The Flight of the Flighty Fanatics

During the course of the Obama administration, I knew some folks who had previously identified as committed Democrats who hated Barack Obama. Hated, hated, hated him -- and not "from the left". These were folks who at least played with all the conspiracies (birtherism, closet Muslim, etc.), thought he was selling America to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood -- they really went off the deep end. Often times, they were die-hard 2008 Hillary Clinton supporters, but even that has the potential to mislead because by the time 2016 rolled around they viewed Clinton as toxic too because of her tenure in the abominable Obama administration (Benghazi!). In the last election, they often were very loud in calling themselves "independent" because "the Democratic Party left me".

Given the degree to which their hatred of Obama stemmed from truly wild xenophobic fantasies, I kind of just wrote them off as lost to the Trumpist movement. Honestly, they seemed like his perfect voters. All the things that should make a reasonable person detest Trump seemed to me like basically souped-up version of the politics they had been increasingly indulging in since 2008. People who viewed Obama as an incompetent naif cum reckless dictator whose deepest fantasy was to give Iran an open pipeline to import Sharia Law into America weren't going to be repelled by Trump's actual incompetence, recklessness, authoritarian tendencies, etc.

And yet, I've observed some of these people and -- they really don't like Trump. They do think he's incompetent and racist and reckless and at least quasi-authoritarian. From my vantage point, they seem to be just wildly pinballing. At best, it is confirmation of the conventional wisdom that "independent" is another way of saying "low-information and politically incoherent". But I suppose it's good news for the next election?

Last Call

At the end of November, I noted that one group which was really going to have it rough -- from a cognitive dissonance point of view, anyway -- over the next four years is that of Trump-critical conservatives. These are the guys who have some awareness of the outrageous danger that Donald Trump poses to our democratic system of governance, but really, really want to insist that this makes him no different from equally-dangerous-threat-to-the-republic Barack Obama. Having Obama to blame as the True Evil was the one thing that kept them sane. He was the one thing that kept them "conservatives". Donald Trump may be a problem, but Barack Obama!

It is for this reason that the last month or so of conservative commentary on Obama -- reaching its apex with the UN abstention vote on Israeli settlements -- has reached a fevered pitch. Like drunks who just heard "last call", conservatives are imbibing their favorite tonic with a desperate ferocity, knowing that it will soon disappear. In a month, right-wingers won't have Obama as their foil. They won't be able to wave their hands, throw up some pixie dust, and say "look over there!" They'll have to confront their demon face-to-face. Or -- perhaps more likely -- they'll have to bend the knee to it.

It is no accident that virtually the entirety of conservative response to Trump so far has been an extended riff on "I know you are but what am I?" Each and every sin Trump represents gets projected back onto the Democratic Party, the better to deny responsibility for what was happening in their own house. Harder and harder they clutch at denial: The mainstream media is the real feeder of fake news! Russia is the real force for good in the Middle East! Minorities are the real racists! Scientists are the ones really in denial on climate change!

The evolution of "fake news" is a great example. It is a problem when completely fabricated nonsense ("The Pope endorses Trump!") storms through social media. It undermines public trust and it shreds the informational fabric necessary for people to make informed decisions. But conservatives, desperate to insist that the problem isn't their own, are scrambling to apply the term to any liberal opinion they dislike. One might not agree with the assessment that the Iran Deal checked Iran's nuclear ambitions. One might have cogent arguments against it. But a story that reports that claim is not "fake news", it's a contrary evaluative appraisal. It doesn't fit, and it's embarrassing to see my conservative friends turn into the saddest of post-modernist parodies trying to make it fit. But the point of applying it isn't because it fits, it's to neutralize the terrible reality that there is a problem, and it is not in fact a symmetrical one.

So in all likelihood, other institutions (or the myth of Obama's "legacy") will take Obama's place as the conservative bugaboo which justifies their failure to hold their own movement to account. But nobody will fulfill that role better than Obama while in office. The conservative image of Barack Obama -- radical, terrorist-sympathizing, un-American, hyperpartisan, dictatorial, White-blaming -- was utterly divorced from reality. Indeed, it many ways it was what created Donald Trump. Tell your base that the opposition is radical, terrorist-sympathizing, un-American, hyperpartisan, dictatorial, and racist, and they will start believing you. And they'll do without your oh-so-subtle pseudo-intellectual pivot that seeks to ground it outside the fever swamp. Each time putatively reasonable conservatives engage in the myth, they further abdicate their responsibility to cure the disease ravaging their own political movement.

But there is a reason why the myth is so tempting. In its distortion it unified Republicans and quelled internal dissonance, albeit at a terrible cost. If Obama was this terrible, horrible, destructive, cataclysmic creature, then it wasn't really that terrible if Republicans created their own version of the "same". The constructed image of Obama warranted the failure of Republicans to confront their demons, because it allowed them to swallow every partisan's favorite intoxicant: The other side's worse.

Soon, Obama will be gone, and with him, the right's favorite palliative. But for one more month, they can still live in the idyllic harmony of the last eight years, where their actions had no consequences and their fantasies needed no foundations. I honestly can barely blame them for their carousing.

So drink up, my conservative friends. It's last call. In the morning, reality hits. And I hear its hangover's a bitch.

Needing a True Friend in the White House, Part II

In December of 2008, at the close of Obama's first year in office, I wrote on how he represented a true friend of Israel in the White House. Being a true friend is very different being a sycophant; as I put it then, "Part of being a good ally means knowing when to take your friend aside and tell them to chill."

Democrats have this relationship with Israel because Jews are a prominent and valued presence in the Party, and so our Party's Israel relationship develops out of genuine concern rather than empty rhetorical flourishes and grandiose symbolic posturing.

I was reflecting on this because I think Jewish pro-Israel conservatives are going to learn a hard lesson about what sort of "friend" they have in the White House right now. Because Republican policy towards Israel isn't based on any sort of organic care or concern. They don't care about Israel qua Israel, at most they care about it as a symbolic bulwark against dark Muslim hordes; at least they care about it simply as a domestic partisan wedge issue. And this means that Republican policy towards Israel is predictably skewed towards grand rhetorical pronouncements and against thought-out and considered policy agendas. More importantly, to the extent that Israel is purely a rhetorical concern of Republican leaders, it will always lose out to things they are concerned about on substance -- and Israel's Mideast rivals have a lot of substantive things to offer a fossil-fuel hungry Trump administration.

We're already seeing a little of this with the floating of Rex Tillerson -- deeply connected to Arab oil states and (of course) the Russian government -- as Secretary of State. Many right-wing Jewish groups are nervous -- persons with Tillerson's profile rarely are particularly fond of Israel, which they see as a barrier to increased friendly  relations with Gulf oil producers. There was also some pushback against James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, who complained of the "price" Americans paid in terms of their Middle East support for backing Israel and forthrightly acknowledged that if Israel does not find a way to disengage from the West Bank "Either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say the Arabs don’t get to vote — apartheid" (aside -- can you imagine if a prominent Democratic official said half as much? I bet Keith Ellison can.). In both cases, it's demonstrative of the deprioritization of even conservative pro-Israel politics in the Trump administrative. He'll pay good lip service, but it isn't actually an important concern for him.

What we can expect from Trump regarding Israel is simple: For the most part, he'll ignore them and let them run free. There will be no "telling them to chill," because for the most part Trump won't give two hoots about what Israel does. Some people will term this being an ally. Those people are simpletons.

In terms of actual policy, we'll see things that have high rhetorical impact (moving the Embassy to Jerusalem) but do little in the way of actual materially altering Israel's regional or international standing. And, most importantly, when genuine Israeli interests knock up against other American priorities -- like, say, Saudi oil -- they'll get kicked to the curb. Because Donald Trump isn't actually a friend of Israel. Friends care. And Donald Trump doesn't.

Our First Jewish President

Harold Pollack, responding to Barack Obama's declaration that no one over the age of eight should ever put ketchup on a hot dog, tweeted #FirstJewishPresident. Really, it just marks him as a man of Chicago.

But it did get me to thinking: In the same vein that people once called Bill Clinton our first Black President, could one say that Barack Obama was our first Jewish President?

In introducing that argument with respect to Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison argued as follows:

After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President’s body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and body-searched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke? The message was clear: “No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and—who knows?—maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us.

Morrison's argument mixed elements of Clinton's background, his personal style, and the particular way he was targeted and maltreated by his opponents. I think a similar connection can be made between Obama and the Jews.

I noted before he was even elected that Obama seemed to "get", in his bones, the Jewish connection to Zionism in a way that is rare to see among non-Jews. In terms of background, Obama initially rose to prominence through scholastic excellence, most prominently embodied when he was elected President of the Harvard Law Review. His cerebral style -- concerned with argument and persuasion, believing that we can reason our way through problems while being a bit uncomfortable with the back-slapping, good-ol'-boys club mentality of Washington politics -- seems quintessentially Jewish. In terms of how he handles himself, in terms of what he values, and in terms of how he approaches politics, Barack Obama could very easily pass for a Jew.

And then there are the conspiracy theories. Obama's political career has been beset by a series of ever-more ridiculous conspiracy theories. Birtherism is just the tip of the iceberg. We saw Obama launching Jade Helm as a prelude to taking over Texas, Obama seeking to become UN Secretary General in order to take over the world, and of course Obama revealing himself to be the Antichrist and taking over all of human existence. I could go on more or less indefinitely.

This particular form of oppression is very much Jewish in character. A few years ago, I joked that if you ever get "conspiracy theories" as a pub trivia category, you can save time by just putting down "Jews" for every answer -- odds are that, whatever the theory, somebody has pinned it on us. The conspiracy theory may well be the central organizing feature of anti-Semitism, and it may well also be the central distinctive component of the opposition to the Obama presidency -- managing to ramp up even the fevered "Clintons had Vince Foster murdered" pitch that prevailed at the end of the prior Democratic administration. On this front, Barack Obama -- presumed to be at the forefront of every domestic and global calamity, secretly plotting with shadowy cabals and foreign enemies to bring us into ruin -- was very much the first Jew in office

Finally, there's the fact that -- while Obama is overwhelmingly popular among most Jews -- about 25% loudly declare the man utterly detestable. Which is pretty Jewish in its own right, come to think of it.

As the days of the Obama presidency come to a close, I grow ever more impressed by all he accomplished in office, and proud that my community stood firmly and decisively beside him in two successful elections. One day, hopefully in my lifetime, we will have an actual Jewish President, just as we eventually got an actual Black President and how we'll soon (knock on wood) have an actual female President. But until that day, we could do far, far worse than to identify ourselves with the Obama legacy.

No, Obama is Not Going To Be The Next UN Secretary General

"There comes a point in every plot where the victim starts to suspect; and looks back, and sees a trail of events all pointing in a single direction. And when that point comes, Father had explained, the prospect of the loss may seem so unbearable, and admitting themselves tricked may seem so humiliating, that the victim will yet deny the plot, and the game may continue long after."*

Some things just seem to attract conspiracies. Jews, for one. Barack Obama, for two. The latest conspiracy theory about the latter is that he is seeking to become the next UN Secretary General. It appears to trace back to a Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida, which not only got the scoop but snagged exclusive quotes from senior Netanyahu aides seeking to block the appointment -- no small feat given that Kuwait and Israel have no diplomatic relations and Kuwait bars entry to anyone with an Israeli stamp on their passport. It has bounced around the usual far-right suspects -- Breitbart, Arutz Sheva, the American Spectator; some of whom admit in text that the report seems "far-fetched", others of whom go straight to the hyperventilation machine ("OBAMA COULD BECOME PRESIDENT OF THE WHOLE WORLD"). Or check out this hot take from the prominent Israeli cartoon Dry Bones:

That came with a caption from the author: "Apparently it's True!!! YIKES!"

So obviously, this is in fact not true. It is rather transparently ludicrous. The story has no corroboration outside of a single Kuwaiti newspaper which has no way of getting the information it purports to have, and would certainly not be rebroadcast by Breitbart magazine in any other context.** There's no reason why Barack Obama would want a thankless position like UN Secretary General, which is about as far away from being King of the World as you can get. And, most importantly, the UN Secretary General cannot come from a citizen of any of the permanent UN Security Council members -- so Obama isn't even eligible.

Hell, even in the realm of "unrealistic high profile positions Barack Obama might want upon leaving office", there's a better candidate: United States Supreme Court Justice. There's precedent for the President-to-Justice move, in the form of William Howard Taft, and it fits better with Obama's background as a law professor and overall temperament. Of course it will never happen because Republicans would pitch a fit in the Senate, but at least it'd be the regular type of implausible.

Individual conspiracy theories aren't really interesting to me. But what I am interested in is what causes people to not just buy into conspiracy theories, but go back to the same wells over and over again. There are some people who read this on Breitbart or Dry Bones and or whatever and simply won't accept that it's not true. But there's another cadre who might accept that it isn't true, but won't engage in any reassessment about their instincts in determining who is a reliable purveyor of information and who is not. They'll continue to draw from the same sources in the same ways and get duped, over and over again. The game continues long after the plot becomes clear.

* Source.

** The one thing that can over come right-wing Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism is when they can unify in hatred of Barack Obama. Then suddenly uncorroborated Kuwaiti media arms are wholly credible of resting an entire story upon.

Obama's "Race Card" Ploys Somehow Everywhere and Nowhere

Peter Wehner has a column today titled "Obama has Worsened Race Relations". Here are some things in that column:

• A 2009 prediction that, if the President's poll numbers drop, "be prepared for the 'race card' to be played" coupled with an in-advance judgment that any claims of racism over the next eight years "will be ... transparently false".
• The claim that Obama, along with Eric Holder, has "acted in ways that have divided us, stoked resentments, and heightened tensions and mistrust."
• The claim that Obama and Holder "have repeatedly put a racial frame around incidents that have nothing to do with race."
• The claim that Obama and Holder "have sought to exploit grievances rather than overcome them."
• The claim that "Obama, throughout his presidency, has been a master at dividing Americans of every race and class order to advance his own political interests."

Here is something you won't find in Mr. Wehner's column:

• Any actual examples (quotes, statements, policies, announcement -- anything) from President Obama that even supposedly demonstrates the President doing any of these things.

Fancy that.

How To Turn #IStandWithAhmed Into an Anti-Obama Attack

The big viral story of the day is a Muslim teenager, Ahmed Mohamed, who built a homemade clock, took it to school to show his teachers his engineering prowess, and was promptly arrested for bringing a "bomb". The case smacks of racial profiling and Ahmed's heartbreaking statement vowing "never to take an invention to school again" has really hit home the emotional and practical depths of his treatment. The President has joined the chorus of condemnations and invited Ahmed to the White House., and Kevin Drum wonders if this might be something so obviously outrageous that even Republicans have to follow suit.

Even conservatives can't really defend what happened here. On the other hand, they can hardly agree with Obama, can they? What to do?

Please. This is easy. First of all, the statement of Irving's mayor (previously most-well-known for engaging in hysterical Islamophobia in an attempt to ban religious mediation), or that of the school district, is the perfect conservative response: no direct attacks on Ahmed, but stressing the importance of public safety and reporting suspicious threats, and congratulating authorities on being "vigilant" towards any "threats". It's basically how Republicans react to cases of police brutality when they can't gin up a decades-old theft conviction or an embarrassing Facebook photo mugging for the camera: vague indication that it sucks for the victim, overridden by the importance of trusting and deferring to the authorities.

But honestly, that's still only scratching the surface. The real opportunity comes from that invitation for Ahmed and his clock to come to the White House. Because when he arrives, obviously the Secret Service is going to check his bag, because that's what they do. And then somebody -- my prediction is Breitbart -- will crow about the naked hypocrisy of Obama condemning a local school district from taking the same precautions that his own security detail demands.

That's how you go pro in anti-Obama hackery.

UPDATE: BOOM! I called it:

#IStandWithAhmed Didn't s.o. mail battery-powered socks to VP Gore once? Secret Service saw a bomb and attempted a controlled demolition.

— Richard5832 (@richard5832) September 16, 2015

What If the Dog Misses the Whistle?

Lee Smith has an utterly dreadful piece in Tablet claiming that Barack Obama employed anti-Semitic "dog whistles" in his interview with Jon Stewart. Now, I'm Jewish and pretty attuned to anti-Semitism to boot, and I watched the Stewart interview without anything setting my ears a-prick. Indeed, I thought back on the interview and couldn't even recall anything that might be a contender for an anti-Semitic dog whistle. Perhaps that's because I'm part of the strong plurality of Jews who supports the deal. But it says something meaningful when those who should be most attuned to the whistle apparently fail to hear it.

So what was the part of the interview that Smith contends is Obama's lapse into anti-Semitism? The apparent answer is that Obama urged Congress to not be influenced by "lobbyists" in voting yay or nay on the deal. Smith's line of reasoning is that attacking "lobbyists" inherently conjures up images of illicit Jewish financial influence and dual loyalties. It's more than a bit of a stretch, particularly since Smith manages to refute it in his own column: Attacking "lobbyists" is a standard-issue, borderline cliche invocation in American politics that is employed by all politicians of all backgrounds on all issues. Smith is actually right that it is essentially a meaningless statement -- all politics is lobbying of one form or another; it's just a question of which lobbyists one prefers -- but that further emphasizes that this is meaningless rhetoric, not a dog whistle of any variety.

That's not to say that "lobby" rhetoric cannot be used in an anti-Semitic fashion. When politicians suggests that there is something inherently suspect about Jewish groups engaging in lobbying, or contends that Jews winning the political game is proof of a political malfunction, or asserts that we lack a democratic system due to outsized Jewish control, those are all anti-Semitic tropes without question. But boilerplate rhetoric against opposing lobbyists is a far cry from that. Smith needs to learn to distinguish a dog whistle from a voice inside his own head.

Doing Anything for Iran

There is an old joke amongst academics, one that I guess is probably falling out of favor but which I still find funny, that goes as follows:

An attractive female student walks into her professor's office, closes the door, and walks suggestively toward him. "I'd do anything to get an A on the final exam," she says.

"Anything?" the professor asks, eyebrows raised.

"Anything." She replies.

"Would you even," the professor leans in, "study?"

I'm reminded of this joke when I think about Israel, Iran, and all those (Netanyahu being the most prominent) who insist that the Palestinian question is trivial and unimportant compared to the existential threat of a nuclear Iran. They keep saying how we need to do anything to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. "Anything?" I want to ask. "Anything!" they thunder. "Would you even ... withdraw from settlements?" Of course not. That's a bridge too far.

The partisans in the crowd will no doubt insist the two issues should have nothing to do with one another. The President has, for his part, argued that Israel's continued settlement expansion is a major impediment in building global support for policies protective of Israel (such as, say, containing Iran). And he's made it quite clear that he could do a lot more for Israel vis-a-vis Iran if Israel did more for the Palestinians. Maybe he's being unfair. But if Iran really is the serious, eliminationist, existential threat that Netanyahu claims that it is (and I think there is ample reason to support that assessment), then it is more than a little unbecoming for him to put Israel at greater risk of utter annihilation to preserve a few outposts in a desert that everybody agrees should never have been built in the first place. It makes one think that maybe it's Israel that doesn't take the Iran threat as seriously as it should.

The other half of my frustration with conservative criticism of America's policy towards Iran is that I continue to have no sense about what alternative the conservatives think we should be pursuing (two years ago I mentioned how, just as the far-left has strained to figure out which side in the Syria conflict is "Zionist" so they know who to oppose, conservatives are straining to get a bead on what Obama's policy on Syria is so they can advocate the opposite). The Hudson Institute's Michael Doran penned a letter to my liberal Jewish friends that embodies the sin. Doran describes himself as a non-Jew who is an expert on middle east policy. His letter opens with a farcical claim that Obama suggests that his Jewish critics are exhibiting "dual loyalty"* and ends with an are-you-still-beating-your-wife question about whether Iran should "be the dominant power in the Middle East, and should we be helping it to become that power." In the middle is a lot of ventilation about how terrible America's policy has been towards Israel, Iran, and Syria, but not a hint about what we should be doing instead. Consider this passage:

The plain fact is that the United States is doing nothing to arrest the projection and expansion of Iranian power in the region; quite the contrary. In Lebanon, for example, Washington has cut funding for Shiite figures who remain independent of Iran’s proxy Hizballah. In Iraq, the United States, through the Iraqi armed forces, is actually coordinating with Iranian-backed militias and serving as their air force. Indeed, wherever one looks in the Middle East, one can observe an American bias in favor of, to say the least, non-confrontation with Iran and its allies.

The pattern is most glaring in Syria, where the president has repeatedly avoided conflict with Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s closest ally. The tendency surfaced again a few weeks ago in connection with mounting evidence that Assad has routinely attacked his own people with gas. If true, this fact should trigger a sharp American response in keeping with the president’s famous “red line” on the use of chemical weapons. But when questioned on this matter at a press conference, he contrived to find a loophole. Assad’s forces, he said, have been deploying chlorine gas, which “historically” has not been considered a chemical weapon.

We are "doing nothing to arrest" Iran's power projections. We have "avoided conflict" with Syria. We have a "bias" in favor of "non-confrontation." Well, how should we "confront" these countries? Missile strikes? Ground troops? A tactical nuclear strike? Something non-violent? Doran doesn't say. I leave Doran's article without even a smidgen of an idea of what alternative foreign policy he'd prefer, unless he really is just advocating an all-out regional war (I have to add here that complaining about Obama's ambivalent Syria policy without mentioning the complication that ISIS brings to the table is nothing short of shocking).

Ultimately, one suspects that the major factor determining whether the Iran deal is a success or a failure will be whether the international community is willing to put some teeth into enforcing it going forward. That, in turn, depends a lot about how willing the West is to go to the mat for Israel when the chips are down, and that no doubt depends on Israel's standing in the world. Which, to circle back, suggests that maybe Israel should trade what it claims to be the trivial, unimportant conflict to shore up its standing in the major, existential one. That's what one does if one really thinks all options should be on the table. One of those options is saying "in a world where we're on the cusp of having a hostile, nuclear armed regional power on our doorstep, we simply can't afford the diplomatic and security costs of occupying the West Bank anymore."

To be sure, I've read enough complaints about the Iran deal from enough parties I respect for me to believe that it is decidedly worse than ideal. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd no doubt craft a different deal. Of course, if I could wave a magic wand I'd convert Iran into a liberal pluralist democracy which respects all of its neighbors and is friends to all of the woodland creatures. One makes deals with autocratic regimes pursuing nuclear weapons under less-than-ideal circumstances -- that comes with the territory. What I haven't seen is any plan or proposal that would lead to a better deal (or any alternative to signing a deal that would lead to better results than not having one). The conservative refrain that we need to do "anything" to stop Iran from getting a bomb seems to boil down to either one thing (war) or nothing (if they reject war).

* The claim is farcical because Obama is quite adamant that he believes his policies are in Israel's interest and are reflective of Jewish values --as Doran concedes. We might disagree with Obama descriptively on both those points, but by framing the debate in that term he's obviously saying it is permissible and salutary for Jews to think in terms of their own values and sense of what is good for Israel, and that this is a permissible (indeed, valuable) form of deliberation. If anything, this is sterling refutation of the scurrilous dual loyalty charge.

Obama the Zionist, Part II

Back in 2008, I wrote a post noting how then-Senator Barack Obama was one of the few non-Jewish politicians who seemed to really "get it" with respect to Israel -- articulating the interest Jews have in an independent and sovereign homeland in language that resonates with how Jews understand our own situation. This is what convinced me that Obama was obviously a friend of Israel and a friend of the Jewish community, and nothing that has happened in the ensuing seven years has shaken that feeling.

Now, Jeffrey Goldberg recaps an interview with the President that reaffirms my instincts in stark terms. There is essentially nothing the President says here that I wouldn't endorse. Iran is indeed a radical anti-Semitic regime -- but that doesn't mean that they can't be engaged with and contained using the normal tools of statecraft. Netanyahu's warnings about the "horde" of Arabs voting in the elections was despicable and an abdication of the principles underlying Israel's founding charter -- and the President here does no more than echo Israel's own President. And he's right about this:

“Do you think that Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people, and are you aware of the particular circumstances of Jewish history that might prompt that need and desire?” he said, in defining the questions that he believes should be asked. “And if your answer is no, if your notion is somehow that that history doesn’t matter, then that’s a problem, in my mind. If, on the other hand, you acknowledge the justness of the Jewish homeland, you acknowledge the active presence of anti-Semitism—that it’s not just something in the past, but it is current—if you acknowledge that there are people and nations that, if convenient, would do the Jewish people harm because of a warped ideology. If you acknowledge those things, then you should be able to align yourself with Israel where its security is at stake, you should be able to align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not held to a double standard in international fora, you should align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not isolated.”

These are the words of a man I'm proud to call an ally. A much better friend and ally, I'd say, then many others whose loud words about "supporting" Israel aren't grounded in concern about preserving its democratic character, much less in any general commitment to self-determination and political equality. As I observed quite some time ago, "Part of being an ally means sometimes taking your friends aside and telling them when they need to chill." That is a role that matters more, not less, because Israel is in a "bad neighborhood" and faces genuine dangers (and a not-insignificant number of people who think that there shouldn't be an Israel at all). Obama gets that and has done, in my view, a very good job in a very tough situation (including dealing with a Prime Minister who he clearly dislikes and who clearly dislikes him back).

So thank you, President Obama, for being a friend under a tough circumstances. Which, after all, is exactly when friends are needed the most.

Extra-Diverse Democrats, Part III

Last month, I noted how Republicans would inevitably describe Hillary Clinton following Barack Obama as Democrats engaging in "affirmative action." Wayne LaPierre grouping both Obama and Clinton as naught but "Demographically Symbolic" Presidents gave me an n of 1 , but I claimed vindication. And now look: the Weekly Standard has devoted a cover story to the theory authored by Joseph Epstein (via)!

If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in 2016 she will not only be the nation’s first woman president but our second affirmative-action president. By affirmative-action president I mean that she, like Barack Obama, will have got into office partly for reasons extraneous to her political philosophy or to her merits, which, though fully tested while holding some of the highest offices in the land, have not been notably distinguished.

If by "second", Epstein means "forty-fifth", he might be on to something (though admittedly, it is hard to argue that George W. Bush's rise to the presidency benefitted from any factors "extraneous to [his] political philosophy or to [his] merits"). But of course, any time women or non-White people rise to any level of political or social prominence, their accomplishments are dismissed as simply undeserved gifts bestowed by guilty White men. They never earn it on their own the old fashioned way: say, by being born into a political dynasty or by benefitting from only members of one's social class having the right to vote or by appealing to crude public sentiments of xenophobia and victimhood or by knowing that the only candidates adjudged to be "viable" would be ones who shared their race and sex. That's choosing a president on the merits.

Let's be clear: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were and are every bit as qualified and meritorious as your typical President before them. That's true regardless of whether or not one subscribes to their policy preferences. The only work "merit" is doing in the above critique is stand as a proxy for their non-White male character. Just like the Sotomayor confirmation, where " Princeton, Yale, and nearly two decades of federal court experience makes one a big ol' dummy [unless your name is Samuel Alito]", the veneer here is so thin it is incredible even the Weekly Standard was able to get it out with a straight face.

It All Hangs Together

I'm not going to say you shouldn't read Liel Leibovitz's latest Tablet Mag column "We Are All Racists Now." But maybe you don't have time. You're a busy guy. So I'll do you a favor and summarize the argument. Ready?

The White House just opened a gender-neutral bathroom, probably because it thinks trans-bias is more dangerous than Iran because presidential administrations should only do one thing at a time. And that one thing obviously shouldn't be transgender rights, because gay marriage is becoming more popular. The administration claims it has something to do with "safety", which shares a root with the word "safe", as in "safe spaces", man aren't those ridiculous? Kids these days. Anyway, by announcing support for transgender rights, he's just taking the easy way out by riding the wave of popular support for gay marriage, rather than doing something hard like taking on banks. Or doing a different foreign policy. You see, transgender rights are part of the culture war, and Obama wants to call anyone who disagrees with him a gay basher or a racist. Oppose his Iran plan, and he'll point to his unisex bathroom and say you hate ... gays? What would have happened if congressional Democrats systematically tried to undermine Reagan's foreign policy? We don't know because they didn't try! I guess that settles that.

Yet despite this cunning and perfectly comprehensible retort, some people still think some attacks on Obama are racist. Once upon a time liberals favored open discourse, but now they use that discourse to call things racist that I don't think are racist, and that's offensive triggering silencing censorship for some reason, rather than just counterspeech that makes me sad. All of this will be bad for the Jews, because if there's one group that would benefit from "-ism" claims being preemptively dismissed as a form of censorship, it's the Jews. In conclusion, "we're all racists now." The end.

Seriously, it's like if someone promised Liel that they'd take a shot for every inane trope he was able to string together without a segue. Please, go ahead and read the column and tell me where I'm being remotely unfair.

Extra-Diverse Democrats, Part II

Back when we were still in the throes of the 2008 Democratic primary, I predicted that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton would add additional "diversity" to their ticket if nominated (that is, both would select a White male VP).

The reason is that there is a very predictable media narrative that will form if two members of politically underrepresented groups appear on the Democratic ticket. One person is ground-breaking and history-making. Two people, by contrast, is an "affirmative action" choice and proof the Democrats are in thrall to "interest groups." If Obama picks a woman, it will undoubtedly be cast as "appeasing" women's groups who were ready to see Clinton break the ultimate glass ceiling. If Clinton picks a Black running mate, same thing, except replace NOW with the NAACP. This is what Derrick Bell calls the unspoken limit on affirmative action. Even if at first the diversity is applauded, at some point folks will start getting uncomfortable with too many women or people of color.

It's hard to say I was vindicated, given the n of 1. But I think the reasoning holds up, particularly given Wayne LaPierre's comments on Hillary Clinton's presidential run: "Eight Years Of One Demographically Symbolic President Is Enough."

It's a Trap!

David Bernstein warns us not to "believe Obama's faux-outrage at Netanyahu". "Faux-outrage?", you might ask -- "doesn't seem very 'faux' to me." And you'd be right, and Bernstein would agree: "I'm not claiming that Obama isn't sincerely outraged at Bibi; rather, the outrage, disgust, hostility, whatever you want to call it, has little to do with the events of the past week." Having retreated from the implausible, Bernstein then shifts to the banal: the frustration Obama is expressing with Netanyahu is not something that developed just this week, but rather stems from much longer-lasting animosity that has developed over a period of years.

This, presumably, is not a revelation: It has been beyond obvious to anyone with a pulse that Obama and Netanyahu do not like each other. Obama, I imagine, thinks that Bibi is craven, a sabre-rattler, at best indifferent to the creation of a Palestinian state, and committed to expanding Israel's settlements regardless of the impact they have on the Palestinian people. Bibi, for his part, seems to think that Obama is weak, unconcerned with Israel's security, too-focused on an (at best) tertiary issue of securing Palestinian statehood, and is in opposition to the settlement project that Bibi and his party fervently support. There is no reason to think that the two would be besties. And so it is not surprising that Bibi would prefer a disempowered Obama in favor of an emboldened Republican Party, and that Obama would rather see Bibi kicked to the curb in favor of a more left-wing coalition. The idea that people prefer their ideological compatriots is not anything astounding.

So Bernstein begins with an argument that is unsupportable and ends with one that is unoriginal and uninformative. What on earth is in the middle? And here is where things go off the rails, for Bernstein has in his head an elaborate plot where President Obama is deliberately seeking to hurt Netanyahu in order to undermine the U.S./Israel relationship (Sayeth Bernstein: the current flap-up mostly derives from "the president’s discomfort with the (positive) trajectory of U.S.-Israel relations (i.e., 'no daylight') in the Clinton and Bush years"). This, presumably, is meant as a counter-hypothesis to the more-immediately intuitive one, which is that Obama is taking the actions that he is because he genuinely thinks that a two-state solution is important and he's genuinely skeptical that Netanyahu has any serious intention of pursuing one. What's the evidence?

Well first, Bernstein cites State Department funding of OneVoice, a prominent NGO working in Israel and Palestine to foster grassroots support in both communities for a two-state solution. Indeed, OneVoice may be the single most important NGO in Israel or Palestine devoted to that project; for that reason it is an eminently sensible recipient of State Department funds given that American policy has long been to promote acceptance of a two-state solution within both the Israeli and Palestinian communities? So what's the problem? The problem is that OneVoice came to the conclusion that Netanyahu posed a significant threat to the two-state agenda, and so (apparently after State Department funding ceased) organized and campaigned against him (and in favor of more left-ward candidates). But the fact that an organization (correctly) identified by the State Department as committed to enabling a two-state solution felt the need to campaign against Netanyahu isn't a strike against State, it's a strike against Netanyahu and all those who think that he'll do anything to make that dream a reality. This, in other words, is evidence that independent political actors in Israel committed to a two-state solution don't trust Netanyahu. It's hardly unreasonable or manifest of a plot for Obama to react the same way.

The second bit of evidence, though, takes us much deeper down the rabbit hole. Follow if you dare:

On March 6, less than two weeks before the election, a major Israeli newspaper published a document showing that Netanyahu’s envoy had agreed on his behalf to an American-proposed framework that offered substantial Israeli concessions that Netanyahu publicly opposed. Let’s put on our thinking caps. Where would this leak have come from? The most logical suspect is the American State Department.

So here’s the dynamic: Netanyahu, while talking tough publicly about terms for an Israeli-Palestinian deal, was much more accommodating privately during actual negotiations. Just before Israeli elections, the U.S. government likely leaks evidence of his flexibility to harm Netanyahu. As a result, Netanyahu starts to lose right-wing voters to smaller parties, and the left-leaning major opposition party takes a lead in the polls, putting Netanyahu’s leadership in question, just as the U.S. wanted.

Netanyahu responds by using increasingly right-wing rhetoric (including denying that he ever agreed to the framework in question), to win back the voters from smaller parties that the leak cost him. He wins, and almost immediately announces that his campaign rhetoric was misunderstood, and that he still supports a two-state solution when conditions allow. The Obama Administration then announces it nevertheless has to reassess relations with Israel, allegedly because Netanayahu is no longer committed to the two-state solution.

So you get it? The Obama Administration, or someone with similar motivations, leaks a document showing that in practice, Netanyahu was surprisingly flexible in negotiations sponsored by the U.S. Netanyahu then tries to compensate by sounding tough in the closing days of his campaign. The administration then pretends that this is much more meaningful than its actual experience with Netanyahu, as indicated by the document it likely leaked, because it was out to punish Israel for electing Netanyahu regardless.

Only Imperial Stormtroopers could be precise, said Obi-Wan in one of his less-perceptive moments, and this reeks of that. Under Bernstein's chain of logic, we know the State Department leaked the information in attempt to weaken Netanyahu because ... it had the exact opposite effect. The actual result of the leak, as Bernstein notes, was that it pushed Netanyahu further to the right and caused him to make a declarative statement that a Palestinian state wouldn't occur "on his watch." Even under Bernstein's theory there's no reason why the Obama Administration would have wanted that outcome. And while it is of course possible that State miscalculated and its plan backfired, even under Bernstein's logic it wouldn't make a lot of sense -- as he notes, if it had worked "as planned" the result wouldn't have been to weaken the Israeli right, it would have simply redistributed right-wing votes to parties even further to the right. Again, there's no reason why Obama would want that. As much as Obama dislikes Bibi Netanyahu, I think it's fair to say a Naftali Bennett premiership would be far more distasteful.

Rather than assuming that a counterproductive State Department plan backfired, it would be far simpler to just ask who really benefited from the leak, based on what actually happened. And that's pretty straightforward -- the leak caused Bibi to issue statements quite antagonistic towards the creation of a Palestinian state, which energized the Israeli right and unified them behind Likud. The folks who benefited were members of Bibi's ideological camp who were unhappy with perceived Netanyahu softness towards a Palestinian state and wanted to push him right-ward. Plenty of folks meeting that description; quite few of whom are currently residing in the Obama State Department. I'm not saying that a discontented member of Bibi's coalition was responsible for the leak; I have no idea who did it. I am saying that the chain of reasoning Bernstein presents to concoct an elaborate Obama administration plot is transparently ludicrous.

Really, the roots of the discontent between Obama and Netanyahu are just as straightforward as they appear. Obama thinks the creation of a Palestinian state is really important. Bibi doesn't care one way or the other about it. That's what Israeli NGOs on the ground who are committed to this issue think. And even if you believe Bibi's apologia for his pre-election comments, and take him at his word that he wants a Palestinian state just not under "current conditions", it is still obviously the case that he's not planning on taking affirmative steps towards changing those conditions. After all, he didn't say "I'll do what I can, but ultimately I don't think the Palestinian leadership will sign on the dotted line." When he said "not on my watch," he said that he wasn't going to take any steps, that he had no interest in creating such conditions, or even taking what initiative he could to move things in the proper direction. One does not have to think Israel is entirely or even primarily responsible for the "conditions" not being right for a two-state solution and still believe that there are things a committed Israeli could do to make those conditions more favorable. For those of us who agree with Obama and think that a Palestinian state is a priority now, Bibi's stated preference for a Palestinian state in some undetermined theoretical future is hardly sufficient to label him an ally to the cause.

Bernstein concludes by saying that the ultimate goal of the devious Obama plot is to enact "a divide-and-conquer strategy to split off liberal Jewish Democrats from the communal pro-Israel consensus." He doesn't say what "pro-Israel consensus" he's talking about. If it's just the idea that we are "pro-Israel", then there's no split necessary -- advocating aggressively for two-states fits comfortably within the confines of "pro-Israel". If it's the idea that Netanyahu is a true-blue supporter of a two-state solution, then there's no consensus -- indeed, it's difficult to imagine that anybody seriously believes that. Liberals have no need to believe it because they never liked Netanyahu that much, and conservatives have no need to believe it because they never liked a two-state solution that much. In any event, Obama hardly needs to take steps to peel off liberal Democrats from anything -- liberal Democrats were already solid Obama backers to begin with.

No, what's really going on is a much deeper game of which Obama is only a small part of. The "pro-Israel consensus" for the past several decades has been quite clear: a two-state solution is the only valid solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There have been dissenters from that consensus on both the far-left and the far-right, but a consensus it has been. But recently, there has been an emergent challenge to this consensus from the more mainstream right. Sometimes they've come out and stated their opposition outright, other times it has come cloaked under a muttered mantra of "in theory yes, but...." It is these persons who are trying to crack -- or perhaps more aptly, reshape -- the pro-Israel consensus so that it no longer views pursuit of a two-state solution as a necessary part of what it means to be pro-Israel. And in response, those of us who are committed to that vision are seeking to the hold the line, and reaffirm that ours is the true pro-Israel position, and if you're going to express indifference or hostility to two-states, then you can hang out with your buddies in the JVP.

It is divide and conquer, but the group that we're trying to peel off isn't liberals away from pro-Israel. It's proto-one-staters who want to stay under the mantle of "pro-Israel." That's not going to fly for much longer. Being pro-Israel isn't simply a matter of subjective sentiment or mouthing the right words at the right time. If you aren't willing to put in some elbow grease to preserve Israel's standing as a secure, democratic Jewish state -- which is to say, if you're not willing to actually fight for a two-state solution -- then you have no business calling yourself pro-Israel at all. And if that means the American pro-Israel community finds itself lining up against the third of Israeli MKs who don't seem to share that vision, then that's the way things crumble.

A Deeply Rooted Response

One of my current projects involves exploring the "race card" response to claims of racial injustice. A large part of why that interests me is because it seems to the retort of choice when faced with any -- and I mean any -- allegation that racism might be an issue. Consider the conservative response to President Obama's statement that "deeply rooted" in America. That's a statement that seems banal, bordering on trivial. It doesn't call any specific person racist. It doesn't attack his political opponents as racist. It just acknowledges, in a vague, general way, that racism is significant problem in America and it won't be solved in a day.

And a good portion of the right went ballistic.

"Playing the race card more overtly than ever before" screams Breitbart.

"How many ways can he insult Americans?" demands the American Thinker.

"So much for that post racial America promise," sneers Gateway Pundit, linking to a speech where the President, um, promised no such thing.

In theory, the "race card" complaint should be reserved for situations where a claim of racism is so patently incredible that the only reason one could bring it up is as a distraction. I'm skeptical that, even on those terms, the "race card" response is ever appropriate because I'm skeptical of our pre-discursive intuitions regarding what sorts of racism claims strike as credible or not. But this response illustrates that the issue is not with particular claims, it's with there being a claim at all. Folks like Breitbart complain about the "race card" almost as a matter of reflex; it's the response of first resort no matter what type of claim is being made here. If it can deployed in as innocuous a case as the one at hand -- a general, even platitudinous acknowledgment of the ongoing power of racism -- there's no circumstance where it won't be deployed.

Rate That Apology! Part 2: Elizabeth Lauten

We're back with one of The Debate Link's favorite games, "Rate that Apology!" People sometimes say terrible things on the internet; later on, they often issue apologies. These range from the meaninglessly formulaic ("I apologize if anyone was offended. I don't have a racist bone in my body.") to the genuinely heartfelt to those which actually manage to make the original offense worse. I'm interested in how people apologize for a lot of reasons. Optimistically, apologies are an important part of moving forward and not replicating past wrongs. Pessimistically, apologies are an important part of moving forward while finding new ways to reinstantiate past wrongs.

In any event, today's entry comes from Elizabeth Lauten, a staffer for Tennessee Congressman Stephen Fincher. Some of you may have seen an image set of the Obama daughters at the annual Thanksigiving turkey pardon. They were, shall we say, not invested in the proceedings. And most people saw the pictures and chuckled at how even the First Daughters are still, at root, teenagers who think their dad does lame things and resent being stuck at boring and hokey public functions.

Lauten, however, thought the Obama daughters needed to show "a little class" and should try dressing "like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar." This would have been a, dare I say, classless response even if they Obama girls had been doing anything remotely out of the ordinary for two teenage girls. It's especially bizarre here given that Lauten is the only person I've seen who saw those pictures and had that particular set of thoughts.

Of course, Lauten soon apologized, and that is the subject of our post (the original wrong is relevant in terms of judging the apology, but remember it's the latter that is the focus of the series):

I reacted to an article and quickly judged the two young ladies in a way that I would never have wanted to be judged myself as a teenager. After many hours of prayer, talking to my parents and re-reading my words online, I can see more clearly how hurtful my words were. Please know that these judgmental feelings truly have no place in my heart. Furthermore, I'd like to apologize to all of those who I have hurt and offended with my words, and pledge to learn and grow (and I assure you I have) from this experience.

It's perhaps worth pausing here to say what I look for in an apology. First, I want to see the person actually take responsibility for the wrong. This means none of that "if you were offended" non-sense, and certainly no complaining that one was manipulating into saying terrible things because grrrrObama!/I'm just so passionate about this issue/I'm the victim of trolling. Second, I'm suspicious of elements that seem to make it about you, the wrongdoer. This is not the time for you to talk about how wonderful you are; it certainly isn't the time to get on a soapbox about how you're really right about the core issue and just happened to express yourself poorly. Third, I don't want to hear about how the statement "doesn't at all reflect [you]." Clearly, it does -- at least somewhat. That's why you said it. If you don't like that element of self, then you should think about how you got to this place and what needs to change so you do too. Finally, one element that's typically impossible to judge at this stage but is of course worth noting is the follow-through. Anyone can say (or read off a PR-prepared card) a decent apology. It's another thing to see if it actually translates into meaningful behavioral change going forward.

Back to Lauten. She actually has a bunch of good things going for her. She does seem to accept that these words really were wrong and hurtful (not just in the ears of certain oversensitive beholders). And I like the "pledge to learn and grow" line too. That indicates that Lauten concedes that the fact that she wrote this indicates some bad thought process or malign attitudes on her part that need to be changed; that this can't be dismissed as some completely anomalous blip. Unfortunately, that passage stands in tension with "these judgmental feelings truly have no place in my heart," but at least we have that tension in the first place -- more often apologies take it as a given that obviously this wasn't the real them, so who needs introspection. Also on the potential "con" side is the "after many hours of prayer" bit, which to me seems to border precipitously on "making it about [Lauten]", but that might be a cultural bias on my part.

All in all, not bad. I'd have liked a clearer concession that this statement did say something about Lauten that she now realizes she needs to change, but that element is by far the rarest one you see in public apologies so there is a limit to how much I can mark down.

Grade: 6.5/10.

Behind the Mule

Urging attacks on America, ISIS calls Barack Obama "mule of the Jews". Quick, somebody inform the Greeks!

Oddly, while the ISIS statement asks for attacks against Americans, Canadians, Australians, and the French, it does not appear to mention Israel (at least as summarized in this article). A certain (former) Labor candidate in England must be very disappointed indeed.

The Tan Man

Let's be real: That was an ugly-ass tan suit. That being said, Rep. Michael Kors Peter King (R-NY) seriously needs to get a grip:

"There's no way any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday," King said on NewsMaxTV on Friday. The interview was flagged by Buzzfeed. "When you have the world watching … a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is gonna do. For him to walk out —I'm not trying to be trivial here— in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy. This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded and he's trying to act like real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism. And then he goes on to say he has no strategy."

You're not trying to be trivial? Try harder. Geez.

Sweet Home Alabamacare

One of the interesting points about Obamacare's supposed unpopularity is that it combines the people who don't like it because it's liberal socialist communist overreach, and the people who don't like it because they're holding out for single-payer. The GOP, naturally, really represents only the latter constituency. And while such persons do represent the majority of the loyal Obamacare opposition, breaking the numbers out is rather revealing. 41% of Americans support Obamacare, and another 12% oppose it because they wish it was more liberal. Only 38% of Americans oppose it on conservative grounds. To put that in perspective, 38% is roughly the vote share President Obama managed to win in Alabama in 2012.

Now this does raise the question of who exactly these 12% not-liberal-enoughers are. I, for example, might wish Obamacare was more liberal than it is, but I still won't say I oppose it. There are some Americans who really are left-wing enough so they oppose, on substance, mainstream liberal policy objectives, but I don't think they total 12%. There's probably some remnants of the firebagger wing of the party mixed in here. And there are probably some people who, unlike me, will vote "opposed" in a poll question of this sort of they can conceive of any policy they'd prefer to Obamacare, even if they don't find the law itself to be particularly objectionable.

In all cases, to say such people won't vote Republican is not to say they will vote Democratic, but obviously to the extent that 12% has a lean, it will lean in favor of the Democratic Party.

"Nor Do They Have Any White Children"

Wait, what?:

"A Portuguese Water Dog can range in cost wildly. On average, one will pay between $1,400 and $2,000. President Barack Obama has this breed of animal," according to an answer on Ask.com.

With the addition of Sunny, the Obamas now have two black Portuguese water dogs.

The Obamas do not have any white dogs.

Not a parody. Just the Daily Caller.