An Example of Rationality

David Brooks wrote a short profile of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels today. The point of the column was to offer Daniels as a good -- maybe the best -- Republican presidential candidate.

The profile is a little more touchy-feely than I would say the best political descriptions are, but its central thesis is crucial:

The country also needs a substantive debate about the role of government. That’s exactly what an Obama-Daniels contest would provide.

It's this debate, and the likely growth and innovation that such discussions would foster, that matters as much as any particular conclusions. Brooks and Daniels certainly have their agendas; Daniels is in the middle of a battle with Indiana Democrats over the power of labor unions in that state. They believe the budget deficit is a moral issue, and want smaller government. I doubt I would agree with a lot of what Daniels does. I don't generally agree with Brooks.
I don't always agree with President Obama, either, but what I like most about him is that he speaks like a sane person. He reasons and appeals fact and consequence, not ideology and fantasy. Brooks reports that

[Daniels] also spoke of expanding the party’s reach. In a passage that rankled some in the audience and beyond, he argued that “purity in martyrdom is for suicide bombers.” Republicans, he continued, “will need people who never tune in to Rush or Glenn or Laura or Sean.” He spoke as a practical Midwesterner, appealing to hard-core conservatives and the not so hard-core.

That sort of thing certainly would be welcome around here.

Egypt and the Rule of Law

NPR ran a story on February 16 arguing -- there really is no other word for it, since they did no serious reporting -- that the peaceful ouster of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt represented a serious setback for al Qaeda. This conclusion came from the fact that al Qaeda has issued no statement about the events of last week and from the reasoning that the peaceful overthrow of the Egyptian government shows al Qaeda's tactics to be both unnecessary and ineffective, since al Qaeda has been working to get rid of Mubarak for twenty years.

It certainly is true that these events put al Qaeda in a rhetorical bind: they can't praise the peaceful protestors for being successful since it does not appear that any of al Qaeda's goals beyond overthrow were accomplished, but they can't condemn anything about the actions either. President Obama succeeded in keeping the United States at a distance, so no one could be tainted by the smell of American interference or preference. Any statement one way or the other, especially in the context of other unrest in Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon and Jordan, might demoralize al Qaeda members who are looking for the nexus of evil that has always been the rallying point for al Qaeda. If leadership comes out against successful revolts they look silly and self-centered, but if they support them they risk hemorrhaging recruits to another method or group.

But logic does not always prevail in history. Any disorder in Egypt could provide a crack through which al Qaeda could enter. A better-organized al Qaeda in Egypt, where anger and education come together to a greater degree than any other place in the Middle East would be an extraordinarily dangerous thing. Remember that the intellectual foundation of the September 11 attackers' motivation came from Egyptian scholars and preachers. Hasan al Bana and Sayyid Qutb came from Egypt.

That's not to say that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist leadership of Egypt are al Qaeda. They are not. If the moderate Islamist movement has any geographic base, it is in Cairo, where the press (see especially al Ahram) and the resistance have for a long time been as reasoned as any in similar circumstances. It is to say that the work of those seeking the rule of law in Egypt have a lot of work to do. President Obama must be on the list of such people. Elections must occur, and order must be maintained while they are established. No one but Egyptians can succeed in these things, but other nations can help to keep outside actors from messing things up.

The Problem of Neoconservativism

In the late 1960's, apparently as a backlash against the student countercultural movement, a group of young men emerged who wanted to mesh the fervor of social activism with a rejection of communist economics. These men, led by Irving and then William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and Henry "Scoop" Jackson.

The reason I call these ideas a "problem" is that they combine the tendencies of a coercive state like the Soviet Union with a strict belief in laissez-faire economics. By the standards of traditional American politics, this combination makes no sense. It meant that its adherants could advocate for military intervention in foreign nations and a strict federal ban on abortion while insisting that the government leave corporations alone. Neither FDR nor Ike would have recognized these ideas as coherent, and they render labels like "conservative" and "liberal" obsolete.

When neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith put their hands on the bureaucratic controls of the executive branch, they were in the perfect position to implement their odd combination of beliefs. They had the means to apply coercive methods in foreign policy while failing to enforce the economic controls left behind by the Great Society and New Deal they so abhorred. They did not need legislative endorsement or even an elected position to take these actions, though they did need someone who would listen to them in the White House. Especially under George W. Bush, they had that person.