writing to the radio

Most broadcast programs have done a less than spectacular job covering the Bush Administration’s illegal domestic surveillance programs or the ongoing fight over FISA revisions. Sadly, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer has been part of the poorly informed pack. I am hoping that the appearance today, in the 10am EDT hour, of Glenn Greenwald will help improve matters some, but with a vote on final passage of a terrible bill possible at any hour, it is most certainly too little too late.

With all that in mind, though, I was still inspired to shoot off this e-mail to Mr. Lehrer (much) earlier this morning:

In listening to the late night broadcast of the Tuesday show, I was quite surprised by Brain's remark that it was news to him to hear that the illegal domestic surveillance program was initiated by the Bush Administration prior to the attacks of 9/11. This was suspected for some time, and was confirmed during the trial last year of Qwest head Joseph Nacchio. Such information has previously been reported in the Rocky Mountain News and the New York Times, and discussed on To The Point (which WNYC aired daily prior to last week).

I, myself, have been writing about this for much of the last year (I humbly ask that you read a few of these posts, listed here. In those posts, I link to more reports about pre-9/11 domestic surveillance and some of its possible targets.), and I am sure that one as expert as your guest Glenn Greenwald would be happy to shed more light on the subject if asked.

Believe me, I hate even sounding vaguely like a conspiracy theorist, but I am well within the mainstream with my belief that the Bush Administration’s illegal domestic surveillance program is not and has never been primarily about keeping us safe from foreign terrorists. Senators Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd, Ron Wyden, and Ted Kennedy have expressed similar doubts. So have NYT reporters Risen and Lichtblau. Mr. Greenwald and many other very prominent bloggers have plumbed the depths of this subject, as has Wired magazine and Editor and Publisher.

The ACLU’s legislative director, Caroline Fredrickson, protested the speciousness of administration arguments for expanded spy capabilities with minimal oversight back when it became apparent that the NSA started domestic spying early in 2001, “How then will that keep us safer if 9/11 followed the expanded capability?”

There are many, many problems with this FISA "fix"--not just retroactive immunity for the telcos and the Bush Administration--but the fact that it codifies a program that was started, illegally, mind you, before 9/11/01 proves this to be a capitulation, and not a compromise. We already had a working FISA law when the Bush team took over, with provisions for surveillance in advance of a hearing, and a super-secret court that almost always approved executive branch requests. Yet, the White House still went outside the system, and did so when it had demonstrably little interest in the likes of al Qaeda. It makes you want to ask: what then is all this spying for? That a Democratic Congress--and now, the Democratic Party's presumptive standard bearer--would choose political convenience over asking this one tough question is both disheartening and disturbing.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

a follow-up on the weak feminism of the Clinton campaign

I can’t help but be a bit amused by this week’s evaluations of Hillary Clinton’s Saturday speech, in part because they fit a very old pattern, and in part because they fit a brand new one.

I am hearing two themes: 1) It was the best speech she has ever given, and 2) it was the first time she sounded like a feminist.

To the first point, it may or may not have been her best speech (though it was certainly better than her generally underwhelming mean), but it was a speech that struck a different tone. That was to be expected because it was made from a place of concession. Also to be expected, most every pundit and talking head would praise it.

I think it was Hubert Humphrey who said, in the last weeks of his life, as he received a litany of accolades from former friends and enemies alike, that they always praise you once you are no longer seen as a threat. Many of the encomia bestowed upon Saturday’s speech sounded like they would have made Humphrey smile.

As for the second idea, it reinforces what seems to be an emerging consensus (or, if not a consensus, at least a common talking point), one that was expressed last week in Meghan O’Rourke’s Slate post, “Death of a Saleswoman.” O’Rourke’s opening proposition can be summed up in the quote, “Her problem wasn’t that she was a feminist. Her problem was that she wasn’t feminist enough.”

I wrote about that piece last Thursday. In my post, while not completely disagreeing with O’Rourke, I felt that other important issues—specifically, many positions taken by Hillary Clinton—were given less than their due by such an identity-driven analysis.

After I wrote my brief analysis, O’Rourke and others hosted a chat over at the Washington Post, so I turned my post into a question. . . and that question got a pleasantly affirming response:

New York [me]: It wasn't just that what HRC did to inoculate herself against the sexism inherent in the system made her seem more like a man -- it made her seem more like a Republican.

To my eyes, while it seems like a plausible argument to say that Hillary Clinton failed to cast her campaign as a sufficiently transformative endeavor, and though it might have been harder for Clinton to seize the day than her male competitor, HRC could have avoided many of the pitfalls of identity politics if she had not spent her time in the Senate and on the campaign trail trying to split the mythical difference between core liberal Democratic positions and what she thought were the ones that made her more electable.

What do you all think?

Meghan O'Rourke: I agree with you -- she spent a lot of time trying to split the difference on issues, and it harmed her. George Lakoff, who just wrote a book about political rhetoric, and what's behind it, was on NPR yesterday talking about the differences in how Obama, Clinton, and McCain use the word "bipartisan." And his point was that when Hillary uses it, she uses it in a way that downplays - or tries to paint over -- the difference between her and those who disagree with her positions, in order to imply the disagreement isn't that profound. Obama, on the other hand (according to Lakoff) uses it to acknowledge there ARE real differences, but to stress that he'll be open to compromising when it comes to policy.

If that makes sense--Lakoff explains it much better.

I happened to hear that George Lakoff interview (or one just like it on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show), and I think what Lakoff actually said about bipartisanship was a little different.

At about the 10:50 mark of the segment, Lakoff moves to refute the idea that McCain is a bipartisan, and throws in HRC for good measure. Lakoff argues that someone like Hillary believes, as McCain does, that when you need to, you adopt conservative positions on specific issues. It doesn’t mean that McCain is moving to the left, it means that he finds conservative Democrats like Joe Lieberman to bolster his claim of bipartisanship. Similarly, Clinton would move to the right to achieve her notion of bipartisanship.

Obama, says Lakoff, doesn’t do this. According to Lakoff, Obama looks for shared values on specific issues. Certain conservatives might value the environment (like hunters and some Christian evangelicals, for instance), so Obama might reach across the aisle to work with those people on environmental problems. On different issues, Obama might look for others with different common values. Obama doesn’t move to the right himself, he just works with the right when he can find common ground with them.

I don’t find the examples that Lakoff presents on McCain and Clinton to be exact parallels, thought I think I get the gist of what he is saying. Certainly, McCain’s solidly pro-Bush voting record refutes any assumption that he is a bipartisan maverick. Clinton, on the other hand, spent years trying to triangulate or split the difference between grass-roots Democratic values and the positions that she thought would be necessary for her to hold in order to triumph in a general presidential election. Whether the triangulated positions mirrored Clinton’s deeply held beliefs is sometimes hard to say, but the impression left by her fence-straddling was of a candidate that was less than transformative, and, at times, less than sincere.

As for what George Lakoff has to say specifically about Obama, I remember thinking as I listened the first time: I sure hope he is right. It is too early to tell if Obama’s political allegiances are free of expedience, but I have my concerns on some topics.

What I am sure of, however, is that John McCain has spent his whole career pandering, glad-handing, and claim jumping to get ahead. What represents a “core value” to John McCain is defined by his own personal ambition.

As to the original issue of Senator Hillary Clinton and her failed campaign, I feel vindicated in my long-held belief that her political calculations not only did her ambitions no good, they sold her constituencies short, as well. I look forward to a post-presidential candidate Clinton taking to heart some of these lessons and emerging as a more progressive and more effective legislator for years to come.


(cross-posted on capitoilette, Daily Kos, and The Seminal)

John McCain on net neutrality: splunge!

In an effort to keep net neutrality a hot topic through this election cycle, Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chip Pickering (R-MS) introduced the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act” last week. Though weaker than some of Markey’s initiatives from previous sessions, the 2008 act makes it explicit that an open internet is Federal policy, and requires that the FCC to hold hearings on net neutrality.

So where does Republican frontrunner John McCain stand on this issue? McCain was interviewed late last year by Brian Lehrer for WNYC, New York Public Radio; the interview was replayed as part of a Presidents’ Day segment about the remaining candidates in the ’08 race. The Senator from Arizona was asked where he stood on net neutrality. In what was less than a concise answer, McCain first says that it’s important that one big money player doesn’t crowd out everyone, and then states that it’s a hard subject and we must take a look at it. He then changes subject to internet taxes (he believes that a tax moratorium should be extended, by the way).

After a few minutes, interviewer Lehrer circles back to net neutrality and says that he had read that McCain was opposed to it, to which the Senator replies: “Look, I go back and forth on the issue, it’s a very hard issue, and I continue to take a look at it.”

The entire interview is a case study in less-than-straight talk—an exercise in pandering that I expect McCain thought would not be heard outside the New York City area—but the answers to questions about net neutrality are especially pathetic. . . and are an especially good example of what the Asshole from Arizona does on most issues.

(It seems that pretending to be all things to all people while toeing the George W. Bush line 99% of the time is all that it takes to be a “maverick” these days. If you break it down, I guess there is a difference—the difference between saying one thing and doing another, and saying nothing and doing the same thing as the dishonest Republican President that came before.)

Save the Internet is looking to get 100 US Representatives to cosponsor the IFPA (HR 5353). The three Senators still seeking the presidency are “spared” this moment of truth (for the record, both Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have stated that they support giving the FCC the power to enforce net neutrality), but what about your Representative? Save the Internet has a tool to help you ask (h/t mcjoan).



(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

George Packer: "Hillary Clinton will hedge her bets on Iraq"

(I was going to work this into a bigger piece on JRE and Iraq, but, well, events got ahead of me, so I’ll just report on this point that seems to have, like so many substantive points in this race, gone underreported.)

Appearing on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show last week, George Packer, New Yorker writer and author of The Assassins' Gate, got to comparing the (then) three major Democrats left in the race. He had these two things to say (transcribed from the audio):

If a Democratic primary voter is concerned with getting out of Iraq as quickly as possible, then there is only one clear choice, and that is John Edwards.

. . . .

If you want to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible and you are trying to choose between Obama and Clinton—there is no way to choose.

I should note that Packer was not explaining his take on Edwards as a way of promoting him—quite the contrary. Indeed, Packer (a semi-repentant advocate of the 2003 invasion) believes US troops should not leave, as best I can tell, any time soon.

Instead, the man who just completed a multi-thousand word piece on Hillary Clinton sought to pay an odd compliment to the New York Senator by saying this: “Hillary Clinton will hedge her bets on Iraq.”

After reading that New Yorker piece (which focuses on Clinton, but also devotes a good amount of space to her now one remaining rival), I get the sense that he expects Obama to also “wake up” to what Packer sees as the necessity of an extended military commitment. Apparently, as he explained on the radio, because the US has enlisted so many collaborators that our government will not now—to any meaningful extent—allow to immigrate here, Packer thinks that we need to stay and protect them there. (I’m all for aiding the people who have risked so much in service to the US, but I question how much we are helping anyone by maintaining our current posture.)

Alas, after listening to him on WNYC, and reading his New Yorker article “The Choice,” Packer has made the choice now thrust upon me very much harder.

As if it weren’t hard enough.