Dear Glenn,

If you have not already seen it, Fred Barnes has an article on The Weekly Standard website that quotes approvingly Cheney's defense of the lack of transparency in the policy making processes of which he was a central part, especially as they relate to enhancing the power of the presidency to decide how to treat suspected terrorists. What is particularly striking about Barnes' article is that it is framed in terms of whether Cheney felt personally attacked by the criticisms he has received for his role in shaping policy. For example, consider this excerpt from the article:

"Cheney was reminded that during the campaign last fall Biden had called him a "dangerous." Cheney grinned. "I didn't take personally," he said." (errors are from the article)

What Cheney (and Barnes, apparently) fails to even consider is that Biden's remarks were aimed at the office of the VP, not the particular person occupying the office. The failure to note the distinction is symptomatic of the growing tendency not to think of our leaders in legal terms, terms which define the powers of people in their role as government officials, but in terms of personalities who may or may not be offended. As you have written about time and time again, one effect of this tendency is to trade questions over legal authority and responsibility for questions about what kind of person occupies the office. A consequence is that people draw the conclusion that Bush, Cheney, etc. should not be held accountable from the premise that they did what they did out of good intentions. The inference is a non-sequiter, but one people are more inclined to make when assessments of personal character--rather than legal authority--become the basis for deciding questions of responsibility and punishment of government officials

Dear Joan,

You write, "I also believe outdated racial politics will backfire on Democrats and Obama. Every Democrat (and pundit) who said Blagojevich shouldn't appoint a new senator given his indictment should be politically skewered if they changed their mind upon the appointment of an African-American senior statesman -- including Burris and Obama, frankly, who both urged Blagojevich to avoid that course last month."

Urging that Blagojevich's appointment be seated even when you said Blagojevich should not make an appointment does not imply that you have changed your mind about whether Blagojevich should have made an appointment. I suspect Obama still believes that Burris should not have been appointed, but given that he was, he should be seated (given the thin argument for not seating him). I don't see Obama or any other Democratic senator suggesting that, since Burris is black, it was not a mistake for Blagojevich to make an appointment.

Remember those halcyon days after the Monica Lewinsky affair broke? I thought at the time that, whatever else President Clinton was doing with his evenings after the scandal broke, he sure wasn't cheating on Hillary. This leads me to believe that the initial reaction to Blagojevich's scandal--any appointment he makes would be tainted--was dead wrong. First of all, let's think about what the concern would or should be if he made an appointment. Surely it would be that the person he appointed had engaged in some shady practices. But given Blago's predicament, we can be assured that this would have been practically impossible. In fact, it is a safe bet to say that the chances of the person Blago picked being corrupt were actually lowered by the scandal, not increased.

There is a well known, controversial, but widely defended moral principle (the doctrine of double effect) that says, roughly, that it is sometimes justifiable for an agent to perform an action that has foreseeable negative consequences if the intention of the action be for something good. So, for example, there is supposed to be an important moral difference between attacking a military target (the intention is to destroy the military target; let's assume, for the sake of argument, that eradicating Hamas forces is acceptable) while knowing that such an attack will likely kill 100 civilians (a foreseeable, but non-intended, outcome) and attacking the 100 civilians (the intention is to kill the civilians). Let's suppose that there is some truth to the distinction; can we understand Friedman's position in light of it? It's not clear to me that we can. If Friedman had said that the aim of Israel was to eradicate Hamas, that eradicating Hamas would have the unintended but forseeable consequence of inflicting property damage and civilian deaths, and that that consequence would have the consequence of "educating" the civilians of Gaza, then perhaps he/Israel would have some moral cover. But he does not characterize the aims that way. Rather, it seems he is saying that the goal of the attacks is to inflict this civilian damage--it is the intention, carried out by targeting combatants. In other words, the strategy seems to be, "Let's attack Hamas forces as a means to achieve the end of civilian casualities." If that's right, then the DDE provides little moral cover.

Dear Glenn,

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about the connection between the almost exceptionless support for Israel by our elected officials and beltway media types and the phenomenon of concision, of which you spoke last month in your blog. My sense is that the connection is fairly strong, and that the reason we do not hear more criticism of Israel is that it goes against the received political wisdom and would actually require more than sound-bytes and op-ed pieces to begin to look plausible in the eyes of many. In effect, the mainstream formats for discussing this issue make criticizing Israel practically impossible (without coming across as anti-Semitic or a terrorist sympathizer).