Evaluating Student Evaluations

Right Wing Professor's got an interesting essay making the case for student evaluations of faculty in improving teacher performance, "Student Evaluations, Revisited."

It's a lengthy piece, but I like this passage:

The university differs in one crucial way from the elementary, middle, or high school: University students have the luxury of choice. The student can choose his major and degree program. The student can choose his courses based in part on which faculty members are teaching them. After all, if you have to take M125 and three faculty members are teaching it, why not take it with the best of the three, or at least not take it with the worst?

When I was an undergraduate, that choice was mitigated by a lack of technology, and we were limited to word of mouth. Now we have the web, and RateMyProfessors.com, and many universities have their own forums for rating faculty. Today’s university students is far more informed about faculty than we were, and can make better choices.

Of course, there is that silly objection to students as consumers, but face it, that’s exactly what they are. The course is for them, after all, not your ego. That alone makes them consumers, and you, the provider. If you’re a godawful teacher, but your colleague is a really good teacher, then students have every right to avoid you and take your colleague’s class instead, and you would do exactly the same.

I'm going to disagree a bit on the "students as consumers" line, although I think the market competition analogy is a good one.

One problem with RateMyProfessors is that the system's easily abused. For example, I've had folks who've disagreed with my blogging (at my previous blog) go over to RateMyProfessors to say "he's fascist and doesn't care about anyone's opinion but his own" (this was a guy who previously blogged at The Blue Voice). Also, often in my experience, students who have done poorly in class - usually for lack of basic skills or the maturity for college-level work - would use RateMyProfessors to retaliate for receiving a low grade.

Interestingly, my school's administration has been well-aware of the online evalution websites, so there's certainly an incentive for faculty to take these ratings into consideration for reputation purposes, if not retention decisions.

Actually, my evaluations have improved over the years, largely because I've become more comfortable in my teaching, more confident in my authority to manage the classroom, and more flexible in understanding students' life circumstances that hinder their successes.

I'm still tough, of course, but I've become friendlier as an instructor and more forgiving in my grading.

Here's a sample evaluation for me currently at RateMyProfessors:

...he's not an easy teacher, but he's still very helpful. he provides online practice tests, and office hours for all his students. he's a pretty cool guy, he can be funny at times...

This one's pretty much in line with a thesis of Right Wing Professor: Demanding teachers who excel at their craft will generate favorable yet critical assesments, and these are valuable for the improvement of instruction.

Indeed, although one of my student evaluators misunderstood my policy on absences and tardies, the basic criticism she offered is valid, and I'll be making some changes to my course syllabus for the fall semester. This student also was not out to "punish me" for a low grade:

To be fair, he is helpful, smart, and nice. Most of the exam questions are from the book and NOT from the powerpoint slides so read the book...

Having said that, as I've noted before, I'm generally skeptical of student evalutions of teachers, particularly as a deciding factor in promotion and tenure.

For my argument on this, see "Blaming Teachers? Educational Accountability and Student Performance."

Recall, though, as cited above, Right Wing Professor makes a distinction between college teaching and public education in weighing the usefulness of student evalutions.

See also, Paul Trout, "Flunking the Test: The Dismal Record of Student Evaluations."

A useful resource page is available from the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University, "Student Evaluations."

Hat Tip: Maggie's Farm

The Globalization of Beer

I was only half serious the other day when talking about the decline in Ireland of Guinness stout's brand, which suggests the "globalization of beverages."

Well, it turns this is no joke, in light of InBev's acquistion of Anheuser-Busch, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Red, white and blue Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos. lost its battle for independence early Monday but it may be headed for barrels of new customers overseas.

The St. Louis-based beer maker agreed to be purchased by InBev of Belgium in a $52-billion merger that will create the world's largest brewer to be called Anheuser-Busch InBev.

The deal is the latest move in the ongoing globalization of beer and the end of a 150-year-old company as American as Chevrolet.

"The King of Beers will have to pledge allegiance to a new European-Latin American master," said British trade publication Just-Drinks.

And although its new owners will surely push Anheuser-Busch brands deeper into global markets, they also are likely to ride herd on expenses such as the famous Budweiser Clydesdales advertising campaign, according to industry observers. Anheuser spent an estimated $378 million on advertising in the U.S. last year.

"InBev is run by Brazilians who have been aggressive in cost cutting," said Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark, a consulting firm in Buellton, Calif. "They will install the kind of discipline that will change the profile" of Anheuser-Busch.

InBev President Carlos Brito, who is based in Brazil, is "a tough guy," Pirko said, and may cut back on Anheuser-Busch's historically prolific advertising, curb its generous sponsorships and put the squeeze on distributors to reduce their profits.

Brito, however, said Monday that InBev had no plans to trim advertising in the United States.

"What we see in Anheuser-Busch is its marketing expertise, and that's one of the pillars of why they built such great brands," Brito said.

InBev said Monday that all of Anheuser-Busch's U.S. breweries would remain open.

"We expect limited impact on the breweries as a result of the transaction," InBev spokeswoman Nina Devlin said.

But union officials are wary. "We know that Carlos Brito has a reputation as a cost slasher, and always at the expense of workers," said Jack Cipriani, a Teamsters official.

Pirko predicted that InBev would actually lower its beer prices in the United States for about the next year to try to build goodwill and reassure its longtime drinkers. Then, "as things begin to stabilize we will see prices go up and less selection of product."

The sale will probably have little effect in places where beer is served, said Kip Snider, corporate beverage director of Yard House, a restaurant chain based in Irvine that has poured 3.9 million pints of beer so far this year.

The average Yard House has 110 beer brands on tap and Bud Light is the No. 2 seller behind Blue Moon, a Belgian-style wheat ale.

Actually, Budweiser's hardly the first American brewer to be foreign-owned.

But hey, I'd miss those Clydesdales commercials!

Photo Credit: "Famous American Brands in Non-American Hands."

Ceteris Paribus*

Andrew Sullivan asks, in response to David Horsey's cartoon mimicry below, "How would the Republican base react to this":

Well, ceteris paribus ("all other things being equal"), this cartoon doesn't work anywhere as well as New Yorker's Barack Obama's dap, which has been described thus:

Michelle and Barack are in the Oval Office, doing a celebratory fist bump. There's an Osama Bin Laden portrait on the wall and a burning flag in the fireplace. He's a Muslim and she's a revolutionary. Of course, Obama has to push it aside and can scarcely laugh about it.

Well, all other things aren't equal, of course, but here goes:

The New Yorker is a literary magazine in its essence, whereas the National Review is the founding journal of opinion of American conservatism. The respective audiences, while overlapping on the liberal/conservative divide, are likely different in orientation toward activism and praxis. Had the Obama fist bump first appeared at the American Prospect or Harpers, then, well, perhaps ... (and I can't think of a conservative analogue to the New Yorker).

Further, take a look at what Horsey hopes to satirize: McCain in a wheelchair? I can't see how this is an effective lampoon. One of the most amazing elements of the GOP primaries this year was McCain's resurrection from near dead politically, and images of the Arizona Senator lugging his own bags while huffing to catch a plane at the airport powerfully showcased the man's vigorous drive to victory.

How about Cindy McCain's overflowing pharmaceuticals? Well, unlike Barack Obama's patriotism or his ties to ex-domestic terrorists, Mrs. McCain speaks openly about her past struggles with drug abuse and she's used her own imperfections as a model for personal and social improvement. Also, in contrast, Michelle Obama herself indeed epitomizes the angry black woman (black power!), and she spoke forcefully at Princeton about the primacy of an outsider's status amid America's structures of hierarchy and inequity - not unlike a Weatherman bomber might boast about rightfully "taking it to the man."

As for McCain's humorous repartee found in lines like "Bomb, Bomb, Iran," well, there's been a lot less analytical attention to McCain's off-colorness than that of Obama's elitist put-downs, like those of the bittergate controversy. Supply does not create its own demand.

And Dick Cheney's portrait on the wall, with a copy of the Constitution in the fire? Well, polls have shown the nation evenly divided on the balance between protecting the national security versus protection civil liberties; and for the most part, the "evil" Richard Cheney is a figment of the hard-left's imagination.

In contrast, large numbers of Americans believe Barack Obama to be Muslim:

Ludicrous as it might seem .... and obvious as it should be that the New Yorker would never do anything deliberately to hurt the Democratic nominee, it remains the case that a Newsweek poll has just found 12 per cent of voters believing that Obama is a practicing Muslim and another 12 per cent (possibly the same 12 per cent) convinced that he used a Koran for his swearing-in ceremony at the United States Senate. These are of course exactly the sort of people who do not read the New Yorker, or go in very much for the ironic and the satirical, so that as usual the aesthetic effort is somewhat lost on what ought to be its target audience.

In other words, the New Yorker cover was shocking precisely because it tapped into real fears residing close to home among millions of Americans who worry less about McCain's age than about Obama's infidelity to traditional American cultural and religious values.

In any case, it's a funny cartoon, but even with first-mover advantages it wouldn't have riled the conservative base the way the New Yorker cover hammered the left's solar plexus.

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* "Ceteris paribus" is the logical reverse of "mutatis mutandis," the title of Sullivan's post.

David Horsey's original cartoons are here.

Neoconservative Moral Nationalism in U.S. Foreign Policy

Political scientist Brian Rathbun offers one of the best recent discussions of neoconservatism in international relations theory.

His article, "Does One Right Make a Realist? Conservatism, Neoconservatism, and Isolationism in the Foreign Policy Ideology of American Elites," dissects the varied orientations in right-wing foreign policy, and argues that neoconservatives are essentially "nationalist surpremacists" in their ideological stress on both power and morals in global affairs.

Specifically, the significance of Rathbun's research is to differentiate the foreign policy persuasions of those on the right regarding the understanding and implications of "realism," which is the paradigm in international politics holding actor agency as egoistic self-interest defined as power (with little stress on humanitarianism as a goal of U.S. global purpose).

The argument is concise and refreshing in its review of theories of international power poltics. Especially good is the clarification of how neoconservatism stands apart from conservative realism or isolationism as a powerful paradigm of good and moral right for America in the world:

Conservatives are realist in the sense that they define the national interest narrowly and materially, treat international politics as amoral, consider force a necessary but not universally appropriate instrument, recognize that a preponderance of power creates as many problems as it solves, and guard sovereignty so as to facilitate rapid adjustment to international realities while recognizing the possible instrumental use of international organizations. Neoconservatives, in contrast, define more grandiose national interests, justified by a belief in American moral authority, often think of force as the primary instrument for realizing international outcomes, advocate the achievement and maintenance of American preponderance, and oppose the involvement of multilateral institutions on principled grounds as illegitimate bodies inherently threatening to American sovereignty. Nor are the neoconservatives idealistic. Their stress on American values emerges from a deep sense of national pride that in its more exuberant form translates into a feeling of moral superiority in international affairs. Neoconservatives refuse to separate the pursuit of American self-interest and those of the greater international good, arguing that serving America’s cause is the world’s cause. They are not idealists or realists, but nationalists. This conceptualization, while it distinguishes between the different rights, also offers an understanding of what unites them. Realism and nationalism both serve as poles on different identity dimensions that separate ‘‘us’’ from ‘‘them,’’ albeit in different ways. In all cases, the right is more egoistic. There are simply multiple ways of being so. The realist dimension concerns how narrowly foreign policy is defined. Realists are not humanitarians. They envision foreign policy as obliging no more than the pursuit of policies benefiting the self. Positions on this dimension capture the degree of distinction made between self and other. The second dimension also involves notions of self and other, but in terms of their rank, rather than their distinctiveness. The right in this dimension, the nationalist or neoconservative variety, pursues a preeminent position vis-a-vis the rest of the world. With this emphasis on position in an international hierarchy comes a tendency to define self-interest more expansively and ambitiously. And a feeling of being entitled to one’s rank serves as a moral justification for egoism. The final dimension concerns the separation of self from other, with the isolationist right seeking to detach itself from the rest of the world.

Here's the heart of Rathbun's argument of neoconservatism's vital ideational power, which he contrasts to the cold "instrumental empathy" of traditional realism:

Neoconservatives find their inspiration in a belief in the greatness of the American nation, which justifies its preeminent rank in the global hierarchy, defined in terms of both military and moral power. Neoconservatism is not a nostalgic patriotism. Irving Kristol, the intellectual father of modern neoconservatism, writes that ‘‘neoconservatism is not merely patriotic—that goes without saying—but also nationalist. Patriotism springs from a love of the nation’s past; nationalism arises out of hope for the nation’s future, distinctive greatness.’’ Nationalism provides the greater purpose needed to mobilize societal virtue and prevent the slide into decadence. Kristol and Kagan argue that such a sense of commitment is necessary even to preserve basic vital interests. This is why the movement so embraced Ronald Reagan. The President vanquished the Vietnam syndrome that had sapped America’s self-confidence and crippled the administration of Jimmy Carter in its dealings with Iran and the Soviet Union. In doing so, Reagan drew a strict moral line that neoconservatives respect between virtuous American democracy and an evil totalitarian empire....

Neoconservatism is not a nationalism of the soil as is the case with American isolationism or other nationalisms across the globe. Rather, it is based on the superiority of American ideals and values, a universal nationalism. As a result, even more than others, American nationalism has a strong moral component that distinguishes it sharply from the amorality of realism. Realism is simply pragmatic, while neoconservatism puts great stress on the importance of American ideas and the strength it derives from them. Neoconservatives take what might be considered a constructivist approach to world politics that is sharply distinguished from the realists’ austere materialism. Hence, they are highly engaged in the media battle over the course of American foreign policy.45 The belief in the superiority and universality of American national values leads them to a vigorous promotion, at least rhetorically, of American institutions and ideals, most notably democracy. However, they do so in a unilateral way, in keeping with their nationalism....

The consequence of this moral self-confidence is a tendency to perceive the world as a struggle for power between good and evil. This was the sustaining force of the neoconservative nationalists during the Cold War, who saw the ongoing competition with the Soviet Union as more than just a realist struggle for power or survival. It was a moral crusade as well The sense of moral superiority shared by neoconservatives is most clearly seen in their repeated insistence that there is no distinction between the national interest and that of the international community.

A key point for Rathbun is that neoconservative evangelical moral nationalism is not new. It can be traced back at least a hundred years, to the administrations of William McKinley and Theodore Rooseelt (for more on this, see, Robert Kagan, "Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776").

This is an important argument, as the purpose of Rathbun's piece is to sort out the forms of "egoism" in conservative foreign policy and offer a roadmap for electoral choice this November.

Crucially, neoconservative nationalism is not to be confused with "neoliberal internationalism," the popular outward-looking foreign policy persuasion of left-wing elites in the U.S. (a crude example is found in Matthew Yglesias', Heads in the Sand, but see also, Peter Beinart, "Balancing Act: The Other Wilsonianism").

In contrast to liberal internationalism, Rathbun announces, neoconservatism "always begins with the national interest."

That differentiation is key, not just for electoral decisionmaking across variations in conservatism, but for electoral choice between left and right as well.

Leftists, and neoliberal internationalist to a lesser degree, recoil at the deployment of force in the context of power and interest.

It's no surprise that in recent weeks leftists have been vehemently dismissive of the use of force in dealing with international crises in Myanmar and Zimbabwe. But as the Ingrid Betancourt rescue has shown, the deployment of force in the final anaysis represents the true victory of power and morality in world affairs (in other words, "The Bush Doctrine Is Relevant Again").

We can see, then, some of the theoretical bases for both leftist and libertarian isolationist opposition to John McCain presidential campaign.

Just this week the New York Times found Theodore Roosevelt to be John McCain's ideological predecessor, in "McCain’s Conservative Model? Roosevelt (Theodore, That Is)," especially with reference to Roosevelt's assertiveness in foreign policy.

Today's antiwar forces, however, would like less assertiveness and dramatically more humility and restraint. And as anyone familiar with today's trends in political polarization know, such desires generally erupt into the most vicious demonizing attacks against neoconservatives and the neoconservative basis for the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Obama Purges Iraq Criticism from Campaign Homepage

In a sign that Barack Obama is increasingly rattled by progress in Iraq, the campaign has removed its antiwar position paper - which attacked the Petraeus surge as a "failure" - from its homepage.

Here's a passage from an official campaign statement from December 2007:

“The stated purpose of the surge was to enable Iraq’s political leaders to reconcile. They have not done so. . . . Our troops fight and die in the 120 degree heat to give Iraq’s leaders space to agree, but they are not filling it. . . . The bar for success is so low that itis almost buried in the sand.” (source: Former Obama Supporters)

Here's more from the New York Daily News:

Barack Obama's campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a "problem" that had barely reduced violence.

"The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.

Plus, Captain Ed has this:

The campaign says they regularly update the site to “reflect changes in current events”. However, the Obama campaign has yet to acknowledge that the changes came from a strategy he opposed and that he predicted would fail. Even more remarkably, he hasn’t changed his policy to incorporate the “changes in current events”. Instead, he just retooled his demand for timetabled withdrawals with a sop to the troops.

So far this week we've had the New Yorker cover controversy, and now the campaign's Iraq surge scrub-job at the official homepage.

This is looking to be one of Obama's worst weeks ever.

Obama's Breathtaking Dishonesty on Iraq

Be sure to check out John Hinderaker's essay at Powerline, "Obama's Dishonest Op-Ed."

Here's a nugget:

Obama bet the farm on his prediction that General Petraeus and the American military would fail. He was as spectacularly wrong as John McCain was spectacularly right. But his op-ed somehow twists this history into vindication on the theory that Afghanistan has deteriorated, the Iraq war has been expensive, and Iraq's political leaders "have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge."

And from the conclusion:

It is possible that at some point in American history there may have been a major politician as dishonest as Barack Obama, but I can't offhand think of such a miscreant.

For reference, see Obama's "dishonest" essay, "My Plan for Iraq."

McCain Holding Strong on Iraq Support, Poll Finds

Public opinion on the Iraq war continues to improve, and overall trends appear to benefit John McCain, a new Washington Post poll finds:

Americans divide evenly between Barack Obama and John McCain’s approaches to the war in Iraq, and rate McCain much more highly on his abilities as commander-in-chief – key reasons the unpopular war isn’t working more to Obama’s advantage.

Despite broad, longstanding dissatisfaction with the war, just 50 percent of Americans prefer Obama’s plan to withdraw most U.S. forces within 16 months of taking office. Essentially as many, 49 percent, side with McCain’s position – setting no timetable and letting events dictate when troops are withdrawn.

That division is reflected in another result: While Obama’s steadily led on most domestic issues, he and McCain run about evenly in trust to handle Iraq, 45-47 percent in this new ABC News/Washington Post poll. The war’s been a top campaign issue, second only to the economy in public concern; Obama speaks on it tomorrow, after writing an op-ed on the subject in today’s New York Times.

This is key: While the survey continues to find a large majority agreeing the war was a mistake, the public is evenly divided on a timetable for withdrawal.

Allahpundit has more analysis, but these findings appear to vindicate one of the major claims of the Bush administration: That increasing success in Iraq would translate into improvements in public support for the deployment, an argument that was central the president's "Strategy for Victory in Iraq," from 2005.

At that time, amid high combat fatalities, the administration relied on findings in political science research in adjusting to trends in public opinion:

Since the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers have worried that the American public will support military operations only if the human costs of the war, as measured in combat casualties, are minimal ... Ultimately, however, beliefs about the likelihood of success matter most in determining the public’s willingness to tolerate U.S. military deaths in combat.

See also, "Bush's Speech on Iraq War Echoes Voice of an Analyst."

The length and cost of an engagement also drive trends in support, although the level of casualites are hypothesized to be the major factor leading to the loss of public backing for the use of force.

Image Credit: Hot Air

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UPDATE: See also the feature stories on the poll at ABC News and the Washington Post, plus the blogosphere reaction here.

The response from the lefties seems to take out their frustrations on Michael O'Hanlon (who arguing that Obama should not offer a withdrawal timeline until he visited Iraq).

Taliban Murders Raise Questions of Associated Press Complicity

From the Jawa Report, Taliban militants on Saturday executed two women accused of prostitution, while a photographer from the Associated Press documented the killings:

Here's the text from Jawa Report, with updates at the link:

AP photographer Rahmatullah Naikzad was a witness to a Taliban murder. The two women were alleged to have been prostitutes who served Western clientèle.

The executions may have been videotaped as well.

Allahpundit adds this:

Judge for yourself from the photos whether they constitute PR work. Best case scenario: The AP’s stringer was taken hostage and forced to document the killings, which would explain why he didn’t interfere but wouldn’t explain why the AP chose to run photos shot under duress, i.e. not “uninfluenced.” Worst case scenario: He’s a Taliban sympathizer and went willingly to the scene with the AP’s blessing, a possibility that isn’t quite as far-fetched as it should be.

Here's a television news report as well:

See also, Atlas Shrugs, "Associated with Terrorists Press Aids Abets Islamic Killing."

Democratic House Candidates Running Away From Obama

The Wall Street Journal reports that a good number of Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives are distancing themselves from Barack Obama's presidential bid. Democrats in conservative districts fear "reverse coattails" in the event of tying their own electoral fortunes to the Democratic nominee's:

Barack Obama could have long coattails this fall. That doesn't mean that every Democrat is going to want to grab on to them.

The Illinois senator is likely to spur voter turnout among African-Americans and college students in some districts where Democrats hope to pick up House seats now held by Republicans or to fend off Republican challenges. But other Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns could see Sen. Obama's politics and his weakness among working-class whites as a liability.

"Some of these Democrats are trying to walk a fine line" between courting black voters and holding on to whites, said Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Report, a nonpartisan political handicapper. Democratic candidates may embrace, ignore or run away from Sen. Obama, or perhaps some of each, he added.

Meanwhile, vulnerable Republicans, many of whom are in closely divided or Democratic-leaning districts, could see John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, as an asset because of his appeal to independents. If the Arizona senator runs a competitive presidential race, he "could provide air cover for our candidates" in what could otherwise be a difficult year for Republicans, said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who heads the Republicans' House re-election campaign.

The article goes on to indicate that the Democrats have the best congressional electoral environment in years, but it sure is telling that quite a few Democratic office-seekers see Obama as radioactive.

For more information, see Congressional Quarterly's list of open seats this year.

Obama's Iraq Policy Overtaken by Events

I noted yesterday that the leftist hordes continue to invent novel ways of attacking the war in Iraq, going so far as to allege that the success of the surge is a manufactured "media narrative."

The facts, however, indicate that the left's antiwar meme of "failure in Iraq" has collapsed miserably, as Noemie Emery argues at the Weekly Standard:

Back in the heady days of late 2006--when Barack Obama decided on his run for president--Democrats had a foolproof plan to gain power: Use the "disastrous" war in Iraq to split the Republican base off from the center, force Republicans in Congress to desert the president, defund the war effort, and compel withdrawal. Declaring defeat in advance, and even embracing it, they tried to cripple the surge before it started. Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate led a chorus of Democrats who declared the war lost.

Even after the surge began, they hoped that pressure would cause mass defections among Republicans, and pressure was duly poured on. Reid is "lashing out at top commanders while putting the finishing touches on a plan to force a series of votes on Iraq designed exclusively to make Republicans up for reelection in 2008 go on record in favor of continuing an unpopular war," Politico reported on June 14, 2007. "By September," Reid hoped, "Republican senators will break with the president."

The left planned an "Iraq Summer," with antiwar groups spending millions on grassroots campaigns. In May 2007, the Washington Post reported on plans to spend up to $12 million on demonstrations, phone calls, and ad campaigns to pressure Republican lawmakers. Tom Matzzie, head of the activist pressure group Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, visited the offices of Politico to unveil his grandiose plans. "Democrats and the antiwar movement had the GOP 'by the balls,' Matzzie argued. .  .  . 'We're going to smash their heads against their base, and flush them down the toilet,' " he said. Late in July, Congress adjourned, with Democrats convinced that when they returned in September, Republican lines would be shattered. But the only sound one heard last fall was that of a toilet not flushing.

What happened to change things? The proverbial facts on the ground. At the end of July, longtime Bush critics Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon, Democrats allied with a center-left think tank, returned from Iraq having found not chaos but "a war we just might win," as the headline on their New York Times op-ed proclaimed. Within weeks, three Democrats who had been to Iraq over the recess also jumped off the antiwar caravan, citing progress sufficient to make them more "flexible" when it came to demands for rapid defunding. These were not the defections Harry Reid had planned on.

Though Democrats did their best in advance to discredit the testimony to Congress in early September of Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus (whom they had called to testify months earlier, when they were certain there would be nothing to report but more failure), their measured accounts of modest but marked improvements everywhere in the country checked the course of debate, and then started to change its direction. Public opinion, which had aligned with the Democrats' base at the height of the violence, began to drift back towards the center. A slight uptick in the polls stiffened the spines of beleagured Republicans. The lines held, the rebellion was stymied, and Bush got his way on his war funding measures. "Iraq Summer" turned into the summer that things began to turn around in Iraq.

And so it is that this summer the Democrats and their nominee find themselves caught between an undeniable change in conditions and a dogmatic, intransigent base--in other words, in the very same spot the antiwar left had hoped to put Republicans in. "The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness," O'Hanlon told the New York Times last November. "If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it. .  .  . The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say, and not hem themselves in."

There's more at the link.

See also, Peter Wehner, "Obama on the War," where he argues that Obama, in his disastrous politics of antiwar, has essentially diqualified himself from "being America’s next commander-in-chief."

See also, Obama's op-ed piece at today's New York Times, "My Plan for Iraq," as well as the additional commentary and debate.

Who Listens to Political Blogs?

Why blog?

That's the first thing that came to mind yesterday upon reading John Sides and Eric Lawrence at the Los Angeles Times, "Who Listens to Blogging Heads?":

Daily Kos. Little Green Footballs. Talking Points Memo. Instapundit. Firedoglake. Captain's Quarters. These are among the thousands of political blogs that are increasingly a factor in U.S. politics. Bloggers and their readers are courted by politicians, as occurred when seven Democratic presidential candidates appeared at the August 2007 convention organized by the readers and posters at Daily Kos, a liberal political blog. Bloggers can also shape the news surrounding election campaigns. It was Huffington Post, a liberal political blog, that first reported Barack Obama's comment about small-town Americans clinging to "guns and religion"....

How might political blogs and their readers affect the presidential campaign?

They will not change many voters' minds because the vast majority of their readers are already members of the choir and hold strong opinions about politics. Sodon't expect political blogs to make Democrats vote for John McCain or Republicans embrace Barack Obama. If political blogs change opinions, they will more likely do so indirectly -- by uncovering new information that is then amplified and discussed in media that reach a broader, and less partisan, cross section of the public.

Read the whole thing, as well the additional discussion at The Monky Cage.

A good rebuttal to Sides and Lawrence is at Flopping Aces, "Political Blogs and Influence: Just How Important Are We?"

This tendency to see a minimal influence of blogs is not new.

Last weekend we saw a really interesting exchange of blog posts on the question of "Do Blogs Suck?" The catalyst for the debate was David Appell's total dismissal of political blogging, with special reference to Matthew Yglesias:

Over the last six months or so I have been getting very frustrated with the blogosphere, and I find myself reading less and less of it. There just isn't much meat out there. Amateur bloggers just seem to spread useless gossip. And what's especially bad, "professional bloggers" seem so intent on posting 20 times a day that all of their individual posts are basically useless, conveying nothing whatsoever...

Read the whole post for more, although I'd hazard that Appell's take is extremely narrow.

I'd argue there's more "meat out there" than ever, although one might differ on what kind of meat we're talking about. Blogs and blogging essays rarely rise to the level of hard political research. I see the blogosphere mostly as a world-wide op-ed page in which everyone can contribute.

And all of this is new and growing. Perhaps only a small number of blog posts have a great impact on political debate, but the fact that the political system is deeply sensitive to what's happening across the blogosphere is perhaps a more telling indicator than survey statistics on reader preferences.

As for myself, I'm just having fun, and if I find myself having an impact, then that adds to the thrill of it all. This morning my post on Barack Obama's New Yorker controversy got picked up at RealClearPolitics, which is probably the most important aggregator of political commentary on the web:

BEST OF THE BLOGS - MONDAY

The Truth About ACORN - Betsy Newmark, Cross Tabs
Schumer Owes the Public an Apology - Erick Erickson, Redstate
Are Political Blogs Important? - Mata Harley, Flopping Aces
Obama and 9/11 - Byron York, The Corner
Downplaying Their Differences - Steve Benen, Crooks and Liars
The Elite-Radical Fist Bump from Heaven - Donald Douglas, American Power
KS-Sen: Roberts Gets Worried - Jonathan Singer, MyDD
Jindal and Teaching Creationism in Public Schools - Ron Chusid, Liberal Values
When Memes Collide - Nate, FiveThirtyEight
Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan: A Friendly Critique - Juan Cole, Informed Comment

So, while individual bloggers might not have the same impact as book authors or scientists, blogging certainly invigorates the marketplace of ideas, and folks can have a lot of fun in the meantime!

Obama's Terrorist Cover Story Controversy

I wrote last night on New Yorker's cover satire of Barack and Michelle Obama outfitted as terrorist radicals, "The Elite-Radical Fist Bump from Heaven."

It turns out James Joyner's taken the pulse of the left blogosphere this morning, with his entry, "New Yorker Obama Terrorist Cover."

The liberal blogs are in a tizzy about the cover of the July 21 New Yorker, an illustration by Barry Blitt which shows the Obamas in terrorist outfits, doing a fist bump with a big portrait of Osama bin Laden over their mantle with an American flag burning in the fireplace...

Joyner charts the shifting reactions, from moderate amusement to outright indignation, although, frankly, the reaction among some seems more than a "tizzy." The folks at Daily Kos (there are literally dozens of diaries on this) are looking to retaliate against the New Yorker, and this comment really captures a sense of the outrage on the radical left:

This is an encouragement of every dark, racist, ignorant, and violent impulse that Obama's candidacy has inspired in the hearts of a presumably small number of Americans. Blitt and the New Yorker better pray every day that no act of violence is directed at Obama in this campaign. If it is, they will be culpable.

Where's the cover of Rice or Colin Powell as slaves, or of Lieberman and Haddasah as Hasidic JDL terrorists, or McCain as a Nazi flyer fire-bombing innocent Vietnamese children? Those actually have an element of truth to them. This does not.

The reference to "Blitt" is to Barry Blitt, the cover artist for the New Yorker.

But notice the intense right wing demonization in this comment: Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell are "slaves"? Joseph Lieberman and his wife are "JDL terrorists"? And John McCain's a "Nazi fire-bomber"?

I just briefly culled through the comments at Kos last night, and the one cited above is from "Long Tom," who's apparently a regular Kos diarist. One will no doubt find additional outrage in the various entries (at Kos and elsewhere), perhaps including some outright calls for violence against David Remnick or the Republicans.

In that case, would the folks at the Huffington Post demand a Secret Service investigation?

Stay tuned ... things are just getting warmed up, and there's still more than four months of campaigning left!

Related: See Protein Wisdom for a little of what's going on among conservative bloggers.

Lieberman Charts Tricky Path to New Partisan Identity

In a recent essay, I asked, "Do you think [Joseph] Lieberman will have to retire from politics at the end of his current term, since on social policy he may not have a home in the GOP?"

The New York Times, in its profile of Joseph Lieberman this morning, comes closest to providing an answer:

Joseph I. Lieberman, lapsed Democrat of Connecticut, strolled into the weekly lunch of the Senate Democrats last Tuesday, unaccompanied by a food taster.

He greeted his colleagues, including some who felt he should not have been there. He ate his lunch (salad, eschewing the mac and cheese) and sat through a discussion about gasoline prices and Medicare.

Then the conversation veered into the danger zone, the presidential election — specifically, Senator John McCain’s recent votes, or nonvotes, on energy policy.

At which point Mr. Lieberman walked out.

“I just didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to be there,” Mr. Lieberman explained the next day.

“It was the right thing to do,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, who said that a colleague approached him afterward to complain about Mr. Lieberman’s showing up. “This is a delicate situation,” Mr. Durbin summed up.

It has grown increasingly so for Mr. Lieberman, once his party’s vice-presidential candidate and now a self-styled “independent Democrat.” He has zigzagged the country on behalf of Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and, in recent weeks, amplified his criticism of Senator Barack Obama to a point that has infuriated many of his Democratic colleagues.

At least two have asked Mr. Lieberman to tone down his rhetoric against Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, two colleagues said, and at least three have advised Mr. Lieberman against speaking at the Republican convention, a prospect he has said he would entertain.

Clearly, Mr. Lieberman’s already precarious marriage with the Democrats has reached a new level of discord and could be approaching divorce, if not necessarily a remarriage into the Republican Party. The strain has been rooted largely in Mr. Lieberman’s steadfast support for the Bush administration’s engagement in Iraq and his hawkish views on Iran. He has not ruled out switching parties but has stopped short of saying he has moved so far from the Democratic Party — or, in his view, the other way around — that he is at a point of no return.

“I don’t have any line that I have in my mind,” Mr. Lieberman said in an interview. “If it happened, I’d know it when I saw it.”

Actually, Lieberman has indicated previously that the Democratic Party's been hijacked by the hardline netroots contingents, especially on national security.

In earlier interviews, he's also dismissed suggestions that he'll always be a Democrat.

My own sense is that Lieberman is just slowly walking away from the party, watching the political trends to see how things turn out.

He's promised not to mount his own "Zell Miller moment" at the Republican National Convention, but the content of his message to the GOP is less important than the symbolism of his defection to the other side. He'll never be forgiven by Democratic Party activists, nor by some of his colleagues in Congress.

My advice to Lieberman is to step up his game. He needs to work even harder for John McCain's victory in November. I see Lieberman with a top cabinet post in a McCain administration, such as Secretary of Defense or State.

If McCain loses, the defeat will signal the sundown moment of Joseph Lieberman's life in politics. I simply do not see him finding a long-term place in either party, with the intense political polarization that is no de rigeur in American politics.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Netroots Ninnies Out of Touch With Reality

Kristen Powers notes that radical netroots activists are badly out of touch with reality on the top problems facing the country:

ASK passers-by on any street in America what their top issue is for the upcoming presidential election, and they'll all answer the same thing: the Foreign Service Intelligence Act.

Gas prices, home foreclosures, the Iraq war - all pale in comparison. Single mothers gathered at the laundromat are all talking about one thing: FISA.

And if you get them to stop yammering on about immunity for telecoms, you won't be able to shut them up about their next favorite outrage: Barack Obama's decision to opt out of public financing.

Don't believe it? Then - unlike many left-wing bloggers and activists, known as the "net roots" - you're in touch with reality.

One top liberal blogger opined last week that Obama's drop in a recent Newsweek poll resulted from his vote for a compromise on FISA, the intelligence surveillance law.

Ridiculous: The average American voter can't describe what FISA is.

Meanwhile, a virtual mutiny is taking place on Obama's campaign Web site, which is swamped with angry complaints that Obama has sold out his "base."

Newsflash to the netroots and the media (which seems perpetually confused on this issue): The netroots are not the base of the Democratic Party.

Overwhelmingly white, male and highly educated, they're a loud anomaly in a party that's wholly dependent on the votes of African Americans, women and working-class whites.

And every poll in existence confirms that what the folks in the party's actual base care about is the economy and the Iraq war.

It's high gas prices, not electronic snooping, that have most Americans on edge.

Powers is absolutely right about the core issues of concern to rank and file Americans, although the question of whether or not the netroots constitutes the party's "base" is an analytical and empirical one.

Certainly, in terms of real voting Americans, in cities and towns across the country, the notion of being part of the "netroots" is completely alien or logically preposterous for workaday Democrats.

Yet, officials in the Democratic Party treat the radical online hordes as a significant factor in their electoral coalitions.

If Markos Moulitsas, and others, like Firedoglake and Glenn Greenwald, are not genuinely a part to the Democratic Party base, it's incumbent on leaders in the party establishment to formally renounce them for what they are: Online bullies intent to move the country to the far left of the spectrum, drastically out of the mainstream.

I don't think the Democrats will do so, and although Barack Obama continues to throw his far left-wing liabilities under the bus, he's not gone far enough in giving folks like the Kos-kiddes the boot.

The Elite-Radical Fist Bump from Heaven

It's deliciously tasteless, which is the oxymoron that came to me upon seeing the New Yorker's July 21st cover image of Barack and Michelle Obama:

The cover's certainly going to draw fire over the next couple of days, from folks on the same side of the spectrum to which the magazine calls home.

An added bonus is the New Yorker's new feature story, "Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama," an expose of Obama's politically successful assimilation to the Windy City's leftist political machine.

The piece discusses Obama's run for the State Senate, begining in early 1995, and includes this passage on Obama's campaign associations:

Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn ... held an event for Obama. Forty years ago, Ayers and Dohrn were leaders of the Weathermen, the militant antiwar group that bombed the Pentagon and the United States Capitol. By the time Obama met Ayers, the former radical and onetime fugitive had been accepted into polite Chicago society and had been reborn as an education expert, eventually working as an informal adviser to Mayor Daley. (Those ties remain intact in the jumbled culture of Chicago politics. When Obama’s association with Ayers first became a campaign issue, Daley, whose father, in 1968, sent his police force into the streets to combat Ayers’s fellow-radicals, issued a statement praising Ayers as “a valued member of the Chicago community.”)

Here's a bit more discussion, further down in the piece, addressing Obama political style once in office:

Obama began writing a regular column—“Springfield Report”—for the Hyde Park Herald. In the first one, on February 19, 1997, he wrote, “Last year, President Clinton signed a bill that, for the first time in 60 years, eliminates the federal guarantee of support for poor families and their children.” The column was earnest and wonky. It betrayed no hint of liberal piety about the new law, but emphasized that there weren’t enough entry-level jobs in Chicago to absorb all the welfare recipients who would soon be leaving the system.

In effect, while President Clinton and the national Democratic Party were drifting to the right, State Senator Obama pushed in the opposite direction. The new welfare law was one of the first issues that Obama faced as a legislator. “I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare,” he said, choosing his words with care during debate on the Illinois Senate floor. “Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems.

Well, so much for Obama's New Democrat orientation (recall the speech on the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where Obama called for more personal responsibility in the black community)!

Note this section as well, on Obama's optimal machine-style legislative gerrymandering:

One day in the spring of 2001 ... Obama walked into the Stratton Office Building, in Springfield, a shabby nineteen-fifties government workspace for state officials next to the regal state capitol. He went upstairs to a room that Democrats in Springfield called “the inner sanctum.” Only about ten Democratic staffers had access; entry required an elaborate ritual—fingerprint scanners and codes punched into a keypad. The room was large, and unremarkable except for an enormous printer and an array of computers with big double monitors. On the screens that spring day were detailed maps of Chicago, and Obama and a Democratic consultant named John Corrigan sat in front of a terminal to draw Obama a new district. Corrigan was the Democrat in charge of drawing all Chicago districts, and he also happened to have volunteered for Obama in the campaign against [Congressman Bobby] Rush.

Obama’s former district had been drawn by Republicans after the 1990 census. But, after 2000, Illinois Democrats won the right to redistrict the state. Partisan redistricting remains common in American politics, and, while it outrages a losing party, it has so far survived every legal challenge. In the new century, mapping technology has become so precise and the available demographic data so rich that politicians are able to choose the kinds of voter they want to represent, right down to individual homes.

Obama began working on his “ideal map.” Corrigan remembers two things about the district that he and Obama drew. First, it retained Obama’s Hyde Park base—he had managed to beat Rush in Hyde Park—then swooped upward along the lakefront and toward downtown. By the end of the final redistricting process, his new district bore little resemblance to his old one. Rather than jutting far to the west, like a long thin dagger, into a swath of poor black neighborhoods of bungalow homes, Obama’s map now shot north, encompassing about half of the Loop, whose southern portion was beginning to be transformed by developers like Tony Rezko, and stretched far up Michigan Avenue and into the Gold Coast, covering much of the city’s economic heart, its main retail thoroughfares, and its finest museums, parks, skyscrapers, and lakefront apartment buildings. African-Americans still were a majority, and the map contained some of the poorest sections of Chicago, but Obama’s new district was wealthier, whiter, more Jewish, less blue-collar, and better educated....

In the end, Obama’s North Side fund-raising base and his South Side political base were united in one district. He now represented Hyde Park operators like Lois Friedberg-Dobry as well as Gold Coast doyennes like Bettylu Saltzman, and his old South Side street operative Al Kindle as well as his future consultant David Axelrod. In an article in the Hyde Park Herald about how “partisan” and “undemocratic” Illinois redistricting had become, Obama was asked for his views. As usual, he was candid. “There is a conflict of interest built into the process,” he said. “Incumbents drawing their own maps will inevitably try to advantage themselves.”

That's an incredibly revealing passage: The concluding sentence is the perfect summation of what I was thinking upon reading these paragraphs: Obama's a classic inner-city pol, an old-school party boss who shamelessly used the perks of the Cook County system to work his way up to power.

What's even more interesting, though less noticeable, is that Obama's new "Hide Park, South Side" ward is essentially America's most unusually postmodern neighborhood.

As Andrew Ferguson wrote recently, in his penetrating essay, "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood":

When Barack Obama was briefly embarrassed earlier this year by his association with the onetime bomb-builder and wannabe bomb-exploder William Ayers, he blamed his neighborhood, sort of. "He's a guy who lives in my neighborhood," Obama said with a shrug, as if to say, "Don't we all have to put up with these cranky old domestic terrorists wandering through the yard?" But of course not every neighborhood has a former Weatherman and his wife, former Weathermoll Bernardine Dohrn, living in it, especially not as twin pillars of the community. Obama's casual dismissal led people all across America, people who live in all kinds of communities without bombers, to look at each other and say: "Wow, what kind of neighborhood does Barack live in?"

Yes, what kind of neighborhood?

Well, as we can see, it's a neighborhood that Obama's utilized perfectly for his political rise. He employed his local party machine connections to tailor a redistricting plan that captured former '60s-era revolutionaries in residence, as well as one of the country's most prestigious college campuses, the University of Chicago, an institution flowing with postmodern intellectualism and home-grown political activism, a "Berkeley with snow."

We might describe such a neighborhood environment as, well, elitist and radical. Elite radicalism perfectly captures the essence of Barack Obama, a man at once comfortable calling white working class voters "bitter" (a notion weighted with Marxist implications), while at the same time one who was indoctrinated to Chicago's black liberationist religious power movement for nearly twenty years.

If Barack Obama's elected in November, we'll see the accession of a machine-style party boss to the Oval Office, one who'll assemble a Democratic administration steeped in a community mobilization and organization tradition, and one prone to capture by some of the most implacable left-wing interest groups ever in American history.

In any case, that cover drawing really is the "elite-radical fist bump from heaven"!

**********

Neocon Express hits the nail on the head, preempting left-wing dismissal or outrage:

With the Reverend Wright, William Ayers, Luis Farrakhan, Khaleed Rashidi and the long list of radicals, tyrants, terrorist-sympathizers and loony-toons supporting Obama ... This image simply hits too close to home. If that were not the case, than the image would be immediately recognized by all as satire. It's not. Which says everything.

Be sure to check out Glenn Reynolds' round up of reactions to both the cover art and the "Making It" article.

See also, "'Scare Tactic' — Obama Slams Muslim Portrayal," and "Yikes! Controversial New Yorker Cover Shows Muslim, Flag-Burning, Osama-Loving, Fist-Bumping Obama."

Moral Difference: Identity Theft or Illegal Immigration?

Well, as we've been debating moral differences here at American Power, what do folks think about this editorial from the New York Times, on illegal immigration?

Anyone who has doubts that this country is abusing and terrorizing undocumented immigrant workers should read an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor and Spanish-language court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of a huge immigration workplace raid at a meatpacking plant in Iowa.

The essay chillingly describes what Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw and heard as he translated for some of the nearly 400 undocumented workers who were seized by federal agents at the Agriprocessors kosher plant in Postville in May.

Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.

What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them....

No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored.

I have highlighted the relevant sentence.

For the New York Times, there's a benignity to the lawlessness of aliens who come to the United States, who are breaking various federal statutes to do so, and then who are exploited by unscrupulous employers shaving massive overheads costs with their under-the-table employment practices?

It looks to me that the Times is using this example as a chance, once again, to take pot-shots at the administration. If the Justice Department's at fault, it's for allowing illegal alien employment markets to get this out of hand in the first place.

See also, Christopher Jencks, no bloodthirsty neocon, and his balanced essay, "The Immigration Charade," where he argues that Americans will not truly be serious about immigration reform until there's a crackdown on the demand side.

See also the Camayd-Freixas paper, "Interpreting after the Largest ICE Raid in U.S. History: A Personal Account."

Human Rights for Animals?

This story at the New York Times, on the push for human rights for non-humans, captures the essence of Europe's postmodern ideological drift:

If you caught your son burning ants with a magnifying glass, would it bother you less than if you found him torturing a mouse with a soldering iron? How about a snake? How about his sister?

Does Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — the Guantánamo detainee who claims he personally beheaded the reporter Daniel Pearl — deserve the rights he denied Mr. Pearl? Which ones? A painless execution? Exemption from capital punishment? Decent prison conditions? Habeas corpus?

Such apparently unrelated questions arise in the aftermath of the vote of the environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month to grant limited rights to our closest biological relatives, the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.

The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project’s directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a “community of equals” with humans.

If the bill passes — the news agency Reuters predicts it will — it would become illegal in Spain to kill apes except in self-defense. Torture, including in medical experiments, and arbitrary imprisonment, including for circuses or films, would be forbidden.

The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated.

What’s intriguing about the committee’s action is that it juxtaposes two sliding scales that are normally not allowed to slide against each other: how much kinship humans feel for which animals, and just which “human rights” each human deserves.

Read the whole thing.

The article notes that while apes would not be according the full range of normally accepted rights and liberties, "their status would be akin to that of children."

Question for Readers: How do you feel about this? Is it appropriate for a chimp to have commensurate rights under the law to that of a child in kindergarten?

I have long considered it a moral responsibility to treat animals humanely. But as animals do not have the capacity for human reason (and hence, objective truth), I do not consider them as entitled to equal protection under the laws to that of people.

To the extent this become a bigger poltiical issue in the Western democracies, the question of animal rights will demonstrate increasingly how matters of social justice have become extremely perverted in postmodern ideology, at the expense of the improvement of human life for the great bulk of humankind around the world today.

Photo Credit: New York Times