Hello, good morning, welcome, to nothing much: just your regular Sunday morning liveblog of the three hours-or-so that the teevee dispenses vaguely-politically-soaked marm into your home like a great Play-Doh factory of conventional wisdom. Today, we'll see if Meet The Press' audience can slip further. They have Tim Kaine and Michael Steele on, fighting with scimitars, maybe, to Star Trek music! My name is Jason and I will be, as always, your regular host for this affair. And I shall remain doing so, up until August, when I take a single Sunday off from this dread watchtower overlooking the decline of contemporary America, and go on vacation. Many of you have suggested ideas for what to do during that time, by sending me emails with the subject heading "OMGZ HOW WILL WE CONTEND WITH THIS DREADFUL VACATION IN AUGUST?" Please continue to do so. I am receiving a rich tableau. Next week, we shall drill down into your suggestions, and begin to arrive at a mutually satisfying plan!
As usual, you may send an email, leave a comment, follow my bleatings on the Tweetings, or set up an online black market for Sunday Liveblog themed arts and crafts. And as usual, due to the vagaries of area television programming, we begin with...
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
We go live to Notre Dame, where protesters are protesting President Obama offering pleasing bromides on what it's like to graduate from college, an oration that will cause everyone to hunger to have abortions. The reporter on the scene says things are calm, but "today, that may change." Fingers crossed, right?
Anyway, there's going to be a debate on this, between two priests. If you've been unfortunate enough to see anything on the news featuring this so-called debate, then you aren't missing anything. Anyway, there's an exciting poll that indicates that a majority of people are pro-life, but that a larger majority want abortion to remain legal. That sounds about right to me! Anyway, these protests follow Democratic candidates everywhere, and Presidents seem to get dogged by these mini-controversies whenever they give commencements. So, dog bites man. After today, I guess this news division will have to find a new chew toy.
Wow. The whole first segment was devoted to that. Is this going to be a thing today? Feh.
Ah, now Mitch McConnell is here right now, because we have a DIRECT CONFLICT between Nancy Pelosi and the CIA. "How should we get to the bottom of this?" Wallace asks. McConnell doesn't want to get to the bottom of it, of course! He thinks that these disputes can sort out the matter. Furthermore: the CIA says they didn't lie. To his credit, McConnell doesn't accept the CIA's word as tautology, it's "what the CIA believes." But he says, "The Speaker obviously has a problem." No: the story is a bunch of legislators knew we were torturing people and said nothing. Interestingly, Pelosi remains in favor of a Truth Commission. That's a thing apart from an investigation that ends in prosecutions, but it's not, "Look the other way as the intelligence communities dick around."
Now McConnell is talking about how we cannot bring GITMO detainees to America and house them in prisons that already house dangerous criminals. Hilariously, he asserts that the Moussaoui trial "disrupted" the city of Alexandria while it was ongoing. I can personally attest to the way the Moussaoui trial affected the residents of that city. How tragic was their circumstance! How terrible was their burden! Never before have a city full of people gone on living their lives exactly as they had always done under such terrible circumstances!
Are we heading for a battle over health care? McConnell says "everyone knows we need health care," but that a government plan will bring a "huge debate." I maintain that while this debate is ongoing, I'd love to stop paying for these legislators' health care. McConnell says that "private insurance will not be able to compete against a government option," a mere breath after asserting the superiority of private market-based health care. Seems to me that those who can afford the superior plan will continue to purchase it! Unless it turns out to not be competitive.
Anyway, if there was a response available from the White House, they'd probably say, "How many times do we need to tell you that we aren't planning a European-style health care plan? Do you even know the difference?"
McConnell also says that Dick Cheney is the mind behind all of Obama's national security policies. McConnell seems to believe that Obama has "adjusted his sails" in Iraq, when all he's really done is continue to hew to the Status of Forces Agreement. He also weirdly believes that sending additional troops to Afghanistan is a GOP/Cheney driven initiative, but it was really a constantly restated policy from the 2008 campaign trail. As for the detainee photo switch, well, I am not a fan! But some have suggested there are exciting jujitsu behind this.
So, Panel Time! Brit Hume says, basically, "OOOH PELOSI SHINY." Part of me is sort of grateful that the Pelosi angle on this matter has become so inflamed, because the torture issue was in danger of dropping out of the news. But here it is, sort of! I mean, now everyone's sort of forgetting that people were tortured, mainly in the hopes that someone would prove a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, and these techniques have made us less safe as a result.
Nina Easton is mad shimmery today! She says, "This is a bigger story than Nancy Pelosi...there are other Democrats in those briefings." IT IS AN EVEN BIGGER STORY THAN THAT, MY DEAR!
Kristol says "it's pretty shocking that a Speaker of the House to accuse the CIA of lying." That's just silly! If John Boehner can do it, SURELY Pelosi can!
Jennifer Loven says the White House is "worried about this being a distraction" and hopes that Pelosi backs away from having a Truth Commission. No one seems to find it remarkable that despite all of this, Pelosi wants to have a Truth Commission.
I have already said that Pelosi is not the onion, but the peel, and it's important to remember that. Matt Yglesias, concurs, saying: "Whether you love torture or despise it, and whether you believe Pelosi or not, there's just no way of looking at the history of torture in America in which Pelosi comes out as anything other than a bit player." And he sums up this whole media obsession very succinctly:
Pelosi, to her credit, has stood firm against this. She's consistently not only defended herself, but defender her position in favor of establishing a truth commission to get to the bottom of all of this. But the right is hoping to scare her into tossing her principles overboard in an effort to keep herself out of controversy.
That's important to remember. The hope here, and McConnell echoed it this morning, is that those who want this matter sounded out fully will back down at the fear of tarnishing Nancy Pelosi. Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that this doesn't move me in the slightest.
On the matter of detainee trials, Bill Kristol is basically actively hoping for the American people to agitate to both give up habeas corpus and shut down the prisons in their neighborhood. Again, I note the appalling disinterest among ostensible reporters who are filled with all sorts of nonsensical thoughts about the political ramifications of detainees - how will it affect so and so in the polls, how does it alter campaign promises - and yet no one, NO ONE ever stops to consider: "Are these detainees actually guilty of anything? If so, what? If so, how can we leverage their guilt in the service of global security? And if they are not guilty of anything, precisely how are we going to make it right, to people wrongly imprisoned?
Jennifer Loven talks about Obama, "taking a gamble." But the gamble is being made with human lives! I mean, we do still consider these people human, right?
These people really act that what they do is important, that they get to the bottom of things on a weekly basis with their big brains. It's just mindless activity, masquerading as achievement. A whole conversation of torture and detention, and the actual people detained and tortured are nothing but abstractions. Depressing.
THIS WEEK
Hey, today is an "extended power panel." Which means offering the largely useless husk known as James Carville to help Katrina vanden Heuvel battle Republicans. Maybe I'm wrong! We'll see!
So OMGZ PELOSI IS YELLEEN AT THE SEE-EYE-YAY. John Kyl says, "I am less interested in investigating [Pelosi] then I am about the policies." And he doesn't want a truth commission. Jim Webb also wants to move forward. This is a double dose of NO TRUTH commission. Webb is very disappointing to me on this issue. And, wow. They just wipe the issue away, just like that.
What about military commissions? Webb backtracks on his one-time opposition to Commissions, saying he wants merely a playing field that mimics our judicial system without actually being our judicial system, for the sake of keeping classified material under wraps. Separate, but equal! I am starting to see why no one wants these detainees at Leavenworth: all those additional water fountains they'd have to install!
John Kyl is, I believe, stating a debunked figure on detainee recidivism, but nevertheless, we simply cannot continue to jail persons who have committed no crimes. (You know, doing so tends to piss people off, food for thought.) Kyl also says that the remaining detainees are all the most threatening folks, but GSteph immediately steps on that, citing the Uighurs from China who are an near-universally recognized non-threat. They cannot safely go back to China, but Webb and Kyl don't want even those detainees tried in the United States.
What's important to remember is that you have to give GITMO closure a deadline - or "a date certain" to use the goofy-ass parlance of the times - or else the prison stays open. There is no situation where GITMO, in following currently established trial proceedings, closes out their business and closes itself. That's because the mechanics of trials at GITMO are designed to go on indefinitely. They aren't procedures that spin to a conclusion.
Panel Time! They run a tight, seat-switching game at the Newseum, getting Kyl and Webb out of there, and wheeling the panel in. Today, they probably had to work hard at this. Did they fully account for how slow Webb and Kyl would leave the set today? I ask only because those two were doing a lot of half-stepping today.
Liz Cheney, she's playing torture memo chicken, in the belief that there are memos that indicate the effectiveness of torture. I'd like to read these myself. I've started to put together a picture of the yield gained from waterboarding KSM and Abu Zubaydah, and so far, I am not impressed.
KVH is bravely fighting the whole panel on the matter of releasing the detainee photos, she being of the mind that the whole "knowing they exist part" is enough to inflame anti-American sentiment. Carville says that he's comfortable "as a Democrat" with Obama's decision. This is bankrupt thinking. He's basically saying that bad decisions become magically good when it's a Democrat that makes them, and that's just asinine.
Steve Schmidt thinks that GITMO cannot be closed because there are people there who want to kill Americans, which doesn't really sound that unique from any prison, anywhere, in the United States. And here in the United States, one thing we are really, really good at is keeping people in prison. George Will agrees with me! Exciting!
Liz Cheney says, "It's easy for us inside the Beltway to suggest the these detainees get sent to Colorado." Actually, it is easy for people inside the Beltway to suggest that Colorado is incapable of housing these detainees. She then goes on to suggest we consider the source of the torture allegations, slagging Colin Powell's old chief of staff. Yes. That's Dick Cheney's daughter suggesting that not enough of us have been considering the sources of various allegations.
Pelosi time! Will suggests that it's time people get over attacking the Bush administration. I'm sure he was just a strident in decrying all the "BILL CLINTON SODOMIZED THE FUTURE OF AMERICA" that the world endured well after his tenure as President ended.
James Carville is now yammering on and on and on and on and on. Steve Schmidt says that he is against waterboarding, but shouldn't we consider the SINCERITY of people who tortured other people! They only wanted what's best! Yes, shouldn't we consider the SINCERITY of bank robbers? They merely wanted to circumvent the traditional banking systems to enrich their own lives!
"This is about torture!...This is not a political football game," says KVH, and God bless her. She wants a full disclosure, not a cherry-picking, run like the Abu Ghraib matter. Liz Cheney immediately steps in and starts obfuscating,
And Carville just cares about polls: "Twice the number of people think this President is doing a better job than the last President." YES, DEMOCRATIC PARTY EXCEPTIONALISM WILL SAVE US. MORE AMERICANS WOULD SUPPORT BEING SENT INTO AN IMMORAL WAR BY OBAMA THAN SOMEONE ELSE, MAYBE. Let's do a poll.
And now Liz Cheney and Carville are yelling about polls - like forever and ever. This is how Beltway insiders have sex with each other.
KVH is really, really up against it here. Everyone is battling her on the idea of investigating torture. Steve Schmidt is pissing and moaning about 9/11 and anthrax and calling prosecuting criminals "nonsense." And Carville reduces everything to Rush Limbaugh.
Liz Cheney: "The future of the Republican Party is going to be built on substance." And the promise of never being held accountable for anything, presumably!
Anyway, I think Lady Macbeth had a monologue about the specific substance Liz Cheney is talking about. I recall it was quite a tenacious one!
MEET THE PRESS
Oh, Lord. MTP begins today with animation of an elephant and donkey doing...SOMETHING to one another. Having violent foreplay, I guess. That basically tells you all you need to know about how day is going to go. Apparently one of David Gregory's "issues this Sunday" is that "Democrats and Republicans" are "at odds." NOOOO! Really? How did this happen? WHAT BIG NEWS!
Anyway, Tim Kaine and Michael Steele are here to talk issues! I wonder what they'll say about stuff. I promise to do my best to penetrate the mysteries behind their sure-to-be-surprising rhetoric!
1. OMGZ TEH ABORSHUNZ: A new Gallup poll says more Americans are calling themselves pro-life than pro-choice for the first time! Funny, if you asked me or my wife which one we were, our answer would be: "I reject your premise that the two are mutually exclusive." Think about it. And then try not to lose yourself in pondering the fact that the same poll says only a mere 23% want abortion criminalized in all circumstances. This will be something Gregory, I assure you, won't note...aaaaaaand he doesn't. Instead he basically asks: DOES THIS NOT SHOW THAT OBAMA IS A MONSTER FOR TALKING TO NOTRE DAME.
STEELE: "I think there are two issues here." He's right! Talking to Notre Dame is not the same as abortion policy...oh WAIT--that's not what he is saying. Steele is actually saying that it's okay for ND to invite Obama to speak, but not to confirm Obama's "imprimatur" through an honorary degree, because this will change Catholic dogma through powerful magicks!
KAINE: I am Catholic and me and my two ND alum brothers are cool with this. We're working very hard to reduce abortions.
Gregory asks what Obama should say about this matter today. Uhm, how about he says NOTHING? How about he be the one guy who doesn't turn a day focused on the accomplishments and achievements of a bunch of great students into the sparring ground for two rival ideologies to kick one another in the throat.
Kaine says Obama should talk about the common ground Americans share. Steele says Obama is the most pro-abortion president in American history.
STEELE: "You cannot get away from the morality of the issue." In just a few minutes, I imagine he'll be asked about Pelosi and torture, and I imagine that he'll be very quickly GETTING AWAY FROM THE MORALITY OF THAT ISSUE.
Gregory asks Steele if the GOP is open to new pro-choice candidates. Steele instead talks about helping to build a "strong pro-life coalition among the Democrats." This is precisely where David Gregory might want to bring up the whole matter of how ONLY THIS WEEK, a GOP recruiter brought up taking the matter of bringing pro-choice Republicans into the fold and running them in winnable races. Guess how well that went over? I'll spare you the suspense: NOT VERY WELL. Gregory could make note of this, but I guess he'd be required to be up on current events, or something.
2. OMGZ THE SUPREME COURTS AND TEH EMPATHEEZ!
Steele wants judges to just interpret law without considering the human issues. I'm not sure that's possible, so long as humans are asked to render judgment. Perhaps robots could do this, but not people. Anyway, I would find it hard to believe that Steele would criticize the judicial activism of an Antonin Scalia, who has very clearly ruled out of empathy for his fellow doctrinaire Catholics.
Anyway, Steele seems to think that court judges never consider mitigating circumstances or conditionalities when rendering judgments. This is simply not true. The truth is, over time, there's been a movement to strip judges of their ability to actually apply judgment. Mandatory minimums are a great example of a law that places an unneeded restraint on justices. Steele seems to suggest that "empathy" is the robotic concern for another person's feelings. He invites us to look up the definition of the word, so let's do that:
Empathy is the capability to share your feelings and understand another's emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes," or in some way experience what the other person is feeling. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, sympathy, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior.
I think that Steele is trying to suggest that Obama wants justices who SYMPATHIZE. Sympathy of course, suggests an alliance of feelings. All empathy suggests is consideration. It doesn't mean some sort of enslavement to another's point of view.
3. OMGZ THE PELOSEES!
Gregory asks: "Why does this matter?"
Kaine says, basically, WE'VE TURNED THE PAGE LET'S GO FORWARD. Yes, Obama has banned the practice of torture, so it's all good, brah! Because once the government forbids something it never ever happens ever again! (Except maybe in "speakeasies." It's rumored that there's a nice one those at Bagram AFB. Ssssh! Don't tell the mouldering corpse of Eliot Ness or anything!)
Gregory is incredulous: "But the Democrats don't want to turn the page?" And some don't, and it's REALLY CRAMPING DAVID'S STYLE. I mean, he wants to turn the page pretty badly, it seems.
Steele says, "Nancy Pelosi has stepped in it big time, and the issue now is whether the President supports Pelosi or his CIA director." What about the "morality of the issue," Michael? Gregory asks if there should be a truth commission, and Steele basically says "Let's put it all on the table." Of course, what he's really saying is, "If we put it on the table, think about what harm it will do to Nancy Pelosi." Kaine just wants everyone to agree that torture is bad, because he takes Steele's subtextual blackmail deadly seriously. Both of these guys are being totally and disgustingly disingenuous. I mean, Steele was just holding court on the primacy of moral issues, but you ask him to share his opinion on the morality of torture, and suddenly he's mum. Kaine, for his part, couldn't be more cloying in his cringing attempt to change the subject.
GOD THIS IS DUMB. One guy brings up Cheney. The other brings up Rush Limbaugh. David Gregory shows a clip from last week's FACE THE NATION, and asks the two men to react to them, like he's doing Rorschach tests.
Steele says, "I'm not in the business of suppressing someone's opinion or their thoughts." Unless they are giving a graduation speech at Notre Dame.
Gregory points out that Steele's suggested that he's open to "denying funds to anyone who supported the stimulus plan." Steele denies this, saying: "Let's set the record straight. That is not what I said. What I said was I would follow the lead of the state party leadership in making their determinations with respect to primaries and the outcomes thereof." Well, I remember it differently. Steele absloutely said he was open to it, and "following the state party leadership" is not a concept that excludes being open to it. Steele once seemed to undertand this perfectly well, though now he seems to think the two ideas are separate mutually-excluding concepts:
CAVUTO: Republican Senators Collins, Specter, and Snowe who voted for the stimulus plan in the Senate, what...uhh...retribution will you exact?
STEELE: Look, my retribution is the retribution of the voters in their states. They're going to have to go through a primary in which they're going to have to explain to those Republican voters in that primary...
CAVUTO: I know, but will you, as RNC head recommend no RNC funds being provided to help them?
STEELE: That is something I'll talk to the state parties about and we'll follow their lead.
CAVUTO: So, in other words, are you open to that?
STEELE: Oh, yes, I'm always open to everything, baby, absolutely.
I find that Michael Steele has spent so much of his tenure explaining how all sorts of matters are outside the purview of the RNC that I have no idea what is actually INSIDE their purview. And honestly, since Steele has taken over, it seems like wide swaths of operations and decision-making are just going on without the RNC even in the loop. By 2010, maybe the RNC will be nothing more than a supper club!
To Steele, support for the stimulus package was not a "litmus test," rather it was a "clear line that House Republicans did not cross." That sort of makes it a litmus test! Unless Steele is a strict constructivist on the definition of litmus tests, and having revealed no information on pH levels, the "line" could not be said to be "litmusy."
4. OMGZ A GRAB BAG OF LEFTIST CRITICISM, WHY NOT?
Oh, now that we've had Steele enunciate the GOP's criticisms of the administration, he'll now BALANCE SAUCE IT UP be getting to some Democratic criticisms of the administration. I'm actually grateful for this, because the criticism from the left is more substantive: military commissions, detention, state secrets. It's almost as if one side believes that the unitary executive should be dismantled no matter who is in charge. Not that Tim Kaine can be considered among that cohort. Kaine wants to stipulate that astounding distinctions have been made between Bush's military commissions and Obama's, and that the rationale on releasing detainee photos - it would endanger American troops, inflame our enemies, hurt our security...the same argument the previous administration made - is now somehow, magically, MORE VIABLE because an Exceptional Democratic President is at the helm.
On 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' - a matter that Obama can do away with rather readily, Kaine says that it's important that the matter get sorted out with Congress. Who is commander-in-chief, Mr. Kaine? You're telling me that Obama needs an up-or-down vote to put the kibosh on the discharge of this translator who is being sent FROM his duty because of his sexual preference? You just got through saying that America should feel safe that an Exceptional Democratic President is weighing these matters on a "daily basis" and making decisions. Not releasing the pictures keep us safe! And what does discharging a linguist get us, safety-wise.
Gregory asks why Obama hasn't tended to this matter, yet, and Kaine says, basically, OH WELL HE'S ONLY BEEN IN OFFICE FOR A FEW MONTHS! But we just celebrated the outstanding achievements of the first 100 days! We're supposed to celebrate how much he crammed into them! Tell you what, Mr. President, skip lunch tomorrow, and sign an executive order ending this practice, which, let's face it, has been lovingly sculpted from pure horseshit anyway. EVERYONE REALIZES THAT DON'T ASK DON'T TELL JUST LEGALLY ENSHRINES PRETENSE, RIGHT?
5. OMGZ THE HEALTH CARE
Kaine says he's heartened by the dialogue on health care, but Steele says no compromise is being made this year, basically because BLEAH THE TORT REFORMS and the TRIAL LAWYER DEVILS. Why should any doctor ever be sued for malpractice? Also, Steele wants insurance companies at the table "in a real way," which means they charge everyone a co-pay to sit at their table.
Gregory signs off with some fearless reporting on the White House Correspondents' Dinner, where Obama told some jokes about Michael Steele. Gregory heroically wrangles the EXACT SAME QUOTE from Steele he had already previously given. So, wow. Everyone throw your panties at David Gregory. (Seriously, I hear he is out of panties.)
We haven't done our little Panel Playlette in a long time, so why not:
THE MEET THE PRESS PLAYERS PRESENT:
"Another Experiment With An Air Pump"
a lamentable dissertation on the fifteen minutes or so of my lost life in one actDRAMATIS PERSONAE
David Gregory: encaser of birds within tubes
Peggy Noonan: wealthy dowager with cranium full of whimsy
John Meacham: look who's got a website!
Richard Haass: Choice/Necessity dialectician
Ron Brownstein: today's bespectacled expert
Me: very much like the main character of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, it seems, at least every Sunday morning______
GREGORY: OMGZ, the ramifications! The paths! The future of party politics!
BROWNSTEIN: The GOP is in a cycle of contraction, and are quickly becoming a Southern rump.
ME: And not the sorts of Southern rumps celebrated in Outkast songs!
GREGORY: But, OMGZ, the Cheney! It speaks!
NOONAN: Big tents need big poles, and lots of sleeping bags. And S'mores! The GOP needs to evolve.
ME: Or be more intelligently designed!
GREGORY: OMGZ, Meacham! You have a magazine and a website and everything! Help me start a Tumblr, or something.
MEACHAM: Woo, twitter! Anyway, having Dick Cheney yelling at you is a good thing.
ME: It's when he shoots you, right in the face, where you have problems.
HAASS: CAN I PLUG MY BOOK PLEEZ? Anyway, the fact that anyone is placing a one-year deadline on Afghanistan is silly.
ME: Not to dispute someone who so cagily plugged their book, but it's awfully disingenuous to suggest that anyone credibly thinks that a one-year deadline has been suggested to SOLVE AFGHANISTAN. Rather, Congress is asking for the opportunity to review various benchmarks in a year's time to evaluate whether the money had been well-spent, and whether the operation will continue to be funded. Granted, I don't recall the administration having established those promised benchmarks, yet.
HAASS: Not releasing the photographs was a good idea. Better to alienate the ACLU than jihadists. When people in Washington get alienated they write op-eds, when people in Afghanistan get alienated they plant IEDs.
ME: Uhm, that sort of makes me wonder why the ACLU is treated by so many on the same level of jihadists. I'd like to further point out that it's not so much the PHOTOGRAPHS that inflame passions and get IEDs planted, as it is the actions those photos depict that get IEDs planted. I promise you that no terrorist anywhere in the world is saying: "Wow. Barack Obama isn't going to release photos of the stuff I already know has happened. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING."
GREGORY: OMGZ Nancy Pelosi! Let's talk "about this quote-unquote torture debate."
ME: It's a torture debate. No scare-quotes need apply. It's a torture debate.
BROWNSTEIN: Nancy Pelosi didn't take the out Panetta gave her! This is extraordinary.
ME: No. The torture is extraordinary.
BROWNSTEIN: This tells quite a story about internal politics!
ME: It tells quite a story about how much the press wants to avoid the issue of torture.
BROWNSTEIN: She's escalated this by being inflammatory.
ME: The torture is what's inflammatory. Pelosi's escalations are a molehill next to a mountain.
NOONAN: What a difficuly news conference? How will this story resolve itself? The speaker and the head of the CIA are in a disagreement! WOW!
ME: Our government authorized the torture of a guy to try to elicit a false connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. There was no ticking time bomb. It was done specifically to advance a military policy that needed some sense added to it to make it palatable. That's the story that needs resolution. WHY ARE NONE OF YOU INTERESTED IN THIS?
NOONAN: I just think Pelosi made a big mistake!
ME: I cannot believe you all are respected media figures, on the teevee.
GREGORY: WOW. Look at us, talking about foreign policy!
ME: You people haven't said one word about foreign policy. You've merely discussed how foreign policy relates to the game of politics: who's up, who's down, what do polls say, what's the perception, who's strong, who's weak. None of you people have demonstrated even a passing interest in whether or not these policies have amounted to anything. There's been no evaluation of what has actually worked, or what hasn't.
GREGORY: WOW. MEACHAM. Have I mentioned your redesigned magazine yet? HAASS. Look at you! Writing books. My God, we are a special group of people, bleating nonsense forever into the ether! Let's continue to have some really deep thoughts, about stuff! I love this, you write, blah blah blah: "The moment calls for defining success down."
ME: This is precisely my point. Only people with narrow political obsessions can sit back on their gilded lillies and talk about the wisdom of "defining success down." For the rest of us, we are dependent not on how success is PERCEIVED, but by how it is ACHIEVED. You all celebrate half-measures, and compromise, and the wranglings of political elites and it's all such a goddamned pageant to you all. Take the stimulus package: shows like this talk about the brinksmanship and the votes and how the votes will be perceived and who's political career will be hurt and who really holds the power, and whether the White House won by getting their bill passed or lost because they had to buckle for the sixtieth vote in the Senate. WHAT CRAP! Ordinary people don't care about that stuff. They care about: will the stimulus work, by what mechanism will it achieve its ends, is it substantial enough, how long before its effects are felt.
GREGORY: It's so interesting the way the President feels like he has to limit the operation in Afghanistan.
ME: No, what's interesting is whether or not the strategy is sound, not whether it shall be perceived to be sound.
MEACHAM: My sense of him is that he will respond to new realities.
ME: This is not remarkable. All animal life forms respond to new realities.
HAASS: It's so interesting! Obama doesn't speak about establishing democracy. It's so different from Bush. It's so interesting.
ME: Was Bush wrong to suggest democracy could be achieved through warfare? Is Obama right to suggest it can't be done? Is that what he's suggesting at all? Are you aware that society is different in Afghanistan than it is in Iraq? Are you literally ONLY INTERESTED IN THE WORDS THAT ARE INCLUDED AND OMITTED FROM SPEECHES?
GREGORY: It's interesting! The health care debate is about pincer movements and deal-cutting and gambles!
ME: No it's not. The way in which people without sufficient health care suffer indignities in this country is interesting.
BROWNSTEIN: Wow! So many interesting things to say about strange coalitions and compromises! Obama could build a lasting majority.
ME: Could he build an effective health care system? I mean, would this "lasting majority" even get me a plate of egg rolls?
NOONAN: My head is spinning. Everything's a flurry! Spaghetti is being thrown at the wall. Don't do the flurry. The cost, the cost.
ME: I don't even know what that means? Can you literally go on teevee and just say a bunch of random words and be invited back again and again?
GREGORY: Let's end things with a clucking reminder of the great expert clique we are, by funning on Meacham, who I remind you, has a new design for his magazine and website!
MEACHAM: Ha ha. I'll get you for this, someday.
ME: Ha ha. Ugh.
That was literally, a conversation about nothing.
By the way, those photos? They're out. So much for all those discussion on political wisdom!
Anyway, that's that. My head hurts, watching that scintillating nonsense. It's why I need one day off from this, this year. We'll continue dragging that out next week. because that's what Sunday is for: dragging inconsequential things out, forever. Have a great week!