A poodle for the donkeys

Will there be a New York Times in the 22nd Century? Not at this rate, this pundit posits. The thought occurred to me after reading today's editorial about the supposed dire straits of the Republican party (what else would the Times say?) titled "Whose Century is it Anyway?" Obviously, it's supposed to be the Times' century, and nobody else is getting the message. That the Times is in the tank for the Democrats is not a surprise. But the lengths to which they will go in advancing the Democrat agenda (or denigrading the Republicans') will sometimes still catch me off guard. This is one of those editorials that is so wrong-headed it must be answered point-by point.

The general election for president is still a ways off, but the New Hampshire primary campaign is providing a preview of the ultimate contest. So far, it’s not looking so good for the Republicans.

The rest of the article explains that it doesn't look good for Republicans because gosh-darn it, they keep acting like Republicans. But before tackling the issues, the Times has to play the "looking out of touch" card:

The six Republicans, who came first, were a study in grays, hunched over their desks like the officers of some restricted men’s lodge... Then came the four Democrats: the woman, the African-American, the Hispanic American, the coiffed Southern lawyer. They seemed younger, livelier and clearly to be living in 21st-century America.

Of course, none other than George Stephanopoulos commented immediately after the Democratic debate just how un-lively and fatigued the Democratic field appeared. This is nothing more than the Times being blinded by its own vision. The only animation seemed to be when Hillary pressed her cashier credentials, loudly defending her record of making change for 35 years.

On domestic policy, the Republicans offered trickle-down bromides, with the exception of Mr. Paul, who wants to scrap the tax code. The others touted the power of tax cuts to boost the economy, an odd dissonance when Americans see economic woes all around them. They spoke reverently of unregulated business, when Americans know the Bush administration’s failures to regulate are at the root of the mortgage crisis that is driving the economy toward recession and are the reason they have to worry about lead in their children’s toys and poison in pet food.

The Democrats fell over each other proclaiming their opposition to continuing those tax cuts. Unlike the Republicans, who never mentioned it, the Democrats took on the mortgage crisis, saying it demonstrated the need to regulate the banks that made irresponsible loans and the investment firms that profited from them.

Americans might see economic woes all around them, but only because there are always economic woes if the media chooses to point them out. Unemployment is 5%. The economy is still growing (though never as fast as the Times would like when Republican is in the White House). This despite the tech bubble bursting as Bush took office, despite corporate America readjusting Clinton-era stated revenues in the wake of Enron, despite conducting a two-front war on the other side of the globe, despite a housing slump and the subprime mortgage mess, and despite the Times seeing a recession around the corner each quarter for the past seven years. And it is thriving despite all of these things because the market works. Not perfectly, but always better than the statist schemes that the Times regularly advocates.

How exactly is the subprime mess Bush's fault anyway? In each foreclosure case it took two parties to make bad decisions: the homeowner for taking on a mortgage he could likely not afford, and the lender who might have known the homeowner was too high a risk. To suggest that mortgages should be harder to get for low-credit borrowers is antithetical to what Democrats and their water carrier the Times have said for decades. So they focus on the brokers, who immediately sold the bad loans in bulk. But again, two sides to each transaction. The banks and investment houses who bought the loans knew the risks and thought they could make money when the higher rates kicked in. I don't recall Bush repealing any Clinton-era laws to enable such free-market activities. The real problem they have, of course, is there hasn't been a bailout to their liking, and even if there were, they'd say it's too small anyway(see No Child Left Behind and Hurricane Katrina, for starters).

Regarding the lead paint in toys. Yes, more companies are doing business overseas due to cheaper manufacturing costs. Did Dick Cheney sneak into Mattel factories and sprinkle lead in direct violation of existing U.S. regulations? A systemic problem has been found with toys manufactured in China, and it is bad news in terms of brand and dollars for those U.S. corporations who chose to do business there. They didn't police their product well enough before it went out the door, and they are paying and can continue to pay the price, especially if they were aware of the problem and chose to ignore it. Existing laws were broken. Drastic new ones are unnecessary. But the real problem the Democrats have is that China is manufacturing toys in the first place, so they will do their best to huff and puff and appease the Michigan union vote.

Except again for Mr. Paul, the Republicans tried to outbid the others’ commitment to staying the course in Iraq. That included Mike Huckabee, who defended his criticism of Mr. Bush’s foreign policy as “arrogant,” but offered no new ideas on how to manage Mr. Bush’s arrogantly mismanaged war. We hardly expected calls for withdrawal, but none of the five who support the war offered the slightest sense of how to achieve the victory they said they wanted.

The four Democrats debated ideas for ending the war, a service to American voters who overwhelmingly want it to end. Hillary Clinton, struggling for purchase against Barack Obama, who now owns the “change agent” mantle, came to life over this issue. She called for withdrawal but sensibly said it must be done carefully, and that Americans have to accept the consequences.

Charles Gibson didn't ask the Democrats and Republicans the same questions, so this criticism is completely disingenuous. He asked the Republicans what they thought generally about the Bush Doctrine of foreign policy, not how they would win the war. By contrast he asked the Democrats specifically about the surge and their plans for ending the war. Regarding Hillary coming to life over this issue, her statements should have put nails in her coffin, if newspapers like the Times had any time for analysis. Here's what she said Saturday night:

So it's time to bring our troops home and to bring them home as quickly and responsibly as possible and unfortunately, I don't see any reason why they should remain beyond, you know, today. I think George Bush doesn't intend to bring them home, but certainly I have said when I'm president I will. Within 60 days, I'll start that withdrawal.

So Hillary sees no reason for us to hang around longer than tomorrow... or 60 days. What does Mr. Obama think on the issue?

What we have to do is to begin a phased redeployment to send a clear signal to the Iraqi government that we are not going to be there in perpetuity. Now, it will -- we should be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. I welcome the genuine reductions of violence that have taken place, although I would point out that much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar province -- Sunni tribes -- who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what, the Americans may be leaving soon, and we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shi'as. We should start negotiating now. That's how you change behavior.

Let's leave aside the breathtaking assumption that the election caused the change in behavior and not the surge, and focus on his argument. As we leave, it will force Iraq to step up; this will reduce violence as our threats to leave has already done; this is the only way to exit Iraq and have peace. So what does Hillary say next?

I don't think anyone can predict what the consequences will be, and I think we have to be ready for whatever they might be. We have to figure out what we're going to do with the 100,000-plus American civilians who are there working at the embassy, working for not-for- profits or American businesses. We have to figure out what we're going to do about all the Iraqis who sided with us, you know, like the translators who helped the Marines in Fallujah, whom I met, who said they wouldn't have survived without them. Are we going to leave them?

The times alludes to her "sensibility" here, but for a newspaper, it doesn't quite seem to know how to ask relevant questions. The question that lingers in my mind is straight out of the courtroom climax of A Few Good Men (roughly quoting from memory): "Why the two orders? If you gave specific orders for Santiago not to be touched, and your orders are always followed, why did he need to be transferred off the base?" If withdrawing is the way to bring peace... why do we have to worry about the safety of the Iraqi supporters we leave behind? I guess peace takes many forms. Perhaps the Times could use its clout to ask Obama and Clinton to clarify the party position on this issue, instead of wasting trees to gush about their liveliness.

It is too soon, in our view, to call either nominating contest, much less the fall election. But in a year in which voters are fed up with Washington (even Mr. McCain said on Sunday that his base was disillusioned), the Republicans have a long way to go to grasp the mood of the electorate in this 21st-century election.

Frankly, the Times has a long way to go to grasp the mood of real Americans who work for a living and are not anxious to lose a war; Americans who likely stopped reading the Times in the last century.