What's wrong with praising the Jewish people's "contributions" to society?

Phoebe Maltz Bovy of TNR sharply observes:

This past Friday, The Atlantic posted part of Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Conservative Party leader and current Prime Minister David Cameron. . . . Cameron tells Goldberg, “The Jewish community in Britain makes an incredibly important contribution to our country.” Later he reiterates the “contribution” idea: “So I think in Britain we’re taking the right approach, tackling anti-Semitism, emphasizing the contributions of the Jewish community, and all the rest of it.” In a March speech to a British Jewish organization, Cameron again praised his country’s “Jewish community” for its “contribution,” modified in this case with the word “enormous.” . . .

But talk of “contributions”—apart from just being patronizing—has a way of reinforcing difference, and, in turn, encouraging xenophobia.

Jonathan Chait expanded on a related point in 2013 in New York magazine, in response to some over-the-top contribution-talk from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that, Chait argued, delivered “a speech that is likely to be quoted by anti-Semites for years and decades to come.” The flip side of praise is stereotype: Jews are great, until their greatness means that they are controlling the entire world.

More restrained contribution-rhetoric is “standard spiel for praising any ethnic group,” Chait continued. This is true, but it shouldn’t be: Contribution-talk is always a rebuttal to the notion that some segment of society hasn’t pulled its weight, not a way to change the terms of the discussion. Cameron’s choice to respond to British anti-Semitism with contribution rhetoric ends up implying the Jews’ placement in Britain is contingent on sufficient (unspecified) contributions. Does he mean bagels? What they pay in taxes? If Jews were to earn less, or to introduce fewer charming cultural products, would anti-Semitism then be more acceptable?

Rather than speaking of Jews’ or any other minority group’s “contributions,” politicians should be clear that there is a path toward full belonging. They should promote acceptance of “communities” but also of individuals. Politicians shouldn’t ask that the communally minded chuck out all identity other than national ones, and they should be welcoming of the proudly hyphenated. But they should also remember that not everyone whose name or appearance marks him or her as a minority wants in on organized communal or religious life. Yet everyone who reads as a minority is, by definition, a target of racists and xenophobes. A true rhetoric of inclusiveness would acknowledge existing societal bigotries without reinforcing them.

The new political correctness

Insightfully analyzed by Jon Chait:

Under p.c. culture, the same idea can be expressed identically by two people but received differently depending on the race and sex of the individuals doing the expressing. This has led to elaborate norms and terminology within certain communities on the left. For instance, “mansplaining,” a concept popularized in 2008 by Rebecca Solnit, who described the tendency of men to patronizingly hold forth to women on subjects the woman knows better, . . . has now grown into an all-purpose term of abuse that can be used to discredit any argument by any man. (MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry once disdainfully called White House press secretary Jay Carney’s defense of the relative pay of men and women in the administration “man­splaining,” even though the question he responded to was posed by a male.) . . .

If a person who is accused of bias attempts to defend his intentions, he merely compounds his own guilt. (Here one might find oneself accused of man/white/straightsplaining.) It is likewise taboo to request that the accusation be rendered in a less hostile manner. This is called “tone policing.” If you are accused of bias, or “called out,” reflection and apology are the only acceptable response — to dispute a call-out only makes it worse. There is no allowance in p.c. culture for the possibility that the accusation may be erroneous. A white person or a man can achieve the status of “ally,” however, if he follows the rules of p.c. dialogue. A community, virtual or real, that adheres to the rules is deemed “safe.” The extensive terminology plays a crucial role, locking in shared ideological assumptions that make meaningful disagreement impossible. . . .

The Marxist left has always dismissed liberalism’s commitment to protecting the rights of its political opponents — you know, the old line often misattributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — as hopelessly naïve. If you maintain equal political rights for the oppressive capitalists and their proletarian victims, this will simply keep in place society’s unequal power relations. Why respect the rights of the class whose power you’re trying to smash? And so, according to Marxist thinking, your political rights depend entirely on what class you belong to.

The modern far left has borrowed the Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones. “The liberal view,” wrote MacKinnon 30 years ago, “is that abstract categories — like speech or equality — define systems. Every time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere. Strengthening the free speech of the Klan strengthens the free speech of Blacks.” She deemed this nonsensical: “It equates substantive powerlessness with substantive power and calls treating these the same, ‘equality.’ ”

Political correctness appeals to liberals because it claims to represent a more authentic and strident opposition to their shared enemy of race and gender bias. And of course liberals are correct not only to oppose racism and sexism but to grasp (in a way conservatives generally do not) that these biases cast a nefarious and continuing shadow over nearly every facet of American life. Since race and gender biases are embedded in our social and familial habits, our economic patterns, and even our subconscious minds, they need to be fought with some level of consciousness. The mere absence of overt discrimination will not do.

Liberals believe (or ought to believe) that social progress can continue while we maintain our traditional ideal of a free political marketplace where we can reason together as individuals. Political correctness challenges that bedrock liberal ideal. While politically less threatening than conservatism (the far right still commands far more power in American life), the p.c. left is actually more philosophically threatening. It is an undemocratic creed. . . .

The p.c. style of politics has one serious, possibly fatal drawback: It is exhausting. Claims of victimhood that are useful within the left-wing subculture may alienate much of America. The movement’s dour puritanism can move people to outrage, but it may prove ill suited to the hopeful mood required of mass politics. Nor does it bode well for the movement’s longevity that many of its allies are worn out. “It seems to me now that the public face of social liberalism has ceased to seem positive, joyful, human, and freeing,” confessed the progressive writer Freddie deBoer. “There are so many ways to step on a land mine now, so many terms that have become forbidden, so many attitudes that will get you cast out if you even appear to hold them. I’m far from alone in feeling that it’s typically not worth it to engage, given the risks.” [The Nation's Michelle] Goldberg wrote recently about people “who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in [online feminism] — not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists.” Former Feministing editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay told her, “Everyone is so scared to speak right now.”

That the new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters into despondent silence is a triumph, but one of limited use. Politics in a democracy is still based on getting people to agree with you, not making them afraid to disagree. The historical record of political movements that sought to expand freedom for the oppressed by eliminating it for their enemies is dismal. The historical record of American liberalism, which has extended social freedoms to blacks, Jews, gays, and women, is glorious. And that glory rests in its confidence in the ultimate power of reason, not coercion, to triumph.

Is The New Republic breaking up with itself on its 100th anniversary?

It sure looks like it.

TNR used to be my favorite magazine. I've been reading it since I was in high school. It played a significant role in teaching me how to write and how to think.

It used to be known as a liberal magazine that would question orthodox liberalism and conventional wisdom. TNR's outgoing editor, Franklin Foer, even wrote an article in 2001 challenging the conventional wisdom that conventional wisdom is often wrong!

But lately it's become predictably liberal — I can't think of the last thing I've read in TNR that differs from "what you'd expect a generic liberal to say."

The magazine seems to have been taken over by people who are more interested in transforming it into a "digital media company" than in taking over the helm of an august journalistic institution. It's going to move from DC to NYC and switch from 20 to 10 issues a year — not even a monthly. Its top two editors (Foer and Leon Wieseltier) just quit. The new CEO has warned of a "staff restructuring"; some are predicting "mass resignations"; and two of its former writers whose names are still on the masthead (Ryan Lizza and Jon Chait) have asked for their names to be taken off the masthead "immediately."

Chait has written a "Eulogy for The New Republic," and the consensus seems to be that "eulogy" is the appropriate term. This is a sad day for opinion journalism.

UPDATE: The "mass resignations" prediction was correct — look at TNR's masthead now! (Source.)

UPDATE:

On Friday morning, 28 senior staff and contributing editors resigned from The New Republic en masse. A letter of resignation to Chris Hughes was signed by ten contributing editors, including Lizza, poet and literary critic Helen Vendler and Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz:

“Dear Mr. Hughes,

 We are contributing editors of the New Republic, and our commitment to 
the venerable principles of the magazine requires us now to resign. 
Please remove our names from the masthead. 


"
Yours truly, 

Paul Berman, 
Jonathan Chait, 
William Deresiewicz, 
Ruth Franklin, 
Anthony Grafton, 
Enrique Krauze, 
Ryan Lizza, 
Sacha Z. Scoblic, 
Helen Vendler, 
Sean Wilentz.”

For Foer, Wieseltier and others at the magazine, the brutal shakeup by [Guy] Vidra, 40, who was hired in September, and his 30-year-old patron, [Chris] Hughes--who purchased TNR two-and-a-half years ago for an undisclosed sum from a consortium that included longtime owner Martin Peretz--didn’t come as a surprise. Tensions have been building since the summer. According to multiple sources, Hughes came to think of his writers and editors as “spoiled brats,” and especially disliked the flamboyant, feud-prone, white-maned Wieseltier, who was more than twice his age. Much of Hughes’s distaste was telegraphed in his body language; he strikes many TNR staffers as passive-aggressive and averse to confrontation.

The friction escalated with the arrival of Vidra, who is said to have complained to Foer that the magazine was boring and that he couldn’t bring himself to read past the first 500 words of an article. According to witnesses, Vidra did little to hide his disrespect for TNR’s tradition of long-form storytelling and rigorous, if occasionally dense, intellectual and political analysis--to say nothing of his lack of interest in the magazine’s distinguished history--at an all-hands meeting in early October.

Presiding at the head of a long conference table, Vidra didn’t acknowledge Foer, who was seated beside him; he didn’t look at him; he didn’t mention him. Instead, as he started to speak, Vidra confided that he liked to stand up and move around the room as he communicated his thoughts, as though he were Steve Jobs unveiling the latest technological marvel. Oddly, he stood up, but he didn’t move.

Vidra spoke in what one witness described as “Silicon Valley jargon,” and, using a tech cliché, declared: “We’re going to break shit”--a vow hardly calculated to ingratiate himself with TNR’s veteran belle-lettrists, who feared that he was threatening the magazine’s destruction. Only a few interns dared to ask questions, which Vidra repeatedly dodged. “The senior people were too shocked to speak,” said a witness. “Jaws were dropping to the floor.” Through it all, Chris Hughes nodded approvingly, an unnerving grin on his face.

To be sure, that meeting was a warning sign. But the manner in which the two technology mavens administered their coup de grâce only two months later has left a bitter taste.

According to informed sources, Hughes and Vidra didn’t bother to inform Foer that he was out of a job. Instead, the editor was placed in the humiliating position of having to phone Hughes to get confirmation after Gawker.com posted an item at 2:35 p.m. reporting the rumor that Bloomberg Media editor Gabriel Snyder, himself a onetime Gawker editor, had been hired as Foer’s replacement. Yes, it’s true, Hughes sheepishly admitted, notwithstanding that he and Vidra had given Foer repeated assurances that his job was safe. . . .

“It was cowardly, the way Chris and Guy went about this,” Ioffe said. “Media reporters have been calling for months, asking, ‘Is Frank fired?,’ and they’ve been lying to everybody, including Frank.”

It is far from clear whether the remaining, relatively inexperienced staff will be able to get out the next issue, which is scheduled to close on Wednesday. Two multi-thousand-word pieces slated for publication--a profile of Jeb Bush by Alec MacGillis and a report on Vladmir Putin’s political arch enemy, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, by Russian expert Ioffe--were still being edited when the ax fell. And even if the newbies manage to produce the issue, it will be accomplished in an atmosphere of outrage, recrimination and sorrow over the apparent death--some would say murder--of an American institution that was, for decades, a bulwark of liberal thought, cultural criticism and groundbreaking journalism.

“The New Republic was always a small political magazine that was trying to change the world,” said senior editor John Judis, who was trying to figure out late Thursday night if he could continue to work for the magazine. “My impression of what happened is Hughes and Vidra have decided to transform the magazine into a profit-making media center that is entirely different from what the magazine historically has been and what it has represented and entirely different from what The New Republic has been at its core--and this has led to this cataclysm where Frank and Leon have both left. I liked the old New Republic. I thought it had a really important role to play in America and I’m sorry if it’s no longer going to play that role.”

UPDATE: TNR's Facebook page is flooded with negative comments from readers. Just look at the comments on any recent article. Example:

A once storied institution with unsurpassed journalistic prestige & my source for thoughtful engaging content. An unfortunate end to The "old" New Republic. I will be unliking your page . . .

So much for adapting to the digital age.

UPDATE: If there was any doubt about whether TNR as we know it has gone, the fact that Noam Scheiber and Jonathan Cohn just quit today (December 5) has put an end to any suspense. Scheiber says:

So I just resigned from @tnr. People do muuuuch harder things every day. But boy was it brutal. A great ride for 14 years.

Cohn says:

Feel so lucky that I got to work at Herbert Croly's and Walter Lippmann's magazine for 17 years. Thanks to readers and my great colleagues.

UPDATE: Julia Ioffe quit but still attended the staff meeting — and she tweeted it:

Chris Hughes at staff mtg: "This is a setback. These are great journalists that we lost this morning. But we are incredibly well positioned."

Chris Hughes at the meeting: "This institution has been around for 100 fucking years." no fucking kidding

Guy Vidra treats the remaining staff to more deep thoughts at mtg: "This is hard. But we will get through it and we will be better for it."

Chris Hughes telling the staff that he is different from other FB founders bc he cares about institutions, that he's always sent that signal

Thing is, neither Chris Hughes nor Guy Vidra bothered to communicate anything to the editorial staff. Nothing. It's been silence for months.

Chris Hughes, some advice for you: instead of "sending signals" to your staff, talk to them. Honestly.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports:

Some staff members have asked that their work be pulled from the coming issue of the magazine, which will have to be completed without an editor, and a greatly diminished staff.

Mr. Foer was replaced by Gabriel Snyder, the former editor of The Atlantic Wire, who will start on Dec. 22.

The next issue is supposed to come out on Wednesday, but TNR won't have an editor-in-chief from now through then!

It looks like Hughes was right about his announcement to the staff: TNR is no longer a magazine.

Gauging the liberal mood on Obama's jobs speech

See if you can detect a subtle change in Ezra Klein's mood based on two of his articles about speeches by Barack Obama.

The first is from January 3, 2008, the night of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, after Obama gave his first victory speech of the campaign:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

In the days to come, just as in the days that have passed, I'll talk much more about Obama's policies. About his health care policy, and his foreign policy, and his social policy, and his economic policy. But so much as I like to speak of white papers and scored proposals, politics is not generally experienced in terms of policies. It's more often experienced in terms of self-interest, and broken promises, and base fears, and half-truths. But, very rarely, it's experienced as a call to create something better, bigger, grander, and more just than the world we have. When that happens, as it did with Robert F. Kennedy, the inspired remember those moments for the rest of their lives. . . .

The politician who gets the most votes merits our congratulations. But the politician who enlarges our politics and empowers more Americans to step forward into the public square deserves our gratitude.

Now, here's Ezra Klein writing a few days ago about President Obama's upcoming jobs speech to a joint session of Congress:

I’ve stopped pretending that the president’s jobs speech scheduled for next week is going to matter. I’m tired of speculating about what it will contain and whether its proposals will be big or small, bold or timid.

Here is what will actually happen: President Barack Obama will give a speech. It will include a mixture of ideas the administration has pushed for some time (extending the payroll tax cut, investing in infrastructure, passing trade agreements) and some modest new additions (a tax cut for companies that hire new workers, for example). Relatively few people will tune in to the speech; of those who do, most will be either committed Obama supporters or equally committed detractors. . . .

Obama’s speech will achieve nothing. It will go nowhere because it has nowhere to go. . . .

The interest in the president’s speech is just a function of the fact that people who discuss politics and policy for a living need to seem like we’re doing something through the long summer months. The administration needs to look like it’s acting to create jobs, the media need to appear to be reporting news, the pundits need to generate opinions about it all.

This is the part of the column where, as a pundit, I lay out my three-point, politically implausible plan to turn the situation around. This is where I tell the president to fight harder, or take his message directly to the people, or fire up the lethargic Obama for America organization. This is where I remind the Republicans that they supported tax cuts as stimulus all through the last decade and even into 2009; where I beg them to put country before party; where I warn them that everything they are doing unto the Democrats today will be done unto them tomorrow. This is where I summon history to show how FDR or Reagan or Truman broke a similar logjam.

But such exhortations -- and I am guilty of writing variations on these many times over -- are pointless today. The facts are what they are. And what they are is depressing and unlikely to change.

So, it's safe to say Ezra Klein isn't predicting that President Obama's big speech on jobs in the middle of the primary campaign season is going to be one of his finest speeches?

But wait, Jonathan Chait at The New Republic does have a plan for Obama to accomplish something with his jobs speech. It's summed up in the headline of his article:

Obama's Best Hope on the Jobs Crisis: Convincing Us He's Not in Charge

Notice that Chait isn't saying Obama should be worried that his speech might give the impression that he's feckless on the economy. He says this is the best-case scenario for Obama.

In another piece, Chait points out that the White House's supposed interest in historical analogies to presidents who won reelection while unemployment was high — FDR and Reagan — "sounds like pure delusion":

Roosevelt in 1936 and Reagan in 1984 had high unemployment, yes. But they also had very rapid economic growth. . . .

These were situations where the public could discern rapid improvement from a bad situation. No such thing is likely to be the case next year. 1936 and 1984 are not good lessons. They're counter-examples . . . .

Americans are very, very unhappy. Obama's task is to persuade them to blame Republicans. Running an election taking credit for, well, anything is a terrible idea.

Does Mitt Romney have a good chance at being the Republican presidential nominee?

An ongoing discussion between two New Republic writers. One of them, Jonathan Cohn, thinks Romney has a good chance, while the other, Jonathan Chait, thinks he's doomed by the health-care issue.

One factor I don't see either of them bring up: the conventional wisdom is that Republicans prefer a candidate who's run for president in the past. (I suppose Republicans would say they like to see someone diligent and battle-tested, who's paid their dues — and Democrats would say Republicans are uncomfortable with newness and youth.)

Of course, this isn't an ironclad rule. George W. Bush's nomination in 2000 might seem to be a counterexample since he hadn't run before. But the main other strong candidate, John McCain, hadn't run before either, so this wasn't a factor as between those two. OK, Pat Buchanan had run in the past, but he never had a chance. The general rule isn't a silver bullet that renders all other factors irrelevant.

John McCain's nomination in 2008, on the other hand, is a clear example of the general rule. None of the other plausible candidates (Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson) had run for president before.

You might think 2012 doesn't even offer an opportunity to test the theory, if you think Romney's record on health care makes him an implausible candidate off the bat (along with his flipflop on abortion, his general reputation as a flipflopper, and the fact that he was governor of a state that Republicans view as ultra-liberal). If health care is truly a deal-killer for most Republicans, then it doesn't matter if Romney's record as a candidate in 2008 is an advantage; he has no chance anyway.

Well, I'm not convinced. Everyone knows health care is a major obstacle for Romney. But every presidential candidate faces obstacles. You generally can't completely rule out someone who would otherwise be a formidable candidate based on a single issue. McCain got the nomination despite a very long list of issues on which he had flipflopped and/or taken liberal positions. He was on record attacking the Bush tax cuts on first principles, saying they were unfairly tilted toward the rich. Sure, he later tried to characterize his past position as narrowly as possible (by saying he objected to the tax cuts only if there continued to be excessive spending), but this was as disingenuous as Romney's attempt to distinguish health care as a national issue from the decision he made at the state level: it's hard to imagine any voters actually basing their vote on such transparently post hoc line-drawing. McCain simply took the hit on taxes and other issues, but he ended up getting enough votes to be the nominee. And aren't tax cuts at least as defining an issue for Republicans as health care?

Do many Americans pay no taxes? Do tax cuts increase government revenue?

Respectively . . .

1. No.

The New Republic's Jon Chait (via Paul Krugman) explains:

[Y]ou will see the endlessly circulated right-wing talking point that nearly half of all Americans pay no income taxes. . . . [T]hey focus entirely on the federal income tax, because most people will not understand this constitutes just one portion of the overall tax system. . . .

Americans pay different kinds of taxes to different entities. State and local taxes tend to be regressive. Payroll taxes, which fund Social Security and Medicare, are also regressive. To balance this out, we have a pretty progressive income tax. If you focus only on the income tax, it makes it look like the rich are getting screwed. But of course the income tax is just one element. And conservatives are working hard to make the tax code more regressive at every level of government.

2. No.

The conservative National Review's Kevin Williamson criticizes Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and others for claiming or insinuating that lower taxes lead to higher revenue:

Tax cuts do not generally increase revenue, and Republicans should stop saying otherwise. . . .

There are no free lunches in taxation, or anywhere else.

Can you imagine a world where cutting taxes increased tax revenue? What would happen? Every politician would always support cutting taxes, as this would give voters everything they want: low taxes and lots of government benefits! Yay! Needless to say, that is not what the real world is like.

Now that that's clear, can we please put an end to, as Krugman calls them, the "zombie tax lies"?

Are Paul Krugman and David Brooks in a secret feud?

Jonathan Chait gathers the evidence that Krugman and Brooks have been planting their New York Times columns with implicit attacks on each other.

Chait concludes:

Brooks views Krugman as making himself a hero to the liberal choir, while he (Brooks) fearlessly challenges both sides. Krugman sees Brooks as residing comfortably within the cozy embrace of the conventional wisdom, whereas he (Krugman) risks being cast as a partisan or a radical by arbiters of respectability like Brooks for following the logic through to its conclusions. . . .

What makes the feud somewhat pathological is the Times' convention of keeping its columnists from openly debating each other. I suppose this is designed to advance the cause of civility. But the reality is that this just creates a lot of sniping, and the inability to quote and describe each others' arguments in any detail makes it impossible to treat them seriously.

Michele Bachmann might win the Republican presidential nomination ...

... by being like Howard Dean.

That's Jon Chait's argument. It's not as silly as it might sound at first, even though Dean failed to win the nomination the only time he ran for president. Remember, you win not just because of your own qualities, but also because of the inadequacy of every other contender.

The problem with David Brooks columns

Jonathan Chait, with support from David Brooks himself (who calls every one of his columns a "failure"), explains why his columns are often weak.

Brooks admits that he should be writing 3,000-word essays, not 800-word op-eds. He's better at exploring an issue by sorting people into different cultural groups ("this type of person believes this, while this other type believes that") than at making a directly persuasive argument ("here's what I believe, and here's why it's right").

This resonates with something I said in the comments section of my post on Brooks's deeply flawed column on morality as instinctive rather than rational:

I think a lot of it has to do with Brooks's temperament and profession. He's an open-minded intellectual who gets easily excited about writing columns that announce revolutions in the way society thinks about such-and-such an issue. (Luckily for him, these revolutions seem to come along at a steady pace of about twice a week.)

So he probably read about some empirical findings on morality, reason, and emotions. He realized that there's a tension between them and some of the most famous moral theories -- most obviously Kant and utilitarianism. And this got him excited about writing a column announcing that the new empirical studies signify the end of moral philosophy as we know it.

But then he thought more carefully about things and realized that it's not so simple. You still need to apply reason and consistent principles; sometimes our instinctive reactions can be misguided; and so on.

But he was still excited about getting a column out of his idea. So he figured he could disseminate the basic idea (prominently placed at the top of the piece) but still be intellectually honest by including the nuanced qualifications (buried deep in the piece). Hence this strangely incoherent column.

The whole state of affairs actually benefits the New York Times and Brooks, as Chait explains. Everyone may be completely aware of the consistent defect, but no one is both willing and able to change it.

That's the mainstream media for you. If a blogger's content had the same shortcomings, the problem would be solved automatically: people just wouldn't read that blog.

I'm fine with The New Republic restricting some of its articles to subscribers, but . . .

. . . this article is exactly the wrong one to hide from public view.

It's the top article on TNR's website today, and here's the homepage teaser:

Give Obama a Break: Presidents Don't Have Magic Powers That Clean up Oil Spills

Yet when you click through, you'll see only the first two paragraphs, which just introduce the idea that people expect Obama to be (as an article in the libertarian Reason magazine put it) "'a soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns, and spiritual malaise.'"

There's no substantive pay-off, as the actual point of the article is hidden from the public. I have access to the following text (by Jonathan Chait) only because I subscribe to TNR:

In reality, the federal government has no agency tasked with capping undersea oil leaks. All the necessary equipment, along with the expertise for operating it, resides with the private sector. Moreover, since BP will likely bear the full cost of the spill, it has every incentive to deploy its equipment as aggressively as possible. I have seen nobody even attempt to argue, in either practical or theoretical terms, that the government could do a better job of plugging the leak. The demand that Obama solve the problem is not an argument but an emotional state. To accept that Obama is not the man who will plug the hole or fail to do so would be like plunking down ten dollars to see Superman at the Cineplex only to watch Jimmy Olsen save the world. . . .

Conservative critics have leapt upon the image of a hamstrung Obama to discredit the president and activist government. . . .

Of course, neither Obama nor liberals in general believe that government has limitless powers or responsibilities. . . . The intellectual task of liberalism is not to make government responsible for everything. It is to rationally determine which things cannot be handled by the private sector. No less than the dogmatic anti-statism of the right, the cult of the presidency is an enemy of that task.

That's the kind of well-reasoned, empirically grounded argument that I read The New Republic for. And it's clearly meant to drive public opinion in the relatively short term. It's the kind of piece that TNR should really want as many people as possible to read.

Of course, they want all their pieces read by a lot of people. But an article on Obama's responsibility for the oil spill one has an urgency that's not present in, say, this other article that's currently featured on TNR's homepage, which is free to the public:

Will I Miss the Feel of Books? Yes. Will I Get Over It? Yes.

Here's my message to TNR, as a loyal subscriber: If you have to put some articles behind a pay wall out of economic necessity, I understand and respect this. But please, try to put the articles that are most in need of being read by large numbers of people in full public view.

How to deal with our lack of understanding of financial reform

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait makes a confession that's rare for a pundit: he doesn't know what he's talking about. Specifically, his "commentary on financial regulatory reform has been somewhat hamstrung by my skeletal understanding of the substance of the issue." He also thinks this ignorance isn't just his own quirky failing but extends to liberals and policy wonks in general:

Other policy commentators have learned more about this issue than I have, but even their opinions are heavily sprinkled with self-doubt. This points to the fact that liberals and the wonk community have a lot less confidence that financial regulatory reform will work than we did that, say, health care reform would work.

So how should they respond to this state of affairs? Chait says:

We could wait a few years until the debate has matured, but the truth is that only is the shadow of an economic crisis and a backlash over the bailouts does the political space exist to impose a reform that actually takes a bite out of Wall Street.

Apparently, the issue has addled his brain so much that he has trouble writing in grammatical sentences.

He continues:

So at this point, the best bet is to pass the toughest, most anti-Wall Street reform possible while the window of opportunity remains open. Then, if it proves too tough, or if somebody comes up with a better way to regulate the system, you can bargain away the too-tough parts of the law for something better.

You rarely see someone argue: we're unusually lacking in confidence about whether our ideas will work; therefore, let's try to exert as much power as possible, as quickly as possible! But just because this is a counterintuitive line of reasoning -- and one that most commentators wouldn't be willing to make explicit -- doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

The conservative case against higher taxes on the rich

Pithily taken down by Jon Chait.