Keeping the Republic Blog

Is There a Speaker in the House? 10/21/06

No time to write much, but a pair of articles from the Washington Post to bring to your attention on the current Speaker of the House  Micheal Grunwald and Jim VandeHei, Hastert’s Team Mentality to be Tested as Foley Scandal Unfolds, 10/16/06)  and the woman who would like to replace him (Lois Romano, The Woman Who Would be Speaker, 10/21/06) .   Nice analyses of their respective leadership styles.

Also, see this fun one on the origin and  scope of “October surprises.”  (Linton Weeks, Boo! An Inevitable October Surprise, 10/21/06)

Terror Bills and Party Splits -- 10/18/06

Yesterday President Bush signed the terror investigation bill that Congress passed nearly a month ago.  According to the Washington Post (Michael A. Fletcher, Bush Signs Terrorism Measure, 10/18/06), here’s what the bill does in a nutshell: “The new law imposes tight limits on defendants' traditional courtroom rights, including restrictions on their ability to examine the evidence against them, to challenge their incarceration and to exclude evidence gained through witness coercion.” That alone is enough to dramatically change the traditional guarantees of procedural justice that the founders put in place to ensure that people could not be jailed and sentenced in the United States on purely political grounds.  The Bush administration says it will use the new powers only to prosecute terrorists, but the trouble with altering the fundamental protection of rights is that, once you’ve done it, you can’t control how it will be used in the future. What might be the “unintended consequences” of this law?

Also in the news, but not “news” per se, is an article in the Los Angeles Times (Johanna Neuman, Some See “Pink Purge” in the GOP, 10/18/06) about the internal schism in the Republican Party between social conservatives who want the party to stay strictly to its anti-gay agenda, and the party policy of reaching out to moderate voters, some of whom are gay themselves or favor gay rights.  Remember the discussion in Chapter 2 of KTR on the difficulties the Republicans have in holding together a collation that includes those with a substantive position on the role of government in establishing the social order and those with a more procedural position.  The tension between the two sides, exacerbated by recent events like the Foley scandal and a new book that claims that the administration had privately mocked the evangelicals whose votes it has come to depend on, is likely to have repercussions in the upcoming election.  The GOP is counting on its fabled GOTV (get-out-the-vote) machinery, but if social conservatives stay home in large numbers on Election Day, the Republicans will probably lose control of one or both houses of Congress.

Government by Which People? 10/15/06

Congressional elections are just over three weeks away, and much of the coverage in the papers focuses on last minute strategy, polls, and expenditures.  A couple of interesting articles in the Sunday papers are this one in the NYT (Robin Toner, Democrats Have Intensity but G.O.P. Has its Machine, 10/14/06) on the edge Republicans believe they have on get-out-the-vote efforts  despite intense Democrat anger against the Bush adminstration and this similar piece in the Post on the White House confidence that they will prevail on November 7 because of their superior vote mobilizing machinery (Michael Abramowitz, White House Upbeat About GOP Prospects, 10/15/06).  They plan to spend the next three weeks hammering the theme that Democrats are soft of national security and urging conservative voters to get to the polls.

With polls showing widespread discontent with the Republican Party among the electorate, these articles raise interesting questions.  What is it elections really measure – popular opinion generally or the opinion of those who can be scared, or excited, or angered enough to get themselves to the polls?  What does “government by the people” translate into when most of the people themselves do not vote to register their sentiments and when leaders confidently believe they can motivate sufficient numbers to keep them in power despite the fact that they have lost the confidence of a majority of the public? 

Also on elections more generally, see this piece (David Kirkpatrick, Voters' Allegiances, Ripe for the Picking, 10/15/06) in the NYT on voter identification, the increase of those who say they are political independents, and the prospects for a realignment of the electorate.  Some interesting updates there to the discussion in KTR, Chapter 12.

The Costs of War -- 9/28/06

A couple of things to note with regard to the Iraq war.

First, as I noted below in discussing the compromise between the White House and the Senate on the interrogation bill, it looks like Pres. Bush is getting much of what he wants, including quick passage of the bill so that he can sign it before Republican congresspeople go home to campaign against any Democrats who vote against it.  The House voted on the bill yesterday and the Senate, having voted down Democratic amendments to beef up detainee rights, is set to do so today. (Charles Babbington, House Approves Bill on Detainees, 9/28/06)  

An editorial in the more liberal New York Times is solidly against the bill but so is one in the usually-supportive-of-the-Iraqi-war Washington Post. 

Andrew Sullivan, a conservative libertarian critic of a war he once supported, has a link on his blog to a YouTube of military, religious, and intelligence experts testifying before Congress on the harmful effects of the behavior that this bill will allow the military and the CIA to engage in.  Sullivan’s blog is kind of eccentric since he covers a variety of issues, but it is the go-to place for anti-torture links and debate on the subject.  He often gives a hearing to his critics, so it is not just one-sided (though there is no doubt about where he stands.)

Jonah Goldberg, in the conservative National Review Online, is one of Sullivan’s critics, claiming that he fails to consider some of the reasons why we engage in coercive interrogation techniques and thinks we are too quick to call them torture. (When Push Comes to Torture, NRO, 9/27/06) 

As you read this stuff, think about the issues raised in Chapter 5 of KTR (p. 157) on the trade-offs between security and freedom.  Thomas Hobbes showed what kind of government fearful people would choose – a Leviathan that protects them but demands all their rights in exchange.  Anything short of that demands debate about how much freedom, how much security.  By urging the quick passage of this bill as an election ploy and threatening to stop all interrogations if it isn’t passed, Bush is silencing the debate that should accompany any decision to reduce the liberties America values.  Even Goldberg concludes his essay with these words:

“In the recent debate over torture, everybody decided to kick the can down the road on what torture is and isn’t. This argument will be forced on us again, no matter how much we try to avoid it. We’ll be sorry we didn’t take the debate more seriously when we had the chance.”

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Another issue to follow today is the partial release by Pres. Bush, yesterday, of the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate), a report prepared by the US intelligence community that basically says that the Iraq war has had a negative effect on US safety.  (Mark Mazzetti, Backing Policy, President Issues Terror Estimate, 9/26/06)

The report, issued in April, was leaked to the New York Times last weekend. Amid calls from Democrats that the report should be made public, Bush declassified a few pages of it, and now the two parties are both trying to spin the results their way.  Most analysis seems to support the Democratic contention that the report paints a grim picture of the war and the impact it has had in breeding new supporters of terror.  Here is the New York Times’ take, but you can find similar views in the rest of the mainstream media: David Sanger, Study Doesn’t Share Bush’s Optimism on Terror Fight, 9/26/06) 

 If Republican members of Congress plan to go home and campaign on Democrats softness on terrorism, the Democrats are headed home to complain that the Republicans’ policies are increasing it.  Hold on to your hats and get ready for a wild ride to Election Day.  The NYT has a nice piece on the increasingly negative campaign commercials that candidates are airing this season: Adam Nagourney, Theme of Campaign Ads: Don’t Be Nice, 9/26/06 

Let's Make a Deal -- 9/22/06

One of the great blessings of politics is that it allows us to negotiate solutions to intractable problems, to cooperate, to make deals, to compromise so that all sides of a dispute can get something of what they want, even if they lose something in the process.

In the deal cut by Senate Republicans and the White House over the president’s interrogation bill, it’s difficult to see what the White House lost.  Despite changes in the language, President Bush will still be allowed to redefine the terms of the Geneva Conventions for all practical purposes when he orders the CIA to interrogate prisoners, and classified information can still be kept from prisoners facing trial based on that evidence.  On a first reading of the deal, what chiefly seems to have been gained by the Senate is deniability.  They are not officially giving the president approval to redefine the Geneva Conventions, but he can effectively do so at his discretion.

I’ll post more on this as analysis comes in, but read the coverage in the Times (Kate Zernike, Republicans Reach a Deal on Detainee Bill, 9/22/06), the WaPo (R. Jeffrey Smith and Charles Babbington, White House, Senators Near Pact on Interrogation Rules, 9/22/06) and the LAT (Julian Barnes and Richard Simon, Bush Bows to Senators on Detainees, 9/22/06) whose headline, at least, sees Bush as capitulating more than the other papers do. Editorials in the Times and the WaPo are both strongly critical of the compromise.   

What this deal appears to do is clear the way for approval of Bush’s bill before members of Congress go home to campaign.  If Democrats vote with them, Republicans can claim a bipartisan victory for Bush.  If Democrats vote against the bill, they can be cast as soft on terror and weak on defense – precisely the outcome Bush and Rove had hoped for in bringing up this issue now. Public opinion polls show that their effort to change the subject to national defense has shown some success as Republican fortunes have improved somewhat (at least, depending on which polls you read.)

Stay tuned….

Sunday Follow Up

The Sunday papers are often a chance to get follow-ups on the week's news, or longer pieces analysing events.  A good piece this a.m. from the Sunday Washington Post on the continuing battle to set the agenda in the days before the election: Jonathan Weisman, Tribunal Dispute Could Ruin GOP Strategy, WaPo, 9/17/06.

Key Republican Senators Balk at Bush Push 9/15/06

Both the Times and the Post have excellent articles this a.m. on the Republican rebellion in the Senate Armed Services Committee over Bush’s proposals to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions to allow the CIA greater latitude to interrogate terror suspects and to set up military commissions to try those suspects.  Read both pieces – there is much overlap but between them they do a terrific job of setting out just what is at stake in this dispute – what Bush intended his proposal to accomplish and what it has actually done so far.

• Carl Hulse, An Unexpected Collision Over Detainees.  NYT 9/15/06
• Charles Babbington and Jonathan Weisman, Senators Defy Bush On Terror Measure.  WaPo, 9/15/06

9/11 and Electoral Politics 9/14/06

With September 11 coming less than two months before Election Day every year, and immediately after the Labor Day launch of the campaign,  it may be too much to hope that politicians would refrain from using it as a rallying cry to get voter support.  Sure enough, on the fifth year anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Center, Election Day politics got intertwined with memorials and remembrances and warnings against terrorists.

Tuesday morning, Dan Balz and Michael Abramowitz of the Washington Post summed it up: “President Bush's Oval Office speech last night was the culmination of two weeks of efforts to rally the nation behind his policies and presidency by summoning the memory of Sept. 11, 2001.” (President Tries to Win Over a War-Weary Nation, 9/12/06)

Bush’s efforts were about rallying support for the war, as the Post points out, but they were also an attempt to set the agenda for the election campaign. The Republicans would much rather have people talking about the September 11 attacks and national security, issues on which they poll relatively well, than about a war that headlines remind us daily is not going as promised.

Last week, for instance, Bush gave a speech in which he dramatically tried to change the terms of debate by turning some of the most damaging criticisms of his administration into positives. (R. Jeffrey Smith and Michael Fletcher, Bush Says Detainees Will Be Tried, Washington Post 9/7/06)  He has been criticized in the past by both Democrats and Republicans for overreaching his powers as an executive by setting up military tribunals to try terror suspects, for ignoring the Geneva Conventions, for incarcerating prisoners in Guantanamo bay, Cuba, without due process, for allowing the CIA to operate clandestine prisons around the world, for condoning the torture of prisoners of war and for permitting the NSA to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans. 

In his speech last week he tried to turn those negatives into positives by declaring that his actions were necessary to keep American safe.  He admitted that the US had had held terror suspects secretly and subjected them to controversial interrogation techniques (Bush doesn’t call it torture.) He defended his administration’s actions and said he was transferring 14 prisoners accused of perpetrating the 9/11 attacks to Guantanamo Bay and was asking Congress to give him the authority to order military trials of the sort the Supreme Court had called a halt to in June.  Following his speech, Republicans said they intended to bring his proposals to a vote as soon as possible, hoping to force Democrats into either voting to support Bush or casting a vote against prosecution of the terror suspects, which would help to brand them weak on national security. 

Debate on that vote is currently going on in Congress.  Today (Thursday) Colin Powell, Bush’s former Secretary of State opposed the creation of military commissions for the purpose of trying prisoners, saying that “"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." (William Branigin, Powell Opposes Effort to ‘Redefine’ Geneva Provision, Washington Post, 9/14/06.)   At the same time, despite Bush’s personal visit to Capitol Hill to lobby for the passage of his bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee rejected Bush’s proposal that would deny some key rights to prisoners in favor of one that grants them more protections. (David Stout, Senate Panel Defies Bush on Detainee Bill. New York Times, 9/14/06)    Four Republican senators (McCain, Warner, Graham and Collins) joined with all of the Democrats on the committee to reject the president’s version of the bill.

If the Republican strategy is to drive a wedge between the two parties, it may not work if a bipartisan group continues to oppose Bush’s bill.  At issue are whether prisoners have a right to see the evidence that is being used against them and whether statements obtained through torture can be sued as evidence.  Part of the wider debate is whether the U.S. engages in torture, and what actually constitutes torture.  See this video for Bush’s views as expressed to journalist Matt Lauer.  

Although we do not address the issue of torture directly, we discuss the conflicts involved in protecting civil liberties and national security on pp. 157-158 of KTR.  How do you respond to the criticism that if we torture prisoners and deny them their rights, we have become little better than the people we seek to protect ourselves against?

Let the Games Begin 9/4/06

I mentioned last week that the midterm elections are upon us (see KTR, p. 286) and as Labor Day is the official kick off of the election season, several papers run articles assessing the stakes in the election and the chances that the Democrats will take back control of one or both houses.  Four pieces are especially worth taking a look at.

• The New York Times is all over the subject this slow news weekend.  Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg have a piece on the high stakes for Karl Rove, the president’s political advisor and the mastermind of Bush’s two successful presidential campaigns (Rove’s Word Is No Longer G.O.P. Gospel, 9/2/06.)  The legacy of the man that some people call “Bush’s Brain” will be seriously damaged if the Republicans fail to hang on to Congress.

• Historian David Greenberg does a good job of running through key midterm elections of the past, looking for lessons for Bush. (For Bush, Hope and Fear in Lessons of Midterms Past, 9/3/06)

• Robin Toner and Kate Zernike do a recap of where things stand for the two parties at the start of the campaign (G.O.P. Seen to Be in Peril of Losing House, 9/4/06.)

• Dan Balz and David Broder of the Washington Post cover some of the same ground, but look at how Republicans fortunes have changed (for the worse) since the start of the summer.  (More GOP Districts Counted as Vulnerable: Number Doubled Over the Summer, 9/3/06.)

As you read these analyses, and the ones we will see in the future, remember that this election is not over until it’s over. Many pundits and reporters have made up their mind that the Republicans will lose control of the House of Representatives come November.  That may well happen, but these folks are basing their predictions on factors that can change between now and then.  Keep an open and critical mind as you read!

Sorry for the DeLay -- 4/6/06

I apologize to all for my recent absence from this site. As the editorial note posted tells you, I have been on the road a bit (I am on leave this semester to do some research for a book), but we have also been dealing with the loss of one beloved pet and the critical illness of another. Sometimes life just trips you up.

There are a couple of issues I’d like to discuss here, but I am going to divide them up over the next couple of days. Look for upcoming posts on immigration and the Massachusetts health care bill. Today we’ll talk about the announcement on Tuesday that Tom DeLay, the former House Majority Leader who resigned that post when he was indicted last year, will resign from Congress and not seek reelection in November.

The news about DeLay came in a Time Magazine exclusive interview with Mike Allen, quickly followed by an announcement by the man himself and nonstop interviews and media coverage everywhere. DeLay says he is quitting to spare the Republican Party the possible loss of his seat and because the upcoming campaign would be incredibly nasty. But DeLay has survived and even flourished in nasty campaigns before. What else is going on here?

The crash in DeLay’s career has been sudden. Just last year he was universally hailed or hated as the most powerful man in the U.S. House, a person who had almost single-handedly changed the way Congress does business (see the discussion of the K Street project below, for example) and who was largely instrumental in fostering the strong partisanship that has characterized American legislative politics since the Clinton years (DeLay was a powerful force behind the Clinton impeachment, for instance). But his tribulations quickly piled up. First he himself was indicted on money laundering charges, for which he still faces a trial. Then two close friends and former staffers have been indicted as part of the investigation into Jack Abramoff, and some believe that investigators are closing in on DeLay as well. (Jonathan Weisman and Chris Cillizza, DeLay to Resign from Congress, WaPo, 4/4/06.) With polls showing him running 50/50 in his district, the possibility that the once invincible “Hammer,” as he was called, could lose the election became very real, prompting his decision to quit (though he says he still believes he could have won).

He says his future plans are still uncertain, though he speaks of becoming a national leader of the conservative movement. The future of the Republicans he leaves behind in Congress is unclear as well. With Bush’s approval ratings too low to provide cohesion, and the man who kept them in line for so long on his way out, Republicans are beginning to show divisions in what once seemed like an unshakable party bloc (Carl Hulse, Republicans Are Finding Their House Now Divided, NYT, 4/6/06) and Democrats are delighted to see their once formidable foes on the ropes. (Howard Kurtz, Three Cheers for DeLay, WaPo, 4/5/06.)

During the DeLay years, the Republicans were remarkably successful at changing the rules of American politics to advantage their party – from the K Street Project to the Texas redistricting that bolstered their majority in the 2004 elections. The Democrats are now starting to think that they may have a chance to take back the majority (though it is a long shot still - see for example this map), at which time, of course, they would try to change the rules back to benefit their party. If you remember the theme of KTR,  that politics is about who gets what and how they get it, and that controlling the rules of the game helps you determine who will win and who will lose, much of this battle for control of Congress makes sense. If you remember the old adage that power corrupts, then the fate of Tom Delay begins to make some sense too. The Democrats, who faced corruption in their own ranks during their majority, would do well to remember it too.

More to come in a day or so on immigration and health care.

Civil Liberties: Moussaoui's, Al Qaeda's and Ours -- 3/16/06

Good morning, everyone.  Spring Break here at I.U. – hope yours is good wherever it finds you.

A couple of stories to follow this week. 

First, there is the curious story about the FAA lawyer in the Moussaoui sentencing trial. The lawyer, Carla Martin, seems to have single-handedly undermined the federal government’s effort to get the death penalty for 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. In opposition to the expressed orders of the judge in the case that the witnesses should not be exposed to the trial proceedings so that they could not alter their testimony, Martin sent emails to seven witnesses, strategizing about what they were going to say on the stand. (Adam Liptak, Crossing a Fine Line on Witness Coaching, NYT, 3/16/06.) The judge called her behavior “egregious,” and  said that the federal case against Moussaoui had to proceed without the testimony from the witnesses. Prosecutors say this deals their case a death blow, and have asked the judge to reconsider. (Jerry Markon, Prosecutors Scramble to Salvage 9/11 Case After Ruling, WaPo, 3/16/06.)

Since Moussaoui has pled guilty, it is hard to see what the fuss is about here. What is at stake is not whether he gets off free (he won’t) but whether he faces the death penalty or life imprisonment. It will help to understand what is happening here if we apply the procedural/substantive distinction we lay out in Chapters 1 and 2 of KTR (pp. 10-11, 47-48). We explain that often in procedural cultures (like ours) it is more important to ensure that the rules are followed properly than to achieve some particular substantive outcome. We put our faith in procedural due process, to be sure that the rules treat everyone fairly and impartially, and trust that fair results will follow. We could of course say, “Well, we know Moussaoui is guilty, he has confessed after all, so what difference does it make if we ignore this witness tampering at the sentencing stage. What the judge in the case has to grapple with is the fact that because our system guarantees fair rules to everyone, to deny Moussaoui his rights will jeopardize the rights of all of us. If they can be waived for him, they can be waived for anyone.

This issue throws into relief the ongoing scandal of the American treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay. Some have tried to claim that because the stakes are so huge here (preventing a future terrorist attack) or because these prisoners are not on American soil or are not American citizens, that American procedural guarantees do not apply. Others argue that we are bound by the Geneva Convention and by our own standards of morals and decency to protect the human rights of those we take prisoner. Perhaps the most compelling reason against the torture, offered by critics such as Senator John McCain, himself a former prisoner of war of the Vietnamese, is that to treat the captives as we fear they would treat us sinks us to their level and endangers the American democratic ethic which is what we want above all to protect. The online journal Salon.com has excellent in depth coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal and has just put up on its site an archive of 279 photos and 19 videos of the abuse, obtained form the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. (Joan Walsh, The Abu Ghraib Files, salon.com.) 

Take a look at those photos and ask yourself what difference it makes if the United States engages in torture of its prisoners. Is this kind of substantive behavior (treating people as if they are guilty without a trial and taking an “ends justify the means” approach) ever justified? In the Abu Ghraib case, who is responsible for maintaining American standards of behavior – the people on the ground or the people in charge? Does the Abu Ghraib situation shed any like on the judge’s ruling in the Moussaoui trial?

***

Other stories to follow this week. President Bush is issuing a document today reaffirming the “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive war that we discuss in Chapter 18 (pp. 811-812). (Peter Baker, Bush to Restate Terror Strategy, WaPo, 3/16/06.) Essentially, the document will recommit the U.S. to the strategy we embarked on with the war against Iraq in 2002. Should that commitment be tempered by any of the events of the last three years?

Finally, take a look at the NYT article about how Republicans are seizing on Senator Russ Feingold’s efforts to censure President Bush over the NSA spying issue. With Bush’s approval ratings at new lows in the polls, Republicans need to rally their base to get them to turn out in the November congressional elections. Declaring that it is necessary to vote Republican in order to hold off censure or even impeachment proceedings gives them a way to excite voters who are frustrated with the previously popular president’s performance since he was reelected. (David D. Kirkpatrick, Call for Censure is Rallying Cry to Bush’s Base, NYT 3/16/06.) Feingold’s efforts have not been met with any marked success – far more senators voted to censure President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal than have stepped forward to support Feingold on this civil liberties issue. Why?