Academic Steroids: The Ethics of Brain Enhancement

Do academics "juice-up" their teaching and research with performance enhancing drugs?

Actually yes, but how does this compare to steroid use in competitive athletics? Pretty closely, according to this New York Times article:

SO far no one is demanding that asterisks be attached to Nobels, Pulitzers or Lasker awards. Government agents have not been raiding anthropology departments, riffling book bags, testing professors’ urine. And if there are illicit trainers on campuses, shady tutors with wraparound sunglasses and ties to basement labs in Italy, no one has exposed them.

Yet an era of doping may be looming in academia, and it has ignited a debate about policy and ethics that in some ways echoes the national controversy over performance enhancement accusations against elite athletes like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

In a recent commentary in the journal Nature, two Cambridge University researchers reported that about a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promotes wakefulness, to improve their academic performance. The former is approved to treat attention deficit disorder, the latter narcolepsy, and both are considered more effective, and more widely available, than the drugs circulating in dorms a generation ago.

Letters flooded the journal, and an online debate immediately bubbled up. The journal has been conducting its own, more rigorous survey, and so far at least 20 respondents have said that they used the drugs for nonmedical purposes, according to Philip Campbell, the journal’s editor in chief. The debate has also caught fire on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education, where academics and students are sniping at one another.

But is prescription tweaking to perform on exams, or prepare presentations and grants, really the same as injecting hormones to chase down a home run record, or win the Tour de France?

Some argue that such use could be worse, given the potentially deep impact on society. And the behavior of academics in particular, as intellectual leaders, could serve as an example to others.

In his book “Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution,” Francis Fukuyama raises the broader issue of performance enhancement: “The original purpose of medicine is to heal the sick, not turn healthy people into gods.” He and others point out that increased use of such drugs could raise the standard of what is considered “normal” performance and widen the gap between those who have access to the medications and those who don’t — and even erode the relationship between struggle and the building of character.

Having been around the block on a lot of these issues, let me be perfectly honest: A couple of cups of coffee, some Tylenol, and a dose or two of ephedrine will get go a long way toward boosting cognitive ability, or at least academic stamina, which is almost a prerequisite to get through a graduate program these days.

But I obviously don't advocate it, and now with the growing and widespread abuse of presciption ADHD and other medications among youngsters and college students, it seems academics have an even greater responsibility to set standards of propriety and rectitude.

While Derek Jeter and Eli Manning are obviously the most important role models for millions of young, aspiring athletes in the United States, I'd argue that classroom professors in the long-run are the most important influence on a young adult's life after the parents.

I've never even entertained the idea that one of the high-powered lectures offered by one of my research professors was power-boosted by a hefty dose of Methylphenidate, or some other stimulatory medicine.

I certainly wouldn't expect my students to think such thoughts about me when I enter the classroom, and I don't want my own boys selecting classes in college on the basis of tox-screening stats instead of research reputation.

Radical Schizophrenia? Making Sense of Democratic Party Constituencies

Outside of psychiatric medicine, the notion of schizophrenia suggests "a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements."

We've seen a lot of irrationality this campaign season on the right of the spectrum, which thankfully has moved largely toward remission. But as the Democratic race becomes increasingly frenetic, we're seeing snowballing incoherence among the competing factions of the Democratic Party base.

First, note Ari Berman's argument that the fundamental dividing line among Democrats is between Hillary Clinton's political machine and the Democratic National Committe under Chairman Howard Dean.

The Democratic establishment apparently dissed Dean, belittling his stronghold among grassroots internet activists as insignificant and immature.

Berman suggests instead that Dean's an unheralded genius, and the real party split is between those who champion old-guard centrist triangluation versus the progressive insurgency seeking to uproot the party from below. According to Berman, Obama's heir to the Dean legacy: There's amicable relations between Dean and Obama, suggesting synergy between Obama and the netroots. Here's a key passage:

The race for the Democratic nomination is a window into how the candidates view the future of the party, which is being shaped in large part by Dean's efforts. Are Clinton and Obama similarly committed to Dean's [winning all] fifty-state strategy? How much faith would each, as the Democratic nominee, put in the party's grassroots? In the Internet era, the party is less about elder statesmen sitting in Washington than millions of people across the country organizing locally around issues and candidates....

Dean and Obama have understood how the party is changing -and have embraced it. Clinton, thus far, has not.

Howard Dean and Bill Clinton were both pragmatic, moderate governors of rural states who shared an affinity for balanced budgets and free trade. But ever since Dean became a presidential candidate, his relationship with the Clintons has been rocky....

Tensions have cooled since then, and both Clintons have voiced their support for Dean's fifty-state strategy. Yet in a larger sense, Hillary's candidacy represents the polar opposite of what Dean built as a candidate and party chair: her campaign is dominated by an inner circle of top strategists, with little room for grassroots input; it hasn't adapted well to new Internet tools like Facebook and MySpace; it tends to raise big contributions from a small group of high rollers rather than from large numbers of small donors; and it is less inclined to expand the base of the party.

Okay, if Berman's sources are credible Obama's essentially got the DNC in the tank, while the Clinton's will run an off-the-shelf establishment campaign with 1990s-era Clintonites (like Harold Ickes, EMILY's List and Clinton allies in organized labor, and party media-and-money men like Terry McAuliffe and Howard Wolfson).

The problem here is that genuine netroots activists - the very people who catapulted Dean to frontrunner status in the 2004 pre-primary season - aren't cooperating with the analysis.

Jerome Armstrong - a comrade-in-arms to Dail Kos' Markos Moulitsas - indicates that he's not in love with either Clinton or Obama, but has nevertheles thrown in his lot with the New York Senator, a position most likely adopted by much of the blog's readership:

It continues to amaze me - the contortions that folks who dearly want Obama to win will rationalize to themselves about his candidacy. Now, I thought the 2003-2006 netroots was all about the 'fighting dems' that invigorated the Democratic Party with a strong sense of partisanship and Howard Dean's "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party" candidacy. But then The Nation comes along, and rewrites that entire history to say that really, it was all just a precursor, that really, "Obama is Dean 2.0"....

I don't find myself in love with a candidacy in this nomination fight. I had a number of candidates that I supported, a few I really liked, and they all dropped out. In the choice between Clinton and Obama, I don't see much of a difference in substantive policy, nor in the people running their campaigns, and basically chose Clinton because I think she's got a better shot at winning than the gamble of going with the untested Obama.

So here we have one of the founders of the netroots movement debunking the Dean-Obama nexus.
But wait!

You've got to get a load out of FireDogLake's blogger, who's jumped into this debate to straigthen things out.

Jerome is essentially right that there are really no meaningful policy differences to be divined between our two candidates, and Samantha Powers' comments now about Obama's likelihood of revising his withdrawal plans if elected serve simply to remind us that the tea leaves people are currently reading during the campaign re: policy really mean nothing. If Obama were a true anti-occupation believer, he could have jumped full guns behind Lamont when he had the chance instead of ducking and running through the state and pulling the plug on his participation in a Lamont multi-platform ad buy.

So, we have no progressive candidate. We have no Wellstone, no Feingold, no ideologically based movement person. My question is this: which of these candidates is more likely to reveal an inner Lieberman of some form once in power? I don't have an answer. People can believe what they choose to believe, but both candidates have Liebermanish historical tendencies and both propel narratives reminiscent of Lieberman, the earlier years.

You'll have to wade through the rest of this terribly written post. But understand that "Liebermanish historical tendencies" refer to any deviation from the netroots' fundamentally retreatist agenda, and neither Clinton nor Obama have any credibility on the issue. Indeed, look at the language FDL reserves specially for Hillary Clinton:

It so happens that, once [John] Edwards dropped out, more of the online readership sorted itself to Obama. Now, I can't see any meaningful policy reasons for having done so (and Edwards hasn't endorsed), so to me it seems more like a consolidation of the anti-Clinton movement among tech literate activists than it seems like anything about any ideologically or policy based progressive agenda....

I conclude from this that the hundreds of millions of dollars at least that have poured into branding Hillary Clinton - whose policies in general I hardly care for - as a lesbo cunning corrupt cold calculating bitch, have altogether not been without their effect on many online activists and readers in particular.

So as you can see, the comparison so far here reveals considerable incoherence and schizophrenia in the various directions the Democratic partisans are moving.

But note something else, especially with the crude FireDogLake: The hardliners in the base want absolute purity in a candidate, assumably to get the most ideological doctrinaire leftist installed in the Oval Office in January. They'll thus have in position their own Manchurian Candidate to implement a radical anitwar agenda that even the most hardened activists in INTERNATIONAL Answer would love.

Another problem: Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have exceedingly advocated the hard-left antiwar agenda, which includes a couple of years worth of commitments by both candidates to withdraw virtually unconditionally from Iraq upon taking office. Either all of this left-wing blogging ferment is simple oneupsmanship or there truly is a seriously unhinged strata of radical diehards simply too perplexed by their tremendous opportunity this year to unite around a standard-bearer.

In closing, be sure to read Abe Greenwald at Commentary and his elucidation of both Clinton and Obama's antiwar bona fides. They're both desperately ready for an antiwar surrender, in Afghanistan, Iraq, it doesn't matter - just get the troops out as fast as possible:

We’ve had our formidable challenges in both theaters, [but we know] from Hillary that it’s too late to win in Iraq, and from Obama that we need to withdraw from Iraq immediately and pick up the pace in Afghanistan. We must, you see, stop fighting somewhere.

I'll have more later.

See also my earlier post, "Crash: More on the Coming Democratic Train Wreck."

Crash: More on the Coming Democratic Train Wreck

Recall yesterday I argued that in the ongoing Clinton/Obama nomination struggle we have "a true internecine battle erupting, and the stakes entail the very future of the Democratic Party."

As I indicated, things'll get nastier as we move along, and Pennsylvania's a long way off yet.

So let's update: Newsweek's got some new polling data suggesting a dead-heat for the Democrats:

Sen. Hillary Clinton's primary victories in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island have revived her near-dead campaign and brought her into a statistical dead heat with Sen. Barack Obama among registered Democrats and Democratic leaners, according to a new national NEWSWEEK Poll. The survey found that Clinton has erased the once-commanding lead that Obama held in most national polls following his 11 straight victories in February's primaries and caucuses. Obama is the favored nominee among 45 percent of Democrats, compared with 44 percent for Clinton, according to the poll, which was based on telephone interviews with 1,215 registered voters March 5-6.

The poll also found that Democratic voters are ready to rally around the candidate they trust most to improve the economy, amid fears of a recession. But neither candidate has been able to lock up that issue, or many others, and the vast majority (69 percent) of Democratic voters now support the idea of a "dream ticket" - leaving aside the crucial question of who runs on top.

I doubt either camp is "dreaming" of the ulti-multi-culti Democratic ticket, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Remember, we're in a situation likened to an epochal battle between the new and old, the hip and the square, between the politics of hope versus the politics of pugilistic parsing.

And it's going to continue.

Michael Tomasky, writing before Hillary's big Texas and Ohio victories, suggests the New York Senator will take it all the way to Denver, taking advantage of party rules, popular voting dynamics be damned:

Depending on how the rest of the voting shakes out, the possibility exists of a convention floor fight over the seating of these delegates. And 120 delegates [Clinton's current shortfall] ... could prove decisive. So imagine this situation. Clinton trails Obama by, say, eighty or ninety delegates. Her campaign has already said it will fight if she is within one hundred. If she has won more large states—so far she has won New York and California and she might possibly win Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania—her forces might be overrepresented on the credentials committee. Interestingly, it, too, is chaired by Alexis Herman and James Roosevelt Jr. (as well as Eliseo Roques-Arroyo). So we will have a circumstance in which the candidate who is behind but who has a functional advantage on the committee handling credentials might be able to muscle through a vote that gives her a sufficient number of delegates to vault from second place to first.

Would the Clinton campaign do that, risking the fury of millions of Obama backers—on national television no less? Democratic leaders have started warning her against that course. "It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on February 15. But the Clinton team's aggressive exhortations in behalf of seating the delegates, issued by spokesmen and the candidate herself repeatedly since January 25, do not suggest that if the time arrives to show her hand, she will meekly fold it.

Well, as noted, Tomasky's conjectures were offered before the Hill's "Second-Super Tuesday" comeback. This race is heading for a long brawl.

But it's a fair fight, in contrast to the tender sentiments of Andrew Sullivan.

Obama's not wrapping up the big states, rich in Electoral College numbers. Hillary's got some momentum, and a win today for Obama in Wyoming (which is looking likely) will only slow it a bit.

More later, but don't miss my earlier post, "Riots in Denver? Radicals May Seek "Direct Action" Against Democrats."

See more analysis at Memeorandum; and don't miss Ari Berman, "The Dean Legacy," and the Democratic Party's insider-outsider schism between the Clinton camp and the DNC.

Data Suggest Economic Recession

The new media consensus is that the U.S. economy has moved into recession. Here's the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. employers shed 63,000 jobs last month, the most in five years, reinforcing a widening view that the U.S. is falling into recession. Among economists and politicians, the debate is shifting to how deep the downturn will be and how to ease it.

The jobs dropoff came after the nation lost 22,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department said. In the past, such back-to-back monthly employment declines have occurred only around recessions.

U.S. employers shed 63,000 jobs last month, the most in five years, reinforcing a widening view that the U.S. is falling into recession. Among economists and politicians, the debate is shifting to how deep the downturn will be and how to ease it.

The jobs dropoff came after the nation lost 22,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department said. In the past, such back-to-back monthly employment declines have occurred only around recessions....

Easing the worries slightly, the Federal Reserve said it is stepping up efforts to restore credit markets to health by injecting cash into money markets and making larger direct loans to banks.

The Fed's actions were an effort to bring down interest rates banks charge to one another and stabilize the market for mortgage-backed securities, whose falling prices have lowered the value of the collateral posted by firms that hold large quantities of them, such as Thornburg and Carlyle [one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, which warned yesterday of possible collapse].

The New York Times has also got some beefy coverage on the economy's presumed downturn, "Sharp Drop in Jobs Adds to Grim Economic Picture, " and "Seeing an End to the Good Times (Such as They Were)."

Actually, just last weekend I let out a few musing on the economy and housing market ("Housing Woes: Borrowers Abandoning Mortgages Amid Falling Market"), and I mentioned how I noticed one of the first true signs of a recession in the "store closing" sign that went up on the big Wickes furniture storefront down the freeway from my home.

But frankly, things just don't feel that recession-like to me. SoCal's usually behind the market in any case, but things are still pretty robust in my area.

My wife's in retail management and she went on the job market a week or so back and was snapped up for a new position at the first big-box store to which she applied. What amazed me about this - after talking to my wife - is how the recruiters were saying they couldn't find enough highly-qualified top-end managers!

Sure, I see all the news stories on cable and Good Morning America, and I see the videos of all these people out-of-work, filling out applications, and saying this is the worst market they've ever seen.

Geez, you'd think we were back in the Dust Bowl or something.

Still, even voices of economic optimism are weighing the various statements on recessionary trends, so we'll have to keep our eyes peeled for more of the telltale indicators of a genuine downturn.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

Did McCain Flip? Round Two With the New York Times

Here's the video of John McCain's confrontation yesterday with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller (via Ann Althouse):

For the full story, check this MSNBC article, including this text:

Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times asked, “Senator, can I ask you about Senator Kerry. I just went back and looked at our story, the Times story, and you told Sheryl Stolberg that you had never had a conversation with Kerry about being about vice president...”

McCain testily replied, “Everybody knows that I had a private conversation. Everybody knows that. That I had a conversation. There’s no living American in Washington -- that knows that, there’s no one.”

Bumiller: “Okay.”

McCain: “And you know it, too. You know it. So, I don’t even know why you ask.”

Bumiller: “Well, I ask because I just read…”

McCain: “You do know it. You do know it.”

Bumiller: “Because I just read in the Times in May of ’04 you said….”

McCain: “I don’t know what you may have read or heard of, I don’t know the circumstances. Maybe in May of '04 I hadn’t had the conversation…”

Bumiller: “But do you recall the conversation?”

McCain: “I don’t know, but it’s well known that I had the conversation. It is absolutely well known by everyone. So do you have a question on another issue?”

Bumiller: “Well can I ask you when the conversation was?”

McCain: “No. nope, because the issue is closed as far as I’m concerned. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows it in America.”

Bumiller: “Can you describe the conversation?”

McCain: “No, of course not. I don’t describe private conversations.”

Bumiller: “Okay. Can I ask you…”

McCain: “Why should I? Then there’s no such thing as a private conversation. Is there (inaudible) if you have a private conversation with someone, and then they come and tell you. I don’t know that that’s a private conversation. I think that’s a public conversation.”

Bumiller: “Okay. Can I ask you about your (pause) Why you’re so angry?”

McCain: “Pardon me?”

Bumiller: “Nevermind, nevermind.”

McCain: “I mean, it’s well known. Everybody knows. It’s been well chronicled a thousand times. John Kerry asked if I would consider being his running mate.”

Bumiller: “Okay.”

McCain: “And I said categorically no, under no circumstances. That’s very well known.”

The 2004 New York Times piece in question ends in this way: "If Mr. McCain is offered the vice-presidential spot, people close to Mr. Kerry say, the request will come from the candidate himself and not through the campaign's vice-presidential vetting process."

"Asked if Senator Kerry had made such an offer, Mr. McCain said no without hesitation. But asked if the two men had ever discussed it, even casually, he paused for a moment. 'No,' he said finally. 'We really haven't.'"

Well, no wonder McCain's exasperated. The media's trying to take him down a bit, to help the Golden Child to a victory in November.

The whole thing's been blown out of proportion, according to Captain Ed:

I agree with Michelle about learning a lesson in dealing with the mainstream media. Obviously Elizabeth Bumiller wanted to trip his circuits; she pulls out a story in 2004 about the invitation from John Kerry to join his ticket, hoping to get a reaction. She’s not looking out for his best interests, quite obviously, but trying to be deliberately provocative. After all, wouldn’t that be a question to ask before he had sewn up the nomination?

But his reaction seems rather mild, under the circumstances. He’s annoyed, sure, but hardly spitting and cursing. By the time she asks “Why are you so angry?”, the question is so inappropriate that he asks her to repeat it — and she declines, hopefully out of embarrassment.

Interestingly, the Times now has tried twice to get his goat, and for the second time, they’ve wound up with egg on their face.

That's a reference to the McCain lobbying smear. This isn't the last round, to be sure.

Natalie Portman Gets Results!

This post is mainly just a chance to write about Natalie Portman. I mean she personifies eye candy!

She's also an extremely interesting young woman (a Harvard graduate who was initially rejected for her first movie role - in The Professional - but persisted until offered the part).

Well it turns out Portman's got a little lobbying muscle up on Capitol Hill. She's been working on microfinance issues, and made a splash in recent congressional testimony.

The New York Times has the story:

In 2004, Natalie Portman, then a 22-year-old fresh from college, went to Capitol Hill to talk to Congress on behalf of the Foundation for International Community Assistance, or Finca, a microfinance organization for which she served as “ambassador.” She found herself wondering what she was doing there, but her colleagues assured her: “We got the meetings because of you.” For lawmakers, Natalie Portman was not simply a young woman — she was the beautiful Padmé from “Star Wars.” “And I was like, ‘That seems totally nuts to me,’ ” Portman told me recently. It’s the way it works, I guess. I’m not particularly proud that in our country I can get a meeting with a representative more easily than the head of a nonprofit can.”

Well, who is? But it is the way it works. Stars — movie stars, rock stars, sports stars — exercise a ludicrous influence over the public consciousness. Many are happy to exploit that power; others are wrecked by it. In recent years, stars have learned that their intense presentness in people’s daily lives and their access to the uppermost realms of politics, business and the media offer them a peculiar kind of moral position, should they care to use it. And many of those with the most leverage — Bono and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and George Clooney and, yes, Natalie Portman — have increasingly chosen to mount that pedestal. Hollywood celebrities have become central players on deeply political issues like development aid, refugees and government-sponsored violence in Darfur.

Portman's made her celebrity impact in microlending, small-scale credit financing in Third World countries, whereby the world's poor get loans for start-up businesses.

(Microlending's a great thing in principle, although unscrupulous lenders in the developing world have turned microfinance opportunities into the next subprime frontier).

Perhaps Portman will join Angelina Jolie in backing a long-term American commitment to Iraq. Now that'd be a great use of Hollywood firepower!

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Israel's War for Survival - And Ours

Gaza poses an existential threat to Israel, argues Daniel Doron at the Wall Street Journal:

The massacre of rabbinical students Thursday at a Jerusalem seminary highlights the failure of the powerful Israeli military to stop the assaults of Palestinian terrorists. It also reveals serious deficiencies in Israel's strategy and tactics.

These have cost Israel dearly. They also harm the world-wide war on terror, of which Israel is on the forefront.

You can't stop every suicide bomber of course. But for seven years now, Hamas terrorists have been rocketing southern Israeli towns from Gaza. Israeli governments headed by Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert have all vowed to put an end to the attacks. Despite Israel's overwhelming military superiority, its governments have failed to do so....

Israeli governments have done little to stop the massive rearmament of Hamas in Gaza with Iranian weapons, bought with Saudi money and transported into Gaza with the connivance of Egypt. Israel did not even press its great ally, the U.S., to lean on Egypt and put an end to this flagrant violation of its peace agreement with Israel -- a peace agreement for which Egypt is rewarded by billions in U.S. aid.

But the worst failures stem from adoption of a no-win strategy. Many in Israel's top political and military echelons have convinced themselves that terrorism cannot be defeated by force, that to stop it one must compromise and accept some of its demands. But how do you "compromise" with a terrorist organization sworn to destroy you?

The Israeli leadership's lack of determination to win, and its chronic political weakness, have prevented it from resisting pressure from Europe and certain American circles (mostly the State Department and the CIA) to accommodate Hamas and strengthen the allegedly peace-loving Palestinian Authority. Amazingly, Israel keeps supplying Hamas, for "humanitarian reasons," with subsidized electricity and materiel including the steel and chemicals needed to produce the rockets that attack it. It keeps providing money and weapons to prop up the hopelessly corrupt Palestinian Authority.

So what is the one strategy that can win? History has shown time and again that military confrontation does work. Israel could achieve military victory by eliminating or incarcerating Hamas's leadership, not two or three a month (so that they are replaceable) but a few hundred at once. By breaking its command structure and its logistical apparatus, Hamas can be rendered inoperative.

But for this to happen, Israel and Western democracies must treat the terrorists' mortal challenge as a war for survival, not as a series of skirmishes. And in war, you must fight to win, by all traditional means.

Hmm, a mortal challenge? That's a phrase that doesn't go over very well with antiwar nihilists here at home, who naturally take the other side in America's battles with the world's villians.

Doron's got his head on straight, in any case. Notice how he indicates that the challenge is not just Israel's, but Israel and the Western democracies too.

Israel's fight is our own.

The Coming Battle for the Democratic Party

It's a long way off until the Pennsylvania primary, but if this week's left-wing handwringing is any sign of things to come, the Democratic Party's truly going to tear itself to pieces in the interim.

Andrew Sullivan's got a big crush on Barack Obama, but I still think he nails some of the basic fundamentals of the Clinton campaign's Machiavellianism:

The new meme is that politics has returned to normal and that this election will now be run by Clinton rules. Many are relieved by this. You could sense the palpable discomfort among many in Washington that their world might actually shift a little next year. But if elections are primarily about fear and mud, and who best operates in a street fight, Beltway comfort returns. This we know. This we understand. This we already have the language to describe. And, the feeling goes, the Clintons can win back the White House in this atmosphere. What she is doing to Obama she can try to do to McCain. Maybe Limbaugh will help her out again.

What I think this misses are the cultural and social consequences of beating Obama (or McCain) this way. I don't mean beating Obama because the Clintons' message is more persuasive, or because the Clintons' healthcare plan is better, or because she has a better approach to Iraq. I mean: beating him by a barrage of petty attacks, by impugning his clear ability to be commander-in-chief, by toying with questions about his "Muslim past", by subtle invocation of the race card, by intermittent reliance on gender identity politics, by taking faux offense to keep the news cycle busy ("shame on you, Barack Obama!") and so on. If the Clintons beat Obama this way, I have a simple prediction. It will mean a mass flight from the process. It will alter the political consciousness of an entire generation of young voters - against any positive interaction with the political process for the foreseeable future. I'm not sure that Washington yet understands the risk the Clintons are taking with their own party and the future of American politics.

The reason so many people have re-engaged with politics this year is because many sense their country is in a desperate state and because only one candidate has articulated a vision and a politics big enough to address it without dividing the country down the middle again. For the first time in decades, a candidate has emerged who seems able to address the country's and the world's needs with a message that does not rely on Clintonian parsing or Rovian sleaze. For the first time since the 1960s, we have a potential president able to transcend the victim-mongering identity politics so skillfully used by the Clintons. If this promise is eclipsed because the old political system conspires to strangle it at birth, the reaction from the new influx of voters will be severe. The Clintons will all but guarantee they will lose a hefty amount of it in the fall, as they richly deserve to. Some will gravitate to McCain; others will be so disillusioned they will withdraw from politics for another generation. If the Clintons grind up and kill the most promising young leader since Kennedy, and if they do it not on the strength of their arguments, but by the kind of politics we have seen them deploy, the backlash will be deep and severe and long. As it should be.

Unfortunately for Sullivan, he's naive to think what the Clintons are doing is anything new. I mean, hello! Does the name Tom Delay ring a bell? Ever heard of Jesse Helms? Shoot, you'd think slash-and-burn politics was as new as the latest envelope laptop sleeve.

No, Hillary Clinton's doing exactly what she should be doing: Fighting to the finish against a candidate of which she's eminently more qualified. If Obama lets himself get beat up by the Clintonian old-guard, you have to wonder how really talented a politician he is.

But what to think, in any case. Are these good developments?

Perhaps not. Certainly Obama's captured the hopes and sentiment of a new generation of Americans, and I think the upsurge of youth mobilization is geniune and potentially long-lasting. Yet, should Obama be essentially robbed the party's nomination by extra-instituational means (leveraging-in Michigan and Florida delegates, browbeating the party elite to shift superdelegate ballots), then yes, we could be in for some severe political conflict, and not necessarily on the convention floor.

Remember my post from this morning, "Riots in Denver? Radicals May Seek "Direct Action" Against Democrats"?

Well if you check the links there you'll find the Rick Pearlstein's entry at Huffington Post. Pearlstein argues that some lefties are plotting a bit of serious unconventional particpation for Denver in August. Some leftist Iraq veterans are looking to provide operations intelligence to the radicals' game plan of political mayhem. But read the comments to the post, where you can see a real battle developing between members of the Democratic Party's old guard and those who would seek to rescue the party through revolutionary direct action:

Oh I see. So we're being threatened with violence if the voters continute speak out for Hillary? Is that how it goes? We're supposed to be afraid of thugs now? Get off your high horses and stop deluding yourself into believeing that this is the freakin' American Revoltion. It's not. It's a bunch of people raised on video game and movie violence, who just registered to vote, and think they know what America needs.

Your candidate is a fraud. Plain and simple. You're all willing to go to jail or die for a guy that gets his words from a middle-aged white media consultant. Yeah, that's really revolutionary. These nutjob comments that are featured here are not the only ones out there.. they're multiplying all over the internet. I'm sorry, but I have a hard time thinking these people are so devoted to democracy as to threaten violence to get their weak candidate in office.

Movement? Yeah, right. It's be so impressive to hear these 'give me obama or give me death' types if he actually stood for something. Which he does not. I think that the Obama supporters that were caught on tape screaming at people during the caucuses, and the threats by these thugs, are only going to guarantee that NO ONE will vote for him even if you manage to strongarm the nomination. He can't win the General Election with a handful of his little army (or whatever the hell you call yourselves now.) You can kiss even the slightest bit moderate voter behind.

We will not be intimidated. You're underestimating the Super Delegates and the voters, and America. Obama needs to rein his supporters in, pronto.

This is a true internecine battle erupting, and the stakes entail the very future of the Democratic Party. Andrew Sullivan knows this, of course, so look for more Obama victimology posts that serve mostly to further embolden those young Seattle-style youths hoping to revive the 1960s.

McCain: Americans Will Never Surrender

Here's John McCain's new web advertisement, "Man in the Arena" (via YouTube):

Recall that I've been talkin' up McCain's Churchillian enigma, a theme powerfully presented in the ad.

Smart move too, as it turns out that McCain's national security creds are getting some play in public opinion. See Rasmussen's new survey, "42% Want McCain to Answer 3:00 a.m. Phone Call."

Americans Want McCain in White House for 3:00am Call

Rasmussen's got a nifty poll finding indicating that a plurality of Americans wants John McCain to answer the 3:00am phone call the Clinton campaign highlighted a couple of weeks back:

Before Hillary Clinton was declared the winner in Texas, most American voters had read, seen, or heard about her 3:00 a.m. telephone commercial. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 43% had seen at least part of the commercial which was played incessantly on news networks and other outlets for days. Another 16% had heard something about it and the overwhelming majority (81%) correctly identified Hillary Clinton as the candidate whose campaign ran the commercial (see the commercial).

The commercial was credited as one factor enabling Clinton to turn her campaign around in Texas last week. But, 42% of all voters said the person they’d most want to answer the phone was John McCain. Among all voters, 25% picked Clinton and another 25% named Obama as the person they’d want in the White House when a foreign policy crisis call arrived.

The Rasmussen results provide an initial statistical answer to the issue raised in my earlier post, "Tough and Ready: How Will McCain's Defense Message Sell?"

So far, McCain's experience and national security credentials appear to be selling pretty well.

Huffington Post Closes Comments in Wake of Terrorist Attacks

Nice Deb reports that the Huffington Post has shut down comments to its posts on the Jerusalem murders and the Times Square bombing (seen here on YouTube):

Here's Nice Deb:

What does it say about your blog, and its readership, when you have to close down comments because of their embarrassing, mortifying, and anti-semitic content every time there is a terrorist attack? Or a Republican gets hurt, sick, or dies, or any number of other things? It seems that comments are being closed on a fairly regular basis, over there.

How unfortunate to be afraid of your own commenters.

Indeed, it must be an utter disaster to realize that the high-brow anti-Americanism peddled at HuffPo and other radical blogs has its must fundamental appeal for the most implacable domestic enemies of the United States

(Note: I need to second Deb's point on the nature of these comments, which are indeed the most vile racist and anti-semitic screeds imaginable, truly extremist in essence).

Recall in my post yesterday I noted that Daily Kos sloughed off the attack as another salvo in an alleged Rovian smear campaign against the Democratic Party's "good works."

Has anyone seen a major left-wing bloggers' statement of renunciation on the attacks in Jerusalem (where Hamas applauded the murders of 8 Israeli youths) and New York?

I don't see one at FireDogLake. Indeed, Newshoggers is attacking conservative bloggers for even making the connection between radical left-wing ideology and the recent political violence against the institutions and symbols of American military power.

Huffington Post turned off comments to two entries, "7 Die in Shooting at Jerusalem Seminary," and "Police Release Footage of NYC Blast."

If actions are louder than words, that says a lot.

See also my earlier posts, "Blast Damages Times Square Military Recruiting Station," and "Times Square Recruiting Bombing: An Update."

McCain Personnel Memo: Avoid Not-So-Smart FP Advisors

John McCain's ramping up his political organization in the wake of President Bush's endorsement Wednesday.

So here's a tip for the McCain campaign's director of personnel: Avoid not-so-smart foreign policy adivisors.

It turns out that Samantha Power, a left-wing international relations big-shot at Harvard University, and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Problem From Hell, has just submitted her resignation as foreign policy advisor to the Barack Obama campaign after she called Hillary Clinton a "monster."

The Associated Press has a short take:

A Barack Obama adviser has resigned after calling rival Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster."

A campaign official told The Associated Press Friday that Samantha Power's resignation is effective immediately.

Power told The Scotsman that Clinton is a "monster" who will stoop to anything to win. She tried to make the remark off the record, but the Scottish newspaper printed it anyway. She apologized in a statement and the campaign decried the remark.

Power is a foreign policy adviser to Obama and a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Power's a big advocate of humanitarian intervention - she's apparently known as "the genocide chick" - but she might do well to audit some of the political communications seminars offered at her own public policy institute, JFK School of Government.

This is a colossal mistake. Power was positioning herself for a major post in an Obama administration, perhaps Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights.

Apparenty, Power likes to play basketball, to which George Clooney - a comrade-in-arms - is said to have remarked, "She's the best I've ever played against."

Here's Frank James on Clooney's endorsement:

With all due respect to Clooney and his assessment of her basketball skills, we'll have to see her crossover move before we can determine if she's really got game. It's fair to say, however, when it comes to her political footwork, she needs more practice.

See more analysis at Memeorandum; and CNN, "Obama Adviser Resigns Over Comment."

Times Square Recruiting Bombing: An Update

Here's the New York Times's mainstream media analysis on developments in yesterday's Times Square military recruiting center bombing:

The British Consulate in 2005. The Mexican Consulate last year. And on Thursday, the Times Square military recruiting station.

Three bombings with similar devices at three high-profile locations in Manhattan, each occurring at nearly the same time of day, in the predawn hours; each inflicting little damage; none injuring people.

And in each case, someone — most likely a man — seen pedaling away on a bicycle with a hooded jacket or sweatshirt hiding his face.

These are the similarities that police detectives and federal agents are exploring as they investigate whether these blasts, so seemingly similar, were the work of the same person or group, and what the motive was.

Law enforcement officials stopped short on Thursday of definitively linking the explosions — or of trying to divine the significance of the latest, most visible target: the island at the center of the pinball-game brightness of Times Square....

Late Thursday, investigators analyzed letters received by members of Congress with pictures taken before the blast of someone in front of the recruiting station with the words “We did it. Happy New Year.” As the night wore on, investigators increasingly believed the letters had no connection to the bombing, but were probably a strange coincidence, one official said.

This is obviously a clinical take on things.

For sharp contrast, see Michelle Makin, "Special Report: Tracing the Left’s Escalating War on Military Recruiters."

Also, Chris Hill, from Gathering of Eagles, puts things in perspective:

We will gather at 1230hrs until 1600hrs, this Saturday, 8 March in Times Square to serve notice that our troops do not cut and run, and neither do we. We recognize that most of you do not live within easy driving distance of NYC, so we are asking that everyone else don your military or patriotic garb and visit your local recruiter station. It is important for them to know we love and respect them, and will stand with them always. New York City has, once again, been the victim of terrorism; this time of the homegrown brand it appears. This despicable act can be laid right at the feet of the vehement anti-American groups we have countered so often. They have made it okay in the minds of some to attack recruiter stations and deface our war memorials. We must not allow this to continue!

Meanwhile, New York City anarchists are cheering the attack:

Bringing the war home, a hooded bicyclist bombed the Times Square Armed Forces recruiting station this morning. There has been no statement regarding this thus far, and perhaps there will not be, although in this case, perhaps the medium is the message. Unlike the bombs dropped by the US armed forces on various brown people around the world, no one was hurt.

Check back for more updates.

Limbaugh in Texas: Did He Put Hillary Over the Top?

Did Rush Limbaugh's call for conservatives to crossover and vote Hillary in the Texas primary put the New York Senator over the top?

Allahpundit considers it, "More Exit polls: Did Rush Win it for Hillary?"

But check out this post from the Washington Wire:

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh led a campaign to have his Republican followers in Texas cross party lines and vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the state’s open primary last Tuesday. Why? Because Limbaugh thinks Republicans can defeat Clinton in a general election. Plus, watching Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama bloody each other in a nomination fight is pure sport for Limbaugh conservatives.

According to exit polls, Clinton won a notably higher number of Republican voters than she has in past open primary contests. Of the 9% of voters who identified themselves as Republicans in the Democratic Primary, Obama still edged Clinton 53%-46%. However, that margin is significantly slimmer than earlier contests. In Wisconsin’s open primary, for instance, Republicans broke 72%-28% for Obama. Similarly, in Virginia’s open primary, Obama was favored 72%-23%.

Clinton unquestionably secured a Texas victory, but some locals are convinced it was a false win bolstered by dirty politics. Laura Jean Kreissl, an accounting professor at West Texas A&M University, served as an election official in Canyon, Texas on Tuesday. She contacted the Wall Street Journal to report the hijinks she observed at the four precincts that voted at her polling location.

Of the 181 voters she personally dealt with, 70 offered that they were “Rush Limbaugh voters” who were there to cast ballots for Clinton. “I’m here to vote for Hillary Clinton, I want to see the Democratic Party implode,” one voter told Kreissl, she recounted in an interview. “I was just stunned,” she said. “As an election official we can’t say anything. We just jot them down and let them vote.”

Kreissl, an Obama supporter, said she kept rough counts, but her fellow poll worker, a Clinton supporter, both estimated that as many as two-thirds of the voters were Limbaugh Republicans turned Clinton voters. About 800 ballots were cast in total there. “I’m an accounting professor, I know numbers pretty well,” she said.

Kreissl worked a 19 hour day to also help organize the caucus event later that night. Similarly, she said she personally checked in 20 Obama supporters and 17 Clinton supporters. Of Clinton’s 17, 10 identified themselves as Rush Limbaugh voters, she said.

She’s convinced the Limbaugh voters turned the tide in favor of Clinton. “I don’t think we were an isolated case by any means,” she said. “I think it was very widespread across the state.”

The grassroots group, Republicans for Obama, agrees. “Hillary Clinton owes her political life to Rush Limbaugh,” they wrote on their web site Wednesday.

Rush Limbaugh is also convinced. “Don’t Doubt the Limbaugh Effect,” he boasts on his web site.

Clinton won Texas 50.9%-47.4%, earning roughly 100,000 more votes than Obama. However, Texas’s two-part system of a same day primary and a caucus is expected to end up netting Obama more delegates when the caucus delegates are allotted.

I need to take a deeper look at the data, but with Hillary's small margin of victory, the Rush-bots might have done some Texas "Hillraising" magic.

Riots in Denver? Radicals May Seek "Direct Action" Against Democrats

Will the Democratic Party see rioting at their summer nominating convention in Denver?

In an earlier post I predicted "Seattle-style" youth mobilization (riots) in the event that Barack Obama is denied the nomination. Heidi from Big Girls Pants had some doubts about such developments, so maybe my musings were over the top. Here's my prediction:

I'm of the opinion that a leveraged nomination for Clinton - with the crowbar of superdelegates squeezing her in - will likely result in street riots, and not just a few scuffles between some antiwar protesters and police outside the Denver convention hall. I'm talking 1999 Seattle-style total mobilization protests - in cities around the nation - among a coalition of outraged groups hoping to take down the Democratic Party establishment once and for all.

Is that a bit unhinged? Maybe not?

Check this post from Allahpundit at Hot Air, "Far Left Ready to Blow the Lid Off the Democratic Convention, Maybe Literally."

Allah cites Rick Pearlstein's entry at Huffington Post, "Some Apocalyptic Observations on the Democratic Nomination Fight from Here on Out," for example:

Rick, if the Machine tries to give the Clintons the victory at the convention, I swear to God, Chicago’s going to look like a Sadie Hawkins dance. People my age are going to be throwing stones. We all have transportation — cell phones — disposable income — the Internet — free time — and Seattle as our example. Part of me is scared of a riot. Part of me isn’t. The nomination belongs to Obama. Do you think we’re going to let the Democratic Leadership Council take it? “God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.”

Now, call me crazy, but I'm not putting significant unconventional mobilization past people like this.

Maybe it's just a bunch of hippie wannabes mouthing-off anonymously in the comments section of a lefty blog.

But as we're seeing more extremely violent acts of domestic terrorism - with this week's Seattle ecoterrorism case and the Times Square bombing - maybe things could indeed move beyond seemingly idle online chatter to a few copy-cat attacks, and then perhaps a more serious hard-left conspiracy of violence?

See also the Weekly Standard, which provides information on the left's "Recreate '68" movement, activities that include plans for "direct action" (i.e., revolutionary violence).

Don't forget my earlier post, "Antiwar Left Seeks to Recreate Protests of 1968."

I'll be posting on these developments moving forward.

Blast Damages Times Square Military Recruiting Station

It was a small explosive device, and there were no casualties from the blast, but this morning's Times Square bombing is both deeply troubling and extremely fascinating. Here's the background, from the Associated Press:

A small bomb caused minor damage to an empty military recruiting station in Times Square early Thursday, shaking guests in hotel rooms high above "the crossroads of the world."

The blast, which happened around 3:45 a.m., left a gaping hole in the front window and shattered a glass door, twisting and blackening its metal frame. No one was hurt. But Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the device, though unsophisticated, could have caused "injury and even death."

A witness saw a person on a bicycle wearing a backpack and a hood and acting suspiciously, but no one saw the device being placed in front of the recruiting center, authorities said at a news conference.

"If it is something that's directed toward American troops then it's something that's taken very seriously and is pretty unfortunate," said Army Capt. Charlie Jaquillard, who is the commander of Army recruiting in Manhattan.

He said no one was inside the station, where the Marines, Air Force and Navy also recruit.

The New York Times provided updates on the story throughout the day. Here's the latest:

The police said the explosive device involved in the Times Square blast this morning was “roughly similar” to the devices used in two earlier bombings at foreign consulates in Manhattan, in 2005 and 2007, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at an afternoon news conference. The device had been placed in an ammunition box like the kind that can be bought at a military supply store. Officials said that in today’s attack, a man bundled in a gray hooded jacket or sweatshirt and wearing a backpack was seen riding a bicycle around the recruiting station and acting suspiciously moments before the explosion. Video footage from a surveillance camera showed a bicyclist dismounting, approaching the recruitment center, then returning to the bike and riding away before the explosion occurs. (See related slide show.)

Be sure to check out the video (from WNBC) and the NYT slide show.

Should we read any "larger truths" into this story, that perhaps there's a seed of anarchist nihilism germanating in our midst? Probably not, although it's hard to dismiss the powerful symbolism of an attack on a prominent armed forces recruiting center in the heart of America's financial capital.

Captain Ed provides his analysis:

Given the escalating protests over military recruitment, it seems inevitable that people would bomb those who seek to protect the nation and fight our enemies....

Melanie Morgan just wrote about the escalating attacks on military recruiters a week ago. She lists several cities where recruitment centers have been attacked in varying degrees, usually limited to vandalism and threats of violence. These operations have not hurt military recruiting at all. Michelle wrote about this two years ago (and many times since), and quite obviously the attackers have grown frustrated that they haven’t frightened off enough people to slow down the flow of recruits.

Now the movement has decided to morph into domestic terrorism. Of course, the people responsible will claim that they bombed the office during the night to keep anyone from being hurt. That’s exactly the same kind of rationalization that people like the Weather Underground and the SLA used at first, anyway — that terrorism was justified by their politics. In fact, a few like William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn still claim that.

And what exactly are the politics behind this? The US does not have a draft any longer. The only people joining the military are those who volunteer to do so. The Code Pink protesters who throw paint, rocks, and the unknown terrorists who throw bombs want to disarm the nation while it’s under attack by radical jihadists, and at the same time want to stop young men and women from exercisig their own choices. Since the Code Pink contingent and the nutcases who throw bombs can’t possibly win through the democratic process, they want to engage in intimidation — and now terrorism — to frighten people into acquiescence.

When this fails to achieve their goals, expect bombs to find human targets.

The Captain notes that that Daily Kos has called the bombing a Karl Rove, fear-mongering-style attack, designed to sow confusion and destabilization as part of an effort to tear down all the "good work" being done by John Edward and Barack Obama.

Right...

Note how the Kos piece fails to denounce the attack.

Again, while it's good not to read too much into this, it is fascinating - and informative - that recent incidents of domestic terrorism have been perpetrated by suspects associated with far left-wing ideologies (recall this week's ecoterrorist new-home burnings in Seattle).

Photo Credit: New York Times

Bear Any Burden? The U.S. Can Afford Iraq

There's increasing buzz on Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War.

Here's a Houston Chronicle synopsis:

When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would be self-financing and rebuilding the nation would cost less than $2 billion.

Coming up on the five-year anniversary of the invasion, a new estimate from a Nobel laureate puts the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at more than $3 trillion.

That estimate from Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz also serves as the title of his new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, which hit store shelves Friday.

The book, co-authored with Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, builds on previous research published in January 2006. The two argued then and now that the cost to America of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is wildly underestimated.

When other factors are added — such as interest on debt, future borrowing for war expenses, continued military presence in Iraq and lifetime health care and counseling for veterans — they think that the wars' costs range from $5 trillion to $7 trillion.

"I think we really have learned that the long-term costs of taking care of the wounded and injured in this war and the long-term costs of rebuilding the military to its previous strength is going to far eclipse the cost of waging this war," Bilmes said in an interview.

The Chronicle article suggests the Stiglitz/Bilmes claims are controversial in Washington. The article also reviews how the administration allegedly underestimated the "social costs" of the conflict.

Stiglitz and Bilmes summarize their work in this piece from the Times of London:

The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.

The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.

And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that's $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.

Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The price in blood has been paid by our voluntary military and by hired contractors. The price in treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised to pay for it - in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen. Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter. But of course the laws are not repealed. The costs of the war are real even if they have been deferred, possibly to another generation.

The war is expensive, however, Stiglitz and Blimes' analysis lacks comparative and historical rigor. As Amity Shlaes argues, it's just not the case that the U.S. cannot afford to fight this war:

In their best-case scenario, under which the U.S. presence in Iraq drops to 55,000 non-combat troops by 2012, the total budgetary costs for the conflict add up to $1.7 trillion. They posit that a more realistic figure would be $2.65 trillion.

When a U.S. soldier dies, the authors write, the Pentagon pays something like $500,000 to families in insurance and death benefits. Stiglitz and Bilmes claim that a more accurate price would be $7 million -- the Pentagon fails to consider the lifetime earning and spending power lost when a soldier dies.

``Instead of paying for the war in Iraq, we could have fixed the Social Security problem for the next half-century,'' the authors say, and America would have had ``a smaller mountain of debt.''

In their best-case scenario, under which the U.S. presence in Iraq drops to 55,000 non-combat troops by 2012, the total budgetary costs for the conflict add up to $1.7 trillion. They posit that a more realistic figure would be $2.65 trillion.

When a U.S. soldier dies, the authors write, the Pentagon pays something like $500,000 to families in insurance and death benefits. Stiglitz and Bilmes claim that a more accurate price would be $7 million -- the Pentagon fails to consider the lifetime earning and spending power lost when a soldier dies.

``Instead of paying for the war in Iraq, we could have fixed the Social Security problem for the next half-century,'' the authors say, and America would have had ``a smaller mountain of debt.''

`Vast and Huge' Cost

Non-budgetary and interest costs are an important part of the Stiglitz calculation. The authors worry about the deficit. The conflict's costs, they say, ``are certain to be vast and huge and will continue for generations.''

The rebuttal to this argument starts with oil. Professor Steven J. Davis of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business challenges as ``unwarranted'' their argument that even $5-$10 of the per barrel increase is because of the war.

The 2003 drop in oil production by Iraq accounted for less than 1 percent of world production. Overall, world oil output went up from 2002 to 2006.

The authors' description of the war's cost as ``vast'' or ``huge,'' conjures images of unprecedented financial sacrifice. But by the standard method of calculating costs of wars, defense spending as a share of gross domestic product, Iraq's price is improbably modest.

Back in 1986, the year before Ronald Reagan threw out his ``tear down this wall'' challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev, defense spending was 6.2 percent of the U.S. economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, it was 9.5 percent.

`Peace Dividend'

In 2005, 2006, and 2007, defense spending was about 4 percent of GDP -- as low as during the early 1990s, when the U.S. was enjoying the ``peace dividend'' after the Soviet Union's collapse.

As for the budget deficit, it is likely to range between 2 percent and 3 percent of GDP this year, a humdrum level nothing like the heroic 30 percent deficit Washington ran as it prepared for D-Day.

Yet it is the Stiglitz-Bilmes ``what-would-have-been'' argument that will prove most contentious. Back in 2006, Davis and two colleagues made their own counterfactual case, seeking to analyze the costs of the theoretical alternative to war against Iraq: containment of Saddam.

Davis found that the costs of containment in Iraq would have been big. In certain situations, they even would have been ``in the same ballpark as the likely costs of the Iraq intervention.''

Good News

In a phone request for an update of his paper this week, Davis said sending additional U.S. troops last year, the ``surge,'' increased costs enough to make the war yet more expensive -- but not by trillions of dollars.

And where in the ``Three Trillion'' calculus does the new good news fit in, such as the International Monetary Fund's prediction that Iraq's GDP will increase by 7 percent this year?

The message of this book is that the war can be blamed for America's failure to reform domestically. If this is true, then Washington would have used the period of 1991 to 2001 to rewrite Social Security and Medicare. It didn't.

Democrats and Republicans will both find the Iraq-as- budget-buster argument convenient. That doesn't make it compelling. It is also disingenuous. There are a number of reasons to oppose the war in Iraq. Just don't say we can't afford it.

Stiglitz and Bilmes' research will likely get huge play, as Shlaes suggests, but their work's not to be trusted.

Tough and Ready: How Will McCain's Defense Message Sell?

How will John McCain's beefy tough-on-defense message resonate with voters? Are hawkish credentials an asset this year?

The Wall Street Journal has an analysis:

In his victory speech Tuesday night, John McCain ticked off his muscular foreign-policy plans and then, with clenched jaw, urged the rowdy crowd to "stand up and fight for America."

The Republican presidential nominee's resolve will now be tested on a national stage. His record in Congress suggests that a McCain White House could assume a tougher posture overseas than has the current administration, which has itself often been criticized as too bellicose. Sen. McCain has joked about bombing Iran, ruled out talks with North Korea and, earlier this week, condemned the new leader of Russia....

His worldview will likely pose a contrast to his opponent, be it Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Sen. McCain and his Republican allies are preparing a campaign built around the assertion that either Democrat would be too soft. The Democratic nominee will likely portray Sen. McCain as a reckless saber-rattler....

In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 47% of respondents said they thought Sen. McCain was "tough enough" on foreign policy, compared with 39% for Sen. Obama and 44% for Sen. Clinton. One in four thought Sen. McCain was "too tough" -- compared with only 3% for Sen. Obama and 9% for Sen. Clinton.

Sen. McCain has a long record of urging the use of force during crises from North Korea to Iran. In 1994, he accused President Clinton of trying to appease North Korea over its nuclear program. "To get a mule to move, you must show it the carrot and hit it with a stick at the same time," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times.

Five years later, when the Clinton administration led a North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign against then-Yugoslavia, Sen. McCain was one of the loudest voices in the Senate urging the White House to prepare for a potential ground invasion. "The credibility of America as a superpower is at stake," he said.

A decade later, during the Iraq war, U.S. credibility has again emerged as a big issue. The top Democratic contenders frequently promise to restore America's image overseas. But Randy Scheunemann, Sen. McCain's chief foreign-policy adviser, said the McCain campaign sees no similar need. "At the end of the day, people are happy to engage with Americans," he said. "They know we're the sole superpower."

Several of Mr. McCain's original advisers, including Mr. Scheunemann, fell firmly in the camp of neoconservatives, the hawkish group that encouraged President Bush to invade Iraq. But as the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. McCain has since attracted support from nearly all of the party's foreign-policy luminaries, including staunch realists like former Secretary of State James Baker.

Sen. McCain and his aides have devised a foreign-policy strategy that recommends pushing for tougher economic sanctions on Iran -- including a possible gasoline embargo -- outside the auspices of the United Nations, a policy the Bush administration has eschewed as impractical. Sen. McCain wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last fall that when it comes to Iran, "military action, although not the preferred option, must remain on the table."

Read the whole thing.

WSJ notes that President Ronald Reagan came to office with a similar bellicose reputation, but then mellowed while in office and achieved great success in foreign policy.

Further, McCain's toughness puts our enemies on watch not to fool around (recall Max Boot's argument as well that the terrorists fear most a McCain presidency), and a reputation for firmness may even position McCain favorably to resolve international crises, like those with Iran.

The quesion is wheter these assets will sell with the general electorate in November. I think they will.