Reason Magazine - Staff > David Weigel > Hit & Run Posts

President of What?

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:56:00 EDT

Most of the criticism of Barack Obama's Berlin speech came before the speech had even been delivered, and focused on trivia (he printed fliers in German!) and traditions that were invented last week or so (presidential candidates don't give speeches in other countries!). But the speech has been given now, and the text is more interesting than the atmospherics. Specifically:

Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?

That's not pablum. I count at least four extensions of American foreign policy here: increased foreign aid, increased funding for PEPFAR, sanctions, and maybe a little bit of ol' fashioned humanitarian intervention. (That's what he's occasionally suggested for Darfur, at least.) It's proof, if any more was needed, that Obama is not wary of foreign engagements. He's a progressive realist who thinks America hasn't done enough to police the world and to stave off future threats by doing whatever NGOs say we should be doing.

Most of our foreign policy debate has focused on Iraq, in part because that's where John McCain wants it to focus, in part because that's where our forces are at the moment. I definitely agree with Andrew Bacevich that an Obama victory discredits the Iraq project, while a McCain victory validates it. But McCain and Obama want the same thing, for Americans to be proud of their country again vis-a-vis its engagement in foreign conflicts. Put another way: I don't think an Obama victory discredits neoconservatism. He's offering neoconservatism with a human face.

Headline explained here.

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty has a quiz: Obama speech lines versus "We Are the World" lyrics.

UPDATE II: Oh, I love hacks. From Obama's opening lines:

Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

From Team John "Wow, it was a good idea to dare Obama to take this trip" McCain:

While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a 'citizen of the world,' John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election.

He declared himself a citizen of the U.S. and the world, smart guys. Is John McCain not a citizen of the world? When his map reaches the Atlantic Ocean, does it turn white and read "Here There Be Dragons"?

It strikes me as more fighting-the-last-war from McCain. John Kerry was vulnerable to attacks of America-hatin' globalism when he did things like say American policy decisions had to pass a "global test." Obama was putting American supremacy in the kind of gooey nougat shell that Europeans like.

Can Mitt Happen?

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:05:00 EDT

Word on the street is that Gov. Mitt Romney is the favorite to fill out the GOP's presidential ticket. The American Spectator's Philip Klein says "shut the hell up, street." The key argument Klein makes is that the "Romney gives McCain economic cred" sales job (put forth by Karl Rove, among others) is baseless.

Romney was able to turn economic jitters to his advantage in the Michigan primary (after pledging $20 billion in subsidies for the auto industry), but he wasn't able to gain much traction on the issue elsewhere. In Florida, for instance, despite targeted messaging emphasizing his business credentials, Romney lost to McCain among voters who considered the economy the most important issue, 40 percent to 32 percent.

A deeper look at his performance in the primaries shows that Romney's appeal was stronger among higher-income voters than it was among the type of working class voters who will determine the election. Also, Romney consistently did substantially worse among those who thought the economy was "not good or poor" than he did among people who thought it was "excellent or good." In an electoral environment in which Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the state of the economy, this would be trouble.

Klein doesn't have a dog in this fight—his preferred candidate was some ex-New York City politician whose name escapes me. (He ran this year, right?) And he's right about the polls. But that's the worst reason to reject Romney as a VP candidate. Romney does have economic experience, and he does know more about economics than McCain. In some primary states, McCain was only beating Romney among those "economy" voters because they were voting for McCain anyway. That 8-point Florida lead on economics was matched by a 5-point McCain win. In California, which McCain won by about 8 points, Romney won "economy" voters by 13 points. The problem was that a bunch of people who thought Romney was better on the issue voted for McCain anyway.

Californians were right, by the way. McCain is a shambling mess on economics, whose answers on economic issues fall into four categories: 1) I was part of the Reagan revolution, 2) there's too much pork, 3) Phil Gramm and I are like *this* and 4) I served in Vietnam. I'm serious about that last one. Remember how he responded to this at the final GOP primary debate?

JANET HOOK: There's been a lot of discussion lately about the importance of leadership and management experience. What makes you more qualified than Mitt Romney, a successful CEO and businessman, to manage our economy?

MCCAIN: Because I know how to lead. I know how to lead. I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy. And I did it out of patriotism, not for profit. And I can hire lots of managers, but leadership is a quality that people look for. And I have the vision and the knowledge and the background to take on the transcendent issue of the 21st century, which is radical Islamic extremism.

I can't imagine a worse answer. OK, perhaps if McCain had thrust forward a copy of Das Kapital and said "this is what I'll do!" it would have been worse. But in about a minute he analogized economic management to the logistics of a peacetime Navy squadron and intimated that our problems would disappear if we ramped up the War on Terror just a bit. The cost of the war in Iraq? Decreased oil production? That had nothing to do with it.

So, polling-wise, it would be a mistake for McCain to pick Romney. But that doesn't mean it's fair. If only he'd been a Baptist, the sculpted flip-flopper would be the GOP nominee right now, and he would be making a credible economic argument.

Barrwatch: Arm Wrestling, Nader Envy, and Boehnergate

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:32:00 EDT

Some California newspaper is out with the latest profile of Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr. Faye Fiore kicks it off with a vignette from his Supreme Court presser.

Then he threw it open to questions from members of the Fourth Estate, whose average age looked to be about 19.

"Do you think the country is ready for a president with a mustache?"

"Do you think you could take Ron Paul in an arm-wrestling match?"

Yeah, I have no idea who that guy was. But I treasure my audiotape of Barr explaining that he and Paul talk about "issues of... substance." There's a lot of color here, plus the usual pondering about Barr's spoilage potential, plus some good scene-setting.

If Bob Barr is anything, it's focused. He acknowledges his campaign is a long shot, but at the very least he will bring attention to the values of freedom he learned growing up the son of a civil engineer in far-flung places such as Iran and Iraq. (The longest place he lived as a boy was Baghdad, for three years.)

It was that kind of focus -- that and his love of the limelight -- that powered him when he was the lone voice calling for impeachment and members of his own party dismissed him as foolhardy.

It's been a busy day, and Barr boards the evening shuttle from Washington back to Atlanta and his 12th-floor consulting offices, the temporary campaign headquarters.

All around are remnants of the substantial elephant collection -- elephant bookends on a desk, a close-up of an elephant's trunk in the hallway. It's an awkward display, considering he now regards Republican lawmakers as wimps scared into submission by Bush. But as Barr is fond of saying, "I don't worry about it."

Also, Barr's campaign manager Russ Verney responded to John Boehner's comment about conservatives "wasting their votes" on Barr.

Rep. Boehner would rather coerce people into voting for someone they do not want through fear tactics so that the Republicans and Democrats do not have to change their runaway spending habits. After all if they have no dissent from the voters over a big spending Republican and a bigger spending Democrat, they are free to argue over whose special interests get the benefits of our hard earned tax dollars.

I think if the public is happy with the direction our country is headed then they should thank the Republicans and the Democrats. If they want a change, their only option is Bob Barr.

Also, Ralph Nader's campaign pestered reporters today with an exceptionally piqued press release about a Friday congressional hearing about impeachment. Bob Barr will be there. Ralph Nader was disinvited.

This is not the first time that I have been excluded from testifying on subjects both of us have been concerned about and have discussed. Remember your invitation to testify at your unofficial public hearing right after the 2004 elections regarding "irregularities" in Ohio? Within two days, your chief of staff, Perry Applebaum, persuaded you to disinvite me.

Applebaum has been a problem with my appearing before a Committee Chairman whom I have known, admired and worked with for nearly forty years. He has performed his exclusionary behavior on other occasions. It is time to make this public and to ascertain why he prevails again and again with his superior either not to invite or to deny requests to testify regarding subjects well within my knowledge, experience, and forthrightness.

You know, some people say that Nader is running a vanity campaign and soothing his Galactus-sized ego. I don't see it.

Hey, Barack Obama Exists After All

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:20:00 EDT

The latest news from the Obama Conspiracyverse is the first third-party proof of Obama's birth in Hawaii. It's a birth announcement from a 1961 issue of the Honolulu Advertiser that was dug up, ironically enough, by Lori Starfelt, who's working on an anti-Obama documentary for pro-Clinton PUMAs.

The crucial clip:

Well, that's it. Game over: Obama was born in the States. Or... [cue Bernard Hermann sting] was he? This image actually comes from Obama conspiracist TexasDarlin, who appends it with 12 questions. Such as...

Although this announcement suggests his parents were married, that’s still an open question.

Have you noticed that there are no photos of Obama as an infant?

Barack Obama’s original birth certificate likely contains something that embarrasses him, or something that could be problematic for him legally, such as an indication of dual nationality. I STILL think he needs to produce a hard copy of the original Birth Certificate, or he looks like he’s hiding something.

In the comments, TexasDarlin talks with fellow skeptics.

Jackson, I’m not sure that any info on the COLB is fake, but perhaps the document was set up to appear to be fake, so that we would spend hundreds of hours studying it…

I've recovered footage from inside the Obama truther strategy meeting held before this blog post was published. Here it is:

(Seriously, if you like conspiracy theories, the comments at this site are a festival of chuckles. The idea of Obama's family collaborating to create a false biography for him is, in itself, hilarious. How did those 1961 dinner table conversations go, do they think? "If we don't create a false story, and fast, our half-African son of an 18-year old mother will have no chance at becoming president!")

Is There Anything the Surge Can't Do?

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:24:00 EDT

Witness: John McCain's superior judgment on Iraq!

Colonel McFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history.

The surge began in early 2007. Here's what McFarland was saying about Anbar in September 2006:

With respect to the violence between the Sunnis and the al Qaeda—actually, I would disagree with the assessment that the al Qaeda have the upper hand. That was true earlier this year when some of the sheikhs began to step forward and some of the insurgent groups began to fight against al Qaeda. The insurgent groups, the nationalist groups, were pretty well beaten by al Qaeda.

Indeed, most reports credit the Anbar awakening with beginning in September '06. Foreign policy reporter Spencer Ackerman first noticed the slip-up (if we can generously call it that), but it hasn't gotten much skepticism from the broader media. I'm not sure why. It badly complicates McCain's already-weakened narrative about the war, that all was lost before he "had the courage" to push for a troop surge.

Rep. John Boehner on Bob Barr, Jeff Flake, and Losing Elections

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:41:00 EDT

I grabbed lunch at a surprisingly subdued meeting between House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and around 50 conservative bloggers, reporters, and think-tankers. The American Spectator and Americans for Tax Reform hosted. Boehner's message of the day was "American-made energy," his buzz word for the campaign that Republicans will run against Democrats who refuse to drill in Alaska, shale, or offshore deposits. And most of the questions politely focused on energy.

My one question was about Bob Barr. Boehner said he hadn't talked to Barr since he launched his Libertarian presidential bid, but "if I were talking to a conservative I’d suggest that they allow their vote to count and vote for John McCain. Bob Barr’s not going to win." When I asked what he thought of the idea that a Barr vote would shock the GOP into reforming itself (in a more libertarian direction, one assumes), Boehner flashed a get-real kind of smile. "A vote for Bob Barr—you might as well vote for Barack Obama. If you want to throw your vote away, that's fine. But that's what it would be."

Phillip Klein of the American Spectator (and occasionally of reason), teeing off Boehner's talk of "reform," asked why Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) didn't get a seat on the House Appropriations Committee. "The steering committee decided that another member was more qualified for the job," Boehner said, "and the steering committee made that decision. I know that a lot of people control the steering committee. I wish I did!"

Michael Barone asked Boehner an open-ended question about the party's chances of taking back the House. "John McCain has a good chance of winning," Boehner said. The implication of that dodge was pretty obvious. When James Poulos asked a follow-up question about House retirements, Boehner said the party had a good chance in "23 or 24" of the seats opened up by Republican departures. There have been 30 such departures.

I'm Wrong, You're Right, I Win

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:04:00 EDT

Before Barack Obama went to Iraq, a pundit consensus was congealing. He'd have to suck it up and admit he was wrong about the troop surge.

With Republicans panting at the prospect of an Obama U-turn on a key plank of foreign policy, the Petraeus meeting promises a moment of genuine political theatre that is likely to be absent from the “grip’n’grin” photo opportunities lined up with Gordon Brown, President Nicolas Sarkozy, Pope Benedict and other leaders in Europe.

“I guess the question is, if indeed he’s going to Iraq and nothing that he sees will change or impact his decision-making on this, then why is he going?” asked Brian Rogers, a McCain campaign spokesman.

Answer: He's going to get the photo ops, say that the surge worked, and deny that he was wrong about it.

"These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult," he said. "Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is, at that time, we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with, and one that I continue to disagree with—is to look narrowly at Iraq and not focus on these broader issues."

The McCain campaign has pounced, but what else was it going to do? Jonah Goldberg, I think, gets the politics exactly right.

Politically, the surge is a bit like the Supreme Court's recent decision affirming the constitutional right to own a gun. Obama's position on gun rights, a miasma of murky equivocation, would hurt him if gun control were a big issue this year. It isn't, thanks to the high court's ruling. That's a huge boon.

The surge has done likewise with the war. If it were going worse, McCain's Churchillian rhetoric would match reality more. But with sectarian violence nearly gone, Al Qaeda in Iraq almost totally routed and even Shiite Sadrist militias seemingly neutralized, the stakes of withdrawal seem low enough for Americans to feel comfortable voting for Obama. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's support for an American troop drawdown undoubtedly pushes the perceived stakes even lower.

Matt Yglesias seems mystified that McCain can wring anything out of this; his commenters seem gloomy that "the media" will make the debate about the 2007 surge vote, not whether the war was right. The important thing about the media, though, is that fewer people are paying attention to them. A debate over how right McCain was/how wrong Obama was over this aspect of the war is not going to subsume a debate over when to leave Iraq. I don't see any of this redounding to the benefit of John McCain. McCain's goading Obama to make this trip stands tall and proud as one of the dumbest blunders of the campaign. He couldn't have helped the Democrat more if he'd challenged him to a slam dunk contest. And lo and behold, Maliki is shorting McCain stock as fast as he can move it.

I Can Make This Warrant-Signing Pen Disappear!

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:18:00 EDT

[Warning: This post contains spoilers about The Dark Knight. Don't read it if you haven't seen it.]

The third act of The Dark Knight takes a morally ambiguous twist with Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) discovers a sonar-based spying node that Batman (Christian Bale) is using to locate The Joker. Fox is horrified at the invasion of privacy; Batman, uncomfortable with what he's done, gives Fox the power to shut it down. Over at the ACLU's blog, Amanda Simon is thrilled at the plot twist. Sort of.

Unfortunately, like the telecoms before him, Mr. Freeman’s character reluctantly goes along with the plan saying he’ll resign and terminate the program after “this one time.” At least he didn’t ask for immunity.

But Tylerc217 at the Daily Paul totally rejects the twist, and sees the movie as propaganda.

I clearly remember one scene in The Departed where Alec Baldwin was giving high praises for the Patriot Act. The one line of praise stuck out in my mind, because after watching Thank You for Smoking, it dawned on me that lobbyists try to win over the ideas of the movie at hand. Without actually coming out and saying "buy our product", they instead push an idea and subconciously get the viewer to be in agreement with it.

You know, it didn't strike me like that it all. The sonar actually screws up at points; when it malfunctions, Batman nearly dies. And the way it's presented, there's nothing the technology offers that heat imaging doesn't offer. I'd want the Nolan brothers to explain their thinking before I rule one way or the other, but I'd bet the sonar was an anti-national security state statement.

Starchild: Making It Safe to Walk the Streets

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:48:00 EDT

In November, San Francisco voters will get to vote on whether to decriminalize prostitution in the city.

The measure would bar authorities from spending money to investigate or prosecute people for engaging in prostitution.

The measure, which qualified Friday, would also end a local program that allows those caught soliciting a prostitute for the first time to avoid charges if they attend a class and pay a fine.

And the measure got in the ballot in large part because of Starchild, America's best-dressed Libertarian activist. He helped collect the signatures to qualify it, and he's one of the measure's spokespeople. Eric Dondero pays tribute:

Libertarians and most especially Libertarian Republicans are aligned with Conservatives more and more these days, on a variety of civil liberties issues. Conservatives have come around on smoking bans, seat belt laws, speed limits, free speech rights, and even in some cases on the gambling front. But they still seem completely out-of-touch on sexual matters, and hopelessly uncool.

And they wonder why young people are turning off to the GOP in record numbers.

Perhaps they should consider that it's their oldline prudishness that's more of a turn-off to younger voters than the War in Iraq. Solution: Let the Libertarians take the lead on issues such as legalization of prostitution and swingers' rights, and bring some hipness back to the GOP.

It's a beautiful coda to the city's 2007 lawsuit against Starchild, which he won.

Ceci n'est pas une movement

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:31:00 EDT

Part MMCIV in an ongoing series on stupid distractions that Republicans think will save them from humiliating defeat

After Barack Obama finished the primaries with more delegates than Hillary Clinton, some media-savvy (and fat-walleted) Clinton supporters went off the deep end and created revanchist blogs and PACs aimed at installing Clinton at the Democratic convention. The catchall name for these groups was PUMA, short for "Party Unity My Ass," and a PUMA PAC and PUMA.com were launched in mid-June to steer the movement.

It was hard to tell, at first, how much pull these people had. Their every move draws media coverage; they've got a YouTube channel collecting all of their cable news appearances. As Robert Stacy McCain reports, they've announced an August conference in D.C. (with the caveat that they'll cancel it if fewer than 250 people register).

But the first evidence of their power has trickled in, and it's... yeah, it's pathetic. PUMA PAC (its acronym changed to "People United Means Action") has released its first FEC filing, which shows it raised $22,840 in the month of June. Of course, most of the PUMAs' effort is geared not toward funding a new PAC, but toward relieving Hillary Clinton's debt so she can triumphantly seize the Democratic nomination in Denver. How's that going?

On Sunday, Clinton reported having a $25.2 million debt at the end of June, including her own $13.2 million loan to the campaign... Clinton, who suspended her campaign on June 7, reported raising $2.7 million from donors during the month.

That doesn't jibe with what PUMAs have been saying. On July 10, PUMA founder Will Bower appeared on Fox News to announce that the group had raised $10 million to pay off Clinton's debts.

We at JustSayNoDeal.com, we started an initiative before the Fourth of July to raise money to put down her debt. And within that week leading up to the Fourth of July we raised approximately $10 million. Our most conservative estimates have it at six million but we’re looking more at $10 million. Our sources tell us that the debt is now less than $5 million from being in the black… we believe that by this weekend that Hillary’s debt will be finished.

Is it possible that Bower et al raised 400 percent as much as Clinton raised in June? It's hard to believe, since Bower had no idea of how much debt Clinton was carrying—she would have had to raise $20 million in 10 days to run it down to $5 million. And it doesn't help Bower's case that traffic to JustSayNoDeal.com actually declined during this week of frenzied fundraising. Yes, he claims that the hub site is one of 230 sites serving "2.5 million people." But if Clinton raised $2.7 million in June, what were all of those people doing? Did they all chip in $1.01? (The fundraising link at JustSayNoDeal goes straight to HillaryClinton.com.)

Is there any way of gauging how many PUMAs there are? Well, on June 14 Bower created a Facebook group for them. In a month and a week it's grown to 456 members. Is it so small because Clinton's salt-of-the-earth supporters don't waste their time online? Well, no. The still-active Hillary Clinton for President group has more than 22,000 members, although it's shedding dozens of them every day.

Are the PUMAs lying about their support, their numbers, or their fundraising just to get attention? We won't know for sure until July's fundraising numbers come out, as they can prove or disprove Bower's Fox News claims. Bower, in another interview where he made the "$10 million" claim, said that PUMAs give in increments of $20.08 so "they know it's from us." Anyone want to bet that 50,000 Clinton donors materialized in a week in early July? A long holiday week, no less? If you do, I've got an account at IndyMac I want to sell you.

In other stupid Obama news, a few bloggers revisited the issue of whether Obama forged his own birth certificate, based on a study by an expert who goes by the handle "TechDude." AJ Strata leaves them crawling around on the floor, looking for their teeth.

The Friday Political Thread: Did You Know Pat Leahy Has a Cameo in The Dark Knight?

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:31:00 EDT

Off-Message Quote of the Week
“The Muslims have said either we kneel, or they’re going to kill us.”
- McCain spokeshero Bud Day (whom I believe has permanently glued his Medal of Honor to his shirt)

The Week in Brief
- Bob Barr kept up his offensive on John McCain over judicial appointments.
- Dick Heller tried to register his guns.
- The GOP opened up its platform online and was promptly overrun by Ron Paul supporters. Seriously, they didn't see that coming?
- Congress's other Dr. No headed back to Congress.
- Barack Obama made advances in the war on poverty.
- Congress overrode the president's Medicare veto.

Below the Fold
- Tom Knapp, a Libertarian who's un-endorsed Barr (and is running as the Boston Tea Party's VP candidate), has interesting ruminations on the purity fight within the movement.
- Richard Spencer reviews Grand New Party.
- Ben Friedman tells Obama how to handle Iran.
- The Algernonization of the Right continues apace.
- Naomi Klein vs Jonathan Chait: the long-awaited sequel to Bambi vs. Godzilla.

The new issue of the Believer includes—of all things—a Gentle Giant appreciation by Rick Moody. The perfect excuse to post this.

SATURDAY UPDATE: I think Ed Morrissey is rattling the chains too wildly here. So: When she left the presidential race, Hillary Clinton's close allies bought hillary2012.com. Is it evidence that she wants Obama to lose? I seriously doubt it. One, her Senate re-election bid is coming in 2012. Two, if Clinton is as Machiavellian as the Right spent the last 20 years saying she was, would she actually telegraph her Obama doltschuss plan by buying a web domain? It's more likely her team bought the domain to stop Clinton's more Alex Forrestian followers from launching their own "defeat Obama now and get Hillary later" site. (Party Unity My Ass, the much-hyped if little-populated anti-Obama group, geared up days after this web domain was purchased.) Obama's fundraising and consistent poll lead over McCain are dripping pesticide over any left-wing or Clinton revanchist movement to stop him.

Oh, and who's that at Netroots Nation in Texas?

Lesbians Are Cool, and Straights Are Fools

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:41:00 EDT

California's ballot measure to ban gay marriage is failing.

The Field Poll survey firm found 51 percent of voters oppose the measure, which proposes an amendment to the state's constitution recognizing marriage as only between a man and woman, while 42 percent were in favor.

The biggest measure of how the marriage issue has faded is, I think, the lack of interest in this California measure. Go back and read media clips from this point in 2004: it was like firecrackers had been placed under every church pew in America. Yet California opposition to gay marriage has dropped 20 points in eight years (61 percent voted to define marriage as one-man-one-woman in 2000) and, eh, the "Protect Marriage" folks seem lost. Initiative supporters have raised $2.3 milion in a state where the last serious contested statewide race (the 2004 Senate race) cost about $22 million.

Headline explained here.

Dick Heller, Get Your Gun

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:24:00 EDT

Dick Heller showed up at the District of Columbia Courts with his gun in his hand. Sort of. Yesterday the victorious plaintiff in Heller vs. D.C. showed up downtown to register his gun but hesititated to bring it with him; cops told him to show up packing. So this morning at 9 a.m. Heller rendezvoused with advisors Dane von Breichenruchardt and Brad Jansen carrying his 1911 single-action Colt .22 revolver in a cherry-red vinyl case. "Concealed carry!" Heller said. "It doesn't look so bad, does it?"

The three men walked over to the courts to greet a small throng of libertarian activists and reporters from local news amd NRANews.com. "There were more cameras yesterday," mused von Breichenruchardt. "There were vans outside"—he waved his hand and pointed to the curb—"just more reporters, generally." There were just enough reporters to pack the room when Heller entered and handed the gun over to police to start what became a 90-minute registration process.

Heller emerged from the courts with a thumbs up: He'd met with partial success. The city had taken finger prints, administered a 20-question exam, and subjected the gun to a ballistics. He could take the gun home as long as it was empty and trigger-locked. But he'd have to come back in a week with two passport photos, and wait for the city to process the rest of his information with a background check. Part of the reason for the delay is the city's law defining "machine guns"—anything that loads from the bottom or can hold more than 12 rounds at a time qualifies. "It's in the city's hands now," Jansen said.

Heller milled around with reporters for about 30 minutes, taking questions about whether he'd join a hypothetical lawsuit to roll back the rest of the gun restrictions. He would, but, in the words of Jansen, he hopes "the city gets it right this time" without that. On why he registered the colt: "I bought it because it was the gun they used in Gunsmoke," Heller said. "That used to be our culture."

I asked Heller about the petitions circulating his name as a Libertarian Party candidate for delegate against incumbent Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton. (Heller is the treasurer of the D.C. LP.) He was coy about it.

"It Was Kovacs Who Closed His Eyes. It Was Rorschach Who Opened Them Again."

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:49:00 EDT

The trailer for Zak Snyder's Watchmen is online.

An ominous thing that occured to me on my second (third?) viewing: Where had I heard that Smashing Pumpkins song before? The answer is on the soundtrack of Batman and Robin.

Barrwatch: Hoosier Passion

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:12:00 EDT

It's been a busy week in Barrtopia. Declan McCullugh reported from Las Vegas on FreedomFest and Barr's promise to be the candidate of privacy.

Barr focused almost exclusively on privacy and eavesdropping--and argued that both major parties are far too surveillance-happy. "Both of them will continue down the same track," Barr said, noting that both McCain and Obama supported last week's bill to immunize telecommunications companies that illegally opened their networks to government snoops.

Congress' legislative rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is "not about surveilling al-Qaida," Barr said. "It's about surveilling U.S. citizens in America." He added, for good measure: "This administration is the most anti-privacy, the most anti-individual freedom, in our nation's history, certainly in my lifetime."
...
"The best way to control the populace is to take away their privacy," he said. "The digital age, and what will come after that, makes it much, much easier for the government to abuse those powers and erode the Fourth Amendment."

Today, Barr attended the launch of Al Gore's We campaign, and fired off his impressions for the press.

I commend Mr. Gore for his efforts and leadership in this area, and urge Senators Obama and McCain to join me in studying, debating, and finding solutions to the problem of energy needs, consumption and effects. The American people deserve to hear all of our views and proposals on this issue and others. I am particularly pleased that Mr. Gore agrees that the public debate of this issue should include me so that the American people can make an informed choice after hearing a range of views. However, the fact that neither of the two major party candidates attended this event may indicate their unwillingness to address this important issue. Mr. McCain, for example, seems to have adopted already the internationalist approach and relying on the cumbersome and costly “cap and trade” formula and he may therefore be unwilling to engage in a real debate that would reveal how flawed that approach truly is.

After that, Barr got on the phone for an inaugural blogger conference call. Ed Morrissey has the rundown and some thoughts.

Barr, it should be emphasized, sounds eminently more reasonable and competent than Ron Paul. Even on issues where I’d disagree, Barr gave reasoned, thoughtful answers, as opposed to the kind of conspiracy-theory kookiness Paul spouted at debates and in interviews. The Libertarian Party has its most credible candidate in years, if not ever. However, unless he suddenly finds a way to organize Libertarians and convince vast swaths of Americans to start pitching money into the kitty, his best hope will be to influence the major-party candidates to start addressing some of the legitimate concerns of the Libertarian Party.

I missed all but 10 minutes of the call, sadly, but I had a reason: lunch with three Indiana LP candidates for U.S. House, state Senate, and state House. Rex Bell, who's making a second run at the 54th district House seat after scoring 15 percent in his 2006 race, told me that he'd love for Barr to come to the state and campaign for him. "Four years ago, nobody asked me about our presidential candidate," he said. "At the booth at the last fair I went to, people were asking me. Even if they hadn't heard about Barr. They wanted a new candidate. They don't like either of the major party choices." (EDIT: Added the last part of what Bell said to make this clear.)

Also, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney talks to Newsweek.

Q: There are quite a few prominent third-party candidates running this year, including your former fellow Congressman from Georgia, Bob Barr, over at the Libertarian Party. Is he basically the conservative version of you?

A: The only thing I would say about Bob is that it's interesting that Georgia is so well-represented in the non-major party lineup. Of course, I worked in the Congress for a long time with Bob Barr and, in fact, members of the Libertarian Party have reached out to me on several occasions this year and I expect there will be more mutual reaching.

Q: So you might actually be working together on some issues?

A: I didn't say that.

Q: What does mutual reaching mean then?

A: It means that where there is the possibility of having discussions, then I wouldn't turn down discussions. There's nothing afoot, if that's what you mean. I would take it issue by issue, and see what the future brings.

Somebody, Please, Clobber the "Bradley Effect" with a Rusty Shovel Already

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:07:00 EDT

The Marvel No-Prize for "stupidest column of the day" goes to (drum roll) this slithering heap of offal by Susan Estrich, better known to you and me as the brains behind the Dukakis landslide. In the middle of an argument that boils down to "gee, the election is sort of close," Estrich worries that the "Bradley effect" of white voters lying about their support of black candidates will sink Obama.

The experience of the primaries, not to mention that of other African-American candidates, suggests that polls tend to overstate, not understate, support for black candidates.

For a debunkinging of the "other African-American candidates" nonsense, go here.

With the exception of Indiana, every pre-primary poll in a major state showed the race between Obama and Clinton to be closer than it turned out to be.

This is true, but not to the benefit of Hillary Clinton. Here's what the polls said, then what the voters said, in all of the big states from the end of February to the end of May.

Wisconsin. Final poll average: Obama 48.9, Clinton 41.9. Final result: Obama 58.1, Clinton 40.8. Obama beat the spread by 10 points.

Ohio. Final poll average: Clinton 49.6, Obama 43.6. Final result: Clinton 53.5, Obama 44.8. Clinton beat the spread by 3 points.

Texas. Final poll average: Clinton 47.8, Obama 45.9. Final result: Clinton 50.9, Obama 47.4. Clinton beat the spread by 1 point.

Pennsylvania. Final poll average: Clinton 49.8, Obama 42.8. Final result: Clinton 54.4, Obama 45.3. Clinton beat the spread by 2 points.

North Carolina. Final poll average: Obama 49.6, Clinton 42.3. Final result: Obama 56.1, Clinton 41.6. Obama beat the spread by 8 points.

Indiana. Final poll average: Clinton 48.6, Obama 44.4. Final result: Clinton 50.6, Obama 49.4. Obama beat the spread by 3 points.

Kentucky. Final poll average: Clinton 63.2, Obama 28. Final result: Clinton 65.5, Obama 29.9. Clinton beat the spread by less than 1 point.

Oregon. Final poll average: Obama 54.1, Clinton 41.6. Final result: Obama 58.5, Clinton 40.5. Obama beat the spread by 5.5 points.

Three conclusions: One, Obama never got a lower share of the vote than the final poll average projected, and the closest he came was winning 44 percent of the Ohio vote when polls had him at 43. Two, on average Obama outperformed Clinton in beating the spread predicted by pollsters. Her biggest surge was a 3-points-bigger-than-expected Ohio win; he won by 10 points better than expected in Wisconsin. Third, Obama beat those spreads by outperforming expectations among white voters. He won a majority of the white vote in Wisconsin, pre-Jeremiah Wright. He won whites in Oregon, post-Wright. Which segues nicely into more Estrich nonsense.

Recent polls showing America to be as racially polarized as ever don’t exactly give comfort to those who would dismiss the concern that some voters may be telling pollsters one thing and then doing something very different when they actually mark their ballots.

But they're not doing that! In Indiana, for example, Clinton won 78 percent of the white voters who said "race was important" in their vote—that was 10 percent of all white voters. In West Virginia, the site of Obama's biggest primary defeat, 21 percent of whites said race was important and they broke 84-9 for Clinton. The voters who actually have a problem with Obama's race are saying so when they vote against him.

Compare this to the 1982 race for governor of California between George Deukmajian and Tom Bradley. It was a complicated election, because conservative turnout was surging ahead of what polls projected as people came out to beat the anti-handgun Proposition 15. In the final Field poll, 3-4 percent of whites actually said they were voting against Bradley because he was black. But that same poll showed Bradley winning 47-41, with Deukmajian gaining, just presumably not by enough to overtake Bradley. There is no example of a similar reversal happening to Barack Obama in any 2008 primary; indeed, there's no example of a black candidate in 2006 (there were six such statewide candidates) underperforming the polls so badly. And yet people say that there is, and get paid for it.

All Aboard for Fund Time

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:01:00 EDT

On June 19, Barack Obama opted out of public financing. I interpreted this as a sign that his coffers were overflowing, and that the combined efforts of NPR pledgers, English lit professors, union heavies and chastened ex-Hillary donors (b-b-b-but I wanted to be ambassador to Laos!) would power him to a massive fundraising haul. Smart conservative Patrick Ruffini disagreed:

The rumor now is that Obama has raised $30 million. A number like this not be a problem but for the fact that Obama opted out of the public financing system with a smug look on his face that suggested a gusher of cash in the offing. With him formally capturing the nomination in June, that doesn't seem to be happening. In fact, Obama's opting out is starting to look at best premature and at worst a complete strategic blunder... if it were really impressive, they wouldn't be holding it back.

And so on—there's more throat-clearing at the link. The hot topic at a conservative book party I went to last week (among the politicos, at least) was whether Obama's fundraising would dip below the $22 million he raised in May.

Ahem.

Because of your generosity and commitment, we're reporting to the press today that this campaign is in a very strong financial position. In the month of June, supporters like you helped raise $52 million.

Basically the right and the press got snowed: Obama held back the numbers to lower expectations and to shame McCain's total of $22 million. For some perspective, look at John Kerry's fundraising in 2004. In June, he raised $34 million. So Obama's raising two-thirds more than Kerry was, and McCain is raising one-third less. It's even darker for McCain when you realize he raised only $1 million more in June than he raised in May—Obama beat his May total by about 150 percent.

I bring this up not only to shame the complacent right that is ever expecting something to fly out of space and derail Obama, but to tramp some more dirt on the grave of the public financing system. Yesterday, Ben Smith reported the latest matching funds released by the FEC.

John Edwards: $4,057,452.60
Joe Biden: $1,135,035.94
Dennis Kucinich: $970,521.05
Chris Dodd: $514,173.62
Ralph Nader: $411,187.85
Duncan Hunter: $353,527.32

Those numbers for Hunter and Nader are comparable to what they actually raised in the primary season—more than Nader raised, I believe. Anyone want to argue that the FEC was reflecting the voice of the people? Anyone still want to argue for this system?

The World According to AARP

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:35:00 EDT

How massive were the House and Senate votes to override President Bush's veto of the Medicare bill—the one that prevented a cut in doctors' fees by cutting payouts to insurance companies? This massive:

The vote in the House was 383 to 41, with 153 Republicans defying the president. In the Senate, the vote was 70 to 26, with 21 Republicans voting to override.

The elephant stampede away from the president was wholly unsurprising. The Times picks a representative quote explaining why:

The political dynamic was illustrated by Representative Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, a conservative Republican who boasted that she was voting against the wishes of her party. “I am proud to continue my fight against the White House on behalf of Colorado doctors and seniors,” Mrs. Musgrave said.

This is one of the reasons why I don't expect the libertarian flank of the GOP to take over if/when McCain loses, and why the Huckabeethatian/Douthabeesque version of conservatism is going to get a hearing instead. The only times Republicans can confront social policy from the right are 1)during crises where the left has mismanaged the economy and 2)during wartime when the GOP is at full strength. The party's in a crouch now, and it will be in six months, so expect lots of cave-ins like this.

It's On the Market, You're On the Price List

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:28:00 EDT

I'd been wondering how Michigan was going to pull its way out of what has been, for a few years now, a one-state recession. The answer:

A new state law gives consumers more rights when it comes to gift cards and certificates... Under the new rules, gift cards are good for five years. Retailers can no longer charge an inactivity or other service fee to consumers using or possessing gift certificates. They must also accept gift certificates during a sale, closing or liquidation and disclose all terms and conditions to prospective purchasers.

And if you don't comply?

Retailers violating the law could be on the hook for $250 in fines or actual damages, whichever is higher.

Consumers can file a complaint with the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General's Office or can pursue matters with their own attorney. Retailers must also cover attorney fees, if fined.

A bed and breakfast spokesperson quoted by the Grand Rapids Press thinks it'll be great for business, as it frees them from consumer terrorism after the five years run out. But if Michigan's legislators really care about consumers, why just five years? Why not 10? Why not make them redeemable until we break ground on the Moon colony?

The Broun Sound

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:14:00 EDT

Iconoclastic Georgia Rep. Paul Broun (R), whom I profiled late last year, has beaten back a primary challenge from the speaker of the state House.

Fleming raised more than $920,000 in the run-up to the election, keeping pace with the roughly $1 million raised by Broun.

Both candidates pledged to represent conservative values, with Fleming promising to "walk the walk" for traditional family values and Broun vowing to unravel the federal government's "huge ball of twine of socialism."

Throughout the campaign, Fleming took aim at Broun's votes, calling his philosophy "strange and outlandish." Broun, meanwhile, insisted the votes helped limit the government.

With most of the vote counted, Broun has buried Fleming in a 42-point landslide. Yes, Broun was the guy who wanted to ban dirty magazines on military bases, but that's the rare issue on which he's worse (or as bad) as the rank-and-file Republican.

"Pledge Allegiance to Mugabe or We Will Burn Down Your House."

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:40:00 EDT

With the coming and going Robert Mugabe's illegal, murderous, and fraudulent election triumph, the tragedy of Zimbabwe had slipped off the front pages. That's too bad. Christopher Thompson has a first-hand account over at the New Republic of Mugabe's campaign of thuggery.

"I would go at night to the edge of our maize field and listen to them chanting, wondering what was going to happen to us--if they would enter the homestead," said Simon, 25, who asked that his last name not be used for fear of retribution. Then one night in mid-June--as Mugabe's chances of winning the run-off began to look precariously low--the vets finally plowed onto the 100-acre farm, dragging laborers from their huts at night and forcing them to attend impromptu pungwes, compulsory government-loyalty sessions. A simple choice was laid down by the war vets' leader: "Pledge allegiance to Mugabe or we will burn down your house."

Simon and his family were able to escape unscathed via a back road as soon as they saw the vets, many drunk off the local maize-brew chibuku, walk up the red-clay drive and onto the farm they'd owned for two generations. But many Zimbabweans had not been so lucky. At least 85 people, mainly supporters of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), were killed in the violence that ravaged southern Africa's former breadbasket in the run-up to the June 27 vote. Thousands more were injured as Mugabe's notorious "Green Bomber" militia--composed of indoctrinated rural youths--rampaged across the country's undulating north-eastern provinces.

Reporters from the UK's Channel 4 cornered Mugabe at the African Union summit in Egypt. They deployed an interesting tactic; refusing to treat Mugabe like a head of state, they asked "how it felt to steal an election" as his goons pushed and slapped them away.

When you stop being angry about this, read this: a column in a Ugandan newspaper by Andrew Mwenda, asking why people like, well, me, care about Zimbabwe anyway.

Mugabe is destroying the economy of Zimbabwe and terrorizing its citizens. But he has not threatened his neighbours like Amin did when he invaded Tanzania. Zairean dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, would have died in power had he not financed rebels opposed to Rwanda.

Why then are we hearing calls for freer and fairer elections in Zimbabwe? There was hardly a whisper when Mugabe’s crack units butchered the Ndebele in the mid 1980s. Many people think the current noise is racial because Mugabe has dispossessed white farmers. Actually, it has a lot to do with social capital. White farmers had networks and contacts with influential groups and individuals in Western capitals. They have successfully used this to mobilize international opinion against the Zimbabwean patriarch. The lesson for opposition movements in Africa is that they need to build such networks and contacts in order to have voice.

I think that's true, on both counts, but it wasn't just that Mugabe was attacking whites when world opinion started to swing against him. It was that Zimbabwe was falling so far. The Congo was a basket case that got worse during Mobutu's reign; Zimbabwe was, until Mugabe really started bringing the hammer down in 1999 and 2000, a wealthy African democracy.

Of course, something that might change in six months is the installation of an American president with continental African roots, who has a habit of speaking out in and on African issues in ways that reverberate.

Meanwhile, at the Revolution March....

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:11:00 EDT

How was Saturday's "Revolution March" different than any of the Ron Paul rallies I've covered? When I walked out the door of my Washington, D.C. home—past a plastic "Revolution" banner that some hardy soul had put up overnight—I was heading to my fifth monster-sized libertarian be-in in less than a year. Last August it was the Iowa Straw Poll, where more than a thousand Paul supporters bused into Ames to wreak havoc and knock Tommy Thompson (remember him?) out of the presidential race. Last November it was the Philadelphia Veteran's Day rally, when I saw men in V masks take over Independence Mall and grown women cry as Paul signed copies of the Constitution. In January I saw Paul draw Mick Jagger crowds at the Free State Project's Liberty Forum; I saw Paul volunteers line the streets of Manchester and reduce Sean Hannity to a quivering tub of rancid yogurt. (Metaphorically speaking.)

You can understand, then, why my overall impression of the "Revolution March" was one of deja vu. Not only did this look like those older rallies; it recycled some of the participants. I recognized rEVOLutionaries from Pennsylvania (80-odd of them showed up), Texas, California, New Hampshire and Iowa. "It feels like a college reunion!" said one marcher who declined to give me his name (probably because he asked "if, you know, Kerry Howley, is gonna be here" and felt an appropriate level of shame about this). Indeed, it did feel like that, as people who hadn't seen each other since January or February caught up with one another, swapped stories, compared T-shirts.

What could it be if not a reunion? The Ron Paul campaign for president was over. Yes, a few people passed out palm cards planning out a strategy to get their man nominated at this year's GOP convention. On the front of the cards were pictures of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Harrison and Warren Harding and the question, "What do these men have in common?" On the back was the answer: They had arrived at their conventions as dark horses and won their party's presidential nominations anyway. "Abraham Lincoln had NO delegates," the card pointed out—I decided against saying that, under those rules the GOP might as well nominate Rudy Giuliani.

But this was a minority sentiment. Most of the marchers were there to write the final chapter of a weird year's diary. "I didn't even know about the convention plans until today," said Sonja Regish, a Michigan marcher who worried that Barack Obama might be part of "the blood line." (An explanation of that is here.) The marchers gathered in the shadow of the Washington Monument around 9:30, clustered and starting chants as more people rolled up, hooting at a van painted with Paul slogans that kept circling the Mall. At 10:30 they slowly started walking from the monument to the Capitol on Constitution Ave.

"Make love, not war!"

"Listen to our grievances!"

"Shut down the IRS!"

The utility of marching down this road in this city—despite the blistering July height—became clear when the march actually passed the IRS building. Wave after wave of marchers booed as they passed it, shaking their fists, flipping the bird. I overheard two marchers making new plans.

"Where's the CIA building?"

"It's in Virginia."

"Too bad."

The march passed one of the highway interchanges temporarily blocked off by police. One of the marchers had a little fun with the motorists peering out of their windows: "This wouldn't be happening if you'd voted for Ron Paul!"

It took a while for the marchers to trickle in to the west lawn of the Capitol. Those of us who arrived early were treated to an infinite loop of Aimee Allen's rah-rah Paul anthem "Revolution." Unlistenable or not, the song had the right effect, cheering up marchers as they staked out shaded space, unwrapped lunches, or rushed up to the stage where the first of umpteen speakers would soon start talking. A number of Paul-inspired congressional campaigns, like Maryland's Collins Bailey and Texas's John Culberson had supporters walking the field, spreading the gospel. The Free State Project set up a booth that quickly started rolling up signatures to its newsletter, and ten new pledges to move to New Hampshire.

Then the speeches began. The basic truth of all D.C. marches is that the speeches don't matter. Anti-war rallies in the run-up to Iraq were famously organized by International ANSWER, a Maoist group of malcontents who, in being Maoist and malcontent, had become very good event planners. They would pull tens of thousands of peace-minded people to the center of town and give them a speaker's agenda that was light on war talk, heavy on the nonsense that they could never get people to pay attention to; show up with a "Rums-failed" sign, listen to a Symbionese Liberation Army burnout rant about Mumia.

The "Revolution March" wasn't as bad as all that, but the structure was similiar. It was organized not by the Paul campaign or by the new Campaign for Liberty, but by hard-core libertarian activists like Ernie Hancock, the man who designed the rEVOLution logo (he writes it r3VOLution). They were interested in certain parts of the Paul message more than others. "They say that we cannot handle the truth!" yelled co-MC Gary Franchi. "But we know the truth! They can't handle us knowing the truth!"

The "truth," vis-a-vis Hancock's speakers, was that Americans were under attack from rapacious interests in and beyond their own government. Of the 16 people (not including Paul) who took the podium, half could be described as members of the political fringe. Several of them referred to the late Aaron Russo's film From Freedom to Fascism; one, home-school activist Marcy Brooks, spoke repeatedly of her role in the movie as she instructed marchers on how to use jury duty as an opportunity to teach people about the law. (The 9/11 Truth types were present, but not on stage, and vastly outnumbered by normal people who were combining this rally with a family sightseeing trip. The truthers didn't much care about the families; the families I talked to wish they had the power to wish the truthers always angling to get into some reporter's camera or notebook, into the cornfield.)

The eight speakers whom I'd heard of before the march stayed away from the fever swamps, but sounded more radical than I'd expected. G. Edward Griffin, author of the anti-Fed treatise The Creature from Jeckyl Island, condensed his book to seven minutes of wry commentary on "the greatest scam in history." After the speech, he was mobbed by photo-seekers like John De Lancie at a Trek convention. "This book is the red pill!' said historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr. waving a copy of Paul's bestselling The Revolution. (Woods and I disagreed mightily during the primary campaign, but patched up a bit after the rally.) As for the big departure of the day, the speech by wannabe left-libertarian coalition builder Naomi Wolf, well...

The message of the march, according to the official literature, was to be "Ron Paul's message of peace, prosperity and freedom through adherence to the Constitution." But the accepted version of that message implied that all three of those things were only possible with rigid national sovereignty, controlled borders, and a narrow vision of trade. The final speech before Paul's came from Chuck Baldwin, the Pensacola, Florida pastor and Constitution Party candidate, who used the little time he had (graciously having given some of his minutes to Paul) to make a concise national sovereignty pitch. "You're either a globalist or you're an American," Baldwin said. "And I... am an American!" Some of the Baldwin boosters in the crowd (many from Florida) started chanting "USA! USA!"

Some of the people I talked to at the march wondered why Bob Barr had no presence there, ceding all the ground to Chuck Baldwin. I can't speak for Barr, but I don't think he lost anything that by going to Freedom Fest instead of the Revolution March. Both events were aimed at different segments of the Paul movement choir. I've seen enough go-nowhere groups (Palestinian solidarity types, white pride morons) fill the West Lawn with rallies to cure me of the thinking that "big rally" = "movement on the rise." Yes, it's awfully fun to see people walking in view of Washington monuments with signs like "READ ATLAS SHRUGGED" and "MISES SAVES." What it achieved, I have no idea.

My photos from the march are here.

Tony Snow, 1955-2008

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:40:00 EDT

Tony Snow succumbed to cancer this weekend at the age of 53. For the past few years, reason had watched Snow's rise to White House Press Secretary with optimism and an appreciation of his talent. When Scott McClellan quit the White House, Tim Cavanaugh reacted to rumors that snow might replace him.

As a Tony Snow fan, I have to concede that this is the kind of career move you'd be a fool to turn down, but I still say: Don't do it, Tony. You're too good for that.

Snow's take on immigration appeared in our summer 2006 package on the issue, which went to print as the issue was burning up among Republican activists.

Immigration is not the pox neo-Know Nothings make it out to be. Begin with the astounding influx of illegal immigrants, the vast majority of whom hail from Mexico. While the population includes an eye-popping number of crooks, drug dealers, and would-be welfare sponges, it also provides a helpful prop for sustaining American economic growth and cultural dynamism.

When Snow was leaving the White House last year, The Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia (a former Snow colleague at the Detroit News) sat him down for a lengthy interview. She asked if he'd abandoned his criticisms of the president since working for him.

When you get to see somebody in action you get a different view, totally different. Also, we haven't had a lot of the issues on which I was critical that have arisen since I've been here. For instance, on an issue like immigration that I was really passionate about, he took on a lot of Republicans and I'm very proud of what he was doing. When it comes to the war, he's been incredibly steadfast in the face of a lot of people who would like him, really for the sake of polling reasons, to change the way he conducts the war. During my time, it's come down to a handful of key issues such as energy, education, immigration and retirement reform. On all of these, the president didn't do half measures. He's pushing for the right things—regardless of whether he accomplished them or not. I'm fully confident that over time immigration and retirement and all those things, those are the right policies and we'll end up with them.

The Friday Political Thread: Keep Your Nuts

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:00:00 EDT

Convincing Quote of the Week
"Libertarians are getting ready for the mainstream, and mainstream America may finally be ready for them."
- Time magazine

The Week in Brief
- John McCain's economic team ended the recession. Just in time!
- The Bill of Rights got pared down to a manageable nine.
- Jesse Jackson went nuts.
- Bob Barr started polling in the high single digits... or did he?
- Jesse Ventura pondered a comeback.

Below the Fold
- Chris Hedges frets about the implications of FISA reform on the press.
- Nate Silver notices that Obama has been compared to everyone who's run for president since the 1940s.
- The Onion picks Obama's running mate.
- Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild calls Obama an "elitist." Seriously, kids.
- Time tries to grok the Libertarians.
- Surprise! Mark Penn's rotten to the core.

I've taken a request for this week's Politics 'n' Prog. Thanks to Jon Rowe for recommending "The Pinnacle."

SATURDAY UPDATE: This is awful news: Tony Snow has died.

Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President Bush's press secretary, has died of colon cancer, Fox News reported Saturday. Snow was 53 years old.

Shikha Dalmia's 2007 interview with Snow is here.

SATURDAY UPDATE II: Daniel Larison ruminates on one of my electoral obsessions.

Except for Indiana, which is a natural target for an Illinois candidate, most of the “map-expanding” moves that Obama is making right now make little sense. I know that the Montana, North Dakota and Alaska polls show a very close race, and at least one has shown Obama leading in Montana, but there are structural reasons that these states almost never vote Democratic in the presidential race, just as there are structural reasons why “the Casey belt” states are more likely to vote that way. Many of the latter would be reverting to previous voting patterns, while the newly targeted states will have to break with long-established patterns. Put another way, if these states even voted for Bob Dole, odds are they will still end up voting for ~~Dole Mk II~~

McCain. I just don't think Larison understands these states. Not until 2000 were Montana and North Dakota out of bounds for Democrats. In 1988, Michael Dukakis only lost Montana by 6 points and North Dakota by 13. In the two Clinton races, with Perot pulling independent voters, the Democrats won Montana once and lost North Dakota by smallish margins. Clinton's Kentucky and Tennessee wins (to use two states Larison says Obama should play for) were not overwhelming: In 1996, Clinton beat the pathetic Dole in Kentucky by 13,000 votes out of about 1.4 million. For a number of oddball demographic and cultural reasons, western whites like Obama more than Appalachian whites like him. Those same whites are represented right now, in Montana, by two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor, and in North Dakota by two Democratic senators and a Democratic congressman. I don't think Obama is shadowboxing by playing in the plains and west.

Economists: Now With 30 Percent More "Con"

dweigel@reason.com (David Weigel) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:41:00 EDT

Alex Burns and Avi Zenilman had a good enterprise story on Wednesday about the McCain campaign's support from economists.

In interviews with more than a dozen of the signatories, Politico found that, far from embracing McCain’s economic plan, many were unfamiliar with — or downright opposed to — key details. While most of those contacted by Politico had warm feelings about McCain, many did not want to associate themselves too closely with his campaign and its policy prescriptions.
...
Constantine Alexandrakis, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, expressed second thoughts about signing.

"I would describe myself as an Obama supporter," he explained. "Maybe I shouldn't have rushed into signing the letter."

Megan McArdle made a prediction:

If anyone bothers to call them, I'm pretty sure they'll get a few not-very-political types who were recruited by enthusiastic colleagues, and then a boring litany of "Maybe not perfect, but a lot better than the alternative."

Well, Nico Pitney and Sam Stein e-mailed 150 more of the economists on the list.

"Yes, I support the Jobs for America policy proposal, especially a simplified tax code, lower restrictions on trade, and energy development," said Michael Connolly, Professor of Economics, University of Miami. "[But] I am worried that continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will tear apart our social fabric and defeat any economic proposal to reduce the deficit and stimulate growth. Guns are crowding out butter."

This past week, the McCain campaign presented the list of the economists as backing a general statement outlining the Senator's economic objectives. But when asked to weigh in on specific proposals—as opposed to the 403-word executive summary—many in the group shuddered. Among individual policies, McCain's idea of a gas tax holiday was the one most scoffed at with nary an economist offering a defense.

"It would do nothing but increase the quantity demanded—and it wouldn't increase supply," wrote Dave Garthoff of the University of Akron. "So price would just go back up again until demand and supply approached equilibrium, and everyone would blame the oil companies."

Basically, the McCain campaign played an okey-doke and got caught. The statement its economists signed was a short bit of pablum about tax simplification and free trade, but the McCain campaign says that they support the "Jobs for America" plan. I take this a bit more seriously than McArdle becasuse the objects raised by Connolly and Gartoff are issues on which McCain is worse than Obama. McCain's making a calculation on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that no one should take seriously: that we'll win the wars, and that'll put our fiscal house in order. At the same time he's ready to spend whatever it takes to fight the wars, leading to worries like Connolly's.