Matt Yglesias

The Celebrity Party

Ross Douthat observes that Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee emerged from the 2008 election as the two conservative figures with some charisma and enthusiastic followers, but “both had the same Achilles’ heel: They seemed unready for high office, and owed their appeal more to personality than to substance.”

This meant that both faced the same post-election choice. Did they want to take their newfound eminence seriously? Or did they want to cash in on their celebrity?

For Palin, the serious path required at least serving out her term as governor before returning to the national stage. For Huckabee, it could have involved anything from starting a think tank to running for the Senate in 2010. For both, it would have meant wedding their political identity to ideas as well as attitudes.

I think this is all pretty much right. And as Douthat goes on to argue, there are a number of right-of-center policy wonks who’ve tried to articulate some kind of meaningful response to the nation’s problems, only to be ignored. But is he right that “there are substantial political rewards awaiting the politician who becomes the voice of an intellectually vigorous conservatism?” I’d like to think he is. But it also seems to me that going all the way back to the rise of George W. Bush in 1999 we’ve seen the conservative movement tending to fetishize stupidity and put forward the notion that there’s something actually un-American about being thoughtful, having respect for scholarship, or incorporating any kind of nuance into your discussion.

9/11 served to intensify this and for a while turned it into a mainstream attitude. The idea that the country was just kind of screwed to have a dim bulb in office amidst a national crisis was too much to handle, so instead The New York Times started running articles saying “many Democrats who once dismissed Mr. Bush as too naive and too dependent on advisers to steer the United States through an international crisis are now praising his and his advisers’ performance. Some are even privately expressing satisfaction that Mr. Gore, who tried to make his foreign affairs experience an issue in the campaign, did not win.” That moment has, fortunately, waned somewhat in the mainstream. But not, I think, in the conservative movement.

Palin Getting Middle East Policy Advice from Billy and Franklin Graham

Sarah Palin recently explained that Israel’s illegal settlements should be expanded “because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” In my own critique of that statement I focused on the weird theory that population growth requires territorial expansion (almost every country’s population is growing, after all) but she also seemed to articulate the view that Jewish immigration to Israel is about to accelerate. I wrote that off as possibly poor wording, but Jeffrey Goldberg had some questions:

“More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel”? Who, exactly? Is this her analysis of Jewish demography? Is there a sudden upsurge in Zionist sentiment among American Jews, the only sizable Jewish community left outside of Israel? Or is this an indication that Palin buys into creepy End-Times thinking, in which the ingathering of the Jews, and their mass death, presage the return of Christ? Inquiring minds want to know.

This story about Palin’s meeting with Billy and Franklin Graham tends to bolster the End-Times possibility:

The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate told Billy Graham about how she came to faith in God as a girl in Bible camp.

She quizzed him on the presidents he’s known and wanted his take on what the Bible says about Israel, Iran and Iraq, Franklin Graham reported.

I don’t want to make too big a deal about this, but given the tendency of U.S. politicians to avowedly claim religious grounding for their political beliefs I do think somewhat more scrutiny needs to be given to the issue of the extent to which evangelical figures are letting their policy views be driven by apocalyptic scenarios. John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, for example, supports preventive military strikes on Iran that he believes will lead to Israel’s destruction at the hands of a Russo-Arab alliance.

At any rate, Franklin Graham’s views on the subject are clear and disturbing:

In case there was any doubt left about evangelical views of Islam, Billy Graham’s son, the Rev Franklin Graham, stated that Islam “is a very evil and wicked religion.” […]

Yet the millennialist Christian beliefs and goals differ not only from those of mainstream Israelis, they also differ starkly from the goals of even the most militant Israeli expansionists. Fundamentalist Christians believe that the Jews will either convert to Christianity or perish in the end times. Hence the Middle East peace plan suggested by Rev Franklin Graham, Billy’s son: Muslims and Jews alike should try “surrendering their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and having their hearts changed by the Holy Spirit.”

Unfortunately, the government of Israel seems intent on pursuing a path that’s bound to over time alienate the liberal majority among diaspora Jews and instead leave it more dependent on these kind of people.

Sarah Palin’s Qualifications

The most ridiculous thing about Sarah Palin’s ongoing quest for national office is that she has a really pathetic ability to answer basic questions. Bill O’Reilly wants to know if she thinks she’s qualified to be president:

I believe that I am because I have common sense, and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the kind of a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and a fact resume that’s based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I’m not saying that has to be me.

That’s awful!

How about: I know I don’t have as much experience in office as a lot of other politicians, but this country has never had a tradition of electing long-time Washington hands and I think that in America the strength of ideas matters more than your longevity. Of course that would require her to develop some ideas, but that’s a different problem.

For the record, though, I think we should take the probability of her becoming president at least somewhat seriously. She probably won’t win the GOP nomination (the odds of any particular individual winning are < 0.5) and my guess is that by 2012 the economy will be growing nicely and Obama will be re-elected no matter what. But if she does get the nomination and the economic fundamentals aren’t good then I don’t think anyone should count on her absurd persona bailing the Democrats out. Incumbents win when the economy is improving. When it’s not, they lose.

The Fact-Check Fetish

In addition to displaying clear ignorance, on the campaign trail last year Sarah Palin demonstrated a habit of lying. Consequently, it makes sense that some media organization decided to scrutinize her book for accuracy. It seems pretty clear, however, (see Greg Marx) that the Associated Press’ big Going Rogue fact check is itself a bust.

This is perhaps a good time to note that there’s something a bit weird about the whole fact-check conceit. If you’ve ever written for a magazine that does a fact-checking process, you’ll know that the point of fact-checking is really to prevent a certain kind of silly inadvertent error. I remember one time at the American Prospect where I turned in a draft that had a typo that wound up misstating some funds by a factor of ten. For an Atlantic piece one time I was waxing narrative and described a road as “brand new” for some reason, then turned out to have no really clear basis for saying that, but the checking process revealed that it really was new. Another time I think I called a 1950s-era Senator a Democrat when he was an independent who caucused with Democrats or something. Part of what makes quality magazines quality magazines and not blogs is that they put in the time to fix this kind of stuff. From a writer’s perspective, it’s annoying. From a reader’s perspective, it’s nice that it’s done.

But from the overall perspective of getting it right or wrong on the big issues checkable facts are totally useless. Robert Kaplan’s 2005 Atlantic story “How We Would Fight China” is insane and irresponsible, but impeccable from a fact-checking standpoint. An assertion like “we need to be prepared at any time to fight, say, a conventional war against North Korea or an unconventional counterinsurgency battle against a Chinese-backed rogue island-state” isn’t a factual error but it is a display of incredibly poor judgment and that’s considerably more important than quibbling over precise dates.

What that means, however, is that if you want a real critique of Going Rogue you need to get a writer to deploy some judgment and interpretation and critique the ideas, not just pretend to do a “fact check.” Thus, for example, something like Annie Lowery’s review for Foreign Policy provides real value. Her conclusion, “Ultimately, Going Rogue goes rogue as a political memoir, demonstrating what can only be described as a persistent and guileless lack of knowledge of even basic foreign-policy or domestic political issues” is far more damning than anything a fact-check could provide.

The Soviet Union Was a Real Empire, And Really Bad Too

Warsaw Pact invasion of Prague, 1968

I’ve been trying to stay out of the Sarah Palin blogging. But though there’s a lot to be said about her, the really important thing is that for a prospective national leader she has terrifyingly little grasp of public policy issues. For example, take this curious remark from a softball interview with National Review:

“The term I used to describe the panel making these decisions should not be taken literally,” says Palin. The phrase is “a lot like when President Reagan used to refer to the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire.’ He got his point across. He got people thinking and researching what he was talking about. It was quite effective. Same thing with the ‘death panels.’ I would characterize them like that again, in a heartbeat.”

This is a reminder that faced with anything other than a bending-over-backwards-to-not-embarrass-her interview, Palin can’t get through the easiest questions without humiliating herself. Dave Weigel suggests the obvious followup: “Which part of ‘evil empire’ was not literal?”

The Soviet Union was an honest-to-god literal empire and Reagan was calling it evil. Not metaphorically evil. Evil. That was the point. To show that he wasn’t going to let the practicalities of détente stop him from calling it like it is. And this isn’t just a random point of history, it’s relevant to an ongoing political and policy controversy about the merits of putting “moral clarity” at the center of your approach to dealing with autocratic regimes.

Early 2012 Polling

Gallup takes an early look at potential Republican contenders for 2012. Mike Huckabee, who doesn’t get the press coverage of a Sarah Palin, seems to be in the best shape:

As general election contenders, however, this crew all seems to be in bad shape:

Of course what looking at these polls doesn’t tell you is whether the answers to these questions this far out have any real predictive value. My guess would be that the answer is no, and that if Huckabee became the Republican nominee and the economy continues to be in bad shape that he’d win notwithstanding the tendency of a majority of Americans to say they wouldn’t even consider voting for him. That said, this definitely does underscore the basic fact that much as the conservative base may love Sarah Palin, the broader public hates her. Maybe—maybe—a Palin nomination would break the rule that the fundamentals matter most to presidential election outcomes.

Cynicism and Greed Stand in the Way of Sarah Palin’s Political Aspirations

The hard-right loves Sarah Palin and wants her to be president, but she really just wants to cash in:

A conservative Iowa group’s effort to lure Sarah Palin to its banquet next month has had an unintended effect: Rather than exciting conservatives about the prospect of a visit from the former Alaska governor, the group’s plan to raise a six-figure sum to bring her to the state has GOP activists recoiling at the thought of paying to land a politician’s speaking appearance.

The Iowa Family Policy Center’s effort to cobble together $100,000 for Palin would represent a striking departure from customary practice in the first-in-the-nation state, these Republicans say, noting that a generation of White House hopefuls has paid their own way to boost their party and presidential ambitions.

I think the most under-discussed part of the GQR focus group on how self-identified conservative Republicans have weird ideas is the Sarah Palin stuff: “Asked what their party needs to reinvigorate itself and close the gap between its leaders and its rank and file, these conservative Republicans are almost unanimous in their solution – new leadership. And although they expressed some hope for a variety of names (Gingrich, Romney, Huckabee, Jindal), there was only one figure who truly excited them and created real passion – Sarah Palin.”

Class and Sarah Palin

Ross Douthat on Sarah Palin:

That last statistic is a crucial one. Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

I think the implicit idea here that the real class struggle in the United States is between graduates of fancy colleges and graduates of less-fancy colleges is pretty blinkered. Consider the Census Department’s information on educational attainment in the United States of America:

As you can see, less than a third of the population has a bachelor’s degree. But both of Sarah Palin’s parents belong to that educational upper class. And so does Palin herself. Meanwhile, I think it’s telling that Douthat’s idea of a counterpoint to Obama’s Ivy pedigree is Palin rather than, say, Joe Biden of the University of Delaware and the Syracuse University College of Law. Biden strikes me as an excellent example of the fact that a person can attend some not-so-fancy universities and yet be both enormously successful and widely acknowledged to be a smart person with a command of the issues. Palin, by contrast, is someone who Douthat acknowledges needs more time “to bone up on the issues.”

And that is the key to people’s complaint with Palin; not that she attended North Idaho College but that she ran for Vice President and spoke out on a range of issues without seeming to understand any of them. That’s a big deal, and it’s not mere snobbery to point out that it’s a big deal.

Meanwhile, John Sides points out that educational attainment has relatively little impact on public approval of Palin:

When you consider that college graduates and people without bachelor’s degrees typically disagree on political issues, there’s nothing noteworthy about this rather small gap. College graduates are somewhat less conservative on culture war issues than non-graduates, so you would expect them to be less friendly to cultural conservative politicians irrespective of their personal qualities.

History’s Greatest Monster

Phoebe Connelly says what’s on everyone’s mind: “But really, isn’t the real takeaway that Palin doesn’t want to give the press freedom to enjoy a patriotic 4th merrily grilling without the distraction of our Blackberries?”

I think this is the aspect of Palin’s career that I respect most. Politicians whining about media elites are a dime a dozen, especially on the right, but Palin really put her money where her mouth is and found a way to disrupt a whole bunch of people’s vacations. It’s a pretty solid plan.

The Case Against The Case Against Empathy

Dahlia Lithwick had a great piece earlier this week knocking down the ridiculous notion that seeking Supreme Court justices with empathy is “code” or somehow insidious:

Now, if the GOP really wants to run out on a rail anyone with empathy or anyone who values it, far be it from me to object. Democrats will be more than happy to feel their pain. But to the extent that the debate over empathy may shape every Supreme Court discussion we are going to have this summer, let’s just be clear that the opposite of empathy isn’t rigor. It’s pretty close to solipsism, or the certain conviction that everything you’ll ever need to know about judging you learned from your own fine self.

Empathy is not a substitute for legal judgment or policy expertise. But I do think it’s a crucially important political value. I think back to the 2008 campaign when Sarah Palin was running as a hard-core conservative who believed in low taxes, low spending, and therefore low levels of government services. Except for “special needs” children. Why? Well, because as the parent of a special needs child herself, she understood the issues facing such families and felt a strong desire to help them out.

But what about children whose needs weren’t “special” but whose families just didn’t have that much money? Palin wanted a “spending freeze” for them. No food stamps. No S-CHIP expansion. Per capita cuts in title one funding for schools. Fewer Section 8 housing vouchers. No empathy.