John McCormack is outraged by the double standard applied to meaningless goodwill gesture gaffes:

Can you imagine if this had happened in Bush administration?

Can anyone imagine the Bush administration attempting to defrost relations with Russia by making goodwill gestures? Of course you can’t, because for most of the time they were either in denial that relations were declining or they blamed Moscow for everything. Had they ever made such an attempt, they might have been forgiven if the prop being used as part of the gesture had the wrong word on it. Even if the prop was hokey, this entire “reset button” approach is welcome. I am concerned that it seems a bit too glib, as if the last decade or two of provocative policies can simply be erased from memory by hitting a button, but the direction for the moment is encouraging.

But very recently I met with a friend who had worked years ago with Freeman — on China, not the Middle East — and was upset about what he called the “self-lobotimization” of US foreign policy that the campaign to discredit Freeman represented. As I’ve looked into it, I’ve come to agree.

His first point was that Freeman was being proposed for a post within the president’s discretionary appointment power, like one of his White House aides, and therefore didn’t have to reflect the Senate’s sense of who should be in the job. The more important point, he said, was that Freeman’s longstanding contrarian inclination to challenge conventional wisdom of any sort, far from being an embarrassing liability, was exactly what a president needed from the person in this job.

A president’s Secretary of State had to represent the country’s policies soberly and predictably around the world. His National Security Advisor had to coordinate and evenhandedly present the views of the various agencies. His White House press secretary had to take great care in expressing the official line to the world’s media each day. His Director of National Intelligence had to give him the most sober and responsible precis of what was known and unknown about potential threats.

For any of those roles, a man like Freeman might not be the prudent choice. But as head of the National Intelligence Council, my friend said, he would be exactly right. While he would have no line-operational responsibilities or powers, he would be able to raise provocative questions, to ask “What if everybody’s wrong?”, to force attention to the doubts, possibilities, and alternatives that normally get sanded out of the deliberative process through the magic known as “groupthink.” ~James Fallows

This is similar to my original thoughts on the controversy. Self-lobotomization is what we seem to do best when it comes to foreign policy. Obviously, what the IG investigation of Freeman’s ties determines will be decisive. If the investigation finds that he has serious conflicts of interest because of his connections to the Chinese oil firm and the MEPC, the appointment should not go forward, but if not he seems well-suited to the position to which he is being appointed.

The final point about Freeman’s willingness to break with groupthink is the crucial point, which is why this sort of complaint is so idiotic. The charge of “politicizing intelligence” was that intelligence analysts were pressured by policymakers to interpret evidence in a way that fit the policy that had already been set. One of the problems with the use of intelligence before the war was that intelligence analysts interpreted what they found according to the false consensus that Iraq still possessed WMDs and WMD programs, and that the administration applied pressure to make sure that they did so. In other words, if you wanted someone who was very unlikely to fall in line with some new, politically convenient consensus about, say, Iran’s nuclear program, you might want to appoint someone like Freeman to run the NIC.

After reading Ross’ final post on the Limbaugh debate, I was reminded of Reihan’s distinction between “true believers” and “evangelizers.” There is an idea that I have seen floating around in this debate that Limbaugh and his fellow radio hosts are somehow representative of “the grassroots” and are caught up in a fight with “elites,” but this is wrong. It may be that the “grassroots” like certain kinds of elites–the kinds that pander to them and flatter them–but that does not make those elites part of the “grassroots.” Reihan’s distinction is useful in that it identifies the debate as one over which direction conservatives should focus their efforts. The debate is fundamentally one between different sets of movement elites who are either oriented inwards or outwards. The former keep asserting that “this is a center-right country” and insist that nothing has happened that redoubled, intensified loyalty to principles cannot cure. The latter are much less unified in their assessment of what went wrong and what needs fixing, but they are in agreement that repeating cliches and slogans that were created thirty years ago (or more) fixes nothing and will persuade no one not already convinced.

What is so frustrating and ruinous about the pro-Limbaugh side of this debate is that it automatically cedes all serious work on policy to those who are already inclined towards a moderate and meliorist agenda, because the mainstream pro-Limbaugh side assumes, or is willing to tolerate the idea, that no work really needs to be done. Reflecting this lack of imagination, the entire post-election strategy has been that the GOP was shellacked twice because it lacked spending discipline, which is simply an unfounded myth that conservatives and party members keep telling themselves to explain the repudiation of the party over Iraq and the economy. Like the near-unanimous backing of the “surge” on the right in 2007, there has been no willingness among the “true believers” to understand the messages the public (or reality) actually did send, and so there continues to be no understanding of what is in need of correction. Inexplicably, when it comes to Iraq the idea that the “surge” was successful remains the prevailing and popular one on the right, when the truth is verydifferent. There seems to have been no fundamental re-examination of anything related to national security and foreign policy, and this is a blind spot that afflicts reform conservatives and their more conventional counterparts. However, this lack of re-examination on foreign policy is mirrored in conservative economics, where the goal seems to be to stand pat on tax, trade and monetary policy.

On a related note, it might be worth thinking about why language normally reserved for the sociology of religion is being applied to describe what is overwhelmingly a narrowly political movement. Reihan is hardly the first or only one to do this, but it is worth calling to our attention when you have Limbaugh stating, “Conservativism is what it is and it is forever.” As Rod asked at the time: “Do they really believe politics is dogmatic religion?” In fact, they probably don’t, but in Limbaugh’s case he is speaking about a political persuasion in a quasi-religious idiom that ideologues over the centuries have used. The “cause” becomes something like a substitute religion, in this case complete with its own half-baked doctrines derived from Whig myths and Enlightenment-era fantasies that is then dubbed a “philosophy,” when it is true enough that it does not deserve the name. Like any ideologue, Limbaugh latches on to a few readily-digestible, repeatable slogans or words and deploys them as and when needed. As Kirk and many others have attested, principles are not ideology, but in the substitution of ideology for principles, which is what Limbaugh does, he and others like him are doing far more damage to any sort of sane conservative politics in this country than the occasional pundit or wonk who argues for particular policy proposals. So Limbaugh alone is not the problem, but he is a significant part of the current problem.

James Matthew Wilson on immigration.

Mark Shiffman on property.

Caleb Stegall on Kansas and the Populists.

The retort that Frum was unsuccessfully trying to make is that demagoguery, which is what Rush Limbaugh, Levin, and their ilk regularly engage in, is a sorry substitute for leadership. And, while that may very well be true, wonkery is an even more sorry substitute for leadership. The people don’t want nuance, substance, or even good ideas. They want something they can easily understand in sound-byte form, something that resonates with their simple, innate notions of justice, something they can repeat around the water cooler and feel good about. That’s something that writerly, intellectual types all too frequently miss. And, I hasten to add, it’s exactly what Barack Obama has been able to provide for the Democrats. ~Damir Marusic

I think Damir gets things precisely wrong here. How many times since Obama’s address to Congress have you seen a progressive expressing his satisfaction that the President was speaking to his audience as adults, speaking in full, complex sentences and not insulting their intelligence? I submit that this is not just the conceit of writerly, intellectual progressives, but also reflects something real in Obama’s oratory and hits upon something important about what the public wants from politicians. Obama’s speeches since August have been notable for how forgettable they have been, but this has not been to his disadvantage. It is difficult to think of a line from his convention speech, his Inaugural or the address to Congress that anyone would repeat at a water cooler the following day, but all three of these were reasonably substantive speeches as these things go and all three were fairly well-received. Style, presentation and image may be what matter most for most voters, but incorporating substantive policy in speeches is part of the presentation and improves a politician’s public image, if only because media reports provide favorable coverage (or do not deride the effort as ridiculous) to speakers who put on a display of a certain sort of calm and seriousness.

Most of the voting public may not be deeply engaged in issues qua issues and are not interested very much in the details, but that just confirms that style, presentation and image matter that much more, which makes the demagoguery of radio hosts that much more of a liability for a party and movement deep in the doldrums. Pure wonkery won’t get you very far, but effective orators who can lace their speeches with meaningful references to policy matters outclass their competition. Talented politicians who can combine the two, as Clinton did and Obama does, are formidable opponents, and to compete with them you need something better than a demagogue.

Almost as if he wanted to test the proposition, Jindal gave a response speech that was more or less universally regarded as terrible not simply in its delivery but also in its repetition of boilerplate and its use of more memorable but effectively meaningless phrases (“the American people can do anything!”). Naturally, radio demagogues liked what they heard, because it was the sort of speech they would have given. I would add that the McCain/Palin campaign strategy was an enormous bet that “the people don’t want nuance, substance, or even good ideas,” and they did their best to eliminate all of these things from their campaign. They lost that bet.

Wonks and pundits cannot fill the leadership vacuum that the demagogues are effectively occupying, but demagoguery isn’t going to be able to do anything except rally the rank and file. There is a place for this sort of rallying, and it is unrealistic to expect entertainment created for mass consumption is ever going to provide the sort of complex and qualified arguments that will satisfy wonks, but it cannot become the main form of conservative argument. For one thing, so much of it is not argument, but instead is frequently a series of assertions that make sense only to those who are already in agreement.

Indeed, it is because electoral politics turns not primarily on policy substance, but instead has so much to do with identity and the kind of people with whom voters want to identify that appearances and image matter so much. The argument being made by certain wonks and pundits that the demagogues’ newfound preeminence is bad for the GOP and conservatism is on the whole quite valid. That does not mean that the wonks and pundits can fill the gap, but that they are right that it is crucial–if one wants to build a serious opposition to this administration–that the demagogues not be permitted to take up a central, starring role.

Our literary editor Freddy Gray has a report in The Spectator on his experience at CPAC. The closing paragraph has an amusing scene with Freddy and the Plumber:

Outside, I bump into a bald man smoking. It’s Joe the Plumber. He looks exhausted. I scrounge a cigarette from him and we stand together puffing away. I ask him what the future holds. ‘I think I am going to take on the IRS,’ he says. ‘If not, I guess I go back to doing what I was doing.’ A young conference attendee approaches us, breathless with excitement, and asks for Joe’s opinion on the best way of reforming American democracy. Joe listens patiently to the boy’s ambitious schemes. He cracks an avuncular smile, puts out his cigarette, and says: ‘I’ll have to think about that and get back to you.’ With that, he shuffles back towards the hotel, perhaps to sort out the Republican party, or maybe just to fix a leak.

When I was participating in TPMCafe’s discussion of Charles Homans’ article on investigating the former administration’s surveillance, detention and interrogation policies, I argued for investigations and criminal prosecutions of those involved if there was evidence showing that they broke the law. Mr. Homans had argued instead for some kind of truth commission at least partly on the grounds that this process would be less politicized and would not be seen as a witch hunt. This was Homans’ proposal:

The findings of an investigation exclusively targeting a Republican administration, conducted under the auspices of a Democratic Congress, would be too easy to dismiss. Moreover, Schwarz notes, the legislative branch is deeply implicated in what the executive branch did during the Bush years, and investigating itself would be something of a conflict of interest.

This doesn’t mean that Congress should abandon the idea entirely. Instead, what Congress needs to do is figure out how to achieve the same goals while avoiding the political consequences. The best way to do this is to appoint someone else to do it, a panel that does for the wartime excesses of the Bush administration what the 9/11 Commission did for the September 11 attacks. In other words, a 9/12 Commission.

Naturally, then, the mainobjections to the truth commission Sen. Leahy has been trying to organize are that it will be highly politicized and will be nothing more than a witch hunt. Of course, the use of the phrase “witch hunt” today implies a hunt in pursuit of something that does not exist, while we are fairly certain that there were criminals in the outgoing administration who have thus far escaped the appropriate sanctions of the law. The best argument that witnesses testifying against the idea of forming a commission seem to have had is that the abuses of power and crimes in question are not as numerous as they were under Pinochet and apartheid. Now that‘s a claim to moral authority.

In my view, these criticisms and the problems in the preparation for the truth commission make the case for criminal investigation and prosecution even stronger. The complaints of politicization and persecution are going to be the same, and there are large numbers of people invested in ignoring or justifying these crimes because of their support for the decisions that led to them. There is no way to hold government officials accountable for systematic abuses of power that is not also at some level political in nature. At least if violations of the law are treated as crimes rather than unfortunate incidents to be understood for posterity, there will be some possibility of accountability and some chance that the rule of law will still apply to government officials in these matters. All signsfrom the new administration, however, are that the past is to be buried and legal remedies for past abuses are to be fought every step of the way.

Patrick Deneen on free riding (discussed below).

James Matthew Wilson on Burke.

Katherine Dalton on Wendell Berry and the land economy.

Bill Kauffman on Hoosiers.

Caleb Stegall on churches with porches.

Susan McWilliams on owning a home.

I appreciated Professor Deneen’s discussion of the problem of free-riding, and I agree that ours is a precarious position, but I would suggest that it is also paradoxically the strongest position available inasmuch as we are always trying to be very conscious of our debts and the obligations they impose on us. At the risk of sounding pompous, I submit that the main lines of criticism against this position (i.e., we are simply choosing an alternative, our choices are made possible by the very things we reject, etc.) do not amount to very much. Indeed, they are the philosophical equivalent of lecturing the penitent man that he is a sinner and mortal, which is something one has to assume he already knows, else he would not be repenting.

Like the penitent man, we have inherited our current state, our predicament, along with everyone else, and like him we are not satisfied with it. To pursue the theological comparison a bit more, let us reflect on the fallen state of man. How did it happen, and what was the cause of the Fall? Our ancestors chose to try to be as gods and willed the one thing that God had forbidden them. Individual autonomy is at the heart of the Fall, and so it is part of our fallen nature, the part that St. Maximos described as the gnomic (deliberative) will. This is how we are now, but this is not how we were created. As fallen creatures we can embrace this autonomy, celebrate it and make it one of our highest goods, as most modern traditions would have us do, or we can turn back to God and change our minds. In our case, it is also true that none of us would be where and who we are without many of the things we are critiquing and rejecting, and indeed ultimately none of us would be here at all had our first ancestors not disobeyed God, but while we should not be entirely ungrateful for our inheritance neither should we acquiesce in repeating the same errors and persisting in false beliefs about human nature and nature.

Respect for our patrimony, our inheritance, is an essential part of what we are defending here, and we are not engaged in what Niemeyer called “total critique” in that we are not particularly interested in beginning the world anew. We retain affection and loyalty for what has been handed down to us because it is part of who we are, just as Christians have always been taught to fulfill their obligations to family and polity with the full knowledge that we have a greater loyalty and an unfathomable debt to God, and it is out of that loyalty that we are obliged to reject what is unsustainable and eventually destructive of the institutions and the country to which we do owe so much.

Cross-posted at Front Porch Republic