How ironic--the man who ran for the Presidency on a 2002 speech against the liberation of Iraq and fought the General Petraeus strategy change every step of the way, demanding unconditional withdrawal, is essentially carrying out the schedule the Bush Administration had negotiated and no doubt will reap the political credit. It's not surprising that Al Qaeda has tried to exploit the transition by spark sectarian violence with bombs in Shiite mosques, etc. This is a last gasp, though, because they no longer can use the American presence as a propaganda tool. (There are still some combat troops in Iraq, but not in the cities. Obama is targeting phasing out the remaining combat troops by August next year.)
I have a nuanced position on Iraq. I am not an isolationist, I do believe in spreading the virtues of republican democracy against tyranny and genocide, I did believe the multiple foreign intelligence agencies red-flagging issues with Saddam Hussein, and I agreed with the 1998 Congressional call for regime change. At the same time, I did share President Bush's first campaign reservations about Clintonian nation-building, and I definitely don't think we can afford to be the world's policeman and to deploy a disproportionate amount of our military forces in any one isolated place, leaving us vulnerable to more salient threats. I wish there had been alternative methods, e.g., a military coup, which would have limited any necessary American troop involvement. I have echoed John McCain's criticisms of Bush's post-invasion administration. My basic concern was with the Democrats' position of unilateral withdrawal at the start of 2007, because I thought we had a moral obligation not to leave the country in an unstable state, inviting a regional war, the President had announced a change in strategy that I thought had a chance to work.
I myself am not convinced by neoconservative simplistic justifications for the liberation of Iraq (in a post-audit of intelligence failures) that a world without Saddam Hussein is a better place, his crimes against humanity, etc. That does not excuse Bush's managerial problems during the post-invasion occupation, including the wrong tactics and inadequate manpower to hold territory and delayed response in adjusting relevant corrective remedies in tactics and strategies.
I am concerned about Afghanistan, particularly given Obama's scaling up involvement without a commensurate commitment from our NATO allies. I think Pakistan has made significant progress in pressuring Taliban and allied forces on the western flank of the country. I would prefer to see us help Pakistan's democratic government fund the costs of stabilizing the western flank than the equivalent cost in American lives and military hardware. Afghanistan's mountains and porous border provide challenges unlike we've seen in Iraq. I certainly don't want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory by a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan, but I am aware of the historically difficult issues in the stable governance of the country, I am concerned about the lack of stability years after the Taliban was overthrown, and I don't want to see the same kind of analysis paralysis in post-invasion Iraq occurring in the Afghanistan theater. Obama needs to keep his military commanders on a short leash.
In the long term, we need to learn how to pick our battles (realizing not all governments and policies will be consistent with our own as a fact of life), use our resources more effectively and efficiently with rapid feedback cycles for course correction, and whenever possible leverage the use of our military forces more effectively with allies or regional countries
Al Franken Finally "Wins" in Minnesota
The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Democrat Al Franken narrowly won a tight Senate race against GOP incumbent Senator Norm Coleman. Coleman quickly conceded the election; my guess is that he is eying the open governor's seat, given incumbent GOP Governor Pawlenty's decision not to seek reelection. (Pawlenty, high on McCain's VP list last summer, is thought to be considering a Presidential bid in 2012.) So why did Coleman lose in the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court really didn't decide that Franken won the election on its merits. It's fairly clear that illegal votes pushed Franken over the top, but identifying which votes were illegal (other than the ones that boosted Franken's alleged winning margin from 49 to over 300 votes). Basically, Coleman's case was persuasive from a theoretical perspective but thin on specific evidence, and Coleman's own lawyer, on questioning, refused to allege fraud.
I'm confident that Franken did not legitimately win the election, based on indisputably different standards between certain lax (Democratic) vs. strict (Republican) voting standards. For example, Democratic-controlled precincts are loathe to enforce photo ID standards (likely invalid votes for Franken), whereas Republican-controlled ones do (lost opportunity invalid votes for Coleman), but it's difficult to determine these numbers. Second, the absentee ballot standards were more lax in Democratic counties, e.g., they might not have checked to see if a ballot request came from a valid registered voter or whether a received ballot could be traced backed to an application (the same points hold: they strongly favor Franken). Other factors included an unforced error by Coleman whom had a Dec. 18 ruling allowing him to veto inclusion of illegal absentee ballots, which raised Franken's lead from 49. In addition, some 130 votes were missing in one Democratic precinct but included in the recount, some 100 or so votes magically appeared overnight in another, some double-counting of Democratic votes was claimed, and Coleman objected, on equal protection grounds, the time-related disqualification of certain military absentee ballots.
Palin Derangement Syndrome?
Fox News Special Report the other day, once again showing a slobbering love affair with all things Sarah Palin, started off its Grapevine feature discussing a recent Vanity Fair article by Todd Purdum on Palin as Palin Derangement Syndrome. Most of the grapevine focused on a battle between Schmidt (McCain campaign manager) and Bill Kristol.
(Schmidt is thought to have turned sour on Palin, and a Kristol friend, a pro-Palin staffer, was briefly fired late in the campaign.) Chris Matthews famously described his reaction to Barack Obama in terms of a "thrill going up my leg". I characterize Bill Kristol's reaction to Sarah Palin in terms of a thrill going down a different part of his body.
This morning's Fox and Friends, always "fair and balanced", had Kristol on by himself (Kristol, in fact, is a regular contributor on Fox News); Fox News, of course, described the article as a "hit piece" on Palin. The interview this morning focused mostly on one line in the article, that a top aide (which Kristol identified as Schmidt), unable to explain Palin's prima donna behavior [my words], speculated during the campaign on whether Sarah was experiencing postpartum depression. The Fox interview then converged on agreement that Schmidt had engaged in a sexist smear, rather than questioning what was it about Palin's behavior that motived armchair psychology? Kristol quickly piled on, essentially calling Schmidt a fair-weather friend of Palin, wanting to take full credit while Palin peaked early and then trying to scapegoat Palin when the campaign began to falter.
Actually, what Fox News failed to acknowledge was a couple of points in the article regarding prime time host Greta Van Susteren, whose husband (John Coale) has been involved in setting up Sarah Palin's PAC and whom invited the Palins (only Todd attended) to the White House Correspondents' Dinner and intervened when a Politico correspondent approached Todd Palin for an interview.
Purdum is unforgiving of McCain's judgment in picking Palin and covers some well-known information that I've mentioned in past posts, like Palin's misleading claim that she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere project, Troopergate, etc. But there are some points in his article which I wasn't as well-versed:
- Sarah Palin pointedly did not endorse John McCain before the VP pick, even after he clinched the GOP nomination last year. (I suspect it had to do with the fact that McCain used the Bridge to Nowhere project in making a point in the aftermath of the Minnesota bridge collapse. Palin finally terminated the project a month later.) And I wonder how many Palin fans know on Aug. 4, 2008, mere weeks before her selection, Governor Palin issued this press release over Obama's energy plan: "I am pleased to see Senator Obama acknowledge the huge potential Alaska’s natural gas reserves represent in terms of clean energy and sound jobs. The steps taken by the Alaska State Legislature this past week demonstrate that we are ready, willing and able to supply the energy our nation needs."
- Sarah Palin does some dubious nitpicking. For example, to identify with people without health insurance, Sarah said Todd and she did not have health insurance early in the marriage. Todd later corrected the record, saying they had catastrophic insurance. She basically responded that catastrophic insurance didn't count. A second example involved Republican Ted Stevens (recall during the campaign she was loathe to endorse Stevens and in fact demanded that he step down after conviction?) When the conviction was overturned, a GOP representative claimed that alternately elected Democratic Senator Begich, whom narrowly beat Stevens after the conviction, to step down and allow a new election. Palin sent an email to an Alaskan paper saying she absolutely agreed, but days later denied she ever called on Begich to step down. A third example was the Palins' reactions in the press after Levi Johnston, Bristol's baby daddy, claimed that he had been living at the Palin residence (versus staying as a guest) before Levi and Bristol's breakup.
- Sarah Palin's phony fiscal conservatism. The federal stimulus bill which Sarah Palin argued against symbolically to the conservative base offered up to $930M to Alaska. With energy revenues down, Alaska's state budget is in the red, and Alaska, which has long led the nation in takes of per-capita federal funds, is not known for turning away federal money. So after indicating she wanted to turn down at least a third of the stimulus money because of "big government strings attached", she eventually agreed to take about 97% of the money, only turning down about $28M for energy assistance. In fact, Alaska's Congressional delegation takes pride in how much dough it can pry out of Uncle Sam, and then Mayor Palin hired a lobbyist to make sure Wasilla got its fair share. And while Senator McCain was arguing to drop the highest bracket business tax rate, Governor Sarah Palin was hitting the energy companies with a stiff tax increase.
- Sarah Palin's reformer reputation questionable. While on the energy commission, Palin caused fellow Republican (state chairman) Randy Ruedrich to resign, noting that he had done political work from the office. A conservative columnist found evidence that Palin herself had done campaign work as Wasilla mayor. She privately admitted the error but then sent out a press release, accusing the columnist of "smearing" her. Another example was Sarah Palin and her staffers would often do emails from personal accounts (yes, like the Yahoo one which was broken into during the campaign) just to work around tracking of official state communications. A third example was GOP state senator Green coming home after a 90-minute closed-door meeting with Palin and others, only to hear Palin on TV insist that she doesn't hold closed-door meetings.
- Sarah Palin's personal abuse of power. Aide John Bitney, who Palin publicly cited for helping make her first legislative session a success, fell in love with the wife of one of Palin's friends, and she responded by terminating Bitney for "poor job performance". Other examples: One of the incidents discussed in Troopergate involve CPS head Monegan's discussion of an allegation forwarded by an anonymous state legislator that she had been seen traveling with baby Trig without being strapped down in an approved car seat. Palin reacted by demanding to know the name of the legislator; Monegan's termination came less than 2 weeks later. She also worked around her former chief of staff, Mike Tibbles, whom resigned in protest, and husband Todd Palin, unelected by the people of Alaska, often sat in on meetings, and Todd Palin's attempt to directly approach Monegan about terminating trooper Wooten, a former husband to Sarah's sister Molly, was clearly a conflict of interest.
- Sarah Palin's Family is Off-Limits. That is, unless it serves Sarah Palin's political purposes. In an earlier interview with Greta Van Susteren (this past February), Bristol Palin said that abstinence education was not very realistic. But then in May she was announced as teen ambassador to the Candie's Foundation promoting teen abstinence.
- Sarah Palin's position reversals to supporters. There's the well-known flip on the Bridge to Nowhere project, which she supported during her gubernatorial run. But what people perhaps don't know is that Walter Hickel, a former Alaska governor and co-chair to her 2006 campaign, in part threw his support behind Palin when she agreed to support his "all-Alaska" gas pipeline to the port of Valdez. She later flipped to push an alternate pipeline project without his input, alienating Hickel with her "what-have-you-done-for-me-lately" attitude.
- Sarah Palin's cronyism. For those conservatives loving Bush's cronyism, e.g., nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and Alberto Gonzales Attorney General, Sarah Palin won't disappoint, having nominated hometown friends and other contacts to positions for which they were unqualified: e.g., head of candidate review for state boards and commissions and director of the Division of Agriculture.
- Sarah Palin's narrow positional focus and limited expertise. The following incident seems to parallel Sarah Palin's reported issues with McCain staffers trying to prep her for the national media interviews (it adds again to the poor vetting procedure of the McCain campaign):
“In the campaign for governor, they’re prepping her for debate,” Curtis Smith’s former business partner, Jim Lottsfeldt, told me recently in Anchorage, “and Curtis says, ‘The debate prep’s going horribly .Every time we try to help her with an answer, she just gets mad.’” ...But Palin’s lack of knowledge turned out not to hurt her. Andrew Halcro later remembered that he and Palin once compared notes about their many encounters, and she said, “Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I’m amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, Does any of this really matter?”
Democrat Representative Les Gara, who has worked with Palin on bipartisan legislation, is quoted as saying, "She didn’t work very hard. You would speak to her on particular issues, and it was like she didn’t know anything about them and she never seemed very engaged." This brings to mind that incredulous exchange back in the Vice Presidential debate last fall:
IFILL: Governor, please if you want to respond to what [Biden] said about Senator McCain's comments about health care?
PALIN: I would like to respond about the tax increases....
BIDEN: ...He did support deregulation almost across the board. That's why we got into so much trouble.
IFILL: Would you like to have an opportunity to answer that before we move on?
PALIN: I'm still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again... And I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people .
- It's all about Sarah... There are reports that the fall campaign wasn't even over, but Todd Palin was already reaching out to South Carolina Republican contacts, urging them to keep Sarah Palin in mind for 2012. (South Carolina is one of the early primaries.) Purdum also gives another example, which probably further explains Palin's unhappiness with McCain staffers. Sarah Palin was worried about the problems she might be experiencing back in Alaska by playing the role of McCain's bad cop. Schmidt, in an attempt to mollify Sarah's concerns, agreed to have an Alaskan poll done. But Rick Davis eventually cancelled that poll in the aftermath of the economic tsunami given a funding disadvantage to Obama, needing to have polls done on economic matters. Sarah Palin, of course, took the broken promise personally. [There is also this controversial statement in the article: "Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy ”—and thought it fit her perfectly." I myself am skeptical of the claim that this book is in every Alaskan citizen's home library; not even I have a copy of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in my extensive library, but given Obama's narcissism, which I've discussed in prior posts, I've thought about getting one.]
