Virginia Congressman Jim Moran argues that the Defense Department ought to step up and pay for the increased traffic BRAC is about to bring to his district:

The latest round of BRAC (Base Realignment and Closing) moves is poised to create a daytime nightmare of traffic congestion for Northern Virginia.

Over the next two years, the on-base population at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County will double, to more than 47,000 people. In a location difficult to reach by bus and impossible by rail, the addition of approximately 24,100 personnel is poised to grind the region’s already notorious traffic — consistently ranked second-worst in the nation — to a halt, adding hours of backups on Interstate 95 and Route 1.

This outcome could be avoided, or at least mitigated, if transportation upgrades were part and parcel of the BRAC relocations. Unfortunately, the Office of Economic Assistance, the Defense Department agency that is responsible for aiding communities affected by BRAC, can only help hire planners and consultants to perform studies identifying infrastructure needs, not fund the projects they identify. At Fort Belvoir, they have done neither.

The other way to meet federally imposed transportation needs is through the Defense Department’s Defense Access Road program. The program can and does pay for roads in communities affected by BRAC, but only if the projects meet very narrow criteria. One such requirement is that traffic on any given roadway must double because of specific federal activity, measured over 24 hours. But when the “roadways” in question are I-95 and Route 1, the principal north-south highways on the East Coast, this is an impossible qualification.

The Pentagon’s narrow application of Defense Access Road eligibility, however, is not what Congress intended. The program was created to provide a means for the military to pay its fair share of the cost of highway improvements related to the post-World War II buildup of domestic military installations.

Presumably, the point of the op-ed is to get recognition from his constituents for fighting this fight. As a practical matter, there are two U.S. Representatives directly interested in this issue (Full disclosure: I’m in the neighboring Congressional District and the Fort Belvoir/Rt. 1 corridor is quite literally the dividing line) and several other Representatives and United States Senators live in the area and are personally effected by this issue.  I’m actually befuddled that they haven’t stepped in before now, since the BRAC announcement on Fort Belvoir came out several years ago.

Moran’s argument is rather weak, however:

It’s common sense for the military to help pay for these improvements. For our men and women in uniform, and the civil servants and the contractors who assist them, time spent in traffic is time not spent providing for our country’s national security.

That’s not how it works. These people will have to put in as much time as it takes to do their job and then waste a lot of time sitting in traffic.  The more logical response to the traffic issue, frankly, is that Fort Belvoir should be closed and its activities moved to a larger base in a much less densely populated area.  It would be much cheaper for the taxpayer and provide an economic boom for some part of the country that almost surely needs it more than the National Capitol Region.

Since that appears not to be an option — indeed, the Powers That Be are doubling down on the base — then it seems perfectly reasonable to have the DoD pay a large part of the cost of transportation upgrades (perhaps extending the Yellow or Blue Metro lines to Belvoir, a Rt. 1 bypass, or the like rather than simply widening Rt. 1 as Moran suggests).   Then again, since I’d directly benefit from this (my house is less than 1/4 mile from Rt. 1 and less than 3 miles from Ft. Belvoir) my analysis is biased.

Readers may be familiar with the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics (short version: the US can do whatever it wants if it just has even willpower). Now, it appears we can add another member of the Justice League to our understanding of foreign policy. On Friday, author Andrew Klavan had a piece in the WSJ comparing Batman and George W. Bush (yes, you read that correctly): What Bush and Batman Have in Common

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Call me crazy, but I am betting pretty heavily that the producers of the latest Batman flick aren’t out to sing the praises of the 43rd president, but oh well.

Klavan’s piece seems to have two basic points within it. One is about about foreign/security policy under the war on terror and the other is about movies on general.

The Batman Theory of Foreign Policy. The logic here appears to be the brute force and general havoc is sometimes necessary when going after the bad guys. Batman works in the shadows and seeks to control crime in Gotham by brute force and by doing things that the cops can’t do. However, Klavan’s view that one can actually look at Batman as even a useful allegory about the war on terror illustrates perhaps the key problem with what has been the underlying logic in much of the Bush administration’s approach to counter-terrorism, i.e., that it is that it is all very simply: just punish the bad guys.

There are two basic assumptions inherent in the overall approach: 1) whatever the good guy does in pursing the bad guy is ultimately good and is justified because the good guy only wants good, and 2) the good guy only using his powers against the bad buys. It assumes above all else that it is easy to identify the bad guys, as in movies (or the comics) where they wear costumes and they are quite obvious in their malefaction. For example, the most ardent supporters of the administration think that this is the way the War on Terror works–for example, that everyone at Gitmo is obviously a terrorist (even if we know that that is not the case) and that they are all on the same level as Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers. In that world, just having the wrong name or being in the wrong place at the wrong time isn’t a problem as the wrong people are never punished or harmed because, again, we know who the bad guys are and no mistakes are ever made. In the comics, only the bad guys are punished and they deserve everything that they get. The neoconservatives like to think that that is what happens in real life, but it isn’t and one cannot formulate policy based on that notion as whenever a nation-state starts to throw its weight around, innocents will always be hurt and to pretend otherwise is foolishness.

Indeed, it would seem that we thought that that Batman approach was going to work in Iraq: jump in, defeat the supervillan (Saddam) and his henchmen and that would solve all the problems. Lest anyone didn’t notice, unlike in the comics, defeating the head honcho didn’t fix everything in Iraq–not by a longshot.

And, I suppose that when it comes to Dubya’s Rogue’s Gallery, the less said about Osama bin Laden the better, or the fact that Bush ultimately negotiated with Kim Jong Il and with the Iranians as well.

“Conservative” Movies. Part of what Klavan is dealing with as well is that notion that Batman represents a specific type of “conservative” movie:

“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

In regards to movies and ideology he states:

time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror — films like “In The Valley of Elah,” “Rendition” and “Redacted” — which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3″ and now “The Dark Knight”?

First, I am not sure why these are “conservative” movies, per se (although of those mentioned, 300 was pretty clearly embraced as a neoconservative opus—see a discussion of this here.). I don’t think that it is legitimate to say that the presence of a clear good guy and a clear bad guy means that a movie is necessarily “conservative.” While Klavan asserts that these views can somehow only be projected by Hollywood by “putting on a mask” the main thing that all of these movies have in common is that they are all fantasies and are ultimately simple tales where the good guys and bad guy are clear and the script can control how the tale ends (indeed in all of these movies we know from the very beginning that Good with triumph over Evil—which is at least in part why we go see them in the first place). The sad thing is that in the real world it is rarely that simple, and even when it is the end of the story is not predetermined.

I have seen none of the “left wing” films he cites, so cannot comment on their content, however to compare their box office performance to the blockbuster fantasy films (and I have seen all of those listed except 300) in question is absurd. Even if they had been realistic yet “conservative” films about the war on terror, they would have likely bombed as well. Let’s face facts: mass appeal movies are escapist vehicles, and realistic films tend not to do that well at the box office. Indeed, I suppose that United 93, which I did see, was a realistic “conservative” movie about terrorism and it hardly had the same box office as the LotR trilogy. United 93 simply wasn’t entertaining, while The Return of the King was.

The only “realistic” movie that I suspect that Klavan would consider “left wing” of this type that I can think of that I have seen was The War Within, which did show the radicalization of a young Pakistani man as the result of a rendition by the CIA. The film’s goal was not to justify terrorism but it did make the clear argument that bad choices made by the US and its allies can have horrible consequences. Such films may not make us cheer, but they may make us think, which is hardly a bad thing.

On the Evil Question. Understand, I am not saying that there isn’t evil in the world, there clearly is (and yes, sometimes people don’t want to call it that). I will even admit that I initially applauded Bush’s “Axis of Evil” notion, but the reality is, stark views of the world work better in the world of fiction than in the real one and often make it more difficult to accomplish one’s goals. For example: if one of our national goals is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, then having tagged them as “evil” makes dealing with them a tad difficult. How does one sit down and talk to evil? After all, as Klavan notes, Batman simply pummels evil. Beyond that, if I have called you evil, do you really want to talk to me? And there is the fact that by invading one Axis state (Iraq) we upped the ante on the security dilemma for the Iranians making the acquisition of nuclear weapons even more desirable to them from their point of view. Ultimately we haven’t been well-served by this approach.

In the movies Mordor is an unrepentant, unredeemable place filled with nothing but evil (Sauron, Nazgûl, Orcs and the like). If it is destroyed, nothing good dies; no innocents are harmed. However, the same cannot be said, for example, of North Korea or Iran. Even if one casts Kim Jong Il or Mahmood Ahmejinedad in the Sauron role, the people of those states are as often the victims of their governments rather than the teeming minions of evil. Beyond that, in the movie the destruction of evil is ultimately a fairly simply thing: put Ring A in Volcano B. Sure it was hard to get there, and there was self-sacrifice along the way, but it was still a pretty easy plan. There is no such easy path in the real world, which is why comic books and fantasy novels aren’t particularly good blueprints for foreign policy.

Newsweek has released a new poll and is excited by the huge change: “Glow Fading? The latest NEWSWEEK Poll shows Barack Obama leading John McCain by only 3 points. What a difference a few weeks can make.” This is quite amusing in that pretty much everyone agreed that the June 20th Newsweek poll was an outlier.

No matter. In a Newsweek Web Exclusive, Jonathan Darman explains,

Obama’s rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience–an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who’d slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama’s reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.

More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics. This is a major concern since Obama’s outsider credentials, have, in the past, played a large part in his appeal to moderate, swing voters. In the new poll, McCain leads Obama among independents 41 percent to 34 percent, with 25 percent favoring neither candidate. In June’s NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama bested McCain among independent voters, 48 percent to 36 percent.

He makes a nod toward reality with this:

Obama’s overall decline from the last NEWSWEEK Poll, published June 20, is hard to explain. Many critics questioned whether the Democrat’s advantage over McCain was actually as great as the poll suggested, even though a survey taken during a similar time frame by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg showed a similarly large margin. Princeton Survey Research Associates, which conducted the poll for NEWSWEEK, says some of the discrepancy between the two most recent polls may be explained by sampling error.

This is followed by a blithe return to pretending that both Newsweek (or is that NEWSWEEK?) polls are accurate and must reflect real movement. As OTB readers know, the previous poll showed an Obama advantage that was 14.5 percent higher than a RealClearPolitics average that included the outlier poll. How about now?

Well, surprise, surprise! It’s now perfectly in line with what the other polls — only 1.8 percent off the average but right in the flow of the other July polls.

Is the “glow” off of Obama? I’d love to see it. The data, unfortunately, don’t seem to support that conclusion. Here’s a graph of RCP’s McCain-Obama numbers since January:

McCain’s numbers are down slightly since Hillary Clinton’s concession while Obama’s are up a smidgen. (Note: The scale makes the variation look more substantial than it is.) McCain’s numbers have been as high as 47 and as low as 40 whereas Obama’s have fluctuated between 43 and 49. The gap between the two has never exceeded 4 points. So, we’ve got a very close race with very little movement that Obama has been leading, with brief exceptions, for months.

Beyond that, the usual caveats apply: We don’t elect presidents by national vote but state-by-state. We vote in November, not July. Registered voter polls such as Newsweek’s and CNN’s are less reliable than likely voter polls like Rasmussen’s. There’s a possibility that Obama’s numbers are somewhat inflated because people don’t like to admit that they don’t support the black candidate (although recent evidence for that phenomenon is scant).

Elsewhere:

• Ed Morrissey notes that the difference is likely that the previous poll grossly oversampled Democrats.

• Stacy McCain’s reaction mirrors mine: “The ‘rapid drop’ never happened, because Obama’s purported 15-point June lead never existed.”

• Digby believes Obama’s drop is real and offers this analysis:

Many people assumed those values were their own, and without a detailed analysis of his policies and his books, they were unlikely to think they were anything but orthodox liberal. This was, after all, a Democratic primary. So, when Obama did the predictable (although surprisingly clumsy) turn to the right and began to speak in somewhat unprogressive terms on things like the death penalty and faith based programs and FISA and abortion, they felt betrayed. The campaign had actually encouraged them not to know but rather to place their faith in Obama on a personal level.

I’ve been predicting that would happen for, oh, eighteen months now.  But I just don’t see any evidence for it.

Memeorandum has many more reactions: Chicago Tribune, Real Clear Politics,  NO QUARTER, American Power, Bucks Right, TalkLeft, Open Left, PoliGazette, Flopping Aces, THE GUN TOTING LIBERAL™, Wake up America, The Jed Report, Power Line, Hullabaloo, Eunomia, Lawyers, Guns and Money, TPM Election Central, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, Gateway Pundit, Hotline On Call, Comedy Central, MyDD, Newshoggers.com, Blue Girl, Red State, Taylor Marsh, Macsmind, TIME.com, and Donklephant

The resilience of the Hillary Clinton dead-enders is surprising. CNN reports that the number of holdouts is actually growing.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Friday, the number of Clinton supporters who plan to defect to Republican Sen. John McCain’s camp is down from one month ago, but — in what could be an ominous sign for Obama as he seeks to unify the party — the number of them who say they plan to vote for Obama is also down, and a growing number say they may not vote at all.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey completed in early June before the New York senator ended her White House bid, 60 percent of Clinton backers polled said they planned on voting for Obama. In the latest poll, that number has dropped to 54 percent. In early June, 22 percent of Clinton supporters polled said they would not vote at all if Obama were the party’s nominee, now close to a third say they will stay home.

In another sign the wounds of the heated primary race have yet to heal, 43 percent of registered Democrats polled still say they would prefer Clinton to be the party’s presidential nominee.

Without looking at the poll’s internals, I’m at a loss to explain this.  Further, without raw numbers — or even the poll questions themselves — there’s no way to know what any of this means.

If people are still identifying themselves as “Clinton backers” this long after her concession, then they’re almost by definition not resigned to supporting Obama.  The question simply becomes, How many of them are there? If, though, these are merely people who supported Clinton during the primaries, then we’re dealing with a much more significant phenomenon.

John McCain has reshuffled his top campaign staff for the second time is a less than a year, elevating Karl Rove protégé Steve Schmidt to the top post.

Responding to Republican concerns that his candidacy was faltering, Mr. McCain put a veteran of President Bush’s 2004 campaign in charge of day-to-day operations and stepped away from a plan to have the campaign run by 11 regional managers, Mr. McCain’s aides said Wednesday.

The installation of Steve Schmidt, who worked closely with Karl Rove, at Mr. McCain’s headquarters represented a sharp diminishment of the responsibilities of Rick Davis, who has been Mr. McCain’s campaign manager since the last shake-up nearly a year ago.

The shift was approved by Mr. McCain after several of his aides, including Mr. Schmidt, went to him about 10 days ago and warned him that he was in danger of losing the presidential election to Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, unless he revamped his campaign operation, two officials close to the campaign said.

Mr. Schmidt’s elevation is the latest sign of increasing influence of veterans of Mr. Rove’s shop in the McCain operation. Nicolle Wallace, who was communications director for Mr. Bush in the 2004 campaign (and in his White House) has joined the campaign as a senior adviser, and will travel with Mr. McCain every other week. Greg Jenkins, another veteran of Mr. Rove’s operation who is a former Fox News producer and director of the presidential advance team in the Bush White House, was hired by Mr. Schmidt last week after a series of what Mr. McCain’s advisers acknowledged were poorly executed campaign events.

[...]

Mr. McCain’s advisers said that Mr. Davis would continue to hold the position of campaign manager, but that Mr. Schmidt had taken over every major operation where Mr. McCain has shown signs of struggling: communications, scheduling and basic political strategy. Mr. McCain’s aides said Mr. Davis would focus now more on longer-term campaign efforts, including helping with the selection of a running mate and planning for the Republican National Convention, which is now just two months away.

[...]

Mr. Schmidt, who is 37, is one of the most intense, hard-driving figures in his party today: when he worked for Mr. Bush, his nickname in the campaign was “The Bullet,” a reference to the shape of his shaved head.  He has been at the center of some of the most politically significant Republican operations of the last 10 years. In working with Mr. Rove and Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mr. Schmidt has become immersed in the use of data-driven methods to find and turn out Republican voters.

He also ran the campaign’s war room, which was responsible for capitalizing on mistakes of opponents; Mr. McCain’s advisers said that one sign of Mr. Schmidt’s increasing influence in the campaign’s rapid response operation was the quickness with which it seized on a remark by Gen. Wesley K. Clark questioning whether Mr. McCain’s years in Vietnam gave him the experience he needed to be president.

Mr. Schmidt also ran the successful re-election campaign of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Republican who won in a Democratic state by embracing moderate positions on issues like the environment and gay rights.

This sort of thing is too inside baseball even for me.  There’s not much doubt that the McCain campaign seemed rather unfocused.  On the other hand, he’s remarkably close to Obama in the polls (currently trailing by an average of 5.4 percent), which is phenomenal given the current state of the Republican brand and the incredible amount of attention Obama has gotten owing to his prolonged primary battle with Hillary Clinton.

Then again, somebody has to be running campaign scheduling and strategy. That person can’t be the candidate.

“Somebody asked, ‘what’s the strategy behind this?’ ” Mr. Black said of the foreign travel. “It’s simple. McCain says he wants to go to these places, and we say of course.”

AllahPundit has more thoughts along those lines.  If Team McCain is going to be run by people who know what the hell they’re doing, it’s a good thing.

The principal objection, of course, will be the Rove angle.   Karl Rove is “an example of how not to do it,” the conventional wisdom now tells us.  But the “it” is decidedly not “running a competent campaign.”  Schmidt has risen to his current position with success.   Further, with McCain, the logical approach is to take the angle Schmidt successfully used in rebuilding Schwarzenegger’s appeal in California rather than the divide-and-conquer strategy for which Rove is infamous.

Marc Ambinder tells us that, “In the year and a half since McCain and Schmidt first got to know each other, the two have grown close, almost like father and son; each very deferential to the other. Schmidt has taught McCain how to be John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate — a different creature from just plain ol’ John McCain.”  That’s pretty much the definition of a good campaign manager.  For McCain to have any chance of winning this thing, he’s going to have to do it as McCain. But any candidate needs to be disciplined to focus on what matters rather than simply doing what interests them.

Photo: Charles Dharapak / Associated Press (Via Andrew Malcolm, LAT)

Blogger Brian Beutler was shot in DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood Monday night, Greg Sargent reports for TPM.

Brian Beutler, a well-known progressive blogger, was shot and seriously injured during a mugging last night in Washington, D.C.

One bullet damaged Beutler’s spleen, and he had it removed during surgery this morning at the Washington Hospital Center. He’s expected to make a “pre-trauma” recovery, which is to say, a completely full recovery.

[...]

It’s unclear as yet what happened, but the man fired several shots at Beutler. One bullet hit him in the spleen and he was hit twice in the shoulder. A D.C. police official said he wasn’t aware of any arrests made in connection with the shooting.

Brian’s friend and colleague Adele Stan reports that he’s in good spirits and cracking jokes.

Other friends in the close-knit DC blogger-journalist community are weighing in as the news filters out. Megan McArdle, who lives nearby (as is well documented in media accounts, all DC bloggers live in flophouses with, or within close proximity to, Matt Yglesias) isn’t surprised given the deplorable state of crime control in the city.  Julian Sanchez resists the urge to profanity and limits himself to noting Brian’s awesomeness and adding his best wishes.

Most of his friends are joining in Brian’s cheerful response to this incident now that it’s clear he’s out of the woods. Dave Weigel titles his post “Now They Call Him 30 Cent” and notes that there’s a Chuck Norris-style list of “Brian Beutler Facts” being collected, including “Lance Armstrong wears a Brian Beutler bracelet” and “Meatloaf would do that for Brian Beutler.”

Steve Clemons is soliciting financial contributions.

I’ve met Brian but probably don’t know him well enough to inquire as to whether he’s now a conservative, which is purportedly what happens to liberals who get mugged.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his gang of mullahs are said to be “seriously considering” the latest EU 5+1 proposals on resolving the international standoff on the Iranian nuclear program and are telling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to pipe down.

Warren Strobel:

Iran’s senior diplomat said Tuesday that Tehran was seriously considering a new offer from six world powers to resolve the dispute over its nuclear program, and he praised the package as “constructive.” The unusually positive remarks by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to a small group of reporters raised hope that a negotiated solution can be found to defuse the crisis.

[...]

During a 90-minute luncheon at Iran’s United Nations mission, Mottaki dismissed the growing speculation that Israel or the United States will strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities during President Bush’s last six months in office. He described news reports to that effect as part of a long-running campaign of “psychological warfare.” The chance that Israel will attack Iran “is almost nil,” Mottaki said. As for a U.S. strike, he said there was little public support in this country for a new conflict. “The consequences of such an attack cannot be predicted,” he said.

Mottaki is a much keener observer of American politics than most Western observers, it would seem.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, conveyed the offer to Tehran two weeks ago. It essentially repackages a two-year-old proposal by Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States to give Iran political, economic and security rewards if it “verifiably suspends its enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.”

Presumably, the passage of two years has made it plain that no better offer would be forthcoming. Mottaki’s colleague, Ali Akbar Velayati, who serves as the top foreign policy advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offered some amusingly twisted logic as a face-saving explanation:

“Americans wanted Iran not to accept Solana,” Velayati told the hard-line daily newspaper Jomhuri Islami. “Therefore our interests imply that we should embrace Solana.”

Whatever works, I guess. This, though, is what got everyone’s attention:

In a sign of apparent high-level debate in Iran, a top aide to the country’s supreme religious leader made a veiled swipe Tuesday at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who’s used belligerent rhetoric to defend Iran’s nuclear work. “Officials … should avoid illogical and provocative sloganeering,” Ali Akbar Velayati, a foreign policy adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in published remarks, Reuters reported. His remarks seemed targeted at Ahmadinejad, although he didn’t mention the president by name.

While Ahmadinejad is the public face of the Iranian government, he’s by no means its most important player, despite the obsession with him by the media and some American politicians. As has been the case since the 1979 revolution, the clerics run the show with the Supreme Leader as the first among equals.

This, via Laura Rosen, strikes me as a fair read:

“What Velayati is presenting is a softening up of Iranian opinion as to why Iran might accept some sort of suspension without him going into that,” Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, interprets Velayati’s remarks. “And then Velayati goes on to say that under the current circumstances, Iran can do this because of the fact that the international community has recognized Iran’s right to enrich. So in effect, Velayati is saying, Iran can declare victory and compromise, and that if it doesn’t do this, there will be a stronger case for war against Iran and a continuation of economic sanctions, which it’s very clear are hurting Iran’s economy.”

Of course, as Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the Iranian atomic energy organization, reminds us “as in everything in Iran, things could change tomorrow.”

Photo credit: Atta Kenare / AFP / Getty via TIME

Update (Dave Schuler)

I believe Iranian acceptance of this offer would be a benign development for all sorts of reasons of proverbial prudence including “jar-jar is better than war-war” and “half a loaf is better than none”. The offer should have a sell-by date or I see no reason that they’ll not deliberate it forever.

Unfortunately, it’s not nearly enough. The Iranian regime really needs to be more forthcoming about their past and present nuclear development activities for us to have any confidence that whatever nuclear development activity they cease is the nuclear development activity they have. Otherwise we’ll just be subsidizing their R&D.

The greatest danger I see in it is that European countries, blinded by a fog of Euro signs, will see Iranian acceptance of this baby stuff as big enough to take the pressure off Iran. 43% of Iranian imports are from the EU. That dwarfs China, the next largest vendor, by a considerable amount.

However, Iran’s import partners who are probably most able to influence the regime may well also be those necks are most on the line in the face of rising Iranian power in the region, Oman and Saudi Arabia (13th and 17th on the list, respectively). I don’t have detailed stats on the exports of these countries to Iran but I suspect their exports are mostly gasoline. Most of what Iran uses it does not refine itself.

Arthur Silber is, as am I, fascinated by the cult of personality surrounding Barack Obama.  He notes some anecdotal creepy gushing on a local radio show and then

Reactions of this kind to Obama are fairly common. No, they are not this extreme much of the time, but such statements are far from unusual. And many of Obama’s less obviously deluded supporters fall along the same continuum. Take a look at the woozily sentimental, intellectually reprehensible remarks collected at the beginning of “Obama’s Whitewash,” the third excerpt here, and the comments here. Moreover, this kind of reaction — an emotion-driven response utterly devoid of coherent ideational content, a response that leads far too many people to be enthusiastically willing to believe virtually anything that Obama might proclaim and to follow him anywhere — is one that Obama and his campaign explicitly seek to elicit.

People had better wake the hell up, and they had better study some history very damned fast. I have sometimes remarked, and I repeat the warning here, that the twentieth century was a nonstop train of horrors — yet in one sense, the most terrible and horrifying aspect of the twentieth century is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.

Among the horrors of the twentieth century were several notable leaders who initiated events that led to slaughter and destruction on an ungraspably monumental scale. These charismatic leaders evoked a response from their followers almost identical to that called forth by Obama. These leaders specialized in “personal stories of political conversion.” Doesn’t anyone see the connection? Doesn’t anyone remember any of this?

This, incidentally, from a man who can scarcely imagine voting for a Republican.

James Benjamin goes further:

Although I seriously doubt that Obama is the next Hitler, his followers are every bit as authoritarian as those who followed Bush (or Schwarzenegger, as I seem to recall) just a few years ago, and that’s something a despot, a strongman would want.

[...]

I would not be at all surprised if either Obama himself were revealed to be some sort of wild card authoritarian in his own right, and/or numerous of his followers were wild card authoritarians – i.e., those who can pose as “leftists” but once in a position of power begin to crack down on dissent much like the right-wingers we all know and loathe. Obama’s own embrace of warmongers, neoliberals, and of course of the awful FISA bill that is likely destined to pass does not bode well for those who wish to continue arguing that he is “progressive” (whatever that is supposed to mean any more). The behavior by groups of Obama fanatics on some of the community blogs (lots of bully tactics as I recall) and the apparent efforts by Obama partisans to shut down individually run anti-Obama blogs is a relatively mild expression of that authoritarianism; we should keep in mind that we’re still early in the game.

Jesse Taylor believes this line of reasoning has guano-level sanity and snarks, “While he lacks any political element of fascism in his platform, he makes up for it in some people liking him a lot, which is like 60% of fascism anyway.”

Obama is quite possibly the most charismatic politician of my lifetime.  Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had superb oratorical skills and charismatic personalities but neither made crowds swoon to the extent Obama does.  John Kennedy was murdered before I was born and it’s hard for me to assess him apart from the strange fascination and conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination plot.  Perhaps Dwight Eisenhower and, certainly, Franklin Roosevelt had it.

Like Silber, it worries me when people get so emotionally involved in their leaders.  I’m not concerned that Obama is going to annex Canada and start the ethnic cleansing of white working class Appalachians and people named Larry;  Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were evil men, not good ones who went mad with too much power.

Then again, I don’t think that George Bush or Arnold Schwarzenegger (or even Rudy Giuliani) are “authoritarians,” “despots,” or “strongmen,” either.  Executives naturally believe in the rightness of their cause and seek to push the envelope of their power when they’re being thwarted by inconvenient institutions.  Some do so more than others.

The problem with cults of personality in the American experience is it that it furthers our tendency to trust government to take care of us.  FDR was well meaning in constructing the New Deal and the vast machinery of government bureaucracy needed to support it to combat the unique challenges of the Great Depression; unfortunately, the solution long outlasted the crisis.  Similarly, I believe torture, rendition, habeus corpus suspension, the Department of Homeland Security, and the other over-reactions to the 9/11 attacks were well intentioned measures to make us safer.

Both Obama and his opponent, John McCain, have a streak of crusading righteousness in them that leads to a dismissiveness to criticism.  Some of our best and some of our worst presidents have had it.   Fortunately, we have a set of institutions — separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism — and a political culture that make realizing authoritarian ideals difficult.

via memeorandum

Some creative San Francisco bar patrons want to rename a sewage treatment plant after the, um, sitting president.

From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. The plan, naturally hatched in a bar, would place a vote on the November ballot to provide “an appropriate honor for a truly unique president.”

[...]

The renaming would take effect on Jan. 20, when the new president is sworn in. And regardless of the measure’s outcome, supporters plan to commemorate the inaugural with a synchronized flush of hundreds of thousands of San Francisco toilets, an action that would send a flood of water toward the plant, now called the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant.

Critics say this is “an abuse of process” and being done “without regard to the city’s governance or cost.” Well, that’s democracy, I guess.

Amusingly, Josh Patashnik has responded with a post entitled “Why Direct Democracy Is Awesome” that rather demonstrates the opposite.

via memeorandum

David Paul Kuhn argues that John McCain should strongly consider choosing a woman as his vice presidential running mate in order to woo angry Hillary Clinton supporters. That premise strikes me as absurd, in that no Republican woman is going to be a suitable substitute for Clinton in the minds of her supporters. Still, reaching out to women as a means of attracting moderates is worth exploring.

Kuhn considers Condoleeza Rice the obvious choice but takes her at her word that she isn’t interested. Instead, he focuses on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Palin, 44, would add youth to the GOP ticket. As governor she has shown a willingness to veto some of the state’s large capital projects, no small plus for fiscal conservatives. But it’s her personal biography, which excites social conservatives, and reformist background that might most appeal to McCain.

She’s stridently anti-abortion, and recently brought to term her fifth child — who she knew would have Down syndrome. A hunter, fisher and family woman with a rapid professional rise, Palin is a natural for Republican framing.

Palin has become a darling of the conservative blogosphere in recent months and has been touted quite a bit. She’s no doubt a rising star. But it makes little sense to nominate a 44-year-old with no foreign policy experience to be one heartbeat away from the presidency on a ticket whose principal message is that it’s risky to put a 44-year-old with relatively little foreign policy experience in charge of our nation’s security.

Fiorina is also already close to McCain. The two of them recently sat down at his Arlington headquarters with frustrated Clinton supporters and urged them to shift their political allegiance to him. On the campaign trail and on shows like CBS News “Face the Nation,” she’s served as a ubiquitous advocate of the candidate. Privately, she has also become one of McCain’s most trusted economic advisers.

That sounds like the résumé of a future Treasury Secretary, Fed Chairman, or Council of Economic Advisers chair. The vice presidency would be an odd entry job into politics. And, again, aside from trade issues, what’s her international relations background?

Hutchison had already engaged on McCain’s behalf, defending his embrace of the controversial conservative Pastor John Hagee earlier this year and making the rounds as a surrogate on the Sunday political shows (including an appearance Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”), though, like McCain, it’s a medium that does not suit her. And also like McCain, she is not a gifted campaigner.

In Texas, where she has been comfortably reelected, one Republican strategist notes that she’s “proven she can get scores of Hispanics in a huge state surrogate.”

I saw her on “This Week,” which I inadvertently TiVo’d. Rather than risk falling asleep at 11 a.m., I soon fast forwarded to the roundtable. She reinforces McCain’s negatives without bringing anything.

Palin would be my initial favorite if forced to chose from among these three candidates. But, surely, there are better choices? Going the extra mile to look at women and minority candidates makes sense; picking a weak candidate simply to fill a quota, however, does not.

The Fearless Freep Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

(AFP/Getty Images/File/Jeff Swensen)

✰ THE WINNERS ✰

First: John Burgess – Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Second: Bithead – True to form, Barry brought a gun to a bungee jump

Third: John425 – “…for I am the Living Obama, and he that believeth in me shall have everlasting federal subsidies and eternal taxation.”

HONORABLE MENTION

Cowboy Blob – Daddy! Look at the size of that Gremlin on our wing!

Maggie Mama – “With arms spread wide — as if to embrace the whole country sprawling below in spectacular disorder” — Obama the Redeemer statue can be seen all over the airways.

radio free fred – Tim Russert Coaches From Heaven..”Balance ..Balance..Balance.”

charles austin – I still don’t get performance art.

ℛODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

Once fundamentalist muslims took over Rio, Christ the Redeemer had to go.

Obama’s bridge to the future.

I think we’re gonna need a bigger bridge.

The Thursday Contest is still looking for Ceiling Cat.

School vouchers is an idea I’ve supported ever since I first read Capitalism and Freedom in 1989. It’s an idea so simple, and sound, that it’s a wonder it hasn’t been embraced. Yet here we are, forty-six years after CaF was published and choice hasn’t caught on (except when dismembering a fetus) and is even reviled by most of the American public (I can’t find the source, but a few days ago I read that close to 60% are against vouchers, no doubt reflecting teachers’ unions’ well-funded opposition).

In fact, people in Washington D.C., like House Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton are trying to strangle a pilot program in its crib:

On Tuesday, a House Appropriations subcommittee is set to take up provisions in President Bush’s budget for $18 million to continue the five-year-old D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for next year. It is part of an unprecedented $74 million earmarked for education in the District. In April, Mr. Fenty and D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray appeared before the House subcommittee on financial services and general government to speak in support of the initiative, which gives low-income students scholarships to attend private schools. Ms. Norton is not a member of that subcommittee, but she made a special appearance to attack the program.

Even worse, as The Post’s Valerie Strauss and Bill Turque reported Monday, it now turns out that Ms. Norton is preparing a plan that could end the program after just one more year. Ms. Norton won’t discuss her plan, and she would, rather disingenuously, have the public believe that she is acting only to ensure an orderly transition of students from a program doomed because of the opposition of others in her party. But, at best, by refusing to support the mayor, she is helping to doom a program that gives poor parents an opportunity that others in this country take for granted: the chance to choose a decent school for their children.

For parents such as Patricia William, that means the probable loss of an educational opportunity that has transformed her 11-year-old son. Ms. William is not alone in her praise of the program and in her panic about the possibility of its demise. The voucher pilot is intended to measure and compare children’s progress in private schools over a span of several years. But one result already is known: Poor parents do not want their children automatically consigned to failing schools any more than middle-class parents would. Talk to parents and grandparents of children afforded what should not be the luxury of choice and you’ll hear stories of thanks and success — stories of young women such as Tiffany Dunston, this year’s valedictorian at Archbishop Carroll High School. Ms. Norton turned a deaf ear to these accounts during a recent meeting, dismissing the scholarship families as “befuddled.” Catherine Hill, whose grandson graduated from the Academy for Ideal Education, told us that the only thing the group doesn’t understand is why Ms. Norton “hates a program that works so well.” (Her response to this editorial is here.)

The depth of the opposition to school choice has convinced me that a new approach is needed, though my proposal is a long shot at best. It is modeled on welfare reform and would involve breaking up the Department of Education and releasing the money to the states as performance-based block grants.

For instance, the almost $60 billion dollars in discretionary spending that was used to fund the DoEd this year could be allocated among the states and each individual block grant could be broken into thirds: one-third for construction of schools, purchase of books and computers; one-third for augmenting teacher pay; and, one-third for performance improvements. The data collection functions of the DoEd could be moved to Health and Human Services, along with administration of the block grants.

Whatever happens, something different needs to be done. Inflation-adjusted, per-pupil spending on education has more than tripled since the mid-1960s and we have very little to show for it. Time to try something new.

Megan Cerpentier observes that, “despite the stereotype that my taxes should go up under a Democratic tax plan and down under a Republican, it seems that Obama’s tax plan is most likely to lower my tax bills and McCain’s plan will do little or nothing at all for me.” This, because Obama proposes giving self-employed Megan a “Making Work Pay” credit whereas the McCain tax cuts won’t help her much because she makes a relatively modest income.

Ezra Klein expands on this insight

Just as a small sliver of the population controls a massive amount of the national income, so too does the same sliver pay the lion’s share of the taxes. In recent years, their tax burden has been easing even as their incomes have been rising, but in absolute terms, the folks with the bulk of the money are still the folks paying the bulk of the taxes. Democrats often raise taxes on these folks — who are often called “the rich” — which means raising taxes on 2 percent or 5 percent or 10 percent of the population, depending on how you’re counting. But in increasing the burden of the rich, they’re often able to lower it on the poor and working class. So even as revenues go up because Bill Gates’ bracket is raised to 41 percent, the tax burden of 60 percent of the country might go down. The government takes in more money, but the median American pays less in taxes.

To recap: Under Democrats, the tiny percentage of Americans who pay almost all the taxes will pay even more so that those who pay hardly any taxes can get a tiny rebate. Under the Republicans, those who pay the most taxes get the most tax relief.

Certainly, it’s a crafty electoral model. As my colleague Dave Schuler likes to say, “When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul.”

One could reasonably argue, of course, that cutting taxes during wartime is bad policy, let alone when we’re borrowing massively to pay for the war. But if we’re going to reduce the tax burden, it makes sense to do so in a way that targets those actually burdened by taxes.

Image: BlogNetNews

Steven Aftergood has an interesting look at a proposal from Jane Harmon to formalize the concept of “controlled unclassified information” (CUI) that the White House rolled out on a trial balloon basis last month.

Aftergood is dubious of the so-called “The Improving Public Access to Documents Act” and I mostly defer to him on this matter.

[I]t is tactically unwise to lock into statute an executive branch “framework” that still remains largely undefined and that may be subject to significant modification in the course of its projected five-year implementation period. The CUI Office at the National Archives that is supposed to develop the implementing regulations referenced in the bill does not even have its own funding this year, and has also missed the funding cycle for next year.

Among other questionable features (and some positive ones), the bill regrettably endorses the executive branch view of the Freedom of Information Act as the proper channel for public access to agency information on homeland security and related topics. Thus, the bill says, “The Department [of Homeland Security] should start with the presumption that all homeland security information that is not properly classified, or marked as controlled unclassified information and otherwise exempt from disclosure, should be shared with the public pursuant to section 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the `Freedom of Information Act’).”

This is not a “presumption” — disclosure of non-exempt information pursuant to FOIA is already required by law — and it would not “improve public access.” To the contrary, by presenting disclosure under FOIA as the primary alternative to classification or control, the bill would place an impossible burden on the FOIA process, and would diminish agency responsibility to unilaterally disclose homeland security information that has not been formally requested.

Fair enough. Our goal should be making it easier, not harder, for journalists, scholars, and other interested citizens to get access to information about how their government operates.

In theory, though, a bill could be written that would actually achieve the titular objective. A regulatory scheme that provides rules for internal handling and dissemination of information but that stops short of formal classification is, theoretically, a good idea. Once something is classified, it’s ridiculously hard to overcome inertia even if it only needed to be held close for a very short period of time. Ending the practice of stamping that sort of material — including huge documents with only a sentence of such material — “classified” could be a boon.

My suspicion, unfortunately, is that the bill which actually emerges — at least after the bean counters lard it with “clarifying” regulation — will further the tendency to treat routine operating information as sensitive and thus not sharable with the public because those who would do us harm could cobble together something damaging from bits and pieces of information that, in isolation, are innocuous.

YahooNews has applied the nonsensical headline “Young voters: Obama’s race as an asset, non-issue” to an AP story about how various age cohorts view the issue of race in general and Barack Obama in particular. Either something is an issue or it isn’t. If it’s an asset, it’s an issue.

For young voters, Rosa Parks’ refusal to sit at the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 is schoolbook history. Even the racially charged 1992 riots in Los Angeles are a distant memory.

The United States is far from a blueprint for racial harmony, but for today’s young adults — all born after segregation was outlawed in the mid-1960s — race is not the issue it once was. They have grown up with Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan among their highest-profile and wealthiest role models. And in their everyday lives, they are much more likely than their elders to have friends of another race, studies show. Is it any wonder, then, that young adults have been the most willing age group to support a black man for president?

Primary exit polls conducted for The Associated Press illustrate the generational shift that has helped Barack Obama secure the Democratic presidential nomination. About 56 percent of Democrats younger than age 30 supported Obama. That number dropped steadily with each age bracket to a low of 30 percent for voters 65 and older.

Many young voters say a diverse background is an asset for a candidate. “Rather than just being tolerant of race, we embrace and accept our differences,” says Alisha Thomas Morgan, a 29-year-old black state lawmaker in Georgia. “We all recognize that racism still exists. But I think younger people are much more willing to get over it.”

They also are more accustomed to seeing people of color in positions of power. The country has, for instance, had a black secretary of state for the past seven-plus years. “I shouldn’t say we’re taking it for granted. But it’s not especially strange to us,” says Tobin Van Ostern, a junior at George Washington University who is spending his summer in Chicago as a leader for Students for Barack Obama.

Van Ostern, who is white, says he understands that Obama’s victory is historic. “But it’s one that seems appropriate for the direction the country is going,” he says. “In numerous ways, it presents a new image of the United States to the world — and not just because of the color of his skin.”

[...]

The way Patricia Turner sees it, Obama’s race is just one factor that makes him more accessible to younger voters. Turner is a professor of African-American studies at the University of California, Davis, a diverse campus where she says no one racial or ethnic group is the majority. She recalls a conversation at a recent university dinner where her table included a few Asian-American students and a white woman in her 30s who was married to a man of mixed race. Asked what struck them about Obama, they listed everything from his age and rearing by a single mother to the fact that he is biracial. “There’s something about the sophisticated and complex ethnic identity that resonates with younger voters as well,” says Turner, who is black. “Younger people are able to say ‘we’ — and that ‘we’ includes Barack Obama.”

The story is mostly anecdote with only one fact (the polling by cohort) to buttress the point. So, let me respond in kind.

I was born just a few months after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed and went to school with it never occurring to me that black kids should go to a different one. And I’ve rooted for black athletes, enjoyed black actors and comedians, had at least one outstanding black high school teacher, and had, as a young Army officer, both a black battery commander and a black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

While aware of the color of these people’s skin — it was both visually obvious and culturally remarked upon with some constancy — I was able to judge them based on their performance and by the same standards that I would have applied to whites in those positions.

At no time, however, did I say to myself, “How awesome is it that they’re black! This must be a real treat for me!*”

It strikes me as implausible that a significant number of people who are 10-20 years younger than me, who, as noted in the story, have grown up with blacks in key leadership positions as a norm, would be fascinated by Obama’s biracial existence and exotic upbringing and conclude that these things would make him a great president.

Photo: Seattle Policore

_____________________
*See John Wayne and Roscoe Lee Browne in “The Cowboys” (1972) if this reference is unfamiliar to you.