Letters to the Editor
Amity
Published Letters: 1110 Editor's Choice: 106
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powersjq on Schmitt, Obama, and theory of change
[Read the article: Listening to Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The link that powersjq (and maybe others?) posted is well worth reading (and citing again):
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_theory_of_change_primary
Mark Schmitt's analysis is very smart, but it fails to address one major criticism of Obama's campaign philosophy, which is his readiness to face the national Republican smear machine. There is an aspect of the criticism of Obama as "too nice" which reflects that concrete concern, rather than more abstract questions about change theory.
Schmitt himself seems subject to the same criticism — he seems to take for granted that Obama will not elicit the same kind of frenzied right-wing hatred that Clinton does, but he offers no basis for believing that. It's the single most glaring hole that I can see in his defense of Obama as a pragmatist.
Reach back and remember the 1992 campaign. The degree of viciousness to which the Clintons, and Hillary in particular, were subject was jaw-dropping in its immediacy. Clinton hatred emerged fully armed from the forehead of the national Republican machine, and since that time there's no evidence to suggest that it's gotten any more intense. It's always been this bad.
So why should we believe that Barack Obama will not instantly become the target of an equally frenzied set of hate-memes, if and when that becomes a necessity for the Republican machine? Maybe there are reasons to think so (does Obama have a better relationship with the press, perhaps?) but if there aren't, then all of Schmitt's predictions about how Obama's softer coattails will help Senate Democrats will turn out to have, indeed, been overly audacious in their hope.
A progressive power block will emerge in the Senate this year if and only if progressives take each fight as it is, state by state and district by district. Clinton-hate will prove symptomatic, not causal, in its relationship to conservative fervor.
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Social, not cultural?
[Read the article: Made in China: The Bible]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The report to which Andrew Leonard links has a few interesting nuggets: for instance, although it asserts that the sheer number of bloggers obviously makes blogging an important channel for people to receive information, half of the blogs in question are concerned with "inner monologues," less than a quarter of readers regard blogs as credible sources of information about the world, and a very small number of people who don't already have blogs intend to start one.
My interpretation of the findings is that blogging in China (as elsewhere) is proving to be more of a personal activity than a cultural one.
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Huge success
[Read the article: The Bush legacy: No fat for the lean years]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]From a certain point of view, Bush's fiscal policy has been a huge success. A focused, efficient military operation (Clinton's plan for the Taliban) with little opportunity for contract dollars was moved a thousand miles to Iraq and reconceived as a massive, capital-intensive permanent deployment whose strategic doctrine is essentially whatever involves the most, and most lavish, construction. Actual tactical considerations take a back seat to what is effectively the same logic that leads bankers to require mortgage-holders to live in overbuilt houses. Haliburton and its ilk have enjoyed staggeringly unprecedented war profits.
And of course everything about federal spending has followed suit — elaborate and absurd inefficiencies as an excuse to give money to favored constituents, and when no longer possible to do directly, then indirectly on the policy level, by allowing financial interests to operate the economy in very inefficient ways to their own advantage.
If Bush's people were smarter, they doubtless would have found ways to be even more precise about whose mouths the funnel leads to. I'm sure they would have preferred if rich but traitorous Americans like Warren Buffett, Al Gore, or George Soros could somehow be stripped of their assets and denied further access to wealth.
But you know, having succeeded so massively in their 8 year project, it's hard to imagine that they feel they have too much to complain about. Was it Gerhard Schroeder who described US fiscal policy under Bush as "more like looting"?