rapid access to specialized health care services." That helps explain why U.S. outcomes for such diseases as prostate and breast cancer are markedly better than in Canada's and Britain's socialized systems. The U.S. is the center of medical innovation for the world. When internists ranked the world's top 10 medical innovations, eight were developed thanks to American innovations. The Commonwealth Fund ignores this, focusing on the problems of the U.S. uninsured.

 The study divides "quality" into right care, safe care, coordinated care and patient-centered care. While the U.S. was 5th or 6th in the last three, it ranked first in "right care.” "Right care" is the most important because it includes things like how often women have mammograms and whether diabetics get proper treatment.

 Based on telephone interviews with patients and doctors, the study grades nations on people's perceptions. Yet patients who live in a country with long waits for medical care and bureaucratic inefficiency likely have lower expectations.

 The study's authors consider having high administrative costs and spending the largest share of GDP on health care worse than having the highest share of patients who wait four months or more for surgery—a bias designed to hurt the U.S.

Not your father's Vietnam lesson.

Libertarian blogger Robert Tracinski has a provocative piece defending Bush’s worry that any premature pull-out from Iraq will be like Vietnam. Conventional wisdom from Iraq War defenders (including The Observer’s Christopher Hitchens and me) is that Vietnam and Iraq are entirely different animals. It’s the media’s storyline that Iraq is Vietnam redux [see cartoon of press bugging Rumsfeld]. So Tracinski certainly has found a new wrinkle.

Here are Tracinski's key points:

• While America's defeat in Vietnam was seemingly a triumph for the anti-war left, which had long proclaimed the war unwinnable, the years following that defeat--the era of American retreat and "national malaise"--proved so traumatic that the American people have never wanted to repeat them. The left won the political battle over the war--but lost the peace.
  

• Bush’s citing Vietnam as an analogy to Iraq has caught the left by surprise, since the history of the Vietnam War is territory they thought they controlled. That’s why they have attempted to fit every conflict since 1975 into the Vietnam template: dishonest leaders starting a war of imperialist aggression doomed by incompetent leadership and tainted by American "war crimes" guaranteed to end in humiliating defeat.
  

• Now come books by Mark Moyar, who had access to facts that the conventional history of Vietnam, written in the 1970s and 1980s, could not have taken into account: the archives in Hanoi and Moscow. His thesis in an upcoming book, according to the New York Sun, "the North Vietnamese only attempted their 1975 attack when convinced that America would not counter this violation of the Paris Agreement." And what gave the North this confidence? Congressional resolutions passed after 1972 sharply limiting assistance to South Vietnam.
  

• This new view of how the Vietnam War ended is summed up by Max Boot, “By 1972 most of the south was judged secure and the South Vietnamese armed forces were able to throw back the Easter Offensive with help from lots of American aircraft but few American soldiers. If the US had continued to support Saigon with a small troop presence and substantial supplies, there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived....”
  

• The Democrats knocked the remaining props out from under South Vietnam. The result was the collapse of American power and credibility, combined with the "Vietnam Syndrome" that enshrined timidity as the cornerstone of American foreign policy, emboldened the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan --which gave birth to the "mujahadeen," the movement that gave Osama bin Laden his start. It also led to President Carter to stop supporting the shah of Iran, which assured the success of the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution.

What Housing Crisis?

Is the housing crisis over, at the very time the stock market goes wobbly over financial market weakness stemming from falling housing prices? Bloomberg’s Kevin Hassett thinks the crisis is nearly behind us, and prices will soon start back up.

Hassett’s reasoning:

 new home sales rose 2.8% in July, and the inventory of unsold homes fell to 7.5 months.

 in 4th quarter 2005, household investment in new homes and repairs peaked at an annual rate of $711.8 billion in 2006 dollars, according to the Federal Reserve. By 1st quarter 2007, it had dropped to $549.3 billion (2006 dollars). That 23% decrease is enormous: in the 1990-1991 recession, residential investment dropped 10%, and during the worst housing recession, 1980, the decline was only 17%.

 outside of recessions, the per capita growth of housing has been 1.1 percent since 1952, according to Federal Reserve statistics. During recessions, it drops not to zero, but to an average level of about 0.8 percent.

 housing capital “decays" at a rate of about 1.1% per year. Adjusting for population growth, the existing stock of residential real estate is now growing at about 0.3% per year, or 1% below where it was in 2005, and 0.5% below the average level experienced in postwar U.S. recessions. Because housing capital actually decays a bit faster, the stock of housing in the U.S. isn't growing at all, and may even be shrinking. That is exactly the response to overbuilding that economics would predict.

So, Hassett concludes, the drag from the housing industry is mostly gone.

Be careful what you wish for. . .

Jonathan Martin has a piece in the online magazine for politics junkies called Politico that says Republicans are delighted at the prospect of running against Clinton. To be clear, Republicans aren’t happy about having to contest Democrats in 2008, period. But since they must, Hillary offers Republicans the best prospect that they might actually win. It’s because she’s been around, because her negatives are so high, and because her polarizing style fires up dispirited Republicans.

To me, Clinton is the Democrats’ Nixon of 1968, and the Democrats’ Reagan of 1980. Nixon and Reagan carried with them so much baggage from their previous lives (in Reagan’s case, being an actor-spokesman for right-wing causes) that Democrats in those two very bad years for incumbent Democrats thought they might actually beat the damaged-goods Nixon or Reagan.

But Republicans, working from the same evidence in each of those elections, reached a different conclusion. A Republican was going to win. So why not nominate the Republican they wanted, rather than some compromised Republican whose main virtue was helping them win? Go for the real thing!

As we know in both 1968 and 1980, the Republicans' gamble paid off. Their true-blue Republican captured the White House. By that same token, in 2008 Democrats (the Pink Party) will be delighted to nominate and help elect Hillary.

Clinton's Secretary of State: Richard Holbrooke

Bloomberg News’ Janine Zacharia, sheds light, indirectly, on the likelihood Richard Holbrooke [pictured] will be Clinton’s Secretary of State. Bloomberg interviewed Zbigniew Brzezinski, now 79 and well past the age when Zbig himself could aspire to the position. Zbig hit Zbig's big time in the Carter administration (1977-81) as Carter’s national security advisor, when he engaged in an often-petty battle to control foreign policy with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Holbrooke’s boss at the time.

Zbig tells Bloomberg that—gasp!—Barack Obama has a better global grasp than his chief rival, Hillary Clinton. According to Brzezinski,
Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world,'' and
“Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand.'' So, Zbig says, he is supporting Obama. Zbig goes on to dismiss the notion that Clinton is more seasoned than Obama. “Being a former first lady doesn't prepare you to be president.”

Yeah. Like being an Illinois state senator does.

Here’s what’s going on. Zacharia says Clinton relies on Holbrooke, an old “Friend of Bill,” for foreign policy advice. Since Holbrooke knows Zbig all too well, Brzezinski grasps there will be no place for him in a Clinton administration—even as an unpaid advisor. That makes Obama the best remaining shot Zbig has for influence in the next Democratic administration. It’s as good a signal as you’ll get 15 months out that Holbrooke’s already won the Secretary of State sweepstakes.

Is "World Health Report" "Sicko"?

ABC’s resident conservative John Stossel takes on a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) rating of 191 nations that “Sicko” used to document the low state of U.S. health care. In the WHO rankings, the U.S. finished 37th, behind nations like Morocco, Cyprus and Costa Rica. Finishing first and second were France and Italy.

According to Stossel:

 U.S. medical system problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. And 86% of health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness.

 WHO judged a country's quality of health on life expectancy. But we have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada. Adjusted for these "fatal injury" rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.

 Diet and lack of exercise bring down average life expectancy.

 We are downgraded for being less socialistic than other nations. WHO judged countries not on the absolute quality of health care, but on how "fairly" health care of any quality is "distributed." That means a country with high-quality care overall but "unequal distribution" would rank below a country with lower quality care but equal distribution.

 The U.S. ranking is influenced heavily by the 45 million without medical insurance. Yet the figure is misleading: According to the Census Bureau, 37% live in households making more than $50,000 a year; 19% are in households making more than $75,000 a year; 20% are not citizens, and 33% are eligible for existing government programs but are not enrolled. The U.S. ranks at the top for quality of care and innovation, including of life-saving drugs, and people come here for care, not the reverse.

Can Friedman Let Iraq Go? Maybe not.

Tom Friedman, appearing on “Charlie Rose” August 16, downplayed prospects for the surge working, saying it’s just “too late.” Friedman stuck by his position, articulated for the first time a year ago, that we “can’t throw more good lives after good lives.” He wants to set a date certain for withdrawal (thought he would leave forces in Kurdistan and along the border in some areas).

Friedman, defended, in response to Rose’s probing, his earlier support of going into Iraq, saying he makes no apology for hope, apologizing only for ranking hope above the knowledge he did have that putting Iraq together after Saddam would be hellishly difficult. Oddly, Friedman added he doesn’t take back anything he wrote. Odd, because one thing commentators can count on is publishing lots of stuff that will come back to bite them.

On the surface, Friedman has given up on Iraq. Yet he hasn’t, really. He laid out a plan for Iraq’s having a future: 1) establish a monopoly of force; 2) build on the success of Kurdistan, and; 3) wait out a resolution of the Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia divisions, something, one imagines, that might take decades. Like the more famous Middle East problem.

Melting Pot Good

Robert Putnam, the Harvard political scientist whose Bowling Alone documented Americans as non-joiners, has a new, shocking study about diversity’s not working. His researchers did 30,000 interviews in 41 U.S. communities, and found that people in ethnically diverse settings don't want to have much of anything to do with each other.

According to Putnam:

 "Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television." Yet they have little confidence in the "local news media."

 Diverse communities may be yeasty and even creative, but trust, altruism and community cooperation fall. Putnam calls it "hunkering down."

 Diversity is working in a surprising place: Christian evangelical megachurches. "In many large evangelical congregations," he writes, "the participants constituted the largest thoroughly integrated gatherings we have ever witnessed." The churches do it with low entry barriers and by offering lots of little groups to join inside the larger "shared identity" of the church.

The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger, in writing about Putnam’s study, notes that in the past, diversity's advocates gave short shrift to assimilation, even arguing that assimilation into the American mainstream was oppressive and coercive. Henninger wants some young minority writer to recast diversity in a way that restores the worth and utility of assimilation, the old “melting pot” ideal.

February 2008

We are less than six months from the start of the longest ever general election campaign. After Super Tuesday February 5, America should know both parties’ candidates; the two who will fight it out over the subsequent nine months.

It looks to be an uneven battle. This blog’s past few posts reviewed evidence Democrats are likely to win:

1. The Iraq war and Katrina have cost Bush and Republicans the competency issue. GOP guru Karl Rove himself said Republicans are hurting with independents and Hispanics.

2. Democrats have a big fundraising lead.

3. The media are extraordinarily determined to bring the GOP down.

4. Polls document strong voter preference for Democrats over Republicans.

5. The strongest GOP pair of Giuliani and Fred Thompson doesn’t begin to match up to Clinton-Obama. The first Italian-American president lacks the pizzazz of either the first woman or the first black.

Six months from the beginning of the general election campaign, our baseline projection remains Clinton-Obama in 2008. We’ll concentrate on evidence that moves the baseline in some new direction.

Not Fred

Six months ago, this blog dismissed Edwards as a serious candidate for president. If Fred Thompson's priorities truly are the agenda he offered the Washington Post’s David Broder—and not just his pandering to the #1 Washington insider journalist—then Fred too should be out as a serious candidate.

Here’s why:

 He would have opposed adding the prescription drug benefit to Medicare, calling it "a $17 trillion add-on to a program that's going bankrupt."

 He attacks the FBI as perhaps incapable of morphing itself into the smart domestic security agency the country needs.

 He warns that unless action is taken soon to improve both sides of the government's fiscal ledger—spending and revenue—the next generation will suffer. "Nobody in Congress or on either side in the presidential race wants to deal with it."

Thompson’s bible isn’t the old and new testaments. Rather, Broder notes, it's two texts: 1) "Government at the Brink," a two-volume report he issued as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in 2001, and; 2) several reports from Comptroller General David Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office, on the long-term fiscal crisis spawned by the aging of the American population and the runaway costs of health care.

Comment: Thompson’s search for “revenue” (taxes) and a balanced budget may excite inside-the–beltway types, but not the typical Republican or even the average American. He’s hardly moving to Giuliani’s right by preaching more efficient government. Fred’s nearly in the race because of his Southern accent and his Southern-drawl acting fame, but seems to lack a program in tune with a Southern-fried social agenda. Seems that, like Edwards, Fred’s forgotten his roots.

Pew Research: Country Increasingly Democratic

Several reporters are quoting Pew research from last March that found the country turning more Democratic. Pew concluded, “increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies have improved the political landscape for the Democrats as the 2008 presidential campaign gets underway.”

Here are some specific Pew findings that encourage Democrats:

 In 2002, the country was equally divided along partisan lines: 43% identified with the Republican Party or leaned to the GOP, while an identical proportion said they were Democrats. Today, 50% either identifies as a Democrat or says they lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 35% who align with the GOP.

 Support is rising for government action to help disadvantaged Americans. 54% say the government should help more needy people, even if it adds to the nation's debt, up from just 41% in 1994.

 Also helping Democrats, 44% say they "don't have enough money to make ends meet," up from 35% in 2002. The number "pretty well satisfied" with their personal financial situation is lower than it has been in more than a decade. And 73% concur with the sentiment "today it's really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer," up from 65% five years ago.

 In 2002, less than a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, more than 60% agreed with the statement, "The best way to ensure peace is through military strength." Today, about half express similar confidence in military power.

 In Pew surveys since the beginning of 2006, 12% identified themselves as unaffiliated with a religious tradition. That compares with 8% in the Pew values survey in 1987. The change appears to be generational.

Pew found, however, that in spite of the Democrats' growing advantage in party identification, its standing with the public is no better than it was when Bush was inaugurated in 2001. What’s happened is the Republican Party’s rapid loss of public support, particularly among independents. The proportion of Americans holding a favorable view of Republicans stands at 41%, down 15 points since January 2001. But during that time, the positive view of Democrats has declined by six points, to 54%.

And Americans feel estranged from government, period. Just 34% agree with the statement, "most elected officials care what people like me think," a 10-point drop since 2002.

Just the slant, Ma’am.

We now live in a docudrama world in which techniques of fiction and nonfiction are starting to blur. Many reporters think objectivity is a myth. They see journalism as inherently a subjective exercise in which the feelings and the will of the journalist function to reveal the truth of what has occurred. Two results are the emotional commitment to powerful but untrue story lines, and a further loss of credibility for the press.

--John Leo, New York Sun

Leo made his comment after unearthing this gem from Newsweek’s Evan Thomas about his magazine's dubious reporting on the Duke non-rape case — "The narrative was right but the facts were wrong." Oops, but who cares?

I would make these points about the media:

1. The heavyweights are under real pressure: newspapers from internet competition, network news from cable, entertainment TV, even YouTube.
2. Media proliferation has freed the big guys from a former obligation to be objective.
3. Media got used to running the country during Vietnam-Watergate, 1967-74, and explained away previous Republican victories in 1980 (Reagan) and 1994 (Gingrich) as caused by media pummeling of Carter (1977-80) and Clinton (1993-94).
4. In any case, media by 1995 shifted to partisan cheerleading, openly backing Clinton during the impeachment process.
5. Bush’s triumph in 2000, turning Washington into a Republican city (the GOP also controlled Congress) in the face of full-on media opposition, directly threatened media control of the national agenda.
6. In the media’s view, Bush blew it when he invaded Iraq and handed media the club needed to end his power.
7. The GOP triumph in 2004 made the task of ridding the nation of Republicans more urgent than ever; Democrats’ winning in 2006 vindicates media’s partisan warfare against Republicans.

Republicans share responsibility for media warfare. They could have caved to the media’s agenda-setting power, rather than fighting it head-on and ultimately losing.

Here are some media successes in playing with the truth:

1. Treating Iraq as a daily story of Americans dying and being maimed when we’ve lost fewer soldiers in Iraq than in any major U.S. military action save the War of 1812 and Gulf War I.
2. Selling the “Bush lied” Iraq story when the world—not just Bush—thought Saddam had WMDs, when Iraq did try to buy yellowcake from Niger, and when Bush never blamed Saddam for 9.11.
3. Downplaying American prosperity since 2002; obsessing on gas prices when they go up, not down.
4. Marketing Bush’s prescription drug plan as a failure.
5. Scaring seniors about social security cuts when Bush tried linking payments to stock market gains (“privatization”).
6. Making “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job!” the most famous eight words coming out of the Katrina natural disaster.

Other media successes overplay actual GOP failures:

1. Educating the country on Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and especially Mark Foley (all punished or removed from power before the 2006 elections).
2. Taking out Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) with the “macaca” story (Washington Post).
3. Providing the megaphone, now that Democrats have Congress, for nonstop investigations of Bush administration foibles.

Rove Gone, Who’s Responsible?

Karl Rove is brilliant, and his time at the top is over. Bush rightly called him “the architect.” Rove, more than anyone, was responsible for 1) pulling Bush through in 2000 when the country was peaceful and prosperous under Clinton-Gore and could have expected the White House to remain in Democrats’ hands; 2) nationalizing the 2002 mid-term election, thereby growing Republican numbers that year, and; 3) out ground-gaming the Democrats in 2004.

Byron York argues, persuasively to me, that Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of Rove in the Plame affair brought Rove down. York credits Democrats for mounting the drum beat that kept Fitzgerald going, but to me it’s obvious the Plame business owed its punch to an obsessed media, not Democrats. Whoever, whatever, Fitzgerald’s 2003-06 investigation knocked Rove off his game, and helped Democrats defeat Republicans in 2006 (Rove of course attributed the GOP’s defeat that year to factors beyond White House control). Fitzgerald’s dogged pursuit of Rove seemed unfair to me; Rove didn’t initiate the Plame leak, and remained unindicted because unlike Libby, he hadn’t committed perjury. But harassing Rove in 2005-06 certainly worked to Democrats’ advantage.

And now Rove returns to Texas. His triumphs are so closely associated with the personal relationship built with Bush in Texas in the 1990’s that they can’t be repeated.

Rove is avuncular. I think he’ll end up a political commentator instead of working for a GOP that badly needs him.

Iraq: American KIA Surpass 9.11 Total

Here’s our latest monthly, highly abbreviated version of the Iraq Index, published and updated twice a week by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution:



Americans Killed in Action, Iraq (monthly average)
2003: 32
2004: 59
2005: 56
2006: 58
2007: 84
July: 63

Americans Killed in Action, Vietnam (monthly average)
1965: 128*
1966: 420
1967: 767
1968: 1140
1969: 785
____
* = First U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam, 5.3.65
Vietnam table compiled by Galen Fox using Defense Department sources.

Crude Oil Production (m. bbls./day)

Prewar Peak: 2.50
Goal: 2.10 (Revised downward, 1/07)
actual: 2.06 (7/07)

Electricity (megawatts)

Prewar: 3,958
Goal: 6,000
actual: 4,250 (7/07)

Since our last monthly report, the American KIA total dropped from June's 99 down to 63. This represents a significant decline from the KIA total for April-June, which averaged 104 a month. [Please note: the number of KIA is almost always lower than the media-reported total of American deaths, which covers all causes, including non-hostile. Our Iraq and Vietnam figures are KIA only.] Still, the American KIA in July passed a milestone of sorts; at 3000, the KIA total now surpasses the total of 2,974 innocent people killed in one morning on September 11, 2001.

Oil output rose slightly from June to July, yet remains below the target revised downward in January. In the case of electricity, output during the heat of summer rose to another 2007 high, but remained below July 2006's average output of 4,400 megawatts.

In his current report, O’Hanlon adds, “On balance, Iraq at the end of July is showing significant signs of battlefield momentum in favor of U.S./coalition military forces, but there is nonetheless little good to report on the political front and only modest progress on the economic side of things.”

O’Hanlon, together with his Brookings colleague Kenneth Pollack, has also written a New York Times op-ed that generated quite a stir, especially among war critics who expected a more sober evaluation of conditions in Iraq from the Brookings team. According to O’Hanlon and Pollack:

the administration’s critics seem unaware of the significant changes taking place [in Iraq]. Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Democrats Lead Money Race

The Democrats’ lead in fundraising offers powerful evidence the party is ready to repeat its 2006 election triumph, this time by holding congress and electing a president. As noted here earlier, Democrats are becoming the party of the wealthy. True, Republicans are the party of tax cuts, and tax cuts appeal to rich people. But so too does access to power—an asset Democrats look likely to have at their disposal after November 2008.

In the Wall Street Journal, Mary Jacoby and Brody Mullins lay out facts about the Democrats’ fundraising advantage:

 Through June 30, Democratic candidates for the White House and congress, along with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other party committees, raised $388.8 million, compared with $287.3 million for Republicans—a $100 million advantage. The disparity is particularly sharp in the presidential race, where eight Democratic presidential candidates raised $179.3 million, compared with just $118 million for nine Republicans.

 So Democrats will have more resources for advertising, organization building and voter outreach next November to buttress their edge in the polls. Moreover, the Democrats' focus on small donors leaves them room to raise cash from the many contributors have yet to hit the legal limit of $2,300 per candidate. Democrats led by Terry McAuliffe, former DNC chairman, have invested heavily in databases and Internet fund-raising tools to reach out to smaller donors. McAuliffe touts his "Demzilla" database, with detailed profiles of over 150 million potential voters

 Money pours in because the political environment strongly favors Democrats. Bush's low popularity not only energizes the Democratic base, it also dumps morale among Republican voters and donors. Like compounding interest, the Democrats' chances for success next year encourages special interests to give even more money, in hopes of winning influence with those expected to be in power.

 That’s why Democrats are gaining among large donors with business and regulatory interests who need to be on the winning side. Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group and other members of the Private Equity Council trade group gave 69% of their $3.4 million in campaign donations to Democrats last year, up from 51% of $2.7 million in 2000 (Center for Responsive Politics data). Large hedge funds show a similar pattern of giving. And ex-American Express CEO James D. Robinson III, a lifelong Republican, says he is backing Clinton.

Bush’s Brain on Why GOP Lost in 2006

From those who attended private sessions in January, the Washington Post’s “Capitol Briefing” has obtained Karl Rove’s inside view of what went wrong for Republicans last November.

Rove believes Republicans lost their majority mostly because of corruption- tinged Republicans in Congress. One page of the presentation is headlined: "Corruption" Voters' Top Issue. It then highlights, according to exit polls, 41 percent of voters who considered corruption an "extremely important" issue. Another chart indicates the number of "corrupt" lawmakers and "complacent incumbents" ousted from their seats.

Rove won’t blame losses on the Iraq war. Another chart, Dems Won Corruption, Econ., Iraq Voters, spreads the blame among those 3 issues, highlighting the percentage margin Democrats won in November from the electorate on each issue—21% on Iraq, but 20% on corruption and the economy, a small difference between Iraq and the domestic issues.

Rove contends that the Democratic gains in Congress came because middle-of-the-road independents fled the Republican Party. The presentation also notes Republicans suffered a 31-point drop in Latino voters, a net loss of 8 points among suburban voters, and a 14-point drop among self-identified moderates.

According to exit polls in still another Rove chart, the percent of the electorate identifying itself as Democrats stayed roughly the same over four elections from 2000 to 2006, 39 percent in 2000 and 38 percent in 2006, while the liberal percentage was 20 percent in 2000 and 20 percent in 2006.

Resilient Hong Kong

The Economist’s special section on Hong Kong may not describe the “greatest city the world has ever seen,” a future the Economist once projected for Hong Kong, but the magazine still views Hong Kong as a pretty impressive place.

The worst thing about Hong Kong is smog. In 1974, the year I left Hong Kong, the city had less than 200 hours a year when smog reduced visibility. That figure is now 3000 hours, a fifteen-fold increase. Local emissions ruin the air 192 days a year, mainland- sourced pollution another 132 days, leaving only 41 days when Hong Kong is low on pollution. Awful. Pollution—along with a shortage of places in international schools and the exorbitant price of housing—is one of the three major factors driving expatriates away (their numbers have dropped by a third since 2001).

Predictably, Hong Kong is also suffering from the mainland’s unwillingness to deliver the democracy China promised the city. China’s Basic Law for Hong Kong allowed for a freely-elected Legislative Council by 2007. While that development is nowhere in sight, once the British decided to leave Hong Kong undemocratic, that pretty much sealed the former colony’s fate under China’s rule.

Another Hong Kong downside is its disadvantaged competition with Shanghai, the mainland’s very own rising financial center. Hong Kong retains an edge over Shanghai because the Hong Kong dollar, as opposed to the yuan, is fully convertible. But that advantage will disappear once China decides to take it away. Time and the Chinese government are on Shanghai’s side.

Still, Hong Kong has a lot going for it:

 Hong Kong ranks ahead of Singapore on the Economist’s democracy index. It has a free press, operates a competitive economy governed by the rule of law, and its judicial system works. The Chinese have largely kept their promise to allow these freedoms to continue.

 While China’s rapid growth has reduced Hong Kong’s once-dominant entrepôt role in the China trade from 60% in the 1980s to 20% now, Hong Kong in absolute terms exports two times more from China than it did a decade ago, $300 billion a year. China’s prosperity benefits Hong Kong.

 Hong Kong is at the center of China’s Pearl River Delta (PRD), a region that includes Guangzhou, Macau, and the special economic zones of Shenzhen and Zhuhai, an area with 65 million people [see map]. Over the last 25 years, the PRD’s mainland region year after year has delivered the astounding growth rate of 17% a year[!]. Hong Kong firms employ 11 million in the PRD, and provide two-thirds of the area’s foreign direct investment. Collectively, the PRD’s mainland portion has attracted 22% of China’s foreign direct investment, and accounts for a third of China’s total foreign trade.

 The PRD is so successful, some PRD local governments are sending potential investors on to Vietnam and Bangladesh. Also, Hong Kong is part of a “pan-PRD initiative” aimed at bringing China’s nine southern provinces into a super PRD, to the benefit of 474 million people with a combined GDP the size of all ASEAN’s ten members.

As the Economist says, “Eat your heart out, Lee Kuan Yew.”

Is America the 1930s France?

Thomas Sowell sees parallels between France pre-war and America pre-nuclearized Iran. It’s a point I made earlier this month regarding Iran and al-Qaeda winning in Iraq.

Here are Sowell’s parallels:

"Moral paralysis" is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them. Winston Churchill later said, "There was never a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action." In 1936, when Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, France was so much more powerful than Germany that the German generals had secret orders to retreat immediately at the first sign of French intervention.

The French had the means but not the will. "Moral paralysis" came from the death of a million French soldiers in the First World War . . . Pacifism became vogue among the intelligentsia and spread into educational institutions. As early as 1932, Winston Churchill said: "France, though armed to the teeth, is pacifist to the core."

Is America today the France of yesterday? We know that Iran is moving swiftly toward nuclear weapons . . .The Iranian leaders are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And, like Hitler, they don't think we have the guts to stop them. [Iran,] one of the biggest oil-producing countries in the world. . . has no need for nuclear power to generate electricity. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and its international terrorist allies will be a worst threat than Hitler ever was. But, before that happens, the big question is: Are we France? Are we morally paralyzed, perhaps fatally?

To Change France

Jurgen Reinhoudt tells us that Nicholas Sarkozy’s reforms are underway in France:

 one key component of his promises—a significant package of tax cuts—will be passed into law. The French House approved a 10 to 13 billion Euro per year tax cut package on July 16th, while the Senate is set to review it starting the 25th. Sarkozy’s finance minister, Christine Lagarde, could not have been more blunt when she told Parliament that “France is a country that thinks. There is hardly an ideology we don't have a theory on. That's why I would like to tell you: that's enough thinking, enough prevaricating. Let's just roll up our sleeves.”

 proposals designed to crack down on massive strikes—the favored pressure tool by unions to stop reforms—are in store as well. A Senate measure would force workers, on an individual basis, to declare themselves in favor of a strike to their employers 48 hours before beginning any strike. And if employers so wish, a secret ballot vote must be held among workers on whether or not to continue a strike beyond an 8-day period. Also, a minimum level of ground transport (rail and other) service be maintained throughout the duration of a strike. The House is set to review this set of reforms starting July 30th.

As Reinhoudt writes, Sarkozy’s cabinet and his Parliamentary majority want to remove the de facto veto that unions have long held over decisions taken by democratically elected legislators. The right to strike is one thing, but bringing the country—including those who are not striking—to a standstill is quite another.

We Must Fight Terror

America [has] a special job to do for mankind and the world . . . because America is the world in miniature and the world is America writ large.

--Martin Luther King (1965)

Robert Kagan has written a long article, published in Policy Review, called, “End of Dreams, Return of History.” The piece seems to push back at the pre-9.11 American optimism one finds reflected in the bible of this blog, Mandelbaum’s The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets. Yet Kagan defends, without so branding it, American exceptionalism, our desire to spread to the rest of humankind the good fortune equal opportunity has brought us. While today exceptionalism is associated with Bush, conservatives, and Republicans, Martin Luther King’s quotation above shows how basic exceptionalism is to the ideals of America.

Kagan becomes more “realist” when he defends the nation-state system as securely in place today with Russia, China, Japan, India, and Brazil as major actors (though Kagan somewhat contrarily tends to treat the supernational EU as a single entity). An idealist such as Mandelbaum believes democracy is the inevitable final form of national government, even in Russia and China. Kagan defends autocracy as an accepted way to run a country, the normal way to govern until the 20th Century. By challenging autocracy, we unnecessarily threaten Russia, China, and other nations we should be seeking to get along with. Kagan feels we should rally the democracies to our side, and with the autocracies, work on détente (not his word, but his parallels to Kissingerism are too strong to ignore).

Here’s a big reason we need to get along with Russia and China. Kagan wants to promote democracy in the Middle East, a big job that means we have to minimize our battles elsewhere in the world. We should promote Middle East democracy, Kagan writes, “as part of a larger effort to address the issue of Islamic radicalism by accelerating and intensifying its confrontation with the modern, globalized world.”

Kagan believes the Islamists' struggle “poses by far the greatest threat of a catastrophic attack on the mainland of the United States. . . the radical proponents of Islamic traditionalism. . . have deployed the weapons of the modern world against it. Modernization and globalization inflamed their rebellion and also armed them for the fight."

Kagan recognizes that the great powers won’t turn over control of the Middle East to Islamic fundamentalist forces, “if only because the region is of such vital strategic importance to the rest of the world.” So the world faces a protracted struggle in which the goals of the extreme Islamists can never be satisfied because “neither the United States nor anyone else has the ability to give them what they want.”

That means the best course for the West is to “hasten the process of modernization in the Islamic world: more modernization, more globalization, faster. This would require greater efforts to support and expand capitalism and the free market in Arab countries, [and] increase public access to the modern world through television and the internet.” Also, the West should “promote political modernization and liberalization; support human rights, including the rights of women; and use its influence to support repeated elections that may, if nothing else, continually shift power from the few to the many.” In other words, promote democracy.

According to Kagan, “the United States and others will have to persist in fighting what is, in fact, quite accurately called ‘the war on terrorism.’ . . . [G]iven the high stakes, it must be prosecuted ruthlessly, effectively, and for as long as the threat persists. . . One need only contemplate the American popular response should a terrorist group explode a nuclear weapon on American soil. . .Nor, one suspects, will the American people disapprove when a president takes preemptive action to forestall such a possibility -- assuming the action is not bungled.”

A Middle East “Might Have Been”

History is an argument without end.

--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

HDS Greenway has a Boston Globe column offering an historical analogy for Iraq that may say more than Greenway meant to say. Greenway writes, “As Washington struggles with what to do with a lost war, consider the British experience in Palestine and their 30-year mandate after World War I.” Greenway perceptively adds:

 Britain, "with its technological and military superiority . . . its entrepreneurial and missionary zeal, its largely democratic institutions, was to take the once-great peoples of the East into tutelage and direct their slow but sure progress under stable and just government," A.J. Sherman recalls in his book, "Mandate Days." "This clashed almost immediately with the reality of Palestine."

 the British genuinely hoped for national reconciliation and peace in Palestine between Jews and Arabs. But as Tom Segev writes in "One Palestine Complete," "the government expected the army to impose peace between the Jews and the Arabs, as a result of which it had to fight both of them."

 When Arabs and Jews weren't fighting each other they attacked the British, who were blown up in terrorist attacks, their soldiers kidnapped and killed. When they weren't surging, they holed up in Green Zone-like enclaves called "Bevingads," after Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin. "Security continued to erode despite the presence of over 100,000 troops," Sherman writes. "The sense of constant menace (was) heightened by the ubiquitous roadside mines, against which no British vehicle could be adequately armored."

 Britain feared the chaos that would follow a retreat. But after 30 years of trying to engineer compromise, the British left with their tails between their legs when support on the home front collapsed. Once they were gone, the feared upsurge of bloodshed between Arabs and Jews was realized, and the nightmare of outside intervention from neighboring states came to pass.

Comment: To Greenway, the British were fools to get between two sides that valued victory above peace. Greenway is saying the U.S. in Iraq is similarly stupid to “force compromise on combatants who have no interest in compromise.”

I buy Greenway’s analogy but take exception to his conclusion. The Arab-Israeli conflict has been a disaster for world peace over the 59 years since Britain “bugged out.” The conflict bedevils the world today, and arguably mothered the Islamic extremism that currently darkens civilization’s otherwise-bright future. Had Britain not crumbled in the face of homefront impatience with its Palestine peacekeeping, and had it instead presided over a partition acceptable to both sides (yielding a smaller Israel), the oil-rich Middle East might have become peaceful and prosperous.

History’s argument goes on.

Believe It: Worldwide Economic Boom

"This is far and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my business lifetime."

--U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson


James Pethokoukis, who quotes Paulson in a US News article, has the proof to support Paulson’s statement:

 According to Goldman Sachs: "If we and the consensus are correct, then the period 2003-2008 will have been one of the most powerful periods of economic growth globally since accurate data [have] been collectible for much of the world."

 According to the International Monetary Fund the global economy is growing at about a 5 percent annual pace, after growing 4.9 percent in 2005 and 5.4 percent last year. By contrast, the global economy grew at a 3 percent pace from 1980 to 2000 and at 4.7 percent from 1960 to 1980.

 The gross global product is three times as big as it was in 1970, when adjusted for inflation. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, "The first 60 years of the 20th century saw average annual global growth rates of 2.4 percent, after 1 percent for the entire 19th century, and one-third of 1 percent for the 18th century."

 Since 2000, according to the Tax Foundation, more than half the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have lowered their top marginal rates, reducing the OECD average rate from 45.93 to 42.95 percent.

 The U.S. reduced its top rate by over 13 percent between 2000 and 2006, dropping it from 15th to 21st highest in the OECD rankings. If no other country had reduced its tax rates, the U.S. would stand at 26th, but the strong tax-cutting trend in other OECD countries blunted the U.S. advantage.

 Full repeal of the 2001 rate cuts after a surcharge to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) would move the U.S. from 21st to 9th highest—and that assumes the tax cutting abroad comes to a halt. A repeal of the 2001 tax cuts with no AMT surcharge would move the U.S. to 11th highest.

Quitting the War on Terror

getting out of Iraq is now partly in the hands of Democrats who control. . .Congress. History will be. . . unforgiving if [Democrats'] agitation for withdrawal results in a pell-mell retreat that causes lasting damage.

-- David Ignatius,
Washington Post


Iraq has divided America between those who still hope for victory, and those who believe the war is lost. But there is another important dividing line: that between those who see Iraq as a battlefield in the War on Terror, and those who either think Iraq has little to do with al-Qaeda in northwest Pakistan, or that terrorism is nothing more than a police problem. If one believes 9.11 initiated a war against Muslim extremism, then defeating both al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Shiite extremists backed by Iran there makes sense.

Iraq is at the heart of the Arab Muslim world, with large oil reserves. If Islamic extremism defeats us in Iraq, we can expect Muslim terror to move to the West, as well as through the Islamic world. That's the view of observers closest to al-Qaeda's plans and capabilities (see here and here). And, as this blog has noted, Iran shares al-Qaeda’s objective of driving Western moderation and democracy from the Islamic world, replacing Western ideas with Islamic law.

Democracies find war distasteful, but this democracy has to counter the threat Islamic extremism brought home to America on 9.11. Losing Iraq in 2008 will be like losing France in 1940. It will make the rest of the war against Islamic extremists much harder. Iraq is more like France in April 1940, less like Vietnam in April 1975. Vietnam was a civil war, and when our side lost, the West was able to limit the loss to Indochina. Al-Qaeda’s and Iran’s winning in Iraq will reverberate throughout today's world, the way the fall of France reverberated throughout the world of 1940.

If the stakes are so high, why would we give up on Iraq before we are defeated? Of course, if you think we’ve already lost, then it's just about sending as many boats to Dunkirk as possible. But we haven’t lost. We are still making gains in Baghdad. To quit now is criminal.

Quitters (Part II)

the job our troops were sent to Iraq to do is done. After nearly five years of a failed policy in Iraq, we have a duty. . . to end the war.

--Speaker Nancy Pelosi

As Victor Davis Hanson noted, initial supporters of the Iraq war included both houses of Congress, 70 percent of the American public in April 2003, the majority of NATO members, and a coalition with more participants than the United Nations alliance had in the Korean War. On the other hand, the media emerged early as leading skeptics, suspecting they were about to see a re-run of their generation’s war: Vietnam. If Bush succeeded, well, that would be fine; we’d have a new democracy in the heart of the Middle East. But if Iraq went bad and American casualties mounted, the media would play out the parallels to Vietnam. The reporters’ script throughout was, “we’ve seen this tragedy before.”

Reporters believe Bush is a fool. In the 1960’s, the media had helped America realize that fighting Vietnamese nationalism was a disaster. Vietnam was also a disaster for Democrats, costing them the White House and their domestic program. If Bush wanted to wade his way into an unnecessary war, the media have been only too happy to help Republicans draw electoral defeat from the misadventure. Throughout 2004, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, suppressed photographs of flag-draped coffins, and reports of torture all helped undermine support for the war, along with daily or weekly body counts, often including photographs, of dead Americans. War coverage excludes mention of any living heroes, unless they emerge severely wounded.

But Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, which of course had nothing to do with Iraq, turned out to provide the knockout blow to Bush’s popularity. As Nina Easton, then the Boston Globe’s Washington bureau chief, put it six months after the devastating hurricane, “Katrina is the gift that keeps on giving for the Democrats, absolutely.” That and the sectarian war that engulfed Iraq in March 2006 after al-Qaeda destroyed the Golden Mosque at Samara.

Writing just before his untimely death in April, David Halberstam, the reporter most responsible for ending American involvement in Vietnam, in a wide-ranging attack for the August Vanity Fair unsparingly denounced Bush for his “wishful thinking, arrogance, and a total disdain for the facts.” Here’s an example that shows how Halberstam saw Bush as a latter-day Lyndon Johnson:

One of Bush's favorite conceits, used repeatedly in his speeches, is that democracies are peaceful and don't go to war against one another. Most citizens of the West tend to accept this view without question, but that is not how most of Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East, having felt the burden of the white man's colonial rule for much of the past two centuries, see it. The non-Western world does not think of the West as a citadel of pacifism and generosity

Halberstam was saying that as with Vietnam, the U.S. in Iraq is fighting a colonial war disguised as a war for democracy, and the non-Western world gets it. Yet in fact, most every (non-Western) dictator is alarmed by the precedent Bush threatens to establish of crossing an international frontier to replace a tyrant with democracy, and these dictators will be exceptionally alarmed if Bush succeeds. So in truth Halberstam aligned himself with the (non-Western) world's despots, and against those of their subjects who want democracy.

It’s where we are today. Bush and his dwindling band of supporters are the Wilsonian idealists (the people to whom this blog is dedicated) who believe democracy is the best system of government for everyone. And the media, Democrats, and Halberstam represent a currently growing body of realists who want America watching out for its own interests at home, abstaining from foreign ventures.

One sees the emerging intellectual underpinnings for a quitter foreign policy in Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz’s Foreign Affairs piece grandly titled, “Grand Strategy for a Divided America.” The article denounces Bush for “pursuing a foreign policy of excessive and unsustainable ambition.” The authors worry about idealism in the Republican Party, much as Roosevelt worried in 1941 about isolationism in the Republican Party:

One CNN poll recorded that after four years of occupying [sic] Iraq, only 24 percent of Republicans oppose the war, compared with more than 90 percent of Democrats. As for exporting American ideals, a June 2006 German Marshall Fund study found that only 35 percent of Democrats believed the United States should "help establish democracy in other countries," compared with 64 percent of Republicans. Similarly, a December 2006 CBS News poll found that two-thirds of Democrats believed the United States should "mind its own business internationally," whereas only one-third of Republicans held that view.

What’s wrong with Republicans that they just won’t quit? Well, Peggy Noonan, Reagan's brilliant former speechwriter, is one Republican who's quit, and is now siding with the realists.

Quitters (Part I)

We need a debate on how to win, not how to lose.

--Alexander Haig

The facts about Iraq don’t tell me why we should be quitting. On 9.11, Islamic terrorism became the big show. Very quickly, Bush told the country terrorists didn’t honor borders, and neither would we. We would hunt them down where they live, and we would knock out governments that offered them sanctuary. 27 days after 9.11, we were in Afghanistan successfully taking down the Taliban regime. Al-Qaeda, which means “the base,” would have to look elsewhere for a new base.

Bush’s conclusion, reached over the following year, was that Iraq made a logical Middle East base for al-Qaeda. Under Saddam, Iraq was an enemy of the U.S., and in open defiance of UN resolutions demanding it permit international inspection of its weapons research, manufacturing, and storage facilities. Iraq has the world's fourth largest oil reserves; wealth Saddam wanted to turn into weapons. Iraq had active programs to build weapons of mass destruction and a history of using such weapons. Iraq had thrown UN inspectors out of the country in 1998. When the UN in 2002 demanded their return, Saddam finally relented, but declared many facilities “off limits,” and demanded pre-notification of other inspections. These were the actions of a man with something to hide.

It’s “straw man” logic to say that Saddam was in on 9.11. That’s not the point. Here’s the point: Saddam was a terrorist, Saddam hated the U.S. and was at war with it, Saddam directly supported Palestinian terrorists, and it was reasonable to expect that terrorists with al-Qaeda connections, people such as Abu Musab al Zarqawi would find their way to Iraq and begin operating there, with Saddam’s blessing.

We went into Iraq in 2003, quickly overthrew Saddam, and set about establishing a democratic Iraq in its place. Our successes in the war on terror—Afghanistan, Iraq, homeland security—helped pave the way for Bush’s re-election in November 2004. Over the next year, 2005, Iraq held three separate, successful national elections that would lead to establishment of a democratic Iraqi government, and would allow for a drawdown of U.S. forces there. Anyway, that was the plan.

Al-Qaeda disrupted our planned withdrawal on February 22, 2006, when it destroyed the sacred Shiite Golden Mosque in Samara. Shiites predictably retaliated against Sunnis throughout the country, and the violence from both sides that followed tore the country apart for much of the time since. Instead of withdrawing troops, the U.S. had to bring in more troops in an effort to get Baghdad—where Sunni and Shiite living together make up a quarter of the country’s population—under some sort of control.

If we had sent in more U.S. troops earlier, Iraq’s security situation would have been better. Bush made mistakes, and is now trying to correct them. Should we quit now, before we know if the surge will work?

Angry?! Good!!

Michael Gerson used to be Bush 43’s top speechwriter. He is now on his own. On July 4, he wrote a commentary that indirectly endorses angry Bill Moyers. As noted here, Moyers used the Declaration of Independence to frame his attack on present-day America for tolerating gross disparities in wealth.

Gerson praised an 1829 July 4 address by firebrand abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison [pictured], who raged, Americans should "spike every cannon and haul down every banner" because of the "glaring contradiction" between the Declaration of Independence and the practice of slavery. The grievances of slaves, he argued, made the grievances of the American colonists look like trivial whining. "I am ashamed of my country," Garrison concluded. "I am sick of our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of our hypocritical cant about the unalienable rights of man."

Moyers had to have been delighted with this bit of Gerson research. According to Gerson, “Garrison laid bare the central contradiction of the American experiment: that the land of the free was actually a prison for millions of its inhabitants.” Gerson then moved forward to Martin Luther King, speaking on July 4 a hundred years after the Civil War. To King, the Declaration said, "You may take my life, but you can't take my right to life. You may take liberty from me, but you can't take my right to liberty." And King added, this creed of "amazing universalism" calls "America to do a special job for mankind and the world . . . because America is the world in miniature and the world is America writ large."

Summing up, Gerson said—in words that directly parallel Moyers denunciation of the rich—“The privileged and powerful can love America for many reasons. The oppressed and powerless, stripped of selfish motives for their love, have found America lovely because of its ideals.” Ideals expressed in “All men are created equal.”

Iraq Surge Comes with a Price

Here’s our latest monthly, highly abbreviated version of the Iraq Index, published and updated twice a week by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution:



Americans Killed in Action, Iraq (monthly average)
2003: 32
2004: 59
2005: 56
2006: 58
2007: 88
June: 99

Americans Killed in Action, Vietnam (monthly average)
1965: 128*
1966: 420
1967: 767
1968: 1140
1969: 785
____
* = First U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam, 5.3.65
Vietnam table compiled by Galen Fox using Defense Department sources.

Crude Oil Production (m. bbls./day)

Prewar Peak: 2.50
Goal: 2.10 (Revised downward, 1/07)
actual: 1.98 (6/07)

Electricity (megawatts)

Prewar: 3,958
Goal: 6,000
actual: 4,240 (6/07)

Since our last monthly report, the American KIA total dropped from May's 117 to 99. The surge continues to cost American lives. The April-June three-month total of 311 KIA is the highest for any three-month period in the war. [Please note: the number of KIA is almost always lower than the media-reported total of American deaths, which covers all causes, including non-hostile. Our Iraq and Vietnam figures are KIA only.] The total KIA of 99 in June raises the monthly KIA average for 2007 to 88. That average is higher than all months in 2006 but two, and higher than any single month in 2005.

Oil output declined yet again from May to June, dropping further below the target revised downward in January. In the case of electricity, output during the heat of summer rose to a 2007 high in June, but remained below June 2006's average output of 4,400 megawatts.

One Angry Priest

A thousand years are like a day.

--II Peter 3:8

(The Rev.) Bill Moyers is an angry man. He is preparing a television series that compares current America to the “Guilded Age,” the post-Civil War years when “Robber Barons” owned the U.S. Senate, got paid in land to build railroads, manipulated the stock market, built mansions in Newport, and rode out recessions that drove ordinary people into joblessness and debt. He told the United Church of Christ’s general synod June 23 that while he believes in democracy, the current concentration of wealth in a few hands, and the wealthy’s consequent manipulation of our political system, threatens the very foundation of democracy.

Moyers proclaimed the heart of democracy lies in the Declaration of Independence’s key phrase that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Liberty is the old word for freedom. Conservatives stress this freedom to pursue happiness in our own, individual ways. Moyers is fixed on equality, most especially inequality of income. So later in his speech, he just rewrites Jefferson to say we are after “life, liberty, and the pursuit of justice[!]”

Whoa! So much for happiness. And so much for Jefferson’s leaving “justice” out of the Declaration’s key phrase. Moyers rams home his passion for justice by quoting the story of Jesus’ driving moneychangers from the temple. In the name of justice, Moyers wants to drive the wealthy from the temple of Washington D.C.

My disappointment is with the stale nature of Moyers’—and Democrats’—divisive, anti-business appeal. It’s a throwback to FDR, to HST, and to LBJ’s Great Society. Don’t Democrats have anything new to offer? Moyers who was, in effect, Johnson’s chief of staff at age 30 [picture], seems unable to live past the collapse of the Great Society, Johnson’s (and Moyers’) failed big government effort to complete the New Deal. Vietnam was part of that collapse, in Moyers’ eyes draining needed money and attention away from domestic programs. But it’s also true big government just didn’t work to solve poverty or fix education. America moved on with Reagan’s election in 1980, Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform, and the decentralized effort to raise education standards that 2001’s No Child Left Behind represents.

So Moyers still fights the anti-capitalist war, as if the old ways are right for America today. Democratic New Priests such as Moyers won’t leave the New Deal behind. They want high taxes, humbled capitalists, and bureaucrats back in charge. Vilifying business worked—politically, especially—for the America they ruled 1933-69. Like Confucians, they revere a past that brought their religion mythic success.

The New Deal-Fair Deal-Great Society made major contributions to America--especially social security, labor laws, the GI bill/student loans, FHA mortgages, Medicare, and civil rights legislation. And we cannot allow capitalism to run roughshod over the landscape. But we now know that big government has severe limitations (look at Iraq!). In the broad sweep of history that treats years as minutes, capitalism has brought prosperity to billions, and big government socialism has collapsed. Dour New Priests like Moyers may find prosperity problematic, yet to the masses prosperity exactly defines "the pursuit of happiness."

Tough Man, Tougher Job

Dennis Ross is the person to listen to when it comes to Israel and Palestine. He has some advice for new Middle East envoy Tony Blair, who is taking the job Ross once had to try and put together an Israeli peace settlement. Whatever Ross may think about the need to return to Israel’s 1967 borders, his advice for Blair is about what Blair needs to do now, if peace is to have any chance.

Ross’s key points:

• Blair has to find a way to get Fatah to reform itself so that it can compete effectively with Hamas. Pressing Mahmoud Abbas to take on the Fatah old guard is essential but goes against Abbas's very nature. If Abbas won’t side with those who truly want to remake Fatah and reform it, it won't matter how much money goes to Fatah.

• Blair must be able to deal directly with the younger members of Fatah who are prepared to operate at the grassroots level, and who demonstrate their ability to deliver services if provided the means.

• Blair must have a strategy for Gaza. Blair must show he is not disregarding Gaza; he will need to ensure ongoing humanitarian assistance even while shaping an international consensus that developmental help will not flow to Gaza unless Hamas is willing to play by the rules. There is leverage—Hamas needs to show that it can govern and will need real help from the outside to do so.

• As important as it is for Blair to apply leverage on the Fatah old guard and on Hamas, this will matter little if he cannot ease travel restrictions for Palestinians throughout the West Bank. This, as much as anything, will signal that life and commerce may be normalized. Israeli security forces will resist any meaningful change without some demonstration of Fatah's capability and performance.

These points represent gigantic challenges. Challenges big enough that Blair may soon be longing for his old life as the hounded prime minister who took Britain into Iraq.

Argument Without End. . .

The late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., just before he died last winter, wrote that history is an argument without end. I now realize endless argument about history is a subplot of my blog.

LA Times editor Nicholas Goldberg [pictured] knew Danny Pearl, the subject of “A Mighty Heart,” the movie about Pearl’s murder by Pakistani terrorists. Goldberg looks back to ten years ago when he and Pearl used the same interpreter while covering Tehran, and spent several evenings together, two Jewish American correspondents in deep conversation about Israel and the Middle East. By contrast, Goldberg says:

What's clear. . .is that extremism has more sway now than it ever had in the 1990s, thanks not only to the successes of Al Qaeda but to American policies that have radicalized and inflamed the Muslim public. What moral standing we had in the region after 9/11 was squandered in the prison cells of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

There are many bright lines separating American liberals and conservatives. Goldberg points to one of the clearest. Conservatives believe the world changed on 9.11, when terrorists taught us they meant business. Liberals blame the U.S. for the extremists' post-9.11 successes.

Incredible. Yes, the U.S. has found it impossible to fight a mistake-free war. Still, it seems clear to me that extremists are largely responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Muslim men, women, and children, while America seeks peace and a better life for young Muslims, free from terror and with jobs plentiful. And furthermore, I believe Americans who insist on bringing down other Americans harm our ability to achieve these noble goals.

“Argument without end?” I hope not.