Saturday, October 02, 2004 |
A Detailed Plan For Iraq? |
Throughout the campaign, the media have demanded that John Kerry detail a strategy for dealing with Iraq. Never mind that the situation has changed dramatically, month-by-month, throughout the campaign. Never mind that even if it were possible to propose a "perfect solution" for today's situation, that solution would be hopelessly out-of-date by January. Never mind that, no matter what the plan, the Bush Campaign would ridicule any element that it could not coopt. (That led to the recent pecularity, following Kerry's first clear speech on an Iraq plan, in which the unreflective Bush Campaign declared through parallel statements to the media, "His ideas are the same as ours" and "He's advocating 'defeat and retreat'".) Never mind that no similar demand has been made of the Bush Campaign.
I'll give David Ignatius this much - at least he's breaking with the nonsensical pattern of demanding the challenger to outline precisely what he would do in Iraq while failing to make any similar demand of the Bush Campaign. But any person who can assert,
The coming offensive in Fallujah could be the bloodiest combat that U.S. forces have faced yet in Iraq. Worse, it could push interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's fragile interim government toward the breaking point. One early warning sign was this week's comment by interim President Ghazi Yawar, a Sunni Muslim, criticizing recent U.S. airstrikes on Fallujah as "collective punishment." It was Yawar's threat to quit the interim government last April that helped halt the previous U.S. offensive in Fallujah.has to also know that a strategy for the present situation in Iraq, let alone an exit strategy, could be dramatically changed by the success or failure of such a venture - and that even a military success could result in a profound setback if it inspires the collapse of the Allawi government, broadens the "resistance", or prevents elections.
Ignatius continues,
If you try to put yourself in the boots of a U.S. soldier in Iraq, what you want to know from the candidates is: Can we win this thing, and if not, how can we get out? Unfortunately, the debate didn't really illuminate those essential questions. The most difficult days in Iraq may well lie ahead, but neither candidate has leveled with the country about how severe that test will be, or what fallback plans he has if his assumptions prove overly optimistic.The questions are not entirely unfair, but Ignatius again ignores the fact that what might work today might not work tomorrow, let alone next month. The answer to "can we win this thing" seemed a bit different when Bush was strutting beneath his "Mission Accomplished" banner than it does today - and the colossal mistakes made since that time make it much less likely that we will achieve the results we most desire. Then, "winning" was defined as creating a stable nation with a secular, democratic government. Today, "winning" seems to be defined as achieving stability, preventing civil war, and creating a government that is not hostile to western interests. Would Ignatius call a plan to achieve that end a plan for victory?
Bush, the person in the best position to provide the type of answers Ignatius demands, won't provide them. His answers would be an admission of the failure of his central promises in the "liberation" of Iraq, and would also reveal that he has no "exit strategy". And his campaign can't simultaneously accuse Kerry of "defeat and retreat" while simultaneously proposing Bush's plan for doing precisely what he ridicules.
Bush would love for Kerry to paint a strategic picture on Iraq that addresses the present realities. "See how negative and pessimistic he is. Defeat and retreat. He's setting back our interests in the region." Columnists like Ignatius need to place the onus on the Bush Administration to announce its plan - to which the Kerry camp could then be called upon to respond with what it would do differently. And Bush knows that had he clearly enunciated his plan for Iraq and "exit strategy", he would have had to update the plan so frequently as to be (in his parlance) the quintessential flip-flopper, or would have had to repeatedly admit failure. Or both.
Perhaps, before being allowed to write columns like this, columnists like Ignatius should be required to propose their own plans to achieve victory in Iraq, and their ideas of a viable exit strategy. Perhaps such a demand would be the only thing that would wake them up to the realities of the situation, and why their demands are rather silly. Comments (0)
Leading Them By The Nose.... |
When I hear criticisms of Kerry as the Democratic candidate, I am often left wondering what it is that inspires those criticisms. That is, the speakers will declare something silly like, "Kerry doesn't excite me", or "He was picked because he was considered the most electable", as if... as if either statement has any significance, or as if parties should pick unelectable candidates. Or "Bush reminds me of a guy I'd drink a beer with", or "I like his swagger and confidence - he's like me" (which is pretty much what a blue collar attendee at a Nascar event said a few months back - as if Bush is anything like him). When you hear something more substantive, such as "Kerry flip-flops", and press for details, you're lucky if you get any. In my experience, pressing for details reveals these comments to be inspired not by the candidate, but by news coverage of supposed voter ambivalence and of the other side's attack ads.
I am often left to wonder what these people want in a candidate. Whose idea is it that you should want a candidate you would drink a beer with, or that you shouldn't want a candidate who instead drinks wine and likes fancy food? Or that you should have an (unelectable) candidate who excites you, rather than a staid, intelligent, and competent candidate who seems, well, staid, intelligent, and competent instead of "exciting". The media, I suppose, started to buy into the packaging and selling of a candidate, over the substance and competence of a candidate, after the Nixon-Kennedy debates. So "Dukakis looks silly in that helmet"-type nonsense often becomes the media's central focus, as opposed to the candidates' positions on the issues. (The media's distractability was very well highlighted by their response to the "Swift Boat Liars" nonsense - and the effort of even the New York Times to blame a candidate for its poor work. Sure, Dukakis didn't have to put on the helmet and get into the tank, but was that really a story?)
If you were "surprised" by John Kerry's performance at the first Presidential debate - which he is widely regarded as having "won" - here's some news for you: If you had been paying attention to the candidate as opposed to the spin, you wouldn't have been surprised.
You want a candidate who thinks in simple terms and speaks in pre-packaged sound bites, instead of one who understands the world's complexities and whose comments reflect thought and abstraction? Perhaps, then, you should do us a favor and limit yourself to voting for the county dog catcher. If you want more from a candidate, stop regurgitating the media's latest spin, and start listening to what the candidates are actually saying. Comments (1)
Thursday, September 30, 2004 |
Party Affiliation & Polling |
Here's a real shock - USA Today presents a table demonstrating that when polls include disproportionate numbers of people from one party or the other, the results of the poll skew toward the overrepresented party. With all due respect to Gallup's rationalizations for releasing polls which overrepresent self-identified Republicans, I think critics do understand the science (or lack thereof) behind this type of polling. Comments (0)
Wednesday, September 29, 2004 |
"Bad Baby" Cases |
That sounds a bit strange, right? Maybe it has something to do with a small child who won't behave? Actually, it's lingo that some lawyers use to describe malpractice cases involving birth injuries. Realizing that most professions at times use expressions that are a bit unseemly, I can't get used to that particular example.
There are cases of obstetric malpractice which are truly appalling. But, as everybody knows, not all birth injuries are the fault of the doctor. And there is validity to complaints about lawsuits being filed over alleged birth injuries when causation can't be made more certain than a coin toss. Very few lawyers engage in this type of litigation - on the one hand, fortunately, there aren't that many cases to be litigated in any given state; on the other hand, it is far too costly a gamble for those who can't afford to specialize in this type of litigation. Very few attorneys can risk $100,000.00 or more in up-front costs on a coin toss. And, although doctors may argue otherwise, very few attorneys would want to engage in this type of practice.
The way it works is this: there's a birth case, where the baby has a serious injury that might be a birth injury, or it might be a congenital disorder for which the doctor has no fault. The medical evidence is equivocal - so the defense hires "experts" who testify that it was congenital or was an unavoidable consequence of birth, and the plaintiff hires "experts" who argue that the injury was caused by medical malpractice. The same experts often make a very handsome living from their testimony alone, be it for the malpractice insurance carrier or the plaintiff. The jury is then asked to pick a side by a "preponderance of the evidence" - which is why I referenced the coin toss. Whether one side persuades the jury that the plaintiff only proved a 49% likelihood of malpractice or a 51% likelihood of malpractice may turn more on external factors - such as whether the defendant doctor seemed arrogant when he testified, or whether the plaintiff came across as a greedy opportunist - than on the evidence.
If the lawyer wins one case out of two, the strategy is a big-time moneymaker.
There's another side to this type of litigation. It is this paradigm which is used as the rationale for sweeping "tort reform" measures which are designed not to make the jury's fact-finding more accurate, or to prevent the filing of "frivolous suits", but which are aimed directly at the most seriously injured victims of malpractice. The cry is that "obstetricians and neurologists pay too much for malpractice insurance", with the illogic that this necessarily means that all doctors should thus receive broad protections from liability for their mistakes - no matter how egregious the physician's conduct, and no matter how severe the patient's injury.
I'm all for hearing proposals from physicians on how to make the birth injury situation more fair. (Or, for that matter, the somewhat similar situation for neurosurgeons, who may end up being sued as the result of a horrific maloccurrence - a fancy word for a 'bad outcome' - from a high risk surgery, even in the absence of malpractice.) But when it comes to making the system better, doctors and their lobbyists are almost universally silent. They instead want to arbitrarily limit the damages received by the most seriously injured victims of malpractice, in the most meritorious of cases. That's at least as immoral as going to court on a coin toss over a "bad baby" case. Comments (7)
Bad Coverage of Bad Polls |
As poor as U.S. news coverage can be of the important issues of the day, it perhaps isn't surprising that CNN's coverage is particularly bad when it turns its spotlight on itself. CJR Campaign Desk observes CNN's coverage of MoveOn's criticism of the methodology of recent CNN/Gallup polls:
Anchor Judy Woodruff began by briefly outlining MoveOn's complaint: "[R]ecent polls have shown George W. Bush leading John Kerry and MoveOn.org claims Gallup's polling techniques exaggerate Republican support." Woodruff then gave Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport almost three minutes to respond, uninterrupted, to the charges. Naturally, Newport defended Gallup's methodology, but essentially asked viewers to take it on faith that he knows what he's doing.Comments (0)
Tuesday, September 28, 2004 |
Afraid of Hardball Questions |
The Bush campaign can reasonably anticipate the type of softball questioning of past debates - but they apparently fear that hard questions might be posed by the guy at the other lectern, so....
Still, officials of the debate commission said they were agreeing primarily to those things Mr. Bush's aides had emphasized as especially important to them: a strict time limit on candidate responses, an electronic warning when candidates exceed their speaking time that can be seen and heard by viewers at home, and a prohibition against the candidates' directly posing questions to each other.Gotta keep the ugly truths from being aired.... Comments (1)
Tax Returns as Public Information? |
In London's Guardian, a columnist notes that the rich are getting away with paying far less than their fair share of taxes, but that the country's politicians seem to have little interest in closing loopholes and creating a fairer system. (Sound familiar?)
So, if the super-rich won't pay because no one's interested in making them pay, what on earth can be done? How can the public's interest in fair taxation be revived? How could the government find the courage to stop the tax cheats?(I think the teachers and dustmen would first check the tax returns of their neighbors and supervisors, but the media would certainly go after controvercial public figures and politicians.... But most people would probably be very uncomfortable with the disclosure of their personal financial information.) Comments (2)
I have a cruel and unusual proposal: everyone's tax returns should be published. If the teachers and dustmen of this country could see that certain multi-millionaires are paying less tax than they are, they'd be so angry that the government would surely be obliged to act.
Monday, September 27, 2004 |
Common Sense, Ohio Style? |
The Dayton for Kerry website has reproduced an article (PDF format) describing how Ohio's Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has declared that counties must ignore voter registration cards submitted on paper stock of less than 80# weight.
The requirement is because the forms are designed to be mailed like post-cards and must be thick enough to survive mechanical sorters at the U.S. Post Office, according to Blackwell's spokesman Carlo LoParo.Yes, you heard that right. In order to protect registrants from having their registration forms destroyed in the mail, those which arrive intact but aren't on sufficiently thick paper stock are to be discarded.
"Our directive stands and it is specifically in place to protect new registrants to make sure the forms are not destroyed," LoParo said.
To make sure that this new ruling is fair and consistent in its application, Blackwell has exempted Cuyahoga County from the rule, and has additionally declared that registration forms downloaded from the federal Elections Assistance Agency must be accepted regardless of the paper they are printed on. Comments (1)
Sunday, September 26, 2004 |
Suicide |
It can be difficult to mark the moment when self-confidence turns into gradiosity, or when a suspicious nature turns into paranoia, particularly in someone you see regularly. But when you speak with somebody only a few times a year, the progression is more marked.
When we lived in the same community, I knew somebody who would at times share theories of conspiracies which were, for the most part, plausible but unlikely. He was an intelligent professional, and he spun a lot of fact into his stories.
At some point, his theories became far more involved and personal. He became deeply wedded to the notion of a conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of government, in which he was the target of a range of efforts to discredit him or to have him killed, because the nation's most powerful people were afraid of what would happen if the world found out what he knew.
I wonder if there was more that could be done to help, but at the same time recognize that every effort to provide assistance was greeted with suspicion, and that the more aggressive efforts at intervention inspired new conspiracy theories, with those attempting to help transformed into villains trying to destroy him. There was no chance of getting court intervention, as he gave no evidence of being a danger to himself or others, and was quite rational when addressing issues other than his paranoid fantasies.
The most aggressive effort at intervention, which pressured him to seek voluntary, intensive psychiatric care or possibly lose his professional license, backfired. He put himself beyond the reach of everybody who wanted to help him, and was largely isolated for the past year. He contacted me every few months, and we even discussed on a few occasions how I might be able to help him, but unfortunately he didn't follow through. A couple of times I must have pressed too hard, as I received emails indicating that I was forgiven (for whatever it was that I had been perceived to have done), but that he knew that I was nonetheless "one of the good guys".)
I hadn't heard from him for quite a few months, then learned of is death through the proverbial grapevine. I can't say that I am surprised at this outcome, but I am saddened. Comments (0)