Dumb and Dumbererer

Sometimes I think pieces of information that are tangential to a story can be more revealing than the intentional focus. Reading between the cracks in the accepted narrative of this hard to believe NYT article on the pitfalls of negotiations in the Afghan war, two facts stood out more than the absurd fraud in the headline:

1. The man was paid to participate in the negotiations?!!! Even if he was the real McCoy, he would be just as likely to fake the talks just to receive more payments. A prerequisite to negotiation is that each side has something the other actually wants. If you have to pay the other side to show up, then its a safe bet that any resolution is DOA.

2. The real Taliban leadership is believed to be in Pakistan, hiding with the help of the Pakistani government?!!! At what point does Pakistan stop being our Ally? We invaded Afghanistan and unseated the Taliban in the first place because they were harboring our enemies. How is this very different?

Certainly our interests in the Middle East are very complicated, but it is not backwards land. Up is not down and pigs still don't take off from Kabul airport, yet these two facts that seem essentially like admissions of total failure are "background" to the story.

Hemingway had a simple rule for playing poker: if a hand is good enough to check, it is good enough to raise. If it isn't good enough to raise, then fold. If we can't win in Afghanistan, then there is no point spending another day, another dollar and another soldier's life trying not to lose. In the Middle East we are being strung along like suckers. Only the oil and defense companies will walk away with a smile.

Through the Looking Glass

Below is a bit from an NYT article mentioned in a Political Animal post. The article and the post are about Paul Ryan's (R-WI) "Road Map", a plan that the GOP claims to support. The plan includes essentially an end to Social Security and Medicare, reduced income taxes for the wealthy and most likely an increase in national debt, proposals which seem more than a little odd in a campaign year...or in this century. The role of the press should be to disseminate the substance of Ryan's proposals in objective news articles and provide analysis of it's merits in columns like this. In the below excerpted sentences from the NYT column (with my commentary added in bold) the article by one Matt Bai shows enormous cynicism in treating politics as a meaningless, zero-sum sporting event. Reading not very deeply between the lines Bai seems to have almost no respect for Ryan or his policy initiatives, yet the columnist self-consciously approaches the debate as if his job description is to NOT make a substantive analysis:

Let’s leave aside for now the debate over the viability of the road map, which, as a practical matter, doesn’t stand a chance of being enacted as is, anyway. (So we are "leaving aside" the question of whether Paul Ryan, the only Republican to even come close to producing an actual budget proposal, has any relevant policy ideas?)

The more pertinent question is whether Mr. Ryan is the kind of guy who just wants to make a point — or whether his road map represents the starting point in what could be a serious negotiation about entitlements and spending. (So again, there is no reason to even consider whether his ideas actually have any merit. The only possibilities are legislation as rhetorical point or legislation as negotiating tactic. Isn't there room in modern political coverage to point out how vapid and cynical this makes Ryan and the national GOP?)

We tend to think of bipartisanship as cooperation among a few pragmatic principals in both parties who already agree on how to solve a particular problem. (Or in the last year as mainstream Democrats compromising with conservative Democrats to create workable legislation while the GOP sits on their hands and make demonstrably false claims)

A good example is the recent bill on climate change advanced by Democrat John Kerry and Independent Joseph I. Lieberman with their Republican colleague Lindsay Graham, which stalled in the Senate.(which is by their own accounts a nearly worthless piece of legislation that accomplishes almost none of it's supporter's goals, so no, I wouldn't say its a good example)

But what President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich demonstrated in the mid-1990s is that meaningful bipartisan agreements can also be forged by fierce and ideologically opposed competitors who wrestle each other toward a tolerable consensus, as long as that consensus stands to benefit both parties politically.(i.e. they are "fierce" and "ideological" as long as their every action coincides with partisan concerns and popularity? What definition does this columnist understand for "fierce" or "ideological"? And how is Bill Clinton, the Democratic president who more or less ended Welfare and pushed NAFTA ideological? Do words truly have no meaning? Am I taking crazy pills?!!!)