Friday, October 10, 2003
The demographics of a new political phenomenon
Baseless
by Joel Kotkin
Only at TNR Online | Post date 10.08.03
In yesterday's recall election, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante sailed to victory in heavily Democratic fortresses such as San Francisco, where he captured over 60 percent of the vote and overwhelmed Arnold Schwarzenegger by a margin of better than three-to-one. Meanwhile, right-wing diehards had their own love affair--with State Senator Tom McClintock. Despite garnering a mere 13 percent of the overall vote, McClintock nearly beat Bustamante in conservative Orange County.
Which raises the question: With each party's base so loyal to its preferred candidate, how on earth did Arnold manage nearly 50 percent of the vote? The answer hints at the emergence of a new and potentially critical force in California politics.
In the broadest terms, Arnold's victory came courtesy of a large and growing constituency of younger and middle-aged, middle-class voters, mostly living in the suburbs. They were attracted not only to the star power of the onetime Terminator, but also to his combination of fiscal probity and moderate social positions. In the run up to the election, several hundred thousand of these voters registered for the first time, many of them as Independents. To a large extent, they don't exist in the political "base" of either party, meaning they can't be rallied effectively either by labor union organizations or conservative political action committees. But, according to exit polls, nearly half of them supported Schwarzenegger; three in five voted in favor of the recall.
Perhaps the best way to see the new patterns--and the emerging new constituency--is by looking at the geography of the election. The election's geographic key was those parts of the state where young families, seeking job opportunities and affordable housing, have been flocking. Ground zero for this trend lies in what's known as the Inland Empire, which covers the counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, abutting Los Angeles County but tucked away from the bulk of national reporters, who tend to congregate in west Los Angeles and San Francisco. Yet with roughly three million people, it has more than twice the voting power of San Francisco and its environs. So how did the residents of the Inland Empire vote yesterday? Roughly 60 percent of them favored Schwarzenegger, and a remarkable 70 percent voted for the recall.
"The people who opted for Arnold are those who are post-student but pre-big money making," explains economist David Friedman, who has studied California economic trends over the past decade. "The gap between them and the [traditional Democratic] alliance of the government dependent and the latte liberals is what's shaping politics now in California." These voters, Friedman suggests, had no shortage of economic reasons to detest Gray Davis and the legislative Democrats. Regulatory burdens imposed on builders have forced up the price of housing, typically their key concern. They were especially hard hit by the state's recently-increased car tax, since many own multiple cars. Burdens on business, imposed at the behest of labor unions, trial lawyers or environmentalists, were seen as threats to their jobs or the enterprises they own.
Many of the new constituency voters, although not strict social conservatives, also objected to the Democrats' social agenda, which had shifted from mere "tolerance" to an aggressive program of social engineering in favor of gay rights and illegal aliens. For example, state Democrats recently passed legislation to protect the rights of "crossdressers" and to force prospective foster parents to prove they weren't homophobic. Particularly damaging was the Democrats' support for illegal alien drivers licenses, which polls showed roughly two-thirds of voters opposing. In previous elections, running against zealots like 2002 GOP candidate Bill Simon, Democrats could hide their extremism behind support for such things as choice and gun control. But against Arnold, who embraced these mainstream positions, the Democrats had no effective weapon on social issues, and their defiantly counter-cultural stances became all too evident to voters.
But perhaps the most intriguing part of this new constituency is its racial component. One cardinal principle of Democratic Party politics in California, and in the nation as a whole, has been that Latinos, like African-Americans, will remain loyal Democrats regardless of what the party does. Yet even with a prominent Latino on the ballot, Schwarzenegger was able to win upwards of 35 percent of the Latino vote, better than any Republican candidate in a decade. The population of the Inland Empire is nearly 40 percent Latino, many of whom are middle-class, second generation California residents. Beyond that, the fact that heavily Latino Los Angeles County voted for Schwarzenegger and split 50-50 on the recall suggests that the "core" may not be as solid as many Democrats suppose.
For Democrats, the most ominous development in all of this may be the fact that the Inland Empire represents the demographic future of California. At a time when domestic migrants have been leaving Los Angeles and San Francisco in droves, notes Bill Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer, they have been flocking to the Inland Empire: The region is experiencing population growth of 2 to 3 percent per year, compared with San Francisco's loss of about 4 percent of its population between 2000 and 2002. The Inland Empire region has also lost far fewer 25-to-34 year-old voters in the last decade than either California or the nation in general, and has gained an impressive number of people in the 35-to-44 year old category.
All of this has helped make the Inland Empire the fastest growing part of the state both economically and demographically; its share of the state's electorate is rising rapidly as well. Together with the state's other growth areas, notably the Central Valley, Orange and San Diego counties, it now accounts for over 40 percent of the California electorate, almost matching the combined heft of the Bay Area and Los Angeles County.
And, of course, the demographic trends on display in the Inland Empire aren't that different from the trends remaking much of the Sunbelt. Beyond California, the emergence of a contestable, multi-racial "new constituency" marks a challenge to both parties. On the left, an emphasis on the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party"--fervently loyal to union, gay, feminist, and environmentalist orthodoxy--could alienate the middle-aged, middle constituency that threw Davis out of office and put Schwarzenegger there in his place.
Republicans, too, have something to learn. If they wish to expand outside of their right wing and southern base and become competitive among the new constituency in key states like California, they must adopt a less strident position on social issues and a more humane face in general. Arnold's political positioning helped turn many of these voters into "Schwarzenegger Republicans." But whether they remain Republicans for George Bush and other party candidates will depend on how much the GOP learns from the Terminator's California triumph.
Baseless
by Joel Kotkin
Only at TNR Online | Post date 10.08.03
In yesterday's recall election, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante sailed to victory in heavily Democratic fortresses such as San Francisco, where he captured over 60 percent of the vote and overwhelmed Arnold Schwarzenegger by a margin of better than three-to-one. Meanwhile, right-wing diehards had their own love affair--with State Senator Tom McClintock. Despite garnering a mere 13 percent of the overall vote, McClintock nearly beat Bustamante in conservative Orange County.
Which raises the question: With each party's base so loyal to its preferred candidate, how on earth did Arnold manage nearly 50 percent of the vote? The answer hints at the emergence of a new and potentially critical force in California politics.
In the broadest terms, Arnold's victory came courtesy of a large and growing constituency of younger and middle-aged, middle-class voters, mostly living in the suburbs. They were attracted not only to the star power of the onetime Terminator, but also to his combination of fiscal probity and moderate social positions. In the run up to the election, several hundred thousand of these voters registered for the first time, many of them as Independents. To a large extent, they don't exist in the political "base" of either party, meaning they can't be rallied effectively either by labor union organizations or conservative political action committees. But, according to exit polls, nearly half of them supported Schwarzenegger; three in five voted in favor of the recall.
Perhaps the best way to see the new patterns--and the emerging new constituency--is by looking at the geography of the election. The election's geographic key was those parts of the state where young families, seeking job opportunities and affordable housing, have been flocking. Ground zero for this trend lies in what's known as the Inland Empire, which covers the counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, abutting Los Angeles County but tucked away from the bulk of national reporters, who tend to congregate in west Los Angeles and San Francisco. Yet with roughly three million people, it has more than twice the voting power of San Francisco and its environs. So how did the residents of the Inland Empire vote yesterday? Roughly 60 percent of them favored Schwarzenegger, and a remarkable 70 percent voted for the recall.
"The people who opted for Arnold are those who are post-student but pre-big money making," explains economist David Friedman, who has studied California economic trends over the past decade. "The gap between them and the [traditional Democratic] alliance of the government dependent and the latte liberals is what's shaping politics now in California." These voters, Friedman suggests, had no shortage of economic reasons to detest Gray Davis and the legislative Democrats. Regulatory burdens imposed on builders have forced up the price of housing, typically their key concern. They were especially hard hit by the state's recently-increased car tax, since many own multiple cars. Burdens on business, imposed at the behest of labor unions, trial lawyers or environmentalists, were seen as threats to their jobs or the enterprises they own.
Many of the new constituency voters, although not strict social conservatives, also objected to the Democrats' social agenda, which had shifted from mere "tolerance" to an aggressive program of social engineering in favor of gay rights and illegal aliens. For example, state Democrats recently passed legislation to protect the rights of "crossdressers" and to force prospective foster parents to prove they weren't homophobic. Particularly damaging was the Democrats' support for illegal alien drivers licenses, which polls showed roughly two-thirds of voters opposing. In previous elections, running against zealots like 2002 GOP candidate Bill Simon, Democrats could hide their extremism behind support for such things as choice and gun control. But against Arnold, who embraced these mainstream positions, the Democrats had no effective weapon on social issues, and their defiantly counter-cultural stances became all too evident to voters.
But perhaps the most intriguing part of this new constituency is its racial component. One cardinal principle of Democratic Party politics in California, and in the nation as a whole, has been that Latinos, like African-Americans, will remain loyal Democrats regardless of what the party does. Yet even with a prominent Latino on the ballot, Schwarzenegger was able to win upwards of 35 percent of the Latino vote, better than any Republican candidate in a decade. The population of the Inland Empire is nearly 40 percent Latino, many of whom are middle-class, second generation California residents. Beyond that, the fact that heavily Latino Los Angeles County voted for Schwarzenegger and split 50-50 on the recall suggests that the "core" may not be as solid as many Democrats suppose.
For Democrats, the most ominous development in all of this may be the fact that the Inland Empire represents the demographic future of California. At a time when domestic migrants have been leaving Los Angeles and San Francisco in droves, notes Bill Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer, they have been flocking to the Inland Empire: The region is experiencing population growth of 2 to 3 percent per year, compared with San Francisco's loss of about 4 percent of its population between 2000 and 2002. The Inland Empire region has also lost far fewer 25-to-34 year-old voters in the last decade than either California or the nation in general, and has gained an impressive number of people in the 35-to-44 year old category.
All of this has helped make the Inland Empire the fastest growing part of the state both economically and demographically; its share of the state's electorate is rising rapidly as well. Together with the state's other growth areas, notably the Central Valley, Orange and San Diego counties, it now accounts for over 40 percent of the California electorate, almost matching the combined heft of the Bay Area and Los Angeles County.
And, of course, the demographic trends on display in the Inland Empire aren't that different from the trends remaking much of the Sunbelt. Beyond California, the emergence of a contestable, multi-racial "new constituency" marks a challenge to both parties. On the left, an emphasis on the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party"--fervently loyal to union, gay, feminist, and environmentalist orthodoxy--could alienate the middle-aged, middle constituency that threw Davis out of office and put Schwarzenegger there in his place.
Republicans, too, have something to learn. If they wish to expand outside of their right wing and southern base and become competitive among the new constituency in key states like California, they must adopt a less strident position on social issues and a more humane face in general. Arnold's political positioning helped turn many of these voters into "Schwarzenegger Republicans." But whether they remain Republicans for George Bush and other party candidates will depend on how much the GOP learns from the Terminator's California triumph.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
It's easy to see why the Bush crowd is getting so tetchy.
The itch to ditch officials who fritter away the public trust is growing, as Arnold and his broom bear down on Sacramento.
And we know now that our first pre-emptive war was launched basically because Iraq had . . . a vial of Botox?
Just about the scariest thing the weapons hunter David Kay could come up with was a vial of live botulinum, hidden in the home of an Iraqi biological weapons scientist.
This has very dire implications for Beverly Hills and the East Side of Manhattan, areas awash in vials of Botox, the botulinum toxin that can either be turned into a deadly biological weapon or a pricey wrinkle smoother.
And it may have dire implications for the Pentagon and White House if Americans come to believe that their trust was betrayed when the president and his team spread the impressions that Saddam was about to blow us up and that he was behind the 9/11 attacks.
It doesn't help to have a former-NATO-commander-turned-presidential-contender running around telling the country that the Bush dream team is a bunch of dunces. Or a former-diplomat-turned-angry-husband-of-an-outed-spy running around telling the country that the Bush dream team is a bunch of backstabbing lawbreakers who are dead wrong on Iraq.
The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating, as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.
Women who are discouraged at the ascension of Conan the Barbarian in Cal-ee-fornia can take heart. In this delicious gender-bender, Condoleezza Rice triumphs as the macho infighter, driving Rummy into a diva-like meltdown.
The trigger was Monday's coverage of the Iraq Stabilization Group (a.k.a. Fat Chance Group); the group is a desperate bid to get a grip on Baghdad before the campaign starts by transferring power for postwar Iraq from the Pentagon to the national security adviser's office inside the White House.
Condi used a trick she learned from Rummy: pre-emption. She outflanked the famous Washington infighter by talking about the new alignment to The New York Times before he had a chance to object.
It was the first time the chesty defense czar — who had tried to freeze out the softies at State, which the Pentagon sneeringly refers to as "the Department of Nice" — had been downgraded by the president and outmaneuvered by a colleague.
"And because he is a cantankerous egomaniac," one longtime Rummy watcher said, "he compounded his own problems by acknowledging it in public, further undermining his own stature."
President Bush clearly realizes that Mr. Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz have gotten him into a fine mess. He wants his trusted Mother Hen, as he calls Condi, the woman who probably spends as much time with him as Laura — weekends at Camp David, vacations at the ranch, workouts at the gym — to make it all better. This will be the first time Ms. Rice, a Soviet expert who has functioned mostly so far as First Chum, will have her reputation on the line.
Some Republicans worry that it's risky to move accountability for postwar Iraq closer to the Oval Office because then there's no one else to blame.
In a meeting with foreign reporters on Tuesday in Colorado Springs, Rummy made no effort to mask his displeasure, saying he had not been consulted, even though Condi said he had, and cattily referring to the "little committees" of the N.S.C. When a German broadcast reporter pressed the defense secretary, he hissed: "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English?"
One of Rumsfeld's Rules is: "Avoid public spats. When a Department argues with other government agencies in the press, it reduces the President's options." Hmm.
Maybe Rummy hasn't brushed up lately on the Washington rulebook he wrote in the 1970's — after his stints as President Gerald Ford's chief of staff and secretary of defense. Otherwise, he might have recalled this Rumsfeld rule before he bullied the world and ripped up Iraq: "It is easier to get into something than to get out of it."
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
It's easy to see why the Bush crowd is getting so tetchy.
The itch to ditch officials who fritter away the public trust is growing, as Arnold and his broom bear down on Sacramento.
And we know now that our first pre-emptive war was launched basically because Iraq had . . . a vial of Botox?
Just about the scariest thing the weapons hunter David Kay could come up with was a vial of live botulinum, hidden in the home of an Iraqi biological weapons scientist.
This has very dire implications for Beverly Hills and the East Side of Manhattan, areas awash in vials of Botox, the botulinum toxin that can either be turned into a deadly biological weapon or a pricey wrinkle smoother.
And it may have dire implications for the Pentagon and White House if Americans come to believe that their trust was betrayed when the president and his team spread the impressions that Saddam was about to blow us up and that he was behind the 9/11 attacks.
It doesn't help to have a former-NATO-commander-turned-presidential-contender running around telling the country that the Bush dream team is a bunch of dunces. Or a former-diplomat-turned-angry-husband-of-an-outed-spy running around telling the country that the Bush dream team is a bunch of backstabbing lawbreakers who are dead wrong on Iraq.
The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating, as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.
Women who are discouraged at the ascension of Conan the Barbarian in Cal-ee-fornia can take heart. In this delicious gender-bender, Condoleezza Rice triumphs as the macho infighter, driving Rummy into a diva-like meltdown.
The trigger was Monday's coverage of the Iraq Stabilization Group (a.k.a. Fat Chance Group); the group is a desperate bid to get a grip on Baghdad before the campaign starts by transferring power for postwar Iraq from the Pentagon to the national security adviser's office inside the White House.
Condi used a trick she learned from Rummy: pre-emption. She outflanked the famous Washington infighter by talking about the new alignment to The New York Times before he had a chance to object.
It was the first time the chesty defense czar — who had tried to freeze out the softies at State, which the Pentagon sneeringly refers to as "the Department of Nice" — had been downgraded by the president and outmaneuvered by a colleague.
"And because he is a cantankerous egomaniac," one longtime Rummy watcher said, "he compounded his own problems by acknowledging it in public, further undermining his own stature."
President Bush clearly realizes that Mr. Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz have gotten him into a fine mess. He wants his trusted Mother Hen, as he calls Condi, the woman who probably spends as much time with him as Laura — weekends at Camp David, vacations at the ranch, workouts at the gym — to make it all better. This will be the first time Ms. Rice, a Soviet expert who has functioned mostly so far as First Chum, will have her reputation on the line.
Some Republicans worry that it's risky to move accountability for postwar Iraq closer to the Oval Office because then there's no one else to blame.
In a meeting with foreign reporters on Tuesday in Colorado Springs, Rummy made no effort to mask his displeasure, saying he had not been consulted, even though Condi said he had, and cattily referring to the "little committees" of the N.S.C. When a German broadcast reporter pressed the defense secretary, he hissed: "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English?"
One of Rumsfeld's Rules is: "Avoid public spats. When a Department argues with other government agencies in the press, it reduces the President's options." Hmm.
Maybe Rummy hasn't brushed up lately on the Washington rulebook he wrote in the 1970's — after his stints as President Gerald Ford's chief of staff and secretary of defense. Otherwise, he might have recalled this Rumsfeld rule before he bullied the world and ripped up Iraq: "It is easier to get into something than to get out of it."
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Voters in a State of Change
Their decisive ouster of the governor is a slap at the status quo that Schwarzenegger promises to smash.
By Mark Z. Barabak, Times Staff Writer An invasion of armies can be resisted, the saying goes, but not an idea whose time has come.
For millions of Californians who stomped to the polls Tuesday, the idea was change. And nothing — not political inexperience, not vague answers to issues, not a spate of sexual misconduct allegations — seemed to matter.
The smashing victory of Arnold Schwarzenegger, just 62 days after his campaign debut, and the ouster of Gov. Gray Davis, a 30-year political lifer, was a starkly personal repudiation of the icy incumbent, as direct and bracing as a slap to the face.
But it was also much more. It was a slap at the status quo, at Sacramento, at business as usual, at the political and media establishments of California.
"For the people to win, politics as usual must lose," an exultant Schwarzenegger said in claining victory last night in Century City.
Throughout the recall race, Davis and his supporters used fear as a weapon, brandishing their warnings like a stick. They spoke of democracy unraveling, of the uncertainty and the danger of handing the nation's most populous state to an untested newcomer — an actor no less. On election day, the voters of California snatched away that stick and snapped it in half.
"What they wanted to change was the way things are done," said Don Sipple, the impresario of the Republican's campaign advertising. "Arnold Schwarzenegger is the epitome of the agenda of change."
Remarkably, the Democratic incumbent managed to get himself fired in a state that remains solidly Democratic, in both political registration and cultural values. Indeed, a good number of voters in both parties agreed with his stance on a good many issues.
But most of those issues, such as abortion, gay rights and gun control, failed to influence voters the way they did when Davis won his first term in 1998, or again when he ran for reelection last year. Tough economic times saw to that. Davis, with his relentless fund-raising, became the epitome of what so many people hate about politicians.
He had the nerve to seek a $1-million campaign contribution in the governor's office, hitting up an education lobbyist while raising money to seek a second term. But at the same time, Davis also suffered a strange lack of self-confidence. He decided against running for reelection on a positive agenda, aides say, because he was convinced people would not believe him when he touted his accomplishments.
The result was "a negative atmosphere through all of 2002," said David Binder, a San Francisco-based Democratic pollster. The attacks worked against two weak Republican opponents, Richard Riordan and Bill Simon Jr., but sowed the bitterness Davis reaped in the recall vote.
Even then, with his political life on the line, "It was only in the last couple of weeks that [Davis] began pointing out positive acts — environmentally cutting-edge legislation, raising the minimum wage — that most people would have applauded, swing voters as well as the Democratic base," Binder said.
By that point, ravaged by accusations that he had mismanaged the state, Davis had lost just about all of his credibility.
But Davis' biggest problem may have been his standoffish personality, which many Californians simply didn't like.
"You have the same trends that are facing probably 48 governors in the country that blew a hole in the budget and caused other economic problems," said Roy Behr, a Democratic strategist who sat out the recall election. "Because Gray had no personal capital to work with, he had no cushion to fall back on."
Democrats would be foolhardy, though, to pin the blame on Davis alone; the results Tuesday appeared nothing less than an attack on the entire, Democrat-dominated Sacramento political establishment.
And Republicans would be wise to pay heed as well, said Dan Schnur, a GOP strategist whose candidate, independent Peter V. Ueberroth, dropped out halfway through the recall race.
"If the leaders of both parties assume that this was all about Gray Davis and that business as usual on their part is just fine, they're going to end up in the voters' crosshairs themselves in very short order," Schnur said.
"The recall was about the budget, and the car tax, and the energy crisis and driver's licenses for illegal immigrants," he went on, as if reading from Davis' political autopsy report. "But most of all it's about voters who want someone to listen to them."
Schnur said the message — more a primal scream — is: "Stop this partisanship, stop this gamesmanship and listen to us."
But what the voters seem to want and what is achievable may not square. Low taxes and a high level of public services are ideals, not necessarily a sustainable way to run the state.
But Schwarzenegger promised both in his blue-sky campaign, vowing to improve public education while cutting taxes, starting with the hugely unpopular vehicle license fee. Rolling back the recent boost in the "car tax," which he promised his first day in office, would add $4 billion to an existing $8-billion shortfall.
There were few other specifics, however, meaning Schwarzenegger laid little of the political groundwork he may need when he takes office. Indeed, at one point in the campaign, he belittled the need for specifics.
"Everyone is talking about the details," he said. "Details, details, details. Sacramento is filled with warehouses of details. But the thing they are lacking is leadership. The thing that Sacramento is lacking is backbone."
His muscular pronouncements resonated with voters and may have helped him avoid tough choices on the campaign trail. But they hardly make for much of a mandate now that he prepares to take office and all the burdens — and expectations — become his responsibility.
Perhaps most critically, Schwarzenegger never said during the campaign how he planned to fill the state's looming budget gap, suggesting he could solve the state's problems through sheer force of personality. Strategists in both parties believe he will ultimately have to raise taxes, the way fellow Republicans Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson did as governor, after saying the state they inherited was in much worse shape than they ever imagined.
That could drive a wedge in Schwarzenegger's Republican Party base, the way serious spending cuts would likely engender outrage among the Democrats, who still control both houses of the Legislature.
After such a bitter, polarizing contest, the Schwarzenegger honeymoon is likely to be brief. Privately, some within his campaign admit that governing will be a lot harder than winning the governorship, even with all the bumps at the end.
At the least, after years of futility and frustration, Republicans can take heart in the party's rapid change of fortunes.
In romping to victory, Schwarzenegger did a remarkable job rallying disparate parts of the famously fractious California GOP. As someone who supports legalized abortion, gun control, gay rights and who lived a Hollywood lifestyle that, by his own admission, was rowdier than most, Schwarzenegger is hardly a Republican from Central Casting. The fact so many conservatives flocked to his side — even with their political soul mate, state Sen. Tom McClintock, in the race — is a testament to how desperately the party wanted to win.
Others were also willing to give Schwarzenegger a pass, on substantive matters like the budget as well as the sexual misconduct allegations that arose in the final days of the contest. Alternating between contrition and condemnation of the Los Angeles Times for printing the charges, Schwarzenegger promised an explanation — along with his budget blueprint — after the vote.
Polls conducted by his campaign, as well as others, showed the recall race tightening over the weekend.
In the end, however, a profound desire for change seemed to override any concerns. The charges cast a brief shadow over the man who once reigned as the film industry's most bankable star. But as Schnur put it, "They made up their minds about Gray Davis a long time ago."
Their decisive ouster of the governor is a slap at the status quo that Schwarzenegger promises to smash.
By Mark Z. Barabak, Times Staff Writer An invasion of armies can be resisted, the saying goes, but not an idea whose time has come.
For millions of Californians who stomped to the polls Tuesday, the idea was change. And nothing — not political inexperience, not vague answers to issues, not a spate of sexual misconduct allegations — seemed to matter.
The smashing victory of Arnold Schwarzenegger, just 62 days after his campaign debut, and the ouster of Gov. Gray Davis, a 30-year political lifer, was a starkly personal repudiation of the icy incumbent, as direct and bracing as a slap to the face.
But it was also much more. It was a slap at the status quo, at Sacramento, at business as usual, at the political and media establishments of California.
"For the people to win, politics as usual must lose," an exultant Schwarzenegger said in claining victory last night in Century City.
Throughout the recall race, Davis and his supporters used fear as a weapon, brandishing their warnings like a stick. They spoke of democracy unraveling, of the uncertainty and the danger of handing the nation's most populous state to an untested newcomer — an actor no less. On election day, the voters of California snatched away that stick and snapped it in half.
"What they wanted to change was the way things are done," said Don Sipple, the impresario of the Republican's campaign advertising. "Arnold Schwarzenegger is the epitome of the agenda of change."
Remarkably, the Democratic incumbent managed to get himself fired in a state that remains solidly Democratic, in both political registration and cultural values. Indeed, a good number of voters in both parties agreed with his stance on a good many issues.
But most of those issues, such as abortion, gay rights and gun control, failed to influence voters the way they did when Davis won his first term in 1998, or again when he ran for reelection last year. Tough economic times saw to that. Davis, with his relentless fund-raising, became the epitome of what so many people hate about politicians.
He had the nerve to seek a $1-million campaign contribution in the governor's office, hitting up an education lobbyist while raising money to seek a second term. But at the same time, Davis also suffered a strange lack of self-confidence. He decided against running for reelection on a positive agenda, aides say, because he was convinced people would not believe him when he touted his accomplishments.
The result was "a negative atmosphere through all of 2002," said David Binder, a San Francisco-based Democratic pollster. The attacks worked against two weak Republican opponents, Richard Riordan and Bill Simon Jr., but sowed the bitterness Davis reaped in the recall vote.
Even then, with his political life on the line, "It was only in the last couple of weeks that [Davis] began pointing out positive acts — environmentally cutting-edge legislation, raising the minimum wage — that most people would have applauded, swing voters as well as the Democratic base," Binder said.
By that point, ravaged by accusations that he had mismanaged the state, Davis had lost just about all of his credibility.
But Davis' biggest problem may have been his standoffish personality, which many Californians simply didn't like.
"You have the same trends that are facing probably 48 governors in the country that blew a hole in the budget and caused other economic problems," said Roy Behr, a Democratic strategist who sat out the recall election. "Because Gray had no personal capital to work with, he had no cushion to fall back on."
Democrats would be foolhardy, though, to pin the blame on Davis alone; the results Tuesday appeared nothing less than an attack on the entire, Democrat-dominated Sacramento political establishment.
And Republicans would be wise to pay heed as well, said Dan Schnur, a GOP strategist whose candidate, independent Peter V. Ueberroth, dropped out halfway through the recall race.
"If the leaders of both parties assume that this was all about Gray Davis and that business as usual on their part is just fine, they're going to end up in the voters' crosshairs themselves in very short order," Schnur said.
"The recall was about the budget, and the car tax, and the energy crisis and driver's licenses for illegal immigrants," he went on, as if reading from Davis' political autopsy report. "But most of all it's about voters who want someone to listen to them."
Schnur said the message — more a primal scream — is: "Stop this partisanship, stop this gamesmanship and listen to us."
But what the voters seem to want and what is achievable may not square. Low taxes and a high level of public services are ideals, not necessarily a sustainable way to run the state.
But Schwarzenegger promised both in his blue-sky campaign, vowing to improve public education while cutting taxes, starting with the hugely unpopular vehicle license fee. Rolling back the recent boost in the "car tax," which he promised his first day in office, would add $4 billion to an existing $8-billion shortfall.
There were few other specifics, however, meaning Schwarzenegger laid little of the political groundwork he may need when he takes office. Indeed, at one point in the campaign, he belittled the need for specifics.
"Everyone is talking about the details," he said. "Details, details, details. Sacramento is filled with warehouses of details. But the thing they are lacking is leadership. The thing that Sacramento is lacking is backbone."
His muscular pronouncements resonated with voters and may have helped him avoid tough choices on the campaign trail. But they hardly make for much of a mandate now that he prepares to take office and all the burdens — and expectations — become his responsibility.
Perhaps most critically, Schwarzenegger never said during the campaign how he planned to fill the state's looming budget gap, suggesting he could solve the state's problems through sheer force of personality. Strategists in both parties believe he will ultimately have to raise taxes, the way fellow Republicans Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson did as governor, after saying the state they inherited was in much worse shape than they ever imagined.
That could drive a wedge in Schwarzenegger's Republican Party base, the way serious spending cuts would likely engender outrage among the Democrats, who still control both houses of the Legislature.
After such a bitter, polarizing contest, the Schwarzenegger honeymoon is likely to be brief. Privately, some within his campaign admit that governing will be a lot harder than winning the governorship, even with all the bumps at the end.
At the least, after years of futility and frustration, Republicans can take heart in the party's rapid change of fortunes.
In romping to victory, Schwarzenegger did a remarkable job rallying disparate parts of the famously fractious California GOP. As someone who supports legalized abortion, gun control, gay rights and who lived a Hollywood lifestyle that, by his own admission, was rowdier than most, Schwarzenegger is hardly a Republican from Central Casting. The fact so many conservatives flocked to his side — even with their political soul mate, state Sen. Tom McClintock, in the race — is a testament to how desperately the party wanted to win.
Others were also willing to give Schwarzenegger a pass, on substantive matters like the budget as well as the sexual misconduct allegations that arose in the final days of the contest. Alternating between contrition and condemnation of the Los Angeles Times for printing the charges, Schwarzenegger promised an explanation — along with his budget blueprint — after the vote.
Polls conducted by his campaign, as well as others, showed the recall race tightening over the weekend.
In the end, however, a profound desire for change seemed to override any concerns. The charges cast a brief shadow over the man who once reigned as the film industry's most bankable star. But as Schnur put it, "They made up their minds about Gray Davis a long time ago."
The crux of the matter
Many Democrats Vote Against Davis and for a Republican
About 25% to 30% of liberals and moderates abandon the governor. Schwarzenegger has a strong showing across the political spectrum.
By Matea Gold
October 8, 2003
Dissatisfied Democrats showed their displeasure with Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday, with about a quarter each breaking ranks to vote for the recall and for a Republican candidate to replace him, according to a Times exit poll.
Despite the governor's efforts to rally Democrats to his side, a quarter of liberals and at least 3 in 10 moderate Democrats voted "yes" on the recall, according to the survey of voters. Members of traditional Democratic constituencies — such as union members and Latinos — voted against the recall, but not in overwhelming numbers.
The widespread defection came as nearly 3 in 4 voters said California was on the wrong track.
Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger had a strong showing across the political spectrum, picking up nearly a fifth of Democratic voters, more than 4 in 10 independents and 69% of conservative voters.
Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante collected just under two-thirds of liberal voters, but won fewer than 3 in 10 independents and a small fraction of Republicans. He also garnered slightly less than 60% of the Latino vote — a smaller share than his campaign had hoped to win.
The exit poll, supervised by Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, was based on interviews with 5,205 voters from 74 precincts around the state. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
People who made up their minds about the election in the last few days — when the campaign was dominated by allegations of sexual impropriety by Schwarzenegger — voted mainly for the recall.
Though men voted for the recall by a decisive margin, women were evenly divided. However, a racial and ethnic split emerged among women voters: Nearly four-fifths of African American women and a majority of Latinas were against the recall, but a majority of white women voted for it.
Davis found his strongest support among African American and Jewish voters.
Tuesday's electorate was remarkably similar to the one that narrowly reelected Davis to office last November: largely white and male, with smaller numbers of Latino, black and Asian voters.
That demographic breakdown favored Schwarzenegger. More than 8 in 10 of his voters were white, and more than half were men.
Schwarzenegger, who attempted to rally support among Californians who have not participated in the political process, appeared to gain the most from first-time voters. Nearly half of them supported him, and nearly 3 out of 5 voted for the recall.
Among all voters surveyed, a majority in every age group voted for Davis' recall.
Schwarzenegger sought to win the votes of his youthful moviegoing audience, but 18- to 29-year-olds were the least supportive of him, making up only 11% of his backers. Unlike voters in other age brackets, who backed Schwarzenegger over Bustamante by strong margins, young people favored him more narrowly.
Those who did vote for Schwarzenegger were staunchly committed to him. Almost 60% of them said their preference for their candidate was very strong, compared with 50% of those who voted for state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) and 34% of Bustamante voters.
Bustamante had the most diverse pool of supporters among the top candidates to replace Davis. One in 10 of his voters were black, 20% Latino and 5% Asian. Schwarzenegger and McClintock, on the other hand, had predominantly white supporters.
Though the lieutenant governor focused much of his campaign on Latinos, about 3 in 10 Latino voters threw their support to Schwarzenegger.
Bustamante's efforts to woo blue-collar support did not appear to pay off either. He beat Schwarzenegger by just nine points among union members, while voters who earn less than $40,000 a year were split evenly between the two.
And Bustamante's standing as the only prominent Democrat on the ballot did not deliver him unified Democratic support: Fewer than 2 in 3 backed the lieutenant governor.
Meanwhile, McClintock, who made a strong appeal to the right wing of the GOP, won support from only about a fifth of conservative Republican voters.
Some Democrats crossed party lines to support the state senator, making up nearly a quarter of his voters — the majority of them Democratic women.
Both Democrats and Republicans who voted for the recall cited as their top reason their perception that Davis had mismanaged the state. They also criticized the way he handled the state's energy crisis and financial problems.
Recall opponents said their main reason for voting against it was their belief that the governor was elected fairly, followed by a perception that Republicans wanted to gain power and push a conservative agenda.
The exit poll results highlighted a persistent political split in California. Orange County overwhelmingly backed the recall, the measure received divided support in Los Angeles County and went down to a strong defeat in the Bay Area, the only region where a majority voted to keep Davis in office.
Many Democrats Vote Against Davis and for a Republican
About 25% to 30% of liberals and moderates abandon the governor. Schwarzenegger has a strong showing across the political spectrum.
By Matea Gold
October 8, 2003
Dissatisfied Democrats showed their displeasure with Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday, with about a quarter each breaking ranks to vote for the recall and for a Republican candidate to replace him, according to a Times exit poll.
Despite the governor's efforts to rally Democrats to his side, a quarter of liberals and at least 3 in 10 moderate Democrats voted "yes" on the recall, according to the survey of voters. Members of traditional Democratic constituencies — such as union members and Latinos — voted against the recall, but not in overwhelming numbers.
The widespread defection came as nearly 3 in 4 voters said California was on the wrong track.
Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger had a strong showing across the political spectrum, picking up nearly a fifth of Democratic voters, more than 4 in 10 independents and 69% of conservative voters.
Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante collected just under two-thirds of liberal voters, but won fewer than 3 in 10 independents and a small fraction of Republicans. He also garnered slightly less than 60% of the Latino vote — a smaller share than his campaign had hoped to win.
The exit poll, supervised by Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, was based on interviews with 5,205 voters from 74 precincts around the state. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
People who made up their minds about the election in the last few days — when the campaign was dominated by allegations of sexual impropriety by Schwarzenegger — voted mainly for the recall.
Though men voted for the recall by a decisive margin, women were evenly divided. However, a racial and ethnic split emerged among women voters: Nearly four-fifths of African American women and a majority of Latinas were against the recall, but a majority of white women voted for it.
Davis found his strongest support among African American and Jewish voters.
Tuesday's electorate was remarkably similar to the one that narrowly reelected Davis to office last November: largely white and male, with smaller numbers of Latino, black and Asian voters.
That demographic breakdown favored Schwarzenegger. More than 8 in 10 of his voters were white, and more than half were men.
Schwarzenegger, who attempted to rally support among Californians who have not participated in the political process, appeared to gain the most from first-time voters. Nearly half of them supported him, and nearly 3 out of 5 voted for the recall.
Among all voters surveyed, a majority in every age group voted for Davis' recall.
Schwarzenegger sought to win the votes of his youthful moviegoing audience, but 18- to 29-year-olds were the least supportive of him, making up only 11% of his backers. Unlike voters in other age brackets, who backed Schwarzenegger over Bustamante by strong margins, young people favored him more narrowly.
Those who did vote for Schwarzenegger were staunchly committed to him. Almost 60% of them said their preference for their candidate was very strong, compared with 50% of those who voted for state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) and 34% of Bustamante voters.
Bustamante had the most diverse pool of supporters among the top candidates to replace Davis. One in 10 of his voters were black, 20% Latino and 5% Asian. Schwarzenegger and McClintock, on the other hand, had predominantly white supporters.
Though the lieutenant governor focused much of his campaign on Latinos, about 3 in 10 Latino voters threw their support to Schwarzenegger.
Bustamante's efforts to woo blue-collar support did not appear to pay off either. He beat Schwarzenegger by just nine points among union members, while voters who earn less than $40,000 a year were split evenly between the two.
And Bustamante's standing as the only prominent Democrat on the ballot did not deliver him unified Democratic support: Fewer than 2 in 3 backed the lieutenant governor.
Meanwhile, McClintock, who made a strong appeal to the right wing of the GOP, won support from only about a fifth of conservative Republican voters.
Some Democrats crossed party lines to support the state senator, making up nearly a quarter of his voters — the majority of them Democratic women.
Both Democrats and Republicans who voted for the recall cited as their top reason their perception that Davis had mismanaged the state. They also criticized the way he handled the state's energy crisis and financial problems.
Recall opponents said their main reason for voting against it was their belief that the governor was elected fairly, followed by a perception that Republicans wanted to gain power and push a conservative agenda.
The exit poll results highlighted a persistent political split in California. Orange County overwhelmingly backed the recall, the measure received divided support in Los Angeles County and went down to a strong defeat in the Bay Area, the only region where a majority voted to keep Davis in office.
Muslims in European Schools
The question of whether Muslim women can wear head scarves in European state schools keeps coming back. A French school recently suspended two girls for covering their heads, while Germany ruled in favor of a teacher who insisted on wearing her head scarf in class. Cases like the one in France have been portrayed as a defense of the secular state — the need to keep overt religious symbols out of state schools. This seems a false pretext. Following the dress or dietary codes of one's faith is an exercise of freedom of conscience so long as the exercise does not amount to proselytizing or otherwise infringing on the freedoms of others.
The laws, their rationale and their enforcement differ from country to country, even school to school. But the fact is that any such regulation is inherently discriminatory because the targets are likely to be members of faiths that mandate outward signs. The scarf of a Muslim woman, the skullcap of an observant Jew and the turban of a Sikh cannot be concealed.
In France, Europe's most adamantly secular nation, the constitution gives schools power to ban any religious symbol worn as an "act of pressure, provocation, proselytism or propaganda." But that provision was framed in a long and bitter struggle between church and state. The real motive behind the objections to head scarves too often appears to be resentment of the growing population of Muslims, sometimes augmented by feminists who see the scarf as a symbol of women's subjugation.
These are not valid motives. The purpose of separating church and state in schools is to liberate students from the pressures and taboos of sectarians and ideologues. Of course, wearing a head scarf may well be a political statement, and it may even inspire schoolmates to explore radical Islam. But to presume that every devout Muslim is a radical is a false and dangerous notion. And the battle with extremism cannot start with the suppression of personal religious expression in schools; that is not only a violation of fundamental freedoms, but also a good way of pushing ideas underground and ensuring that they become seriously dangerous.
The question of whether Muslim women can wear head scarves in European state schools keeps coming back. A French school recently suspended two girls for covering their heads, while Germany ruled in favor of a teacher who insisted on wearing her head scarf in class. Cases like the one in France have been portrayed as a defense of the secular state — the need to keep overt religious symbols out of state schools. This seems a false pretext. Following the dress or dietary codes of one's faith is an exercise of freedom of conscience so long as the exercise does not amount to proselytizing or otherwise infringing on the freedoms of others.
The laws, their rationale and their enforcement differ from country to country, even school to school. But the fact is that any such regulation is inherently discriminatory because the targets are likely to be members of faiths that mandate outward signs. The scarf of a Muslim woman, the skullcap of an observant Jew and the turban of a Sikh cannot be concealed.
In France, Europe's most adamantly secular nation, the constitution gives schools power to ban any religious symbol worn as an "act of pressure, provocation, proselytism or propaganda." But that provision was framed in a long and bitter struggle between church and state. The real motive behind the objections to head scarves too often appears to be resentment of the growing population of Muslims, sometimes augmented by feminists who see the scarf as a symbol of women's subjugation.
These are not valid motives. The purpose of separating church and state in schools is to liberate students from the pressures and taboos of sectarians and ideologues. Of course, wearing a head scarf may well be a political statement, and it may even inspire schoolmates to explore radical Islam. But to presume that every devout Muslim is a radical is a false and dangerous notion. And the battle with extremism cannot start with the suppression of personal religious expression in schools; that is not only a violation of fundamental freedoms, but also a good way of pushing ideas underground and ensuring that they become seriously dangerous.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
What Kay Found
By Colin L. Powell
Tuesday, October 7, 2003; Page A25
The interim findings of David Kay and the Iraq Survey Group make two things abundantly clear: Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in material breach of its United Nations obligations before the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 last November, and Iraq went further into breach after the resolution was passed.
Kay's interim findings offer detailed evidence of Hussein's efforts to defy the international community to the last. The report describes a host of activities related to weapons of mass destruction that "should have been declared to the U.N." It reaffirms that Iraq's forbidden programs spanned more than two decades, involving thousands of people and billions of dollars.
What the world knew last November about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs was enough to justify the threat of serious consequences under Resolution 1441. What we now know as a result of David Kay's efforts confirms that Hussein had every intention of continuing his work on banned weapons despite the U.N. inspectors, and that we and our coalition partners were right to eliminate the danger that his regime posed to the world.
Although Kay and his team have not yet discovered stocks of the weapons themselves, they will press on in the months ahead with their important and painstaking work. All indications are that they will uncover still more evidence of Hussein's dangerous designs.
Before the war, our intelligence had detected a calculated campaign to prevent any meaningful inspections. We knew that Iraqi officials, members of the ruling Baath Party and scientists had hidden prohibited items in their homes.
Lo and behold, Kay and his team found strains of organisms concealed in a scientist's home, and they report that one of the strains could be used to produce biological agents. Kay and his team also discovered documents and equipment in scientists' homes that would have been useful for resuming uranium enrichment efforts.
Kay and his team have "discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery . . . has come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that the Iraq Survey Group has discovered that should have been declared to the U.N."
The Kay Report also addresses the issue of suspected mobile biological agent laboratories: "Investigation into the origin of and intended use for the two trailers found in northern Iraq in April has yielded a number of explanations, including hydrogen, missile propellant and BW [biological warfare] production, but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers. That said, nothing . . . rules out their potential use in BW production." Here Kay's findings are inconclusive. He is continuing to work this issue.
Kay and his team have, however, found this: "A clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to U.N. monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW [chemical-biological weapons] research." They also discovered: "a prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N."
The Kay Report confirms that our intelligence was correct to suspect the al-Kindi Co. of being involved in prohibited activity. Missile designers at al-Kindi told Kay and his team that Iraq had resumed work on converting SA-2 surface-to-air missiles into ballistic missiles with a range of about 250 kilometers, and that this work continued even while UNMOVIC inspectors were in Iraq. The U.N.-mandated limit for Iraq was a range of 150 kilometers.
The Kay Report also confirmed our prewar intelligence that indicated Iraq was developing missiles with ranges up to 1,000 kilometers. Similarly, Kay substantiated our reports that Iraq had tested an unmanned aerial vehicle to 500 kilometers, also in violation of U.N. resolutions.
What's more, he and his team found that elaborate efforts to shield illicit programs from inspection persisted even after the collapse of Hussein's regime. Key evidence was deliberately eliminated or dispersed during the postwar period. In a wide range of offices, laboratories and companies suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction, computer hard drives were destroyed, files were burned and equipment was carefully cleansed of all traces of use -- and done so in a pattern that was clearly deliberate and selective, rather than random.
One year ago, when President Bush brought his concerns about Iraq to the United Nations, he made it plain that his principal concern in a post-Sept. 11 world was not just that a rogue regime such as Saddam Hussein's had WMD programs, but that such horrific weapons could find their way out of Iraq into the arms of terrorists who would have even fewer compunctions about using them against innocent people across the globe.
In the interim report, Kay and his team record the chilling fact that they "found people, technical information and illicit procurement networks that if allowed to flow to other countries and regions could accelerate global proliferation."
Having put an end to that harrowing possibility alone justifies our coalition's action against Hussein's regime. But that is not the only achievement of our brave men and women in uniform and their coalition partners.
Three weeks ago I paid my respects at a mass grave in the northern city of Halabja, where on a Friday morning in March 1988, Hussein's forces murdered 5,000 men, women and children with chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein can cause no more Halabjas. His "Republic of Fear" no longer holds sway over the people of Iraq. For the first time in three decades, the Iraqi people have reason to hope for the future.
President Bush was right: This was an evil regime, lethal to its own people, in deepening material breach of its Security Council obligations, and a threat to international peace and security. Hussein would have stopped at nothing until something stopped him. It's a good thing that we did.
The writer is secretary of state.
By Colin L. Powell
Tuesday, October 7, 2003; Page A25
The interim findings of David Kay and the Iraq Survey Group make two things abundantly clear: Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in material breach of its United Nations obligations before the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 last November, and Iraq went further into breach after the resolution was passed.
Kay's interim findings offer detailed evidence of Hussein's efforts to defy the international community to the last. The report describes a host of activities related to weapons of mass destruction that "should have been declared to the U.N." It reaffirms that Iraq's forbidden programs spanned more than two decades, involving thousands of people and billions of dollars.
What the world knew last November about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs was enough to justify the threat of serious consequences under Resolution 1441. What we now know as a result of David Kay's efforts confirms that Hussein had every intention of continuing his work on banned weapons despite the U.N. inspectors, and that we and our coalition partners were right to eliminate the danger that his regime posed to the world.
Although Kay and his team have not yet discovered stocks of the weapons themselves, they will press on in the months ahead with their important and painstaking work. All indications are that they will uncover still more evidence of Hussein's dangerous designs.
Before the war, our intelligence had detected a calculated campaign to prevent any meaningful inspections. We knew that Iraqi officials, members of the ruling Baath Party and scientists had hidden prohibited items in their homes.
Lo and behold, Kay and his team found strains of organisms concealed in a scientist's home, and they report that one of the strains could be used to produce biological agents. Kay and his team also discovered documents and equipment in scientists' homes that would have been useful for resuming uranium enrichment efforts.
Kay and his team have "discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery . . . has come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that the Iraq Survey Group has discovered that should have been declared to the U.N."
The Kay Report also addresses the issue of suspected mobile biological agent laboratories: "Investigation into the origin of and intended use for the two trailers found in northern Iraq in April has yielded a number of explanations, including hydrogen, missile propellant and BW [biological warfare] production, but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers. That said, nothing . . . rules out their potential use in BW production." Here Kay's findings are inconclusive. He is continuing to work this issue.
Kay and his team have, however, found this: "A clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to U.N. monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW [chemical-biological weapons] research." They also discovered: "a prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N."
The Kay Report confirms that our intelligence was correct to suspect the al-Kindi Co. of being involved in prohibited activity. Missile designers at al-Kindi told Kay and his team that Iraq had resumed work on converting SA-2 surface-to-air missiles into ballistic missiles with a range of about 250 kilometers, and that this work continued even while UNMOVIC inspectors were in Iraq. The U.N.-mandated limit for Iraq was a range of 150 kilometers.
The Kay Report also confirmed our prewar intelligence that indicated Iraq was developing missiles with ranges up to 1,000 kilometers. Similarly, Kay substantiated our reports that Iraq had tested an unmanned aerial vehicle to 500 kilometers, also in violation of U.N. resolutions.
What's more, he and his team found that elaborate efforts to shield illicit programs from inspection persisted even after the collapse of Hussein's regime. Key evidence was deliberately eliminated or dispersed during the postwar period. In a wide range of offices, laboratories and companies suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction, computer hard drives were destroyed, files were burned and equipment was carefully cleansed of all traces of use -- and done so in a pattern that was clearly deliberate and selective, rather than random.
One year ago, when President Bush brought his concerns about Iraq to the United Nations, he made it plain that his principal concern in a post-Sept. 11 world was not just that a rogue regime such as Saddam Hussein's had WMD programs, but that such horrific weapons could find their way out of Iraq into the arms of terrorists who would have even fewer compunctions about using them against innocent people across the globe.
In the interim report, Kay and his team record the chilling fact that they "found people, technical information and illicit procurement networks that if allowed to flow to other countries and regions could accelerate global proliferation."
Having put an end to that harrowing possibility alone justifies our coalition's action against Hussein's regime. But that is not the only achievement of our brave men and women in uniform and their coalition partners.
Three weeks ago I paid my respects at a mass grave in the northern city of Halabja, where on a Friday morning in March 1988, Hussein's forces murdered 5,000 men, women and children with chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein can cause no more Halabjas. His "Republic of Fear" no longer holds sway over the people of Iraq. For the first time in three decades, the Iraqi people have reason to hope for the future.
President Bush was right: This was an evil regime, lethal to its own people, in deepening material breach of its Security Council obligations, and a threat to international peace and security. Hussein would have stopped at nothing until something stopped him. It's a good thing that we did.
The writer is secretary of state.
What they're saying about the Dems:
Conan the Barbarian at the Gates
What a Schwarzenegger victory will mean for the Democratic party. by Hugh Hewitt 10/07/2003 8:00:00 AM
Hugh Hewitt, contributing writer
THIS IS THE PART in the movie when the battering rams smash through the besieged town's much-reinforced-but-nevertheless-crumbling wooden gates, and the outsiders pour through the breach and then over the walls to loot and pillage at will.
Arnold and his forces are at Sacramento's gates. Think Alexander and Thebes. The gutter politics of the last few days won't make the hand-over pretty. Gray Davis's allies knew better, but they threw in with a small-minded man whose greatest talents were fundraising and a seemingly limitless capability to hit low.
And these allies have clung to their old tactics even to the last. California Democratic party operative Bob Mulholland, quoted in the New York Times' yesterday on Sunday's huge pro-Arnold rally: "He doesn't draw as big a crowd as Hitler did." In many ways Mulholland has been the GOP's secret weapon throughout the campaign, reliably repulsing any audience who heard him. (I featured him for weeks on my radio show for that reason, until the dim bulb in Bob's head went off and he fled the format.)
The Los Angeles Times rushed to reinforce to the walls, but it was too late. Arnold has promised to rescind Davis's tripling of the car tax on his first day in office. Voters can thus chose a massive tax cut that will benefit them immediately or to credit the Los Angeles Times' charges of women claiming that Arnold harassed them (charges that oddly surfaced in the campaign's final 100 hours).
It has not proven a difficult choice.
With the expulsion of Davis almost certain, prepare for the Democratic meme that will follow in its wake.
(What is a "meme?" "Memes are contagious ideas, all competing for a share of our mind in a kind of Darwinian selection," according to MemeCentral.com. The term has spread virus-like through the blogosphere, and I wanted to use it once before, like "paradigm shift," it becomes an indictment of hopeless behind-the-timesism, and not simply a fancy way of saying "hot idea.")
The Democratic meme on Davis's fate? Some variation on the charge that the Republicans have again stolen an election. The thrust will be that the recall process, though spelled out in black and white in the state constitution, was not intended for the purpose it has served in 2003, and that its alleged perversion represents a new low for the GOP.
This intonation will overlook the fact that the recall is the marriage of a tax revolt and a good government purge of Sacramento. The pattern of protest from Democratic partisans is more interesting than this particular episode. We can now lay out that broad pattern:
Republicans rely on written rules and the judges who enforce them.
Democrats rely on unwritten rules and the judges who invent them.
Democratic analysis of the California recall will ignore what California attorney general Bill Lockyer (a Democrat) termed Davis's addiction to "puke politics," the illegal tripling of the car tax, and the repeated refusals of a half-dozen courts to rescue California Democrats in the way the New Jersey Supreme Court rescued Garden State Democrats by approving the Lautenberg-for-Torricelli trade last fall, or the attempted rewriting-on-the-fly of Florida election law by the Sunshine State's remarkable collection of supreme jurists. No, the refrain will be: "Republican plot, Republican plot, Republican plot."
The GOP can only hope that Democrats on the West coast as well as throughout the country embrace this mantra rather than a serious analysis of why Davis was thrown from office.
Like the virus in "28 Days," the Democratic addiction to rhetorical rage and the politics of personal destruction has quickly spread far beyond patient zero, Bill Clinton. It has now consumed the California Democrats. Next stop, Iowa.
Conan the Barbarian at the Gates
What a Schwarzenegger victory will mean for the Democratic party. by Hugh Hewitt 10/07/2003 8:00:00 AM
Hugh Hewitt, contributing writer
THIS IS THE PART in the movie when the battering rams smash through the besieged town's much-reinforced-but-nevertheless-crumbling wooden gates, and the outsiders pour through the breach and then over the walls to loot and pillage at will.
Arnold and his forces are at Sacramento's gates. Think Alexander and Thebes. The gutter politics of the last few days won't make the hand-over pretty. Gray Davis's allies knew better, but they threw in with a small-minded man whose greatest talents were fundraising and a seemingly limitless capability to hit low.
And these allies have clung to their old tactics even to the last. California Democratic party operative Bob Mulholland, quoted in the New York Times' yesterday on Sunday's huge pro-Arnold rally: "He doesn't draw as big a crowd as Hitler did." In many ways Mulholland has been the GOP's secret weapon throughout the campaign, reliably repulsing any audience who heard him. (I featured him for weeks on my radio show for that reason, until the dim bulb in Bob's head went off and he fled the format.)
The Los Angeles Times rushed to reinforce to the walls, but it was too late. Arnold has promised to rescind Davis's tripling of the car tax on his first day in office. Voters can thus chose a massive tax cut that will benefit them immediately or to credit the Los Angeles Times' charges of women claiming that Arnold harassed them (charges that oddly surfaced in the campaign's final 100 hours).
It has not proven a difficult choice.
With the expulsion of Davis almost certain, prepare for the Democratic meme that will follow in its wake.
(What is a "meme?" "Memes are contagious ideas, all competing for a share of our mind in a kind of Darwinian selection," according to MemeCentral.com. The term has spread virus-like through the blogosphere, and I wanted to use it once before, like "paradigm shift," it becomes an indictment of hopeless behind-the-timesism, and not simply a fancy way of saying "hot idea.")
The Democratic meme on Davis's fate? Some variation on the charge that the Republicans have again stolen an election. The thrust will be that the recall process, though spelled out in black and white in the state constitution, was not intended for the purpose it has served in 2003, and that its alleged perversion represents a new low for the GOP.
This intonation will overlook the fact that the recall is the marriage of a tax revolt and a good government purge of Sacramento. The pattern of protest from Democratic partisans is more interesting than this particular episode. We can now lay out that broad pattern:
Republicans rely on written rules and the judges who enforce them.
Democrats rely on unwritten rules and the judges who invent them.
Democratic analysis of the California recall will ignore what California attorney general Bill Lockyer (a Democrat) termed Davis's addiction to "puke politics," the illegal tripling of the car tax, and the repeated refusals of a half-dozen courts to rescue California Democrats in the way the New Jersey Supreme Court rescued Garden State Democrats by approving the Lautenberg-for-Torricelli trade last fall, or the attempted rewriting-on-the-fly of Florida election law by the Sunshine State's remarkable collection of supreme jurists. No, the refrain will be: "Republican plot, Republican plot, Republican plot."
The GOP can only hope that Democrats on the West coast as well as throughout the country embrace this mantra rather than a serious analysis of why Davis was thrown from office.
Like the virus in "28 Days," the Democratic addiction to rhetorical rage and the politics of personal destruction has quickly spread far beyond patient zero, Bill Clinton. It has now consumed the California Democrats. Next stop, Iowa.
What they're saying about the Republicans:
From the October 13, 2003 issue: There is disarray in George W. Bush's administration.
by William Kristol 10/13/2003, Volume 009, Issue 05
REALITIES are sometimes unpleasant. Presidents are elected to confront such realities, and to deal with them. Evading them doesn't work. Pundits can afford to indulge in wishful thinking. Partisans can choose to preoccupy themselves with rock-throwing and blame-casting. But presidents have to govern. They have to deal with difficult realities--even if disingenuous liberals are capitalizing on them, and Democrats are distorting them.
Perhaps the biggest such reality for President Bush is the disarray within his administration. That disarray has been highlighted by reactions to the leak in mid-July of the name of an undercover CIA employee--the wife of an administration critic--to columnist Robert Novak.
On July 6, retired ambassador Joseph Wilson took to the pages of the New York Times and accused the Bush administration of having manipulated intelligence on Iraq's nuclear threat and thus of having gone to war "under false pretenses." A critic of the administration's Iraq policy, Wilson reported in his op-ed that he had traveled to Niger at the request of the CIA in early 2002 to investigate reports of Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium there. By Wilson's (no doubt exaggerated and self-important) estimation, he had debunked such reports but was ignored by a White House that continued to cite them. Novak offered an explanation for why the outspoken Wilson had been chosen for the CIA mission: "Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger." Novak named Mrs. Wilson, describing her as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction."
Revealing the identity of covert CIA agents is a crime under certain circumstances. But given the strict stipulations of the relevant statute, it seems unlikely that the Justice Department investigation will ever lead to a successful prosecution of the leaker or leakers. That doesn't make the political reality or the moral responsibility any less urgent. Surely the president has, as the Washington Times suggested last week, taken "too passive a stance" toward this misdeed by one or more of his employees. Surely he should do his utmost to restore the White House's reputation for honor and integrity by calling together the dozens of more-or-less "senior" administration officials and asking whoever spoke with Novak to come forward and explain themselves. Presumably the relevant officials--absent some remarkable explanation that's hard to conceive--should be fired, and their names given to the Justice Department. The president might also want to call Mrs. Wilson, who is after all a government official serving her country, and apologize for the damage done to her by his subordinate's action.
The leak controversy has revealed an administration at war with itself, a war intensified by the difficult aftermath of the war in Iraq. The situation there seems to be better than you would think if you read only the New York Times and the Washington Post, but worrying nonetheless. On Thursday, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, acknowledged that the enemy had succeeded in organizing itself in recent weeks to become "a little bit more lethal, a little bit more complex, a little bit more sophisticated, and, in some cases, a little bit more tenacious." With its submission of the $87 billion package to Congress, the administration has begun to come to grips with the problem, and seems committed to doing what needs to be done. But reports suggest that the civilian efforts on the ground in Iraq remain spotty and that the military is stretched very thin. And even more striking, as debate has raged on its $87 billion request, the administration has been virtually invisible in making its case to Congress or to the American people.
One reason for this is that the civil war in the Bush administration has become crippling. The CIA is in open revolt against the White House. The State Department and the Defense Department aren't working together at all. We are way beyond "fruitful tension" and all the other normal excuses for bureaucratic conflict. This is a situation that only the president can fix. Perhaps a serious talk with Messrs. Tenet, Powell, and Rumsfeld can do the trick, followed by strengthening the National Security Council's role in resolving intra-administration disputes. Perhaps a head or two has to roll. But the present condition is debilitating, and, given the challenges facing us in postwar Iraq, in Iran, and in North Korea, it is irresponsible to let it fester.
To govern is to choose. Only one man can make the choices necessary to get the administration back on course. President Bush has problems with his White House, his administration's execution of his policy, and its internal decision-making ability. He should fix them sooner rather than later. Time is not on his side.
--William Kristol
From the October 13, 2003 issue: There is disarray in George W. Bush's administration.
by William Kristol 10/13/2003, Volume 009, Issue 05
REALITIES are sometimes unpleasant. Presidents are elected to confront such realities, and to deal with them. Evading them doesn't work. Pundits can afford to indulge in wishful thinking. Partisans can choose to preoccupy themselves with rock-throwing and blame-casting. But presidents have to govern. They have to deal with difficult realities--even if disingenuous liberals are capitalizing on them, and Democrats are distorting them.
Perhaps the biggest such reality for President Bush is the disarray within his administration. That disarray has been highlighted by reactions to the leak in mid-July of the name of an undercover CIA employee--the wife of an administration critic--to columnist Robert Novak.
On July 6, retired ambassador Joseph Wilson took to the pages of the New York Times and accused the Bush administration of having manipulated intelligence on Iraq's nuclear threat and thus of having gone to war "under false pretenses." A critic of the administration's Iraq policy, Wilson reported in his op-ed that he had traveled to Niger at the request of the CIA in early 2002 to investigate reports of Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium there. By Wilson's (no doubt exaggerated and self-important) estimation, he had debunked such reports but was ignored by a White House that continued to cite them. Novak offered an explanation for why the outspoken Wilson had been chosen for the CIA mission: "Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger." Novak named Mrs. Wilson, describing her as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction."
Revealing the identity of covert CIA agents is a crime under certain circumstances. But given the strict stipulations of the relevant statute, it seems unlikely that the Justice Department investigation will ever lead to a successful prosecution of the leaker or leakers. That doesn't make the political reality or the moral responsibility any less urgent. Surely the president has, as the Washington Times suggested last week, taken "too passive a stance" toward this misdeed by one or more of his employees. Surely he should do his utmost to restore the White House's reputation for honor and integrity by calling together the dozens of more-or-less "senior" administration officials and asking whoever spoke with Novak to come forward and explain themselves. Presumably the relevant officials--absent some remarkable explanation that's hard to conceive--should be fired, and their names given to the Justice Department. The president might also want to call Mrs. Wilson, who is after all a government official serving her country, and apologize for the damage done to her by his subordinate's action.
The leak controversy has revealed an administration at war with itself, a war intensified by the difficult aftermath of the war in Iraq. The situation there seems to be better than you would think if you read only the New York Times and the Washington Post, but worrying nonetheless. On Thursday, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, acknowledged that the enemy had succeeded in organizing itself in recent weeks to become "a little bit more lethal, a little bit more complex, a little bit more sophisticated, and, in some cases, a little bit more tenacious." With its submission of the $87 billion package to Congress, the administration has begun to come to grips with the problem, and seems committed to doing what needs to be done. But reports suggest that the civilian efforts on the ground in Iraq remain spotty and that the military is stretched very thin. And even more striking, as debate has raged on its $87 billion request, the administration has been virtually invisible in making its case to Congress or to the American people.
One reason for this is that the civil war in the Bush administration has become crippling. The CIA is in open revolt against the White House. The State Department and the Defense Department aren't working together at all. We are way beyond "fruitful tension" and all the other normal excuses for bureaucratic conflict. This is a situation that only the president can fix. Perhaps a serious talk with Messrs. Tenet, Powell, and Rumsfeld can do the trick, followed by strengthening the National Security Council's role in resolving intra-administration disputes. Perhaps a head or two has to roll. But the present condition is debilitating, and, given the challenges facing us in postwar Iraq, in Iran, and in North Korea, it is irresponsible to let it fester.
To govern is to choose. Only one man can make the choices necessary to get the administration back on course. President Bush has problems with his White House, his administration's execution of his policy, and its internal decision-making ability. He should fix them sooner rather than later. Time is not on his side.
--William Kristol
fighting words
Conversation With Khomeini
The ayatollah's grandson calls for a U.S. invasion of Iran.
By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, October 6, 2003, at 11:03 AM PT
I have no respect for the hereditary principle and neither does Shiite Islam, which considers earthly kingship to be profane. But no one can be completely uninterested in heredity per se, and my first thought, on meeting Hossein Khomeini, was that he has his grandfather's eyebrows. Still, our conversation quickly banished the notion that this 45-year-old cleric is the least bit interested in running for his grandpa's job.
He is a relatively junior cleric—a sayeed—but he wears the turban and robe with some aplomb and was until recently a resident of Qum, the holy city of the Iranian Shiites and once the Vatican, so to speak, of the Khomeini theocracy. As soon as it became feasible, however, he moved to Baghdad (where he would have been executed on sight until a few months ago) and is now hoping to establish himself in Karbala, one of the two holy Shiite cities in southern Iraq. He refers as a matter of course to the work of the coalition forces in Iraq as a "liberation." He would prefer, he says, to live in Tehran, but he cannot consider doing so until there has been "liberation" in Iran also.
He speaks perfect Arabic, acquired during the years when the ayatollah and his family were exiled by the shah to live in Karbala, and he knows Iraq reasonably well already. He is of course a figure of fascination to the Iraqi Shiite population, but he doesn't seek any explicit role in their affairs. Nonetheless, his view of developments among them is worth hearing. "Talk of an Islamic state in Iraq is not very serious or very deeply rooted among the people. It is necessary for religion and politics to be separated." When I asked him about Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite anti-American extremist in Iraq who is the son of the late Ayatollah Sadr, murdered by Saddam Hussein, he was dismissive. "He is not considered an interpreter of our religion but only an imitator known only because of his father." Again, there is implicit disapproval of those who trade on the family name.
Even so, I could not resist asking his opinion of the famous fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I cannot say that I understood all of his reply, which was very long and detailed and contained some Quranic references and citations that were (to me at any rate) rather abstruse. But the meaning was very plain. A sentence of death for apostasy cannot really be pronounced, or acted upon, unless there is "an infallible imam," and there is no such thing. The Shiite faithful believe in a "hidden imam" who may one day be restored to them, but they have learned to be wary of impostors or false prophets. In any event, added Khomeini, there was an important distinction between what the Quran said and what an ayatollah as head of state might say. "We cannot nowadays have executions in this form." Indeed, he added, it was the policy of executions that had turned the Islamic revolution in Iran sour in the first place. "Now we have had 25 years of a failed Islamic revolution in Iran, and the people do not want an Islamic regime anymore."
It's not strictly necessary to speak to Hossein Khomeini to appreciate the latter point: Every visitor to Iran confirms it, and a large majority of the Iranians themselves have voted for anti-theocratic candidates. The entrenched and reactionary regime can negate these results up to a certain point; the only question is how long can they do so? Young Khomeini is convinced that the coming upheaval will depend principally on those who once supported his grandfather and have now become disillusioned. I asked him what he would like to see happen, and his reply this time was very terse and did not require any Quranic scriptural authority or explication. The best outcome, he thought, would be a very swift and immediate American invasion of Iran.
It hurt me somewhat to have to tell him that there was scant chance of deliverance coming by this means. He took the news pretty stoically (and I hardly think I was telling him anything he did not know). But I was thinking, wow, this is what happens if you live long enough. You'll hear the ayatollah's grandson saying, not even "Send in the Marines" but "Bring in the 82nd Airborne." I think it was the matter-of-factness of the reply that impressed me the most: He spoke as if talking of the obvious and the uncontroversial.
That reminded me to ask him what he thought of the mullahs' nuclear program. He calmly said that there was no physical force that was stronger than his faith, and thus there was no need for any country to arm itself in this way. No serious or principled Shiite had any fear of his belief being destroyed by any kind of violence. It was not a matter for the state, and the state and religion (he reiterated) ought to be separated—for both their sakes.
Hossein Khomeini operates within an entirely Quranic frame of reference, but what he has to say is obviously of great interest to those who take the secular "regime change" position. The arguments about genocide, terrorism, and WMD—in all of which I believe the Bush administration had (and has) considerable right on its side—are all essentially secondary to the overarching question: Does there exist in the Middle East a real constituency for pluralism and against theocracy and dictatorship. And can the exercise of outside force hope to release and encourage these elements? This is a historic question in the strict sense, because we will not know the true answer for some considerable time. But that does not deprive us of some responsibility to make judgments in the meanwhile, and we have good reason to know that the region can't be left to fester as it is. On my own recent visit to Baghdad, Karbala, and Najaf, as well as to Basra and then Kurdistan, I would say that I saw persuasive evidence of the unleashing of real politics in Iraq and of the highly positive effect of same. Conversation with Khomeini suggests to me that in at least one other highly important neighboring country, the United States has also managed to get on the right side of history, as we used to say.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and author of The Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq.
Conversation With Khomeini
The ayatollah's grandson calls for a U.S. invasion of Iran.
By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, October 6, 2003, at 11:03 AM PT
I have no respect for the hereditary principle and neither does Shiite Islam, which considers earthly kingship to be profane. But no one can be completely uninterested in heredity per se, and my first thought, on meeting Hossein Khomeini, was that he has his grandfather's eyebrows. Still, our conversation quickly banished the notion that this 45-year-old cleric is the least bit interested in running for his grandpa's job.
He is a relatively junior cleric—a sayeed—but he wears the turban and robe with some aplomb and was until recently a resident of Qum, the holy city of the Iranian Shiites and once the Vatican, so to speak, of the Khomeini theocracy. As soon as it became feasible, however, he moved to Baghdad (where he would have been executed on sight until a few months ago) and is now hoping to establish himself in Karbala, one of the two holy Shiite cities in southern Iraq. He refers as a matter of course to the work of the coalition forces in Iraq as a "liberation." He would prefer, he says, to live in Tehran, but he cannot consider doing so until there has been "liberation" in Iran also.
He speaks perfect Arabic, acquired during the years when the ayatollah and his family were exiled by the shah to live in Karbala, and he knows Iraq reasonably well already. He is of course a figure of fascination to the Iraqi Shiite population, but he doesn't seek any explicit role in their affairs. Nonetheless, his view of developments among them is worth hearing. "Talk of an Islamic state in Iraq is not very serious or very deeply rooted among the people. It is necessary for religion and politics to be separated." When I asked him about Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite anti-American extremist in Iraq who is the son of the late Ayatollah Sadr, murdered by Saddam Hussein, he was dismissive. "He is not considered an interpreter of our religion but only an imitator known only because of his father." Again, there is implicit disapproval of those who trade on the family name.
Even so, I could not resist asking his opinion of the famous fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I cannot say that I understood all of his reply, which was very long and detailed and contained some Quranic references and citations that were (to me at any rate) rather abstruse. But the meaning was very plain. A sentence of death for apostasy cannot really be pronounced, or acted upon, unless there is "an infallible imam," and there is no such thing. The Shiite faithful believe in a "hidden imam" who may one day be restored to them, but they have learned to be wary of impostors or false prophets. In any event, added Khomeini, there was an important distinction between what the Quran said and what an ayatollah as head of state might say. "We cannot nowadays have executions in this form." Indeed, he added, it was the policy of executions that had turned the Islamic revolution in Iran sour in the first place. "Now we have had 25 years of a failed Islamic revolution in Iran, and the people do not want an Islamic regime anymore."
It's not strictly necessary to speak to Hossein Khomeini to appreciate the latter point: Every visitor to Iran confirms it, and a large majority of the Iranians themselves have voted for anti-theocratic candidates. The entrenched and reactionary regime can negate these results up to a certain point; the only question is how long can they do so? Young Khomeini is convinced that the coming upheaval will depend principally on those who once supported his grandfather and have now become disillusioned. I asked him what he would like to see happen, and his reply this time was very terse and did not require any Quranic scriptural authority or explication. The best outcome, he thought, would be a very swift and immediate American invasion of Iran.
It hurt me somewhat to have to tell him that there was scant chance of deliverance coming by this means. He took the news pretty stoically (and I hardly think I was telling him anything he did not know). But I was thinking, wow, this is what happens if you live long enough. You'll hear the ayatollah's grandson saying, not even "Send in the Marines" but "Bring in the 82nd Airborne." I think it was the matter-of-factness of the reply that impressed me the most: He spoke as if talking of the obvious and the uncontroversial.
That reminded me to ask him what he thought of the mullahs' nuclear program. He calmly said that there was no physical force that was stronger than his faith, and thus there was no need for any country to arm itself in this way. No serious or principled Shiite had any fear of his belief being destroyed by any kind of violence. It was not a matter for the state, and the state and religion (he reiterated) ought to be separated—for both their sakes.
Hossein Khomeini operates within an entirely Quranic frame of reference, but what he has to say is obviously of great interest to those who take the secular "regime change" position. The arguments about genocide, terrorism, and WMD—in all of which I believe the Bush administration had (and has) considerable right on its side—are all essentially secondary to the overarching question: Does there exist in the Middle East a real constituency for pluralism and against theocracy and dictatorship. And can the exercise of outside force hope to release and encourage these elements? This is a historic question in the strict sense, because we will not know the true answer for some considerable time. But that does not deprive us of some responsibility to make judgments in the meanwhile, and we have good reason to know that the region can't be left to fester as it is. On my own recent visit to Baghdad, Karbala, and Najaf, as well as to Basra and then Kurdistan, I would say that I saw persuasive evidence of the unleashing of real politics in Iraq and of the highly positive effect of same. Conversation with Khomeini suggests to me that in at least one other highly important neighboring country, the United States has also managed to get on the right side of history, as we used to say.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and author of The Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq.
Lumps of Labor
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Economists call it the "lump of labor fallacy." It's the idea that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in the world, so any increase in the amount each worker can produce reduces the number of available jobs. (A famous example: those dire warnings in the 1950's that automation would lead to mass unemployment.) As the derisive name suggests, it's an idea economists view with contempt, yet the fallacy makes a comeback whenever the economy is sluggish.
Sure enough, the lump-of-labor fallacy has resurfaced in the United States — but with a twist. Traditionally, it is a fallacy of the economically naïve left — for example, four years ago France's Socialist government tried to create more jobs by reducing the length of the workweek. But in America today you're more likely to hear lump-of-labor arguments from the right, as an excuse for the Bush administration's policy failures.
The latest lump-of-labor revival came to my attention when I realized how eagerly certain commentators were picking up on a new study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In it, Erica Groshen and Simon Potter argue that the pattern of laying off workers during recessions and rehiring them during recoveries has changed: since 1990 employers have become much less likely to rehire former workers. It's an interesting study, and it might — repeat, might — shed some light on why businesses have added so few jobs during our so-called recovery.
But I was puzzled at first by the enthusiasm with which a relatively academic paper was seized upon by usually bullish, supposedly hardheaded business commentators. The puzzle vanished, however, when I read these remarks more carefully: they were mainly trying to make excuses for the administration's dismal job record. You see, they say, it's not that an economic policy consisting largely of tax cuts for the rich has failed to deliver. No, it's a structural problem with the economy, which just happens to have arisen now, and nobody could have done better.
Oh, well. But partisan politics aside, the growing lumpishness of American thinking about jobs is dangerous, in two ways.
First, it encourages fatalism — if politicians and the public believe that new jobs can't be created, they will stop pressuring our leaders to find more effective policies. And that would be a shame, since the Bush administration has resolutely refused to try the policies most likely to improve the employment picture.
Since 2001, sensible economists have been pleading for federal aid to state and local governments so schoolteachers and police officers needn't be laid off because of a temporary fall in revenues. They've also urged the administration to stop dragging its heels on much-needed homeland security spending, not just because such spending is needed to make the country safer, but also because it would create jobs and put more income into the hands of Americans likely to spend it. (And if you're worried about spending's leading to increased deficits, why not cancel some of those long-run tax breaks for upper brackets?) Until we've done the obvious things, there's no reason to despair about job creation.
Second, lump-of-labor thinking — and the policy paralysis it encourages — feeds protectionism. If the public no longer believes that the economy can create new jobs, it will demand that we protect old jobs from new competitors in China and elsewhere. Economists can explain until they are blue in the face why limiting exports from developing countries would be a bad idea — why keeping our markets open to new producers is in America's interest both economically and diplomatically. But theoretical arguments for free trade will count for little if the real-world experience of jobs lost to Chinese competition can't be offset by a credible promise that new jobs will be created to replace them.
History seems to be repeating itself: a similar rush to blame foreigners for U.S. problems happened during Bush I's jobless recovery (which looked like a hiring boom compared with recent experience). Remember the president's literally nauseating trip to Japan in the company of auto executives? But if the early 1990's flirtation with protectionism had the feeling of farce, today's employment stagnation — and the protectionist talk now emanating from both parties — has the makings of tragedy. If we don't get some real job creation soon, the politics of jobs may become dangerously self-destructive.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Economists call it the "lump of labor fallacy." It's the idea that there is a fixed amount of work to be done in the world, so any increase in the amount each worker can produce reduces the number of available jobs. (A famous example: those dire warnings in the 1950's that automation would lead to mass unemployment.) As the derisive name suggests, it's an idea economists view with contempt, yet the fallacy makes a comeback whenever the economy is sluggish.
Sure enough, the lump-of-labor fallacy has resurfaced in the United States — but with a twist. Traditionally, it is a fallacy of the economically naïve left — for example, four years ago France's Socialist government tried to create more jobs by reducing the length of the workweek. But in America today you're more likely to hear lump-of-labor arguments from the right, as an excuse for the Bush administration's policy failures.
The latest lump-of-labor revival came to my attention when I realized how eagerly certain commentators were picking up on a new study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In it, Erica Groshen and Simon Potter argue that the pattern of laying off workers during recessions and rehiring them during recoveries has changed: since 1990 employers have become much less likely to rehire former workers. It's an interesting study, and it might — repeat, might — shed some light on why businesses have added so few jobs during our so-called recovery.
But I was puzzled at first by the enthusiasm with which a relatively academic paper was seized upon by usually bullish, supposedly hardheaded business commentators. The puzzle vanished, however, when I read these remarks more carefully: they were mainly trying to make excuses for the administration's dismal job record. You see, they say, it's not that an economic policy consisting largely of tax cuts for the rich has failed to deliver. No, it's a structural problem with the economy, which just happens to have arisen now, and nobody could have done better.
Oh, well. But partisan politics aside, the growing lumpishness of American thinking about jobs is dangerous, in two ways.
First, it encourages fatalism — if politicians and the public believe that new jobs can't be created, they will stop pressuring our leaders to find more effective policies. And that would be a shame, since the Bush administration has resolutely refused to try the policies most likely to improve the employment picture.
Since 2001, sensible economists have been pleading for federal aid to state and local governments so schoolteachers and police officers needn't be laid off because of a temporary fall in revenues. They've also urged the administration to stop dragging its heels on much-needed homeland security spending, not just because such spending is needed to make the country safer, but also because it would create jobs and put more income into the hands of Americans likely to spend it. (And if you're worried about spending's leading to increased deficits, why not cancel some of those long-run tax breaks for upper brackets?) Until we've done the obvious things, there's no reason to despair about job creation.
Second, lump-of-labor thinking — and the policy paralysis it encourages — feeds protectionism. If the public no longer believes that the economy can create new jobs, it will demand that we protect old jobs from new competitors in China and elsewhere. Economists can explain until they are blue in the face why limiting exports from developing countries would be a bad idea — why keeping our markets open to new producers is in America's interest both economically and diplomatically. But theoretical arguments for free trade will count for little if the real-world experience of jobs lost to Chinese competition can't be offset by a credible promise that new jobs will be created to replace them.
History seems to be repeating itself: a similar rush to blame foreigners for U.S. problems happened during Bush I's jobless recovery (which looked like a hiring boom compared with recent experience). Remember the president's literally nauseating trip to Japan in the company of auto executives? But if the early 1990's flirtation with protectionism had the feeling of farce, today's employment stagnation — and the protectionist talk now emanating from both parties — has the makings of tragedy. If we don't get some real job creation soon, the politics of jobs may become dangerously self-destructive.
