AFF's Doublethink

With US support, the Organization of American States has threatened to expel Honduras. The Pentagon has cut off military ties. Our Secretary of State wants the actions of the Honduran government to be “condemned by all”.

Kathy describes this situation as one of regional democracy at work. Personally, I am more inclined to James Kirchick’s view that it is extremely strange for real democratic governments to be lining up so passionately behind Manuel Zelaya, a disciple of Hugo Chavez and friend of Fidel Castro — all in the name of democracy.

As I noted earlier this week, I think that the real democrats in Honduras could’ve dealt with Zelaya in a less confrontational and destabilizing manner. Regardless, it wouldn’t have been hard for the US and the OAS to take a more balanced approach to the crisis in Tegucigalpa.

But there may be a silver lining to this cloud. With US support, the OAS is setting the bar very high for democracy. It is demonstrating that it will enforce the rules relentlessly even when pro-American, pro-democracy governments break them. So the next time that one of Chavez’s disciples tries to establish a dictatorship in democratic clothing, the same high standard will apply.

Of course, this all assumes that diplomacy at the OAS is driven by a good measure of high principle…

This week, both the editorial columns in both the New Republic and the New Yorker are demanding that Barack Obama demonstrate his commitment to gay rights by revoking “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” so that gay men and women can serve openly in the US military.

The editors at both publications seem to have forgotten the conventional wisdom of just a few months ago: Don’t make the same mistake that Clinton did in his first hundred days; Don’t define yourself by taking sides with liberal activists against the military, especially not when we still have two wars to fight.

Full of indignant demands for the President, neither editorial even seems to consider whether an aggressive effort to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would threaten the success of so many other liberal initiatives supported by the New Republic and the New Yorker.

As a Republican, I just don’t get where these editorials are coming from. Are you guys trying to do us a favor?

As an advocate of equality, I also don’t get where they’re coming from. Why is it so important right now to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? It has real flaws, but it’s lasted for 16 years. Wouldn’t it be a heckuva lot smarter to take a gradual approach that first builds consensus within the military rather than imposing change from outside?

Hooman Majd in TNR:

One Mousavi campaign manager was asked about the brutality of [the regime], way back, when [Mousavi] was prime minister in the 1980s. The staffer answered, “We were all Ahmadinejads then.” After 6/12, we Iranians are all Mousavis now, even those who voted for Ahmadinejad, whether they know it yet or not.

I’ve long hated poetry, not an easy thing to reconcile with my previous position as the assistant editor for books and arts at the Weekly Standard (my boss was often bemused with my dismissiveness for the form). I skimmed this post with some interest:

The paradox of poetry is that so many more people write it than read it. In this, it’s a little different than the other arts: people who play instruments listen to music all the time. Would-be painters spend lots of time in museums and galleries. I’m not sure why this disconnect exists: perhaps it’s a chicken and egg thing, where the less attention is paid to poetry — in magazines, reviews, even bookstores — the less people are aware of what’s going on in the art, which causes the media to neglect poetry even more, because who wants to read about this obscure thing nobody seems to care about?

The passage above finally made something click for me. Allow me to suggest that poetry, especially as practiced now, is inherently solipsistic. It’s a chance for someone with a thesaurus and the heart of a 14 year old girl to ruminate fecklessly — look at me and how important and articulate and artsy I am! — without actually doing anything or, more importantly, saying anything. It’s an artform without an actual form, something

That people
have abused to the point –
that it no longer exists.

(Or does it?)

You see that? That was a poem. It means exactly nothing. But by setting it off with indents and messing with punctuation, I have given it…….meaning.

(Not really. Poets are the worst. Katha Pollitt’s publishing yet another book of poems? And people wonder why the publishing industry is in trouble…)

Andrew Stuttaford remembers the good old days when liberals defended the president’s critics from accusations of deficient patriotism, or even treason. Normally, I wouldn’t call out Paul Krugman twice in one day, but this exception is worth it. Krugman writes,

As I watched the deniers [who voted against the Waxman-Markey climate change bill] make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

Surely the good Prof. Krugman doesn’t mean that literally. His words must be a clever amalgam of sarcasm and irony. Then again, this is how his column ends:

Is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?

Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.

In theory, bloggers are the ones who don’t understand civil debate, whereas professional journalists are above name-calling. Yet this is nothing new for Krugman. Earlier this month, Krugman was telling us that mainstream Republicans are no different than black-helicopter conspiracy theorists.

I don’t think the GOP will suffer any because of Krugman’s distemper, but it would help those of us with a serious interest in climate change if prominent writers focused a little more on substance. There are certainly some facts in Krugman’s column, but he seems far more interested in exposing alleged extremists than he is in talking about policy.

This post is addressed only to those readers who earn less than $250,000 per year. George Stephanopoulos was doing his best yesterday morning to figure out if President Obama really meant it when he promised not to raise taxes on you. Steph put the question to David Axelrod:

STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to show our viewers something the president said during the campaign back in September.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I can make a firm pledge: Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase, not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Not any of your taxes, a firm pledge. Does that mean the president will veto any health care bill that includes a tax increase on people earning less than $250,000 a year?

AXELROD: Well, first of all, George, let’s make a few points. The president has said whatever is done has to not add to the deficit. So that’s one of the prerequisites for this bill…

[The President] has proposed a plan that would be in keeping with the promise that he made, to cap deductions for the wealthiest Americans on their taxes.

He still believes that’s the way to go. And he has made a strong case to the House and the Senate on it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But he also said this week he was open to compromise on this. And as you know, the Senate is looking especially at this issue of capping the deductions for health care that employers and employees now get. That would get — would be a tax increase for many families earning under $250,000.

But the president said he was open to it. So that means that the tax pledge he made back in September is no longer operative?

AXELROD: Well, George, first of all, there are a lot of different formulations of that plan. The president had said in the past that he doesn’t believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that…

We’ve gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But if you’re open to tax increases for people under $250,000, that means that the pledge he made last September in Dover is no longer operative.

AXELROD: George, I think the president has made clear the way he feels this should be funded. And certainly is consistent with what he said during…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But he’s not drawing a line in the sand.

AXELROD: … the campaign.

STEPHANOPOULOS: He said that.

AXELROD: Well, you know what? The — one of the problems we’ve had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don’t get anything done. That’s not the way the president approaches us.

Sort of funny, isn’t it. Obama kept drawing that same line in the sand almost every day during the campaign. No taxes if you earn under $250,000! I guess when you want change something from a “pledge” into something more malleable, you call it a line in the sand.

Laura Rozen rounds-up the think-tank zeitgeist on Obama’s intentions toward Iran. The conventional wisdom is that Tehran’s brutal crackdown has just about terminated Obama’s plans for engagement. Rozen’s sources say Obama will hold off for a while because it would be unseemly to engage now, but engagement will go forward because Iran is weaker and may have to accept a non-proliferation. Color me curious but skeptical of whether the Supreme Leader is looking for a deal.

Peter Feaver ponders the news that the Vice President will now serve as America’s unofficial point man in Iraq. With good reason, Peter asks exactly how this set-up will work and what Biden’s relationship will be to our actual ambassador, Chris Hill, and our ‘war czar’, Lt. Gen. Lute.

I’d like to complicate the way that we’re talking about what is democratic and what’s a coup. So far, one side has been saying that if the Honduran military gets rid of the president, it’s bad, it’s undemocratic and it’s a coup. The other says that if the military is doing the right thing, it isn’t a coup.

Instead of seeing this as either/or, I’d prefer to think in terms of a spectrum of legitimacy that has a gray center in between the white pole of democracy and the black side of coups. In principle, there is some point at which any democratic military has an obligation to defend the constitutional order from illegal threats. The real question is whether Honduras reached that point, or whether the military acted prematurely.

Among American commentators (at least that I’ve read), there is a consensus that President Manuel Zelaya was openly threatening the constitutional order of Honduras by defying the supreme court and holding a referendum the court had declared illegal.

Yet I still find it very disturbing that the crisis had to be resolved by the Honduran military, even if it was acting on the orders of the court. The absence of other law enforcement bodies capable of upholding the orders of the court is deeply problematic.

The WSJ reports,

The Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. Washington’s ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president’s office, the Honduran parliament and the military.

That was certainly the right approach. It would have been better for everyone involved if this crisis were resolved without camouflage uniforms on the street.

The behavior of the military since its removal of Pres. Zelaya suggests that it is sincerely interested in upholding the democratic order. That does not necessarily justify the removal, however.

The behavior of Pres. Zelaya before his removal from power suggests that he has a deeply flawed view of democracy, one that is influenced by the authoritarian ways of Hugo Chavez and his allies in the hemisphere. That, however, does not justify the removal either.

Once the military has left the barracks, the potential exists for the situation to spin out of control, regardless of the good intentions of everyone involved. Without knowing more about Honduran politics, I cannot say whether the military demonstrated sufficient patience. My sense is that Pres. Zelaya’s behavior represented an extremely serious threat to Honduran democracy, yet there may have been a safer way to remove him from power.

Moving forward, I hope that the US, the OAS and the new Honduran government work toward a resolution that is legal, democratic and acceptable to a strong majority of Honduran citizens.

On ABC, Paul Krugman effectively summed up what many liberals are saying about Sanford-gate:

If a liberal sees somebody who talks about moral values and does something like this, and they call it hypocrisy. A conservative looks at it and says, well, but at least he stands up for moral values.

As Krugman’s tone of voice made very clear, his comment about conservatives was meant to be derisive. Back when I was in college, I felt the same way. We all know politicians will sleep around. So in the end, talking about family values will achieve nothing except raising the hypocrisy quotient. Democrats seem to understand that.

But there’s something deeply flawed about that kind of thinking. Culture matters in politics. Millions of voters want to elect leaders who set a certain standard for individual behavior. When individuals like Mark Sanford fail to live up to that standard, you shouldn’t vote for them a second time. But there will be new candidates who live the values, and they will get elected. Although it’s inevitable that some leaders will be exposed as hypocrites, that is no reason for other leaders to give up on the cause of promoting ethical behavior.

For many liberals (and libertarians), the idea that we should care about what a politician does in the bedroom is deeply problematic. Putting personal behavior — and especially sex — at the center of politics — promotes intolerance and creates massive diversions, such as the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Why not be more like the Europeans, who understand that powerful men are simply going to have mistresses? Let’s just get on with making better policy.

That position isn’t intrinsically wrong, but it avoids addressing the role that culture does play in creating the social conditions that necessitate better policy. Poverty, public health and many related issues are affected by our collective standards for sexual behavior. Not unreasonably, a lot of voters want politicians to set an example that leads us in the right direction. Can you measure how much a good example contributes to addressing social issues? I doubt it. By the same token, it is both premature and self-destructive for Krugman and liberals who think like him to dismiss the family values agenda as nothing more than the hand-maiden of hypocrisy.