Quote/Unquote Archives: 2004
Dec. 31, 2004
The Republican surge in recent years should not have been a shock. The 200-plus years of American political history have seen a series of realignments that shift power from one party to another (1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, now). The chief theorist of realignment, political scientist Walter Dean Burnham, says they occur when the dominant party is unable to cope with new demands from frustrated voters. That prompts a breakthrough election, the latest in 1994. If the new political arrangement"turns out to be permanent," it's a realignment that's likely to endure for decades. The 2004 election" consolidated" the realignment, Burnham says.
Dec. 31, 2004
Here's some context for 2004: The number of human beings who died of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa was about two million. The number of people who died of bad water and bad sanitation was more than two million. These deaths broke families and even whole communities with a force as hard as that in Sumatra this week.
Dec. 29, 2004
Osama bin Laden is a kind of pseudo-intellectual, with a rough theory of history and a highly reactionary desire to restore a lost empire. But he negates even this doomed, pseudo-Utopian project by his hysterical Puritanism, which bans even music and which of course would deny society the talents of women as well as driving out anyone with any culture or education. Thus, any society run by him or people like him would keep on going bankrupt and starving itself to death, with no ready explanation of why this kept happening. The repeated failure would inevitably be blamed on Zionist-Crusader conspiracies, and the violence and repression would then be projected outward, which is why we have a right to concern ourselves with the"internal affairs" of the Islamic world.
Dec. 28, 2004
Fred Kaplan:
IT'S a risky business to predict the decline of the American empire. Ask Paul Kennedy, the Yale historian, who issued such a forecast in his 1987 book, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, only to witness an almost immediate American resurgence. Yet the signposts, at the end of this year, are ominous.
Dec. 28, 2004
Professor Edward James, in a letter to the editor of the London Independent:
A few months ago you published a letter from me commenting sceptically on Tony Blair's comment that history would judge him. I withdraw my scepticism in the light of the recent news from Whitehall. It will obviously be much easier for history to judge him in the way he wants if his civil servants shred all the documents before historians see them.
Dec. 27, 2004
Ahmed al-Jabouri, the head of Iraq's tourism board:
"It's very important for me, for their own safety that they [tourists] don't come."
Dec. 24, 2004
Rebecca Solnit, at tomdispatch.com:
One of the starkest contrasts of the campaign was that Bush was selling hope -- even if false hope, something pretty indistinguishable from lies. After all, his good news mostly consisted of the assertion that the economy was doing just great, the war was being won, and America was safer. Or maybe hope -- which is the belief that another world is possible, not that it isn't necessary -- is a misnomer for the message that everything is fine, just go back to sleep. Kerry had the sorry job of saying that actually the war was a disaster, that we'd made millions of new enemies, that we were a whole lot less safe, and that the economy was tanking, and he never figured out any creative way to frame the bad news and the demands that such news makes. As a product, Bush was more tightly packaged, prodding the American people along with the carrot of false hopes and the stick of false fears. Or perhaps displaced fears is a better term -- for the feelings are real but the phenomena onto which they are projected aren't.
Dec. 21, 2004
Al Neuharth; USA Today Founder:
When historians rate our secretaries of Defense of the past century, these two will go down as the worst:* Donald Rumsfeld, currently serving under Republican President George W. Bush.
* Robert McNamara, who served under Democrat Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
McNamara earned his place in infamy by misleading us repeatedly about the ever-escalating war in Vietnam, which we ultimately lost.
Rumsfeld now has ensured his spot. He turned what was to be a pep rally for Iraq-bound troops into an insult to all military men and women who have served there.
Dec. 21, 2004
Lewis Gould (a quote from a book repeated in the media):
Presidencies have become the political equivalent of situation comedies - there is an initial burst of energy and excitement during the first three years, a suspenseful show in the fourth as the main character faces cancellation and, once renewed by re-election, there are three more years of declining audiences before the show ends after eight seasons.
Dec. 21, 2004
The world is obsessed with the so-called occupied territories in Palestine, but not from any abstract principle of postbellum equity or worry over civilian deaths. Otherwise un resolutions, European subsidies, and American envoys would have been focused on occupied Tibet or Lebanon, or the killing of tens of thousands of innocents in Rwanda and Darfur. So Palestine is not so much a moral issue as a political lightning rod that involves Arab oil, Arab global terrorism, Arab fundamentalist violence in and beyond the Middle East, and Arab anti-Semitism that finds resonance in Europe.
Dec. 21, 2004
Historian Anna Nelson of American University, commenting on NPR about the CIA's recent claim in federal court that it cannot locate classified annexes concerning the intelligence authorization acts from 1947-1970:
"How can you lose those things? You can't lose those things. So, you know, where are they?"
Dec. 21, 2004
Sam Roberts, in the NYT:
''If there are skeletons in your closet -- from unpaid taxes or debts to a run-in with the law to the messy details of a broken marriage -- you must disclose them to the White House and be prepared for the possibility that they may become public knowledge.'' -- ''A Survivor's Guide for Presidential Nominees,'' November 2000.IN more than two centuries of confirming presidential nominees for cabinet-level posts, the Senate has rejected only nine outright, and none since John G. Tower failed to win confirmation as Secretary of Defense in 1989 after public allegations of womanizing and excessive drinking. Senate vetting of nine more ended without a vote when the nominations were declined or formally withdrawn, like Zoe E. Baird, Bill Clinton's first choice for Attorney General in 1993 and the first to be tripped up by a ''nanny problem.''
Bernard B. Kerik's name belongs on a third list: Nominations announced, but then scuttled before they even reach the Senate. While denying him the cabinet post, the hasty retreat might at least have spared him further embarrassment, or worse, had it not been for a daily drumbeat of fresh disclosures about his past.
Dec. 17, 2004
Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum:
It was a good year for New York's Museum of Modern Art, completely rebuilt, reordered and now reopened, thanks to the huge generosity of patrons in the US and around the world. In Yoshio Taniguchi's building, full of stillness and serenity, we can now survey the visual struggles and achievements of Europe and America over the past 100 years.It was a bad year, a very bad year indeed, for the Iraq Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad. It did not reopen. At all. Since Baghdad's liberation by European and American troops last year the museum has been open on only one day - for a press view. The huge task of repairing the objects damaged in the liberation can hardly begin: foreign colleagues cannot travel to help, local staff find it increasingly too dangerous even to travel to work. Iraq's past remains invisible. Meanwhile, the great archaeological sites are damaged and looted with impunity. The world helped New York rebuild its museum.
Dec. 17, 2004
Takayuki Tsuchiya, a Tokyo assemblyman, explaining the necessity of a new regulation requiring students and teachers"to sing the national anthem while standing and facing the national flag," according to the NYT:
The Japan Teachers' Union has been teaching students that the white of the rising-sun flag is the color of bone and red is the color of people's blood. They are depriving students of the freedom to stand up. They hate the emperor and they hate Japan. Would American kids stand up if you teach them America did terrible things in Vietnam?
Dec. 16, 2004
Steven Aftergood, in the newsletter of the Project on Government Secrecy:
Pope John XXIII. Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King, Jr. Certainly. But George Tenet? Tommy Franks? Paul Bremer?
All of them are recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award the nation has to offer.
The last three were selected by President Bush, who honored them this week in what appears to be a preemptive political strike in defense of the war in Iraq.
All that remains to be said is that if the three new awardees deserve the highest possible praise for implementing the President's war in Iraq, then the President himself must be beyond all praise.
Dec. 16, 2004
Oh, the war in Iraq is frightful,
But for Lockheed and pals it's delightful,
Since the Pentagon continues to pay,
Let 'em stay, let 'em stay, let 'em stay.
Dec. 15, 2004
Wendy Doniger, professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed:
During the teaching term, I read to teach. Often I stay up half the night, just like a feckless undergraduate, to reread or sometimes even to read for the first time the book I've assigned."I always meant to read that; I'll assign it and that will make me read it,"
Dec. 15, 2004
Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, commenting on the awarding of the Medal of Freedom to Tommy Franks, L. Paul Bremer, and George Tenet:
I don't think history will be as kind to these gentlemen as the president was today. [Mr. Bush is] still trying to put a good face on serious mistakes. This is the continuing motif: Everything is working, and we should reward ourselves for that.
Dec. 14, 2004
Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson:
"The president is not reading Tim LaHaye for his Middle East policy."
Dec. 10, 2004
Martha E. Nunn, in a letter to the editor of the NYT:
Those who forget history are destined to repeat it. Social Security was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the stock market crash of 1929. Given that it was the stock market that cast millions of elderly Americans into poverty in the 1930's and necessitated the creation of Social Security in the first place, why on earth would anyone suggest putting that money right back into the stock market?
Dec. 9, 2004
Saad Eskander's keynote speech at the Internet Librarian International 2004 conference:
I truly hope that no country in the world experiences what we experienced following the fall of the dictator. I also hope I can give you an honest and frank explanation of what took place in Baghdad in mid-April 2003, when most cultural institutions were looted and burnt. It was a national disaster beyond imagination. Within the space of 3 days, Iraq National Library and Archive lost a large portion of Iraq's historical memory. Hundreds of thousands of archival documents, historical records, and rare books were lost forever. Many Iraqi intellectuals and even ordinary citizens felt ashamed by what happened. I am one of them.
Dec. 7, 2004
Joseph Ellis, during his book tour:
I do think the world has moved on. For me, I will never be able to completely forget or remove the stain of my sin. I think most readers and citizens have either forgiven me or don't remember and a lot of my students do not even know about it. What I did was not just a mistake, it was a sin. And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then, after some kind of decent interval, ask for forgiveness. That is what I have done.
Dec. 7, 2004
This war is going to be more of a lingering disease than Vietnam. I do not see any resolution.... This country looks arrogant, foolish and scary from overseas.
Dec. 6, 2004
Asked why Chinese textbooks do not mention such matters as Tibet's claim to independence at the time Communist troops invaded, Ren Penjie, editor of a history education magazine in Xian, said:"These are still matters of controversy. What we present to children are less controversial facts, which are easier to explain." ... Taking the long view, though, Mr. Ge, 59, who taught high school during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when teachers were beaten and education became hyper-politicized, said things were gradually getting better. Su Zheliang, a historian at Shanghai Normal University, who is himself the author of a new textbook, agreed."Sometimes I want to write the truth, but I must take a practical approach," he said."I want my students to learn, and I've put out the best book that I can. In 10 years, perhaps, China will be a much more open country."
Dec. 5, 2004
When did the Soviet Union collapse? When did reform take off in Iran? When did the Oslo peace process begin? When did economic reform become a hot topic in the Arab world? In the late 1980's and early 1990's. And what was also happening then? Oil prices were collapsing.In November 1985, oil was $30 a barrel, recalled the noted oil economist Philip Verleger. By July of 1986, oil had fallen to $10 a barrel, and it did not climb back to $20 until April 1989."Everyone thinks Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviets," said Mr. Verleger."That is wrong. It was the collapse of their oil rents." It's no accident that the 1990's was the decade of falling oil prices and falling walls.
Dec. 3, 2004
History Channel tag line on a new show about Ben Franklin:
"Inventor. Patriot. Playboy."
Dec. 3, 2004
Republican senators, justifiably indignant about Democrats' filibustering to block confirmation votes for judicial nominees, are contemplating a parliamentary version of shock and awe. Evincing what historian Richard Hofstadter called"the ruthlessness of the pure in heart," Republicans might change Senate rules to make filibusters of judicial nominees impossible.Actually, some Republican senators' hearts are about as pure as the driven slush after the treatment they dished out to some of President Clinton's judicial nominees. Republicans respond that Democrats opened this front in the political wars with their 1987 defeat of the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork. Democrats reply that in 1968 Republicans filibustered Lyndon Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas to be chief justice. But Republicans say the issue then was not ideology but corruption. And so it goes.
Dec. 2, 2004
James K. Galbraith:
The [Ukraine] election was stolen. That's not in doubt. Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted it. The National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute both admitted it. ... In Washington, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski demanded that the results be set aside and a new vote taken, under the eye -- no less -- of the United Nations. ... Personally, I don't know whether the Ukrainian election was really stolen. ... But if the Ukraine standard were applied in Ohio -- as it should be -- then the late lamented U.S. election certainly was stolen. In Ohio, the secretary of state in charge of the elections process was co-chairman of the Bush campaign in the state. He obstructed the vote count systematically -- for instance, by demanding that provisional ballots without birth dates on their envelopes be thrown out, even though there is no requirement for that in state law. He also required that provisional ballots be cast in a voter's home precinct, ensuring that there would be no escape from long lines. Republicans fielded thousands of election challengers to Democratic precincts, mainly to try to intimidate black voters and to slow down the voting process. A recount, demanded and paid for by the Green and Libertarian parties, has been stalled in court, so that it won't possibly upset the certification of Ohio's electoral votes. In Franklin County, Ohio, there was rampant abuse, with voting machines added in Republican precincts and taken away in Democratic ones, as documented by the Columbus Dispatch. The result was a crippling pileup at the polls; many thousands did not vote because they simply could not afford to wait. I witnessed this with my own eyes.
Dec. 1, 2004
Guy MacLean Rogers, author of Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness:
There's a weird Alexander mania setting in. We're living in dangerous times, and there's a strong desire to believe there are superheroes out there. Unlike most, who are animated, Alexander was real.
Dec. 1, 2004
Daniel McCarthy, assistant editor of the American Conservative:
There are two things a moviegoer should know about Stone’s"Alexander." First, it’s blinding awful – literally. Ten minutes into it one of my contact lenses fell out, right as a one-eyed Val Kilmer came charging into a snake-handling Angelina Jolie’s boudoir. The less said the better. If you’re thinking of seeing it, don’t. Go see"Seed of Chucky" instead. Jennifer Tilly vs. killer dolls won’t be any campier than Stone’s"Alexander" and Jolie’s take on the conqueror’s mother as Cruella DeVille.The second thing worth knowing is that"Alexander" is mildly interesting as a document of left-wing Bushism. War, slaughter, and all that goes with world conquest are all right, as long as they secure such goods as improved literacy and the mixing of different races and cultures. This is a perfectly natural companion, by the way, to libertarian Bushism, or liberventionism, which says that a bit of bloodshed is perfectly fine as long as it secures open markets and the free flow of people and goods. There’s a line about that in Stone’s"Alexander," too.
Nov. 29, 2004
In 1864, 11 of the 36 United States did not participate in the presidential election. Was Lincoln's election therefore illegitimate? In 1868, three years after the security situation had, shall we say, stabilized, three states (not insignificant ones: Texas, Virginia and Mississippi) did not participate in the election. Was Grant's election illegitimate?There has been much talk that if the Iraqi election is held and some Sunni Arab provinces (perhaps three of the 18) do not participate, the election will be illegitimate. Nonsense. The election should be held.
Nov. 29, 2004
Japanese Education Minister Nariaki Nakayama:
There was a time when Japanese textbooks were full of nothing but extremely self-tormenting things saying that Japan was bad. We have tried to correct that. I’m really glad that recently there are fewer words such as ‘comfort women’ and ‘forced relocation’ used in textbooks.
Nov. 28, 2004
Gina Kolata, in the NYT:
There's an overweight man in the White House and his name is George W. Bush.Yes, the president of the United States, known for his robust good health, is officially overweight, according to the standards of the National Institutes of Health. At 6 feet and 194 pounds, his body mass index, or B.M.I., a measurement of height relative to weight, is 26.4, and 25 or above is officially overweight for both sexes.
And so President Bush joins about 65 percent of Americans who are overweight or obese - a status derived solely from that body mass index dividing line of 25.
Nov. 24, 2004
Professor Juan Cole:
Colin Powell's resignation as secretary of state may be a more important development than meets the eye.It could be argued that he has been so marginalized and ineffective that he might as well resign, and that it makes no difference whether he is in office or not. Powell wanted to devote great energy to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after September 11, and for a brief moment seemed to have Bush's ear, but then Bush capitulated to hard line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Powell was never able to make any headway. At one point Bush even sent Condi out to meet with Middle East leaders, which one would have thought would be the job of the secretary of state, not of national security adviser.
Powell was not enthusiastic about a war on Iraq, and his own doctrine called for the US to go in with massive force if it did go in. Instead, Rumsfeld sent in only 100,000 troops, laying the ground for the subsequent disaster. But you get no credit in Washington for having been right. You only get credit if you win the policy battle, regardless of how it turns out. Powell almost never did....
But insiders in Washington have told me enough stories about Powell victories behind the scenes that I am not sure the marginalization argument is decisive. Powell had an alliance with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the two of them could sometimes derail the wilder plans of the Department of Defense. Blair, and probably Powell, convinced Bush to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan before going on to an Iraq war. Imagine how dangerous the situation would be if the US were bogged down in Iraq as it is now, but Bin Laden's 40 training camps were still going full steam!
Nov. 24, 2004
The Pentagon's new name for the latest operation in the Sunni Triangle:"Plymouth Rock."
Nov. 23, 2004
Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott:
"We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory," said a veteran State Department officer who was directly involved in Iraq policy.
Nov. 19, 2004
The NYT account of the way Oliver Stone treats Alexander as a gay hero in the new movie, Alexander: :
Mr. Stone, who had final say over the film, scaled back some of the gay love scenes after Warner objected to them and to some of the movie's violence. But the director, who critics say took liberties with historical fact in films like"J.F.K." and"Nixon," said that his choice with"Alexander" was to hew to the record."I don't want to corrupt history," Mr. Stone said in an interview."I don't want to say, 'How do I make this work for a modern audience?' Alexander to me is a perfect blend of male-female, masculine-feminine, yin-yang. He could communicate with both sides of his nature. When you get to modern-day focus groups, to who'll get offended in Hawaii or Maine, you can't get out of it."
Nov. 19, 2004
"Ladies and Gentlemen, if you would like one man to blame for Iraq: blame the eminent historian Bernard Lewis."
Nov. 17, 2004
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber:
The problem with George W. Bush is that he isn't unique. He sits atop a political movement that has been building for 30 years. In 2002, the Republican Party won majority control of every branch of the federal government for the first time since 1932: both houses of Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Presidency not to mention most state legislatures and governor's offices. The 2004 elections didn't just give Bush four more years. It also consolidated Republican majorities in every other branch of government.
Nov. 16, 2004
From an article in the NYT about the indifference of Bulgarian youth to history:
Yana Lazarova, 17, looked up at a tall monument here in the center of Liberty Park featuring three muscular figures, one clutching a gun, all carved of black stone. But what did it honor, exactly? She admitted she did not know. After a while, she guessed,"It's a monument to the Soviet Army for liberating Bulgaria from the Turks in 1878," speaking with wild inaccuracy.Not long ago, her answer would have elicited a rebuke. The statues are indeed part of Sofia's monument to the Soviet Army, which has nothing to do with the Turks. Instead, the monument commemorates the Soviet liberation of Bulgaria from the Nazis in 1944, an event that paved the way for 45 years of Communist rule.
Nov. 11, 2004
There was a nice moment in the Q&A, which I'll share. I was asked by Stephen Moore about comparisons of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, how they are alike and how they differ. I told him I normally don't answer that question from journalists because they always turn it into a sort of"but she conceded Bush lacks Reagan's rhetorical gifts" kind of thing. I don't know why liberal journalists enjoy comparing Mr. Bush with Reagan. They never wanted to compare JFK's leadership style with the giant who preceded him 15 years before, FDR, and they never compared Bill Clinton's rhetoric to JFK's. But Stephen was asking not as a mischievous journalist, so I said I'd answer.I just recounted something that has stayed in my mind. About a year ago I was visiting West Point, and I was talking to a big officer, a general or colonel. But he had the medals and ribbons and the stature, and he asked me what I thought of President Bush. I tried to explain what most impressed me about Mr. Bush, and I kept falling back on words like" courage" and"guts." I wasn't capturing the special quality Mr. Bush has of making a tough decision and then staying with it if he thinks it's right and paying the price even when the price is high and--
a I stopped speaking for a moment. There was silence. And then the general said,"You mean he's got two of 'em." And I laughed and said yes, that's exactly what I mean. And the same could be said of Reagan.
Nov. 10, 2004
Newt Gingrich:
"It is a modest version of 1936. [Bush] is the first president since FDR to increase his majority in the House and the Senate."
Nov. 9, 2004
The only president to have derived political benefit from naming members of the opposing party to his cabinet was Franklin Roosevelt in 1940, when he named Henry Stimson secretary of war and Frank Knox secretary of the Navy. But Roosevelt was accepting a tough bargain: Bidding for an unprecedented and shocking third presidential term, he tried to allay Republican fears by handing operational control over the pending war in Europe to the leading GOP foreign-policy figure of the day and over the pending war in the Pacific to the most recent Republican nominee for vice president. It would be as if George W. Bush made Richard Holbrooke secretary of state and John Edwards secretary of defense. Nothing remotely resembling that is called for in 2004.
Nov. 8, 2004
A.N. Wilson:"We do not live in an age of great politicians. If that means we do not have a Roosevelt or a Churchill, it also means there is no Stalin or Hitler; you win some, you lose some."
Nov. 8, 2004
Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism:
"What we have today is an unprecedented situation in American history, in terms of the willingness of a large number of people, backed up by the president, who want to infuse more religion into government."
Nov. 5, 2004
Four years ago, candidate Dick Cheney was a reassuring presence as George W. Bush's running mate. A former secretary of defense and White House chief of staff, he provided balance to Bush's relative inexperience. Even his Democratic challenger for the vice presidency, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, remarked in their 2000 debate that"I don't have anything negative to say about him."This year, however, according to political analysts from both parties, Vice President Cheney was the most divisive politician in one of the meanest campaigns in modern history, stoking passions on both sides of the divided electorate.
Nov. 5, 2004
Brian Dirck:
I suppose I now have a better idea about why I voted for Bush. I am, it would seem, a bigoted, gay-bashing, simpleminded, Bible-thumping, parochial midwestern (or southern) coward, hell-bent on murdering as many Iraqi civilians as possible and so easily cowed and manipulated by TV ads that I would vote for an obviously unqualified man and thereby risk the wrath of the entire civilized world, Osama bin Laden, and the editorial desk of the New York Times. And all along I thought I voted for Bush because, with all his flaws, he was the right man for the job.
Nov. 5, 2004
Why Can't We Have a Man Like Warren Harding Again? I couldn't resist noting that today is the birthday of Warren G. Harding, the man who released Woodrow Wilson's political prisoners, cut taxes and spending, and signed one of the most significant arms limitation agreements in world history. Bush and Kerry can't hold a candle to that platform.
Nov. 4, 2004
President George Bush:"I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals."
Nov. 4, 2004
In Vietnam, top decision makers, according to [Robert] McNamara, did not appreciate that country's history, culture or values and the dynamics of China's interest in the region; there was not the depth of thinking a president could draw on when it came to dealing with the Soviet Union. Underestimated then and now is the hard reality that nationalism comes before democracy, and that in the Middle East religion comes before both. This reality is difficult for Americans to accept because it conflicts with their own experience. Freedom is intrinsic to American national identity. To be American is to be free. In Iraq, liberators can turn into occupiers if the visible means of maintaining security are not in the hands of the local population.
Nov. 3, 2004
The most shocking thing about this election, with the possible exception of the depth of voter fraud and nullification, is the almost complete lack of movement in the vote: except for New Hampshire, and a few states whose margins of victory last time were under a percent, no states changed hands. Eight million more voters, hundreds of millions of dollars, millions of words written, and it doesn't seem to have changed anyone's mind, in spite of the incredibly important events of the last three years. That's polarization.Jonathan Dresner:
Nov. 3, 2004
"The Democratic Party will have to contend with the loss of Catholics voters, despite running a Catholic candidate. Or because they ran a Catholic candidate."
Nov. 1, 2004
From the daily newsletter of Romenesko:
Howard Kurtz asks CBS News reporter Lesley Stahl:"Have we allowed the campaign to be hijacked by some of this more trivial stuff?" Her response:"Well, I feel like I'm a politician, because I'm not going to answer directly. I am going to say, what's this 'we'? What do you mean we?" KURTZ:"You're finessing my question?" STAHL:"Well, my question is it's not we, and that's one of the problems that we in the kind of work that we do at CBS News are tarred with. ... How did we all get in the same salad bowl together? Why do people think that what we do at '60 Minutes' is the same thing that they're doing on 'Crossfire'? We're not the same thing. We have standards of fairness and -- I don't know. I just -- it worries me that even you, Howie Kurtz, would say we."
Nov. 1, 2004
George C. Edwards III, the author of the new book, Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America:
The Electoral College magnifies the impact of fraud. In 2000, you could change the outcome of the election by stealing 538 votes in Florida. But with popular voting, you'd have had to steal a thousand times that number.
Nov. 1, 2004
As George Will has pointed out, our war in Iraq has now lasted longer than America's involvement in World War I. The span from 9/11 to Election Day 2004 is only three months shy of the 41 months separating the attack on Pearl Harbor from V-E day. And still the storyline doesn't compute. Mr. Bush, having not brought back his original bad guy dead or alive, is now fond of saying that"three-quarters of Al Qaeda leaders have been brought to justice." Even if true, is he telling us the war on terror is three-quarters over? Al Qaeda is, by our government's own account, in 60 countries. Last time I looked we're only at war in two.
Oct. 29, 2004
Historian Michael Burleigh:
We do not study the history of America exclusively through the prism of Vietnam. So children should not be studying German history solely through the lurid lens of the Third Reich. If German schoolchildren visiting Britain are being insulted, and worse, because of an obsession here with the Nazi past, then it is time for history teachers to start learning a painful lesson themselves.
Oct. 29, 2004
For most of U.S. history, going to war was like organizing a large federal jobs program, with most of the work done by inexpensive, quickly trained recruits. Today, it is more like a NASA moon launch, entailing a massive logistical tail supporting a professionally managed and swiftly depreciating body of high-tech physical capital. Just keeping two divisions engaged in"stability operations" in Iraq for one week costs $1 billion; keeping them engaged for a full year would cost the entire GDP of New Zealand.
Oct. 28, 2004
We've been living off of Ronald Reagan's legacy ever since. We won the Cold War against all expectations. Our economy blossomed, bursting forth with fantastic innovations. The U.S. has gone from creating about one-fourth the global GDP to about one-third today. Our stock markets now account for roughly one-half of global market capitalization, having appreciated nearly tenfold. American household net wealth has never been higher. Japan's and Europe's net new job creation has been microscopic compared with ours. Our hollowed-out military has become the best in human history. But we cannot coast any longer on Reagan's legacy; we must renew and expand it, both at home and overseas.
Oct. 26, 2004
Had Lincoln lost the 1864 vote, a victorious General McClellan would have settled for an American continent divided, with slavery intact. Without Woodrow Wilson's reelection in 1916 — opposed by the isolationists — Western Europe would have lost millions only to be trampled by Prussian militarism. Franklin Roosevelt's interventionism saved liberal democracy. And without the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan and his unpopular agenda for remaking the military, the Soviet Union might still be subsidizing global murder.This election marks a similar crossroads in our history. We are presented with two radically different candidates with profound disagreements about how to conduct a historic worldwide war. We should remember that all our victorious past presidents were, at the moments of their crises, deeply unpopular precisely because they chose the difficult, long-term sacrifice for victory over the expedient and convenient pleas for accommodation (if not outright capitulation). We are faced with just such an option today: a choice between a president whose call for patience and sacrifice promises victory, and a pessimist stirring the people with the assurances that we should not have fought, and now cannot win, the present war in Iraq.
Oct. 26, 2004
Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, complaining that Britons hold outdated views of the Germans:
"If you want to learn how the traditional Prussian goose-step works, you have to watch British TV, because in Germany nobody knows how to perform it."
Oct. 26, 2004
Editorial in the Wall Street Journal:
The truth is that war is nearly always a trial-and-error business in which bad decisions and failure tend to precede good ones -- and victory. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln hired, then cashiered, Generals Scott, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker and Meade before settling on Grant. That took about two years, during which the catastrophes of Bull Run (Union casualties: 2,896), Fredricksburg (13,353) and Chancellorsville (18,400) intervened. How's that for poor Presidential personnel choices leading to unnecessary loss of life?Or consider the Allied campaign in Europe during World War II. This too contained its share of squandered opportunities (the failure to seal the Falaise Gap, through which the bulk of the German Army escaped France in August 1944), fiascoes (Operation Market Garden of"A Bridge Too Far" fame) and costly diversions (the invasion of Italy). By these historical benchmarks, the Bush Administration has done reasonably well in Iraq.
Oct. 23, 2004
Underneath all the disputes about Iraq, we're having a big argument about what qualities America should have in a leader. Republicans trust one kind of leader, Democrats another. This is the constant that runs through recent elections.Republicans, from Reagan to Bush, particularly admire leaders who are straight-talking men of faith. The Republican leader doesn't have to be book smart, and probably shouldn't be narcissistically introspective. But he should have a clear, broad vision of America's exceptional role in the world. Democrats, on the other hand, are more apt to emphasize such leadership skills as being knowledgeable and thoughtful. They value leaders who can see complexities, who possess the virtues of the well-educated.
Republicans and Democrats have different conceptions of the presidency. Republicans admire a president who is elevated above his executive branch colleagues. It is impossible to imagine George W. Bush or Reagan as a cabinet secretary. Instead, they are set apart by virtue of exceptional moral qualities. Relying on their core values, they set broad goals and remain resolute in times of crisis.
Democrats see the presidency as a much more ministerial job. They admire presidents who engage in constant deliberative conversations. Democrats from Carter through Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore and Kerry have all been well versed in the inner workings of government. It is easy to imagine each of them serving as a cabinet secretary.
Oct. 22, 2004
Ask an American a question about history, even his own, and you will probably hear - not much.Americans can rattle off baseball statistics and pop music lyrics and gear ratios - but start to delve into the facts of the war of 1812 - that is the one the British waged on the Americans, on this side of the Atlantic - or the Watergate scandal or even their own great-grandparents, and you may find yourself delving alone.
Henry Ford said famously that history is more or less bunk, and I suspect that eight in ten Americans would agree with him - even if not all eight of them could tell you who Henry Ford was.
If you want to understand Americans, understand that in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the past does not count for much.
It is the here and now, and the day after tomorrow, that matters.
Oct. 22, 2004
Historian Gary Nash, commenting on the Education Department's decision to destroy 300,000 pamphlets that included references to the National Standards for History, which Lynne Cheney had blasted when she ran the National Endowment for the Humanities:
"That's a pretty god-awful example of spending tax-payers' money."
Oct. 22, 2004
Can a contemporary democracy elect a wise man or a woman? It now would be an absurd expectation for the United States of America, which twice elected Abraham Lincoln a century and a half ago, and in earlier days was presided over by Thomas Jefferson.
Oct. 22, 2004
Radio commentator Jerry Bower:
Should we mind that some of this war will be paid for by our children? Not at all. Ronald Reagan ended a multi-generational threat through his military build-up in the 1980s. Soviet missiles are not pointed at us any longer. The collapse of the Soviets freed up enormous resources (remember the peace dividend?) which helped lay the foundation for the growth of the '90s. The generation following WWII reaped enormous benefits from the defeat of the Nazis. The generation following the demise of the Cold War reaped similar benefits from the demise of the Soviets. The generation following our own will reap enormous benefits from the defeat of the Jihadists and it is perfectly appropriate that they cheerfully pay their share of the debt that was incurred on their behalf like every other post-war generation in American history.
Oct. 22, 2004
From an interview on MSNBC's"Hardball":
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me ask you the question about – this is going to cause some trouble with people but as an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force. Do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?JIMMY CARTER: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War more than any other war until recently has been the most bloody war we’ve fought. I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war. Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial’s really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a non-violent way. I think in many ways the British were very misled in going to war against America and in trying to enforce their will on people who were quite different from them at the time.
Oct. 22, 2004
Ron Suskind, in the NYT Magazine:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Oct. 20, 2004
John Zogby, pollster (as quoted in a New Yorker profile):
How do I get a handle on this election or any other? I asked one question the Saturday before the election of 2000. I called my call center in Utica and said,"Put this in the poll: 'You live in the land of Oz, and the candidates are the Tin Man, who's all brains, and the Scarecrow, who's all heart and no brains. Who would you vote for?' The next day, I called Utica and said,"Whaddya got?" They said,"Well, we've got Gore ___," I said,"I don't care about Gore. What's Oz?" It was 46.2 for the Tin Man and 46.2 for the Scarecrow. It was right there that I knew I wasn't going to know what was going to happen. But I asked this question again two weeks ago and the Tin Man led by ten points.
Oct. 19, 2004
Geoffrey Nunberg, the Stanford linguist:
The televison commentaries on