The Enlightened Despot

Over the past few weeks, almost every political blog I read that didn’t have an evening link round-up has added one. I suspect they know something we don’t, so I’m jumping on the bandwagon. The plan is to have an installment every week night, and a longer one on Sundays covering the weekend and looking back at the prior week. I’ll include a bit more of a comment on many of the items than one finds in a typical round-up, hence the title.

Tonight’s edition is of bonus length, including all sorts of old news from the past few weeks that I never got around to mentioning. Here we go:

• Nancy Pelosi doubled down on her claim that the briefing she got from the CIA in 2002 did not include the revelation that waterboarding had already been used. She requested that the CIA release its notes on the briefing to verify her claim. If she’s bluffing, I tip my cap to her ballsiness, if not to her torture-enabling. Even generally pro-Pelosi folk agree that the truth about her briefings probably wouldn’t look too good for her. Meanwhile, John Boehner says Pelosi should provide proof that the wasn’t told about the waterboarding or else apologize to the CIA for accusing them of lying. This makes perfect sense. By the same token, I hope Boehner will provide proof that he didn’t tell me how much he likes smoking crack, or else refrain from accusing me of lying about the matter.
• President Obama reversed his position on releasing a series of photos depicting the abuse of prisoners, deferring to the military’s purported belief that they would inflame anti-American sentiment abroad, thus endangering our troops. Needless to say, everybody completely lost it. Deep breaths, guys. Obama might be planning to punt on holding Americans accountable for torture, but the only plausible path toward not punting is necessarily a long, slow affair, with plenty of disappointment along the way. We simply won’t be in a position to judge any time soon.
• Cheerios are now a drug. Seriously. For some time now, General Mills has been advertising that Cheerios are “clinically proven to reduce cholesterol”. That counts as marketing the product as a cholesterol-combatting medication, which requires that the breakfast cereal be subjected to FDA testing. Assuming they don’t want this, General Mills will have to back off the claim. But I fear that we’ll still see off-label Cheerios recommendations from the medical community. There oughta’ be a law!
• Over at Next Right, Max Borders came up with five planks for a revamped GOP platform. Three of them are good ideas on the merits, and of those three, one could conceivably be adopted by a reformed Republican Party: means-test all federal entitlements. It does not make sense, Borders argues, to make direct transfer payments to rich old people simply to bolster the illusion that Social Security is actually a pension plan. No, Max, it sure doesn’t. And taking the lead on taking money away from rich people on solid conservative grounds in a way that would make Democrats uncomfortable would be tactically clever as well. Which is to say, we won’t be seeing this in 2012.
• Speaking of 2012, Utah governor Jon Huntsman, subject of 2012 GOP presidential-candidate buzz, received the nod from Obama to become our next ambassador to China. The near-consensus is that this is a masterstroke from Obama, taking his most dangerous competitor out of the race years ahead of time. This is an incredibly stupid near-consensus. Huntsman has been getting a lot of attention recently because he is a youngish Republican with a serious job who isn’t crazy, and, indeed, seems to be at least somewhat bright. But one thing pretty much all non-crazy, somewhat bright people have in common is that they don’t want to run for president as a Republican in 2012. Mike Allen has reported that some of his advisers think he’d be better of waiting until 2016. Great scoop, Mike!
• The Senate’s newest Democrat, Arlen Specter, said he was confident a compromise on EFCA would be worked out, perhaps by Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter. Everyone on earth said this was a massive flip-flop. I hate defending Specter against charges of unprincipled waffling, because he has no principles of which I am aware, and often waffles. But this is entirely fabricated by people refusing to pay attention to details. Specter said he wouldn’t support EFCA as-is, in part because it included a card check provision. The chances of a bill with card check passing went from around 5% to a nice round 0%. Now he says he thinks a compromise bill will pass. That compromise won’t include card check. Where’s the fire?

Quote round-up:

• Andy McCarthy: “If President Obama wanted to refrain from releasing these photos in order to protect the military forces he commands or promote the security of Americans — his two highest obligations as president — he could do so by simply issuing an executive order.” Keeping the military safe is one of the president’s two highest obligations? Maybe we should stop sending them to the middle-east, then. The artists-formerly-known as Blackwater should handle that - I think our troops would be much safer at home.
• Dick Cheney: “We fail to recognize the fact that we’re alone out there in terms of trying to achieve the objective of forcing the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons … Everybody’s in a giant conspiracy to achieve a different objective than the one we want to achieve.” I’ve always assumed that Cheney only used the apocalyptic line as a means to serve cold, calculated ends. But I’m starting to suspect that he’s genuinely batshit crazy. I’m sorry I misjudged you, Dick!
• Andrew Sullivan: “It is quite something to have a government stamp in your passport, as I do, that will tell any immigration or police officer with a connection to a government database that I have HIV, that I am therefore a threat and can be arrested and detained and deported at the border if necessary.” That really is quite something, an aspect of the HIV ban of which I was unaware, and one that really is appalling. On this issue, though, I’m not sure that there is actual stalling, rather than just the beaurocracy working at the speed at which it works. But the delay on dealing with DADT is the least-defensible part of Obama’s record to date.
• Jay Nordlinger: “In my experience — and I’m just generalizing here — the better the person, the more positive he is about George W. Bush.” I’m not usually in to partisan hacks, but there is something so pure and simple about Nordlinger’s hackery that really appeals to me, and this is a pretty special piece of hackery even from him. But I’m just generalizing here.
  

Aaron Belkin reports on the imminent first Don’t Ask Don’t Tell victim of the Obama administration:

Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about to fire him. Why? Because he came out of the closet as a gay man on national television.

…

I spent a day with Dan Choi last month, and he is not someone we want to fire from the military. He loves the armed forces. He served bravely under tough combat conditions in Iraq. His Arabic is excellent, and he used his language skills to diffuse many tough situations and to save lives, both Iraqi and American. All of his unit mates know he is gay, and they have been very supportive of him. But he doesn’t want to live a lie.

Belkin thinks there is an easy fix that wouldn’t require a legislative fight:

A new study, about to be published by a group of experts in military law, shows that President Obama does, in fact, have stroke-of-the-pen authority to suspend gay discharges. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” law requires the military to fire anyone found to be gay or lesbian. But there is nothing requiring the military to make such a finding. The president can simply order the military to stop investigating service members’ sexuality.

An executive order would not get rid of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, but would take the critical step of suspending its implementation, hence rendering it effectively dead. Once people see gays and lesbians serving openly, legally and without problems, it will be much easier to get rid of the law at a later time.

If this is right, Obama really has no excuse not to act quickly. On most issues, even ones I feel strongly about (abuse of the state secrets privilege, for example) I am thoroughly sympathetic to the difficulties of getting everything done at once. There are bound to be things the new president feels very strongly about that won’t even begin to happen for some time. But Obama is the Commander-in-Chief, so service members are his subordinates. If he can prevent his employees from being fired for their sexuality on his watch, putting it off for a better moment politically is not an ethical option.