Strange New Disrespect
George Will’s distaste for John McCain had been leading me to find some Strange New Respect for the man, but what kind of a person writes a column hailing Mitch McConnell as the savior of conservatism? The guy is, clearly, a very banal party operator. Few incumbent politicians of either party, and absolutely no Republicans that I’m aware of, favor public financing of campaigns. After all, such financing would be bad for incumbents and bad for Republicans. But Will writes:
McConnell opposes public financing of presidential campaigns on Jeffersonian grounds (”To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is,” said Jefferson, “sinful and tyrannical”).
As if McConnell is taking some kind of lonely and idiosyncratic stand inspired by his deep immersion in 18th century ideas.
50 Responses to “Strange New Disrespect”
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November 13th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Uh, Matt – we provide public financing for PRESIDENTIAL campaigns, which is what Will is talking about.
Few incumbent politicians of either party, and absolutely no Republicans that I’m aware of, favor public financing of campaigns.
Uh – as I recall, John McCain, who is a Republican as I recall, criticized Barack Obama earlier this year for using private funding rather than public financing of his Presidential campaign.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Uh – as I recall, John McCain, who is a Republican as I recall, criticized Barack Obama earlier this year for using private funding rather than public financing of his Presidential campaign.
Just because a Republican criticizes a Democrat for an activity doesn’t mean the Republican is *against* that activity. They just think Democrats shouldn’t engage in activities that republicans do.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I’ve always thought Will & McConnell bore a facial resemblance to one another. Sort of a lipless, wall-eyed fish look.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
McConnell is the senatorial equivalent of Tom Delay.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
“As if McConnell is taking some kind of lonely and idiosyncratic stand inspired by his deep immersion in 18th century ideas.”
Christ, Will is such a fucking wanker. That’s his function, though- dress up raw power politics as some noble battle of ideas. You just know the dickhead has a book of quotes so he can work those faux-erudite references into every column.
I’m led to believe that some people find this impressive and consider him sophisticated.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I know it sounds nutty to everyone here, but there is a principled, constitutional case to be made against campaign finance reform, and Will is pretty good at making it. I don’t know if McConnell shares those principles, but he’s a strong ally on what, for Will, is a key 1st Amendment issue.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
MikeJ sums up the last 15 years of American politics. Well done, Mike.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Anyway, care to argue with that Jefferson quote, or do you just find it self-evidently ridiculous?
November 13th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
“Anyway, care to argue with that Jefferson quote, or do you just find it self-evidently ridiculous?”
The Jefferson quote is unobjectionable. However, whenever a writer says that a politicians policy preferences are motivated by a Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Jerk-offian sensibility, my bullshit detector goes off. Politicians don’t think in lofty terms like that. Will is the worst offender with this type of shit, which is why it’s helpful to remind people that he’s just your average movement conservative apparatchik with a thesaurus and a bow tie.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Anyone hearing George Will express outrage at 4500+ soldiers having their lives taken in order to hand Iraq’s oil deposits over to Houston?
Anyone hear George Will express outrage that deceitful shitheads like Bill O”Reilly and Rush Limbaugh can become millionaires feeding deceit to the voters — while 100 million Americans have NO voice in the public forum at all.
Anyone hear George Will express outrage that $6.5 TRILLION of our tax money has gone to bail out superrich men on Wall Street.
George Will is a two-faced Republican whore sucking dirty wealthy dicks in an alley and pretending he’s Socrates. Like all Republican advocates , he survives because he’s careful to never get in a forum where his bullshit would have to stand up to fair debate.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
i trust that matthew, while not as young as young ezra, has learned an important lesson that young people need to learn: there aren’t that many schizophrenics walking around out there.
if long experience has told you that george will is a tendentious ass, the fact that his ire is aimed at a common enemy’s every so often should be treated as an amusing idiosyncracy (”even george will thinks…”) and not as evidence of an improvement in character.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Someone ask George Will what he thinks of this Jeffersonian argument:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
—————
Sounds to me like God says we have a right to fix this fucked up mess we’re in — and if we have to exterminate some rich fuckers and their buttkissing sycophants like Will in order to do it –Well, God says that doesn’t hurt his head.
Gee, I wonder why Rev Hagee never mentions this.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Does George Will have any comment on this Jeffersonian statement?
“And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.”
I graduated from Mr Jefferson’s University. Mr Jefferson would have beaten the living shit out of George Will with his riding crop.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Just because a Republican criticizes a Democrat for an activity doesn’t mean the Republican is *against* that activity. They just think Democrats shouldn’t engage in activities that republicans do.
Er… John McCain did not do the activity for which he criticized Obama. McCain took public financing.
Okay, let me be more explicit. John McCain has never, to my record, come out against public financing of Presidential elections. He accepted public money from the Presidential Campaign Fund and cirticized Obama for not following his lead and taking the federal money. He did not crtiticize Obama for sticking with the current system of public financing, but for bucking the system of public financing. Obviously, he seems to believe that publicly financing the Presidential campaign is a good thing to do, and that there is something sneaky in private financing.
Given that, I don’t see how one can argue that no Republicans favor public financing of (at least Presidential) campaigns, when the most prominent Republican of the year came out in direct support of the public financing system. Moreover, I have heard very few people criticizing or trying to end the current public financing system, which brings into question Matt’s statement that few politicians support public financing.
Now maybe Matt is right if he is saying that very few people support public financing of Congressional/Senatorial campaigns. But Will here is explicitly talking about Presidential campaigns, so Matt’s criticism has no basis.
Also, aren’t contributions to that particular fund voluntary anyway? So Jefferson’s quote would be inapplicable.
Ex ept that no one actually donate $3.00 of their money. They check a box, and for every checked box $3.00 is added to the fund. Checking the box costs you nothing. So every time you check the box, you are simply saying that the government must spend more, you are not actually contributing anything (in the sense that you pay for that $3.00). Seeing as money is fungible, you are essentially raising everyone’s taxes to pay for the campaign.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
btw, kudos to Obama for not going on welfare the way that McCain did.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
The purpose of public financing is to get good governance. Its a means to an end. McConnell and Will are simply trying to distract you from the actual purpose of public financing.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Ex ept that no one actually donate $3.00 of their money. They check a box, and for every checked box $3.00 is added to the fund. Checking the box costs you nothing. So every time you check the box, you are simply saying that the government must spend more, you are not actually contributing anything (in the sense that you pay for that $3.00). Seeing as money is fungible, you are essentially raising everyone’s taxes to pay for the campaign.
It’s a direct referendum on public financing of campaigns. Your “treasure” of $3 frickin dollars doesn’t go to this odious, terrible, crime against the first amendment. What more could you possible want?
No one gave me a checkbox on Iraq War funding. I’d have appreciated that.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
“(”To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is,” said Jefferson, “sinful and tyrannical”).”
The quote of course is from Jefferson’s bill for religious liberty in Virginia, and he’s talking about religion, not about campaign finance. It might make something of a difference, since the point of campaigns is not merely to “propagate opinions”, but to decide who’s going to run the country. In which case you may not like one or more of the alternatives, but you sure as heck want the choice you prefer to be as adequately funded as the alternatives. I’m not always sure about conservatives, but classic and modern liberals tend to think that it’s enough that the truth has a fighting chance in the public square. It doesn’t need somemwhat more than a fighting chance.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Did Mr. Yglesias ever come out against Barack obama’s backtracking against public funding? Did I miss that?
And no, Glaivester. I didn’t vote for McCain but he deserves credit when he does something right. He did right when he refused to sell himself to rich campaign contributors, and Obama did wrong. Obama spent almost a billion dollars on his campaign, proving yet again that it’s always possible to buy your way to the presidency.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Re hector’s comment “I didn’t vote for McCain but he deserves credit when he does something right. He did right when he refused to sell himself to rich campaign contributors, and Obama did wrong ”
——————
I disagree. Obama did not restrict himself to public financing because he knew that the RNC and Republican Independent Groups were NOT constrained by public financing and that they would have Swift-Boated the Hell out of him if he did not have the money to respond.
Obama’s funding was far more broadly based than McCain’s.
The Republicans will NEVER give the average citizen a break — they WANT Members of Congress enslaved to big donors. The only hope for campaign finance reform –and news media reform –was to elect Obama.
Naturally, I regret that Obama had to raise so much money and naturally I fear that he had to make some dirty backroom deals just to be in the race. But he did not create that system — Republican Supreme Courts . Republican Presidents, and Republican Congresses did.
We all knew that John McCain and Hillary Clinton were heavily shopworn whores — Obama may turn out to be the same but hopefully not. He was the only hope we had.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Actually, Matt, not that I spend much time caring about or defending Mitch McConnell, but he is, IIRC, one of a small group of Republicans (four, previously? Bennett (UT), Chafee (x-RI), and Jefford (x-R, x-VT)) who have opposed a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning.
I wouldn’t say McConnell has got a lot of principles, but it’s not implausible that he’s got a couple decent ones.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
hector, what you missed is reality: obama never backtracked on public financing, despite gop efforts to convince the gullible.
need i say more?
November 13th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Re: opposed a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning.
No one could accuse me of being much of a patriot, and the American flag doesn’t have a great deal of meaning or resonance for me. But I do recognize that it has emotional and spiritual resonance for a lot of other people, and I’d just as soon respect their feelings on the matter. Really, what’s the point of burning a US flag, any more than burning a Quran? Aren’t there enough other things to burn, if you want to express your dissatisfaction with the United States? No one is being prevented from making effigies of Jefferson and burning them.
It’s fine if you don’t care much for the U.S. flag, but doesn’t common civility require that we respect other people’s symbols, at least most of the time?
The right to burn American flags was set forth, incidentally, by that noted liberal Antonin Scalia.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Howard,
Oh, you mean he knew he wasn’t going to go public from the beginning? Fine, I’ll retract ‘bactracked’. So what? What annoys me isn’t the hypocrisy, it’s taking huge sums of private money to begin with. Progressives of all people should realize that a campaign that is the creature of rich donors is inevitably going to serve their interests. “Where a man’s treasure is, there shall his heart be also.”
November 13th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
“Really, what’s the point of burning a US flag, any more than burning a Quran? Aren’t there enough other things to burn, if you want to express your dissatisfaction with the United States?”
So, are we going to have a constitutional amendment banning every act of speech that some people find pointless and annoying, or just this one?
November 13th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Agreed, but since the average Obama donor gave $86, I don’t see how that applies.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Let’s hope Will is right (for once) and McConnell becomes the face of the Republican Party. He’s one of the few politicians who manages to be more off-putting than Bush.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Hector:
You are dead wrong. While Scalia concurred in Johnson v. Texas, he wrote nothing. The right was established by William Brennan, with a separate opinion by Anthony Kennedy as well.
And as for the merits of the issue, bear in mind that the question isn’t whether burning the flag is civil or effective or something one should do. It’s simply a legal question as to whether it is “speech” protected by the First Amendment. Lots of uncivil, ineffective things that one should not do are so protected.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Dilan,
Don’t give me that ‘merely a legal question’ BS. You know, and I know, that the Supreme Court likes to pull rights out of their @$$ like a magician’s rabbit from the hat. Depending on how the feeling strikes them that morning, sometimes those ‘rights’ are conservative, like in that notorious case with child labor in bakeries, and sometimes they’re liberal, like the rights to have abortions and burn flags. If you try to find some rhyme or reason why they do what they do, then I’m sorry to say you’re on a fool’s errand. Might as well ask a chimpanzee why it decided to throw a banana against the wall instead of eating it.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:10 am
lol. this post is awesome.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Wow. The irony is overwhelming.
That quotation, which is from the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedoms, is the cornerstone in the argument for separation of church and state. Like, you know, not giving any public funds to private schools that teach the tenets of a particular religion through a voucher system. Last time I checked, McConnel, and for that matter George Will, are pro-voucher. I’m willing to bet, in fact, that there are dozens of issues on which both of them would argue for the increased intermingling of government and religion. When it comes to campaign finance, though, it’s “Jeffersonian grounds” all the way.
I wonder if people like Will, who I generally do respect, feel the need to try something egregious every once in a while just to see if anyone catches him.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:01 am
I know it sounds nutty to everyone here, but there is a principled, constitutional case to be made against campaign finance reform, and Will is pretty good at making it. I don’t know if McConnell shares those principles, but he’s a strong ally on what, for Will, is a key 1st Amendment issue.
Yep, and I think it’s well-reported that McConnell does have principled feelings on this issue, in the same way that a McCain does.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:20 am
My impression is that Hector thinks freedom, per se, is a plague on humanity. Economic freedom, political freedom, civil freedom — all bad. As such, liberalism (in both common senses of the word) is the enemy. He’ll team up with any form of authoritarianism available, with the exception of Islamic authoritarianism, to fight liberalism: Juan Velasco Alvarado’s military dictatorship, Francisco Franco’s phalangism, communists, non-Muslim (but by no means exclusively Christian) theocrats, whatever. Left or right, nationalist or internationalist — anything, so long as it will fight against the blight of freedom, and ideally against the blight of Islam too.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:39 am
What annoys me isn’t the hypocrisy, it’s taking huge sums of private money to begin with.
Honestly, if there’s one thing I credit Howard Dean and Barack Obama with, it’s putting an end to the liberal discomfort with having lots of money and using it. If you can’t convince 2 million out of the 60 million people who support you to send you $50 a couple of times a year, it’s hard to argue that your message is particularly compelling.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:18 am
John McCain did not do the activity for which he criticized Obama. McCain took public financing. . . . He accepted public money from the Presidential Campaign Fund and cirticized Obama for not following his lead and taking the federal money.
Revisionist history,but fortunately, some of us have a memory span that extends more than 20 minutes into the past.
McCain tried to opt out of public financing, but wasn’t allowed to do so, because he had already borrowed against it.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Re Julian Elson’s comment “My impression is that Hector thinks freedom, per se, is a plague on humanity. ”
—————-
I disagree with Hector a lot but I don’t think that’s fair. He has a legitimate point of view — Thomas Hobbes made the argument for order,safety and security in civilized society.
While I despise the Vatican, I have always respected the decent humanity and moral feelings of most lay Catholics and many (not all) priests. But all factions in US politics, including Catholics, have a tendency of wanting to use force to “fight evil” and establish “a good society”.
Americans have a tendency to want things black and white but good politics is the OPPOSITE of that. The Good in Politics is the Mean –not the extreme. In real life, we don’t want to live in the summer Sahara –and die of heat stroke. Nor do we want to live in the Arctic –and freeze to death. We want the Temperate middle.
Same goes for politics. We want order –but not the tyranny of the Nazis. We want freedom –but not the law of the jungle such as we have in our prisons, where if you don’t fight you can end up being someone’s bitch.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:10 am
The Extreme we have seen in US politics for the last 28 years has been the Superrich exerting great power via control of the national conversation. They’ve controlled what politicans have said –and have destroyed politicians like Howard Dean and Cynthia McKinney who didn’t play ball. They OWN the US News Media — and it is harder to finder a bigger pack of deceitful liars in any other institution except Congress and the White House.
The problem is not that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly can put out their views — it’s that they can disseminate deceit without fear of contradiction. It’s that opposing views and evidence are consigned to obscure blogs on the Internet where they reach a small fraction of Rush and Bill’s audience.
Rupert Murdoch doesn’t give a shit re what’s best for the USA. Rupert Murdoch only cares about what’s best for Rupert Murdoch. You would think that the Fox News people should at least wave the Australian Flag, not the US Flag.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Revisionist history,but fortunately, some of us have a memory span that extends more than 20 minutes into the past.
McCain tried to opt out of public financing, but wasn’t allowed to do so, because he had already borrowed against it.
Okay, but he obviously didn’t have a problem with public financing at the time that he was borrowing against it.
In any case, my point is not to prasie John McCain for going on welfare. My point is simply that public financing of the Presidential campaign is not something thatr most politicians, or all Republican politicians, disapprove of. So Matt’s claims to that effect are wrong.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Christ, Will is such a fucking wanker. That’s his function, though- dress up raw power politics as some noble battle of ideas. You just know the dickhead has a book of quotes so he can work those faux-erudite references into every column.
Nah, he employs a quote boy:
“Doonesbury” fans may fondly recall the brief appearance of the character T. Hamilton Tripler, intern for Washington pundit George F. Will. “Quote boy!” Will would call out whenever he needed something from Bartlett’s or beyond. As Higgins, the quote supervisor, explained to Tripler: “We provide the flourishes of erudition so indispensable to a George Will commentary.”
OK, so that’s fictional. But it should be true.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:30 am
While I’m flattered that you guys pay my posts so much attention, let me point out thatI’m not the only one to criticize the Supreme Court. Many people on the left and right have made the argument that when it gets down to it, the Supreme Court is often as arbitrary and capricious in its decrees as a bunch of ill-trained monkeys.
As an Anglo-Catholic I have as much contempt for “Sola Scriptura” as I do for “Sola Constiitutione”. Indeed, there are remarkable similarities between Protestant Fundamentalists and Constitutional fundamentalists like Dilan.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:02 am
hector, i’m not realy familiar with your posts, but many people have made the argument that your work is anti-freedom and thuggish: does that make it so?
November 14th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Howard,
What do you think was NOT arbitrary and capricious about, say, “Dred Scott”?
November 14th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Don’t give me that ‘merely a legal question’ BS. You know, and I know, that the Supreme Court likes to pull rights out of their @$$ like a magician’s rabbit from the hat.
Hector, have you studied jurisprudence? Do you read every Supreme Court opinion? Do you know about the debates between formalism, legal realism, and critical legal studies, the “discrete and insular minorities” Carolene Products footnote and “the Constitution does not enact Mr. Herbert Spenser’s Social Statics”?
Most likely, you know that the Supreme Court has made a few decisions that you don’t agree with substantively (e.g., Roe v. Wade, perhaps Lawrence v. Texas) and don’t see in the Constitution based on a superficial reading. You’ve probably read those opinions and few or no others.
So don’t tell me what “you and I know”. The Supreme Court is filled with extremely smart people who interpret very difficult, vague, broad texts. And there are huge disagreements as to how such broad texts should be interpreted, and how bound we should be to original intention and meaning, versus how cognizant we should be of changes in society.
So no, they don’t pull rights out of their behind all the time. They confront very difficult cases and do the best they can to interpret a very vague document.
And that’s what they did with flag burning. Symbolic speech is a hugely difficult problem, because it ranges from activity with a very minor speech component (such as nude dancing) all the way to things that are essentially speech but are done using symbolism rather than words (wearing a black armband in mourning, or holding a picture of a fetus up at an abortion clinic). The Court has to judge whether the conduct is being regulated for its expressive component.
The point is, the right wing paints a caricature of what is actually a very difficult job. If you want to criticize Roe v. Wade, fine, go ahead, but don’t tell me about pulling rights out of their butts. It is very, very difficult to interpret a vague phrase like “due process of law” or “free exercise of religion” or “cruel and unusual punishment”. This is why when we get some of the greatest minds in the country together, they often disagree about the application of these principles to specific cases.
Hector, really, don’t criticize what you don’t understand.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Enjoyed Don’s opinion on Mr. Will. I got a big smile on my face imagining Pres. Jefferson, with one of his aides patiently holding the reins of his horse, wailing the shit out of Mr. Will with his riding crop, while calling him a ’sniviling cur & not fit for Aaron Burr to wipe his boots on’.
After the election, I’ve got a smile on my face all the time now. Thank’s to the other commentators, especially the one who mentioned our old majority leader Sen. Ford. Sen./VP Alben Barkley was also pretty powerful back in the day.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
duBois:
I didn’t assume that it was principle. (I remember some brouhaha over McCain and borrowing against public financing, I had forgot it by now, though). I had sort of assumed that McCain simply couldn’t raise the same money that he could get by going on the dole.
My point is simply that Matt is wrong to suggest that public funding of elections is an unpopular position, or that nearly all Republicans oppose it. Perhaps that is true for Congressional elections, but not for the Presidential election, which is what Will is talking about.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
To sum up my point:
Matt is acting as if public financing of elections is such a radical idea that Will is crazy to act as if there is any chance of public finanacing occurring in the near future.
My point is that public financing of presidential elections, which is what Will is referring to, is actually the status quo (or at least was until Obama). So Matt is all wet.
November 14th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Dilan Esper,
Just two words for you: “Emanations and Penumbras.”
November 15th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Hector, two words for you: “pretend Crusader”.
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:21 am
tramadol
I want to say – thank you for this!
April 16th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
How are you. Our lives teach us who we are.
I am from Japan and bad know English, give true I wrote the following sentence: “In our company you can reserve airline tickets for international or domestic flights at the best possible rates.”
With respect
, Kentaro.