Thomas Friedman’s latest column, in which he argues Communist China’s system is preferable to ours because it “can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century,” has quite naturally generated a heated response in the blogosphere, with everyone from Reason editor Matt Welch to National Review’s Jonah Goldberg to American University lawprof Kenneth Anderson to Nick Denton’s Gawker ridiculing Friedman’s thinking and/or questioning his patriotism.

In my New Atlanticist post, “Chinese Autocracy vs. American Democracy,” I cut the old boy a bit of slack.

To be sure, Friedman elides some of the minor advantages America’s system has over China’s, such as freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, access to the Internet and others too numerous to mention.  But Friedman, who’s been to China and talked with its cab drivers to gain fascinating insights about how the world works, knows this.

Frustrations and pique aside, Friedman doesn’t really prefer China’s system to America’s at all.   Rather, he prefers to a particular set of policy outcomes that China’s “enlightened” government can impose on its people without consequence, that our own more-or-less accountable representatives can not.   But that’s rather like preferring Fascism for the timeliness of its trains.

Especially if you make your living as an opinion writer.

Some loosely related threads seen on memeorandum this morning:

• California’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger allows as to how he could conceivably endorse a Democrat as his successor — while insisting that he will himself remain a Republican

• Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton likened the Bowl Championship Series, which determines college football’s top division’s national championship, to Communism.

• Red State’s Erick Erickson repeatedly Twitters that retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter is a child molester who also enjoys the occasional goat. (I could not find independent corroboration of this via Google.)

• Right Wing News’ John Hawkins takes to the pixels of Pajamas Media to argue that conservatives are hamstrung by being too civil and should be more like the Democrats

Megan McArdle calls for an extension of Godwin’s Law that would put an end to “using the word fascist to apply to the current, or indeed previous, administration.”

How is this helpful?  Has clarifying the distinction between fascism and socialism really added to most peoples’ understanding of what the Obama administration is doing?  All this does is drag the specter of Hitler into the conversation.  And the problem with Hitler was not his industrial policy–I mean, okay, fine, Hitler’s industrial policy bad, right, but I could forgive him for that, you know?  The thing that really bothers me about Hitler was the genocide.  And I’m about as sure as I can be that Obama has no plans to round up millions of people, put them in camps, and find various creative ways to torture them to death.

I agree with her conclusion but not her argument.

Last things first: The Final Solution was possible because Nazi Germany was a fascist state and therefore no one dared question Hitler’s orders.  Genocide is, however, not a necessary outgrowth of fascist ideology nor have most genocides been carried out by fascist governments. Benito Mussolini, the Founding Fascist (if you will) wasn’t a mass murderer and Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and Omar al-Bashir aren’t fascists. The genocide was what made Hitler evil, not what made him a fascist.

With that out of the way, I completely agree that dubbing American presidents and their policies fascist is not a helpful way to advance the debate.   See, for example, my previous decisions of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism and the Obama cult of personality.  While there may be aspects of the Bush or Obama policies that have something akin with Communism or Nazism or Fascism or whathaveyou, those terms have so much extraneous baggage that the discussion invariably strays from the actual thing being criticized.  [As Dave Schuler points out in the comments, there's a name for this: "poisoning the well."]

We should be careful here to differentiate name-calling from the actual substantive argument.  It’s a very different thing to argue that bringing up the idea of nationalizing health care makes you a Marxist/Socialist/Communist than to argue that enacting a given policy will naturally lead down a road to ever-more-powerful government.   So, Friedrick Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is a different than Ann Coulter’s Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism or even Al Franken’s Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

Over at New Atlanticist, I’ve written several foreign policy-related posts.

Fighting Poverty with Profit looks at a persuasive editorial calling for a radical new approach to development aid.

Poland Slashes Early Retirement Benefits notes the irony that Poland, a country which lived under Communism for decades and freed itself thanks, in large part, to an incredibly powerful labor union, is among the first in Europe to take such significant measures to draw down the social welfare system.

Russia: We’ll Trade Missiles for Defense Shield marvels that U.S. plans to build a missile defense shield, ridiculed as unworkable by U.S. scientists and defense experts since Ronald Reagan floated his Strategic Defense Initiative (dubbed “Star Wars” by critics) have continually caused great consternation in Russia.

On January 23, 1980 President Jimmy Carter enunciated what became known as the Carter Doctrine. He stated, “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” To give this commitment meaning, the United States began a military buildup in the region that ultimately led to the creation of Central Command, which now has responsibility for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Carter Doctrine came about during the period of the “Big Red Arrow” Soviet threat. Readers of a certain age will remember seeing scary maps back then. A big red arrow originating in Soviet Central Asia, plunging through Afghanistan and toward Iran. A second red arrow originated in Ethiopia and shot up into South Yemen, aimed at Saudi Arabia. This was the context of the significant increase in American military presence in the Middle East.

This transformation was significant. Traditionally, the United States had been pretty hands off in the Middle East. Though the United States recognized Israel immediately after its founding, Israel received more aid from other countries for a generation. Massive financial aid to Israel and Egypt only began following the Camp David Accord during the Carter Administration. Otherwise, the United States had always been willing to remain at arm’s length from developments.

Nearly 30 years later, by a combination of inertia, mission creep, and ill-considered friendships, the United States now finds itself deeply enmeshed in politics throughout the Middle East and South Asia. It is time to reverse that trend. Fundamentally, we have made a key mistake in our relations with the Middle East — we have overstated the benefits of deep involvement and the costs of disengagement while systematically underestimating the risks associated with playing such a visible role in a politically unstable region. Challenging the Soviet threat was a credible basis for a greater role, the hodge-podge of half-considered issues we face today is not.

I have argued for a the United States to maintain a dramatically smaller “footprint” on the ground in the Middle East while actively seeking to reduce our “fingerprints” on policy developments in the region. The U.S. military is too active and too visible. American Embassies are too large. And in general, our role in region is too overwhelming. Poll after poll shows the same thing — The United States is blamed for many of the misfortunes of the region and is considered an aggressive, hostile, imperialist power. At this point, our active involvement is self-defeating.

If we were to limit our involvement, this would impact three issues directly: Radicalism, Oil, and Israel. Let me discuss each in turn.

The big issue for the United States today is the threat posed by radical and violent Islamist movements. I would argue that in this area we would reap the greatest benefits of a more detached policy. Simply put, during the Cold War we accepted a quid pro quo with “moderate” Arab rulers. In return for consistent anti-Communism we would allow them to scapegoat us for domestic repression largely aimed at Islamist groups. That policy worked all too well as over the past two decades the biggest change in the Islamist movement has been increased focus on the “far enemy” (i.e. the United States) and less on the “near enemy” (i.e. corrupt rulers at home). It was a bad bargain during the Cold War, and is an even worse one today. The United States simply can no longer allow hatred of us to serve a steam valve to reduce pressure on Middle Eastern rulers. If we are going to be closely associated with regimes in the region, we have to insist that they forthrightly and consistently defend that relationship with their own people. No more message segmenting. No more blame shifting.

On the reverse side, some argue that we cannot reduce our presence because that is what our enemies want. In short, they believe that to spite groups like al Qaeda we have to go against our own interests. As a matter of strategy, it is tremendously dangerous to allow your enemies to define your interests for you. If we allow al Qaeda to pick the time and place of our confrontations, we cede to them the initiative and choice of terrain. Just because AQ might consider Iraq or Afghanistan a central front does not mean we have to. Yes, they may indeed claim victory if we do retrench. But we cannot make American policy in response to AQ press releases. Reducing the visibility of the American role will reduce the viability of anti-American movements and do more to undermine groups like al Qaeda than anything else, even if it gives them the theme for a crowing video.

The second issue is oil. The U.S. presence in the Middle East does serve to reduce some of the risks associated with the Western world’s reliances on Middle Eastern oil. It does not lower the cost necessarily, but it may reduce some potential for volatility in supply. But the cost of this risk mitigation is tremendous. We pay for lowering the supply risk with increased risk of terrorist attacks, greater hostility from the Arab population, and the costs of men and materiel associated with military commitments. Are there other ways to reduce those risks? Of course there are. They include investments in alternative energy, oil exporation at home, better fuel efficiency from cars. Certainly those are costly measures in the short-run, but so is deep involvement in a volatile region. In the long-run, the calculus is easy. Energy independence is a strategic imperative.

The third issue is Israel. There are some in the United States who believe it is in America’s interests to play “whack-a-mole” against an ever-shifting set of potential enemies of Israel. Yesterday Iraq, today Iran, tomorrow Syria. Ultimately, though, Israel has nuclear weapons and is unlikely to be attacked by any state actor. Certainly, the United States has an interest — as does the entire international community — in preventing terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear weapons, but pursuing a non-proliferation agenda does not require unilateral commitment to the region. The other part of the Israel issue is the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Here, I am more pessimistic than most. As long as the Israeli political system is fractured — there are 18 parties represented in the Knesset and the largest party has fewer than one quarter of the seats — and Palestinian political power is split between Fatah and Hamas and even factions within those movements — it is simply impossible to conceive of a lasting, broadly accepted peace. The more visible the American role in brokering such a broken peace, the more resentful enemies we are likely to see emerge. Israeli land-grabs will become American land-grabs in frustrated Palestinian perceptions. Palestinian corruption and violence become American corruption and violence in the minds of angry Israelis. Genuine peace is a fantasy, and before you can visualize hope, you need to recognize reality.

In short, the benefits we believe accrue from deep engagement are largely illusory, and the costs associated with retrenchment are smaller than most fear.

Image by Flickr user Stewf under Creative Commons license.

I found this earlier and had to share:

As best I can tell from Googling, this is not a PhotoShop but an actual ad circa 1930. The image has the watermark of the Georgetown Book Shop, which offers the poster for sale. The copy reads:

This is a perennial bestseller and attention grabber, but to us the best line in the ad is the opening sentence, which tries to equate a “Bolshevik” with any employee who would “grumble” over a harsh, cheap paper towel. We’re sure that as soon at this guy’s boss satisfied his revolutionary yearning for soft towels, his jealousy towards his friends at the National Lead Co. and the Campbell Soup Co. abated, and that his moustache was shaved in a display of recognition that a long and bitter era of class warfare had resolved itself.

Indeed.

I was unable to determine how successful this campaign was in moving paper towels. I can report that most of the places I’ve worked continue to use cheap paper towels (which are, inexplicably, jammed into the dispenser in such a manner that grabbing a single towel would be impossible even if it were sufficient to the task) and that I have noted hints of disgruntlement and some leftist tendencies.

Kevin Drum, responding to Jonah Goldberg’s argument that George Packer’s “The Fall of Conservatism” erroneously conflates conservatism with the Republican Party, retorts:

No political ideology lives in isolation. We judge communism by how Mao and Stalin implemented it, we judge 60s-era liberalism by how LBJ and the Democratic Party implemented it, and we judge social democracy by how Western Europe has implemented it. That’s how you judge movements: by how their real-life adherents put them into practice, not by reference to a utopian vision of how they should be implemented if only we lived in the best of all possible worlds.

Nonetheless, now that the Republican Party has been brought low, an awful lot of conservatives are jumping ship, claiming that it really doesn’t represent them at all. But look: when the GOP made common cause with evangelical extremists, conservatives cheered. When the GOP accepted Grover Norquist’s tax jihad as sacred writ, conservatives cheered. When Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay all but declared the GOP the party of corporate welfare, conservatives cheered. When George Bush declared war on the Middle East, conservatives cheered. Somehow Burke never really entered the discussion. But now that it turns out these positions have been pretty much played out, Burke is back in and Karl Rove is out. That’s just a little too convenient.

That’s exactly right. Especially when, in the same three-paragraph piece, Goldberg does exactly what he accuses Packer of: “[L]ast I checked liberals are not exactly churning out a lot of policy brilliance either. Their rising fortune has almost entirely to do with the political failures of the GOP and the natural cyclical nature of politics generally.”

Goldberg, incidentally, hits the nail on the head with that one. Even though Democrats control Congress again, the American people have been trained to view both history and current events in presidential cycles. We’re in a down cycle right now so, naturally, George W. Bush and, by extension, the Republican Party, get the blame and the opposition party’s calls for change naturally have tremendous appeal.

It’s true, too, that there’s not a perfect overlap between conservative/Republican and liberal/Democrat, although it’s much closer now than it was even ten or twenty years ago. For example, the highly touted Democratic pickups in recent special elections were achieved by finding conservative candidates to wear the Democrat label. Still, the parties, especially the Republicans, brand themselves by their ideology. (The Democrats have shied away from “liberal” in recent years, as Ronald Reagan successfully turned that into an epithet. But they’re still selling the same soap in a “progressive” wrapper.)

Modern American conservatism is a strange coalition between social conservatives motivated by a fear that they’re losing the cultural wars, national security hawks of various stripes, and economic libertarians. With the right standard bearer and set of external circumstances, that’s a winning message at the presidential level. All three groups are necessary for Republicans to win in the Electoral College even though they (especially the first and third group) tend not to like each other very much.

The social conservatives are in the most trouble of the three groups. First trimester abortion will never be illegal; indeed, the ability to terminate pregnancy safely at home will continue to increase, making it a moot point. Homosexuality is rapidly mainstreaming and gay marriage will achieve the status of interracial marriage through some combination of judicial action and social change within the next 10-15 years. Women’s equality is long established now, with the remaining battles taking place over relatively small issues. Prayer in school is a dead issue. It’s not clear what’s left, really, of the movement as it existed when Ronald Reagan was its secular standard bearer.

The economic libertarians continue to carry the day on the macro level but lose on the margins. Institutionally, rent-seeking behavior is all but impossible to eliminate. And, as Kevin suggests, we’re near the end of the days where calling for tax cuts is a sure-fire winner. Not because people don’t like low taxes, incidentally, but because, relatively speaking, we already have them. Cutting the top marginal rate from 90 to 70 to 35 all make sense. It’s hard to morally justify confiscating the lion’s share of a person’s income, regardless of their ability to pay. But arguing about the difference between 35 and 33 just isn’t very sexy. And the demand for government programs is increasing, not decreasing, and somebody has to pay for it.

Despite the incredible unpopularity of the Iraq War, the hawks are in the best shape. They dominate both parties, with the difference being what the legitimate reasons for military intervention are. And even that difference has been blurred with the rise of the neocons and their “national greatness” agenda. Rhetorically, it’s light years from the liberal interventionists; practically, they’re all but identical.

All that said, I’d put the odds at John McCain nonetheless winning the presidency in November at something like 40:60. He’s fighting an uphill battle because of Bush, the war, his age, and Obama’s enormous personal charm and charisma. Despite many conservatives’ distaste for him, McCain will run under the conservative banner and sell soft versions of all three pieces of the movement. The fear of further losses under Obama will motivate an enormous number of people but McCain will need some help from external events for that to be enough this go-round.

Senator John McCain declared our policy of containment towards Cuba a success and declared his support for an independent Kosovo in a conference call with bloggers this afternoon.

He made some opening remarks focusing on foreign policy before taking questions and I had the opportunity to ask him to expand his thoughts.

He challenged Barack Obama’s statement in last night’s debate that he would sit down and talk with Raul Castro without precondition. McCain said he’d be happy to hold talks once they have free elections and release their political prisoners but not before.

In my questioning, I noted that we had managed to have unconditional talks with the likes of Joe Stalin and Chairman Mao. While conceding that point — although noting that our marriage of convenience with Stalin quickly fell apart once our common foe was defeated — he thinks Raul is a particularly bad fellow[1] and that, more importantly, our holding talks would increase his legitimacy and possibly extend the reign of Communism over that country. I noted that we’d been trying to change Cuba’s regime by isolating them since well before I was born and that I’m not a particularly young man anymore. McCain begged to differ, saying our policy was containment and it had worked. He noted that Cuba’s ability to expand their influence to far-flung places in Africa and even inside Latin America had been eliminated.

In his opening remarks, the Senator noted the rioting in response to Kosovo’s independence declaration but stated that he believes it will taper off and Kosovo will be a free society. I asked where one draws the line on national sovereignty claims. McCain said there was no cut-and-dried rule that he could apply. He agreed with me that micro-states could be a problem and that tribalism, particularly in East Africa, had created much misery. At the same time, he believes the long history of human rights abuses against the Kosovar Albanians made them a special case.

Pat Curley asked about the possibility of a McCain-Obama race breaking the mold in terms of Electoral College competitiveness and, specifically, which Red and Blue states in recent years would be in play. McCain stated that he thought he would be “very competitive” in California and thought he had a good chance in New Jersey and even New York. On the down side, he thought he would have more trouble with New Mexico than has been the case in recent years. (See Curley’s write-up for more detail.)

Other questions focused on the New York Times allegations, his issues with the FEC, and the Native Hawaiian bill [see Fausta Wertz on the last]. Nothing much newsworthy came of those discussions.

Note: I made some minor additions to the above account to more fully flesh out the conversation in the first few minutes after initial publication.

__________

[1]He cited Brian Latell’s prize-winning book After Fidel: Raul Castro and the Future of Cuba’s Revolution. See also Latell’s TIME 100 piece, “Raúl Castro.”

Photo credit: The Scratching Post

Bob Novak has a scathing attack on Mike Huckabee’s conservative credentials.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist advocate of big government and a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate. Now that he has pulled even with Mitt Romney for the Iowa caucuses and might make more progress, the beleaguered Republican Party has a frightening problem.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Novak portrays Huckabee as a big government guy who brings his religious fervor to forwarding a liberal agenda:

There is no doubt about Huckabee’s record during a decade in Little Rock. He was regarded by fellow Republican governors as a compulsive tax-and-spender. He increased the Arkansas tax burden 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes. When he lost 100 pounds and decided to press his new lifestyle on the American people, he was hardly being a Goldwater-Reagan libertarian.

As a presidential candidate, Huckabee has sought to counteract his reputation as a taxer by pressing for replacement of the income tax with a sales tax. More recently he signed the no-tax-increase pledge of Americans for Tax Reform. But Huckabee simply does not fit within normal boundaries of economic conservatism, such as when he criticized President Bush’s veto of a Democratic expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Calling global warming a “moral issue” mandating “a biblical duty” to prevent climate change, he has endorsed a cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.

The modern conservative movement has always been an odd mixture.

Reagan successfully mobilized evangelical Christians but he was decidedly not one of them; he was a small government conservative who merely talked the talk on issues like abortion and school prayer while not actually doing much about them. He managed to expand the base to include social conservatives but hold on to the economic conservatives by promoting low taxes, free(ish) trade, devout anti-Communism, and a massive increase in defense spending.

The collapse of the Soviet Union weakened this coalition and helped make the election of Bill Clinton possible. The 9/11 attacks again made national security Priority One for conservatives and again made it necessary for evangelicals and the Chamber of Commerce crowd to band together.

Still, the bedfellows are no less strange. Evangelical leaders are endorsing the likes of Rudy Giuliani because counter-terrorism has taken on a quasi-messianic urgency. At the same time, we’ve got Mitt Romney, whose Mormonism makes him a “cultist” in the eyes of many evangelicals, leading the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. Huckabee is making traditional Republicans very nervous while rallying strong support in Iowa — and drawing the endorsements of Chuck Norris and Ric Flair. And, of course, there’s the Ron Paul phenomenon.

Interesting times.

Photo credit: Mary Ann Chastain, AP

Slate’s Fred Kaplan surveys his readers for ideas on improving America’s image around the world. Most of the suggestions revolve around travel and cultural interaction, such as expanding foreign student exchange programs, Fulbright grants, the Peace Corps, and the like.

While those things are valuable in and of themselves, their impact on reshaping world opinion would be infinitesimal. There are six billion-odd people in the world and the fraction of them that we could possibly interact with in that way is negligible. Moreover, those who would participate in such exchanges would necessarily be from the elite classes who, for the most part, already have substantial contact with Americans and those who have met Americans.

The reason that America and Americans are so often viewed with hostility is that we’re a global leviathan that imposes our culture, value, and policy preferences on the world through the sheer dominance of our economy, entertainment industry, and military.

Some of the former great powers in Western Europe resent that a comparative young upstart has risen to those heights and/or think we’re reckless in the use of that power. Furthermore, our interests and theirs often simply clash.

In the developing world, a different set of problems exist. In some cases, we’ve supported oppressive dictators when doing so aligned with our larger strategic objectives such as containing Soviet Communism or fighting against Islamist terrorism. In others, our movies and music portray a decadent, wealthy society that’s sharply antagonistic to local mores. This is exacerbated by state controlled media that find the United States a convenient target for deflecting anger at the failure of the regime to provide basic services.

So, yes, expanded cultural exchange will persuade a few people that Americans, as people, are decent, hard working, and mean them no harm. It might also persuade a few Americans that more engagement with the world’s problems is in our interest. But it’s not going to change the basic facts of America’s place in the world.

John Derbyshire and Andrew Sullivan see great similarity’s between Ron Paul and a young William F. Buckley, Jr. John Podhoretz and Richard Fernandez, though, see more similarities between Paul and Ralph Nader. Ed Morrissey, meanwhile, thinks he’s this years’ Howard Dean.

To the extent he’s following any of those parallels, I’d go with Dean.

As Derbyshire notes, Buckley’s conservatism was founded on anti-Communism as a principle that united otherwise disparate ideologues. Paul’s brand of libertarianism is relatively isolationist and lacks a unifying principle to rally the different parts of the Republican constituency.

Nader ran as an independent to the left of Al Gore and cost his erstwhile party the presidency. I take Paul at his word that, should he not win the Republican nomination, he’ll bow out of the 2008 race. Were he to nonetheless run as an independent, though, it’s far from clear to me that he draws more Republicans than Democrats. While there has been a strong libertarian strain in the GOP since at least Barry Goldwater, there has been a social libertarian strain in the Democratic Party even longer.

Dean, though, strikes me as the likeliest analog. Both raised wild sums of money from a highly energized online constituency and seemed to be the only candidate in their party’s field that sparked genuine excitement. Neither, though, seemed to have the experience or disposition to pass the “gravitas” threshold expected of those who would be president.

The difference between Paul and Dean is that Paul’s campaign is still active and he therefore still has a theoretical chance. He’s got the deepest support of any candidate in the Republican field. Until he wins a primary, though, I’m not likely to be convinced that his support is very broad.

Lech Walesa is comign to Houston for a heart transplant.

Former Polish President and Solidarity movement leader Lech Walesa said on Wednesday he planned to have a heart transplant in the United States.

Walesa, a symbol of the overthrow of the communist regime in Eastern Europe in 1989 and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said his health was worsening and he could die without a transplant. “I had very bad medical test results last month and quick actions had to be undertaken,” Walesa, 64, told reporters in the northern port city of Gdansk, the cradle of Solidarity which helped to trigger the fall of communism.

[...]

Newspapers reported on Wednesday that Walesa lacked money for the transplant, which could cost around $100,000. “Many people willing to help contacted me after this report was published,” Walesa said before his meeting with Tusk. Two of them even declared unlimited amounts of money but under the condition that I would give them my old heart.”

I suspect payment won’t be much of an issue. Surely, donors will be found to ensure that one of the great heroes of the Cold War gets the medical care he needs.

It is, however, somewhat ironic that a former union boss in a Communist country is having to fly to the United States for medical care.

I was away to attend a wedding this weekend and have barely been paying attention to non-football-related news. There’s lots of blogospheric reaction to the mess that’s unfolding in Pakistan, with Pervez Musharraf suspending any pretense that he’s head of a democracy, jailing opposition leaders, lawyers, and journalists by the hundreds and I’m not sure that I’ve got much to add at this stage. I will, however, call your attention to some interesting expert analysis.

Nick Gvosdev, editor of The National Interest, draws some parallels with Indian politics from three decades ago.

I realize that neither Pakistanis nor Indians may appreciate comparing General Pervez Musharraf with Indira Gandhi, but I can’t help but note some of the parallels between Musharraf’s decision and the one taken by Gandhi back in 1975. Both were facing Supreme Court decisions that could have affected their ability to remain in power; both were coping with an emboldened political opposition; both had their own in-house militants/terrorists (Naxalites in India; Al-Qaeda/Taliban in Pakistan); and both made the argument that law and order was needed to ensure a real transition to democracy at some undisclosed point in the future.

An interesting prediction, then: when Gandhi lifted the Emergency in 1977, she thought she was going to sweep parliamentary elections because there had been economic growth and stability; instead, the opposition managed to finally unite and swept the vote. So it may be that the impact of this emergency in Pakistan will be to finally get a fractious and divided opposition to work together. Again, however, the experience in India in the late 1970s showed that over time a religious conservative and a secular socialist coalition could not endure in government–again possible lessons for Pakistan.

May it be so. Commenters correctly note that Gandhi was at least elected democratically whereas Musharraf seized power via military coup. That’s seldom a direct path to true democracy, since it legitimates the right of the generals to decide that the politicians are making a mess of things and it is therefore the duty of the military to take the reins.

Shahan Mufti and Mark Sappenfield, correspondents for the Christian Science Monitor, cut through Mushararraf’s self-justification.

Despite his assertions to the contrary, his decision has little to do with terrorism, analysts say, adding that his was a political calculation. With the Supreme Court threatening to declare his presidency illegal in a ruling this week, Musharraf struck preemptively against his foes.

Under the emergency order, he has sacked more than half of the Supreme Court, jailed up to 500 opposition party leaders, and shut down the independent media – assuming that the US has invested too much in him and the war on terror to withdraw its patronage. The order may also delay parliamentary elections, which had been scheduled to take place before Jan. 15.

It marks an important moment for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. As one of the last opposition figures who is not under arrest, she is uniquely situated to rally the masses against the president, says Hassan Askari Rizvi, an independent political scientist. Whether she does could determine how long Musharraf survives politically. “Much depends on Bhutto,” says Professor Rizvi. “If she decides to go to the streets, it can make an impact.”

Over the long term, however, Musharraf’s decision risks exposing his weaknesses further. During the five years since Pakistan’s last elections, Musharraf has always had at least the appearance of a democratic government supporting him. Now, that has all but vanished, and if either Bhutto or the lawyers can mount significant public opposition to him, the Army might be left with no option but to dispense with one of their own – as they have done before.

There are no early signs that Bhutto or the military are going to make any moves in that direction, however, and the Bush administration’s options are exceedingly limited given the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Steven Taylor draws yet another historical parallel: “US support for the Shah’s regime was linked to anti-communism, just as our alliance with Musharraf was linked to anti-terrorism. In both cases the foreign policy goals trumped all else.” For those not old enough to remember, let’s just say that didn’t end well.

Then again, absent a policy change much, much earlier, it’s far from clear what else the United States could have done. President Carter perhaps made the worst of all decisions, simultaneously refusing to back the Shah against Khomeini and his goons and yet giving him sanctuary in the United States and thus further inflaming anti-American sentiments. Still, it’s not as if Jeffersonian democracy was an available policy option.

Similarly, it’s far from clear what it is that the Bush administration can do at this point. Musharraf is a thug and, contrary to the old saw, he’s not really even our thug. But it’s not at all clear that Bhutto is a much better option, much less that there’s much we can do to bolster the democratic opposition. Indeed, the United States taking an active role in Pakistani internal affairs would almost certainly hinder rather than help our cause.

Washington Examiner cartoonist Nate Beeler sums up the Republican contest thus far quite aptly:

In the accompanying commentary, Beeler observes, “While the Republican heavies snipe at each other over who is the real conservative in the race, Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave.” Part of the problem, though, is that while Reagan and Goldwater both called themselves “conservatives,” the former was mostly a tax cutting, strong defense populist and the latter a small government libertarian.

Reagan was the more successful politician not only because he was the better messenger but because his message appealed to more people. Goldwater, however, had a much more coherent ideology. Reagan preached smaller government, lower taxes, and a huge military to defeat Soviet Communism. As the old joke says: Pick two.

Given the stakes, Reagan’s military buildup made sense and sacrificing fiscal sanity in order to achieve it was defensible. With the Cold War over and the Soviets replaced by a much more discrete enemy in Islamist terrorist-guerrillas, though, Reagan’s formula no longer makes sense. Republicans continue to rely on it, however, while continuing the “small government” mantra.

The chief opposition party has won a plurality in Poland’s parliamentary elections but is apparently short of an outright victory.

Voters appeared to have ousted the prime minister, one half of Poland’s wonder-twin team, in parliamentary elections on Sunday. The challenger, Donald Tusk, declared victory for his pro-business party, Civic Platform. The prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, conceded defeat as two major exit polls showed his Law and Justice Party trailing Civic Platform by double-digit margins. His brother, Lech, will remain president and retain veto power over the presumptive new government’s legislation.

Official results are not expected until Tuesday. They could determine whether Civic Platform achieves an outright majority or, as is more likely, needs to form a coalition with the centrist Polish Peasants Party. Though the results were still unofficial, Mr. Kaczynski congratulated his opponent after what appeared to be a significant defeat. “It was a battle,” Mr. Tusk told supporters gathered here Sunday night. “We won it. But tomorrow we need to get down to work.”

Surveys showed that this election had the highest rate of voter participation since the fall of Communism in 1989. Some polling stations ran out of ballots, which kept several open up to three hours later than scheduled.

Leaders across Europe were likely to be relieved at the ascension of Civic Platform, a pro-Europe party. Under the Kaczynskis, Poland has earned a reputation as a consensus-breaking troublemaker.

On the other hand, the Kaczynskis have been the staunchest of allies of the United States. Mr. Tusk said during the campaign that he would have driven a harder bargain over support of plans to place missile interceptors on Polish soil and that, if elected, he would try to bring home the 900 Polish troops in Iraq.

The “pro-Europe” and “pro-America” memes are ultimately misplaced. The interests of the United States and Europe alike are served by a functional Poland that is a strong leader within the former Communist bloc as its members struggle with the transition to democratic governance and market-oriented economies.

Matthew Shugart and Steven Taylor have some background on Polish institutions and recent political history, respectively.