History is Happening Now

I want Republican candidates to lose elections — but I do realize that even when they are in the minority, Republicans will influence the course of our nation’s history. I also realize that many Republican voters sincerely want what’s best for this country (even if they have bad ideas about what’s best).

And so even I, a happy Democrat, was flabbergasted when I recently read a blog on Townhall.com written by Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio Secretary of State and one of the leading candidates to be the G.O.P.’s next chairman:

A week ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, mentioned Mr. Obama says his goal is for 80% of these three million jobs to be private-sector. That means, Senator McConnell continued, that 20% would be public-sector, meaning this bill would create 600,000 new federal government jobs. For comparison, Mr. McConnell noted this would be the size of the entire Postal Service workforce.

Once government creates a job, it rarely eliminates it. Government swells by nature, feeding on tax dollars taken away from private citizens and employers until it becomes a bloated, sprawling bureaucracy.

So if Mr. Obama creates 600,000 new government bureaucrats, those jobs should be expected to be kept around permanently, long after this economic crisis is resolved. After all, eliminating those jobs means laying off 600,000 people. Who wants to take responsibility for that?

But most federal employees, that are not political appointees, vote Democrat. Since Washington, DC is the seat of government, whenever new federal bureaucrats are created many live in Maryland and Virginia. In 2008, Virginia went Democrat for the first time since 1964, and Mr. Obama won it by 130,000 votes. Creating 600,000 new jobs might help cement Virginia in the Democrat column, making it harder for Republicans to retake the White House.

So this bill, as currently designed, has serious flaws, some of which convey a partisan advantage. These must be thoroughly discussed and understood, and any major legislation cannot be allowed to benefit one party in what must be a bipartisan solution.

Of course, Blackwell’s policy-based opposition to the creation of 600,000 new federal jobs isn’t surprising – the language of “a bloated, sprawling bureaucracy” and a government “feeding on tax dollars taken away from private citizens” is standard right-wing rhetoric.

(If Republicans could mobilize public support with kind of talk, they would have won the last election — but alas (for them), this attitude toward government seems so outdated and simple-minded in the context of our current financial crisis. Most Americans are willing to take a chance on Obama that he is competant enough to employ 600,000 workers to make important investments in our collective future. They don’t view Obama as “feeding” and “bloated” — they view him as “investing” in our nation’s prosperity.)

But then Blackwell takes a truly awe-inspiring turn for the cynical when he suggests that hiring 600,000 new federal employees will effectively create almost 600,000 more voting Democrats in Virginia or Maryland. In other words, Blackwell is setting aside the question of whether this plan is best for the country, and arguing that Republicans should oppose it because it’s bad for the Republican Party.

For those Americans who care more about the success of the Republican Party than they care about the success of the American economy, Blackwell’s point may be persuasive. But for the rest of us — the vast majority, I would guess — Blackwell’s point is just gross. If these proposed jobs won’t help the economy, then we should obviously oppose them because they will only inflate the federal deficit and put the government in the awkward position of having to eventually fire 600,000 federal employees. And if these jobs will help the economy (and jobs tend to be helpful), then ar argument for opposing them on partisan grounds is offensive. Blackwell might as well argue that this proposal should be criticized because it would make Democrats more popular — and that will do plenty for the Democratic Party in Virginia. 

Blackwell’s post makes the Republican Party look ridiculous (which is fine with me) — but it also degrades our political discourse, appealing to a sense of paranoia and division. Republicans can forcefully advance Republican arguments without reducing every political issue to a question of which party wins and which party loses. Blackwell’s post may be bad for Republicans, but it’s bad for the country as well.  

Just imagine what would happen if our elected leaders took Blackwell’s advice, and “thoroughly discussed,” perhaps on C-SPAN, the electoral advantage Democrats would supposedly enjoy if the federal government hired another 600,000 employees. Imagine if Republican Congressmen and Senators made floor speeches arguing that “any major legislation cannot be allowed to benefit one party in what must be a bipartisan solution.”

It would be disgusting. It would send a signal to the American people that these politicians are concerned, first and foremost, with keeping their jobs — and only secondarily concerned with doing their jobs.

It may sound cheap when politicians go on television and say things like, “this isn’t about Democrat versus Republican,” or “we have to get beyond partisanship and focus on doing what’s right for the American people.” It sounds cheap because it’s difficult sometimes to imagine a politician advocating the opposite view.

Thank you, Mr. Blackwell, for demonstrating the attitude these politicians are rejecting when they say such things.

The Orwellian craziness that George W. Bush has foisted upon this country was beaten back somewhat today when Eric Holder, Obama’s choice to be the next Attorney General, appeared for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Whatever their views may be about the morality and/or effectiveness of torturing detained terrorists, most Americans are offended when they hear Bush and his spokespeople deny that the government has tortured detained terrorists.

Americans find it offensive to hear their politicians lie in an obvious, blatant way, and it is blatantly obvious to the vast majority of Americans that Bush and his spokespeople are deliberately lying when they claim that waterboarding is not torture. This ridiculous lie puts Bush’s right-wing supporters in the awkward position of having to either (a) repeat and defend Bush’s lie (and I’ve heard them do it on right-wing talk radio) or (b) acknowledge the truth but still defend Bush’s decision to lie as a morally acceptable decision. 

And our journalists are put in the awkward position of having to use pathetic phrases such as “harsh interrogation techniques” to avoid implicitly acknowledging what nearly everyone knows — that the president is lying. Like it or not, Bush’s lies don’t end with Bush himself — they spawn new lies throughout our media and culture, like an infection that quickly spreads.

I believe this is true everywhere: when politically powerful people lie, it makes it significantly harder for less powerful people to engage in an honest debate about what they want for their country — which is why tyrants constantly lie to their people.  The world George Orwell describes in his book, “1984,” is about a society where official government lying is so endemic that rational thought is effectively criminal.

Even if you think torture is acceptable and necessary, you must admit that Bush was leading our country in the direction of Orwell’s dystopia when he denied that his administration approved torture.

Eric Holder, Obama’s choice to be the next Attorney General, says waterboarding is torture. I let out a huge sigh of relief when I read this evening that Holder will publicly acknowledge the truth about our national torture policy, which means our policy-makers can begin to discuss waterboarding and other interrogation-related issues publicly without resorting to a bizzare, jargon-laden doublespeak. It means when Holder and other politicians use the word “torture,” we can assume they are speaking English, and not some absurd beaurocratic language they invented to avoid telling the truth.

From the Politico:

Holder’s unambiguous answers on torture stood in contrast those given by Michael Mukasey – then President Bush’s attorney general nominee — a year ago, when he repeatedly dodged questions about the legality of waterboarding.

Holder did not. When Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said Thursday that he considered the practice to be torture, Holder did not equivocate. “I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.”

Holder also rejected the argument made by Bush administration officials that the president’s power in a national emergency overrode constitutional restrictions.

“No one is above the law,” Holder said.

Holder’s admission came only a few days after the absurdity of the Bush Administration’s lying became especially hard to handle, when the Washington Post reported this:

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani’s health led to her conclusion. “The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.

Living in a world where that article goes to press and then Bush and Co. continue to insist that they do not torture — would be unbearable for anyone who values honest public debate. So Obama and Holder are clearly leading our country out of the craziness of the Bush years, and not a moment too soon.

But it seems they cannot lead us all the way.

I’m glad to live in a world where rational thought is NOT criminal — and I plan to exercise my freedom by thinking this:

If waterboarding is torture, and if George Bush (or somebody who worked for George Bush) approved waterboarding, then George Bush (or somebody who worked for George Bush) approved torture.

And if approving torture is illegal, then George Bush (or somebody who worked for George Bush) broke the law.

And if the purpose of having an Attorney General is to enforce the law through criminal prosecutions, then isn’t it the Attorney General’s PURPOSE to prosecute George Bush (or somebody who worked for George Bush) for approving torture? Isn’t that why we have an Attorney General?

Some might argue that the President is above the law due to his extremely high office, and can’t be prosecuted by the Attorney General. But Obama clearly doesn’t accept that excuse — he has said repeatedly that “no one is above the law,” when asked about Bush’s torture policy. But Obama has also implied — without actually explicitly saying — that Holder won’t prosecute Bush officials for torture.

It seems that while Holder didn’t weigh in specifically on the question of whether to prosecute Bush officials for ordering torture, he did indicate that he isn’t inclined to do so:

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) asked whether Holder would authorize criminal prosecutions of Bush Justice Department lawyers who approved “extraordinary redition” and the warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

“We don’t want to criminalize policy differences that may exist between the outgoing administration” and the incoming Obama administration, Holder said.

Holder’s view echoes that expressed by President-elect Barack Obama, who has so far indicated that he is not interested in pursuing such investigations.

So it seems we still live in a country where rationality still doesn’t reign supreme. But a half-sane world is better than nothing — and the benefits of accepting a half-portion of insanity for a few more years may outweigh the costs.