The American Conservative

Something very strange has happened.  Christopher Hitchens writes about the Armenian genocide resolution and actually makes sense:

If the Turks wish to continue lying officially about what happened to the Armenians, then we cannot be expected to oblige them by doing the same (and should certainly resent and repudiate any threats against ourselves or our allies that would ensue from our Congress affirming the truth).

This has generally been my view since the debate heated up again this autumn.  I have more to say along these lines in my next column in TAC.

George Ajjan attended the recent Arab-American Institute’s National Leadership Conference and has some early remarks on one of the panels.  He spoke with Ron Paul while there, and promises to fill us in on their conversation, so keep checking back for an update.

On a similar theme, Michael Crowley writes in response to this LA Times article on Obama:

I sympathize with Obama’s desire to “elevate” politics but unfortunately I just don’t think it generally works. Certainly not the way he’s been doing it. Readers of, say, Matt Yglesias may thrill over swipes at the “conventional” DC foreign policy establishment.  But I suspect the only way Obama is going to get real traction with voters is if he’s willing to go after her character–on questions of trust and honesty.

It would also help him if his swipes at the “conventional” DC foreign policy establishment were supported by his actually charting out what an “unconventional” foreign policy would look like in some way that didn’t draw praise from the likes of Kagan, Giuliani and The Wall Street Journal.  In any case, trying to “elevate” politics clearly does not do much to elevate one’s poll numbers beyond a core constituency of true believers. 

Update: Via The Caucus, we can see that the random Obama supporter, Tod, who introduces the Senator is actually much more forceful in his criticism of Clinton than is Obama.  The Caucus post also points out that Obama’s latest Social Security-related ad is supposed to be an attack on Clinton, but the attack is so indirect and subtle that only people who already know Clinton’s position could decipher it as a criticism.

In The Audacity of Hope, he describes calling Michelle to crow about a legislative victory and being told to pick up some ant traps on the way home: “I hung up the receiver, wondering if Ted Kennedy or John McCain bought ant traps on the way home from work.” He knows the answer, though, and so do we. But he’s proud of being the guy who despite his big-deal status still stops for ant traps. ~Melinda Henneberger

This Slate piece will leave you with the impression that Obama is a decent family man who prizes reaching consensus with his wife.  His enthusiasm for consensus may help explain why he seems to have such a hard time criticising rivals. 

It seems to me that this intense focus on consensus does not make for an effective executive.  It may be better-suited to legislative work, especially in the Senate, but this has been one of the reasons why Senators rarely get nominated or elected.  What has been so infuriating about “the Decider” is not that he is decisive, but that he is ignorant, stubborn and oblivious to contradictory evidence and consequently makes a lot of bad decisions.  

Just as Bush likes stark contrasts that cast his opponents in the worst light, Obama seems to delight in finding the grey areas and finding the bright side of whatever it is his opponents are proposing.  This is also partly a function of the man’s congenital optimism. 

People routinely complain about “negative” campaigning and so forth, but in practice most prefer it to whatever it is that Obama does.  (Also, it makes the most sense to do it against a candidate who already has high negatives–you will damage yourself some, but make your rival radioactive come voting day.)  When he attempts to appear magnanimous and broad-minded (using his standard “I appreciate your view on that…” or “I understand your concern…”), it comes across as mealy-mouthed and condescending, and when he finally tries to “get tough” he is entirely unconvincing.  He does it in such a way that you will think he is asking your permission before ”going negative.”  You can almost hear him asking: “Mother, may I criticise Hillary Clinton for being dishonest?”  It reflects hesitation and uncertainty, which is fatal to a campaign that proposes to sell itself as the vehicle for transformative “change.”   

As John Nichols has noted:

…Could there be anything less inspiring than a candidate who “tests” his plan to muscle-up a listless campaign by inviting in New York Times political reporters to vet his new “aggressiveness”? 

This reminds me of a Jon Stewart bit where he was mocking Bush as the “Meta-President,” who is continually telling us why he is giving a speech or appearing at an event rather than simply giving the speech or appearing at the event.  Obama has engaged in this as well, engaging in almost out-of-body commentary on his own campaign during campaign appearances.  This has been especially true when he has meditated on the importance of “experience.”  For instance, here he engages in one of his classic roundabout comments on his own suitability for office while deliberately not mentioning his chief rival:

“There are those in this race … who are touting their experience working the system, but the problem is that the system isn’t working for us,” he said. “There are those who are saying you should be looking for someone who can play the game better, but the problem is that the game has been rigged. The time is too serious, the stakes are too high to play the same game over and over again.”   

Now, instead of being aggressive, Obama promises aggressiveness.             

P.S.  Of course, I am hardly the first one to notice Obama as the Meta-Candidate.

Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me:

Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial, ubiquitous Iraqi politician and one-time Bush administration favorite, has re-emerged as a central figure in the latest U.S. strategy for Iraq.

His latest job: To press Iraq’s central government to use early security gains from the surge to deliver better electricity, health, education and local security services to Baghdad neighborhoods. That’s the next phase of the surge plan.

Presumably, Iyad Allawi can’t be too far behind as we recycle through the failed leaders of yesterday.

Here are two of Ron Paul’s new television ads.

My Scene colleague Matt Frost has had some fun at Michael Gerson’s expense, as have I, on account of this column.  Matt also notes that Gerson’s taste in coffeehouses has changed a bit.  When Gerson was “writing” the Second Inaugural and doing other such “work,” he was allegedly at a Starbucks, but now he supposedly hangs out with the hip java revolution radicals with whom he is now “comfortable.”  Those would be the people who think Starbucks customers are yuppie, sell-out scum (especially the ones who try to claim that they are still hip and progressive while being a Starbucks customer).  These are the people who buy coffee brands called things like Intelligentsia, and who would probably be pretty sympathetic to the anarchists who were throwing bricks through Starbucks’ plate-glass windows in Seattle, c. 1999–Gerson feels at home among them.  

Gerson–always a uniter, not a divider, as he might say–bridges both worlds in his never-ending quest to be trendy-yet-serious.  It doesn’t really make a bit of difference where Gerson writes his bad policy ”arguments,” since his endorsement of aggressive war or amnesty doesn’t seem any more appealing on account of its rich Arabica inspiration.  But he thinks it does matter, so much so that he feels obliged to tell us about why it is important. 

Matt rightly concludes with this line:

You have had more than your due measure of influence and now it’s time for you to please go away.

Perhaps he could return to his old stomping grounds and begin tackling the kind of assignment that he would have a real knack for: the quotes on the side of Starbucks cups.  They are described thus:

Stylistically, the quotes are mostly the literary equivalent of Bearista Bears: sentimental, squooshy, with no aphoristic bite.

Sounds like “compassionate” conservatism in physical form to me.

There were a few bank robbers and counterfeiters. But more than anything, Thompson took on the state’s moonshiners and a local culture, rooted in Tennessee’s hills and hollows, that celebrated the independent whiskey maker’s battle against the government’s revenue agents. ~The Los Angeles Times

Via Alex Massie

In a just and fair world, this would be the death blow to Thompson’s campaign.  Running down still operators and home-made brew to get the government more revenue is a perfect symbol of the kind of petty government intrusiveness that Thompson supposedly opposes.  Who actually prosecutes moonshiners?  What is wrong with the man?

There was also this item from the story:

“It was a game,” said Merritt, the former U.S. attorney. “Gray [the judge] didn’t like these cases. He thought they were a waste of time, and he was right.”

I know just the man to tackle Thompson the Revenuer, and he’s almost as lazy as Thompson is:

I have no excuse.  There were warnings that the Elizabeth sequel was terrible, but I made the mistake of seeing for myself.  This is a perfect example of why movie reviewers are necessary.  You really should take Chris Orr’s word for it: it’s bad!  If anyone is tempted to go see it, just don’t.

When it isn’t painfully boring (which is most of the film), it’s sappy, and when it isn’t sappy it veers into some weird fusion of Patriot-esque speechmaking and retrojected values of liberal tolerance.  As Orr noted, the dialogue is often unpardonably lame.  At one point Elizabeth even gives a little talk on the evils of the Inquisition and England as the bastion of liberty of conscience and thought.  Since pretty much no one today likes the Inquisition, this is an easy way to make her the sympathetic champion of Freedom (her appearance before the assembled English soldiers does have a bit of the Gibsonian “they may take our lives…” element in it), but pretends as if “liberty of conscience” were some universal principle here rather than an invocation of Protestant polemic.  

The director, Shekhar Kumar, has stayed strangely faithful to the original Elizabeth‘s studious reproduction of Protestant and English nationalist historiography on film.  Indeed, in the sequel Kumar has ratcheted up the anti-Catholicism of the first movie.  You could just as easily call this Black Legend: The Movie or The Catholics Are Coming To Get You.   

The portrayal of Philip, were it done to an American or British historical figure, would throw certain people into fits of hysteria.  The treatment of Mary Stuart was hardly any better.  The take-home message seemed to be: “The dagoes and Scots are trying to take away your freedom, so you have to kill them.”     Since English historians have long wanted to ignore the fact that Philip II was also briefly Philip I of England, it would hardly bother many to show Philip, as the movie shows him, as some sort of decrepit, superstitious eunuch who is afraid of the sunlight and talks to himself, or whatever it was we were supposed to conclude about him.

This was also the king who sent a significant portion of the fleet that won at Lepanto over the Ottomans, and who was probably among the most accomplished, albeit flawed, monarchs of the early modern period.  Naturally, Elizabeth’s apologists and myth-makers have always had to tear him down to make their heroine appear more important than she was.  This movie is just one of the more recent and execrable efforts along these lines.   

The opening “historical” introduction manages to ignore completely the contemporary Dutch rebels, whose resistance to Philip’s rule was the reason for Philip’s wars in northwestern Europe.  “Only England stands against him,” the writers pompously tell us.  The Dutch role in defeating the Armada is also ignored.  The Golden Age is the English version of Fred Thompson bombast: England stands alone for freedom!  Never mind that the Dutch kept fighting and dying against the Spanish for another two decades after the Armada was defeated and that Spain’s bankruptcy was related to its constant continental warfare against France to protect the Milan road.  We mustn’t diminish the reputation of the most overrated monarch in English history. 

P.S. Even Mike Potemra agrees on the anti-Catholicism of the movie, so it must be pretty obvious.

Before it became a tourist trap for lunatics and sci-fi geeks, I used to live in Roswell when I was very young.  Unfortunately, after the “incident” became fodder for crackpots Roswell eventually decided to capitalise on its odd reputation, and a “museum” was opened up (followed by a painfully non-New Mexican show on the WB that seemed intent on reminding us just how far removed from New Mexico the show actually was).  Since taking the helm in Santa Fe, old Bill has made it something of a pet cause to “get to the bottom” of the “incident.”  He has continued in this fine tradition:

If he wins his bid for the White House, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson may be just the man to get to the bottom of the 60-year-old Roswell UFO mystery.

My hunch is that Richardson is just trying to be his usual, crowd-pleasing, avuncular self in this case.  Even so, he does keep talking about it often enough that you begin to wonder whether he’s serious.