Stromata Blog

“Smart Power” Made Stupid

The slogan “work smarter, not harder” was popular for a time, then was laughed out of cubicles across the land when Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss adopted it. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have never seen a cubicle, of course, so they’re no doubt far enough out of touch to imagine that “being smart” really is a strategy instead of just an aspiration.

The concept behind “smart power” is reliance on cleverness rather than force to overcome or win over one’s adversaries. Similar ideas have often been mooted in the military realm: “We don’t need as many men, tanks and guns, because we can outthink the enemy.” Sometimes that works on the battlefield. The problem is, the enemy is able to think, too, and there’s no guarantee that an otherwise weaker army will be able to negate superior firepower with brilliant tactics.

In diplomacy, counting on unassisted brains is iffier yet. When President Obama or Secretary Clinton lauds “smart power” as a self-sufficient counter to Islamofascism, Red Chinese hegemonism or Russian truculence, he (or she) implicitly claims the ability to consistently outwit Osama bin-Laden, Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin. Well, maybe Barry and Hill are the new Metternich and Bismarck, but how much national security should we bet on that prospect?

In less than two weeks, the new Administration hasn’t had much time to chalk up foreign policy successes or failures. What it has done, however, has suggested its “little gray cells” may need a more robust supplement.

The sheerest and most incredible absence of “smartness” is the President’s failure to keep his party from inserting “Buy American” mandates into the Stagflation Stimulus Bill now pending in Congress. If he didn’t know about those provisions, he was negligent. If he doesn’t care, he is dumb. A trade war with our allies – worse, one that we are bound to lose at considerable cost to both our and our friends’ economies – is about the greatest boon our enemies could ask for.

Another boon is for the President of the United States to echo and reinforce Islamofascist propaganda themes, as Mr. Obama did in his first interview with an Arab language television network. Bad enough was his ignorance of the history of American relations with the Moslem world; there’s no way to be usefully “smart” without a foundation of knowledge. Worse was his casual assertion that America has in the past engaged in a generalized war against, and has tried to “dictate” to, the Islamic world. That is the line that Osama and his ilk have pushed for years. A President who was exerting, rather than just talking about, “smart power” would have used this forum to emphasize the truth: that most of America’s recent wars have supported oppressed Moslems, often against Christian adversaries. He might even, as Jenn Rubin suggests, have announced America’s $20 million donation humanitarian aid in Gaza (not necessarily a great idea, but wouldn’t “smart power” get the maximum mileage out of it?) While truth telling might not penetrate the shield of Moslem paranoia, an American leader’s endorsement of outright lies can only make paranoia stronger.

And how brightly are we dealing with our major international rivals? I would have thought that one element of “smart power” was being smart enough not to speak loudly while carrying only joss sticks. Yet that is what the new Secretary of the Treasury did when he denounced Red China’s monetary policies. We have no carrots or sticks (at least, none that it would be “smart” to use) to encourage Peking to revalue its currency for our benefit. Of course we should pay no attention to the answering yawps from Chinese spokesmen, but the problem with this exchange is that it makes us look impotent and Peking strong at a moment when we ought to be doing all that we subtly can to undermine its prestige.

Doesn’t “smart power” also involve maintaining and expanding alliances? How is that consistent with reports that the Administration is already abandoning the planned European missile defense program? The friendly Polish and Romanian governments, having invested political capital in the project, are hung out to dry, while Tsar Vladimir gains a victory without any expenditure of effort. How “smart” is that?

Still, let’s be fair. If press reports are correct, “smart power” is about to go on the offensive – in Zimbabwe, where the Administration will attempt to oust the deranged tyrant Robert Mugabe without violence (violence by anti-Mugabe forces, that is; violence on the dictator’s side has been endemic for years). I hope that the effort succeeds but note that this is like trying out one’s new basketball strategy against the Dallas Academy girls’ team.

Every sentient being on the planet knows that Mugabe has ruined Zimbabwe. He is widely unpopular within the country, where he has yielded a portion (though what portion is unclear) to the opposition. His survival is not of particular strategic interest to any other country. Getting rid of him is about the easiest task that “smart power” could undertake. I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t succeed. If only all the rest of our challenges were that simple.

Due Process for Blago: What It Means

A Cornell professor has entered a plea in behalf of Milrad Blagojevich, arguing that the soon-to-be-ex-governor is being condemned by the Illinois legislature on weak evidence without due process of law. Dave Kopel feels the same way. Neither of these estimable figures is the sort to have a natural sympathy for Blago, and their arguments have a patina of high-minded devotion to justice. As Mr. Kopel puts it,

[T]he evidence against Blagojevich consists almost exclusively of an FBI agent affirming the authenticity of highly selective excerpts from surveillance tapes which he provided via an affidavit. Notably, Agent “Cain refused to answer whether the excerpts in the affidavit put events in ‘the proper context’ (Tr. 293) or whether he has learned anything in the seven weeks since he signed the affidavit which ‘would make any of the statements in your affidavit untrue?’ (Tr. 299).”

Put me in the camp that is reluctant to ruin someone’s life just because Patrick Fitzgerald says so.

In his round of television appearances, Blago has declared that the portions of his recorded conversations that have so far been made public are taken out of context and that, when the full truth is known, he will shine resplendent as a defender of the little guy against a conspiracy of malefactors.

Fine. He has the opportunity to present the context and explain away his seemingly incriminatory statements. He can put on a defense at his Senate trial. He can testify under oath. He can call witnesses. He can review the prosecution’s evidence in detail and expose its flaws. But he chooses instead to confine his defense to the airwaves and, reportedly, a closing statement to the Senator-Judges.

In a criminal trial, he would have the right to say nothing and compel the government to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Messrs. Jacobson and Kopel are essentially applying the same standard to an impeachment, and there, I believe, they go astray.

Americans have rights to life, liberty and property that can be taken away only by due process of law, a term that incorporates all kinds of safeguards for defendants. Private citizen Milrad Blagojevich can’t, and shouldn’t, be sent to prison unless the U.S. attorney can offer a case that, entirely on its own, demonstrates his guilt. I’ll grant arguendo that the prosecutors before the Illinois Senate haven’t done that.

Tenure in a high public office is not, however, a right. It is an honor and privilege. If the governor of Illinois, faced with the evidence that has been made public, can’t or won’t offer reasons why we should believe him innocent, I see no reason for allowing him to remain in office. It’s up to Blago to show why the citizenry ought to trust him to exercise executive powers – not up to us to wait patiently for the assembling of an iron-clad case against him.

Moscow’s New (But Cloudy) Day

Kirill I (Gundyayev), Metropolitan of Smolensk and Königsburg [Sovietice “Kaliningrad”], today elected Patriarch of Moscow, is the first freely chosen holder of that see since St. Tikhon (reg. 1917–1925). His elevation comes at a time when Orthodox Christians must feel anxious about the Church of Russia. The overthrow of communist rule liberated the Church, but that liberty has too often been used for secular aggrandizement rather than spiritual renewal. Some would say that the Patriarchate has found a new Tsar in Vladimir Putin and is content to sink into the slough of subservience.

The new Patriarch’s career has been outwardly brilliant: bishop at age 29, archbishop at 33, rector of the St. Petersburg [Sovietice “Leningrad”] Theological Academy, chairman of the Patriarchate’s Department of External Relations, a popular preacher and author of numerous theological works. He has a reputation, too, of being a “modernizer”, which in the Muscovite context means only not an obscurantist or neo-Slavophile.

The “dark side” is that his spectacular rise through the ecclesiastical ranks occurred during the Brezhnev years, when no man gained preferment unless he was regarded as “safe” by the KGB-controlled Council on Religious Affairs. He was a protegé of the highly controversial Metropolitan Nikodim, a prelate greatly admired in many circles (he died of a heart attack in the arms of Pope John Paul I and received the Pope’s blessing in his last moments) but also a KGB collaborator (codenamed “Adamant”) and tireless apologist for Soviet policies. While, to the best of knowledge, nothing discreditable to Metropolitan Kirill has ever come to light, it is a virtual certainty that he toadied to the communists to some extent. The Kremlin possesses all of the records of that era; if the Patriarch takes too independent a line, it has the means to embarrass or blackmail him.

In my fondest dreams, the new Patriarch will begin his reign with firm declarations in favor of moral renewal (reminding superficial Christians that God expects them to put aside corruption, greed, gluttony, ostentation, mistresses and other vices), religious freedom and the rule of law, which are not “merely” virtues but urgent necessities for the declining Russian polity. Even one out of three would be an improvement.

For those who want to form their own impressions of Patriarch Kirill, here are a few articles and interviews of interest:

• “Metropolitan Kirill on Economic Globalization and the Social Consensus”
• “The Orthodox Church, State and Europe: View from Russia”
• “There Is No Freedom Without Moral Responsibility”
• “How Should We Live in the ‘Global Village’?”
• “Europe Is Losing Its Soul”
• Letter from the Russian Orthodox Church to the Convention on the Future of Europe

Snape in Trouble

From the Daily Telegraph:

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, has promised to “get to the bottom” of the “very serious” allegations against four Labour peers accused of agreeing to be paid to change legislation.

Mr Brown vowed to take “whatever action needs to be taken” if the four men - Lord Truscott, Lord Taylor, Lord Moonie and Lord Snape - are found to have acted improperly. . . .

The four peers, including two former ministers, face a Parliamentary inquiry into allegations that they pledged to amend laws in return for payments from lobbyists. They were secretly recorded in an undercover newspaper sting apparently pledging to seek changes to proposed laws as paid consultants for a foreign businessman.

Libertarian law professor Ilya Somin tries to fashion a defense:

Perhaps Snape only took the money to convince Lord Voldemort that he was truly evil and thereby further his efforts to infiltrate Voldemort’s organization for the Order of the Phoenix. Voldemort himself has so far avoided investigation. Those who bribe the Dark Lord are probably too scared to rat him out.

Well, if Lord Snape suffers “whatever action” Gordon Brown thinks “needs to be taken”, that shouldn’t stand in the way of his joining President Obama’s Cabinet.

The Second Harding Administration?

President Obama knew two months ago that Timothy Geithner had skipped paying four years of Social Security taxes. He has known for longer than that that Hillary Clinton’s husband actively solicits foreign governments to donate to his private foundation. He must by now be aware that Eric Holder demonstrably lied to Congress when asked what he knew about Marc Rich and when he knew it.

Recent history is littered with nominees dropped for lesser transgressions – not just Republicans (as one would expect) but Democrats, too. Bill Clinton, whose ethical sensitivities have no reputation for acuteness, gave up on Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, two excellently qualified choices for attorney general. President Obama has breezed right ahead with his dubious trio. For that matter, he went a long way with Bill Richardson, until the existence of an actual criminal investigation derailed that appointment.

This pattern merely continues the Obama record in Illinois. As he floated upward in one of the most corrupt political cesspools outside the Third World, community organizer, State Senator and Senator Obama saw no evil, or at least breathed no word against it. Now that he is President, it looks like he cares no more about an associate’s ethical lapses than about the color of his shoes (or her pantsuits).

Warren Harding felt that way, too.

A New Lawfare Front

So predictable: President Obama announces that he will close the Guantanamo prison camp, albeit without first deciding how to do it. And the terrorist rights establishment reacts by demanding judicial review for terrorists captured in Afghanistan.

The Daily Telegraph, unhappily falling into step with David Cameron’s frivolous anti-anti-terrorist policy, editorializes “reports”:

As President Barack Obama declared with a fanfare his intention to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention camp last week, he made no mention of another growing US-run prison – with more than twice as many inmates and an even murkier legal status.

More than 600 detainees are held at the US Bagram Theatre Internment Facility - known by campaigners as “the other Guantanamo”. Not only are there no plans to close it, but it is in the process of being expanded to hold 1,100 illegal enemy combatants; prisoners who cannot see lawyers, have no trials and never see any evidence there may be against them. . . .

While Mr Obama struggles to work out what to do with Guantanamo’s 245 remaining prisoners, critics claim Bagram and other detention centres around Afghanistan are still legal black holes.

“If they close Guantanamo and they expand the one in Bagram, it’s the same – there will be no difference,” said Lal Gul, chairman of the Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation.

“If Barack Obama wants to close Guantanamo he should also set out to close not just Bagram, but detention centres in Khost, Kandahar and Jalalabad.” . . .

The International Justice Network, representing the families of four prisoners, has been arguing that they should have the same legal rights to challenge their detention that were eventually given to Guantanamo inmates.

All the same arguments are deployed that have been used against Guantanamo: The captives supposedly consist largely of innocent victims of mistaken identity; they are being mistreated; “the shadowy network of military prisons” has “outraged Afghans and fuelled the insurgency”, and so on. It is evident that what these “human rights campaigners” want is a set of rules that will make it impossibly burdensome for American and Afghan troops to take and hold prisoners. How long before they insist that returning enemy fire is “execution without trial”?

If the President thought that yielding to our enemies on Guantanamo was going to do anything but encourage them to press for more concessions, well, it’s time for him to start learning his job.

The Geithner Kerfuffle

Here is a precis of what you would need to know about Tim Geithner’s Social Security tax issue if you were a member of the United States Senate:

• From 2001 through 2004, Mr. Geithner worked for the International Monetary Fund. The IMF does not pay U.S. taxes, including the employer portion of Social Security and Medicare (“FICA/HI”) taxes. To avoid lost revenue for our government (and lost Social Security benefits for employees), the Internal Revenue Code defines compensation from international organizations as “self-employment income” for FICA/HI purposes only. I.R.C., §§1402(c)(2)(C) and 3121(b)(15). (For income tax purposes, it is just ordinary compensation from employment.) Self-employment income is subject to SECA tax, which is twice as high as FICA/HI, because it includes the taxes levied on both the employer and the employee.

• If the IMF complied with its legal obligations (and no one alleges that it didn’t, though I haven’t seen copies of the documents myself), it issued a Form W-2 each year to Mr. Geithner, showing his salary in Box 1 (gross wages) and nothing in Boxes 3 and 5 (wages subject to FICA and HI, respectively).

• The IMF generously grosses up its U.S. employees’ compensation, that is, gives them an extra allowance to cover their U.S. tax liabilities related to their pay. One of the taxes covered by this allowance is one-half of SECA tax (the portion that would ordinarily be borne by an individual’s employer). Every pay stub that Mr. Geithner received included an entry for “SE Tax Allowance”.

• Each year Mr. Geithner submitted a “Tax Allowance Application” to the IMF treasury department. It included this representation:

  I wish to apply for tax allowance of U.S. Federal and State income taxes and the difference between the “self-employed” and “employed” obligation of the U.S. Social Security tax which I will pay on my Fund income. . . . I hereby certify that all the information contained herein is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and that I will pay the taxes for which I have received tax allowances from the Fund. [emphasis added]

• After all that, Mr. Geithner did not pay any SECA tax on his IMF income until he was audited by the IRS in 2006. He then paid up for 2003 and 2004. The earlier years were closed by the statute of limitations.

(The Washington Post’s Web site has copies of pertinent documents.)

Mr. Geithner’s explanation of his SECA non-payment is a reprise of Steve Martin’s famous “I forgot” defense. Specifically,

If I had thought about it more carefully at the time, and I’d asked more questions — I would have gone back and asked a bunch more questions about that, and I would have approached it differently.

While a lot of speculation has appeared about how it was possible to make such a mistake, I think that there are only two plausible explanations:

One, of course, is that Mr. Geithner noticed that no FICA/HI wages appeared on his W-2 and was savvy enough to realize that his ignoring SECA would be unlikely to alert the IRS computers. There are a number of situations in which W-2’s show wages in Box 1 but not in 3 or 5, and in some of those (e. g., deferred compensation that was subject to FICA/HI tax in a previous year) no Social Security taxes are currently due.

Not paying was, if one considers it, a fairly safe gamble. If the IRS turned out to be screening for discrepancies in this area, the computer would send an inquiry, whereupon the taxpayer would simply file an amended return and pay a little interest and penalties. If there was no screening, the only risk was the fairly small chance of being audited before the statute of limitations expired. Enough international organization employees took this gamble that the IRS eventually instituted a crackdown. Ann. 2006-95, 2006-2 C.B. 1105 (Nov. 17, 2006).

Assuming that the Treasury Secretary-designate was not a deliberate tax cheat, he plainly had enough information from the IMF to be aware that he had SECA tax liability. Where he probably went astray was in being unable to figure out how to report it. His salary was ordinary compensation, entered on line 7 of Form 1040. It may not have been instantly obvious that he was supposed to file Schedule SE, as that form normally is used only by filers who have self-employment income of the kind shown on Schedule C.

I suppose that he stared at the form, browsed TurboTax’s Help function, found nothing blindingly on point, and finally gave up and let the whole thing slide. I’ve had clients who acted no more sensibly in comparable circumstances.

Not being a Senator, I need not have an opinion on whether this probably innocent act of nonfeasance ought to disqualify Mr. Geithner from high office. The opinion that I do have is that the financial markets are less forgiving of lazy innocence than the IRS.

Addendum: There is, of course, one very powerful argument in favor of confirming Timothy Franz Geithner, tax problems or no: He is a financial genius who can rescue the world economy from impending chaos. If only he’d been in a position to do something last September, say, head of the New York Fed. . . .

What’s that? Really?

Et hoc videte.

The War Powers and B. Hussein Obama

Orin Kerr, for whose Constitutional insight I have much respect, is uncharacteristically silly today:

Just A Reminder, for the folks who thought that President Bush had the power to arrest anyone in the United States and detain them as “enemy combatants” without any hearing as part of his Commander-in-Chief power, that this power is now enjoyed by Barack Hussein Obama. That’s right: A liberal with the middle name “Hussein” who pals around with terrorists and is adored in Paris now has all that Commander-in-Chief power. And if he decides that you’re a threat to the nation, he can order you seized and locked up indefinitely. Congress can’t get in B. Hussein Obama’s way: As the FISA Court of Review emphasized back in 2002, Congress “could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power.” And that meddling Supreme Court can’t stop “The One,” either. Or at least that’s your view of things.

Yes, it is my view that “B. Hussein Obama”, as the egregious Miss Coulter calls him, possesses the wide array of powers pertaining to the commander-in-chief of our Armed Forces. Like any other powers, those can be misused. Professor Kerr would (to simplify slightly) prevent the misuse by denying the powers. I see problems with that.

The ability to seize and hold enemies is essential to fighting wars. Someone must decide whom to seize and how to hold them. Until 9/11 no one but an occasional crank doubted that those were executive functions and that subjecting them to judicial oversight was neither practicable (because the courts would be overwhelmed hearing habeas petitions from PoW’s) nor prudent (because civilian courts have no familiarity with the day-to-day conduct of war). Giving the courts a role would have effectively negated our country’s ability to fight any but very small wars. And, in light of the judges’ incapacity for this particular task, there’s no reason to be confident that their judgements would be fairer than the President’s.

Abusus non tollit usum remains a wise maxim. The Presidential powers (and governmental powers in general) that worry me are those whose usus is doubtful, such as the power to seize private property for the benefit of other private parties, or is interpreted so expansively as to be a license to infringe economic or political liberty. Much government control of our lives is “necessary” only if we assume that citizens are too childish to make their own decisions. In those areas, it’s a good idea to limit what the executive (and the legislature and the courts) can do. Winning wars is, by contrast, government’s most important job. Independence is the first requisite for everything else. If we turn war into a lawyers’ game, someday we’ll be playing by rules that Professor Kerr will find less tolerable than Dick Cheney’s and less able to be questioned.

Sunshine and Blue Skies and – Snow?

As I left home this morning, the sun was shining, the sky was an almost cloudless blue, and snowflakes were falling. I looked around for a snowbow, but there are too many tall buildings in my neighborhood, and I couldn’t find one.

In this observation must lie a parable or a parallel or a metaphor or an omen or something. Maybe four years from now I’ll know what it was.

In the meanwhile, my best wishes to our forty-fourth President. And let me add that my American flag will be flying during his Administration, just as it did during those of his predecessors. A man who cheers on his country only when his own party is in power is a patriot only in the scoundrel-refuge sense.

Apprehensions

According to press reports, Barack Obama will start his term of office tomorrow by calling for a “New Era of Responsibility” and a spirit of sacrifice in the face of parlous economic times. He will then proceed straight to lobbying for nearly a trillion dollars in appropriations, to be deployed to protect lenders from losing money, workers from taking pay cuts, businesses from refashioning their product lines, and the country as a whole from having to adapt to recession and overcome it through energy and enterprise.

The last time that a President actually called on Americans to endure hard times and rely on themselves was when Ronald Reagan urged us to “stay the course” before the 1982 elections. Barack Obama, who later wrote sneeringly of the 40th President’s “dirty deeds”, was one of those who vituperated against “Reaganomics”. The voters agreed with him; they handed the Democrats gains in both Houses of Congress – but not large enough gains to steer a course back to the Carter era, and not long afterward a decade-long boom began.

President Reagan was confident that temporary pain, brought on by the monetary tightening needed to overcome years of “stagflation”, would lead to long-term prosperity. President Obama’s plan is pretty much the contrary: to hand out money left, right and center without worrying about the impact on inflation or the credit markets. An odd way for an Age of Responsibility to start off.

I’d be less apprehensive if there were any cases on record where this strategy has worked. None comes to mind. Surely the proponents would be trumpeting precedents, had they any to trumpet. The plan is somewhat like the Japanese government’s response to that country’s housing bust in the 1990’s. Trillions of yen were expended on public works projects while banks and businesses were protected from failure. Success was not rousing. In fact, economists have ever since been citing Japan’s policies as cautionary tales.

If government spending and budget deficits do indeed stimulate the economy, one would think that a lot of stimulus has already been enacted. Without the Obama proposal, the Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.2 billion deficit next year, eight percent of Gross Domestic Product. This will be the first time since the 1930’s, I believe, that the federal deficit has exceeded spending on national defense. The new budgetary gap clearly stems from the Democratic Congress’s acceleration of domestic spending (hardly kept in check by the last couple of Republican Congresses, one should note), not from the costs of war.

So we are already set to get a huge dose of stimulus, yet the incoming President has decided – on what basis we know not – that it must be nearly doubled, to a level approaching a banana republic, in order to fund a hastily assembled grab bag of roads, bridges, museums, loss-making “green” industries, health care subsidies, refundable tax credits (a/k/a welfare checks) and so forth.

Perhaps this spree would do little harm if a trillion dollars in capital were hidden under mattresses and was now being put to some, even if not necessarily the best, use. But a mass of uneconomical expenditures won’t do much good either. If one believes that the world economy suffers from a gigantic liquidity trap, the optimum response would be not to throw cash into the air but to deal with the root causes of capital holders’ unwillingness to invest. Could those causes include the prospect of higher tax rates in the relatively near future, accompanied by a proliferation of expensive federal rules and regulations? Tax hikes in 2011 are “built in” unless Congress and the President affirmatively act to stop them. Meanwhile, our legislators are rushing to make lawsuits against businesses easier to bring and win, to micromanage more aspects of labor-management relations and to spare unions the need to convince workers that their “services” are worth having. Is this an environment that encourages risk-taking and entrepreneurship? Will a massive wave of government borrowing to subsidize inter alia successful entrepreneurs’ failing competitors improve the picture?

We have seen a financial panic, which now seems to be calming down without a great deal of intelligent government action. The Obama Stimulus smacks of political panic. The downturn may indeed be the “worst since the Great Depression”, as the media keep telling us, but that is rather like saying that Rockford is the largest city in Illinois except for Chicago. In the Great Depression, stock prices fell by over 80 percent, economic output declined by 30 percent, and unemployment reached 25 percent (not dropping below 17 percent until World War II). The present bear market has undergone less than a 50 percent drop (comparable to, say, the early 1970’s). The Congressional Budget Office forecasts a GDP decline of two to three percent this year, with unemployment peaking at nine to ten percent. Those numbers aren’t delightful. Neither do they justify fiscal policy an order of magnitude more aggressive than has ever been tried before.

So I am apprehensive about the Age of Obama. Conceivably, a gambit that has never been very successful in the past will prove a splendid success this time. More likely, we are headed toward, at best, a Carter-like escalation of Misery Index.

The National Nanny Council

Having evidently dealt with all of the more serious threats, the National Safety Council demands that the federal government “persuade” state governments – and private businesses, too – to ban talking on cell phones while driving. Declares the Council’s president, “When our friends have been drinking, we take the car keys away. It’s time to take the cell phone away.”

The rationale for such a ukase is that “your head is in the conversation and so your eyes are not on the road”. Sounds plausible to me, but these nannies haven’t thought the matter all the way through.

If cell phone chatter is distracting, well, so are car radios – perhaps not when tuned to soothing classical musical, but most drivers listen to news, sports, talk shows, etc., all of which have a high potential for engrossing attention and raising blood pressure. Isn’t it time to ban these devices too, or at least limit their reception to federally approved “mellow” stations?

Now that we’ve turned off the radio, what about the passengers? Someone nattering at your elbow must be as attention-hogging as a phone call. Square or cube the problem if the passengers include children, teenagers, backseat drivers and so on.

What safety requires, clearly, is a law compelling drivers to sit in sound-proof cocoons. Then they will be safely undistracted.

Also bored. A bored driver becomes inattentive and sleepy.

Okay. That will be the issue for next year’s nanny.

My Book-Buying Frugality

Family and friends have been known to suggest that too much of my budget goes to buying books. In response, I now have proof that my purchasing habits are frugal, nay, abstemious.

ABE Books, an electronic bazaar of second-hand book dealers, has listed its most expensive sales in 2008. Topping all is $17,216 paid for Etudes à l'Eau-Forte,

A collection of 25 etchings by Seymour Hayden – 24 of the plates depict the landscape around London, the Thames, Ireland and Wales and the final one is a portrait of Thomas Haden. The text reproduces an article printed in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts by Philippe Burty and contains a catalogue of the etched work of Seymour Haden.

That cost more than I spend in, er, months and months.

Another fine art book (eight years of the 19th Century Journal Arabe Illustre) was in second place. Okay, collectors pay a lot for rare prints, and I might too if TARP would bail me out to the tune of a billion or so. But what was the next priciest item?

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban!

Let it be a “Rare first edition signed by JK with the dust wrapper panels signed by the cover artist Cliff Wright”, identifiable as part of the very first printing by “a misaligned block of text which was corrected in the subsequent issues” – it ain’t worth $12,874 to anyone rational enough to have that much money in his bank account. I presume that high-level espionage, secret codes and the Fate of the Nation are involved.

It is, on the other hand, pleasing to see than number one in the “Science Fiction and Fantasy” category was a first edition of Out of the Silent Planet ($7,950). I must confess, though, that I had never heard of the runner-up, the English YA fantasy series The Edge Chronicles ($7,000). LibraryThing’s new “Will You Like It?” feature is highly confident that I won’t, but the readers’ reviews lead me to wonder, e. g.,

A fantastic tale of fantastic lands at the edge of the world, where certain rocks float in the air and the feared Deepwoods are crowded with extraordinary trees and creatures. Young teen, Twig, has been raised by woodtrolls but learns his destiny lies elsewhere. he wanders off through the Deepwoods to find them teeming with unheard of horrors, unexpected friends, comic menaces, enslavement as a pet, his true parentage, and the nature of his feared nemesis the Gloamglozer. There are sky pirates, smelly halitoads, hover worms, slaughterers, hammelhorns, caterbirds, skullpelts, bloodoaks, gyle goblins and their Grossmother, spindlebugs, milchgrubs, banderbears, wig-wigs resembling carnivorous tribbles, the very disgusting rotsucker, and many more fascination characters and adventures.

How can I pass up carnivorous tribbles? But if I don’t, I promise my heirs that I’ll find a copy for less than seven grand!

A “Political General” at the CIA

On reading that the President-elect has chosen Leon Panetta, a 70-year-old career politician with no intelligence background, as the next director of the CIA, my first thought was, Well, nothing else has worked. . . .. My second and later thoughts were less sanguine.

To encapsulate the problem, suppose that Mr. Panetta were being named to replace General Petraeus as commander of our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Would anyone suppose that “managerial skills”, however well honed, could make up for deficiencies in technical knowledge and practical experience?

The techniques of intelligence gathering and intelligence are, like the art of war, a specialized world, and the present moment is the worst possible for amateur sorties. It’s true that not every nonprofessional who takes up war late in life proves to be a disaster. There is always the counter-example of Justinian’s general Narses (but don’t read Wikipedia uncritically; the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium thinks that Narses may have been in his 60’s rather than his 70’s when he won his victories in Italy and had experience in lesser military commands). More typical is the parade of governors, senators and congressmen who secured high rank during the American Civil War and did nothing but good for the enemy.

We can hope that the director-designate will be the next Narses rather than the next Dan Sickles, but it’s hard to believe that he was the best available choice for what is probably the third or fourth most important job in our government. This appointment does not raise one’s confidence in the seriousness of the Obama Administration’s approach to the War on Terror.

In the Land of Lincoln

Received from a friend. I wish I had thought of it.

The Year’s Reading: Non-Fiction, Part Two

Now comes the second part of my 2008 reading list, which turns from current affairs to unalloyed history. In an effort to be orderly, I’ll keep to approximately chronological order.

The Year’s Reading: Non-Fiction (and a Novel), Part One

The inspiration for these posts about books that I read during 2008 was Karl Rove’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on President Bush’s reading habits, a piece that I fear I would have overlooked (being preoccupied with the Christmas season at the time) had not Richard Cohen written one of journalism’s all-time stupidest responses.

Thanks to LibraryThing, I know that I acquired just over 500 books during the year just past. Acquiring leisure to read them was beyond my abilities, but eventually. . . . I have this vision of being placed under lifetime house arrest one day with nothing to do but read, play wargames and watch DVD’s. On a rough estimate, I’ll catch up by the early years of the 23rd Century.

Compared to the President, I’m a dilettantish reader, and I don’t expect anyone to be impressed by my list. I’ve compiled it for the same reason that other people keep diaries: because one dislikes seeing his own past reduced to a wisp of unreliable memory. To keep the length manageable, I’ve divided it into three parts: books related (not always closely) to current events, other non-fiction, and fiction. Part One follows:

Let’s start with a Book of the Year award. My choice goes jointly to Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism and Douglas Feith’s War and Decision.

Toward Liberal Fascism I feel a degree of resentment. Way back when I was a college freshman (and young Jonah was not yet a gleam in his parents’ eyes), I encountered the literature of European fascism for the first time and was struck by its affinity with the principles of our home-grown Left. I even thought that the topic would make a great book, though I was too indolent to write it.

Contrary to what liberals who haven’t read it (and some who have read it inattentively) imagine, Liberal Fascism is only incidentally a tract for the times. Except for the last chapter (which is not much easier on the Right than the Left), it is pure intellectual history, tracing the nexus of ideas that comprise fascism (an often abused term that the author takes pains to define) – the beneficence of the state, the obsolescence of traditional institutions, the folly of individualism, the utility of war and war-like crises, the priority of racial and ethnic identity – from their roots in the French Revolution through their manifestations in the distinct but related ideologies of Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler and both Presidents Roosevelt.

Through the combination of the current financial crisis (which could be aggravated, as happened in 1929, by frantic efforts to stave it off) and the election of a quasi-messianic figure to the Presidency, the ground seems to be prepared for the resurgence of more or less overtly fascist governance. It does not follow – and Mr. Goldberg does not assert – that we are on the road to dictatorship. Fascism in 21st Century America may well be mild in its methods and benign in its intent. But we will see ourselves and our future more clearly if we pay attention to where our government’s reigning philosophy comes from and whither it had led in the past.

War and Decision covers not centuries of theorizing but months of practical statecraft. The author was a key Defense Department official during the period between the 9/11 attacks and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He writes as an explicator and defender of the decisions that the Bush Administration took during that time, including but not limited to the decision to invade Iraq.

What has become the Standard Narrative tells us that Iraq was a distraction from the “real” struggle against terrorism: The Administration chose its target capriciously, then attacked it incompetently, leaving America weaker and more endangered than ever before. This concept has become so deeply embedded in public discourse that it no longer needs facts to support it. Mr. Feith is in the position of Galileo stamping his foot and shouting, “Eppur se muove!”

In vindication of his heresy, he presents an abundance of contemporary documents (many reproduced in full on his Web site) showing that the rationale for going to war with Saddam Hussein was sound, whether or not Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that the planning, while imperfect (as all plans are) got the essentials right.

War and Decision is the model of what an “insider’s account” ought to be and hardly ever is. First rate historians will consult it. Second raters will crib from Bob Woodward.