Trump Change

Not taking the bumptious tycoon seriously? Think again. Jonathan Chait does. Andrew Sullivan does. And watch for the Nixon guy lurking beyond the scenes. Now you seen him, now you don't.

We're Reluctant Enough To Sing As It Is

Arguing that the conspiracy-addled far right has merged with the GOP mainstream, Jonathan Chait merges his ecclesiastical metaphors:

Now, mainstream Republican leaders are reading from the same hymnal.

Paula Jones Vs. Osama's Jones

The wheel of retributive political justice goes 'round: Jonathan Chait says Republicans are hypocrites for opposing torture indictments for members of the Bush administration after having impeached President Clinton for perjury. The rule of law applies equally to everyone, he argues.

The varying motives for the alleged crimes notwithstanding (protecting the United States vs. not getting in trouble with the First Lady), Chait overlooks an important event when he says:

This argument [that Bush's decisions on torture should be understood in the light of post-Sept. 11 anxiety] would carry more weight if Republicans had changed their thinking on torture and could be expected to follow the law the next time they won the presidency. Alas, they show little sign of intellectual progress.

As a matter of fact, the Bush administration's thinking changed enough that it decided to stop waterboarding in 2005. So if Chait is really saying that torture would have been understandable immediately after Sept. 11 if ultimately the U.S. learned that it probably shouldn't engage in such practices -- well, it did learn, because it stopped, and under Republicans. The pro-torture arguments Chait describes as being intellectually stunted are part of a political rather than a policy debate, since they're being made by those who are engaging in mortal combat over whether Bush officials should be prosecuted. No matter if their thinking has evolved or not, saying, "Now that you think about it, we really are war criminals" is probably not the best defensive move.

If the actions of the next administration, Republican or Democrat, are Chait's real concern, then an intensive blue ribbon investigation (but not leading to prosecutions) is the best way to go.

Hot Bats, Hot Planet

In his column today, George Will, a climate change skeptic, says there's been a cooling trend since 1998. Jonathan Chait cries foul, and in a comment on Chait's post, "Rhubarbs," a former Washington Post contributor or reporter, turns Will's passion about baseball against him:

Someone needs to forward this chart to Will:

baseballanalysts.com/.../was_the_1990s_h.php

Because it turns out home-run production has followed an eerily similar course to global warming over the last century. Except rather than hitting a record peak in 1998, home runs peaked in 2001. So using Will's logic, the fact that there were fewer home runs in 2006 than there were in 2001 proves that home runs are not increasing over time, even though five times as many home runs were hit in 2006 than in 1919.

Ergo the last twenty years of Will's bitching about the increasing offense in baseball is proved to be [BS]. QED.

Given that Will has written much more, and clearly cares more passionately about, baseball than global warming, I would think that applying the "logic" of his climate assertions to debunk his baseball assertions might just have a motivating effect on the man.

Lonely At The Center

Jonathan Chait argues that moderate Democrats' special interest entanglements and the dysfunction of Congress, especially the Senate, may doom President Obama's legislative agenda, as with President Carter and Clinton. He wishes congressional Democrats would line up in lock step behind Obama as Republicans did behind George W. Bush, because, after all,

Obama's budget...represents a once-in-a-generation chance for the Democratic Party to reshape the priorities of the federal government--to reduce America's unsustainable carbon emissions and reform its bloated, cruel health care system. Democrats have utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

When conservatives say that moderate Republicans have failed to rise to the occasion, it's because they're ideologically squishy, afraid to take a stand, or too eager to be liked by the media or Washington's elites. Chait's centrist Democrats are just greedy doofuses who lack his vision.

Too bad moderates never had a William F. Buckley, Jr. to give some substantive weight to their movement, not that pragmatism ever was or probably ever will be a movement. By and large the success of moderate Presidents is in the narratives of their eras -- Eisenhower from 1953-61, Nixon from 1969-1973 (before Watergate, obviously), Clinton from 1995-2001 (after his own "once-in-a-generation" chance to wonkify health care failed). I think Obama may be angling for something similar.

When Plunging Stock Prices Are Good

Jonathan Chait:

[Jim] Cramer assailed Obama for "destroying the profits in health care companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy)." The United States has the most expensive, least efficient health care sector in the advanced world. The flipside of that inefficiency is massive profits in the health care sector. Anything that reduces waste necessarily reduces that profit. Cramer naturally sees this as a disaster. But why should the rest of us care?

Balancing Budgets Is For Sissies

Deftly, Jonathan Chait challenges Ross Douthat's argument that late-Clintonian fiscal discipline is a good model for President Obama. Ronald Reagan didn't worry about deficits when mounting his massive ideological revolution. Why should Obama?