Liberal Realpolitik

Having washed his hands of the mucked up Iraqi constitution, Noah Feldman has now blithely moved on to the question of Iranian nukes. His article, “Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age”, which appeared in last week’s New York Times Magazine, is a sprawling piece with at least three distinct sections. He spends the first several pages pondering why we should worry about the “Islamic bomb.” His ‘answer’ is that there is good cause to wonder whether Islamic governments would be deterred by the possibility that the state and citizens would be wiped out in any retaliatory strike. Somewhat more careful is his next section, which rambles through an interesting but fairly irrelevant assessment of Muslim scholarly debate on the subject of nuclear arms: concluding, it seems, that Muslims probably can be deterred. Finally, Feldman provides something of a national interest assessment of why we should oppose Iran ’s nuclear ambitions anyway.

It is, at first glance, not clear what ties these three discussions together. It is easy to be distracted by the patently racist elements of Feldman’s argument, which suffuse all three sections of the article. But to do so would be to miss what it is that logically binds them together, and provides impetus for Feldman’s writing. For what is more interesting about Feldman is not a consistently racist train of thought, but that he variously contradicts himself, backtracks on forceful and odious positions, hedges his bets, and seems somewhat apologetic about his patronizing attitude toward Muslims. But the one animating principle from which he never strays is the notion that both he, as a member of the US intelligentsia, and the US government should decide whether Iran gets to join the “nuclear club.”

This is the driving force of the essay, and determines why Iran should never be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. Feldman supports the position alternately by drawing upon widespread prejudices of Muslim irrationality (“The prospect of not just one Islamic bomb, but many, inevitably concentrates the mind on how Muslims…might use their nuclear weapons.” Notice the “inevitability” of this absurd mental effort. “In the mid-1980’s…it was still possible to avoid asking the awkward question of whether there was something distinctive about Islamic belief or practice that made possession of nuclear technology especially worrisome.” But awkward or not, it now presumably no longer possible to avoid asking whether those Islamic beliefs are simply crazy and irrational); and upon the general consensus that Iran is our “enemy.” If you don’t come away confirmed in your prejudice that Muslims could never be effectively deterred from using nuclear weapons since they are hell-bent on destruction anyway (ie, they’ve been known to be suicide bombers in recent years), Feldman hopes to convince you to oppose Iranian nuclear power by asserting that Iran is “an enemy of the United States, which has worked consistently against American interests” and that, in doing so, “Iran’s motives have been primarily Islamic-ideological, not pragmatic.” Why didn’t they just become our allies in the aftermath of the revolution, like Saudi Arabia or the Iraqi Shiites today? Had they tried to, “it is possible that the United States would have eventually reopened relations with an avowedly Islamic Iran.”

Having argued several alternative intellectual justifications for the US policy position of total opposition to Iranian nuclear power, Feldman makes clear that he is not sure what is the best method to achieve this goal “whether force, negotiation or some combination…is of course a hugely important question.” But it is a technical one that “turns on many uncertain facts.” We get the sense that nothing would phase Feldman, from air attacks, to ground forces, as long as the “facts” supported the likelihood of success. And in the long-term he holds out hope that “promotion of democracy in the region”, as we are already doing (!), “might someday allow the rise of leaders whose Islamism is tempered by the need to satisfy their constituents’ domestic needs--and who eschew anti-Americanism as wasteful and misguided. Iraq was the test case of whether this change could occur in the short term.”

And there’s the rub. Despite all the illogical and self-contradictory statements put forward by Feldman, not to mention the patently racist ones, the critical point is his shocking disregard for the equality and freedom of citizens of the developing world. After pages and pages of studious consideration of whether Muslims can be “trusted” with a bomb, he suddenly throws in the line: “These worries about an Islamic bomb raise the question of why we trust any nation with the power that a nuclear capacity confers.” He knows that his whole argument is vulnerable to this question. And he continues with the next likely refrain from non-proliferation folks: “Why, for instance, do we trust ourselves, given that we remain the only nation actually to have used nuclear weapons?” But despite all the care, the modifiers, the analytical dance to avoid being pinned down to any one position, he is unabashed in his recognition that we oppose other states’ acquisition of nuclear capability because “we do not want to cede some substantial chunk of our own global power to them.” He recognizes that this is the logic underlying the strategy of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. “So the nonproliferation regime is not and could never be based on some principle of international fairness.” But Feldman has no problem with this. The underlying racism of much of the article is thus not a peculiar attack on Muslims, but rather, reflects a nearly ubiquitous contempt, of which Feldman’s piece is but one example, for the equality of the majority of the world’s population.

The unwitting utility of Feldman’s argument is to pose a crucial, broader question: whether we should support an international treaty regime that maintains the dominance of the most powerful states and the perpetual dependence and subservience of the weakest. The problem is that this essential element of the nuclear issue is frequently and conveniently masked by resort to base prejudices: about third world irrationality (or instability, or blind “hatred” of the West), or about vague anti-nuclear sentiments that we tend to harbor; (the reasoning operates something like this: it’s terrible that anyone has nuclear technology (this is instinctive rather than rigorously fleshed out), so why let it spread…) Thus a regime whose purpose and effect is nothing more than a power grab is justified through a shifting complex of “moral” rationales claiming to be concerned with peace and global safety.

Thus Feldman’s article is a simple attempt to provide greater moral fiber to the present non-proliferation regime. Aside from vague notions of Islamism’s proclivity to suicide (and, by inference, collective suicide), Feldman also falls back upon the Middle East’s “instability”, its “anti-Americanism”, and its lack of democracy. All these vague catch-phrases of Western prurient interest are marshaled to support the idea that, while there may come a time when we would be willing to support nuclear states in the Middle East, at the present moment they cannot be trusted with the weapons. And so, whether we bomb or twist arms or bring the state to its economic knees, we must force our will on the peoples of the region. Essentially, Feldman’s article amounts to a liberal-centrist justification for the continuation of American power in the Middle East , wielded (as it must be) in pursuit of our own interests.

Feldman’s total lack of interest in an international system based on equality, in fact, his willingness to support policies that consciously ensure continued inequality, allows him to ignore the reality that it is exactly this hierarchical international system that reproduces “instability”, “anti-Americanism”, and the continual thwarting of democracy (if, by democracy, we mean government by the people in furtherance of the interests of that people). Feldman concludes by explaining that the US “has strong reason to block its enemy Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons…if and when Iran does have the bomb, its enhanced power and prestige will certainly be lent to policies that it conceives as promoting the Islamic interest.” Thus, until Muslim countries renounce any effort to promote their own interest (and instead assist in the pursuit of what the US perceives as its or their interest), we must oppose any move that would make them stronger. That Feldman’s article boils down to something not particularly different from conservative realpolitik is therefore instructive of the narrowness of public opinion generally. The supposed greater thoughtfulness, subtlety and diplomacy of liberal foreign policy is nothing of the sort. It is rather a more conflicted, confusing and messy justification than its conservative counterpart for the regime of international inequality and American supremacy. The attempt to give this position a patina of intellectual credibility leads only to convoluted articles like Feldman’s.

On Liberal Renewal

Inevitably, the mid-term elections have produced amongst Democratic influentials a debate about pragmatism versus principle. With his March essay "Party In Search of a Notion," the executive editor of the American Prospect, Michael Tomasky, kicked off a (temporary) national debate about the Democrats' 'vision', or lack thereof. Now that Democrats have a decent chance of retaking both houses of Congress, this question has new urgency. It is especially pressing since one important reason for the Democrats' success appears to be the emergence of a crop of even more centrist candidates than those from elections past. Moreover, if Democrats are going to turn a temporary electoral victory, whose proximate cause is public disenchantment with this particular administration, into a more lasting re-alignment, then they need to be more than pragmatic, they need to enchant. Here is where the problem of 'vision' reconnects with questions of 'practicality' and pragmatism. Pragmatism is self-defeating if it means abandoning precisely those aspects of principled, ideological consistency that gives a party substance.

Enter the project of liberal renewal.

The past three years has been rather productive for those seeking to create new intellectual spaces and ideological projects along the liberal-left trajectory. The Euston Manifesto was the first moment in what has been really a trans-Atlantic process of liberal renewal. It has also included a series of books, such as Peter Beinart's earnest, ignorant and conservative tract The Good Fight. Along this spectrum of political opinion has come a number of self-critical pieces accusing liberals of political capitulation and intellectual dissolution, not least of which is Tony Judt's recent piece, Bush's Useful Idiots. In direct response to Judt's article, the liberal public intellectual, Bruce Ackerman, along with ex-radical Todd Gitlin, have taken up the cause of renewing liberal ideas. In mid-October, they published a new manifesto for liberals called "We Answer to the Name of Liberals" in which they claimed "this is a moment for liberals to define ourselves." But the nature of these efforts does not bode well for their success.

Ackerman and Gitlin lay out the familiar litany of Bush regime abuses, and make important sounding pronouncements about the "process of public reason" and "true patriotism." But what, exactly, is being renewed here? This is undoubtedly not the renewal of a full-fledged liberal doctrine, as it has conventionally been known in the United States. The social democratic element, traditionally associated with 20th century American liberals, is barely found - a distant target towards which they want debate to be "refocused." Much more prominently featured is a series of foreign policy critiques and proposals. We have identified some of the pathological tendencies of this international orientation of contemporary liberalism before. Its most fundamental problem is its inability to come to term with domestic politics and the public. It reflects a tendency to seek renewal abroad, rather than at home, or, insofar as it seeks to focus debate on domestic issues, it does so only in an uninspiring, technocratic way, rather than through a vision that articulates shared interests in a compelling fashion.

But the content of these manifestos and tracts is not their only problem. The problem lies not just with the specific ideas they seek to renew, but also in the manner by which they hope to represent a liberal movement. The form these manifestos take - as internet petitions bearing the names of important public figures, sent to the right magazines, websites, and listservs - reflects a vision of renewal as an oddly passive experience. These manifestos ask nothing more than acceptance, or at most for signatories to their petitions. There is little active engagement with the ideas – such as they are. Their passive character provides little hope for a real liberal renewal. Instead, it indicates that liberals face more of the same problem that has plagued them for a great while: a reluctance to engage in sensuous political activity. Much has been made lately about the sophistication of Republican canvassing, and the Democrats’ inferiority in grassroots organization. Democrats have tried to combat this Republican edge through “technological” innovations and “outsourcing,” none of which addresses the reality that politics demands human contact. That is, it requires convincing those with whom you currently disagree of your arguments, a process that both builds movements, and refines the ideas on which they are based. No short-cut that aims to circumvent this basic, difficult, and intimate aspect of politics will work. Certainly, liberalism is in need of an intellectual renewal. But for those ideas to develop, both in substance and currency, they must arise out of an active process of political engagement.

1972 vs. 2008, "Anti-War" and the Elections

Last Sunday's NY Times included a particularly telling article on the Democratic Party and anti-war candidates. In it, George McGovern argues that the time is ripe for an anti-war presidential candidate in 2008. Rather than viewing the '72 experience as a debacle for anti-war politics, Democrats should take advantage of the sea-change in how the public views the parties and the war in Iraq. McGovern claims, "I would love to be running if I were 25 years younger. I think I would win." At present, it has become increasingly common to draw parallels between the post-9/11 and Vietnam eras, with even George Bush admitting similarities with the Tet offensive. But, in our rush to call Iraq a quagmire and to see Rumsfeld as the second-coming of McNamara, we've increasingly lost sight of precisely what sets these two periods apart.

The conventional wisdom is that McGovern lost because of his anti-war stance. Yet, by November '72 virtually everyone was anti-war. In fact, Nixon's "peace with honor" would not be all that different from many views espoused by Bush's critics. At election time, the countdown had already begun to American withdrawal, and by the middle of the folowing year the war had ended for all intents and purposes.

At stake in the McGovern candidacy was not simply the war, but the future of a set of commitments that linked the civil rights project to anti-war activism. In the late 60s and early 70s, a sustained effort was made to merge two distinct social movements and to present a unified vision of domestic and foreign policy that represented labor, churches, civil rights groups, and students. Martin Luther King and others situated their critique of war directly in the social problems at home--issues of race and class equality. In other words, opposition to the war was part of a larger, structural opposition to the policies and power of political elites.

McGovern was not part of these movements. His campaign stances, including a commitment to full employment and an end to the war, were responses to the social pressures exerted by mobilized groups. Thus, his defeat in '72 was the electoral defeat of these forces. The Democratic Party which had long built its strength on working and middle class support among white southerners, was unable to successfully include new social groups and activists while retaining its base. As Johnson famously remarked to his aide, Bill Moyers, after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time."
Thus, a vote for Nixon wasn't about the war as a stand-alone issue, it was about how one's view of the war related to these social movements and their future role in American politics.

In a sense, McGovern may well be right that an anti-war candidate can win in 2008. But that position wouldn't have nearly the resonances that it did during the Vietnam era. This is because no similar social movements exist to link domestic and foreign policy, and to compel politicians (today's McGoverns) to respond directly to their goals and aspirations.

One final point. 1972 and 2008 are alike and dissimilar in a further respect. No matter who wins, the next president will be trying desperately to exit Iraq, just as Nixon was in 1972. If all we want is an end to the war, the election might make no appreciable difference. But, if opposition is based on a more substantive rejection of not just the Iraq war, but the war on terror and the domestic policies that maintain it, real cleavages can form. When McGovern ran, those cleavages were obvious and compelling. Today, they've been submerged under a political consensus that refuses to question the basic assumptions of the post-9/11 climate. In other words, 1972 might not be a winning electoral strategy for Democrats, but it is certainly a critical image of the political organizing and social bases necessary for ordinary citizens to shape elite discourse and policy.

The Legitimacy of Crisis: Why We Must Confront the War on Terror

Thus far, campaigns for the mid-term elections have barely touched upon the war on terror. Perhaps we should welcome that. After all, it probably indicates what a hollow shell the WOT has become of late. But like most problems, the WOT will not go away if we simply ignore it. Let us not forget that 18 years after the end of the Reagan administration America is still fighting a war on drugs.

And the WOT is unlikely to remain as inert a political issue as the war on drugs has become. That is for the simple reason that the WOT offers the temptation of a political carte blanche to those who can control it. For when the raison d’etat becomes the elimination of risk, preventing random violence is a political program that carries a significant moral force. And in a political climate without a clear and coherent direction, the war on terror can suggest purpose and authority. It does so because it conjures an enemy that must be dealt with now, with the greatest dispatch and effectiveness. Because terrorism is seen as an exceptional foe, to whom the only response is action, the terrain of the war on terror is one of crisis and immediate action, not reflective thinking and deliberate planning. What this really means is that the impression of effectiveness - ie the application of power - becomes its own standard, because 'meeting the threat' crowds out discussion of whether this threat deserves such attention. In this way, the crisis character of the war on terror manages to produce the image of a self-confident, purposeful leader, lifting himself above the petty squabbles of domestic conflict.

These features of the war on terror has been noted on our blog any number of times. Our leaders, Blair and Bush foremost amongst them, love to suggest they are shouldering a great burden on behalf of society, as if they directly bear the weight of keeping 60mn or 300mn souls safe at night. They might adopt slightly different styles in so doing (Bush the tough-talking everyman who says ‘Bring 'Em On’, Blair, a noble isolated figure tortured by the terrible choices he must face) but the message is the same. They want to claim an unambiguous moral purpose, raising themselves above the status of the compromised, cynical politicians of whom we have all become weary.

This is highly problematic for the normal functioning of democracy. In a healthy democracy, we elect leaders based on the principles and policies by which they intend to govern during the period until the next election. Yet how can we hold our politicians to account, if they keep claiming their actions are driven by a higher, more immediate, rationale about which there can be little debate? By stating that they are above politics, that they need to be free of partisan bickering and deal making, our leaders undermine our democratic control. Permitting only debate over tactics and strategies in this 'crisis', they do not want to permit proper political debate over the ends themselves.

We would not want to give the impression that the war on terror is the only issue through which our politicians are trying to short-change democracy. Today there is a tendency to paint a range of issues with the brush of crisis. Al Gore’s campaign on global warming has something of the same character—Gore’s program encourages the suspension of ordinary political discourse (in particular overcoming partisan disagreement) in the pursuit of a greater goal. And this is not just a post-9/11 phenomenon. During the Clinton administration, international politics proved a constant source of moral legitimacy; from violent interventions in Bosnia or Haiti, to peace negotiations in the Middle East and Ireland.

We do not want our criticism to be taken in the same alarmist and hysterical light with which the war on terror itself is discussed. It's not that our constitution is on its last legs, fascism around the corner, and democracy stamped out with an iron fist. This may have been the relationship between crisis and democracy in the past - war and domestic crisis was a way of consciously undemocratic forces to redirect rising democratic forces away from greater control of government. In our context, however, the problem is that the political ends of the crisis-mongers are unclear—indeed external legitimacy (the immediacy of the crisis) is pursued partly due to a lack of ideas about what those ends might be. Thus, the suspension of certain democratic functions has an oddly muted character—democracy seems to be in decay more than it is being stamped out. The war on terror serves as the most recent crisis by which the inability to develop a positive, forward-looking direction for our society is concealed behind a mask of hysterical activity.

This is why we must confront, not ignore, the war on terror. But not in the way that the Democrats and liberal opponents of the Bush administration have taken it up -- as a technical discussion of how best to fight the war. That, in fact, is only an attempt to seize the moral authority of the war for themselves. What we need is to confront the principles that underlie the war on terror. When they say security we need to ask the bigger question: what are we securing? For as we have argued here repeatedly, there can be no program that makes us absolutely safe; we need to engage in a discussion about what can make us live better lives, not necessarily safer ones. We must pin our politicians down and stop them escaping into the universe of moralized hysteria that allows them to avoid such questions.

Maneuvering Yourself Out of Existence

What will it mean if the Democrats win the mid-term election decisively enough to take back the House and the Senate? According to Paul Glastris, editor-in-chief of the Washington Monthly, everything turns on this question. If the Dems fail to take back the House, then each party will take the wrong message from the election. According to Glastris,

"Egged on by their “friends” in the mainstream media, Democrats may come to believe that their mistake was one of message: They didn’t offer up enough bold ideas, an alternative vision to contrast with the Republicans’."

Glastris gives no evidence for why this will be the lesson the Dems take from a defeat - it certainly wasn't the lesson they learned from the 2000, 2002, or 2004 elections. In fact, the striking thing about this campaign is that they have stuck with the 'Anybody But Bush' platform they used to no effect in the previous two elections.

Glastris goes on to argue that the wrong lesson for the Republicans is that they will see even the slimmest majority as a mandate, and will try to use their power to pursue an ideological, rather than compromise, agenda. They will fail to realize their own inner corruption, inability to convince a majority of Americans, and that one can't rule as a majority party with only a plurality of the vote. Perhaps.

Glastris' larger point is that the mid-terms are, first and foremost, a referendum on the party in power. And the reporting on most papers seems to agree. Republican weakness seems to be entirely a problem of their own making. Corruption scandals, stalled legislative agendas, but most significantly, the stalled occupation of Iraq, has meant the Republicans are hoist by their own morals-and-security petard. The New York Times reports Rahm Emmanuel, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, saying that "an even greater focus on the war in Iraq...[has turned] what was once the Republicans greatest strength into a major liability," ie, security.

This 'greater focus on the war' is partly the Democrats' own doing. As Glastris notes, having fielded a number of veterans, the 'Fighting Dems', and having pushed the 'Bush has failed us on security, and everything else' line, the Democrats have made their best effort to make no independent impression on the electorate. This is exactly how Glastris, and the majority of Democratic campaign strategists, would have it.

But Glastris et al. miss two fundamental things about party politics. The first is that, there is a limit to which one can simply win by allowing a party to self-destruct. Appropriating the language of security and morality, and turning it against the Republicans, might highlight just how severely the Republican party has decayed over the past half-decade. However, it does nothing to guarantee that once Republican voters will vote Democrat. It only decreases the Republican vote. It is more likely to produce apathy, not a decisive shift in public opinion. This certainly seems to be the subtext of the mid-term coverage: Republican losses are not necessarily Democratic gains.

The problem with attacking the Republican Party with a kinder gentler version of Republican ideas isn't just strategic. Indeed, the second problem is that the Democrats may very well win, but at the cost of having maneuvered themselves out of existence. Having tailored their message so carefully over the past series of election cycles to necessities of winning, the Dems seem to have forgotten the point of party politics in the first place. Parties don't exist just to win power. They exist to win power so they can use it to certain ends. What are the ends of the Democratic Party? There might be some distinctive legislative proposals, but if they win an election on the basis of security and morals, and then try to change the subject once in power, they will reveal their own lack of mandate. To pursue an independent agenda, one must convince others of the legitimacy of that agenda, otherwise, a combination of disagreement and disinterest will undermine any ability to pursue that agenda.

In other words, the Democrats, like the Republicans, have concentrated so much energy on winning that they have forgotten what the point of winning is. Winning has become an end in itself. In other words, Glastris is wrong that who wins determines whether each party will take the right or wrong message from this election. Regardless of who wins, each side is likely to take the wrong message from the mid-term, because neither side wants us to think very seriously about the principles at stake. They prefer to dabble in fear and personal ethics and to play electoral Stratego.

Gitmo and Shoddy Journalism

Eric Umansky in the Columbia Journalism Review has an excellent piece on the unwillingness of the American news media to challenge Bush Administration claims that those detained in Gitmo are, as Rumself said in 2002, "the worst of the worst." Although the evidence suggests that most of those being held are non-combatants who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, the Administration persists in claiming that the detainees are simply too dangerous to be released. From the Administration's perspective, it makes sense to persist in arguing against the facts. After all, Gitmo isn't just a civil liberties nightmare, it's also yet another example of Bush incompetence. Rather than, in Rumsfeld's words, "the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth," the Gitmo prisoners are generally poor Afghans caught off the battlefield in Pakistan and sold into detention for a bounty. Not exactly crack intelligence at work.

More puzzling, however, is the failure of elite journalists to challenge these Administration assertions or to do the basic work needed to uncover the truth. As Umansky writes, "Such skepticism about the government’s claims would prove to be well-founded -- and quite rare. Until recently, reporters have seldom sought to test the Bush administration’s contention[s]." The lack of such skepticism speaks to the precipitous decline of actual investigative journalism, and the simple fact that most of the reporters with access don't have the background or knowledge to challenge Administration officials. It's hard to know why there has been this decline, although no doubt part of it has to do with existing ideas about what constitutes 'investigation'. Since Watergate, journalists have confused exposing any personal scandal pertaining to a politician, no matter how small or private, with investigative journalism. The desperate quest for the 'scoop' that will make sensational, tabloid-sque headlines stands in for intelligent research into the facts. The lack of good articles also indicates what happens to the press when three-fifths of news sourcing comes from government officials. Under such circumstances, even facts in plain sight have a way of disappearing. For the rest of Umansky article, read on. . .

Election Ads: Giving Politics A Bad Name

In the United States, 'politics' is often used as an epithet. If a report about pork-barrel legislation, or congressional corruption, comes out, people shake their head knowingly - 'that's politics'. In many ways, this attitude is justified. Consider the strategies for the mid-term elections that each Party has taken. As various papers report, the Democrats have taken their familiar, and remarkably unsuccessful, Anybody But Bush message and developed it into a series of advertisements associating vulnerable Republican congressmen with the President. Even non-national elections, like the governor's race in California, have been swept up in the national anti-Bush strategy. In response, Republicans have distanced themselves from Bush, and even substituted an invented likeness with the more admired Senator John McCain. With both sides playing such a starkly strategic game, it's no wonder that people have a negative view of politics. It's hard not to think politics is about mere power when politicians represent nothing more than personal ambition. What's more, the obviousness of the political strategies, on both sides of the aisle, communicates a profound contempt for citizens themselves. Neither party makes much of an effort to conceal the obvious power calculations behind the advertisements, which communicates to the viewer that he is seen not as a thinking citizen but merely as a political resource in the various attempts to be re-elected. If political parties took their voters seriously, they would attempt to convince them with ideas and arguments, not ply them with empty rhetoric and manipulative images. The most corrosive aspect of this way of conducting politics, however, is not that it strips politics of its higher ideas, but that it also pushes people towards thinking politics could never have a higher purpose than mere re-election. Apathy, withdrawal and cynicism, though understandable reactions to real problems, do nothing to change the reality to which they respond. This is the predicament with which the current political constellation presents us. It is not easy to see how to refuse this choice, but at least one alternative suggests itself to us: political activity that is not sucked into the constant strategic calculations of the two-year election cycle, activity that insists on debating principles and ideas, not merely electorally successful 'common sense'. Politics, especially political leaders, should do more than reproduce the doubts and suspicions the public already has ('Bush is bad', 'the war isn't going well', 'Dems aren't Bush'). It should strive to elevate common sense into serious argument and debate. A more effective critique is not to take politics as it is, but push to make politics what it could be.