Putting the "American Empire" Meme to Rest

Jonah Goldberg, who the Los Angeles Times calls, "one of the most prominent young conservative journalists on the scene today," offers a devasting rebuttal to the American empire debate in his column today.

I've long noted my displeasure with the America-as-empire meme, so Goldberg's piece hits a truly sweet spot with me:

For lack of a better word, the United States is getting tagged as an "empire" from all quarters. Indeed, it's been a century since the notion of an American empire got such wide circulation, and back then Washington truly had designs on such expansion. (Google "Spanish-American War" if you're unfamiliar with this period.)

The empire charge has long been a staple bit of rhetoric lobbed about by those on the political extremes -- and has even bubbled up in the presidential race. Lefty Rep. Dennis Kucinich insists that we must abandon "the ambitions of empire." Hyper-libertarian Rep. Ron Paul says that America could afford healthcare if we weren't paying the freight on "running a world empire." The word "empire" substitutes for an argument; there are no good empires, just as there are no good fascists, or racists, or dictators.

In recent years, however, there's been an attempt to rehabilitate the e-word. Historian and former Times columnist Niall Ferguson deserves primary credit for the mainstreaming of the empire debate with his 2004 book "Colossus." He faced the empire charge head-on, saying, in effect, "Yeah, so what's your point?" The world needs a stabilizing, decent watchman to keep the bad guys in check and to promote trade, he argued, and the United States is the best candidate for the job.

Ferguson concedes, however, that the American people don't want an empire, don't think that they have one, and even our elites have no idea how to run one. As David Frum noted at the time in the National Review, Ferguson "repeatedly complains that his particular fowl neither waddles nor quacks -- and yet he insists it is nevertheless a duck."

Even as he strives to rehabilitate the idea of empire, Ferguson acknowledges that the word has limitations. It "is irrevocably the language of a bygone age," he writes at the end of his book. It has become irretrievably synonymous with villainy.

Critics of American foreign policy point to the fact that the U.S. does many things that empires once did - police the seas, deploy militaries abroad, provide a lingua franca and a global currency - and then rest their case. But noting that X does many of the same things as Y does not mean that X and Y are the same thing. The police provide protection, and so does the Mafia. Orphanages raise children, but they aren't parents. If your wife cleans your home, tell her she's the maid because maids also clean homes. See how well that logic works.

When they speak of the American empire, critics fall back on cartoonish notions, invoking Hollywoodized versions of ancient Rome or mothballed Marxist caricatures of the British Raj. But unlike the Romans or even the British, our garrisons can be ejected without firing a shot. We left the Philippines when asked. We may split from South Korea in the next few years under similar circumstances. Poland wants our military bases; Germany is grumpy about losing them. When Turkey, a U.S. ally and member of NATO, refused to let American troops invade Iraq from its territory, the U.S. government said "fine." We didn't invade Iraq for oil (all we needed to do to buy it was lift the embargo), and we've made it clear that we'll leave Iraq if the Iraqis ask.

The second verse of the anti-imperial lament, sung in unison by liberals and libertarians, goes like this: Expansion of the military-industrial complex leads to contraction of freedom at home. But historically, this is a hard sell. Women got the vote largely thanks to World War I. President Truman, that consummate Cold Warrior, integrated the Army, and the civil rights movement escalated its successes even as we escalated the Cold War and our presence in Vietnam. President Reagan built up the military even as he liberalized the economy.

Sure Naomi Wolfe, Frank Rich and other leftists believe that the imperialistic war on terror has turned America into a police state. But if they were right, they wouldn't be allowed to say that.

Two compelling new books help explain why our "empire" is different from the Soviet or Roman varieties. Walter Russell Mead's encyclopedic "God and Gold" argues that Anglo-American culture is uniquely well suited toward globalism, military success, capitalism and liberty. Amy Chua's brilliant "Day of Empire" confirms why: Successful "hyperpowers" tend to be more tolerant and inclusive than their competitors. Despite its flaws, Britain was the first truly liberal empire.

America has picked up where the British left off. Whatever sway the U.S. holds over far-flung reaches of the globe is derived from the fact that we have been, and hopefully shall continue to be, the leader of the free world, offering help and guidance, peace and prosperity, where and when we can, as best we can, and asking little in return. If that makes us an empire, so be it. But I think "leader of the free world" is the only label we'll ever need or - one hopes - ever want.

This is - to the best of my knowledge - the greatest op-ed commentary debunking the America-as-empire thesis since Victor Davis Hanson's, "A Funny Sort of Empire: Are Americans really so imperial?"

Of course, the academic literature on empires is enormous (see here, for an example, in pdf), and I haven't specialized in it to any extent. I have offered my reflections on this research, similar to Goldberg's:

There is an American order in international politics, and that is an order of great power leadership in a realm of nation states that is bound by increasing multilayered patterns of complex interdependence. Empires have been relegated to the ash heap of history, as well they should. Perhaps, with all due respect, this line of research may meet a similar fate some day as well.

I agree with Goldberg, as you can see: It's high time to put the American empire meme to rest.

The Resurgence of Small Government Conservatism?

I've been marveling over the diversity among Republicans of late on the question of which set of conservative values will prevail in the post-Bush era. The current ferment has got me thinking: Is Reagan the model, as he's often mentioned in the debate over the conservative future?

Some readers might recall Time's cover story earlier this year, "How the Right Went Wrong." The article was a paean to President Reagan:

These are gloomy and uncertain days for conservatives, who — except for the eight-year Clinton interregnum — have dominated political power and thought in this country since Reagan rode in from the West. Their tradition goes back even further, to Founding Fathers who believed that people should do things for themselves and who shook off a monarchy in their conviction that Big Government is more to be feared than encouraged. The Boston Tea Party, as Reagan used to point out, was an antitax initiative.

But everything that Reagan said in 1985 about "the other side" could easily apply to the conservatives of 2007. They are handcuffed to a political party that looks unsettlingly like the Democrats did in the 1980s, one that is more a collection of interest groups than ideas, recognizable more by its campaign tactics than its philosophy. The principles that propelled the movement have either run their course, or run aground, or been abandoned by Reagan's legatees. Government is not only bigger and more expensive than it was when George W. Bush took office, but its reach is also longer, thanks to the broad new powers it has claimed as necessary to protect the homeland. It's true that Reagan didn't live up to everything he promised: he campaigned on smaller government, fiscal discipline and religious values, while his presidency brought us a larger government and a soaring deficit. But Bush's apostasies are more extravagant by just about any measure you pick.

One of the Bush-era apostates is Michael Gerson, who's got a new book out, Heroic Conservatism. Gerson's a former Bush administration chief speechwriter, and he champions a vision of a muscular, missionary conservativism that's a far cry from the small-government groundings of the Reagan Revolution.

Ross Douthat's got a review of Gerson's book up today at Slate, "The Future of the GOP." He makes a powerful case that Gerson's "heroic conservatism" is the wrong remedy for what's ailing the Republican Party. While Gerson promotes big government policies and Wilsonian idealism in international affairs, those to the left of him (it might be thought) will not warm to his ideas with his ties to the Bush administration:

Nor is Gerson likely to find a ready audience among conservatives. His year as a [Washington] Post columnist has earned him few friends to his right, given the regularity with which he has piously scolded his fellow Republicans for being too partisan, too tightfisted, and too bigoted. (In a characteristic column, he defended Bush's proposed immigration reform by accusing its foes of betraying Jesus Christ himself: "The Christian faith teaches that our common humanity is more important than our nationality. That all of us, ultimately, are strangers in this world and brothers to the bone; and all in need of amnesty.") The publication of Heroic Conservatism was met by a predictable burst of criticism from conservative pundits, in which National Review's Mark Krikorian summed up the general anti-Gerson consensus by demanding: "Why is this man called a conservative?"

It's a fair question. As the world understood the term conservative in, say, 1965, Gerson isn't one. Like many Americans who've crowded into the GOP over the last four decades—blue-collar Catholics and Jewish neoconservatives as well as evangelicals—the militantly libertarian spirit of the midcentury Right is largely foreign to him. But on the road from Goldwater to Reagan, and thence to George W. Bush, the conservative movement transformed itself from a narrow claque into a broad church, embracing anyone and everyone who called themselves an enemy of liberalism, whether they were New York intellectuals or Orange County housewives. This "here comes everybody" quality has been the American Right's great strength over the past three decades, and a Republican Party that aspires to govern America can ill afford to read the Gersons of the world—social conservatives with moderate-to-liberal sympathies on economics—out of its coalition.

Particularly since Gerson's central argument is basically correct: American conservatism needs to stand for something besides government-cutting if it hopes to regain the majority that George W. Bush won (and quickly lost). At its best, Heroic Conservatism is a necessary corrective to the right's mythologizing of its own past, which cultivates the pretense that small-government purity has always been the key to Republican success. By way of rebuttal, Gerson points out that conservatives tend to win elections only when they convince voters that they mean to reform the welfare state, rather than do away with it entirely. This was true of 1990s success stories like Rudy Giuliani in New York and Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin; it was true of the Contract With America, a far less ideological document than right-wing nostalgists make it out to be; and it was true of Ronald Reagan himself, who slowed the growth of government but hardly cut it to the bone. The insight isn't unique to Gerson; it dates back to the original, '70s-vintage neoconservatives. But it seems to be slipping away from the contemporary GOP, whose primary contenders—save perhaps for Mike Huckabee—are falling over one another to prove their small-government bona fides, and whose activists have persuaded themselves that tax cuts and pork-busting will be their tickets back to power.

Speaking of Huckabee: His rise in the polls is garning attention among conservative pundits. Robert Novak hammered him in a column today over at the Washington Post:

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist advocate of big government and a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses and might make more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

So who's to fill the yearning for a return to the Goldwater/Reagan consensus? Can it be Ron Paul, who's quixotic White House bid is stirring the souls of small government types across the land?

Patrick Ruffini, over at Townhall, pumps up such speculation on Paul's unusual ascendance in his piece today, "Ron Paul Has Won":

In the past few months, Ron Paul has dramatically raised the profile of libertarianism inside the Republican Party. My small-l libertarian friends seem more comfortable describing themselves as such, even though they’ll go out of their way to disassociate themselves from Ron Paul and the big-L kind.

Libertarianism in the GOP took a big hit on 9/11, and it’s slowly coming back, with Ron Paul as the catalyst. Its underlying ideals still have appeal well beyond the cramped confines of the LP. If it’s possible to be known as a pro-life, pro-war, pro-wiretapping libertarian, then sign me up. Markos too brands himself a “libertarian Democrat,” though he’s never read Hayek and supports big government social programs.

Some campaigns can win big without ever coming close to winning an actual contest. Pat Robertson’s 1988 campaign signaled that Christian Conservatives had arrived in the GOP. Ron Paul is doing the same for libertarians. This is not a counterweight to the religious right per se, since Paul is identified as pro-life, but it does potentially open up a new army of activists on the right not primarily motivated by social/moral issues.

Not every losing single-issue candidate succeeds like this. Immigration-restrictionists still lack an outlet in the GOP, thanks to Tom Tancredo’s embarrassing tone-deafness as a candidate. Sam Brownback’s campaign had hoped to galvanize single-issue pro-lifers, but was hobbled by his dry persona. Duncan Hunter looks mostly like a campaign for Secretary of Defense.

Assuming Paul loses, where does small-l libertarianism go from here? His movement already did the smart thing by making peace with social conservatism. Libertarianism is no longer aligned with libertine stances on abortion and gay rights.

To become the ascendant ideology within the GOP, I suspect they’ll have to find a way to do the same thing on national security. The war on terror writ large is the one big thing social and economic conservatives agree on, and Ron Paul is vocally aligned against both.

Mainstream Republican libertarians might be gung-ho for Paul’s small-government idealism, they might adopt Glenn Reynoldsish skepticism of the homeland security bureaucracy, and even John McCain has lately made a thing of ripping the military-industrial complex, but there is no way — I repeat NO WAY — they will embrace Ron Paul if he continues to blame America for 9/11 and imply that America is acting illegally in defending itself around the globe. Even if they aren’t the biggest fans of the war, most people that are available for Ron Paul on the right are by temperament patriotic and will never vote for someone who sounds like Noam Chomsky.

Ruffini captures a tremendous amount of tension within the GOP's small government comeback movement. It's a tension, in my opinion, that marks a fatal direction for conservatives and the GOP. There's nothing wrong with seeking a return to fiscal conservatism (notice how Fred Barnes argues this week that shrinking the federal government is not impossible, with references to Reagan administration spending discipline). Yet, notwithstanding the concerns of the most hard-core libertarian Republicans, the expansive scope of government ought not to be something modern conservatives should abhor.

First, a dramatic reduction of the size and scope of the federal government's reach and power is utopian. Trends since World War II have dramatically increased the power of the federal government over the states, in areas as diverse as national security policy to local community development block grants. Second, there remain too many areas of both foreign and domestic policy that cry out for a combination of innovative thinking and can-do pragmatism.

On that note, I like how Douthat concluded his review of Gerson's book at Slate:

To last, and matter, conservatism needs an agenda that partakes less of Gerson's evangelical moralism and more of the realism that defined the original neoconservatives. It needs a foreign policy whose idealism is leavened with a greater sense of limits than this administration has displayed; and a domestic policy that seeks to draw contrasts with liberalism, not to imitate it, by emphasizing responsibility rather than charity and respect rather than compassion. Above all, it needs to think as much about meeting the concerns of working- and middle-class Americans, the constituents that first Nixon and then Reagan won for the GOP, as it does about the dissidents and addicts that a "heroic conservatism" would set out to save.

Given this warning, where do we go from here?

My neoconservatism supports a muscular national security policy, and a large, well-funded defense bureaucracy to back it (and I deeply distrust the antiwar fringe libertarians backing the Paul campaign). I also see that with our international preponderance comes great responsibility. Perhaps we'll need more prudence in a post-Bush world, but we should not recoil from the robust use of power to achieve American interests.

Note, though, that some observers forget that neoconservatism also offers a powerful domestic agenda of support for traditional values, personal responsibility, and the rejection of the social welfare paternalism of Great Society liberalism (we can do domestic policy, but we must be more judicious in our approach and more effective in implementation). Neoconservatives are especially upset by the descent of traditional morality as a guiding ethos for the new generations (a distrust the marks another break from doctrinaire libertarianism).

In other words, government is not the problem, but is a possible solution to many policy dilemmas. The key, I would argue, is to move with intelligence and pragmatism. An ideological agenda along these lines - one that recognizes that government, i.e., the state - holds a promising avenue for a restoration of conservative ideology after the Bush presidency.

Toward Moral Brinkmanship

Shelby Steele, over at the Wall Street Journal, argues that Senator Barack Obama may be on to something with his suggestion for face-to-face diplomacy with Iran.

Talking with one's foes has a bad reputation - for good reason, as the history of the interwar years show. But Steele uses the idea of an opening with Iran to get at the larger issue of contemporary American war-making. Obama's push for talks makes no sense, says Steele, if we consider wars waged for national survival; when survival is not as stake, meeting one's enemies may be less unthinkable:

I think of such wars as essentially wars of discipline. Their purpose is to preserve a favorable balance of power that is already in place in the world. We fight these wars not to survive but--once a menace has arisen--to discipline the world back into a balance of power that best ensures peace. We fight as enforcers rather than as rebels or as patriots fighting for survival. Wars of discipline are pre-emptive by definition. They pre-empt menace to the peaceful world order. We don't sacrifice blood and treasure for change; we sacrifice for constancy.

Conversely, in wars of survival, like World War II, we fight to achieve a favorable balance of power--one in which a peace is established that guarantees our sovereignty and survival. We fight unapologetically for dominance, and we determine to defeat our enemy by any means necessary. We do not harry ourselves much over the style of warfare--whether the locals like us, where the line between interrogation and torture might lie, whether or not we are solicitous of our captive's religious beliefs or dietary strictures. There is no feeling in society that we can afford to lose these wars. And so we never have.

All this points to one of the great foreign policy dilemmas of our time: In the eyes of many around the world, and many Americans as well, we lack the moral authority to fight the wars that we actually fight because they are wars more of discipline than of survival, more of choice than of necessity. It is hard to equate the disciplining of a pre-existing world order--a status quo--with fighting for one's life. When survival is at stake, there is no lack of moral authority, no self-doubt and no antiwar movement of any consequence. But when war is not immediately related to survival, when a society is fundamentally secure and yet goes to war anyway, moral authority becomes a profound problem. Suddenly such a society is drawn into a struggle for moral authority that is every bit as intense as its struggle for military victory.

America does not do so well in its disciplinary wars (the Gulf War is an arguable exception) because we begin these wars with only a marginal moral authority and then, as time passes, even this meager store of moral capital bleeds away. Inevitably, into this vacuum comes a clamorous and sanctimonious antiwar movement that sets the bar for American moral authority so high that we must virtually lose the war in order to meet it. There must be no torture, no collateral damage, no cultural insensitivity, no mistreatment of prisoners and no truly aggressive or definitive display of American military power. In other words, no victory.

Meanwhile our enemy is fighting all out to achieve a new balance of power. As we anguish over the possibility of collateral damage, this enemy practices collateral damage as a tactic of war. In Iraq, al Qaeda blows up women and children simply to keep alive the chaos of war that gives it cover. This enemy's sense of moral authority--as misguided as it may be--is so strong that it compensates for its lack of sophisticated military hardware.

On the other hand, our great military might is not enough to compensate for our weak sense of moral authority, our ambivalence. If we have the greatest military in history, it is also true that we lack our enemy's talent for true belief. Our rationale for war is difficult to articulate, always arguable, and distinctly removed from immediate necessity. Our society is deeply divided and there is a vigorous antiwar movement ready to capitalize on our every military setback.

This is the pattern of disciplinary wars: Their execution is always undermined by their inbuilt lack of moral authority. In the end, our might neutralizes our might. Our vast power makes all such wars come off as bullying, even when we fight selflessly for the freedom of others.

Great power scares unless it is exercised within a painstaking moral framework. Thus, moral authority is the single greatest challenge of American foreign policy. This is especially so in wars of discipline, wars fought far away and for abstract reasons. We argue for such wars as if they were wars of survival because we want the moral authority that comes so automatically to them. But Iraq is a war of discipline, and no more. If we left Iraq tomorrow there would be terrible consequences all around, but we would survive.

Our broader war against terror, on the other hand, is a war of survival. And it is rich in moral authority. September 11 introduced necessity and, in its name, we have an open license to destroy that stateless network of terrorism that attacked us. America is not divided over this. It was Iraq--a war of discipline--that brought us division. This does not mean that the Iraq war is invalid. Ultimately, it may prove to be a far more important war in preserving a balance of power favorable to America than our war against al Qaeda.

The point is that wars of discipline will always have to be self-consciously fought on a moral as well as a military front. And the more we engage the moral struggle, the more license we will have to fight these wars as wars of survival. In other words, our military effectiveness now requires nothing less than a smart and daring brinkmanship of moral authority.

This is the heart of Steele's essay. The Obama gambit, once attempted - pass or fail - would give us that power of moral authority to wage our current wars without recrimination.

Steele may be on to something.

Beyond the Drop in Violence in Iraq

Arianna Huffington dismisses Iraq progress in her post up this morning:

In Sunday's New York Times U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker was quoted as saying Iraq is "going to be a long, hard slog."

Sound familiar?

It should, because here was then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- four years and one month ago:

"It will be a long, hard slog."

This thing has been going on for so long, the administration is reusing excuses. But hey, at least the administration can now claim it's no longer hostile to recycling, right?

Even more staggering was the rest of the Times piece, which was part of the administration's quarterly Lowering Of Expectations. It's like clockwork: if there's a piece in the Times quoting unnamed "leaders" in "both capitals" who "continue to hold out hope", an "elated" White House, and mention of "positive signs" all around, you know the seasons have just changed. It's sort of like the solstice, only profoundly depressing.

What else did we learn this time out? That "with American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country..."

Really? So we can all stop holding our breath about "quickly" unifying the country? I'd say the "quickly" ship sailed four years ago. Now it's no longer about quick or not-so-quick, it's about ever or never, as in: will we ever leave Iraq?

Read the whole thing.

Huffington's obviously not serious in discussing Iraq. She'd prefer a withdrawal, that faster the better. She cites Matthew Yglesias as a source for declaring the surge a failure, ostensibly because "political reconciliation" has been gradual. Note something Yglesias says about Iraq:

The stated goals of invading Iraq were to eliminate its nuclear weapons program, which failed because there was no such program, and to turn it into a shining beacon of democracy to inspire reformers throughout the region, which also failed since Iraq has instead become a scare story autocrats use to keep elites and middle class types unified behind the regime.

That's only partially true (Yglesias naturally omits mention of U.S. enforcement of numerous U.N. resolutions against Iraq, which the Clinton adminstration failed to uphold).

In the next paragraph, Yglesias says that after casualties declined, it was determined that "that the surge had failed and the political situation was the same as it had been at the beginning." Yglesias goes on to attack the Iraq mission, because "the war has simply been to create a never-ending American military presence in Iraq..."

Huffington and Yglesias don't care about progress in Iraq. No improvement in the military or political picture will satisy them. They're stuck in a 2003 mentality on the war's origins, and they're stuck in a pre-surge mentality on President Bush's post-2006 military strategy. This is not analysis; it's ideological perfidy.

But be sure to read Amir Taheri's new piece at the New York Post, "Iraq: Beyond the Drop in Violence":

'A TORRENT of good news": So the New York Times described the reports of a significant fall in violence in Iraq. But reducing all Iraqi news to measures of violence can hamper understanding of a complex situation.

Those who opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 prefer to focus on violence, for it has seemed to confirm their claim that the war was wrong. They've downplayed all good news from post-Saddam Iraq - the end of an evil regime that had oppressed the Iraqi people for 35 years; the return home of a million-plus Iraqi refugees in the first year after liberation; the fact that the Iraqis got together to write a new constitution and hold referendums and free elections - for the first time in their history - and moved to form coalition governments answerable to the parliament.

The drop in violence is certainly a good thing. But other Iraq news, both good and bad, needs to be taken into account.

After mentioning the dramatic return of Iraqi refugees from Syria, Taheri notes a highlight:

Thanks to mediation by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shiite coalition, the three groups that had withdrawn from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition government are expected to return to the fold.

Taheri's not all rosy about the situation, which is the sign of an accomplished analyst. He indicates, for example:

A new leadership elite has emerged locally, but isn't represented in central decision-making. In parts of the country, the officials in place are isolated, if not actually disliked, while unofficial leaders organize and manage some services that government should provide.

He cites other difficulties, but concludes thus:

IRAQ today is a hundred times better than what it would have been under Saddam in any imaginable circumstances. Statistics of violence don't begin to measure the efforts of a whole nation to re-emerge from the darkest night in its history. And in that sense, the news from Iraq since April 2003 has always been more good than bad.

What is new is that now more Americans appear willing to acknowledge this - good news in itself. As long as the United States remains resolute in its support for the new Iraq, there will be more good news than bad from what is at present the main battlefield in the War on Terror.

Yeah, more Americans are acknowledging this, except the Bush-bashing antiwar nihilists, who refuse to recognize the astonishing gains the U.S. and Iraqis have made in turning around an extremely difficult project of democratic liberation.

Election '08 Could Top $5 Billion

Al Hunt traces the likely scenario of campaign spending for federal elections next year, over at Bloomberg. We're looking at a likely $5 billion gusher:

``Money,'' Jesse Unruh, the late speaker of the California State Assembly, once famously declared, ``is the mother's milk of politics.''

In 2008, America's cholesterol will be off the charts.

Spending for the national campaigns, presidential and congressional, will top $5 billion, as many of the Watergate-era reforms -- public financing of presidential elections and limits on expenditures -- vanish.

The U.S. spends more per capita on these elections than any other industrialized nation, with the exception of Japan and sometimes Israel. The benefits are dubious.

``It isn't clear that we have any comparative advantage from all this freedom to spend money,'' says Thomas Mann, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution who has researched and published a book on money and politics in major democracies.

Voter turnout is lower in the U.S. than in other major countries, and it's difficult to argue that Americans are better informed. The most expensive campaigns are often the most negative and depress voter interest.

The current election cycle will look like this: The Republican and Democratic nominees combined will spend more than $1 billion by next November; other presidential hopefuls will fork over another $400 million; congressional candidates can be counted on to spend in excess of $1.5 billion, and the various Democratic and Republican party committees will part with more money than that.

Throw in at least half a billion from so-called ``independent'' groups outside the campaigns and, bingo, you've topped $5 billion. (If billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, self-finances an independent bid, add as much as 20 percent more.)
This produces what longtime campaign reformer Fred Wertheimer calls ``an arms race'' in spending: ``Reality disappears, paranoia reigns as you just try to top the other guy.''

The presidential primaries this time are a case study. As the leading contenders shun public money and restrictions on expenditures in each state, the lid has come off. In Iowa, the scene of the first contest, there are reports that both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama might spend as much as $15 million apiece; both camps say it depends on what the other shells out.

Overall, the Democratic presidential aspirants may spend as much as $45 million in that small state. The best estimates are that 150,000 Hawkeye state Democrats will turn out for the caucuses on the cold January night. That would amount to about $300 a vote.

This is an interesting article. Hunt's not clear as to changes or solutions. He does make a roundabound case for campaign finance reform, at least by making the case that elections in the post-1974 reform era have been among "the cleanest in modern history."

Hunt's right to point out that new techniques like campaign bundling have brought out the shady types, like Norman Hsu. We should catch the crooks and move on.

Realize that the record amounts pumped into the political system count as a gauge to the health of the democracy. People vote with their pocketbooks. Even the average laborer can kick in 50 or 100 bucks to the candidate of their choice. Note too how Hunt argues that the goal of limiting large donors has been met under McCain-Feingold. He's left to lament that the money-men always find new regulatory loopholes to exploit.

As I noted in a previous post on campaign finance:

Certainly there's a case to be made for eliminating exclusive backroom deals and corporate deep-pocket backing for America's political leaders. But as any student of campaign finance knows, money in politics is like the winding waters of a raging river. Should a dead log block the river's passage, the water finds a way to continue its flow, up, over, and around the impediment. So it goes with money. The McCain-Feingold reform act of 2002 is largely responsible for making the current crop of bundlers so powerful. The law has also made interest group 527 organizations (a regular target of criticism) powerful producers of campaign advertising. Who knows what consequences will flow from the next round of "progressive" campaign finance reforms?

I say let the money flow in 2008. Crack down on the scofflaws while encouraging average folks to kick in some bucks. It's going to be a great electoral year. Big money and big, healthy democracy.

Howard's End: Labor Victory Down Under Strips U.S. of Key Ally

I don't follow Australian politics closely, just enough to note that under the government of Prime Minister John Howard, the U.S. has had a staunch ally in the war on terror and Iraq. Mark Silva at the Chicago Tribune has a concise essay discussing the implication's of Howard's end for U.S. foreign policy:

President Bush has lost another key ally in the war in Iraq with the election losses of Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s government.

Like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose third term was aborted after his popularity plummeted, the long-serving Howard had staunchly supported the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq as well as the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan. Australian Labor Party candidate Kevin Rudd has swept to power in a landslide victory over the second-longest serving prime minister in Australian history.

While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney alike had forged a close relationship with Howard, they also had prepared for this widely predicted upset. Cheney met privately with Rudd earlier this year during a visit to Sydney in which Howard reaffirmed his government’s commitment to the war against terrorism.

Unlike Howard, Rudd has pledged to pull Australian combat troops from Iraq.

Rudd, a former diplomat who has served in China, rode a wave of public discontent over domestic problems -- interest rate hikes increases that Howard had promised to control, failed workplace reforms and a bid by Howard to retire midterm and anoint a deputy who would not have to face elections.

Rudd’s party needed to win 76 seats in the 150-seat lower house of Parliament to gain control, but his party has won at least 86.

"Today Australia has looked to the future," Rudd said after acknowledging the long public service of his predecessor. "It's time for a new page to be written in our nation's history."

Howard’s legacy includes a firm bond with the Bush administration. He was among the first to support Bush's original "coalition of the willing" to battle terrorism and has allied with Bush on most foreign policy issues.

In September, Bush traveled to Australia for the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and made a tour of Australian defense forces with Howard, who introduced him as a “good mate’’ of Australia.

Howard said then with Bush: “The thing we share most of all is common values, and the values are values that our two countries have fought together to defend, starting way back in the first world war at the battle of Hamel, which was the first time that Australians and Americans fought together, and under the command of that great Australian general, Sir John Monash, and from them on we've fought in every major conflict together.

“We are fighting together in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other parts of the world to defend the things that we hold dear,’’ Howard had said. “You come here as the leader of a nation to which we owe so much in terms of our defense during World War II. You come as a good friend of Australia, you come as a good friend of mine. And you come as somebody who has stood up for the things that you believe in and has demonstrated a great example of strong leadership in so doing.’’

In February, Cheney stood alongside Howard at a press conference during the vice president’s own Pacific tour, which included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan after leaving Sydney.

“Decisions about what Australia does going forward with respect to force levels (in Iraq) is a decision for the government of Australia,’’ Cheney said then. “Those decisions are obviously going to be made by the Australian government based on their considerations, as well as I would expect conditions on the ground in that part of the world. It's not for us to suggest to our allies what their appropriate response might be. But certainly, I would say that the government has met our expectations in every regard. cooperation has been excellent.’’

Callling Howard "a good friend and ally," the White House on Saturday said he had "served the people of Australia well by pursuing policies that led to strong economic growth and a commitment to keeping Australians safe by fighting extremists and their ideology around the world."

See also Ottavio Marasco, from Melbourne, and his post, "Australia Went Into Reverse Gear Today":

Today’s loss has ended the career of one the Asia-Pacific region's most enduring conservative leaders and a key partner of U.S. President George W. Bush in the region.

My best wishes to Australians during their new era of Labor Party politics.

Media is Getting it Right on Iraq: Democrats Next?

Jeff Jacoby's Sunday commentary reviews the recent upbeat turn in press reporting on the war in Iraq. He wonders how long it will take the Democrats to get on board in recognizing this year's astounding turnaround of fortunes there:

THE NEWS from Iraq has been so encouraging in recent months that last week even the mainstream media finally sat up and took notice. Can the Democratic Party be far behind?

In a story titled " Baghdad Comes Alive," Rod Nordland reports in the current Newsweek on the heartening transformation underway in the Iraqi capital:

"Returning to Baghdad after an absence of four months," he writes, "I can actually say that things do seem to have gotten better, and in ways that may even be durable . . . There hasn't been a successful suicide car bombing in Baghdad in five weeks . . . Al Qaeda in Iraq is starting to look like a spent force, especially in Baghdad."

The signs of life, Nordland acknowledges "grudgingly" - his word - are undeniable....

Newsweek's isn't the only big media voice bringing tidings of comfort and joy from the Iraqi theatre.

On Tuesday, The New York Times led its front page with a good-news headline - "Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves" - and a large photo of an Iraqi bride and groom, bedecked in wedding finery and accompanied by a band. Below that: a picture of smiling diners at Al Faris, a restaurant on the Tigris riverbank that is booming once again. Inside, across four columns, another photo showed an outdoor foosball game in Baghdad's Haifa Street, once dubbed the "Street of Fear" because it was the scene of so many lethal sectarian attacks.

In another Page 1 story the day before ("U.S. Says Attacks in Iraq Fell to the Level of Early Last Year"), the Times recounted some of the auspicious data: civilian fatalities down 75 percent in recent months, Iraqi security-force casualties down 40 percent, total weekly attacks nationwide down nearly two-thirds since June. The Los Angeles Times, too, fronted a story on the promising developments, reporting on an "unexpected flowering of sectarian cooperation" in which "Sunnis and Shi'ites are joining hands at the local level to protect their communities from militants." The results, reported the paper from the rural community of Qarghulia on Monday, "are palpable. Killings are down dramatically and public confidence is reviving."

Of course things could still change for the worse. In the Middle East there are few guarantees. Neither the US military nor the Bush administration plans to dust off that "Mission Accomplished" banner anytime soon.

Still: "By every metric used to measure the war," as The Washington Post editorialized on Nov. 18, "there has been an enormous improvement since January." The Post credits this achievement to American soldiers in Iraq, to General David Petraeus, "and to President Bush, for making the decision to launch the surge against the advice of most of Congress and the country's foreign policy elite."

With the media at last paying attention to the progress in Iraq, shouldn't leading Democrats think about doing the same? Perhaps this would be a good time for Hillary Clinton to express regret for telling Petraeus that his recent progress report on Iraq required "a willing suspension of disbelief" - in effect, calling him a liar. Perhaps Senate majority leader Harry Reid should admit that he may have been wrong to declare so emphatically: "This war is lost, and the surge is not accomplishing anything."

All of the Democratic presidential candidates have been running on a platform of abandoning Iraq. At the recent debate in Las Vegas, they refused to relax their embrace of defeat even when asked about the striking evidence of improvement. They continued to insist that "the surge is not working" (Bill Richardson), that "the occupation is fueling the insurgency" (Dennis Kucinich), and that the "strategy is failed" and we must "get our troops out" (Barack Obama).

Blind opposition to war that seems lost is understandable. But can Democrats be so invested in defeat that they would abandon even a war that may be winnable? With developments in Iraq looking so hopeful, this is no time to cling to a counsel of despair.

The improved media coverage has been a topic of my blogging this last week (see my posts, "Iraqi Sects Put Aside Animosity to Defeat Al Qaeda" and "Media Silence on Progress in Iraq").

Check out as well the YouTube on Hillary Clinton's "the willing suspension of disbelief," which Jacoby cites in his article:

Democrats in Bind Over Iraq Progress

The Democratic presidential candidates are shifting their tone in discussing the war in Iraq, as the New York Times reports:

As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy.

Advisers to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama say that the candidates have watched security conditions improve after the troop escalation in Iraq and concluded that it would be folly not to acknowledge those gains. At the same time, they are arguing that American casualties are still too high, that a quick withdrawal is the only way to end the war and that the so-called surge in additional troops has not paid off in political progress in Iraq.

But the changing situation suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war — a popular position with many of the party’s primary voters — they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party’s nominee in the election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military.

If security continues to improve, President Bush could become less of a drag on his party, too, and Republicans may have an easier time zeroing in on other issues, such as how the Democrats have proposed raising taxes in difficult economic times.

My God! There you have it! The mainstream media is getting it, finally!

This is exactly what I've been saying: While 2008 is certainly shaping up to be the greatest opportunity for the Democrats in decades, continued success in Iraq will work to the advantage of the Republican Party.

President Bush's poll numbers are improving (click here for a chart tracking President Bush's job approval ratings over the course of his presidency). Further, opinion on the war is inching up. Surveys show, in general, Americans believe victory is still possible, and majorities expect to see a large number of troops in Iraq for at least the next couple of years (see the CBS News Poll. Oct. 12-16, 2007, at Polling Report).

So, while now we see the Democrats suspending their "suspension of disbelief" that the surge is working, some continue to hammer "the failure of political reconciliation" in Iraq. As the Times piece points out, none of the Democratic candidates has stopped calling for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

The debate is changing, but war opponents remain in a pre-surge mindset.

Heroic Conservatism

George Will, one of the most principled conservavtive commentators today, has an analysis of Michael Gerson's new book, Heroic Conservatism, over at Real Clear Politics (click here):

In the 1920s and '30s, the American left was riven by multiple factions furiously representing different flavors of socialism, each accusing the others of revisionism and deviationism. Leftists comforted themselves with the thought that "you can't split rotten wood."

But you can. And the health of a political persuasion can be inversely proportional to the amount of time its adherents spend expelling heretics from the one true (and steadily smaller) church. Today's arguments about conservatism are, however, evidence of healthy introspection.

The most recent reformer to nail his purifying theses to the door of conservatism's cathedral is Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for the current president, and now a syndicated columnist. He advocates "Heroic Conservatism" in a new book with that trumpet-blast of a title.

His task of vivifying his concept by concrete examples is simplified by the fact that he thinks the Bush administration has been heroically conservative while expanding the welfare state and trying to export democracy. His task of making such conservatism attractive is complicated by the fact that ... well, it is not just the 22nd Amendment that is preventing the president from seeking a third term.

Gerson, an evangelical Christian, makes "compassion" the defining attribute of political heroism. But compassion is a personal feeling, not a public agenda. To act compassionately is to act to prevent or ameliorate pain and distress. But if there is, as Gerson suggests, a categorical imperative to do so, two things follow. First, politics is reduced to right-mindedness -- to having good intentions arising from noble sentiments -- and has an attenuated connection with results. Second, limited government must be considered uncompassionate, because the ways to prevent or reduce stress are unlimited.

"We have a responsibility," Bush said on Labor Day 2003, "that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." That is less a compassionate thought than a flaunting of sentiment to avoid thinking about government's limited capacities and unlimited confidence.

Conservatism is a political philosophy concerned with collective aspirations and actions. But conservatism teaches that benevolent government is not always a benefactor.

Conservatism's task is to distinguish between what government can and cannot do, and between what it can do but should not.

Gerson's call for "idealism" is not an informative exhortation: Huey Long and Calvin Coolidge both had ideals. Gerson's "heroic conservatism" is, however, a variant of what has been called "national greatness conservatism." The very name suggests that America will be great if it undertakes this or that great exertion abroad. This grates on conservatives who think America is great, not least because it rarely and usually reluctantly conscripts people into vast collective undertakings.

Read the rest.

Will gets in his digs against neoconservatives (they've never met a foreign conflict they didn't like), but his attack on "national greatness" conservatism is unproductive (just mostly deligitimizing).

What should a post-Bush conservative synthesis look like? The notion of compassionate conservatism has a lot going for it. Perhaps Will and other libertarian conservatives hope to take the U.S. back to long-gone, Lochner-type era that is no longer appropriate for the demands of a massive, advanced post-industrial democracy like the United States.

Making Sense of Ron Paul

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch have an analysis of the Ron Paul phenomenon at the Washington Post:

How to make sense of the Ron Paul revolution? What's behind the improbably successful (so far) presidential campaign of a 72-year-old 10-term Republican congressman from Texas who pines for the gold standard while drawing praise from another relic from the hyperinflationary 1970s, punk-rocker Johnny Rotten?

Now with about 5 percent (and climbing) support in polls of likely Republican voters, Paul set a one-day GOP record by raising $4.3 million on the Internet from 38,000 donors on Nov. 5 -- Guy Fawkes Day, the commemoration of a British anarchist who plotted to blow up Parliament and kill King James I in 1605. Paul's campaign, which is three-quarters of the way to its goal of raising "$12 Million to Win" by Dec. 31, didn't even organize the fundraiser -- an independent-minded supporter did.

When a fierce Republican foe of the wars on drugs and terrorism is able, without really trying, to pull in a record haul of campaign cash on a day dedicated to an attempted regicide, it's clear that a new and potentially transformative force is growing in American politics.

That force is less about Paul than about the movement that has erupted around him -- and the much larger subset of Americans who are increasingly disillusioned with the two major political parties' soft consensus on making government ever more intrusive at all levels, whether it's listening to phone calls without a warrant, imposing fines of half a million dollars for broadcast "obscenities" or jailing grandmothers for buying prescribed marijuana from legal dispensaries.

Paul, who entered Congress in 1976, has been dubbed "Dr. No" by his colleagues because of his consistent nay votes on federal spending, military intervention in Iraq and elsewhere, and virtually all expansions of federal power (he cast one of three GOP votes against the original USA Patriot Act). But his philosophy of principled libertarianism is anything but negative: It's predicated on the fundamental notion that a smaller government allows individuals the freedom to pursue happiness as they see fit.

Given such a live-and-let-live ethos, it's no surprise that at a time when people run screaming from such labels as "liberal" and "conservative," you can hardly turn around in Washington, Hollywood or even Berkeley without running into another self-described libertarian.

The lefty Internet titan Markos "Daily Kos" Moulitsas penned a widely read manifesto last year pegging the future of his party to the "Libertarian Democrat." The conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg declared this year that he's "much more of a libertarian" lately. Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, Tucker Carlson, "South Park" co-creator Matt Stone -- self-described libertarians all. Surely it's a milestone when Drew Carey, the new host of that great national treasure "The Price Is Right," becomes an outspoken advocate of open borders, same-sex marriage, free speech and repealing drug prohibition. As Michael Kinsley, an arch purveyor of conventional wisdom, wrote recently in Time magazine, such people are going to be "an increasingly powerful force in politics."

Kinsley is hardly alone in recognizing this trend. In April 2006, the Pew Research Center published a study suggesting that 9 percent of Americans -- more than enough to swing every presidential election since 1988 -- espouse a "libertarian" ideology that opposes "government regulation in both the economic and the social spheres." That is, a good chunk of your fellow citizens are fiscally conservative and socially liberal; in bumper-stickerese, they love their countrymen but distrust their government. Anyone looking to win elections -- or to make sense of contemporary U.S. politics -- would do well to understand the deep and growing reservoir that Paul is tapping into.

Though relatively unknown at the national level, Paul is hardly an unknown legislative quantity. A former Libertarian Party presidential candidate, he has at various times called for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, the CIA and several Cabinet-level agencies. A staunch opponent of abortion, he nonetheless believes that federal bans violate the more basic principle of delegating powers to the states. A proponent of a border wall with Mexico (nativist CNN host Lou Dobbs fawned over Paul earlier this year), he is the only GOP candidate to come out against any form of national I.D. card.

Such positions may not be fully consistent or equally attractive, but Paul's insistence on a constitutionally limited government has won applause from surprising quarters. Singer Barry Manilow donated the maximum $2,300 to his campaign; the hipster singer-songwriter John Mayer was videotaped yelling "Ron Paul knows the Constitution!" and 67,000 people have signed up for Paul-related Meet Up pages on the Internet. On ABC's "This Week" recently, George Will half-jokingly cautioned his fellow pundits, "Don't forget my man Ron Paul" in the New Hampshire primary. Fellow panelist Jake Tapper seconded the emotion, saying, "He really is the one true straight talker in this race."

This is an excellent synopsis of Paul's recent ascent (Welch is the author of a new book on John McCain, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick). But Gillespie and Welch forgot to mention that this "straight talker" has attracted the support of neo-Nazis, 9/11 truth extremists, and hardline Stalinists (see my posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

The extremist element of the Paul phenomen is the elephant in the room. Just broaching the subject sets people off, if my many drive-by attacks from the Ronulans are any indication.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I communicated with Matt Welch on a couple of occasions when he was assistant editorial pages editor of the Los Angeles Times. If I recall, he grew up nearby my college, in Long Beach, California. He's a good guy, although I part ways with him on Paul's significance.)

Alien Laborers Caught in Criminal Gang Raids

Should U.S. authorities (and the American public) make distinctions among illegal immigrants based on gang membership status? The New York Times thinks so:

It was still dark the morning of Sept. 27 when armed federal immigration agents, guided by local police officers, swept into this village on the East End of Long Island. Within hours, as the team rousted sleeping families, 11 men were added to a running government tally of arrests made in Operation Community Shield, a two-year-old national program singling out violent gang members for deportation.

“Violent foreign-born gang members and their associates have more than worn out their welcome,” Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said at an October news conference announcing the arrests of 1,313 people in the operation over the summer and fall nationwide. “And to them I have one message: Good riddance.”

But, to the dismay of many of Greenport’s 2,500 residents, the raid here did not match her words.

Only one of the 11 men taken away that morning was suspected of a gang affiliation, according to the Southold Town police, who patrol Greenport and played the crucial role of identifying targets for the operation.

The 10 others, while accused of immigration violations, were not gang associates and had no criminal records.

Instead, they were known as good workers and family men. When they suddenly vanished into the far-flung immigration detention system, six of their employers hired lawyers to try to find and free them. Some went further, like Dan and Tina Finne, who agreed to take care of the 3-year-old American-born daughter of a Guatemalan carpenter who was swept up in the raid, if her mother was detained, too.

“This is un-American,” said Ms. Finne, 41, a Greenport native, echoing other citizens who condemned the home raids in public meetings and letters to The Suffolk Times, a weekly newspaper. “We need to do something about immigration, but not this.”

Greenport’s experience with Operation Community Shield sheds light on the inner workings of an antigang crackdown that has brought immigration raids to private homes across the country. The crackdown relies heavily on local police forces to identify suspects, often based on loosely defined or subjective criteria.

But the raid in Greenport also underscores the potential for backlash from local residents and officials when results conflict with expectations.

As the details of the Sept. 27 raid spread through this village, where about 17 percent of residents are Hispanic, some citizens began to protest the very premise of the operation — and the participation of local officers.

David Nyce, Greenport’s mayor, said, “The whole gang issue is something to keep the white majority scared about the Latino population, and to come in and bust as many people as they want.”

“I spoke to the police chief,” he added, “and I said, ‘This is going to set you back a lot.’ ”

Elsewhere in Suffolk County, many welcomed the sweep. The Suffolk County police, who patrol towns in the western part of the county, had only praise for the operation.

But the county executive and the county police commissioner in neighboring Nassau County disagreed. They said that the vast majority of those arrested in their county were not gang associates, and that residents and police alike had been endangered by what they called the agents’ “cowboy mentality,” including armed raids on the wrong homes.

Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement dismiss such criticism. They say that the operation was properly conducted and methodically planned, based on intelligence provided by the local police departments themselves. “Collateral arrests” of illegal immigrants who are not gang suspects are always appropriate to the agency’s mission, they said.

A round of applause here for ICE. They're doing their job. Illegal aliens are criminals, gang members or not. They should get in line for legalization just like any other law-abiding legal immigrant seeking to make the U.S. their home.

Venezuelan Authoritarianism

William Ratliff, at today's Los Angeles Times, provides a nice rejoinder to hard-left defenders of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez (recall yesterday's post on the little blogosphere dust-up over Chavez's authoritarianism).

Here's Ratliff's introduction:

On Dec. 2, Venezuelans will be asked to vote on a whopping 69 constitutional amendments that would greatly reduce the country's democratic governance, strip citizens of still more individual liberties and thus expand President Hugo Chavez's power even beyond what it is today. The sad reality is that voters will probably approve the amendments, as Chavez's opponents have been bumbling around, discredited, disorganized and intimidated.

The vote will be bad not only for Venezuela but for the rest of Latin America. Chavez-style demagogues -- Chavistas -- are taking control throughout the region, persuading frustrated voters to jettison their often unresponsive democratic governments for the promise of something better, even if that something is a populist dictatorship.

Chavez already has assumed some of the powers he wants legitimized in the upcoming referendum. Approving the changes will merely legalize what is already in place and further reduce the options and safeguards available to those who disagree with him and his vision of "21st century socialism."

One of the most disturbing ballot items would allow Chavez to run for president as often as he wishes and make it more difficult for voters to recall a president. He could become, in effect, president for life. Other ballot items would give Chavez greatly expanded control over the country's state and regional governments, its central bank and its international monetary reserves, and would extend his authority to expropriate private property.

Other ballot measures would increase presidential authority to declare and maintain a "state of emergency" for as long as the government deems necessary and significantly curtail the financial privileges of human rights groups, the media and other nongovernmental watchdog organizations. Still another dangerous ballot item would transform Venezuela's military from a conventional armed force intended to protect the people into a "patriotic and anti-imperialist" armed force intended to support the socialist revolution.

The article goes on to explain why the Venezuelan people would vote to dismantle their own freedoms (he notes, as I argued yesterday, that Venezuelan elections are far from free and fair).

It turns out that Michael Shifter over at Foreign Affairs has a new analysis of Venezuelan authoritarianism and the December referendum:

Hugo Chávez - a self-described revolutionary presiding over the world's fifth-largest oil producer - has certainly not lacked for either grand plans or the resources to carry them out in his nine years as president of Venezuela. So far, he has also deftly deflected criticism and overcome opposition. With his newest initiatives, however, he may be overreaching - threatening to stall his project both domestically and internationally.

On the national front, Chávez is resolutely consolidating his autocratic governance model. The National Assembly overwhelmingly approved the articles for a constitutional reform that will be submitted to a national referendum on December 2. The 69 amendments cover private property, social security, central bank autonomy, the length of the workday, and much more. But the centerpiece of the overall package is a reform to allow the Venezuelan president - but no other office holders - to be reelected indefinitely. Other proposed changes would give Chávez instruments to further control the economy and suppress dissent.

There is little doubt that Chávez's December 2 referendum will pass. After polls showed around 60 percent of Venezuelans opposed the indefinite reelection proposition, Chávez quickly added sweeteners, such as reducing the workday from eight to six hours. The political opposition continues to be divided and ambivalent about whether to participate in what they see as a rigged system. It was a shortsighted 2005 legislative boycott by the opposition that left the national assembly filled with only Chávez supporters.

Still, Chávez's not-so-subtle push to be ?president for life? has revealed one of the regime's real soft spots. Compounded by declining oil production, persistent corruption, skyrocketing crime rates, inflation, drug-trafficking, and continued infrastructure problems, these weaknesses have deepened fissures within the government coalition -and created openings for new opposition forces. In the National Assembly, the pro-Chávez Podemos party openly opposed the indefinite reelection measure. More significantly, student leaders - who emerged earlier this year when Chávez failed to renew the license for the RCTV station - have mobilized once again against Chávez's rush toward authoritarianism. These street demonstrations have highlighted Venezuela's sharp polarization (and led Chávez recently to hint that he may break the referendum into two or three blocks of amendments, which would be voted on independently).

Shifter's quick analysis makes Venezuela's situation sound more complicated that those who boast that Chavez "enjoys significant support among the majority of that nation's poor."

Note also that Foreign Policy published a penetrating article on Venezuela in January/February 2006, entitled "Hugo Boss." The article makes mincemeat of the rosy international view of the Chavez regime. Here's the article's conclusion, which puts Venezuelan authoritarianism in perspective:

Ultimately, all authoritarian regimes seek power by following the same principle. They raise society's tolerance for state intervention. Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century British philosopher, offered some tips for accomplishing this goal. The more insecurity that citizens face—the closer they come to living in the brutish state of nature—the more they will welcome state power. Chávez may not have read Hobbes, but he understands Hobbesian thinking to perfection. He knows that citizens who see a world collapsing will appreciate state interventions. Chávez therefore has no incentive to address Venezuela's assorted crises. Rather than mending the country's catastrophic healthcare system, he opens a few military hospitals for selected patients and brings in Cuban doctors to run ad hoc clinics. Rather than addressing the economy's lack of competitiveness, he offers subsidies and protection to economic agents in trouble. Rather than killing inflation, which is crucial to alleviating poverty, Chávez sets price controls and creates local grocery stores with subsidized prices. Rather than promoting stable property rights to boost investment and employment, he expands state employment.

Like most fashion designers, Chávez is not a complete original. His style of authoritarianism has influences. His anti-Americanism, for instance, is pure Castro; his use of state resources to reward loyalists and punish critics is quintessential Latin American populism; and his penchant for packing institutions was surely learned from several market-oriented presidents in the 1990s.

Chávez has absorbed and melded these techniques into a coherent model for modern authoritarianism. The student is now emerging as a teacher, and his syllabus suits today's post-totalitarian world, in which democracies in developing countries are strong enough to survive traditional coups by old-fashioned dictators but besieged by institutional disarray. From Ecuador to Egypt to Russia, there are vast breeding grounds for competitive authoritarianism.

When President Bush criticized Chávez after November's Summit of the Americas in Argentina, he may have contented himself with the belief that Chávez was a lone holdout as a wave of democracy sweeps the globe. But Chávez has already learned to surf that wave quite nicely, and others may follow in his wake.

I touched on some of these points, with links, in my post yesterday. Of course, It never hurts to flesh things out in a little more detail.

**********

UPDATE: From the Washington Post:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally.

Forty-nine percent of likely voters oppose Chavez's proposed raft of constitutional changes to expand his powers, compared with 39 percent in favor, a survey by respected pollster Datanalisis showed.

Just weeks ago, Chavez had a 10-point lead for his proposed changes in the OPEC nation that must be approved in a referendum, the polling company said.

Celebrate Diversity: Vote Republican!

I got a kick out of Mark Steyn's commentary this morning, at the Orange County Register. He notes that the real diversity in this year's presidential race is in the Republican Party:

Only five weeks left to the earliest Primary Day in New Hampshire history, and still, whenever I'm being interviewed on radio or TV, I've no ready answer to the question: Which candidate are you supporting?

If I could just sneak out in the middle of the night and saw off Rudy Giuliani's strong right arm and John McCain's ramrod back and Mitt Romney's fabulous hair and stitch them all together in Baron von Frankenstein's laboratory with the help of some neck bolts, we'd have the perfect Republican nominee. As it is, the present field poses difficulties for almost every faction of the GOP base.

Rudy Giuliani was a brilliant can-do executive who transformed the fortunes of what was supposedly one of the most ungovernable cities in the nation. But on guns, abortion and almost every other social issue he's anathema to much of the party. Mike Huckabee is an impeccable social conservative but, fiscally speaking, favors big-government solutions with big-government price tags. Ron Paul has a long track record of sustained philosophically coherent support for small government but he's running as a neo-isolationist on war and foreign policy. John McCain believes in assertive American global leadership but he believes just as strongly in constitutional abominations like McCain-Feingold.

So if you're a pro-gun anti-abortion tough-on-crime victory-in-Iraq small-government Republican the 2008 selection is a tough call. Mitt Romney, the candidate whose (current) policies least offend the most people, happens to be a Mormon, which, if the media are to be believed, poses certain obstacles for elements of the Christian right.

On the other hand, as National Review's Jonah Goldberg pointed out, the mainstream media are always demanding the GOP demonstrate its commitment to "big tent" Republicanism, and here we are with the biggest of big tents in history, and what credit do they get? You want an anti-war Republican? A pro-abortion Republican? An anti-gun Republican? A pro-illegal immigration Republican? You got 'em! Short of drafting Fidel Castro and Mullah Omar, it's hard to see how the tent could get much bigger. As the new GOP bumper sticker says, "Celebrate Diversity."

Steyn notes that the Democrats are fighting over trivial issues, like whether Barack Obama's world travels as a fourth-grader count as "foreign policy experience."

But I really like this point:

Let me ask a question of my Democrat friends: What does John Edwards really believe on Iraq? I mean, really? To pose the question is to answer it: There's no there there. In the Dem debates, the only fellow who knows what he believes and says it out loud is Dennis Kucinich. Otherwise, all is pandering and calculation. The Democratic Party could use some seriously fresh thinking on any number of issues – abortion, entitlements, racial preferences – but the base doesn't want to hear, and no viable candidate is man enough (even Hillary) to stick it to 'em. I disagree profoundly with McCain and Giuliani, but there's something admirable about watching them run in explicit opposition to significant chunks of their base and standing their ground. Their message is: This is who I am. Take it or leave it.

I've commented at length on the Democrats, particularly on the foreign policies of the major candidates (my statement on Hillary Clinton's disastrous foriegn policy is here, including additional links).

As I noted in my previous post, the Democratic Party's record on Iraq this year as been abysmal. It's too early to make reasonable predictions on the outcome of GOP nomination race, but I'm optimistic that we'll get strong leadership from the ultimate Republican standard-bearer.

Perhaps a little diversity too!

A Failed Democratic Retreat in Iraq

Noemie Emery has an awesome piece in the new Weekly Standard, on the Democratic Party's relentless campaign to bring about an American retreat in Iraq:

Eagerly anticipating the defeat in Iraq to which they are so much attached, some on the left have also been preparing for another contingency: the assault that they think they see coming, a drive to pin the whole wretched failure on them. Apparently, this will be "stab in the back" redux, a new iteration of the theme deployed so successfully in interwar Germany by a resourceful, ambitious Austrian corporal, who managed to propel his rise to power with the claim that World War I would have been won by his country, if not for sinister forces at home. Then, it was subversion by Jews and other disloyal elements. This time, in the left's imagining, the blame will fall on the press and the Democrats who, by pulling the plug at just the wrong moment, caused the loss of Iraq. "Nobody I know in a rational condition believes that the United States is going to have any kind of a military victory," Mark Shields said in August. "So the idea is going to be, 'We were on the cusp of victory and the rug was pulled out from under us by these willy-nilly, weak-kneed, nervous Nellies back home.'"

The problem with this is (1) that we may really win, and have no failure to blame upon anyone, and (2) that the nervous Nellies really did try to keep us from winning, indeed fought fang and claw to derail our best efforts. If they had had their way, Iraq would still be the quagmire they are so fond of invoking, and the United States--or George W. Bush, which may be the more relevant factor--would have incurred a definitive and, at least in his case, legacy-blasting defeat. It is unfair of course to call this a stab in the back, as the Democrats have been engagingly open about their intentions. In the course of the past year, they have gone from attacking a plan that had not been effective to attacking one that hadn't been tried yet, to attacking one that exceeded all expectations, while in the process ignoring reality, slandering a commanding general, and denying American forces in battle due credit for what they had done. If not backstabbing as such (see above), it is diverting enough a spectacle to merit a replay. Let us look back at this last year of battle and see how the story played out.

Emery deftly recounts the months of retreatism masquerading as foreign policy among the Democratic leadership. The party, after voting to confirm General David Petraeus as the new commander in Iraq, subsequently pushed tirelessly to pull the rug out from under his feet.

I like this passage:

Afraid of moving directly to defund the armed forces, Democrats decided on a series of steps that would have the same effect without saying so, i.e., putting so many restrictions and regulations on troop deployments that the number available would in effect be greatly reduced. These would be sponsored by veterans (James Webb and John Murtha), and the stated goal would be to help the armed forces. The real goal, however, was to strangle the surge in its crib.

Remember Hillary Clinton's smear of Petraeus, "the willing suspension of disbelief"? It's all here, but I can't resist this quote:

The depth of the left's investment in an Iraq defeat came out during the last week in July, when, hearing from General Jack Keane that the surge might be working, Representative Nancy Boyda was so shaken she fled a congressional hearing. "There was only so much that you could take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while," she explained.

Read the whole thing. Emery's piece is a true classic! Can't strangle this!

The Real Surge in Iraq

DJ Elliot, over at The Long War Journal, highlights an extremely important development in the Iraq war: the growth and strengtening of the Iraqi military:

While the "surge" of five US brigades plus their accompanying support elements, about 30,000 US troops total, is the main focus of commentators when discussing the current situation in Iraq, the real surge in Iraq is happening behind the scenes. The rapidly expanding Iraqi Army is where the real surge in forces is occurring.

In November 2006, Prime Minister Maliki understated the real surge when he announced the increase of the Iraqi Army beyond the subjective counterinsurgency force. Maliki’s originally announced plan was an increase of the army by three divisions, five brigades, 20 battalions, and an Iraqi Special Operations Force (ISOF) battalion. He also wanted to increase the manning of existing Iraqi units to 110 percent. At that point, the Iraqi Army was 10 divisions, 35 brigades, 102 battalions, and two ISOF battalions. Most Iraqi Army formations were only approximately 65 percent manned at that time.

Over the last year the Iraqi Army has grown to 12 divisions, 41 brigades, 123 battalions, and four ISOF battalions. This is a 20 percent increase in units and a doubling of the ISOF. This does not include the three former strategic infrastructure brigades (17 battalions) that have been transferred to the Iraqi Army and are currently being retrained. While the Iraqi Army officer and NCO ranks remain undermanned, the overall unit manning has grown to 108 percent during that time. This does not mention the steadily increasing Iraqi Army competence that can only come from combat and counterinsurgency experience.

Read the whole thing.

The Iraqi army is expected to grow to 13 divisions, 52 brigades, 162 battalions, and seven or eight ISOF battalions by the time the U.S. starts a significant drawdown of American troops in early 2009.

Elliot reminds us that a rational for the Petraeus surge was to give Iraqi armed forces breathing space to consolidate and build-up their contingents. This is happening, and they're not pulling out.