The Age of Reason

America didn't invent Groundhog Day -- this article blames the Germans, though for them any "hibernating animal" would do in the old days -- but I'm sure we persist in the ritual with greater devotion than any European nation. I grant that we've gotten a decent comedy movie out of it, but that aside, isn't anyone embarrassed by all this attention to a dumb creature that doesn't know the significance of its acts? I can understand why Pennsylvanians promote the concept, since it means money to them from tourists, but why does the rest of the country indulge them? Why do TV meteorologists indulge the superstition when it makes them look like cretins? Perhaps it's a mass expression of the great craving for myth that apologists for religion are always talking about, though they don't talk about this one specifically. I don't want to be too hard on poor Phil the Groundhog or his ancestors, but when people attend so religiously to such an oracle, does it surprise you that people question global warming? Perhaps they should ask Phil. He's likely to give anyone the answer he or she desires.

Way to Vet, Obama! (ongoing?)

Now we have former Senator Daschle apologizing to his former peers and to the public for failing to pay taxes to an extent that makes Secretary Geithner's indiscretions look modest. While Daschle's nomination to Health & Human Services isn't as great an insult to the collective intelligence as Geithner's appointment to the Treasury Department, we do want people in these posts who can keep track of money and where it's meant to go. The President isn't deterred from pushing Daschle on the Senate, which gives you a hint on how unseriously people in high places take these errors. I suppose that any real attempt to vet Daschle took second place to Obama's determination to reward an early supporter of his campaign. The vetting team supposedly knew about Daschle's excessive claim of charitable deductions before Obama named him for the HHS job, while the delinquent payments emerged later. But as they did, the Senate will most likely give Daschle a pass as a former member of their club, despite some predictable Republican grandstanding. What the public needs is an independent entity that perpetually vets all present and former members of Congress, so that scandals like these don't take us by surprise and future Geithners and Daschles could be disqualified in the public mind before a president dared nominate them. Ideally it would be a public but non-governmental entity, funded by subscriptions rather than a corporate bankroll, with access to tax records through the Freedom of Information Act. Perhaps something like this already exists or is struggling to be born, but something more needs to be done to, at the very least, shame politicians into paying their taxes fully and correctly and setting a proper example for the rest of us.

Michael Steele: the Anti-Obama?

After pressuring the incumbent Bushite to withdraw his candidacy for re-election, the Republican National Committee has elected Michael Steele, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland, as its chairman. It is probably no coincidence that this moment of history sees the Party of Lincoln select its first-ever black chair. While The American Conservative saw nothing to distinguish Steele from the other Reagan idolaters, the Grand Olds clearly intend to send a message by selecting him as their leader: Look how far we've come as a country, so that even a black man now embraces our every-man-for-himself philosophy!

Oh, I forgot. They call it "personal responsibility." But between you and me, that's what we call a euphemism, which is a fancy way of blaming workers when their jobs go away and poor suckers when the economy crashes. It's a talent that Mr. Steele will find more useful than licking Reagan's marble toes, but I'll admit that that'll probably come in handy, too. May he reign in interesting times.

Global Hot Spot.

Residents of Madagascar are worried by violent rioting that followed the government's closure of an opposition TV station. Protesters retaliated by attacking a government station and other facilities, according to the Associated Press. Forty-three people have been killed during the rioting, which the government hopes to calm with promises of reopening the dissident station, which is owned by the mayor of the nation's capital, Antananarivo.

The rioting follows a powerful cyclone that has reportedly displaced thousands of people and put the population as a whole on edge. Conditions have exacerbated the power struggle between the president and the media mogul, who offended the leader by broadcasting an interview with an exiled former leader. The president, Mark Ravalomanana, took power in what looks like a "color" revolution after he claimed victory in a 2001 vote despite election officials ordering a runoff. Ravalomanana has since been re-elected and has survived a coup attempt. The mogul, Andy Rajoelina, has strong support in his city but is supposedly being undermined by his state government. A pro-Rajoelina Wikipedia entry claims that the government's pretext for closing his station was flimsy, since other channels showed footage of the same controversial interview with the man Ravalomanana defeated for the presidency.

I honestly find this interesting, and I think more people ought to notice political crises in foreign lands, and not just when the U.S. has interests involved. I credit the local paper with running even a short item on the conflict. But to be just as honest, I thought it might be funny to run the story along with the cartoon picture. I've never seen the movies, so I always wondered what the characters were scared of -- and now I know.

The Senate: New York Gets It.

The Associated Press reports the results of a poll conducted by Siena College in which 65 percent of responding voters said they want New York State law changed so that U.S. Senate vacancies are filled by special elections rather than appointments by the governor. It's unlikely that anyone asked people the same question before the Blagojevich-Burris and Paterson-Kennedy-Gillibrand comedies, but it would be interesting to see how many people have only recently embraced the special election idea. It wouldn't surprise me if most people were only just learning that governors had this power in most states.

Critics of special elections complain about the cost. They are best answered by Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, a Republican who is now favored to win Senator Gillibrand's former congressional seat and who, on this issue at least, is the opposite of a conservative. Asked about estimates that special elections would cost up to $20,000,000, Tedisco told the AP that "it's ludicrous to allow cost to deter politicians from pushing elections over appointments." Mocking the logic of the critics, he suggests: "Let's eliminate all the elections and we'll save a ton of money. In fact, let's take our voting machines and sell them on eBay to a state that has real democracy."

Should he be elected, I hope Tedisco will support the Constitutional amendment that Senator Feingold intends to introduce. That would take the matter out of state hands, but since it's basically the same idea I don't see why anyone would object to it on states-rights grounds. Some may object on I-trust-my-governor grounds, or for the penny-pinching reasons mentioned above, but that would just be dumb.

Blagojevich: You're All Guilty!

I'm still waiting for a complete transcript of the Illinois governor's closing statement to be posted somewhere. For now, I have to make do with stories like this one with selected quotes. Blagojevich's main argument remains that he has done nothing wrong -- never actually negotiated a "sale" of the U.S. Senate seat and neither solicited nor accepted any bribe or gift in return for it. The secondary argument with which he hopes to shame the legislators into acquitting him is his assertion that his statements amount to no more than the horse-trading that everyone else does as part of normal political business. They are things that "all of us in politics do in order to run campaigns and win elections." He is probably not wrong about this, except maybe for the "all of us" part, but his breach of decorum in being so blatant about it is probably impeachable, or at least censurable, in its own right. His is ultimately an offense against etiquette (or honor, if you choose), which may explain why he has so few defenders when otherwise his party might rally around him. Is such an offense enough to cost him his job? Practically speaking, the answer is probably yes, since I doubt he could appeal to the people to get it back if he loses it now. A certain reputation has been stamped on him that won't wash off easily. Is it fair? Perhaps not, but if fairness requires Illinois to keep him in office after all because others have gotten away with like deeds, then fairness is a poor guide to justice.

Russ Feingold is the man!

Finally, after the debacles in Illinois and New York, a U.S. Senator has stood up to say that it's time for a change. Senator Feingold, who just happens to chair the Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, has announced that he will introduce a constitutional amendment to take the power of senatorial replacement out of the hands of governors. He explains it pretty succinctly himself. I'm also listening to him explain it to Rachel Maddow as I write. Let's let him live up to his promise and put it in writing, and then lean on our Senators to vote for the thing. Between this and voting against Secretary Geithner, Feingold gets much respect here. Give him some yourselves.

What is Snark?

The public sphere suffers from a plague of snarkiness, according to the diagnosis of David Denby, a movie critic for The New Yorker who has written a slim but learned denunciation of this alleged tendency of our culture. After approximately 120 pages, it becomes apparent that Denby, for all his erudition, does not know snark, but does know what he doesn't like.


In Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, and It's Ruining Our Conversation, Denby traces the antecedents of snark back to the drinking poets of ancient Greece, the first authors (to our knowledge) to make an art out of insult, and to Juvenal, the satirist of classical Rome. The geneaology runs through Alexander Pope's Dunciad and the 20th century satirical magazines Private Eye and Spy before reaching the present day, when snark runs rampant at every level of culture, from the New York Times to gossipy websites like JuicyCampus. The word snark itself is a nonsense syllable coined by Lewis Carroll for his mock-epic poem, The Hunting of the Snark. It seems to have acquired its modern meaning of a certain snideness without much reference to Carroll, though Denby tries to equate the Carroll snark's ability to annihilate hunters with the reputed desire of some snarky writers that the targets of their spleen disappear from the face of the earth.


So what distinguishes snark? Midway through the book Denby proclaims nine principles of snark, which I paraphrase here: 1. Attack without reason; 2. Appeal to common, hackneyed prejudices; 3. Use media references and old jokes to attack; 4. Assume all negative info to be true; 5.Take no responsibility for accuracy; 6. Caricature everyone; 7. Put celebrities through a cycle of adoration followed by loathing; 8. Attack anything old; 9.Attack overpriced restaurants.


I'm not sure if all these cohere into in a systematic style, but part of Denby's complaint is that snark lacks style. It is lazy in practice, going consistently for the lowest common denominator of invective. Certain writers are not snarky, no matter how vicious they are in their criticism, because style redeems them. H.L. Mencken is an example of a writer whose style elevates him above snark, while Maureen Dowd is identified as the definitive practitioner of snark. Denby's rap against Dowd is that she seems to believe in nothing and assumes that no one else does. He makes her a scapegoat for Al Gore's defeat in the 2000 presidential election, an occasion when Gore was definitely victimized by an attitude that could be called snarky. Gore and Hilary Clinton are the primary victims of snark in Denby's account, and I got the sense that Denby's objections to snark are linked to a higher regard for Secretary Clinton than many other people have. But he describes something real when denouncing the tendency to dismiss idealism as a disguise for power grabbing. As for Dowd, her recent bootlicking on behalf of Caroline Kennedy, which I've discussed recently, throws into question Denby's characterization of her as some glib nihilist. If she later insults Caroline, however, Denby's thesis might be partially proved.

Denby gives us enough information to speculate for ourselves on the existence and essence of snark. For me, the most telling passage appears on page 84: "American life is a viciously competitive race, in which every ego has to fight for a limited amount of oxygen. In that atmosphere, then, adoration of another is experienced as a loss, a wound. Reduced in some way, we want to hit back." He's talking about the particular phenomena of snarkiness toward celebrities, but I think he's on to something bigger. Snark, as he describes it, flourishes on the internet, where to his somewhat unjustified chagrin it's all too easy to post anonymous comments on practically anything. The internet, along with cable TV, is creating the global village of some futurists' wildest dreams. For some people, the world is being transformed to one big schoolyard or water cooler spot in the office. Everyone and everything is a subject for gossip, and for some people, everyone is a potential competitor. Just as the bully asserts himself by putting down his classmates or his neighbor, so the snarky modern asserts himself by putting down celebrities, politicians, and random people in chatrooms and newsgroups. But snark can just as easily be the defensive scorn of the outsider, the nerd or the goth whose impulsive reaction to any hint of superiority is "You're not all that!"

Denby makes a big deal out of the implicit cliquishness of snark. One way he defines it is as a kind of in-joke addressed to an implicit in-group that assumes a posture of superiority to the target of snark. Compared to a mere cynic who might say to someone, "You're not better than anybody else," the practitioner of snark, Denby suggests, says, "You're not better than anybody else -- but I am, because I have you figured out!" But defined that way, snark is not so new, except in the global sweep of it noted above.

Likewise, Denby seems more troubled by reactionary snark aimed at liberals like Gore, Mrs. Clinton, or President Obama than by snark aimed the other way. He makes a few token nods at snark targeting Governor Palin or Senator McCain, but the examples he cites seem feeble in comparison to reactionary snark. He actually suggests, in his comments on Maureen Dowd, that George W. Bush was effectively immune to snark, at least as practiced by Dowd. For all its purported corrosive effect, snark fails as "an adequate critique of power." It seems to work only when used to suppress idealists who strive for reform. If so, is the problem "snark" or is it really a reactionary mentality expressed with snark? Is snark essentially reactionary? Denby doesn't want to say it outright, but that's where everything points. Snark seems to be hostile toward anyone who seems, let alone claims to be superior, and equally hostile toward any suggestion that things can be better or that we, including the snarky skeptic, can do better. A prevalence of snark is certainly no aid to progress.

Let me suggest, in closing, that what Denby calls snark is a fad rather than a style -- a phenomenon of a period when people are only beginning to learn how to communicate with one another in the virtual global village. It could be a reaction characteristic of this moment, and one that will pass with it. If so, we might worry less about correcting snark itself than in going on about the work of cultural evolution, ignoring snark as best we can, until it ends up on the proverbial ash-heap of history. And if we want to be snarky about it, we might remind our antagonists of where they'll end up.

The Republican Conclave: Twilight of the Idol?

The Republican National Committee was supposed to elect a chairman today, according to the new issue of The American Conservative that arrived in my mail today. I learn that the vote will actually happen on Friday -- are they waiting for instructions from Davos? In all seriousness, or all that I can muster, the Conservative isn't optimistic about the party's prospects. The incumbent chairman is a Bush loyalist who's earned lots of hostility for his uncritical attitude toward the departed President, but he so far has a plurality of declared delegates in his favor. There are five insurgents, none of whom seem to have impressed the writer of the Conservative's "Fourteen Days" column.

"The race for the chairmanship...has been like a long night of karaoke, as the contenders belt out the camp standards of decades past," the writer sniffs. The writer watched a debate among the aspirants on Jan. 5 -- "Only it's not much of a debate when the action consists of six middle-aged men vying to see who can get the syllables 'Ronald Reagan' out of his mouth the fastest."

The writer, at least, seems to have arrived at the opinion that Reagan doesn't have all the answers for the new millennium. "The only thing more fatuous than the Reaganolalia were the candidates' bright ideas about harnessing the electoral muscle of Twitter and Facebook, thanks to which Ron Paul won the Republican presidential nomination last year," the scribe recalls sarcastically, noting that none of the candidates seem to have real answers for the new era, either.

"Pity the poor GOP," the writer concludes, "its leaders haven't realized that people only love karaoke when they're drunk."

This outburst appears in the same issue as a review of the late William F. Buckley's memoir of his friendship with Reagan.The review by Daniel McCarthy reflects rising revisionism about Reagan, including the realization based on his private writings that he wasn't as dogged a Cold Warrior as conservatives believed or hoped back in the day. McCarthy isn't as troubled about Reagan as some Republicans might be. He finds in Reagan's apparent true attitude (he was reportedly unwilling to order either a first or a retaliatory strike, just like Mikhail Gorbachev) proof that, not so long ago, there was room for diversity in Republican or conservative foreign policy. He cites Reagan and Buckley's disagreement over the Panama Canal; Buckley favored giving it to Panama, while Reagan wanted to keep it. While they disagreed sharply, they remained friends, whereas today, McCarthy suggests, Buckley's position would "get him branded as an unpatriotic conservative" by the GOP establishment. Buckley renounced the neocons before he died, while Reagan's approach, McCarthy claims, is obsolete because anti-Communism no longer exists as the glue to hold divergent factions together.

"In a world like this, there will never be another Reagan or Buckley," McCarthy concludes, "But that is no cause for mourning. Reagan's conservatism had its day, and Buckley believed that he had won his own wars....The challenge for the Right today is not to attempt to relive the glories of the past but to rethink them, as Buckley rethought Reagan." It looks like Republicans haven't yet accepted that challenge. On one hand, I want to say good because that means they'll probably keep losing elections. On the other, decadent Reaganism is bound to be an anchor holding back progress for years yet unless Republicans do the rethinking urged by these writers.Philosophical conservatives have a useful role to play in any national debate, but only if they wake up to the real issues facing all of us instead of re-enacting Cold War morality plays. We all have a stake in the future of conservatism, but they have to figure this out for themselves.

You Can Sure Trust the Private Sector...

Why am I so amused when I see or hear conservatives and Republicans repeat their refrain that the private sector is always more effective or efficient or trustworthy than the public sector? It's because they can keep saying such stuff while at the same time these things are happening. But my point isn't the simplistic opposite of the simplistic conservative position. I'm not going to say that everyone in the private sector is trying to rip people off like Bernie Madoff and his peers are alleged to have done. But I will insist on their cases as proof against the conservative claim that the private sector carries some aura of virtue around it that's absent in government circles. Some people take it on faith that privatizing any public service will make that service better and cheaper. In some cases that may be true, but it is also true that every such case is also an opportunity for someone to make a profit by squeezing the public and shorting them on actual service. What actually happens depends on the individuals involved. It isn't automatically good because it's private. Nor is it automatically good if it's public. But it's just as absurd to assume, based on ideology, that the public sector will always screw something up as it is to assume that the private sector will always get it right. People don't automatically become incompetent or corrupt when they become bureaucrats any more than they automatically become greedy or dishonest when they become entrepreneurs. This may all sound obvious, but it needs to be said at this time because there's one group of people in the United States who are determined to put their dogmas before the national interest, who are rejecting proposed solutions on reflex and mistaking their convulsive reactions for expressions of principle. I'm not saying this to get people to accept the Obama administration's proposals without question or on faith. But I do insist that everyone apply the same critical thinking to their own preconceptions that they apply to Obama's plans. Anyone who reacts with a pout and a huff that "markets always work out for the best" or "the private sector always does things better" is not just an ideologue but a fool, and should be known as such to all.

Obama Talks to the Arabs

The President has given an interview with al-Arabiya, one of the popular satellite TV networks in the Middle East, and the White House has issued its own transcript of the chat. I wonder whether Obama's skin color keeps Arab viewers from experiencing some sense of deja vu. Eight years ago, many people in the Middle East applauded the ascent of George W. Bush. Believing him to be his father's son, and remembering that the elder Bush was relatively evenhanded (by modern U.S. standards) in his Middle East dealings, Arabs expected a better deal from W. than they were getting from Clinton. They probably would have been disappointed even if al-Qaeda hadn't attacked New York, since W's "freedom" obsession was bound to bias him in favor of "the only democracy in the Middle East." Now they hope that Obama will be a change for the better from Bush.

But what was different, an Arab viewer might wonder, in what Obama says today compared with what W was saying around this time in 2001? The President is always going to tell you that he believes in peace and a fair shake for all sides. He'd be foolish not to say, as Obama has, that he hopes Arabs will be better off under his watch. But what assurance can Obama give his Arab audience that he won't turn into another W. if something goes wrong or if Osama pulls off another stunt? The only signal they might interpret hopefully is Obama's remark that he is specifically concerned with destroying the al-Qaeda organization and is less interested in a broader war against some vaguely or conveniently labeled "Islamic extremism" or "islamofascism." He seemed to be telling the interviewer that he would not regard every single "Islamist" in the region as an enemy of America, so long as Islamists did not do terrorism.

I may be an interloper in this conversation as part of an American audience, but the bit that made me snort was the President's promise that the U.S. would do more listening and less dictating in the Middle East. That's not because I scoff at "listening" as a rule, but because the Middle East does need to be dictated to, albeit preferably by the U.N. rather than the U.S. The problem is not dictation as such, but that American dictation tends to go all in one direction. It's not that the world should listen rather than dictate to the Arabs, but that we should dictate to the Israelis as well as to the Arabs. If their squabbles threaten global stability, then the international community ought to be able to dictate to both or all sides that they should settle their troubles or have them settled from without. "Listening" sounds nice, but it's a fallacy to assume that if we listen enough, any conflict can be resolved without coercion. How long, after all, have we listened to Israelis and Palestinians? How likely is it that George Mitchell, acting as Obama's ears, will hear something new over there? But he should go through the motions at least once, if only so the President can say at some point that we have listened enough.

But have the Arabs listened enough to Obama? They've seen him on TV now, and those with resources can research what he said on the campaign trail last year. The smart ones should be able to figure it out for themselves, but what are they to do with such knowledge? There isn't going to be the sort of diplomatic revolution that could happen in 18th century Europe when the whims of one king replaced those of another. Democracy imposes greater consistency on American foreign policy. If Arabs keep expecting a great change in their favor from each new administration, then they're no better than Americans who perpetuate the Bipolarchy and expect real change. The Arab people had better adjust themselves to this reality or seek new arrangements. Maybe they can interest another superpower to wage war on Zionism in return for resources. Good luck with that.

Geithner: Let Those Without Sin...

The Senate has confirmed Timothy Geithner as President Obama's Secretary of the Treasury by a 60-34 vote. You can tell the difference when a troubled nominee hasn't been a Senator himself, since more people were willing to stand against Geithner and his honest mistakes about taxes. Susan Collins of Maine, who is usually regarded as a relatively liberal Republican, is being portrayed as the leader of the opposition to Geithner. In which case, credit where it's due -- and perhaps some little girl might be inspired by this some day. Kirsten Gillibrand can at least say that she hasn't been sworn in yet. Honor is also due to Senators Byrd, Feingold and Harkin -- Democrats all -- who applied common sense to Geithner and found him wanting. Senator Sanders lived up to his independent label by also voting nay. Harkin says the tax trouble actually had little to do with his vote. Rather, he says, "I want a Treasury secretary who's going to start banging some heads." That ought to be somebody's quote of the day.

The Mystery of Caroline

Count another columnist, Susan Estrich, among those disappointed -- heartbroken, it seems, -- over Caroline Kennedy's failure to become a U.S. Senator. A column she published last Friday, apparently prior to the Gillibrand announcement, since the new Senator isn't mentioned by name, appeared in one of the local papers yesterday. Estrich's enthusiasm for Caroline is even more mysterious than Maureen Dowd's, since Estrich attributes to Mrs. Schlossberg a power of inspiration that no other female politician possesses.

"I believe she would have been a wonderful senator -- committed, compassionate and inspirational," Estrich writes. I suppose she has a right to believe this, though already we have the word "inspirational" begging the obvious question. "I believe we desperately need women like her, women of stature, women who command attention, who could do and be anything in the world, but choose public service." Estrich imagines a Sen. Kennedy who would "inspire a generation of women -- girls today -- to walk in her footsteps."

The columnist returns to this theme toward the end of her article. Wishing Caroline well, she laments that "when a little girl walks into the gallery of the U.S. Senate, she will have a hard time recognizing anyone who looks like her as she looks down on the assembled senators. There are strong and smart women there, but none who would inspire in that little girl the same dream Caroline Kennedy could inspire, none who will make her feel, as Obama today makes countless young African-Americans feel, that they can do anything, and that nothing they could do matters more than serving their fellow Americans."

Why should Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg be so much more inspiring to little girls than any actual female Senator? There are two possible answers. One is implicit in the last quote, that there'd be something special about a celebrity like Caroline Kennedy condescending to serve in the Senate alongside all those grinds and career politicians.This effect might be the sort that would have resulted had Oprah Winfrey accepted the offer that Gov. Blagojevich has said he was considering of an Illinois seat in the Senate. The logic would seem to be that a wealthy celebrity entering the legislature would elevate the prestige of that body among the masses.

The other explanation comes from Estrich herself. "I wanted her to serve because her very presence on that floor, the presence of a woman who has throughout my life been larger than life, might inspire so many other girls to dream the sort of dream that our country's future depends upon." That's emphasis added, by the way. Women like Estrich and Maureen Dowd have more or less grown up with Caroline Kennedy, so that JFK's daughter could be "larger than life" for them while she was still a little girl. And while most people's mental image of Caroline, until last summer, was probably that of a little girl, an eternal child in a storybook White House, women of a certain age and certain career choices may see Caroline's coming of age as a public figure as the fulfillment of a storybook destiny that is theirs as a generation as well as hers. It's a more modest ambition than that of the infamous "PUMAs" of last summer who raged at Clinton's defeat in the Democratic primaries as the failure of their chance to see a female President in their lifetime, but it's just as much a mass delusion indicative of disorder in the public mind. The Caroline mania is worse, in a way, because the Clinton fanatics might be convinced that another woman might soon claim the greatest prize, but people like these columnists look like they'll never be satisfied unless Caroline herself fulfills the destiny that they'd impose on her and writes the happy ending to the national fantasy that she herself temporarily believed.

Against Sen. Gillibrand: Geography Trumps Party?

After hearing innumerable advertisements denouncing Kirsten Gillibrand as a typical liberal, it's stunning to see the new U.S. Senator denounced from downstate as a reactionary gun nut. Especially venomous is Maureen Dowd's latest column, in which she claims that Gillibrand is hated by her own colleagues in the state's Democratic delegation to the House of Representatives. Dowd reports that her colleagues nicknamed her "Tracy Flick" after Reese Witherspoon's character in the 1999 comedy Election, allegedly for being pushy and opportunistic. She condemns Gillibrand for opposing the Bailout, which Dowd, displaying her local bias, insists should be thought of as the "New York bailout" rather than the "Wall Street bailout." The columnist still can't get over Governor Paterson's refusal to annoint Caroline Kennedy, for whom Dowd has only fulsome praise ("a smart, policy-oriented, civic-minded woman"), as if Gillibrand's two elections in a traditionally Republican district count for nothing compared to the rejected one's "magic capital" and her purported friendship with President Obama. For this tragedy, Dowd blames the "vindictive" Clinton family. I don't often defend the Clintons, but on this occasion I'll go as far to question the objectivity of their accuser, given her sycophantic attitude toward the Kennedys.

Of course, it becomes increasingly clear that people like Dowd think that a traditionally Republican district is not worth winning if it means that the Democrats who win don't meet the metropolitan standard of liberalism. There is an obvious degree of sectional snobbishness in downstate's repudiation of Gillibrand. How good can she be, they must be asking down there, if we haven't heard of her? How good can she be, they imply, if she's from up there? The way some people have commented, you would think that Gillibrand is the second coming of Sarah Palin. That comes across most strongly on the subject of guns. Gillibrand's most likely primary opponent next year has called her an "NRA poster child" and anti-gun organizations are, if you'll excuse my language, already training their sights on her. Frankly, I don't have a strong opinion on Gillibrand's position on guns, but I presume that she's probably more pro-gun than I am. However, I object to that being made a make-or-break issue, and I object to the insinuation that New York City's attitude toward guns is somehow automatically more legitimate than the prevailing opinion in Gillibrand's old district. Ideally, a large city and a comparatively rural district ought to be able to have different rules, but I'm not going to base a vote for the U.S. Senate on that issue.

The whole episode demonstrates that even ideological labels are relative and subject to self-interested manipulation. As far as Republicans hereabouts are concerned, Gillibrand is indisputably liberal, but to downstate Democrats, it seems, she's nothing of the kind. Does that make her a centrist? I don't know if there is such a thing, because I question whether there's a "center" of consistently moderate positions on issues that can somehow always be correct. A pragmatist, then? That's for her former constituents to say, for now, and for the rest of us to learn from now on. Democrats throughout the state will have their say on Gillibrand next year, and the rest of us, perhaps, in November 2010. This final act of the senatorial farce should teach us not to jump to conclusions based on labels. People are going to label Gillibrand to serve their own purposes, and she'll do the same to serve herself. What we ought to do during her year in the big league is judge her not by labels, be they ideological or geographic, but by what she does and how she votes. That might be more time-consuming, but that's what we're supposed to do.

Idiot of the Week

"Dec. 9 to my family, to us, to me, is what Pearl Harbor Day was to the United States. It was a complete surprise, completely unexpected. And just like the United States prevailed in that, we'll prevail in this."

Gov. Rod Blagojevich, 22 Jan. 2009

Obama: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

What do you know? One of the new President's own appointments violates his newly promulgated executive order against lobbyists in the administration. And what happens? A "waiver" is arranged so that Obama can have the man he wanted. Is it me, or is there something McCain-like about this (McCain himself was quick to criticize the action), as if Obama were setting rules for general conduct, for other people and other presidents, perhaps, while his own decisions are to be held above reproach, even when he contradicts his own stated rules? At best, this is sloppy thinking.At worst, ...?

The Case Against Senator Gillibrand

Wayne Barrett sums up the "progressive" arguments against New York's new U.S. Senator on the Village Voice website. I note with interest Gillibrand's relatively few degrees of separation from Joe Bruno, the ex-majority leader of the state senate who is expected to be indicted on corruption charges today. Check out the reader comments for more tidbits, including a bit about contributions from Gillibrand's former law firm to Paterson's campaign fund. Their comments on issues are rather less interesting. I guess a primary is inevitable before the 2010 special election, which I believe itself will only cover the remaining two years of the term to which Sec. Clinton was elected in 2006. I also imagine that Gillibrand, and probably by extension her patrons, Schumer and Paterson, would welcome a challenge from the left in order to prove their own "centrist" credentials during an election year for all of them.

Once again, dissatisfaction is desirable so long as people act on it, not next year, but now -- by demanding a new law or constitutional amendment stripping the governor of the right to replace Senators by appointment. If no one does this, I must conclude that they don't object to the governor's power to choose, but only to the choice made. But anyone who's watched this silly process objectively should be convinced that real change, not just a change in personnel, is necessary.

New York Senatorial Endgame II

Governor Paterson is scheduled to name Senator Clinton's replacement at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow. Fox News has jumped the gun by claiming that Paterson has chosen Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, from the congressional district neighboring mine. Gillibrand has been mentioned fairly constantly since the saga began, reportedly as a favorite of Sen. Schumer. Others have recommended her as an upstater, and it should be noted, given expectations of Caroline Kennedy's fundraising potential, that Gillibrand beat back a self-made millionaire last fall in what was estimated, at one point, as the second-most expensive House race in the nation. She has moved to the forefront following Caroline's withdrawal amid gossip that the Kennedys would find it unacceptable for Paterson to name Attorney General Cuomo, a former in-law. Why their opinion should matter in New York State is a fair question, but fundraising, again, is an important concern for the governor.

One obvious reservation about taking Gillibrand out of the House is the likelihood that her district will fall back into Republican hands. She is the first Democrat to represent the area in a long time, and got the seat because the incumbent Republican was scandal-ridden. Since there is no alternative to a special election in such a case, nothing stops the millionaire, Sandy Treadwell, from trying again, with no obvious talent to stop him this time.

Further reservations are reportedly expressed by downstate Democrats who wanted one of their own chosen, and by more liberal Democrats who regard Gillibrand as something of a "blue dog." On one hand, too bad. On the other, these are perfect arguments for primaries as well as special elections in cases like these. I hope people are unhappy with Gillibrand, though I hope they are less displeased as she (again, hopefully) proves herself in the office she seems poised to fill. People up here seem to think highly enough of her that they'd like her chances in a real election, which presumably will come in 2010. But a special election would have been the right way to go all along, and the silly intrigues surrounding the succession should prove the necessity of reform.

Thumbs Down

Our paper has a daily "Thumbs Up" and "Thumbs Down" feature on its editorial pages. One of our editors was thinking aloud of what to do for tomorrow. She was probably not unaware that Mr. Right was in the room when she suggested giving the Thumbs Down to Rush Limbaugh for wishing that President Obama would "fail."

"He wished that Obama's policies would fail," Mr. Right corrected.

"Wow, big difference," the editor scoffed.

"Lots of socialistic policies in there," Mr. Right insisted, "and socialism never works."

"Oh look, here's his website," the editor went on, apparently quoting from it, "'I hope Obama fails.'"

I have no interest in confirming this. I was content to point out to Mr. Right that "nothing really seems to be working right now."

"Cut corporate taxes fifteen percent," was his answer, "Ours are the second highest in the world. Cutting them could only help."

I was in the middle of my own project, so I couldn't come up with more than that one little comment. Mr. Right's idolatry, of course, didn't surprise me. He clings to free-market dogma, but being a believer, he doesn't see it as dogma but more likely as a matter of natural law. Certain things always work according to this worldview, which is exactly the kind that the new President urged Americans to put aside. But the mere suggestion was probably enough to reinforce Mr. Right's impression that Obama himself is the ideologue, the heretic who refuses to accept the inerrant, unchanging law of the marketplace. It also didn't surprise me to hear Mr. Right advocate remedies that catered to the corporate sector first. He is a supply-sider, convinced that his approach always works. Tell him that there's something unseemly about the idea of government catering to the wealthy first during a crisis and he'll call you envious, or a socialist, as if the former weren't a slander and the latter was always an insult. To him, the just society is one in which each individual accumulates as much as he "deserves." He is incapable of imagining an alternative that wouldn't strike him as tyrannical. If he complains now, imagine if real "change" came. Then, it would almost be our duty not to listen to him.

New York Senatorial Endgame

Senator Clinton was confirmed for the post of Secretary of State by her peers in the upper house, with only two Republicans presenting. This makes it imperative on Governor Paterson to name Clinton's replacement. Confusion reigns tonight, at least in media circles. The New York Times reported that Caroline Kennedy had called the Governor to withdraw her name from consideration, citing concerns over her uncle's declining health. But MSNBC reports at this hour that Kennedy family sources have told them that the Times is mistaken. The Kennedy camp claims that Caroline did indeed inform the Governor that her uncle's health was her "top priority," but denies that she has set aside all other priorities for Teddy's sake. Whatever the truth is, it could be the final coffin in her "candidacy" anyway, since the confusion, fairly or not, adds indecisiveness to Mrs. Schlossberg's accumulating demerits at a time when the Governor has admitted thinking hard about Attorney General Cuomo. I'd like to think that Katha Pollitt's mocking column in this week's Nation, in which she declares herself as well qualified as CKS and demolishes Caroline's quasi-feminist apologists, and names numerous better-qualified women, signalled a definitive turning of the opinion tide against her, but conditions are volatile as I write (which is why I'm not linking to anything that might be obsolete shortly), and the farce may not be over yet, though it must be over soon.