Apr 30th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Smearing Cass Sunstein
Cass Sunstein is a brilliant progressive lawyer whose views on regulation are, if anything, somewhat more conservative than those of most Democrats. He’s friendly to cost-benefit analysis, and a proponent of the idea that public policy should try to “nudge” people as an alternative to more heavy-handed intervention. Barack Obama has nominated him to head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where that’s what he’ll be working on.
Naturally, elements on the right have embarked on a dishonest smear campaign. Julian Sanchez has the details.
29 Responses to “Smearing Cass Sunstein”
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April 30th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Cass Sunstein is a moron who doesn’t deserve the respect of progressives. He’s wrong on just about everything, including investigating or prosecuting torture. He wrote a whole book intimating that the internet was bad for democracy, but refused to say we should do anything about it. In the early 90s, he tried to tell all the post soviet states that they absolutely must not under any circumstances whatsoever include social and economic rights in their constitutions. Then he changed his mind and wrote a book in which he tried to argue that our constitution can be read to encompass such rights. (Sorry folks, but it can’t.)
I really don’t understand why anyone listens to him. He’s a law professor–they’re the Kansas City Royals of academics: sure, they’re a major league squad, but no one really knows why. Law professors are accountable to no one but law students at other universities. There are no academic standards, no professional standards, and no method. The difference between law professors and professional philosophers is that philosophers know that they shouldn’t actually be kings.
Fuck Cass Sunstein.
April 30th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
“brilliant progressive lawyer.”
What a joke.
Let’s see:
-Believes Social Security is insolvent
-Described John Yoo as a “a very interesting and provocative scholar” who “doesn’t deserve the demonization to which he has been subject.”
-Per his Nudge “economics” work, he subscribes to the silly theoretical promise of “paternal libertarianism” as the best guide for governance.
- He opposes any prosecution of Bush admin officials for spying, torture or illegal detention
-Supported Bush administration use – on supposed legal grounds – of military commissions to indefinitely detain suspected terrorist. Which has since been legally rejected by the Hamdan decision
-Supported granting retroactive immunity to those implicated in warantless wiretapping
-Suggested that FISA legal authority was ambiguous and thus the President’s “interpretation” was potentially meritorious
At the end of the day, Cass Sunstein is what you might call a TNR liberal. He has very flimsy principles regarding the rule of law and a unreconstructed neoliberals viewpoint of economics. He churns out neat sounding yet empty work that excites people who, well, think like him.
On the law, his views are at best galling and he is clearly a believer in the unitary executive and feels no need to adhere to the constitution. Look at his view on detention and its supposed legal precepts, then tell me I am wrong.
I would say over the last 10 years he has been exposed as a hack who loves the limelight and lines up squarely behind power.
Im not sure what a “progressive” is but he surely is not it.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Fuck Cass Sunstein:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/27/112259/40
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/19/law/index.html
This country needs a Democratic Alberto Gonzales like it needs more swine flu.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Thanks Jeff, that’s much better than what I managed to get out.
If there is any light here, it’s that Sunstein is being appointed to this position and not the Supreme Court. He would be a disastrous pick. Anthony Kennedy with fewer scruples.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I dunno, Glenn Greenwald rants about him every once in a while. In particular, Sunstein doesn’t think that torturers should be prosecuted, and I get the impression greenwald considers him part of the incestuous beltway circle jerk. Maybe you could explain why you think he’s that great, and why greenwald is wrong, rather then simply leaping to his defense.
Sensible centrists usually say that when they are attacked by both the right and the left, they’re doing something right. In fact, it usually just means they’re huge fuckups.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
-believes SS is insolvent
-backed military commissions and detention, contra Hamdan
-unreconstructed neoliberal who posits libertarian paternalism as the governance of the future
-Believes John Yoo is a very interesting and provocative scholar undeserving of any demonization
-Opposes the prosecution of bush admin officials for detention, wiretapping or torture
-Supported retroactive immunity for warantless wiretappers
This guy is TNR liberal who loves the limelight and always sides with the powerful. If anything, the last ten years has exposed him as a hack with no firm legal or economic principal. He is a very unsurprising product of U of C.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
progressive lawyer
You really need to look more closely at him.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Sorry for the double post. Original entry was supposedly denied by the web administrator.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
It might have been Jennifer Palmieri.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I concur that jeff put out a very good post pointing out how calling Sunstein a “brilliant progressive lawyer” is a ridiculous statement.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
He’s a law professor, but hardly a lawyer. Also, he’s not progressive; he’s a douchebag.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
I would say over the last 10 years he has been exposed as a hack who loves the limelight and lines up squarely behind power.
I would say over the last 10 years he has been exposed as a hack who loves the limelight and lines up squarely behind Power.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Jeff: most of those seem pretty much in line with the current administration’s official policies.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Jeff,
What does that list have to do with the position he’s nominated for.
April 30th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
While I agree that sometimes Sunstein is kinda a squishy in terms of how far to the left he is, he is undoubtedly brilliant, and, as a former student, I can say he is really just a phenomenally nice person (albeit socially a bit off, much like many top law professors). He’s truly a mensch, and it’s pretty despicable anyone would start a smear campaign against him.
April 30th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I hear that Samantha Power likes to smear Cass Sunstein.
April 30th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Mike: I would not disagree. I was, however, commenting on his status as a “brilliant liberal lawyer.”
Micheline: I was not commenting on his role at OIRA. I do, nonetheless, believe that Sunstein’s theoretical machinations for our regulatory framework- which this position esentially oversees – is troublesome. He does understand the regulatory apparatus but may be an impediment to the sort of regulation many of us “progressives” want to see. He has, in his work on regs, insisted on a less than democratic fashion for the process.
Goldberg: I dont much care if he is a “nice” person; it has no bearing on his politics.
April 30th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
“Brilliant” is a matter of opinion.
“Progressive” is utter bullshit.
Sunstein is a lawyer of course.
You hasve no idea what you are talking about.
April 30th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
I haven’t read Republic 2.0 but the Princeton site says the book warns against echo chambers and becoming cocooned on the Internet. The era of dialogue is over though. There is no point dialoguing with Glen Reynolds or Michelle Malkin or Hugh Hewitt or Atlas Shrugs. One studies such people from afar but dialoguing with such people is ludicrous. These people are political operatives of the Rovian type. This call for dialogue isn’t all that helpful. A full picture of the world is paramount but a way not to get a full picture of the world is to dialogue with Glen Reynolds or Michelle Malkin or Hugh Hewitt etc.
April 30th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
As others have pointed out, Sunstein is one of those ostensible liberals who somehow end up up the non-liberal side of virtually every issue. I was not happy that he was an Obama advisor or that he was slected to join the administration (unfortunately, that goes for the bulk of Obama’s appointments). While I don’t like Rethug lies, and they always should be pointed out and pushed back even in this case. But don’t ask me to feel sympathy for Sunstein, because I can’t.
April 30th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
This is not the first time President Obama has disappointed me and I am slowly beginning to wonder why I even bothered to vote. He is appointing people with some of the same idiotic thought processes that McCain would have appointed. Now we have another fucknut to endure and he is supposedly on our team. Ha! That is a laugh.
April 30th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Ron, because the alternative is much worse.
Dude’s not liked by the left, but hey people, take a look at his new job title, take a deep breath and chill a bit.
April 30th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Sunstein has written brilliantly on occasion, and espouses progressive views on occasion, but neither is really his norm.
April 30th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
“brilliant progressive lawyer…” [cough. spew]
This is irony, right? Please tell me this is irony.
April 30th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Sunstein is one of those phony progressives who always manages to support reactionaries and their policies. No progressives should help him.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
FWIW, the linked Julian Sanchez piece is mostly about how bat-shit crazy WND’s claims are about how Cass Sunstein will be a new God, outlawing guns and hunting and creating any regulation he wants whole cloth, than it is about Cass Sunstein being awesome.
In fact, the linked piece is not all that complimentary of Sunstein.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
I wasn’t sure if anyone actually read the World Net Daily. For lack of a better reference, I checked their Alexa rank:
visitors as percent of global Internet users
thinkprogress.org: 0.0109%
worldnetdaily.com: 0.0420%
drudgereport.com: 0.1653%
huffingtonpost.com: 0.1924%
Alexa has no way of determining the demographic of the viewers. Too bad.
May 1st, 2009 at 9:01 am
The Richard Cohen of law professors. But at least Nudge is a handy example of how lame behavioral economics can be, the same way that the Lexus and the Olive Tree tells us useful things about advocacy of globalization.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I agree that whether he is a good person has no bearing on his politics (from what I know, Justice Roberts is a very nice person). So, I should probably clarify. I guess what I mean to say is that, based on my personal interactions with the man, these claims are even more baseless (I took his “behavioral economics and the law” seminar just about the same time he was writing about reinforcing norms and the internet).