Since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, Mr. Bush has left us confused about what the war really is and what it will take to win it. Mr. McCain can undo the confusion, make clear what our goals must be and draw the American people to him. The fight is to protect America and Americans will not hide from that. ~Jed Babbin

As misguided and unrealistic as they are, at least Mr. Bush’s stated goals have some small connection to reality.  That is, establishing a self-sustaining, “democratic” Iraqi government capable of defending itself may be a fool’s errand, but the effort does address the reality of the Iraqi government’s impotence and its dependence on our forces.  The current policy is the slapdash, make-shift response to the utterly foreseeable (and foreseen) chaos that was going to follow the invasion, but it does at least concern a problem that exists in the real world. 

What Mr. Babbin proposes that McCain say is that perpetuating the war in Iraq has something to do with defending America.  But even the initial invasion had nothing in reality to do with defending America, since Iraq was no significant threat to our country and would not have been one even if the claims about its weapons programs had been correct.  The two arguments against withdrawal are the humanitarian/guilt argument and a regional stability argument, and neither of these is convincing to a majority of the public.  Neither is a very compelling reason, since the possibility of post-withdrawal civil strife and mass bloodletting on the one hand and the possibility of a withdrawal generating regional upheaval will never entirely disappear, which means that either argument implies a mission of indefinite duration on a “just in case” basis.  

Rhetoric that speaks of an “existential threat” is simply not credible, and anyone who deploys such an over-the-top argument will rapidly lose credibility with everyone outside an intense core of true believers.  There is a security threat from jihadists, but even that is not “existential.”  “America’s existence” is not at stake in Iraq, and it is rather amazing that people continue to repeat such things at this late date.

Sorry for the light posting today.  I seem to have caught the same bug that has been going around this week, and I have been feeling completely wiped out all day long.  Until I can get back to regular posting, here is a post I have up elsewhere.

A year ago, or even six months ago, I would never have thought that the more antiwar Democratic candidate would have a harder time shoring up the party base than one who voted for the war, but that is what the latest Pew survey shows happening with Obama.  Not only do Democratic defections nearly double in a McCain v. Obama race, but Obama loses a fifth of white Democrats to McCain, and he runs seventeen points behind Clinton among <$30K earners, reflecting continuing weakness with downscale voters.  He loses 17 points among the quarter of Democrats who want to stay in Iraq, despite the fact that his and Clinton's positions on Iraq policy right now are virtually indistinguishable (apparently these people believe in Hillary's insincerity enough to know that she won't actually end the war), but he also loses five points compared to Clinton among those who want to bring our forces out of Iraq.  He draws slightly less support from liberals and slightly more from conservatives than Clinton, which is rather baffling.  Compared to Clinton, he also loses 14 points among Democratic women, which is a much larger figure of disgruntled women voters turning away from the Democrat and backing McCain than the three-point difference between Clinton and Obama among black Democratic voters.  The story of the Clintons' permanently alienating black voters sounds good, but on the whole it doesn't seem to be true.  Meanwhile, Obama's nomination definitely appears to alienate a lot of Democratic women, who perhaps resent the "upstart" (as he called himself the other day) taking Hillary's crown away from her. 

Most remarkable of all is that Obama is weaker among Democratsin all age groups than Clinton.  He is four points weaker, and McCain five points stronger, among Democratic voters aged 18-49 than in a Clinton v. McCain race.  The losses are even greater among Democratic voters 50-64 and 65+.  Democratic defections increase across income groups as well.  Obama does much better in the younger age groups among independents, but if the Democratic numbers are any indication this seems to have less to do with age than with style.  Probably the same thing that makes Obama attractive to independents (he doesn’t always sound like a regular Democrat) is what is undermining him with Democratic voters. 

What happens when these independent voters find that Obama is offering little more than rehashed liberalism and the “post-partisan” fantasy is revealed as just that?  Do they embrace the equally fabulous (i.e., made-up) media narrative about the “maverick” McCain, or do they look elsewhere (Nader!)?  As both Obama and McCain need to reassure disaffected constituencies, as this survey shows they do, does this not portend a widening of the partisan and ideological gap in this campaign as the nominees are forced to tack in opposite directions?           

And those “Obamacans” we keep hearing about?  They do exist, making up 8% of Republicans (three points higher than Clinton), but they are hardly the stuff of historic realignment and they are outnumbered almost two-to-one by “McCainocrats.”  Despite all that, Obama leads in the Pew survey 50-43.  Importantly, he does not do any better than Clinton (both draw 50%), but for some reason McCain currently draws less support in an Obama v. McCain match-up.  His lead rests almost entirely on his greater level of support from independents.  Given how fickle these voters seem to be (McCain’s unfavs among independents jumped 13 points in the last two weeks among these voters for no discernible reason whatever, except that he secured the nomination), that is not much of a solid foundation.  As both presumptive nominees try to unify their parties, which one alienates more independents in the process?  The answer to that will likely determine the outcome.

Watch as MichaelGoldfarb makes at least three statements either appalling or ignorant in the space of a few minutes.  In the span of about eight minutes, he cheered the idea of sending ground forces into Pakistan, identified China as a fascist state and (only half-jokingly) assented to the invasion of Liechtenstein.  The man is a walking parody of neoconservatives’ obsession with labeling everything objectionable “fascist” and their reflexive militarism.

P.S. On a related hobby-horse of mine, Mr. Hounshell annoyingly calls the Chinese government an “autocracy,” but his analysis is otherwise pretty sound.

Everyone else has already said the appropriate things that should be said to mark the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr., but I will offer a few modest remarks.  First, I’d like to associate myself with Ross’ statement:

There probably would have been some sort of successful right-of-center movement in late-twentieth century America without Buckley, but his Catholic-libertarian perspective shaped it, and it owed its immense success in no small measure to his wit and charm and indefatigability.

As Taki Theodoracopulos observes in his tribute to Buckley, he had a reputation for great generosity that was entirely deserved and he was a man “whom every servant loved, as did every ski instructor, every waiter, every young man or woman who came to him for help.”  Every account of meeting him that I have heard or read has conveyed this decency and goodwill, and that reputation, alongside his genuinely notable accomplishments, will outlast the memory of past political disagreements.  I did not have the opportunity to meet the man in person, and by all accounts the loss was mine.  American conservatives owe Buckley a debt, and whatever quarrels there have been in the past they should not obscure the character of the man.  As Joe Sobran put it in a 2006 column about the news of Buckley’s emphysema:

Compared with all this, the political differences that finally drove us apart seem trivial now. I saw the same graciousness in his relations with everyone from presidents to menials. I learned a lot of things from Bill Buckley, but the best thing he taught me was how to be a Christian. May Jesus comfort him now. 

Rod says:

Many white voters are drawn to Obama in part because they think he can do something about healing the racial divide in this country. That, to me, is one of the best reasons to vote for him.

This has always struck me as one of the more curious pro-Obama arguments.  I understand why people make the argument (because they think and hope that it is true), and I suppose I can even see how you might conclude that Obama is capable of doing something along these lines, but then again I’m never quite sure what people mean when they say this.  If this “divide” were “healed,” what form would that take?  Institutional discrimination, except for “positive” discrimination, is officially no more and has largely ceased to exist, and the social stigma against racism (which is defined more and more expansively) is as strong as it has ever been, so where does the divide become narrower in practice?  Patterns of residence, however, still tend to break down along racial lines, and it is in those particularly diverse urban areas where the “tortoise effect” takes hold.  There are presumably many reasons for this, but one of them may be simply that this pattern is normal and will tend to recur.  If that’s right, there may be some degree of “division” that is unavoidable in an increasingly diverse country.   

If the “healing” in question is more intangible and concerns a change in attitudes, I submit that Obama’s election could very easily have exactly the opposite effect.  Race, like ethnicity, becomes especially divisive in a community when it is politicised (and it is as divisive as it is because it is frequently politicised), because the contestation for power takes on additional, charged connotations of the status of an entire group of people.  The outcome of the election takes on added importance: one outcome represents a breakthrough and an elevation of status, and another represents repudiation.  When that is combined with ideological baggage that draws in larger national debates on policy, either outcome can be even more explosive.  To draw on a recent example, the charge of a stolen election in Kenya became an occasion for ethnic violence because the election was contested by members of the two major ethnic groups.  To crudely oversimplify, the Luos perceived the (rigged) election loss as one more in a long line of injustices they had suffered, and the Kikuyus saw the possibility of a Luo coming to power as a threat to their status.  Democracy is inherently identitarian, and elections are contestations over which groups will hold more power than others in practice, so particularly in countries with strong racial or ethnic group identities the notion that a country is going to promote reconciliation through the election of someone identified with a minority group is probably mistaken.  So I think we underestimate the potential for this year’s election to be an unusually divisive contest, and its aftermath may be even more so regardless of the outcome.

John Hagee, who described the bombardment of Lebanon in the summer of 2006 as a “miracle from God,” has endorsed John McCain.  Long-time readers will remember that he and Huckabee were consorting together not too long ago, which may be part of the reason for Huckabee’s weakness in capturing much of the Catholic vote in the primaries.  When he is not glorying in the bombardment of countries with large Christian (and non-Protestant) populations, he pushes quite venomous anti-Catholicism.  Glenn Greenwald finds the double standard applied to McCain, who happily accepted Hagee’s endorsement, and Obama, who has “denounced and rejected” Farrakhan, to be startling and glaring, but Greenwald can’t be all that surprised.  Whatever his apocalyptic visions (which the secular supporters of Israel regard as nonsense), Hagee is on board with hard-line policies towards Palestinians and Israel’s neighbours that count as respectable and “responsible” views, while Obama is being linked, either through his pastor or otherwise, with figures who obviously do not endorse those policies, so in this truly odd view a Hagee endorsement is a feather in McCain’s cap and Obama’s associations are troubling and in need of clarification. 

While it is, of course, true that Hagee’s vision of Armageddon is not what anyone could reasonably call “pro-Israel,” the working definition of what it means to be “pro-Israel” in America is already fairly unreasonable.  Obama recently received praise in some quarters and scorn in others for distinguishing between pro-Likud and pro-Israel positions, but when it was the current Israeli Kadima government that embarked on one of the most counterproductive campaigns and suffered one of the most ignominious military failures of Israeli history (which Obama dutifully supported in the Senate) this does not really reflect all that well on his policy views.  What I haven’t seen anyone mention is that Obama endorsed the same campaign in Lebanon in terms that would have been quite satisfactory to John Hagee.  By the conventional definition of these things, this means that Obama is clearly not “anti-Israel.”  However, if the sort of overreaching military responses that Hagee endorses and McCain, Lieberman and Obama all support are not really in Israel’s best interest it may not be all that desirable that Obama can demonstrate his “pro-Israel” bona fides.  What the double standard of treatment means, however, is that Obama is going to have to overemphasise his willingness to endorse dangerous and reckless policies towards Iran and other Near Eastern states to overcome the completely false perception that he is somehow insufficiently “pro-Israel.”

I can’t wait for the moment that the right finally understands it needs positive arguments to defeat Obama, not smears. ~Andrew Sullivan

Because the lesson of the Bush Era is that only positive argument shifts public opinion and smears have no power?  That must be why reckless fearmongering over Iraq did not sway the public, why opponents were not branded as “apologists for despotism” and unpatriotic and why every elected national Democrat with hopes of higher office did not cravenly pave the way for the war–because smears are not that important.  One of the crucial mistakes that a lot of Obama supporters are making is their habit of vastly underestimating the credulity and gullibility of the public.  This is the country that re-elected George Bush, even if many of them may regret that now.  In this campaign there are going to be arguments leveled against Obama, but there are also going to be smears, and frankly we give our electoral system and our electorate too much credit if we think that the latter will not have a significant effect.

Ross keepsasking how the Republicans are going to attack Obama.  Well, they will do something rather like this (dated 2/25).  Of course, flinging the charge of anti-Semitism or of being in league with anti-Semites is the last resort of the unimaginative and intellectually bankrupt.  That doesn’t mean it won’t have its intended effect.