David Kirkpatrick’s article on the politics of modern evangelicals has some interesting details, including a general souring of many evangelicals on the war.  Then there was this:

“The first time I voted was for Carter,” Scarborough recalled. “The second time was for ‘anybody but Carter,’ because he had betrayed everything I hold dear.

“Unfortunately,” Scarborough concluded, “there is the same feeling in our community right now with George Bush. He appeared so right and so good. He talked a good game about family values around election time. But there has been a failure to follow through.”

He didn’t really talk that good of a game.  He played on his own experience with evangelical Christianity to sucker a great many people, both supporters and opponents, into believing that he was a hard-core social conservative.  There was never going to be anything like the “follow through” that would have satisfied many of these evangelical voters.

Kagan manages to put together an entire column in which he never once shows that he understands the difference between “liberal autocracy” a la Singapore and illiberal democracy.  For the truncated democratist imagination in which there is liberal democracy and everything else lumped under “tyranny,” this oversight is typical.  No one, or at least no one of any consequence, thinks that Putin, Hu Jintao (or whoever will succeed him) or Chavez represent “liberal autocracy,” and only committed opponents of Putin’s and Chavez’s regime prefer to call their political systems autocratic.  I’m prone to throw around the word autocracy to make a polemical point, too, but it is plainly imprecise and does not describe the form of government that prevails in these countries.  

In China, the government is oligarchic and authoritarian and still significantly party-based.  Russia’s government is oligarchic and authoritarian and based in the security services, but retains a number of formal democratic and constitutional features.  Venezuela’s government is a much more straightforward illiberal democratic one, whose claim to being democratic has been denied by many American observers because the government is illiberal and quasi-socialist, which is to show that these observers cannot make basic distinctions in political theory. 

So it is difficult for “autocracy” to be resilient in a place where there isn’t actually an autocracy.  The authoritarianism in Russia and the populist demagoguery in Venezuela are both products of the very elections Kagan boosts.  The fact is that liberalism has a small constituency in both countries (outside of a very few western European, Anglophone and North American countries, this has often been the case), and when put before the electorates of Russia and Venezuela liberalism fares very poorly.  Some of this has to do with the fact that relatively liberal politics was associated with the wealthy elite and tycoons, and the effects of policies carried out in the name of liberalism were generally poor or even disastrous for the people who now back authoritarian populist leaders.  There will be objections that Russian elections in particular are not fully “free and fair,” but against this I would note that even with fully free and fair elections the overwhelming majority would still want nothing to do with the Russian liberals.  This is hardly surprising: in mass democracy, the politics of liberty tends to lose and lose badly, while one form of demagoguery or another (be it nationalist or revolutionary socialist) usually prevails. 

Update: Ross has more.

One of Ross’ commenters makes what I assume he thinks is a clever remark:

This is really important work you’re doing. Thanks. Now that we know Venezuela is not an “autocracy” I can go to sleep tonight, comfortable that my children will not improperly label the various oppressive governments around the world.

Very droll.  Of course, one might observe that misunderstanding the nature of a regime and then building an entire argument off of that misunderstanding will lead to the wrong conclusions.  One might suppose that sloppy and inaccurate use of language reflects poorly on an argument.  Suppose that someone thinks that the answer to the problems of Russia and Venezuela is a lack of elections, when the current regimes are at least partly the product of elections, and then that someone opts, whether out of laziness or sloppiness, to label these elected governments autocracies.  Suppose that he also has a record of promoting confrontational policies against other such “autocracies.”  Might it matter then that we give things their proper names and try to address the world as it is, rather than as it appears in the democratist comic book version?

Second Update: I have written on Kagan’s autocracy talk before.

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 aretwo 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.