TW: Read the piece then work through what you read about politics today or this week or last week...it has become almost entirely process...substance be damned.
From George Packer at New Yorker:
"David Broder had a devastatingly unremarkable assessment of Sarah Palin in the Post the other day. Her speech at the Tea Party convention in Nashville “showed off a public figure at the top of her game—a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself.” She used the televised occasion to “display the full repertoire she possesses.” Palin is not only “the most visible Republican in the land,” she has also “locked herself firmly in the populist embrace” and mastered “a pitch-perfect recital of the populist message that has worked in campaigns past.” Broder’s conclusion: “The lady is good.”
Broder wasn’t analyzing Palin’s positions or accusations, or the truth or falsehood of her claims, or even the nature of the emotions that she appeals to. He was reviewing a performance and giving it the thumbs up, using the familiar terminology of political journalism. This has been so characteristic of the coverage of politics for so long that it doesn’t seem in the least bit odd, and it’s hard to imagine doing it any other way. A couple of weeks ago, the Times ran a piece by its lead political reporter, Adam Nagourney, about a Republican strategy session in Hawaii: “Here in Honolulu, the strains within the party over conservative principles versus political pragmatism played out in a sharp and public way, especially as the party establishment struggled to deal with the demands of the Tea Party movement.” The structure of the sentence, and of the article, puts the emphasis entirely on tactics and performance. This kind of prose goes down as easily and unnoticeably as a glass of sparkling water, with no aftertaste. Readers interested in politics drink quarts of it every day without gaining weight. And Broder and Nagourney are at the top of their game.
It would be strange if the Times’s coverage of the financial crisis, which has been stellar, focussed entirely on things like Richard Fuld’s handling of his P.R. problems while Lehman was going down. And it would be strange if the paper’s coverage of Afghanistan, which has also been stellar, focussed entirely on things like Hamid Karzai’s use of traditional Pashtun rhetoric in his effort to ride the wave of public anger at the Americans. Imagine Karzai’s recent inaugural address as covered by a Washington journalist:
“Speaking at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai showed himself to be at the top of his game. He skillfully co-opted his Pashtun base while making a powerful appeal to the technocrats who have lately been disappointed in him, and at the same time he reassured the Afghan public that his patience with civilian casualties is wearing thin. A palace insider, who asked for anonymity in order to be able to speak candidly, said, ‘If Karzai can continue to signal the West that he is concerned about corruption without alienating his warlord allies, he will likely be able to defuse the perception of a weak leader and regain his image as a unifying figure who can play the role of both modernizer and nationalist.’ Still, the palace insider acknowledged, tensions remain within Mr. Karzai’s own inner circle. At one point during the swearing-in ceremony, observers noted that Mohammad Hanif Atmar, his interior minister, seemed to ignore the greeting of Amrullah Saleh, the intelligence chief. The two have been rumored to be at odds ever since last year’s controversial election. A palace spokesman, speaking on background, denied that the incident had any significance. ‘The sun was in Hanif’s eyes—that’s it,’ the spokesman said.”
A war or an economic collapse has a reality apart from perceptions, which imposes a pressure on reporters to find it. But for some reason, American political coverage is exempt. It hasn’t always been true. Back in 1993, the late Michael Kelly, who was then a Times Washington reporter, wrote a brilliant Times Magazine piece called “David Gergen, Master of the Game.” It was about the culture of American politics, including those who write about it: “the story of how the idea of image became the faith in Washington.” According to Kelly (and to Gergen), it happened early in the Reagan Presidency. Kelly included a paragraph so damning that I still remember it almost two decades later: “A New York Times article in February reports that the President’s advisers are worried about ‘the perception thus wrought’ by his rocky beginning, and says the Administration is working ‘to refocus its image as a Government of broad, middle-class interests.’ A Times report in May finds ‘a perception that the President,’ who won office as a political centrist, ‘has come to look very much like the same old—liberal—thing.’ These bits of fatuousness are unexceptional in contemporary Washington journalism; they stand out in my mind only because I wrote them myself.”
It’s hard to imagine Kelly’s piece being published today—its scathing critique would seem quaint, if not mystifying. Anyone covering Washington, not excluding me, will sooner or later turn to a phrase like “refocus its image” or “a perception that the President has come to look” or “a pitch-perfect recital of the populist message,” because they come so easily, and because they make it unnecessary to say anything substantial, which means thinking hard and perhaps suffering the consequences. Still, as an exercise in accountability, political journalists should ask themselves from time to time: Would I write this about a war, or a depression? In the same vein, a government official once told me that the best way to cover Washington is as a foreign capital—as Baghdad, or Kabul."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/02/david-broder-had-a-devastatingly.html
Showing posts with label george packer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label george packer. Show all posts
Monday, February 15, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Oh Well...Populist Nonsense Makes For Better TV Anyway
From George Packer at New Yorker:
"The other day, I was lighting a fire with a copy of the Times from June 27, 2009 when my eye fell on an article about Republican objections to the health-care reform bill. Back then, the public option troubled Susan Collins, who also “said she would like to see the legislation ‘put more emphasis on health promotion, disease prevention, end of life care,’ as well as tax credits for small businesses and self-employed Americans to ease their access to health insurance.” Her fellow Mainer Olympia Snowe “said she was striving to produce a plan ‘that does not undo the current system in terms of employer-based coverage or the quality of our health-care system.’ ”
It occurred to me that these might be grounds for negotiation if Democrats end up needing to pick up a few Republican votes (a need that came to pass yesterday). And then, as the paper went up in flames, it occurred to me that pretty much every one of these objections and conditions was met in the bill that passed the Senate last month, without the benefit of Ms. Collins’, Ms. Snowe’s, or any other Republican’s support."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/01/the-lonesome-death-of-post-partisanship.html
"The other day, I was lighting a fire with a copy of the Times from June 27, 2009 when my eye fell on an article about Republican objections to the health-care reform bill. Back then, the public option troubled Susan Collins, who also “said she would like to see the legislation ‘put more emphasis on health promotion, disease prevention, end of life care,’ as well as tax credits for small businesses and self-employed Americans to ease their access to health insurance.” Her fellow Mainer Olympia Snowe “said she was striving to produce a plan ‘that does not undo the current system in terms of employer-based coverage or the quality of our health-care system.’ ”
It occurred to me that these might be grounds for negotiation if Democrats end up needing to pick up a few Republican votes (a need that came to pass yesterday). And then, as the paper went up in flames, it occurred to me that pretty much every one of these objections and conditions was met in the bill that passed the Senate last month, without the benefit of Ms. Collins’, Ms. Snowe’s, or any other Republican’s support."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2010/01/the-lonesome-death-of-post-partisanship.html
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Germans And AfPak
TW: See below for my parsing of some German thoughts on AfPak. We need the Germans and the Germans should want to be engaged in AfPak, else they are free-riders. But if our policies suck (as they have frequently have) then engaging for them is very challenging.
From George Packer at New Yorker:
"Among those waiting for the outcome of the White House review of its Afghanistan strategy are the Germans. The country’s politicians refuse to call the war in Afghanistan a war. Germany’s participation was sold to the public here as peacekeeping and reconstruction, and that’s what it must remain to prevent any further erosion of support...The German politicians and journalists I’ve spoken with want Germany to do more, not less, in Afghanistan, even if that means fighting. Public opinion in this amazingly pacifist country runs otherwise, though only the extreme left and right want an immediate withdrawal. This gap between élite and mass opinion is a dangerous one, since there’s so little attempt by German leaders to explain the country’s position in the war and why it might be necessary to do more than build roads and schools. A single mass-casualty blow against German forces in Afghanistan (or against a soft target here in Germany—the intelligence traffic has been unusually heavy recently) could significantly change the terms of this non-debate.
I spoke with a senior German diplomat earlier this month, and several points he made struck me:
1.The Germans are waiting for an American position to emerge before they come up with their own. [TW: seems fair, they are not the only ones, if we back off most others will flee, on the other hand if we escalate we will need all hands on deck]
2.There is little to no real consultation of the NATO allies on the part of the White House—its strategy review is an internal affair. If so, this is really too bad. We have a lot to learn from our Europeans allies in Afghanistan. Germans in particular have ties there that go back to the nineteenth century. [TW: hopefully this is not literally true, allies always claim to be under-consulted, we should be engaging our allies strenuously, if we want their help we owe them engagement]
3.Germans have a hard time accepting the narrow rationale for the war in Afghanistan, based on preventing another 9/11. For them, the reason to be in Afghanistan is to prevent a return to power of the Taliban and with it an enormous propaganda victory for Islamists all over the world. In other words, Obama’s turn away from Bush’s more ideological agenda and toward a narrow focus on national security is not necessarily persuasive here, in spite of the former’s huge popularity and the latter’s abysmal reputation. (How’s that for irony?) [TW: I disagree with how Packer frames this. If Obama is merely trying to avert another 9/11 he is going to make big mistakes. On the other hand Bush's neo-con ideology was about imposing democracy and asserting American imperial capabilities. What Obama will hopefully do is ignore that ideology whilst pursuing realpolitik policies to stabilize the AfPak region which have little to do with democracy and U.S. imperialism but much to do with containing radical Islam and maintaining a stable Pakistan.]
4.The German attitude toward the fraudulent Afghan election is: what did you expect? It happens all the time in that part of the world. The problem comes when you raise expectations to an unreasonable level. I’ve also heard this view from a couple of American officials. Here, it seems connected to a sense of European realism, if not cynicism, toward America’s universalist approach to democracy when applied to non-European countries...
[TW: I agree with this attitude, getting wrapped up in Karzai's "democratic" credentials is a false errand]."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/10/the-german-view-of-afghanistan.html
From George Packer at New Yorker:
"Among those waiting for the outcome of the White House review of its Afghanistan strategy are the Germans. The country’s politicians refuse to call the war in Afghanistan a war. Germany’s participation was sold to the public here as peacekeeping and reconstruction, and that’s what it must remain to prevent any further erosion of support...The German politicians and journalists I’ve spoken with want Germany to do more, not less, in Afghanistan, even if that means fighting. Public opinion in this amazingly pacifist country runs otherwise, though only the extreme left and right want an immediate withdrawal. This gap between élite and mass opinion is a dangerous one, since there’s so little attempt by German leaders to explain the country’s position in the war and why it might be necessary to do more than build roads and schools. A single mass-casualty blow against German forces in Afghanistan (or against a soft target here in Germany—the intelligence traffic has been unusually heavy recently) could significantly change the terms of this non-debate.
I spoke with a senior German diplomat earlier this month, and several points he made struck me:
1.The Germans are waiting for an American position to emerge before they come up with their own. [TW: seems fair, they are not the only ones, if we back off most others will flee, on the other hand if we escalate we will need all hands on deck]
2.There is little to no real consultation of the NATO allies on the part of the White House—its strategy review is an internal affair. If so, this is really too bad. We have a lot to learn from our Europeans allies in Afghanistan. Germans in particular have ties there that go back to the nineteenth century. [TW: hopefully this is not literally true, allies always claim to be under-consulted, we should be engaging our allies strenuously, if we want their help we owe them engagement]
3.Germans have a hard time accepting the narrow rationale for the war in Afghanistan, based on preventing another 9/11. For them, the reason to be in Afghanistan is to prevent a return to power of the Taliban and with it an enormous propaganda victory for Islamists all over the world. In other words, Obama’s turn away from Bush’s more ideological agenda and toward a narrow focus on national security is not necessarily persuasive here, in spite of the former’s huge popularity and the latter’s abysmal reputation. (How’s that for irony?) [TW: I disagree with how Packer frames this. If Obama is merely trying to avert another 9/11 he is going to make big mistakes. On the other hand Bush's neo-con ideology was about imposing democracy and asserting American imperial capabilities. What Obama will hopefully do is ignore that ideology whilst pursuing realpolitik policies to stabilize the AfPak region which have little to do with democracy and U.S. imperialism but much to do with containing radical Islam and maintaining a stable Pakistan.]
4.The German attitude toward the fraudulent Afghan election is: what did you expect? It happens all the time in that part of the world. The problem comes when you raise expectations to an unreasonable level. I’ve also heard this view from a couple of American officials. Here, it seems connected to a sense of European realism, if not cynicism, toward America’s universalist approach to democracy when applied to non-European countries...
[TW: I agree with this attitude, getting wrapped up in Karzai's "democratic" credentials is a false errand]."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/10/the-german-view-of-afghanistan.html
Friday, June 5, 2009
Pakistan: It Ain't Easy
TW: New Yorker writer George Packer has been traveling through some Taliban infested parts of Pakistan including areas where the Pakistani military has counter-attacked the Taliban generating many refugees. His observations frame why "solving" the challenges emanating from their are so difficult. The observations sound quite familiar to similar observations made over the years in places like Vietnam etc.
The Taliban wish to sow dissension, sowing dissension is much easier than creating economic opportunity and personal security. The locals probably do not really care who provides the security and opportunity just that they are created. Liberty is probably very low on their list as well. It gets circular quickly.
From George Packer at New Yorker:
"...During numerous interviews in the school, a mosque, one of the official camps, and on the streets, I heard nothing but antipathy toward the Taliban, whose spreading influence and well-publicized violence finally prompted Pakistan’s army to take the fight to Swat and Buner. The refugees I spoke with from Swat all told stories of girls’ schools shut down, policemen beheaded, terror and intimidation spread through radio broadcasts and public displays of violence. But I heard little praise for the government either. A number of refugees and residents of Mardan questioned how serious it was about cleaning out the militants. “We can’t say if the fighting is real or a drama,” Hoti, the lawyer, told me. “Drama” was a word I often heard—it meant essentially a show. A civil servant sitting on a bench by Hoti’s desk said, “They’re shelling on innocent people, not Taliban. Every day you hear ninety militants are killed. Out of these ninety, eighty are innocent. Or maybe ninety are innocent.”
The government’s presence on the streets of Mardan was harder to detect than that of the militants. The forty-one-year-old mayor, Hamayatullah Mayar, told me that international aid wasn’t reaching the hundreds of thousands of hidden refugees. “The government has provided nothing, nothing, nothing,” he said. “People here are supporting the operation—they say the terrorists must be rooted out. They blame the Taliban.” I asked if their sympathies might switch if the tide of refugees continued to pour into Mardan and more help did not arrive. “People will not sympathize with the Taliban,” he said, “but they will turn against the government.” Then the mayor led a crowd of local councilmen in a protest march out on the main road: the government demonstrating against the government.
Also curiously absent was the United States. Four years ago, when an earthquake struck the high mountains of northern Pakistan, the American military used its tremendous logistical resources to ferry aid and shelter to the victims, and for a time the tarnished image of the United States gained a lustrous new sheen in Pakistan. This time, the proximity to a war zone and the extreme sensitivity of the Pakistani army have prevented American aid in the form of heavy-lift helicopters and medical personnel. Instead, as Holbrooke said today in Islamabad, the U.S. has provided half the total funding for the relief effort, and President Obama is asking Congress to commit another two hundred million dollars.
But Pakistani politics makes it difficult for the U.S. to claim credit, and for vital American assets to be used to help what has become the world’s largest group of displaced people. So this time, with the political stakes incredibly high, our help is almost invisible. Refugees are easily radicalized, and if the Pakistani army, which carries out counterinsurgency with a bludgeon, continues to create thousands of new ones, with no government plan for their return to Swat and the reconstruction of their homes, it’s quite possible that the long-bearded men under the black-and-white flags at the traffic circle will find a receptive audience for their message."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/06/postcard-from-mardan.html
The Taliban wish to sow dissension, sowing dissension is much easier than creating economic opportunity and personal security. The locals probably do not really care who provides the security and opportunity just that they are created. Liberty is probably very low on their list as well. It gets circular quickly.
From George Packer at New Yorker:
"...During numerous interviews in the school, a mosque, one of the official camps, and on the streets, I heard nothing but antipathy toward the Taliban, whose spreading influence and well-publicized violence finally prompted Pakistan’s army to take the fight to Swat and Buner. The refugees I spoke with from Swat all told stories of girls’ schools shut down, policemen beheaded, terror and intimidation spread through radio broadcasts and public displays of violence. But I heard little praise for the government either. A number of refugees and residents of Mardan questioned how serious it was about cleaning out the militants. “We can’t say if the fighting is real or a drama,” Hoti, the lawyer, told me. “Drama” was a word I often heard—it meant essentially a show. A civil servant sitting on a bench by Hoti’s desk said, “They’re shelling on innocent people, not Taliban. Every day you hear ninety militants are killed. Out of these ninety, eighty are innocent. Or maybe ninety are innocent.”
The government’s presence on the streets of Mardan was harder to detect than that of the militants. The forty-one-year-old mayor, Hamayatullah Mayar, told me that international aid wasn’t reaching the hundreds of thousands of hidden refugees. “The government has provided nothing, nothing, nothing,” he said. “People here are supporting the operation—they say the terrorists must be rooted out. They blame the Taliban.” I asked if their sympathies might switch if the tide of refugees continued to pour into Mardan and more help did not arrive. “People will not sympathize with the Taliban,” he said, “but they will turn against the government.” Then the mayor led a crowd of local councilmen in a protest march out on the main road: the government demonstrating against the government.
Also curiously absent was the United States. Four years ago, when an earthquake struck the high mountains of northern Pakistan, the American military used its tremendous logistical resources to ferry aid and shelter to the victims, and for a time the tarnished image of the United States gained a lustrous new sheen in Pakistan. This time, the proximity to a war zone and the extreme sensitivity of the Pakistani army have prevented American aid in the form of heavy-lift helicopters and medical personnel. Instead, as Holbrooke said today in Islamabad, the U.S. has provided half the total funding for the relief effort, and President Obama is asking Congress to commit another two hundred million dollars.
But Pakistani politics makes it difficult for the U.S. to claim credit, and for vital American assets to be used to help what has become the world’s largest group of displaced people. So this time, with the political stakes incredibly high, our help is almost invisible. Refugees are easily radicalized, and if the Pakistani army, which carries out counterinsurgency with a bludgeon, continues to create thousands of new ones, with no government plan for their return to Swat and the reconstruction of their homes, it’s quite possible that the long-bearded men under the black-and-white flags at the traffic circle will find a receptive audience for their message."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/06/postcard-from-mardan.html
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Pragmatic Activism Trumps Ideological Pouting
TW: Few can accuse Obama of timidly entering his presidency (the few who do are almost all on the left). Is he a hard core liberal? Nope, he is a pragmatist whose believes in action whilst paying attention to things like fairness, empathy and the long-term implications of his policies. I think Obama has done about as well as anyone could hope at this very early stage of his presidency. He is moving with initiative on many fronts but doing so in a methodical manner. I really do not think the Republicans have figured him out at all. Step back and ponder where we are today policy wise versus last November. Obama is merely getting started but he has started fast.
From George Packer at New Yorker:
"...the dominant characteristic of his Presidency is clear: activist government, on every front. It’s harder to make out the contours of the philosophy at the core of this dazzling blur of action. Given the early and ample track record, there’s surprisingly little agreement over the nature of Obamaism. Obama’s signature projects defy grouping under a single heading, and, as a result, he has been criticized for inconsistency.
...To liberals such as Robert Kuttner, of the American Prospect, and Paul Krugman, of the Times, these self-imposed limitations are unnecessary concessions to a free-market ideology that has been thoroughly discredited. In this reading, Obama lacks the courage of his activist impulses, and his hesitations will play right into the hands of his enemies. The usual reply to such criticism is that Obama is basically a pragmatist, who will do what he thinks can work. But pragmatism is a description of a temperament, not an explanation of a world view.
What underlies so many of Obama’s decisions is an attachment to the institutions that hold up American society, a desire to make them function better rather than remake them altogether. Allowing the auto industry to die would create social havoc in communities around the country, and anything less than de-facto government control seems inadequate. So the President has risked a good deal of his political capital on the largest federal intervention in a sector of the economy since at least 1952, when President Truman seized the steel industry to avert a strike during wartime...Obama may not see a similar need to put the government in charge of the big banks, but he has also shown that he has no taste for such a disruption of the system—even if it were politically possible, and perhaps even if it were the most direct route back to financial health.
In his budget message to Congress, Obama invoked the value of fairness, but his budget proposals don’t create government programs—such as guaranteed-income measures or large numbers of relief jobs—that would establish equality from the top down. Instead, Obama seems to recognize that nothing has shredded the civic fabric in recent years more than the harsh inequalities of finance capitalism and the market ideology of a generation of American politics. This is not the rigid mentality of an engineer of human souls; it’s the attitude of a community organizer.
It’s also a pretty good description of what used to pass for conservatism—a sense that social relations and institutions are fragile things, and that, while government can’t create wealth or impose equality, at moments like this it has to establish a new equilibrium between individuals and huge economic forces, so that society doesn’t crumble. But modern conservatism has grown into exactly the opposite of its origins, in Burke’s respect for tradition and Madison’s promotion of countervailing checks on concentrations of power. Instead, like any revolutionary creed, it is abstract, hard-edged, and indifferent to experience and existing conditions.
Most of the remaining congressional Republicans seem content to adhere to this creed, and to allow banks, car companies, and homeowners to be crushed under the invisible foot of the market—all that matters is the consistent application of principle. Last week, the House Republicans released a shadow budget that would repeal much of the stimulus package and impose a domestic-spending freeze in the middle of what some economists are beginning to call a depression. While claiming to be fiscally responsible, it would also create new optional tax brackets and cut or eliminate taxes of every kind, from capital gains to the estate and alternative minimum taxes, tilting the benefits sharply toward—you guessed it—the wealthy.
...[the shrieking from the Right by the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, Bachmann et al.]... is what the historian Richard Hofstadter has called “the paranoid style in American politics.” In the world of intelligence, it’s known as mirror-imaging: in this case, seeing in an enemy’s mental structure a reflection of one’s own feverish simplifications. Conservatives will not be able to understand the elusive nature of Obamaism and counter its formidable appeal until they remove the impediment of their own insular, rigid ideology."
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/04/13/090413taco_talk_packer
From George Packer at New Yorker:
"...the dominant characteristic of his Presidency is clear: activist government, on every front. It’s harder to make out the contours of the philosophy at the core of this dazzling blur of action. Given the early and ample track record, there’s surprisingly little agreement over the nature of Obamaism. Obama’s signature projects defy grouping under a single heading, and, as a result, he has been criticized for inconsistency.
...To liberals such as Robert Kuttner, of the American Prospect, and Paul Krugman, of the Times, these self-imposed limitations are unnecessary concessions to a free-market ideology that has been thoroughly discredited. In this reading, Obama lacks the courage of his activist impulses, and his hesitations will play right into the hands of his enemies. The usual reply to such criticism is that Obama is basically a pragmatist, who will do what he thinks can work. But pragmatism is a description of a temperament, not an explanation of a world view.
What underlies so many of Obama’s decisions is an attachment to the institutions that hold up American society, a desire to make them function better rather than remake them altogether. Allowing the auto industry to die would create social havoc in communities around the country, and anything less than de-facto government control seems inadequate. So the President has risked a good deal of his political capital on the largest federal intervention in a sector of the economy since at least 1952, when President Truman seized the steel industry to avert a strike during wartime...Obama may not see a similar need to put the government in charge of the big banks, but he has also shown that he has no taste for such a disruption of the system—even if it were politically possible, and perhaps even if it were the most direct route back to financial health.
In his budget message to Congress, Obama invoked the value of fairness, but his budget proposals don’t create government programs—such as guaranteed-income measures or large numbers of relief jobs—that would establish equality from the top down. Instead, Obama seems to recognize that nothing has shredded the civic fabric in recent years more than the harsh inequalities of finance capitalism and the market ideology of a generation of American politics. This is not the rigid mentality of an engineer of human souls; it’s the attitude of a community organizer.
It’s also a pretty good description of what used to pass for conservatism—a sense that social relations and institutions are fragile things, and that, while government can’t create wealth or impose equality, at moments like this it has to establish a new equilibrium between individuals and huge economic forces, so that society doesn’t crumble. But modern conservatism has grown into exactly the opposite of its origins, in Burke’s respect for tradition and Madison’s promotion of countervailing checks on concentrations of power. Instead, like any revolutionary creed, it is abstract, hard-edged, and indifferent to experience and existing conditions.
Most of the remaining congressional Republicans seem content to adhere to this creed, and to allow banks, car companies, and homeowners to be crushed under the invisible foot of the market—all that matters is the consistent application of principle. Last week, the House Republicans released a shadow budget that would repeal much of the stimulus package and impose a domestic-spending freeze in the middle of what some economists are beginning to call a depression. While claiming to be fiscally responsible, it would also create new optional tax brackets and cut or eliminate taxes of every kind, from capital gains to the estate and alternative minimum taxes, tilting the benefits sharply toward—you guessed it—the wealthy.
...[the shrieking from the Right by the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, Bachmann et al.]... is what the historian Richard Hofstadter has called “the paranoid style in American politics.” In the world of intelligence, it’s known as mirror-imaging: in this case, seeing in an enemy’s mental structure a reflection of one’s own feverish simplifications. Conservatives will not be able to understand the elusive nature of Obamaism and counter its formidable appeal until they remove the impediment of their own insular, rigid ideology."
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/04/13/090413taco_talk_packer
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