The story of the 20th Century, from the Progressive era, is the story of the creation of an administrative state that takes legislation much less seriously than had been the case. A good case in point is that if President Bush goes ahead and uses the TARP funds for the car makers, he will probably be acting within the law. Why? Congress seldom writes laws these days. Instead it allocates swathes of power to the executive branch and executive agencies. One our legislators ceased to care about writing the laws under which we live, contempt for the democratic process naturally followed in the other branches. In that sense, I suspect, our new lawyer-President will resemble our current MBA President.

It all rather makes one nostalgic for the quaintness and tackiness and good ’ole boy flavor that represented the Arkansas crew. Rotten as all of that was in its way, it was still--nevertheless--somehow more authentically "of the people" whereas all of this stuff rather smacks of being "over the people." I hope the young who put their "hope" in this "change" are watching.

So I saw this story in the Washington Post this morning about how the usual goo-goo groups (Consumers Union, etc) object to school bus radio because--gasp--our tender kids will be exposed to ads, even though to any common sense observer (as the story explains) the bus radio programming is an excellent calming device for the Lord-of-the-Flies culture of most school buses. But this is the sentence that had me spitting out my coffee amidst a hail of uncontrollable guffawing:

Consumers Union, the National PTA and other groups oppose exposing students to commercial radio on the bus, time they might otherwise pass in quiet reflection or conversing with friends.

Right: In the absence of bus radio, the kids will be reflecting on Cartesian dualism; little Johnnie will be comparing Lucy in the next row to Athena, while Philip in the back row will be quietly reciting a Shakespeare sonnet.

Meanwhile, in other news you can use, KFC is going to introduce grilled chicken. Who says America doesn’t innovate any more?

First of all, I believe that General Shinseki is a good and honorable man. I think that his nomination to head the Department of Veterans Affairs is a good thing. He was badly wounded during the Vietnam War and was one of only a handful of veterans of that war to remain on active duty after losing part of a limb.

Second, given the tenor of the times, General Shinseki is to be commended for not taking his disagreements with Donald Rumsfeld (which predated the Iraq War) public, in violation of the tradition of American civil-military relations, as so many other general officers have done. Unlike Gen. Rick Sanchez, he has not written a CYA book, nor has he given his story to Bob Woodward, as Gen. George Casey did.

Upon his retirement from the Army in June 2003, Shinseki did write Secretary Rumsfeld a private letter in which he stated:

I feel duty bound to provide you with some of my closing thoughts . . . . While our disagreements have been well-chronicled, and sometimes exaggerated, these professional disagreements were never personal, never disrespectful, and never challenged the foundational principle of civilian control of the military in our form of government. . . .

Nonetheless, he gave it to the secretary with both barrels:

I am greatly concerned that OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] processes have often become ad hoc and long established conventional processes are atrophying. Specifically, there are areas that need your attention as the ad hoc processes often do not adequately consider professional military judgment and advice. . . . Second, there is a lack of strategic review to frame our day-to-day issues . . . . Third, there has been a lack of explicit discussion on risk in most decisions. . . . Finally, I find it unhelpful to participate in senior level decision-making meetings without structured agendas, objectives, pending decisions and other traditional means of time management.

In keeping his disagreements with Secretary Rumsfeld private, General Shinseki followed in the steps of Rear Adm. James O. Richardson, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1940. When President Franklin Roosevelt decided to attempt to deter Japanese expansionism by moving the U.S. Pacific Fleet from California to Pearl Harbor during the summer of that year, Richardson objected, arguing that basing the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii was provocative and could precipitate a war with Japan. The president fired him and replaced him with Rear Adm. Husband E. Kimmel. As Adm. Harold Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, wrote to Kimmel after the affair, "This, of course, is White House prerogative and responsibility, and believe me, it is used these days." To his credit Richardson kept his objections to FDR’s decision private and went quietly into retirement.

Randall Gray
Greg Watson
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From Mark Rudd, radical student leader in the ’60s:

This [Obama]is no stupid guy...Had any of the stupid Republicans read his books, they never could have said, ‘We don’t know who this guy is.’ You know every thought he’s ever had.

(H/T Powerline) The Nation’s Katha Pollit blasts Ayers’ mendacious whitewashing of his violent radicalism.

Against Obama’s clever politics the right poses constitutional principles--e.g., our friend Scott Johnson on "limited government," versus Bill Kristol, who sees the severe limitations of "limited government" rhetoric. Note that the Federalist Society has had remarkable success in influencing judicial appointments and promoting debate, but its rhetoric--"original understanding" or "original intent"--lacks, quite intentionally, any partisan political force.

Consider the use that Obama’s lower-level appointees will make of huge federal budgets. Take this agency within HHS as one example; note all the money going to private groups.

The right needs a combination of politics and principle to meet the Obama challenge. Conservatives can’t count on Obama doing himself in.

"The word ’evil’ has been used twice today in the Corner to describe Blago’s crimes. I’m not really disputing the use of the word. But that’s not really the word that comes to my mind. Evil is too dark, too serious, too smart for what we’re talking about. I agree with Kathryn that there’s something almost wholesome or nostalgic about Blogo’s criminal misdeeds. He wasn’t found opening an umbrella in parts of his anatomy for money on the internet, or giving cash to terrorists who were going to have Santas wear suicide-padding at department stores around the country. He didn’t check interns for a hernia without permission or spy for the Norks. He’s just a crook. A good, old-fashioned, crook. I know I’m supposed to be outraged, and in a certain sense I am. If he’s guilty of all that’s alleged, I hope they throw him in the stoney lonesome until the Chicago Cubs win the World Series or 2025, whichever comes second. But in another sense, this is just plain enjoyable. It’s like when you watch "Cops" and the idiot burglar tries to hide beside a tree in the dark, even though he’s wearing light-up sneakers. It’s like when Dan Rather dares the world to prove he’s a clueless ass-clown. It’s just good stuff. There’s no tragedy here. No wasted potential. No undeserving victims. No profound and complicated symbolic issues (I somewhat doubt the Serbian-American lobby is going to cry racism). This is the sort of criminality we want the Feds to find, particularly in Chicago. Everyone gets what they deserve — at least so far — and all of the guilty parties are all the more deserving of punishment because they don’t quite understand what the big deal is. I love it."

However, his appointment has provided an occasion for the media to trot out some old falsehoods about the Bush administration and the Iraq War. Among these is the claim that Gen. Shinseki’s testimony before the SASC, during which he called for a bigger ground force than the one that went in to Iraq, cost him his job. This is simply not true as I have written here.

The fact is that neither Don Rumsfeld nor the Army leadership predicted the emergence of an insurgency in Iraq. As I argue in the piece, Shinseki’s figures were based on an analysis that had nothing to do with what transpired in Iraq.

At issue, von Heyking argues, is the problematical place of a "separatist" (or is it "sovereigntist"?) Quebec in a Canada constituted by an essentially Lockean social contract.

So I'm back from Germany, having spent a useful week touring alternative energy projects (including the fusion reactor project of the Max Planck Institute, still decades away from working as hoped), and talking with various German officials and unofficials about climate and energy policy. Everyone is Obama-crazy in Germany, naturally; every shopkeeper, beer-hoister, and pretzel-monger wanted to give a shout out to the New Messiah.

Had one good meeting with a provincial environment minister--a very impressive young lady who should go far in German national politics if she wants to, in the CDU (the right-leaning party, such as it is there). After having my fill of nothing but climate issues, I decided to ask, since her department dealt with the environment as a whole and not just climate, what other environmental issues in Germany she thought were important.

"Well, we are doing a lot of work on flooding--flooding brought on by climate change." So you really can't change the subject after all.

Me: "What else? Forests? Toxic waste? Traditional air pollution?"

The minister: "Noise pollution. About 50 percent of our citizens say they are concerned about noise pollution." (And the other 50 percent are presumably listening to their iPods?--Ed. That's exactly what I said.)

Seems to me that when a rich country is worried about noise pollution, their major environmental problems are solved.