Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Rule of Thumb - Never Respond to a Bad Review

I must really enjoy other people's misfortune. I love reading the letters section to the NYT Book Review section just to see the authors' responses to bad reviews. Along with the Times Literary Supplement and NY Review of Books, I imagine this is about the most high-profile forum in which one gets reviewed, so I guess a lot of authors must think it's worth it to rebut a particularly unfavorable review. Still, I never think the authors come off well from these things and that's entertaining. That isn't to say that I think all reviewers are fair, just that authors who respond to their reviews in letters typically seem over-sensitive or insufficiently confident in their own work. The two approaches found most often in letters responding to reviews, so it seems, are to accuse the reviewer of some kind of bias and proceed to write the review that a neutral reviewer would have written, or to suggest that the reviewer missed the point of the book and then try to summarize in a couple of paragraphs what apparently wasn't clear from hundreds of pages. The former risks appearing paranoid or at least conspiratorial and the latter can lead to an inference that the book itself is at fault.

This weekend featured a letter from Larry Kramer, the dean of Stanford Law School and author of a new book on "popular constitutionalism" or the constitution outside the Supreme Court. The book (which I haven't read; it's checked out of my library) was reviewed a few weeks ago by Laurence Tribe (I couldn't get permanent links for these; I hope they're still good.) The first paragraph of Kramer's letter, though, will suffice to show that Kramer attempts the first type of response:
It comes as no surprise that Laurence H. Tribe -- who has spent his academic career litigating cases in the United States Supreme Court -- would not like my book, "The People Themselves" (Oct. 24). It is, after all, an effort to cast a skeptical eye on the claims of people like him to having a special say over constitutional law. I would, however, have expected something more or better from him than a caricature of my argument. Rather than reviewing my book, Tribe has written a common lawyer's brief, employing the sorts of tricks lawyers use to diminish a position they must attack: overreading, underreading or simply misreading complex arguments; taking snippets of quotations out of context; attributing contrived motives to an author or far-fetched consequences to a position; and so forth. No one doubts that Tribe is a good lawyer, and this stuff may be permissible in advocacy. It is, however, and for good reason, generally treated as inappropriate in serious debate.


To start with a nitpick, Kramer refers to Tribe spending his "academic career litigating cases in the United States Supreme Court," which is odd since litigating is not an academic career. Tribe's litigation work is professional practice, while his academic career is teaching and writing. It's an especially strange error for a college administrator to make. He probably means to imply that during the period of Tribe's academic career he's also (instead?) been a participant in the Court-centric imperial judiciary, but it's awkwardly expressed.

The "neutral" review follows. It's useful to look back at Tribe's review, which is casual to the point of dismissiveness. Maybe this high-handed attitude is why he draws such ire from his ideological rivals. From Tribe's review, it looks like Kramer rehearses many of the standard examples of coordinate construction of the constitution in the political branches (Jefferson's treatment of the Sedition Act, Jackson's veto of the Second National Bank, etc.) and that this, plus the civil war experience, constitutes his history. I find it hard to believe that Kramer really claims that "no one except the parties before the court should feel any obligation to obey its rulings," as Tribe says he does. Kramer doesn't explicitly deny this in his response, however.

According to Tribe's review, Kramer also favors the aggressive use of political tools to punish justices for making unpopular opinions, which isn't the same thing as calling for greater reliance on extrajudicial deliberation for constitutional meaning. Rather, it sounds like greater dominance of the courts by the political branches, since there's no guarantee that political control of the judiciary will only function when the people are acting enlightened. Again, Kramer claims he's being mischaracterized, but doesn't explicitly deny the attributed ideas. In fact, I can't figure out what Kramer's book actually says from his letter, which contains generalities about "leading and following, checking and balancing, representing and responding" without saying what specifically he means. Tribe, alternatively, points out several powers Congress and the President have to participate in the elaboration of constitutional meaning.

Tribe points out that much of what Kramer appears to be saying isn't new, and certainly Kramer is familiar with Bruce Ackerman’s argument that dualist constitutionalism requires a judiciary with the authority to bind the power of "ordinary" majoritarian politics while allowing for extraordinary political change in those constitutional limitations. I'd also cite Mark Tushnet's Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts, which endeavors (unsuccessfully, I think, but I am sympathetic to his argument) to prove that the "political branches" are at least as qualified to elaborate on fundamental law as the judiciary, and Keith Whittington's Constitutional Construction, which describes in detail several cases where deliberation on the meaning of the constitution appears (maybe) to have profoundly influenced the way that political forces function. I don't see any reflection in Kramer or Tribe's entries of these arguments.

Tribe rightly notes that the impulse to deny the Supreme Court the power to bind other actors through judicial review frequently rises from disagreement with how the Court uses that authority. Still, contemporary skepticism about the legitimacy of judicial review can be traced back to the unease that liberal supporters of the Warren Court’s activism felt with the undemocratic character of judicial legislation. At least since Alexander Bickel, progressive theorists have sought to resolve the countermajoritarian difficulty posed by judicial intervention. Tribe’s claim that Kramer favors disregarding judicial interpretations of the constitution, which Kramer labels "misleading" but also calls "unnecessary or unthreatening" was hardly the latter to those who suffered from the active resistance to integration efforts. Naturally, he has to diminish the early Warren Court civil rights record (echoing Gerald Rosenberg's contentious Hollow Hope argument,) since it was resistance to segregation that led to the Warren Court's pronouncement of judicial supremacy in Cooper v Aaron.

Along with the recent "judicial triumphalism" Tribe refers to, Kramer might profitably argue that the widespread assumption of judicial monopoly over constitutional meaning has led the quality of constitutional discourse in the political sphere to degenerate. Where legislators and executives may (and, let me emphasize, may) have once felt positively obliged to conform their behavior with the limitations of the constitution as they independently understood them, politicians now regularly engage in empty position-taking through legislative and executive actions that courts will faithful prevent from having any ill effects. The recent Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, an absurdly draconian overhaul of political finance law that does more to protect incumbents than prevent the appearance of corruption in politics, may very well have passed and been signed into law because members of Congress and President Bush believed that the Supreme Court would strip its worst excesses, which they didn’t do. Combined with the decreasingly competitive districting techniques that the courts have proven unable to counter, politicians’ disregard for any meaningful limits on the bounds of political competition may do much more harm to the legitimacy of public authority than even manufactured intelligence. Ironically, Kramer might not be able to use these examples, since greater judicial acquiescence to popular constitutionalism is arguably the problem, rather than the solution.

Another problem with these arguments is that Kramer can’t exactly blame the court and the brahmin-class of constitutional lawyers for the abdication of responsibility for principled constitutional deliberation by politicians, since politicians have quite plausibly welcomed it. As long as the left and the right can gain political favor by blaming the courts for their policy or political failures, they have an incentive to grant the courts the power that can make that claim credible. So, even if Kramer does argue that more assertive opposition to judicial monopoly on constitutionalism could make the Court more quiescent, and simultaneously cause politicians and the public to take their constitutional responsibilities more seriously, he’d have to argue convincingly that somebody really wants to do that.

I’ll have to read Kramer’s book, but his letter is disturbingly sanguine about the "risks" associated with popular governments beating the judiciary into obedience through manipulation of funding, jurisdiction, size and impeachment. Instances when the Court has appeared to bow to intense public pressure, regarding military arrests and trials, the criminalizing of communist speech, Japanese internment, legislative investigation, etc., don’t represent the informed polity at its finest. One could argue that state and federal authorities have ceded the constitution to the Court by demonstration of their untrustworthiness.

At any rate, it just doesn't pay to respond to a bad review. Tribe's attitude probably explains why Kramer wrote his letter, although it doesn't do him any favors.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Word processing and writing

Spotted an essay this morning in the NYT about fiction writing by computers. I love to read fiction writers dissembling about their vocation, which is great because there's so much of it about. Although there's no reason for it, writers seem to be in a constant panic that their status or existence is imperiled and feel the need to justify their existence. This is as it should be.

I can't see why writers should concern themselves with fiction-writing computers. As long as human beings retain a monopoly over fiction reading and reviewing, computers won't likely take away jobs from deserving workshop grads. Pinker's point is well-taken; most books written by a computer probably won't be worth reading. Of course, that's true of most novels written by humans, so maybe it's a small consolation.



This article reminded me of Stanislaw Lem's piece from A Perfect Vacuum called "Gigamesh," a Borges-like piece describing a fictional Joycean modernist epic based on Gilgamesh and written primarily by hooking up computers to the Library of Congress or something like that and altering the basic text of Gilgamesh to maximize the number of allusions made. Lem's essay raises the question of the value of a work like "Gigamesh," since it arguably has the same virtues of Finnegan's Wake, but doesn't originate solely from the mind of a person. If the virtue of fiction is supposed to be its capacity to enlighten through allusion or to bring connections between disparate subjects to light, then computers probably will write valuable fiction. It's only if we acknowledge the appeal to sentiment, subjective biases that computers are far less likely to exploit, that undergirds our appreciation for fiction that we can distinguish between the value of something like "Gigamesh" (hypothetical though it might be) and fiction written by human beings for human readers.

The basic issue, I guess, is how curious we really are. It's probably worth admitting that most people don't really want to read a book written by someone who isn't also a person, or at least doesn't do a very good job of reflecting the interests of people. The same limits operate at a more modest level and can be seen in the recent controversy over the National Book Award for fiction, which went to a decidedly pedagogical novel, chosen out of five finalists of remarkably similar backgrounds. I don't buy the objection made by some, that the current favorites of the literary fiction establishment are found lacking in other circles because of an absence of plot, although that might have something to do with it. I find a great deal of contemporary literary fiction uninvolving because I don't share the same interests as those who praise it highly. The formalist criteria that seem to animate reviewers and awards committees may accurately reflect the interests of a certain community, but it's not one that I belong to. With luck, computers will one day be capable of writing the "beautiful sentences, formal experiments and infinitely delicate evocations of emotional states" that Laura Miller describes as the goal of many contemporary writers, leaving writers to move on to more worthwhile pursuits to distinguish themselves from machines.

Media Review - De La Soul, The Grind Date and Handsome Boy Modeling School, White People

Coupling these albums seems unavoidable, given that Prince Paul, half of the Handsome Boy duo, is best known as producer for De La's first three albums and that the plug trio appear on White People (also, both albums have tracks entitled "It's Like That.") Unfortunately, bracketing these two albums may lead listeners to make a choice; you can't like them both, so one has to be disparaged in favor of the other. I actually like both, although I find I'm listening to Handsome Boy more than The Grind Date.

The position of these acts in the industry is quite interesting, since De La, previously on Tommy Boy (the label that released the first Handsome Boy album, So... How's Your Girl?) released this album on their own AOI label through Sanctuary Records, while Handsome Boy Modeling School's new one is on Atlantic/Elektra. Despite their role as leaders of the late 80s-early 90s Native Tongues posse, which appeared at the time to be a viable commercial alternative to the gangsta rap that would soon dominate hip-hop, De La Soul can be comfortably referred to now as "alternative rap," the category of hip hop defined primarily by being outside the "mainstream" of commercial rap. Meanwhile, Dan the Automator, the other half of Handsome Boy, went platinum recently with his Gorillaz project. Shadowy cult hip hop figure MF Doom and "positive" alt-rap perennial Common appear on Grind Date, while Pharrell Williams, RZA, Jay-Z and somebody from Linkin Park appear on White People.



This doesn't mean that the Handsome Boy Modeling School have gone "straight" by any stretch. In fact, their list of guest stars is like a who's who of alternative hip hop and rock (including past collaborators like Kid Koala, El-P and Del tha Funkee Homosapien.) Several other familiar but welcome names appear, like DJ Qbert, Mike Patton, Casual from the Hieroglyphics (one of the best unsung MCs around,) Rahzel from the Roots and Julee Cruise. De La Soul themselves appear on the second track of White People ("If It Wasn't For You") and their reunion with Prince Paul is as good as anything on The Grind Date.

With a few exceptions, White People seems driven more by Dan's sensibilities than Paul's, particularly in the choice of collaborators. Del, who has worked with Automator on the fantastic Deltron album and with the Gorillaz since the first Handsome Boy release, appears on what sounds like the first single ("The World's Gone Mad") which isn't a bad track, but is probably intended partly as a taster for another Gorillaz CD. Mike Patton, who appeared all over the highly underrated Lovage album (Songs To Make Love To Your Old Lady By, practically an unofficial Handsome Boy release) sings on a decent track ("Are You Down With It") and the Casual track is excellent. This is my first exposure to Cat Power, but her tastefully sensual singing didn't strike me as anything worth seeking out. There are a few tracks that suggest Prince Paul's more recent work, but it seems more like this is Automator's project, at least musically.

Sketches throughout the album continue to half-heartedly develop the Chris Elliott sitcom-inspired concept that gives the group its name, but the album could do without the concept. That said, the Dating Game sketch with Jay-Z and RZA effortlessly upstaging comedian Tim Meadows (playing his Ladies' Man character; again, do we need this?) is hilarious. Seriously, between this and his appearances on Chappelle's Show, RZA needs to have some regular outlet for comedy. The mini-suite "Rock and Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) Part 2" doesn't really cohere like it should, coming across instead as a preachy, Guru-style lecture on old school shuffled with bits of unfinished songs. "Class System" sounds like it was conceived for Lovage. In fact, a listener is reminded frequently of better stuff by these guys throughout White People.

I skipped De La's last album, the second Art Official Intelligence project Bionix, since the first release was so pedestrian. Rumor has it the second was a substantial improvement, so that might have been a mistake. Regardless, The Grind Date, a replacement album while they try to place their third AOI piece (alleged to be a DJ album!) isn't bad at all, but doesn't have the coherence or inventiveness of their first three Prince Paul collaborations (unlike many, I think De La Soul is Dead and Buhloone Mindstate are at least the equal of 3 Feet High and Rising.)

De La usually rise to the level of their collaborators, but not much higher, and they use several producers who bring some really good material, including Supa Dave West (providing the superb title track,) Ninth Wonder ("Church") and J-Dilla ("Verbal Clap.") There are several disappointing tracks, like both of the Madlib productions, "Shopping Bags" and "Come on Down," the Carl Thomas collaboration "It's Like That" and another dull Common appearance on "Days of Our Lives."

I couldn't fail to mention the welcome presence of the always-fantastic Ghostface on "He Comes," a song that sounds like it could have easily come off of The Pretty Toney Album. Ghostface seems entirely at home rapping after the De La trio and raises the energy level of the album measurably. Flava Flav makes an appearance on "Come On Down," reminding everyone of the time when Long Island hip-hop represented by De La and Public Enemy held a serious claim to the artistic vanguard, although there's no evidence of that here. I suppose the fact that The Grind Date features several exceptional tracks should be taken as a blessing, given the state of recent PE releases. The last track features ubiquitous underground superstar MF Doom and, unsurprisingly, it sounds a lot like it could have come from a Viktor Vaughn album.

White People and Grind Date are both worth having, although neither of these releases represents an advance for the talents involved. De La Soul and the Handsome Boy players all seem to be in transition, career-wise, which has put each of them into something of a holding pattern creatively. Once De La settle into a new label and Automator decides what he wants to do with the commercial potential his Gorillaz and remixing success has brought, that will probably change. Certainly, neither of these albums suggest that these acts have lost their mojo.

Friday, November 19, 2004

Bullet passes through Specter

Arlen Specter, recently reelected Republican member of the Senate, appears to have survived a challenge to his claim to the chairmanship of the chamber's judiciary committee. After suggesting that judges opposing Roe v Wade would have a tough time getting confirmed shortly after the election (what was he thinking?) he's promised not to block nominees based on their abortion positions. He also suggested that he might support efforts to prevent Democrats from being able to block floor votes on judicial nominees. In return for this public castration, he is now expected to receive the support of the caucus for the chair in January.

I note that in his statement, Specter notes his support for Republican high court appointees, including O'Connor and Kennedy, who have voted to uphold Roe in some form and excluding Scalia. He voted for Rehnquist's elevation to chief and supported Thomas visibly in committee, but his statement appears to characterize O'Connor and Kennedy as abortion opponents. Arguably that's true, in terms of their personal commitments, but social conservatives have long considered both traitors to the cause.

As chair, Specter can still make things easy or difficult for nominees, even with his commitment to move quickly on nominations. With his characterization of O'Connor and Kennedy, I believe he still has some room to favor social moderates in committee (if he ever sees any) and create problems for socially conservative nominees without violating his "no litmus test" statement. Of course, I find the "litmus test" metaphor stupid.

At any rate, I'd be surprised if Specter would want the job so bad if he's not going to have any space to pursue his own interests within it. So, contrary to more pessimistic observers, I wouldn't count out Specter as a moderating influence on judicial confirmation over the next couple of years. This may become extremely important as justices' seats become vacant.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

So Fresh, So Clean

While I'm getting a little better about posting, I haven't done a damn thing with the template or format of the blog since it started. The thing looks... austere. OK, barren. That might change soon, although it will mean figuring out how to do things. This means I might have features before too long, like a blogroll or links or a picture or something. Or, I might mess the whole thing up so that the blog just vanishes or crashes your browser or forwards you to some hard core porn website.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Confidential Report is for the Children

R.I.P. O.D.B.

Strictly constructing or constructing strictures?

This weekend the NYT published an article by Jeffrey Rosen, the legal affairs editor at the New Republic and one of the best writers on legal issues, providing a brief review of the promises and perils of judicial appointment. The article was entitled Can Bush Deliver a Conservative Court?, a question likely to elicit puzzlement from those who believe we already have a pretty conservative court. Rosen points out that Reagan and George the First's efforts to appoint "strict constructionists" (if that means socially conservative justices) were not very successful. A quick review of the data indicates that, excluding memoranda and equally divided decisions, cases in the Rehnquist Court since the appointment of Clarence Thomas have split 650 conservative to 477 liberal (as coded in Harold Spaeth's Supreme Court database.) Sure, that's more conservative than liberal, but not overwhelmingly so.

A conventional account of the Court's recent jurisprudence holds that the "moderates," O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, frequently join with the conservative justices to strike down acts of Congress when congressional authority is opposed to state authority, but join with the liberals to strike down state actions that infringe upon individual rights, thus producing what Keck accurately refers to as "The Most Activist Supreme Court in History." Still, even that understanding suppresses interesting complexity, as fissures can be found even among the liberal and conservative blocs of the Court.



For instance, despite the warm reception Justice Scalia received at the Federalist Society meeting over the weekend when the subject of his ascending to the center chair came up, Scalia hasn't always voted with the socially conservative angels during his tenure as an associate. He voted with the majorities in Texas v. Johnson and U.S. v Eichman, the flag-burning cases, and wrote the majority opinion in Employment Division v Smith, holding that there was no religious exemption to generally applicable drug enforcement policies, a decision that was widely held to infringe on religious freedom and led to the overwhelming adoption by Congress of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Before one thinks that Scalia is the only occasional defector, it should be noted that the Chief Justice wrote for a majority earlier this year, in Locke v Davey, that the First Amendment did not require a state to extend otherwise generally available scholarship money to students pursuing religious vocational education. Rehnquist's opinion, wisely, noted that states should have considerable freedom to decide what their own commitments not to establish religion require. Scalia dissented of course, despite arguing in the Smith case that state legislatures should be free to make religious exceptions to generally applicable laws in pursuit of free exercise commitments. I guess states can do what they will to benefit religious practice, but not to avoid providing public support to churches, as Scalia sees it.

To return to the topic, the current Court has, in the eyes of social conservatives, a mixed record. Even the unrealized doctrinal fruits that modern legal conservativism has produced are related to economic regulation, including an impending takings interpretation in Chevron v Lingle, to be decided this term. Rosen's article arguably mischaracterizes the activist spree the Court has taken since the mid-90s, since the wave of congressional enactments struck down in that time hasn't related to anything as structurally coherent as the "constitution in exile" although the threads are there in the revival of limits to the Commerce power and state sovereign immunity.

President Bush appears to have focused attention on potential justices with good conservative credentials on social issues, at least according to this article. Naturally, Roe is a high-profile target, in which case Bush only needs to flip two votes, but replacing Rehnquist won't get him any closer to that goal. Only if Bush gets to replace O'Connor and Stevens or Ginsburg with an anti-Roe vote will he be able to reverse it, assuming that Breyer and Souter don't mysteriously die.

Whether a relationship can be drawn between "strict constructionism" and "originalism" or "judicial restraint" or whatever other interpretive methodological buzzword that might come up (legal scholars have been stressing the connection between originalism and textualism for some time now) is less important than what really seems to be going on. Despite the emphasis on interpretive methodology, justices' commitments to method are less important, to the presidents who select them and the public who lives under their judgments, than the policy commitments that the justices bring with them. Legal scholars argue at length that interpretive methodologies work as constraints, producing consistency, predictability, and control over the decision-making of judicial actors, but time and again we are reminded that justices' behavior cannot be predicted by their interpretive commitments. Scalia, despite his public commitment to originalism, doesn't always rule as he believes the founders would have intended. Rather, justices' commitments to interpretive methods follow from their commitments to the outcome of legal controversies. As Rosen points out, the degree to which Bush gets what he wants out his judicial appointments depends on the degree to which the Court's agenda focuses on the issues he chose the justices to influence.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Precog Media Review - National Treasure

I haven't seen the yet-to-be-released National Treasure, a new action-adventure film from producer Jerry Bruckheimer starring Nicholas Cage, and doubt that I will, but I have seen ads for it before other features and on TV. Its plot description (from IMDb) follows:

Since childhood, Benjamin Franklin Gates has known that he is decended [sic] from a long line of people whose job is to guard a treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers, who hid clues to its whereabouts in the country's currency and on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Now, he has learned of a plot to steal the Declaration, and has only one option: steal it himself. Even if he pulls off this monumental task, keeping the treasure safe is still going to be incredibly hard, especially since the FBI has also gotten wind of the scheme.

The trailer emphasizes the theft of the Declaration of Independence and subsequent chases (of Gates by the feds, of the treasure by Gates and other Bad Treasure Hunters, etc.)

I don't know whether this is going to be a good movie or not, although it looks pretty stupid from this vantage. I guess the DaVinci Code phenomenon has ignited widespread pop culture interest in stubbornly persistent conspiracy theories (apparently, there's a Masonic/Illuminati angle to this plot, given the prominence of the Great Seal in the poster) and this is part of the result.

I do know one thing, however. A conservative critic, writing in the National Review or Weekly Standard or somewhere like that, will undoubtedly comment on this movie that only people with ultra-liberal, out-of-touch Hollywood values would make a movie about a fabulous national treasure indicated on the Declaration of Independence without realizing that it's on the front of the document, not the back.

Friday, November 05, 2004

Accountability

"I just think that if you're responsible for this kind of a big policy failure, you ought to be held accountable for it."

This unremarkable perspective goes a long way toward explaining the consternation and anger that those who opposed President Bush's reelection feel. Interestingly, this comment comes not from John Kerry or one of his surrogates, but from Francis Fukuyama, the Johns Hopkins professor of International Political Economy and leading neoconservative author who shocked fellow conservatives with The Neoconservative Moment, a critique of unipolar unilateralism, exemplified by the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and articulated recently by Charles Krauthammer. To many people, this may have sounded like the sudden turn against the Iraq war some conservatives like George Will and William Buckley have recently taken due to the observed difficulties, but Fukuyama's point is much larger. I just wish he had made it earlier than he did.

I've followed Fukuyama's writings since the appearance of his most famous book, The End of History and the Last Man over a decade ago. Although I've found much to disagree with and think that he sometimes writes far too conclusively on the basis of thin or speculative inference or declines to commit to other conclusions when his thinking seems to be leading to them, there are often strong, nonobvious and surprisingly simple observations to be found in his books. At the root of his critique of Krauthammer is a simple observation about the unwarranted response to risk and uncertainty that the Bush administration made in their decision to invade Iraq, although I think that most people who have analyzed that policy choice have oversimplified it. I address this below.

Newly arrived criticisms of the Bush administration from conservatives, especially the anti-interventionist, small government types represented by the Libertarian Party, have found an irony in the vast expansion of government ambition, power and spending under what has been described as the most "conservative" president of the modern era. Just as the enthusiasm for centralized regulatory intervention among "liberals" is often blamed on the misplaced desire to entirely eliminate risk from human experience, I see in the Bush team's rush to war with Iraq a desire to react against any risk with the most extreme response possible. Actually, I think the Bush team's rush to war with Iraq was based only in part on this; identifying Iraq as the "risk" worthy of extraordinary intervention was in large part a function of a predisposition toward action against Iraq exposed most clearly in Richard Clarke's book.

As much as the GOP reminds us that everyone, Clinton and Kerry included, agreed that Saddam Hussein was a "risk" to the safety of the United States, the important detail is the magnitude of that risk and what costs were justified to eliminate it. A lot of people, myself included, were not convinced, or even inclined to bet, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Now, I don't know anything special about the Middle East, but Powell's presentation to the Security Council, which presumably didn't hold back on the strongest evidence they could muster, suggested that the evidence was not very convincing.

As Fukuyama makes clear, resistance to war with Iraq wasn't merely based on an aversion to unilateralism, but on differing assessments of the risk Iraq posed and what the likely costs would be of eliminating that uncertain risk. The Bush team, if you assume that they sincerely believed that Iraq was a sponsor or potential sponsor of cataclysmic radical Islamic terrorism against the United States, were unreasonably certain of that risk and unreasonably sanguine about the costs that we would suffer to remove it. This is, at root, the same argument made by those who say that, for instance, substantial reduction in greenhouse gases is an overreaction to the minor threat that they pose to the ecosystem that will impose much more costly reduction in productive economic activity. Fukuyama's point is thus quite simple: Without rejecting the acceptability, even the preference, for unilateral action in the international arena on behalf of American ideals, that action should be based on a realistic assessment of what military force can accomplish and how people, those subject to intervention and those who observe it, will respond to it.

Thus, Fukuyama's argument here is a real threat to the shape of the neo-conservative enterprise, but not necessarily an abandonment of the principles neo-conservatives have embraced. Like many movements, Fukuyama suggests that the policies championed by neo-conservatives have become unmoored from the principles that initially led to them and now live independently, resistant to stark realities and the unpleasant environments in which they are imposed. This is what he means that the premises Krauthammer begins with could lead to a different foreign policy than that pursued by the Bush administration.

Of course, all of this assumes that the Bush administration's stated reasons for invading Iraq, protecting American lives, spreading democracy to the Middle East, overthrowing a brutal dictator, etc, are sincere. Unlike some other critics, I think that these motives are to be found in the choice to invade Iraq, along with some other motives like providing a stage for the road testing of Rumsfeld's new blueprint for the American military, acquiring an exhibit and laboratory for radical privatization of public services, and, yes, unlocking Iraqi oil. I've never bought the simple argument that the war in Iraq was just about "stealing" their oil. There are other, more subtle, changes in Iraqi oil production that might have been considered pleasant side effects of overthrowing Hussein. Getting rid of Hussein makes it much easier to eliminate the sanctions under the "oil for food" program, permit private investment that can increase the yield of Iraqi oil extraction, and, yes, rearrange the contractual relationships Iraq holds with the constellation of international oil companies. Alone, these are not reasons for invading a country, but they may bring certain valuable interests into alignment with a policy chosen for other reasons.

Fukuyama's critique of Krauthammer and neoconservativism's unipolar unilateralism lends credence to the notion that the movement has succumbed to a "garbage can" decision-making process, wherein policy prescriptions are produced for certain reasons, which are at the time insufficient to justify their adoption, but hang around anyway, brought out again and again by their proponents in response to any and every other problem that they may be contorted to address. Eventually, a problem may surface that the policy can be radically retooled to confront. In this case, terrorism was that problem and the policy is unilateral military adventurism.

While reading the National Interest piece weeks ago, I found his argument against making this critique earlier unsatisfying and I still do. Now that Bush has been reelected and is making startling claims about his "mandate" to "spend political capital," the consequences of not calling his policy choices into question are getting exponentially more dire. In the last few days I've been especially concerned with the likely result of Bush's reelection for the judiciary, since that's my beat. I'll likely write about that in the next couple of days.

A Penny for the Old Guy

It's Guy Fawkes Day.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Whose opinions matter?

Everybody thinks that they know politics. This, I've gathered, is a common complaint among political scientists, not just mine. While many people will defer in conversation to the genuine expertise of someone else, most people seem to believe that every citizen in a liberal democracy has a fundamental right to hold whatever beliefs and make whatever conclusions they wish with regard to politics. Because telling someone that something they believe with regard to politics is wrong is considered bad manners, I usually don't say anything. It's bad enough when people make plainly nonsensical claims about the "meaning" of elections or what one political party or another stands for, but I find it more aggravating when people make value assertions that are flatly at odds with other values they committed to a minute earlier. This happens with shocking regularity.

With celebrities and other notable high profile people weighing in all the time on yesterday's elections, particularly the presidential election, I've been left wondering several times how I feel about the generalized sense of expertise that people hold with regard to politics. I've gotten several media requests to comment on the presidential election, particularly about how presidential politics have changed in the last two elections, but I always defer, since I don't study campaign or voter behavior. I've answered a couple of questions about election litigation, but haven't gotten too many of those, and now it looks like I won't get any more. Even though I am a political scientist, I don't feel qualified to make "expert" conclusions in many areas of politics, and I'm sure most political scientists feel that way. Still, Sean Penn and Bruce Springsteen apparently feel that successful acting or music careers qualify them to make conclusions about politics that other people really need to hear about.



To broaden the issue, I've been thinking about how different prominent people, even people who are prominent for their intelligence or other cerebral gifts, talk about electoral politics. An article the other day in the Guardian about Tom Wolfe focuses on his attitudes toward the political opinions within his own Upper East Side community. The article notes the preoccupation with sexual immorality of his new novel, and his sympathy with the Bush administration and the support of it he observes among "Americans," with whom he contrasts the liberal elite. Although literary figures like Wolfe are often asked for, and readily give, their opinions on matters like this, are they really more qualified than anybody else to hold valuable opinions about politics? Wolfe and the other novelists respond to the choice offered in the presidential election just as your friends or the randomly chosen voters speaking to reporters do. They know how Bush or Kerry makes them feel, or what support or opposition to one or the other candidate "means" in a literary or symbolic sense, but don't have anything to say about what a second Bush or first Kerry administration would mean in regard to governance. By that I mean that presidents make thousands of political decisions over the course of their tenures, and the differences between those choices can have a substantial impact on the quality of public services, or the collective goals that the country may or may not commit itself to, or the laws that we enact, or regulations to which we are subject, etc. Wolfe feels that the feeling of his "liberal elite" circle is out of touch with the feeling of ordinary Americans. I can get this observation from anybody. I'd appreciate an observation based on some informed thought. Wolfe says nothing about President Bush that can be translated into any expectation of what another four years of his administration will mean in a sense that anybody can use.

Not that I find the responses of Russell Banks, E.L. Doctorow, or Norman Mailer noted in the other article more informed. I have my own feelings about the President as a human being, but as a political scientist and as a voter, my thoughts about him as a leader and as a policymaker are more relevant. These people may be interesting writers of fiction, but they're observations on politics are singularly uninsightful.

The issue of authority, and the lack of it, does remind me of another article I read recently, a review of a book called Bad Thoughts by a philosopher and management consultant named Jamie Whyte. Although its author sounds like a real pain in the ass, it sounds like a potentially useful review of logical fallacies. Still, the interview is not particularly encouraging. He rails against, among other things, the mistake of trusting someone who has achieved some celebrity (such as having published a book,) rather than relying upon genuine expertise. Then, as an example, he cites the British Medical Association's recommendation that the fat content of foods be taxed to improve public health. He responds first by questioning whether the BMA "knows anything about how we should live" and then asserting that the BMA knows nothing about what the effects of a tax on fatty foods might have.

The nonsensical element of this outburst (or at least, the first) is the assumption that recommending tax policy is a normative conclusion about lifestyle. The BMA might not be authorized to decide whether people would prefer eating fatty foods to being healthy, but they probably know a lot more than a philosopher about the social costs (in terms of public and private sector spending on health care) due to the consumption of fatty foods. The BMA, as an organization, probably includes or has contact with epidemiologists and biostatisticians who can opine credibly on the effect of reducing fat consumption. They may have even contacted economists who could inform them about Pigovian taxes, commonly used to reduce the negative externalities produced by people who make choices that impose costs on others, which is exactly what they recommended. A person can still choose to eat fatty foods, but only by agreeing to pay for the social costs of that choice.

After saying the BMA should "shut up," since they clearly know less about policy than Mr. Whyte (this after insisting that only people with genuine expertise should be trusted,) he goes on to assert that the BMA's recommendation "should be an input to the decision making of somebody else." Maybe I missed something, but that's what the BMA did when they recommended to the government (who is someone else) that they should tax fatty foods. Certainly the government, which is a mechanism for assessing the relative merit of competing values if nothing else, can decide whether the health and consequent economic effects are worth it. Apart from that, now Whyte is asserting that he is an expert in organizational or collective decision-making, which he is not.

He attributes the BMA's fallacious recommendation to "this blind assumption that health is everything" which he attributes to "doctors (who) often seem to forget that" we are all mortal. In his very next statement, he raises the "motive fallacy," which he explains, sort of, as the dismissal of arguments because they are alleged to be motivated by the personal commitments of "tribal groups." How this differs from saying that the BMA's policy recommendation is based on the blind assumption of doctors that health is everything is lost on me. I'd have much more confidence in his book about how to avoid bad thinking if he didn't commit the fallacies he warns against seconds after warning against them.

Whyte pontificates on several other subjects, including behavioral economics and psychology, of which he appears to have a lay understanding, oblivious to the irony of it all. Some things are more credible than others, but I was particularly struck by his confidence to conclude on matters of politics and policy with no grasp of what he was talking about. Bad thinking indeed.

He does slam celebrities for talking about politics, though, and I can get behind that.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Crossfire... utterly debased

So, not learning their lesson from the Jon Stewart incident, Crossfire had Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on the show yesterday. The Washington Post summarizes the encounter, which I unfortunately missed, since I don't watch Crossfire. I didn't see Jon Stewart's appearance either, but I did read a transcript.

As it turns out, the problem with Stewart's critique of Crossfire was that he gives them too much credit. Commentator shows along the lines of Crossfire, even the much-beloved Firing Line, are more about theater first and edification or frank exchanges of views second (or third.) This was nowhere more clear than when SNL started a series of parody sketches in the early 90s of the McLaughlin group. The sketches weren't actually funnier than the McLaughlin group, but that's part of the problem.

If Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala (hard to believe these third stringers are all they can get for the show that used to have first-rate party hacks like Bob Novak and Bill Press) want to be taken more seriously, this isn't the way to do it. If they want second careers as straight-men for abusive comedy, this is a promising start.

Return of the short post

I've still got several posts languishing, half-composed and now suffering from lack of timeliness. Although Jacques Derrida will probably remain dead, I'm not sure I really need to post something about it, even if I started the post weeks ago. I bought Brian Wilson's Smile shortly after it came out and started writing a review, then left it sitting long enough that I was inspired to co-review it with the new William Shatner album Has Been, if only so the post would seem more up-to-date, but I haven't gotten past revising the title.

I'm still gonna do that, though.

I just spotted this article in the NYT about Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, award-winning screenwriter and recent name changee. She says she didn't just adopt her husband's last name after several decades in the entertainment industry because her children, Jake and Maggie, are famous. Yeah.

What bothers me, though, is that her brother is Eric Foner, Professor of History at Columbia and a must-read author for anyone who wishes to understand late 19th-century America. Does this detail warrant a mention in the article? Why no...

Monday, November 01, 2004

In Praise of Kate - Updated

I hadn't planned to take a couple of weeks off from the blog. In fact, I have several posts in various stages of incompleteness, none of which have been even glanced at since early this month. While teaching and research have had a particular hold on me in the last few weeks, the blog has also fallen victim to my attention-deficit problem, which usually manifests itself in writing ten or twelve first drafts or parts of papers in a given year while only completing about two or three. I've yet to master the art of the short post.

As a baby step toward that goal, I offer this Guardian article about the spectacular Kate Winslet. Although she has a film coming out soon, this article seems fairly unmotivated, which is fine since I don't see the need to justify an article about how great Winslet is. In fact, I really have nothing to add, as I'd second any of the laudatory observations made in this piece.

So Kate, gimme a call when you're in town. Heck, bring Sam Mendes; it'll give me a chance to kick his ass.

UPDATE

Somehow, Kate was on Saturday Night Live this weekend and I didn't know about it. Thank God for the obsessives on the internet, who have already posted pictures and more pictures. I'll have to monitor the rerun schedule.