AFF Radio

I'm on AFF's Inside Washington Weekly podcast talking about various events in the news this week. I've joined a regular panel and will be on the show every four weeks or so.

Ron Paul piece at NRO

I've got a piece on Ron Paul up at NRO today. Internet Paulites (is there a nickname for the die hard web Paul fans yet?) commence swarming... now.

Update: I see that I'm getting a lot of hits from Facebook, and that at least one person has written that I "actually want to be swarmed." Well, I mean, I know that's what I wrote, but I was at least a little bit kidding. From talking to some other journalists, I'd sort of been under the impression that anyone who wrote anything about Paul automatically got a dump truck full of email delivered 15 minutes after the piece went live. So I figured I'd just pull the starting gun myself.

That said, I encourage email, comments, etc. and certainly won't argue if anyone links to this site.

Be My Friend, Obama?

At NRO, I've got a piece on Obama's Facebook cult today...

In 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.” If that’s true, then no man, or at least no politician, has grown as much in recent months as Barack Obama.

Of course, when Emerson wrote the line, a “friend” was still likely to be someone you’d met in person, and the word itself was still a noun. These days, a “friend” might be any random Internet onlooker, and the verb “to friend” has surfaced on our lexicon’s fringes. Social-networking websites like Facebook and MySpace have made “friending” so easy as to be meaningless, and have established the Internet “friend count” as a status symbol. Politicians have always been at the forefront of the fake-friend game, so it’s hardly surprising that all of the top-tier 2008 presidential candidates are using social-networking sites to reach out to prospective voters. But while all the contenders have come to play in the online sandbox, it is Obama who has reaped the most rewards.

Obama’s social-network campaigning is unmatched, with more than double the MySpace “friends” of any other candidate, as well as thousands more Facebook messages and a customized social-networking site of his own. In these online communities, the barriers between politician and citizen are reduced, and the formal conventions of politics dissolve amidst the casual protocols of IMs and text messages. Instead of showing up on a field to wave signs from a distance, Obama’s Internet fans come to hang out, to chat, to talk about themselves and their lives, to send “virtual gifts”—in other words, to be Obama’s friend.

The Circus Returns

I've got a piece on the Democrats' return to power in Congress at NRO today.

Can She Be Stopped? Probably.

While I certainly respect the Podhoretz theory, I think the Hillary-is-inevitable theory is pretty weak, and, in fact, easily defeated, as Jonathon Chait amply demonstrates. Added to this, of course, is the wonderful absurdity that Obama is polling better amongst women than Hillary, while Hillary is polling better amongst blacks than Obama. And although I find Ross's theory, in which Gore flies in, Han Solo style, to steal the nomination after Obama, Edwards, and Hillary all prove unpalatable, somewhat plausible, the idea that Edwards might actually beat Obama and Hillary is, as Ross notes, pretty far fetched. So who's it going to be for the Dems? Perhaps this will forever prohibit me any future chance at entry into the swanky pundit clubs, but I just don't think it's useful to speculate at this point. In six months, maybe. In ten months, absolutely. But for now, the whole thing is just a glorious spectacle of wonk and punditry--and I plan to sit back and enjoy every bit of it. Repeat after me: ten months is a long time.

Politi-who?

I know it's only their first day and all, and maybe I'm supposed to give them a break because of it, but don't you think it's a little bit odd that at 11 p.m. The Politico--which I thought was supposed to be the newest, hippest, most up-to-the-minute Capitol news source--has absolutely no current State of the Union analysis or news? (I've uploaded a screenshot here, but Blogger is giving me trouble trying to put a thumbnail in the post. Stupid internet.)

There are many copies

All the world-leader wannabes are announcing their candidacies (or hinting of an announcement to come), and there's much flutter amongst the pundit class. But I think the truly important question that no one is asking is: Which one of them is a Cylon? Is it the smoky-voiced Obama? The mother-robot Hillary? The New Model (now with patented Perfect Hair!) Edwards? And what if none of them are toasters, but one or more is a collaborator? We could end up with Baltar! (Would that make imaginary-6 Vice President?)

Nine more episodes left this season. And apparently, some of them will be doozies.

Come together... right now

As if you needed more reasons that Tim Carney is awesome: His column today is a perfect example of why libertarian-conservative, and even libertarian-Christian, fusionism is still a superb idea. Emphasize the similarities, not the differences--the two groups are far closer than the last six months of conventional wisdom would suggest.

Switching Sides

By now you’ve read Brink Lindsey’s New Republic article on liberal-libertarian fusionism, and you’ve probably read Jonah Goldberg’s brief response as well as Sebastian Mallaby’s column. It’s a good piece, certainly much more persuasive than Markos Moulitsas’ absurd notion of the Libertarian Democrat. But I don’t think I entirely buy it—at least not yet.

Lindsey’s argument, to oversimplify, boils down to asking libertarians to give up hardline support for economic freedom and become pragmatic capitalists, while asking progressives to give up collective identity, hard egalitarianism, and serious centralized economic planning. Needless to say, this strikes me as a difficult proposition. Libertarian angst against Republicans is strong enough right now that it might seem plausible, but I have a hard time believing that there’s really all that much support amongst libertarians for a party whose key positions include a general support for strong business regulations and government programs. This, in fact, is why I’m so reticent to endorse conservative proposals to use government for its ends (even if I have a general respect for those ends). Libertarians aren’t really all that likely to hop parties en masse anytime soon, but if the right makes an active switch away from small government to managed government, they’ll follow Lindsey and turn away.

Of course, as Goldberg notes, there’s an upside to this:

We should all hope that Lindsey's project succeeds. Who among us unapologetic conservatives wouldn't like to see the two parties get in a bidding war over who is more libertarian on economic issues?

And sure, it’d be nice. But it’s also pretty much impossible—and exactly why a true libertarian-liberal alliance will never really happen.

You Can't Say That on Television

Rick Perlstein has a piece in TNR arguing that Democrats should seek to marginalize the GOP by demonizing the South as racist. He repeats Thomas Schaller's argument that Democrats should forget about the South, but right now are afraid (or not allowed) to do so.

The very heart of his argument is a taboo notion: that the South votes Republican because the Republicans have perfected their appeal to Southern racism, and that Democrats simply can't (and shouldn't) compete.

[snip]

What's more, if Republicans have succeeded by openly baiting a region of the country not really American (the latte-swilling Northeast), Schaller says, "The Democrats need their own 'them,' and the social conservatives who are the bedrock of Southern politics provide the most obvious and burdensome stone to hang around the Republicans' neck." Democrats should cite "Southern obstructionism as a continuing impediment to the investments and progress the country must make in the coming century." There's just one problem: You can't do that on TV.

Oh you can't, can you? Look, there's a sliver of truth to the argument that Democratic strategists aren't allowed to openly inveigh against the South. But if it's not done directly, it is done indirectly in all sorts of ways. The left is constantly making snooty inferences about the dumb, backwards Southerners, whether in references to NASCAR, homophobia, trailer parks or yokel accents--there's a reason the coastal pundit class is often referred to as "the elites." And if they haven't gone after an explicit anti-Southern strategy, they've gone in the back door and frantically attacked religion instead, often implying a link between such critiques and the religiously dominated South. Perlstein and Schaller act as if they're breaking taboos by advocating a brand new, hard hitting strategy, but for the most part, they're merely telling Democrats to be open about what they're already doing.

It's like a hip-hop peace accord

If Nas and Jay-Z can hang, collaborate even, maybe there's hope for Israel and Palestine as well. This should've been Michael Steele's theme song.

Lifestyle politics

I ought to be polishing (well, writing a conclusion to) my review of this, but instead I’ll dive headlong into Larisonland, a place I often fear to tread, if only out of a pervasive phobia of getting buried and eventually suffocating under a mountain of blog copy.

In responding to my point about the difference between political conservatism and lifestyle conservatism, Larison writes:

Each time I read over Peter’s post, the bit about ideology always brings me up short. On why preserving a way of life focused on natural loyalties and guided by a spirit that values restraint, prescription and prudence, among other things, is not an ideology.

[snip]

It has long seemed to me that ideology is that sort of abstract commitment to a proposition or theory that one makes that has little or no relevance to how you live. Being a good liberal involves accepting a number of rather dubious claims about the nature of man and society and setting policy accordingly. Allegedly, what you do in your own, “private” life is no concern to anybody. Likewise, being a good communist or fascist ideologue has everything to do with toeing party lines and supporting the right kinds of policies. Living ethically is neither here nor there, except insofar as it comes into conflict with policy.

[snip]

Ethics is the heart of real politika, the things concerning the polis or community. One’s ethos, one’s way of life and habitual practices, defines what kind of politics a man has, and what kind of community he and his will create and maintain….If conservatism is a worthwhile state of mind and persuasion, conservatism ought to have something important to say.

Larison has lots of smart stuff to say—often thousands of words of it every day—but it seems to me, once again, that what Larison is doing is making conservatism into a sort of manifesto for living. But to my mind, that’s not the place of political alignment; that’s the job of the church, of the conscience, of whatever overarching ideas about existence to which one subscribes. To be a conservative is not necessarily to be a Christian, though I believe the two go in kind with minimal friction. A religion can, and probably should, dictate, in however general or specific terms, a way of life to its followers.

But a political ideology, a political movement, one that is primarily about figuring out proper means of governing, should be, in fact, the opposite—a way of allowing opposing, contrasting, varied ways of life and belief to thrive with as little interference as possible. Larison’s conservatism would be preached from the pulpit, infused in every minute and every decision of life, and while I have no quarrel with (and, in fact, heartily support) careful, principled existences, I don’t wish to see that sort of all-encompassing belief take over the political realm. There is a place*, for sure, to discuss how one should live their life, what principles, faiths, and notions are decent and good, but the goal of politics, and thus of political movements, should be to clear a space for those ideas to flourish, not try to inject itself into the discussion.

*That place is probably in dorm rooms and on little-read blogs.