Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Tuesday

Alex Massie

How do you know Obama is failing? Just ask people who didn’t vote for him!

From our UK edition

How should one measure political success? That was my first reaction to Julia Pettengill's Standpoint article headlined Is the Obama Presidency Failing? Sensible, I suppose, for Standpoint to present this as a question to be debated, not a verdict that had already been delivered. And it's bad luck on Ms Pettengill that her piece should have been commissioned after Scott Brown's triumph in Massachusetts and filed before health care reform was passed. Such are the perils of journalism. Nevertheless the article is instructive, not least because of how it is organised and the extent to which it reflects certain strands of Washington's brand of conventional wisdom.

Alex Massie

The Existential Wodehouse

From our UK edition

Jenny Haddon has a nice piece on Wodehouse and Hot Water as her contribution to Norm's Writers' Choice series. She argues: In fact, I disagree with the regular characterization of Wodehouse's dramatis personae as amiable eccentrics. (Bertie Wooster is a kind man but his slightest gesture towards eccentricity is squashed by Jeeves - one remembers, with regret, the skirmish over the white mess jacket. Lord Emsworth is only intermittently amiable. With the exception of the occasional chorus girl, all PGW's women are tough cookies who could give today's feminists a correspondence course in man management.) The amiability is the author's and it is the amiability of the measured Augustan, who sees life steadily, sees it whole and gets a jolly good laugh out of it.

Monday

Alex Massie

Do Debates Really Help the Liberal Democrats?

From our UK edition

Well, in one sense, yes of course they do. By putting Vince Cable and, later, Nick Clegg up against their Conservative and Labour peers the Lib Dems are granted a status and respect they never achieve in other circumstances. So in terms of exposure and credibility then yes the debates help the Liberal Democrats. The format helps too: since Labour and the Tories will sensibly ignore the Liberals the third party is rarely tasked with the awkward business of defending its own proposals. Instead it can scamper around picking off the low-hanging fruit dangling from the Labour and Toriy trees. Since, god help us, there's no shortage of that then even mildly competent Liberals ought to be able to enjoy themselves during these affairs.

Alex Massie

When Wee George and Old Man Vince Met the Badger

From our UK edition

Well, as Pete says there were few fireworks during the finance debate. Then again, why would one expect there to be? By and large the three gentlemen agree with one another more than they disagree. When that's the case you probably shouldn't expect a proper tear-up. Their arguments were, by and large, about the route not the destination. Sure, there's the occasional difference of emphasis and sometimes of timing too but let's not pretend that there isn't quite some degree of consensus. I suppose you could consider the creation of that consensus a Labour achievement but it's not one the party can really boast about. Curiously, however, it is almost as if the media is currently saying, "Look it doesn't much matter how we got here, the only thing that matters is how we get out.

Alex Massie

Drug Dealers in Favour of Prohibition

From our UK edition

What does left mean these days? And what, for that matter, about right? Increasingly the divide that really matters is between the liberal and the authoritarian. When it comes to drugs, for instance, Melanie Phillips is an authoritarian. Well-intentioned, I'm sure, but an authoritarian nonetheless. This means that, whether she or the other Drug Warriors like it or not, they have more in common with drug-producers than consumers. Indeed, the Drug Warriors might be said, objectively speaking, to be furthering producer interests at the expense of the consumer. This might help explain why marijuana producers in California are appalled that the state might, by referendum, legalise pot this year.

Alex Massie

The Future of British Policing

From our UK edition

It hasn't happened yet but, mark my words, something like this will happen in Britain soon. Why? Because when you arm the police with Tasers you cannot be surprised when they start being used and, of course, used when they need not be. Three Seattle police officers were justified when they used a stun gun on a pregnant mother who refused to sign a traffic ticket, a federal appeals court ruled Friday in a case that prompted an incredulous dissent. Malaika Brooks was driving her son to Seattle’s African American Academy in 2004 when she was stopped for doing 32 mph in a school zone. She insisted it was the car in front of her that was speeding, and refused to sign the ticket because she thought she’d be admitting guilt.

Sunday

Alex Massie

Labour’s Political Football

From our UK edition

Elections really are pretty grim. Perhaps it's because I've been overseas for some of them (well, 1997 and 2005) that this one seems especially awful. First there's the rash of "celebrity endorsements"* which are themselves enough to make one abandon any remaining hope. I mean, if the Tories are "backed" by Ulrika Jonsson, John McCririck, Tony Handley and Jimmy Greaves how can any sentient person consider that an argument for the Conservative cause? Then there's this latest election-gimmick from Labour: proposals** to "give" football supporters' groups a 25% stake in their club's shareholding. By give, of course, I mean insist. Really, it's hard to know where to begin. But this is a) ridiculous b) pointless and c) pointlessly ridiculous.

Alex Massie

Obama and the Jews

From our UK edition

Granted there was something about George W Bush that sent plenty of otherwise reasonably normal people a little nuts too and perhaps the nature of politics and technology today is such that this kind of crazy is inevitable regardless of who wins elections. But what, in the name of god, has Obama done to merit this kind of stuff from Glenn Reynolds? Possibly Obama just hates Israel and hates Jews. That’s plausible — certainly nothing in his actions suggests otherwise, really. OK! I guess that White House seder is proof of how deep the conspiracy runs? Evidently the administration is protesting too much. Only a White House riddled with anti-semites would feel the need to have a seder!

Alex Massie

Sunday Afternoon Country: The Flatlanders

From our UK edition

Their 1970s album was called More a Legend than a Band and that was about right since it and they disappeared for 20 years. Happily the Flatlanders returned and continue to amaze with their groovy, mildly mystical brand of Texas country.

Alex Massie

Nanny State Critics

From our UK edition

Cosmo Landesman can't meet many libertarian-minded people: I notice that right-wing critics of the nanny state never call for the legalisation of drugs on the grounds that adults should be free to choose to be addicts or not. Like Mr Worstall, I do. The rest of Landesman's article is no better informed than this.

Friday

Alex Massie

Waiting for Jesus

From our UK edition

Radley Balko thinks it's the note of (mild) exasperation that makes this cover splendid. I agree. Jesus: Disappointing You for 2000 Years. As the man put it: Estragon: He should be here. Vladimir: He didn't say for sure he'd come.

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Corrupting Influence of the Fetish for Bipartisan Politics

From our UK edition

Passing Health Care Reform has done some strange things to some pundits. Here, for instance, is Mark McKinnon, maverick strategist, former advisor to Dubya and McCain and also, of course, a lapsed Democrat: If you think politics have been partisan up until now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The passage of this bill will only sharpen the divide. Now there is a clear hero and a clear enemy, something to fight for and fight against. The target now has a bull’s eye. [...] While Democrats will argue this bill is the most important health-care legislation since the enactment of Social Security and Medicare, Republicans will note that all those measures passed with significant bipartisan support.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Never Trust a Nazi Leprechaun

From our UK edition

Like McShandy, I feel I need to track down, purchase and read a copy of this. Who knows what lessons for our time it may contain? (Actually, it doesn't seem to be a rare book but, obviously, it's not the same without the Nazi Leprechauns on the cover.

Alex Massie

Tony Blair’s Foolish Sabre-Rattling

From our UK edition

Here's Tony Blair, speaking at AIPAC yesterday: We should be clear also. 
Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons capability.
 They must know that we will do whatever it takes to stop them getting it.  The danger is if they suspect for a moment we might allow such a thing. Emphasis added. This doesn't really differ from long-established US policy except that the Americans tend to be a little less vocal when it comes to pledging military action. Then again, they'd be the ones having to take the decision to attack and they, not Blair, would be the ones who'd have to deal with the consequences.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

America! Yay!

From our UK edition

Protesting against HCR and BHO. Photo: Astrid Riecken/Getty Images It's a commonplace to argue that the battle for helth care reform has not been an especially edifying time for American politics. And granted, there's been plenty of craziness and a degree of legislative jiggery-pokery that has not done much to increase the public's faith in Congress. But this misses the point. I think. Washington is a place of sweaty knavery but it's also home to an almost touching measure of idealism.  The Tea Partiers have their kooky side but, as Matt Steinglass points out, they're quintessentially American.

Monday

Alex Massie

Obama & Napoleon

From our UK edition

Historical analogies are always fun! Health Care reform was going to be, as Senator Jim DeMint argued, "Obama's Waterloo". Now that it haspassed conservatives are having to rethink that. The eternally optimistic Bill Kristol winds the clock back a bit and argues that, actually, HCR is Obama's Borodino*: Last night’s victory was the culmination of Obama’s health care effort, which has been his version of  Napoleon’s Russia campaign. He won a short-term victory, but one that will turn out to mark an inflection point on the road to defeat, and the beginning of the end of the Democratic party’s dominance** over American politics. Last night was Obama’s Borodino. Obama’s Waterloo will be November 6, 2012. Well, maybe!

Alex Massie

Obamacare = Romneycare = Mitt’s the Biggest Loser?

From our UK edition

Jon Chait loves a good fight so I'm not surprised he's in I Told You So mood today. I kinda, sorta, less confidently, told you so too even after Massachusetts when the prospect for HCR were pretty bleak and Fred Barnes was saying it was dead, dead, dead. Well, we all get things wrong and sometimes perhaps we get a little lucky. The chap with the most to lose from last night's vote - in terms of politics and 2012 if nothing else - is our old chum Mitt Romney. No wonder Romney released this statement: America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power.

Alex Massie

The Most Significant Democratic Triumph in 40 Years

From our UK edition

Presidents have been trying to cover the uninsured since LBJ sat in the Oval Office. None have succeeded. Until now. It doesn't matter whether one approves of the bill or thinks it likely to work or not, one should be able to recognise the legislative achievement and, hence, the scale of this Democratic victory. It's probably the most significant progressive-inspired* piece of legislation in 40 years. So how did it happen? A bit of luck, some arm-twisting, a lot of perseverance from Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House leadership and, with the benefit of hindsight, a spot of GOP blundering. There aren't, I suspect, 216 members of the House of Representatives who actually like this bill, far less 216 who could vote for it on the merits.