Hillary Clinton was booed at a gathering of liberal Democrats yesterday.. Her statement on the Iraq War was as puzzling as Kerry’s “I supported war…” statement during the ’04 campaign.

“I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government, nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain. I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country.”

I’m wondering what the middle ground is.

I’m not supporting a public timetable for withdrawal. I was opposed to the war before it was launched. But setting a pubic timetable ties our hands. That said, I’d give one privately to the Iraqis. They need to know we intend to get out of their sometime soon. Maybe that’s what Hillary meant. Who knows?

This is about green politicians. No, not the Green Party politicians, but the kind Shailagh Murray wrote about this morning in The Post. The story, for the most part a good one, was about the battle of a GOP incumbent who finds himself in his first real fight to stay in office since he was elected 20 years ago.

I don’t know that the Democratic opponent has never run for office, but as a retired Navy vice admiral, Joseph A. Sestak Jr. has apparently made it a race. About 10 points separate them at this early stage.

Most of the article is about the incumbent, with a few graphs about other incumbents under pressure and remarks from moderates or Republicans that indicate this could be a tight race.

But at the end of the piece he writes of the opponent, “As a politician, he’s still a little green.”

But none of what follows supports that contention:

“Speaking at the Broomall Presbyterian Village nursing home one afternoon, Sestak launched into a somewhat rambling discourse on how Weldon is out of touch with district concerns. Leaning on a woman’s walker, he lambasted the GOP-led House for ignoring big, looming problems, including health care, energy conservation and affordable college.

‘National security begins here at home,’ Sestak shouted for the benefit of the hearing impaired. ‘Our national treasure is our people.’

‘Please tell Mr. Weldon to retire,’ resident Anne Anastasiou shouted back from the crowd. ‘We’ve had enough of him.’

I wrote to the reporter and concluded with,

You may thought what he said was rambling, and I support your journalistic right — and even a duty — to say so. But that doesn’t make him “green” Bush rambles — incoherently sometimes. But he’s no green politician.

I’m just curious, what makes him “green”?

The Washington Post again comes through with an excellent Sunday Outlook section this week with its centerpiece a series of articles about the Democrats’ electoral problems. There’s no shortage of them.

The problem with Democrats is that they’re too liberal. Or not liberal enough. They talk too much (or not enough) about abortion or torture or gun control. They’re too condescending, too cosmopolitan, too secular, too wonkish, too weak. They’ve been captured by their interest groups, their contributors, their pollsters, their consultants. They’re on the wrong side of a demographic revolution. Joe Sixpack doesn’t want to have a beer with them. They should think strategically instead of tactically, or they should forget about strategy and speak from the heart. They aren’t catering to values voters, heartland voters, exurban voters. They aren’t motivating their base. They don’t have a unified national message, or they’re too worried about a unified national message. They need to do more than criticize Bush, or stop rolling over for Bush. They’re too disconnected to understand what voters want to hear, or too cowardly to say things voters don’t want to hear. They should imitate the Republican intellectual infrastructure that produces the conservative movement’s big ideas, or imitate the Republican anti-intellectual attitude that doesn’t worry about big ideas. Or they should stop imitating Republicans.

If it weren’t for the fact that our country’s future depends on progressives gaining control of our government, you’ve got to admit that this is funny. Democrats are the embodiment of all that is hapless: a cross between Michael Dukakis and the U.S. men’s soccer team.

The author of the main article, Michael Grunwald of The Post, reflects the conventional wisdom that the battle in the party is between the centrists or moderates, and the liberal or progressive wings of the party. I use labels as much as the next guy, but they’re really not useful in this debate. Perhaps because I was a political science major in college, and though that my reference is now 40+ years ago, the conventional descriptions of conservatives and liberals are my frames of reference. (For the purpose of this discussion, I will reject the American philosopher Elbert Hubbard’s description of a conservative as someone “who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.” Conservatives can take joy in knowing that he had no where to run on the Lusitania.) Conservatives liked things they way they are. They viewed change skeptically. In politics, they tended to shy away from foreign involvements. Obviously, no more. So why should the descriptions of moderates and liberals be any more valid? They’re not, except for the MSM’s need for characterization, indeed caricature. Grunwald reflects that.

Liberals want the party to be more liberal. Centrists want the party to be more centrist. And those biases tend to translate into diagnoses of the party’s ailments, and prescriptions for cures.

For example, liberal analysts usually argue that Democrats need to tack left to fire up their base, instead of blindly following the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

…Predictably, centrist analysts usually argue that Democrats need to tack right to reach out to swing voters.

But what does right and left mean in this context? The problem is that many well-meaning analysts, party activists and bloggers buy into the left vs. central dichotomy. Some think wanting a “third way” is a DLC excuse for selling out. Others seem to think that challenging social conservatives is political suicide. Until we get past the boxes we draw ourselves in, we can’t decry the MSM or voters from doing the same.

In their book Take It Back, James Carville and Paul Begala urge Democrats to moderate or at least play down their support for abortion, gay rights and gun control; they also tell the party’s liberal interest groups — civil rights advocates, labor unions, environmentalists — to “back off a bit.” Jeffrey Goldberg recently suggested similar strategies in a New Yorker article highlighting moderate red-state Democrats complaining about their tone-deaf, anti-gun, pro-abortion party establishment.

Meanwhile,

…[L]efties argue that Democrats should stop soft-pedaling their opposition to conservative Republicans on issues such as gay marriage, school prayer, immigration and especially the economy.

Some of these issues should be easy to deal with. If we think the GOP is using wedge issues that aren’t really important, why do Dems feel compelled to dwell on them? Gay rights, abortion, gun rights? Not to minimize them, but when compared to war and a decent living, let’s not lead with our chins. Carville and Begala rightly identify the problem: interest groups that demand their issue be front and center and their unwillingness to question the way things have always been done. No less a liberal than Ted Kennedy said it more than 20 years ago.

“We cannot and should not depend on higher tax revenues to roll in and redeem every costly program,” Kennedy said. “Those of us who care about domestic progress must do more with less.” And he added: “The mere existence of a program is no excuse for its perpetuation, whether it is a welfare plan or a weapons system.”

Democrats need new ideas and a willingness to compromise not with the GOP but with themselves. It’s the old firing squad image. (Just read the Virginia blog warfare over the Senate nomination to understand how that is perpetuated.)

There needs to be new ideas, yes, but more important, I think, is a new way of talking about principles. The opposition to the Iraq War shouldn’t be seen as “anti-war.” But instead of making the case, Dems try to have it both ways and wind up flip-flopping. The same is true of civil rights. Because folks oppose affirmative action doesn’t mean they’re racist.

At the end of the day, it’s about acknowledging the concerns of conservatives but proposing better solutions. Gays aren’t the problem with marriage, but the divorce rate and the number of children in one-parent homes suggests there is a problem with marriage. Racism is a problem, but contorted government-mandated affirmative action isn’t the answer. Economic fairness is a challenge, but taxing the rich only masks it. You needn’t be xenophobic to think there are immigration and trade policy problems.

Problem is, these are complicated problems, and when you say that to a guy like Chris Matthews, you are derided by him and his minions in the press who can’t stand complexity.

Still, if Dems underestimate the intelligence of the American voter and offer a cautious, reactive agenda, they’ll lose to someone with the courage of their convictions. But politically, it doesn’t take much courage to call someone a bigot, an elitist or a war monger. And there’s no indication it gets you enough votes, either.

Mike Shear’s article Saturday on the Senate race based on the “Politics Hour” on the Washington Post’s radio station was disappointing in the way he let Chris Matthews’ interview of the candidates Thursday night dictate part of his coverage.

But neither Plotkin nor Fisher could match the combativeness of Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” who oversaw a mini-debate between Webb and Miller on Thursday night.

I wrote before that Matthews is a jerk. Here’s my comment on Shear’s Richmond Report blog:

I am amazed, Mike, that you included the Matthews interview in your story Saturday. No matter who one supports, journalists should be appalled at the treatment Matthews gives many of his guests. His interviewing style is designed to “get you,” not elicit information, and his techniques are journalistically unethical, in my opinion. “Do you have access to history books?” In the context of the interview, what does that mean? Matthews supported this war early on. Didn’t he have access to history books? Give me a break. And why shouldn’t Webb stay neutral in the ’08 race? Warner may have been a successful governor. That doesn’t make him presidential material.

By including Matthews’ interview in your story, you allowed him to dictate the coverage of the race. I’d prefer you rely on your own judgement as to what’s legitimate info. and fair play. Alas, maybe you did.

The more coverage legitimate reporters give to Matthews’ shout fests, the more he is egged on.

Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC, the McLaughlin Group, Dem, said on “Countdown” that Ann Coulter doesn’t really believe much of what she says. She fancies herself a comedienne, he says.

I don’t what’s worse: that she means it or thinks it’s funny. Or that O’Donnell is letting her off the hook.

This race might be interesting.

There’s a story about a Republican consultant — I don’t remember the name — who upon seeing George W. Bush give a concession speech on TV — I believe it was his congressional race in 1978 — said, “There’s a winner.” The sound wasn’t even turned up, but he liked the body language, thinking Bush’s body said confidence.

I don’t know whether I buy that body language is why people elect presidents, but certainly they way one performs on TV is important.

I make the following comments without having seen the second half of the interview. The video link at MSNBC is flawed and ends with the commercial break in the interview.

In last night’s “Hardball” debate, Harris Miller looked a little stiff. In personal appearances, I’ve thought Jim Webb was stiff. In the remaining days, there’s not much to do about TV appearances, but somebody should have trained Miller better. He needed to lower his head, turned his shoulders every so slightly and occasionally and very briefly looked downward from the camera. That being said, his performance wasn’t bad.

Webb had the advantage to be in the studio, which any politician should opt for when possible. Listening to the question and responding over an earpiece is harder than locking eyes while a person asks a question. Webb looked less stiff, though hardly at ease. He also didn’t perform badly.

Chris Matthews, however, was horrendous. Why people can’t deal with him is beyond me. His constantly interrupts in virtually every interview he does, even with his round table discussions with other journalists (though I don’t really put Matthews in that profession). There’s a way to for interviewees to deal with that effectively.

Every politician should memorize his answer for times like this. One easy way to respond to Matthews badgering is to answer a question with a question. When haranguing Webb about immigration, the first thing you say is, “Which question do you want me to answer first?” Matthews is predictable; he always interrupts. Another ahe answer for every such instance is this:

“Mr. Matthews (never Chris), I think your listeners care about this issue and want to hear a reasoned discussion. Your rudely interrupting your guests doesn’t help. I don’t think it serves listeners to hear a shouting match. So I will respect, listen to you and respond to your questions. I would appreciate your doing the same.”

On the immigration issues, he could have gone farther.

“Polls show that people understand the complexity of the immigration issue. They know we depend on immigrants for many of our goods and services. And our systems for verifying citizenship are notoriously inadequate. And your saying we should do a background check on people we might hire as to paint out homes or mow our grass just because they have an accent or are of a different color than us is bigotry in its worse form. My grandfather had a Scottish accent til the day he died, but he was a naturalized citizen. I think you owe immigrants an apology.”

I made the last part up, but if Webb had any dead relative who was a naturalized citizen, who could prove him wrong? And Matthews didn’t say color but let him correct you; he’s now on the defensive.

Turning the tables on an interviewer, when done calmly and respectfully not only puts a Chris Matthews type guy on the defensive, it gains you credibility and respect from the listeners for putting a blowhard in his place.

The downside, of course, is that you’ll never likely get invited on his show again. Which, come to think of it, is not much of a downside.

The U.S. Senate today failed to fully repeal the estate tax. As with the gay marriage amendment vote yesterday, proponents of eliminating what many have called the most progressive of all American taxes fell shorter than expected with 57 votes, mostly along party lines. Sixty votes were needed for cloture.

And as they did with the marriage amendment yesterday, key mainstream media helped Republicans by repeating their spin. The AP:

WASHINGTON — Senators voted Thursday to reject a Republican effort to abolish taxes on inherited estates during an election year with control of Congress at stake.

GOP leaders had pushed senators to permanently eliminate the estate tax, which disappears in 2010 under President Bush’s first tax cut, but rears up again a year later.

A 57-41 vote fell three votes short of advancing the bill. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the Senate will vote again this year on a tax that opponents call the “death tax.”

Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday killed a bill backed by President George W. Bush that would have permanently repealed estate taxes.

The Senate vote of 57-41, mostly along party lines, was three shy of the 60 needed for the measure to advance. The House of Representatives had previously passed a bill to wipe out what Republicans call the “death tax.”

Republican backers had acknowledged they were short of votes for full repeal, but they had hoped for an election-year debate and planned to offer an alternative that would have reduced the tax rate and exempted all but the wealthiest estates from the tax.

The New York Sun even put the GOP spin in its headline.

It’s one thing to allow the GOP to call it a “death tax;” it’s something else when the media does it for them. Would they call it the “Inherited Wealth Tax,“ “Future Investment Tax,” “Common Good Tax” or any other name those of us who support the tax would have it?

Today, on the Diane Rehm Show, the discussion on the estate tax included Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute arguing for repeal. He said it “suppresses savings and investment and business growth.” But that’s hogwash.

A recent Congressional Research Service report found that the estate tax’s net impact on private saving is unclear — it causes some people to save more and others to save less — and that its overall impact on national saving is likely quite small. “[I]f the only objective [of eliminating the estate tax] were increased savings,” the report concluded, “it would probably be more effective to simply keep the estate and gift tax and use the proceeds to reduce the national debt.”

Edwards goes on to say that it’s “a tax on wealth accumulation, which means savings.” You would think Rehm would call him out on that. It’s foolish. Accumulating yachts and mansions isn’t savings; it’s consumption. That’s what they’re passing on.

Edwards also said small business owners won’t work as hard to develop their business if they can’t pass it on. Again, there is no proof of that. While people certainly build businesses to make money, entrepreneurs are also driven to “succeed.” The hard work and success are ends in themselves to many; they don’t set a dollar goal and then quit when they get there. How many people have you known who say, “I’m going to stop working because I don’t want to give anymore to the government”? It’s absurd.

Edwards made the same tired arguments about families selling their farms to pay the tax. Leonard Burman of the Urban Institute pointed out that there are already “valuation discounts” in the tax law that help farmers and small business owners protect their businesses.

Edwards later complained how farmers must pay lawyers to help them avoid the tax. So do they pay it or avoid it? If they have a way to avoid it, elimination of the estate tax unnecessary.

Burman also said the estate tax “taxes income that was never taxed during people’s lives.” Maybe tax lawyers can explain that one to me.

Nevertheless, yesterday’s short item on NPR’s “All Things Considered” provided the best framing for this issue, despite the host’s using “death tax’ in the intro. Nelson Aldrich, author of Old Money: the Mythology of American Wealth, was interviewed. His namesake was a U.S. senator, whose daughter married John D. Rockefeller.

Aldrich argues that inherited wealth contradicts the American value of the “self-made man” and the idea of “standing on your own two feet.” Americans generally don’t value “old money.”

Maybe we should heed the words of Andrew Carnegie who said, “I would as soon leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar.” The context of the quote is useful.

Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the state. Beyond providing for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men may well hesitate, for it is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed oftener work more for the injury than for the good of the recipients. Wise men will soon conclude that, for the best interests of the members of their families and of the state, such bequests are an improper use of their means.

It is not suggested that men who have failed to educate their sons to earn a livelihood shall cast them adrift in poverty. If any man has seen fit to rear his sons with a view to their living idle lives, or, what is highly commendable, has instilled in them the sentiment that they are in a position to labor for public ends without reference to pecuniary consideration, then, of course, the duty of the parent is to see that such are provided for in moderation. There are instances of millionaires’ sons unspoiled by wealth, who, being rich, still perform great services in the community. Such are the very salt of the earth, as valuable as, unfortunately, they are rare; still it is not the exception, but the rule, that men must regard, and, looking at the usual result of enormous sums conferred upon legatees, the thoughtful man must shortly say, “I would as soon leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar,” and admit to himself that it is not the welfare of the children, but family pride, which inspires these enormous legacies.

The narrative for the inheritance tax, then goes something like this:

Americans have always believed in the self-made man. Each of us should contribute to society and reap the rewards, including money, when we do so successfully, lawfully and morally. But even then, we must recognize that when we succeed financially, there is likely to be a large role that American society has played in helping us become rich. Americans support schools and universities with their tax dollars. American workers provide the labor that make businesses succeed. Our transportation, communications and energy systems are supported by American tax dollars.

Therefore, it seems at the end of our lives, while we should certainly be allowed to pass on enough money to help the next generation get started in their own quest to contribute to society, we should repay society and help all Americans achieve the same dream. But that next generation isn’t entitled to massive wealth they had no role in earning.

Kudos to John Bull of the Daily Press for his article about the MoveOn ads in the Drake-Kellam campaign. He makes an attempt to critique the ads’ truthfulness and explain the charges.

MoveOn.org’s first attack on Drake accused her of taking oil company campaign contributions and voting against price-gouging legislation. Actually, she voted for the price-gouging bill, but MoveOn.org said she didn’t vote for amendments that would have strengthened the measure.

The second ad accused Drake of voting to benefit pharmaceutical companies in approving a complaint-ridden drug coverage program aimed at seniors. But she didn’t cast such a vote and wasn’t in Congress at the time.

The latest ad accuses Drake of voting to protect defense contractors who were granted no-bid contracts to manage aspects of the war in Iraq, and which have made huge profits.

The ads claim Drake accepted $27,000 in campaign contributions from defense contractors – including $1,000 from Halliburton, which used to be headed by Vice President Dick Cheney – while voting to protect them from stiffer penalties for overcharging the federal government.

On the other hand, Jon Frank of the Virginia-Pilot, like most journalists, is content to allow the two sides to trade charges without evaluating them.

Bad, Press, Bad!

The controversy over the a Webb campaign flyer was perhaps predictable as it is sad. It all revolves around this cartoon the Webb campaign apparently used at a campaign event.

The image made Smolen, who is Jewish and Stafford County’s Democratic chairman, uncomfortable.
“I don’t think whoever did the cartoon caricature meant this as an ethnic slur,” he said, “but the effect of it was very troubling.”

“That doesn’t look so good. There’s no question to me that’s replete with anti-Semitic stereotypes,” said Mark Feldstein, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. “I’m not someone who readily cries anti-Semitism, but I think it’s hard to look at this and not see a number of anti-Semitic stereotypes plugged into this ad, from the hook nose to the ‘antichrist’ to the money-grubbing character.”

Bruce Newman, a professor of marketing at DePaul University and editor of the Journal of Political Marketing, said it reminded him of 1930s German propaganda, where the Jewish character was subtly made out to be the thieving villain.

“It very much crosses the line,” said Newman, who is Jewish. “I’m speaking with my professional hat on now. It’s a modern-day caricature of the quote-unquote villain, the one who’s out to make life difficult and hurt people in the town. I’ve seen literature from those days and this offends me quite a bit.”

If you look at the flyer, well, you’ve got to be looking for prejudice to find it. The antiChrist characterization was made by a columnist for InformationWeek, one of the most influential high-tech industry publications. There is nothing in the column that’s anti-Semitic. And though it’s only a fair caricature of Miller, the cartoon–which Webb bloggers think is so hilarious but isn’t–doesn’t even exaggerate his nose. The money from the pockets could as easily been from Congressman William Jefferson’s. Would you call that racist? Are we not to criticize any Jewish politician if we think his or her policies are designed to enrich an industry?

But too often, the anti-Semitism charge is meant to stop all debate. Whether it’s disagreement with Israel over its policy toward Palestinians or a disagreement over trade policies, if you disagree with someone who happens to be Jewish, someone will find a way of calling you anti-Semitic. Give me a break.