The Return of HUAC?

H.R. 1955

I urge those poor deluded souls who still cling to the notion that our long national nightmare will end just as soon as Democrats solidify their control over the federal government in 2008, to peruse H.R. 1955, a bill that recently passed the US House of Representatives by a vote of 404 yea vs. 6 nay. H.R. 1955, which bears the chilling title "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," was introduced, not by some red state Republican, but, rather, by Rep. Jane Harman, a Los Angeles-area Democrat. Harman, a so-called "moderate" "blue dog" Democrat, chairs the Intelligence Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee. She is married to Sidney Harman, audio-equipment magnate (he founded Harman/Kardon), and she has the distinction of being the richest member of the House of Representatives (as of 2005), with a net worth estimated to be in a range from $168 to $289 million.

 

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA)

H.R. 1955 would create a special commission charged with studying and making recommendations for the prevention of "violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence," which the bill declares to be a clear and present threat to homeland security. This commission is granted the power to hold public hearings, at which it can take the testimony of such witnesses and consider such evidence as it deems necessary.

The definitions provided by H.R. 1955 for the principal ills it seeks to combat are strikingly broad and vague (although, given the packing of the federal courts with right-wing judges, I suspect that, should it become law, the bill would be unlikely to be thrown out on constitutional grounds). "Violent radicalization" is defined as

the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.

"Homegrown terrorism" is

the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

In the former case, depending on who's doing the defining, the term "extremist belief system" could pretty much be anything outside of the two-party system. In the latter, one wonders what sort of planning would have to be shown to demonstrate "planned use" of force or violence. Would loose talk over a few beers be enough?

Perhaps most shocking of all is this "finding" related to the internet, which may shortly become the law of the land:

The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.

In this regard, Rep. Harman provided her view of the internet "threat" in a prepared  introductory statement to the subcommittee she chairs, for a November 6 hearing on "Using the Web as a Weapon":

"These people [by which she meant, potential domestic terrorists] no longer need to travel to foreign countries or isolated backwoods compounds to become indoctrinated by extremists and to learn how to kill their neighbors.

On the contrary, the Internet allows them to share violent goals and plot from the comfort of their own living rooms . . . "

Full disclosure requires that I note the inclusion in the bill of a section that purports to protect civil rights and civil liberties. The operative provision of the section is as follows:

The Department of Homeland Security's efforts to prevent ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism as described herein shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents.

It then charges the Department of Homeland Security with the task of auditing itself to insure compliance with this provision. Whew! I feel better already, don't you?

Although the poster children for domestic terrorism cited by Rep. Harman and others are almost exclusively Islamic radicals, it's likely that the commission this bill creates would cast a wider net. We can anticipate that radical environmentalists and anti-globalization activists could very well find themselves hauled before the commission, and, thus, implicitly identified to the world as terrorists. I would expect that representatives of groups such as School of the Americas Watch, and individuals who have been involved in attempts to disrupt military shipments (such as the recent efforts in Olympia, Washington) are extremely vulnerable in this regard as well. It seems beyond question that this bill would have a chilling effect on public protest of US government policy and military action in connection with the so-called "war on terror."

The Complicity of the Democrats

Given its rather obvious threat to democratic rights, how are we to explain the nearly unanimous support among House Democrats for H.R. 1955? Sure, Jane Harman is no liberal, but what about supposed progressive stalwarts, such as Maxine Waters (CA), Barbara Lee (CA), Pete Stark (CA), Jerrold Nadler (NY), Ed Markey (MA), John Lewis (GA), and many others, all of whom voted in favor? The only liberal Democrat who voted no was Dennis Kucinich.

In the cases of the Iraq war and impeachment, congressional Democrats have demonstrated that they cannot be counted on to carry out the will of an overwhelming majority of Democratic voters. With H.R. 1955, it becomes obvious, as well, that the Democrats cannot be relied on to defend the basic constitutional rights of Americans. As with the various transparent stunts carried out by Democrats since they took control of Congress aimed at providing the appearance of opposing the war while doing nothing whatsoever to impede it, here we find liberal Democrats hiding behind the fig leaf of toothless civil liberties protection and lending support to a bill that could lead to the criminalization of dissent.

It's not as if they can honestly plead ignorance. Here, for example, is Dennis Kucinich's recently expressed clear-eyed view of H.R. 1955:

“If you understand what this bill does, it really sets the stage for further criminalization of protest,” Kucinich said. “This is the way our democracy little, by little, by little, is being stripped away from us. This bill, I believe, is a clear violation of the first amendment.”

Nevertheless, as with Hillary Clinton's preposterous "if I'd known then what I know now" excuse for her Iraq war authorization vote, we can expect to hear a great big "Who knew?" from congressional Democrats as the consequences of this bill become impossible to ignore. By then, of course, it'll probably be too late.

The Rhyme of History

Interestingly enough, the initial legislative history of H.R. 1955 bears a striking resemblance to the establishment of the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee. HUAC is generally identified with "McCarthyism"  -- that is to say, with the 1950s  anti-communist witch hunts. Yet, HUAC actually began before World War II. It had its origins in a bill introduced in 1934 by a liberal Democrat, Samuel Dickstein, who represented the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the House of Representatives.

Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D-NY)

Dickstein was concerned about the threat of subversion of American institutions posed, not by communists and other leftist groups, but, rather, by domestic fascist and pro-Nazi movements like the German-American Bund and the Silver Shirts. Hence, the title of the so-called "Dickstein Resolution" which led to the establishment of the McCormack-Dickstein Special Committee on Un-American Activities, the precursor of HUAC: "An Act to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities." From the outset, although there were some rather cursory examinations of pro-fascist groups and individuals, the primary focus of the special (later permanent) committee was investigation of leftists, including supposed communist subversives among New Dealers.

Going even further back, we might discern history's rhyme in the Espionage Act, passed in 1917 shortly after the (bitterly unpopular) American entry into World War I. This act was ostensibly intended (as the title indicates) to contain German espionage and sabotage activity in the US. In fact, it was immediately marshaled as the key tool for the suppression of antiwar dissent. Under this law hundreds of dissenters were imprisoned (the great majority of them from the left), including socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, and dozens of left-oriented and foreign-language periodicals were denied mailing privileges and shut down.

Alas, the past, it appears, is prologue. It's scoundrel time, yet again.

The Myth of the New Deal Triumphant

The conventional wisdom among US historians (and, indeed, among educated Americans in general), holds that Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal succeeded in effecting one of the most significant political reorientations in American history. Prior to FDR, the US was effectively run by and in the interests of business (which is really another way of saying: by and for elites). The coming of the New Deal, in this view, effected a near-revolutionary transformation of power relations in the US, whereby the federal government, acting as an honest broker of the competing interests of various social classes, became the dominant power center in American society.

Even if, as is generally acknowledged, the New Deal failed at it's stated aim of ending the Depression (which is generally attributed to the impact of World War II military Keynesianism), most believe that it succeeded in a much broader restructuring that was, ultimately, responsible for the strength and durability of the postwar prosperity. In this view , the postwar period (up to 1980), is seen as an era of the New Deal triumphant, when the basic values embodied therein - - fairness, inclusion, labor rights, the social safety-net, small "d" democracy - - achieved near-universal acceptance from all sectors within American society.

In my view, this conception is seriously flawed. The most significant problem has to do with what seems to me to be a necessary corollary of this line of reasoning: the belief that business elites in the US largely accepted (or, at least, begrudgingly accommodated themselves to) the advent of the "broker state," seeing it, ultimately, as the best means of preserving their wealth and privilege. As I discussed in my last post (see Hoping for a New New Deal),  this view is false: the initial distrust with which elites viewed Roosevelt, rapidly turned to outright hatred as the nature of the New Deal became apparent. By 1934, this contempt was nearly unanimous; extending, even, to pro-business conservatives within the Democratic Party itself (including the party's 1924 and 1928 presidential nominees, John W. Davis and Al Smith). It was these establishment Democrats, after all, who were the driving force behind the formation of the anti-Roosevelt American Liberty League, the public face of their effort to defeat FDR in 1936 and to stop the New Deal in its tracks.

 

 

A political cartoon captures the anti-Roosevelt sentiment.

The election of 1936 reflected the enormous class-based political divide in the US at that time: the nearly unanimous elite contempt for the New Deal was in contrast to its overwhelming popularity among the mass of the populace; the almost monomaniacal elite hatred of Roosevelt, himself, was matched by the ardor of the masses, for most of whom FDR had become a revered figure. Roosevelt's overwhelming landslide, far from causing elites to reconcile themselves to the new societal reality this smashing victory seemed to manifest, simply led to a deepening of their loathing, as well as their despair.

The depth of the enmity toward Roosevelt, even among interests ostensibly aligned with the Democratic Party, is depicted by Robert Caro in the first volume of his excellent biography of Lyndon Johnson (The Path to Power). Caro describes a Texas political milieu in the mid-1930s, in which politicians were forced to posture as fervent supporters of FDR in public, while expressing sneering contempt for the man and his policies in private. Johnson, himself, ran for Congress posing as a committed Roosevelt man, with key backing from Roosevelt-hating ultra-conservative business elements - - in particular, the brothers Herman and George R. Brown of the Brown & Root engineering and construction firm (later Kellogg, Brown & Root, and now part of Halliburton). Once in office, LBJ faithfully did the Browns' bidding, delivering federal construction contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to his patrons. The first major contract, for the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River in Texas, required the personal intervention of FDR to secure a necessary regulatory change.

The Browns and their element in Texas, at the heart of what would become the "military industrial complex," are often depicted as having developed into an important part of FDR's New Deal coalition by the end of the 1930s. The fact that Roosevelt personally interceded on their behalf to secure lucrative government contracts is seen as evidence of this. The reality is that, although they were more than willing to make a fortune by feeding at the trough of the federal government, they never had anything but contempt for Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Why, then, did Roosevelt help the Browns and others like them? The answer reflects not the strength and durability of the New Deal, but, rather, its weakness and vulnerability. Roosevelt, as we all know, broke the two-term tradition in American presidential politics, winning an unprecedented third term in 1940 (and a fourth term four years later). The conventional notion of why FDR chose to buck this tradition and run again usually emphasizes the looming world war. In this view, Roosevelt is portrayed as having decided that, given his experience and leadership qualities, he was the best person to lead the country into and through the war.

Although the approach of war was certainly an important element in FDR's decision, domestic politics seems to have been even more significant: As the 1940 election approached, Roosevelt realized that, should he step aside, no committed New Dealer had a significant chance of winning the Democratic nomination. Rather, the nominee would almost certainly be an anti-New Deal conservative, committed to dismantling FDR's legacy. The odds-on favorite was none other than FDR's vice president - - and bitter political enemy - - John Nance Garner of Texas. Thus, what FDR needed from the Browns and others like them, was their backing for his candidacy in 1940, and, in particular, their commitment to refrain from assisting Garner, with whom they were closely identified. In the end, FDR got the nomination and the Browns got a contract for a huge navy project at Corpus Christi. (An account of the backroom dealings that delivered the Browns - - and Texas - - into the Roosevelt camp in 1940 can be found in The Halliburton Agenda, by Dan Briody at p. 76-79).

In his co-opting of hostile forces like the Browns in the interests of political expediency, Roosevelt was establishing a pattern of behavior that, in my view, would become an essential feature of Democratic Party politics in the postwar era. I like to call this pattern "riding the tiger," after the line from John F. Kennedy's inaugural address alluding to an old folk tale (stated, in that instance, as a warning to post-colonial states): "[T]hose who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside." Although Roosevelt, himself, didn't end up in the tiger's belly, I would contend that, after his passing, the New Deal did.

Elite business interests emerged from World War II much wealthier and more powerful than before. Those connected with the burgeoning military-industrial complex - - with weapons contractors, large-scale engineering and construction firms, resource companies (especially oil and gas), and the financial institutions that were allied with them - - did especially well. With Roosevelt having exited the stage, they were free to promote, at the national level, a political agenda in line with their economic interests and values. That is exactly what they did.

In the political realm, containment and, ultimately, rollback of the New Deal legacy has been the primary imperative of US elites throughout the postwar era. This has involved two main thrusts: 1) promoting policy initiatives that have contributed to the containment, or, wherever possible, dismantling of the New Deal, while opposing those that might in any way extend it; and 2) (perhaps even more important) foreclosing, by any means necessary, the emergence of a "new FDR" as president.

As I discussed in a previous post (see "Al Gore, Media Pariah"), in this context, I take a "new FDR" to mean a president who sees his (or her) role as representing the interests of the general populace (of the "commonwealth"), on whose behalf he (or she) is willing to take on entrenched economic interests. In essence, elites have been determined to prevent the reoccurrence of the situation they faced with Roosevelt, in which an independent-minded president became so popular with the general public that, at least to a significant extent, he effectively escaped their control.

This situation was particularly threatening to elite interests, because the very source of FDR's popularity with the masses lay in their perception of his essential fairness. This, then, was the fundamental danger posed by FDR for elites: he took seriously the democratic pretensions of the US system of government.  He acted like a president is supposed to act. And for twelve long years, elites had to grit their teeth and bear it.

The only alternative to this ordeal would have involved taking the enormous risk of tearing the mask off by putting an end to the constitutional order and establishing a dictatorial regime. As I noted in my last post, there is a good deal of evidence that this was seriously considered in 1933-34, as revealed in the so-called "Smedley Butler affair." If accounts of a plot were true, the fact remains that a coup d'état failed to materialize. There may have been any number of reasons for this; the premature public revelation by Butler is a likely one. However, (again, assuming the truth of the plot), one suspects that the sheer danger that an overthrow of the established order - - and all of the myths of American exceptionalism that stand behind it - - could result in a fundamental destabilization of society that might very well spin out of control, would have loomed large.

In my next post, I'll discuss the lengths elites appear to have been willing to go in the postwar period to foreclose the emergence of a "new FDR," and to rollback the New Deal.

Hoping for a New New Deal

Many liberals, including commentators such as Paul Krugman, have expressed hope that the 2008 election will mark a progressive political watershed in the US, like the 1932 election that swept Franklin Roosevelt into the White House, and large Democratic majorities into both houses of Congress, setting the stage for the New Deal. I've suggested in a previous post (see Al Gore, Media Pariah) that the recent "Draft Al Gore" boomlet is reflective of this quite understandable widespread longing for a "new FDR" on the part of the liberal electorate.

Lately, I've noticed that peak oilers, too, are increasingly citing the New Deal as a hopeful instance of the US political system responding constructively to an enormous challenge facing American society (in that case, of course, the Great Depression). It is not surprising that thinking people are groping for a positive historical reference point, given that we are faced with a bleak contemporary reality characterized by 1) more and more experts declaring the apparent arrival of Peak Oil; 2) signs (in particular the 2007 Arctic ice melt) that global climate change may have reached a tipping point, with potentially catastrophic consequences down the road; and 3) the growing likelihood that the resource wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will shortly be expanded to Iran, possibly even involving the first use of nuclear weapons in more than 60 years, and potentially unleashing World War III. In this context, it's no wonder that any sliver of hope that we might be able to find our collective way out of this mess - - and, thereby, avoid Richard Heinberg's apocalyptic "last one standing" scenario - - is eagerly seized upon.

I'm all for hopefulness, if it's warranted. But, when we make use of a historical example to build a case for a hopeful outcome to our current dilemma, it is essential that we have an accurate understanding of that history. In this case, before we can posit the emergence of a new New Deal, we had better understand the nature of the old one. Having spent the past couple of years researching the response of business elites to the Great Depression and the New Deal for a history dissertation I'm currently at work on, I think I can offer some insight in this regard.

Richard Heinberg's current Museletter consists of a thoughtful essay ("Big Melt Meets Big Empty") concerning the alternative realities of science (physical reality) and politics (political reality). Heinberg identifies the opposition between these two as the key cause of the seeming inability of political institutions in the US and elsewhere to constructively respond to the twin threats of climate change and resource depletion. He advocates working toward overcoming this opposition, to whatever degree that is possible. His key suggestion is that interested groups of citizens develop realistic assessments of the efficacy of various potential policy responses, and that they then use these assessments to create an advocacy program to push for the enactment of desired policies.

Looming in the background for Heinberg, however, are two critical and related specters, either of which would likely doom any constructive initiatives that might be developed: 1) resource wars; and 2) implacable opposition on the part of elites. It seems to me that a fruitful way of looking at these twin threats, is to see resource wars as, in a sense, the bitter consequence of elite opposition to ameliorative policies.  That is to say, if, faced with energy scarcity, elites succeed in blocking serious consideration of "powerdown" approaches (like the oil depletion protocol), resource wars become the likely outcome - - the "default" option, as it were. Conversely, if ameliorative policy options are viable, resort to "last one standing" warfare can hopefully be avoided. If this is so, then the question of the potential for elite acceptance of some such policies seems to be the key factor in assessing the possibility of a hopeful outcome to energy transition.

On this issue, Heinberg expresses a measure of hope, based on the example of the New Deal:

Ultimately, power holders must be convinced that [energy transition] policies, if obnoxious to them now, will be far less destructive to their interests than a complete breakdown of society and biosphere - which is the very real alternative. For a historic example of a similar conversion of elites think of the 1930s New Deal: then the titans of industry had to sacrifice some of their financial power in order to keep from losing it all. Many wealthy individuals never forgave Franklin Roosevelt, whom they regarded as a "traitor to his class," but most of them reluctantly agreed that redistribution represented the lesser of evils.

The question is, thus, starkly raised: Is Heinberg's history here an accurate depiction of actual events? Did most "titans of industry" agree (if reluctantly) to New Deal policies as a lesser evil, in view of the potential for utter ruin represented by the Great Depression? Alas, the historical record provides little basis for this claim. This, obviously, calls into question (though it does not necessarily invalidate) Heinberg's conclusion that a similar conversion of elite opinion is possible today. I'll first discuss the actual history of the attitudes of business elites' toward FDR and the New Deal. Then, based upon this history, I'll try to assess whether hopefulness seems warranted with respect to powerdown policy initiatives.

The notion that a significant segment of business elites supported the New Deal is commonly known as the "corporate liberalism" theory. According to this view, forward-thinking business leaders, primarily drawn from the ranks of large-scale Eastern capital-intensive industries, recognized that laissez-faire capitalism was doomed, that flat opposition to unionization and social welfare initiatives risked opening the way to socialism and expropriation of private wealth. As a result, so the theory goes, these corporate liberals made a strategic decision to back New Deal policies, and, in so doing, were able to shape those policies in a business-friendly way, which, ultimately, stabilized capitalism on a new "welfare state" basis, setting the stage for the postwar boom. [Those wanting a more thorough exposition of this theory may wish to consult the essay by Thomas Ferguson entitled "Industrial Conflict and the Coming of the New Deal," in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, edited by Fraser and Gerstle].

This theory has been pretty thoroughly demolished over the last decade, for one key reason: notwithstanding the claims of Ferguson and other proponents, the existence of a cadre of New Deal-supporting corporate liberals is not supported by the archival evidence. [The best demolition of the theory is an essay by the brilliant sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol, entitled "Political Response to Capitalist Crisis," in Skocpol and Campbell, eds., American Society and Politics: Institutional, Historical, and Theoretical Perspectives].

The reality is that, if FDR saved capitalism from itself through the New Deal, he did so, not with the support of any significant segment of business elites, but, instead, in the face of continuous, nearly unanimous, exceptionally bitter business opposition. Further, what Roosevelt saved, was probably not capitalism, but, rather, constitutional democracy. That is to say, given the state of American society during the 1930s, the US would have been much more likely to have seen a fascist takeover (which would have largely preserved the power of business elites) than a socialist revolution. [For a highly-readable non-scholarly account of a possible 1934 right-wing coup plot, purportedly led by the DuPonts and Morgan interests, see Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House].

This, of course, raises the question of how the New Deal happened, given broad elite opposition. The answer seems to be that the depth of the economic crisis during the 1930s led to an enormous loss of business prestige, which, in turn, resulted in a decline in the ability of elites to exercise decisive control over the political process. The opening thus created was filled, not by forward-looking corporate liberal business leaders, but rather, by government officials like FDR's "Brain Trust" (principally  Raymond Moley, Adolf Berle and Rexford Tugwell), cabinet secretaries such as Frances Perkins at Labor and Harold Ickes at Interior, and Congressional liberals such as Senator Robert Wagner of New York. In addition, into this breach created by the decline in business prestige and authority, stepped a resurgent labor movement, led by John L. Lewis and the CIO.

The key lesson that contemporary would-be "powerdown" reformers should take away from the history of the New Deal, then, is that they are highly unlikely to win the approval or support of any significant segment of business elites. Rather, the probable reality will be bitter and unremitting business hostility every step of the way. "Well," one might ask, "they (the New Dealers) were able to succeed despite business opposition. Can't we do the same?"

In my personal assessment, the answer is: Perhaps, but probably not. First, in the 1930s, business elites were caught by surprise by the relatively sudden, precipitous loss of prestige and decisive influence they suffered. As a result of the (for them) intense trauma of the New Deal, during the intervening decades tremendous intellectual and economic resources have been poured into the development of strategies and social structures intended to insure that it never happens again. These include the massive corporate public relations industry (which, not coincidentally, got its start during the 1930s); the related development of the mass media - - especially television - - and mass advertising, as agencies for shaping mass consciousness; the coalescence of the military-corporate-Congressional complex, with enormous, even decisive influence over government policy in its sphere of interest; the development and implementation, in both the public and private realms, of sophisticated strategies of surveillance and control; and, the capture of the political process, to an unprecedented degree (especially at the federal level), by corporate oligarchic interests.

Second, the US (and the world) faced a very different historical conjuncture in the 1930s, as compared to today. Despite the Depression, the US was the world's supreme financial power, as well as the richest country in resource terms, particularly fossil fuel resources. In this context, the societal "bargain" that we call the welfare state was a feasible alternative to continuous repression of social unrest. All of this changed in the early 1970s (typified by the peaking of US lower-48 petroleum production). The "richest country in the world" is now a good deal poorer (at least relatively) than it was then. It is no coincidence that no new major social welfare programs have been instituted in the US since the 1960s. The willingness of elites to passively accept any significant constraints on the "free market" (such as energy transition-related public policy initiatives) is open to serious question.

One can, of course, posit that the coming catastrophic impact of resource depletion and climate change will lead to a weakening of several of these structures, much as the Great Depression washed away the edifice of business prestige in the 1930s. Let's hope so. However, in my view, it is far more likely that, when the coming crisis hits with full force, we'll see a strengthening of strategies and agencies of repression and control, rather than the advent of a new New Deal.

Dynasty

Bush, Clinton, Bush . . . Clinton. Am I the only one who sees this possibility as dreadful, irrespective of the qualities of the four politicians in question? In my view, the fact that there is even a serious chance that 2008 may bring us yet another dynastic restoration in the presidential office is reflective, in and of itself, of the current dysfunctionality of American democracy.

In truth, I know I'm not the only person troubled by this. After all, political historian Kevin Phillips wrote a whole book back in 2004 about the dangers of dynastic power for our democracy, focusing on the Bush family (American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush). This past June, Phillips, in a Washington Post review of two books about Hillary Clinton, asked the obvious question about her candidacy:

In light of the endless deceits, interest-group baggage, messianic overtones and shameless money politics of the two Bush dynasts (presidents number 41 and 43), do American voters want to empower yet another dubious dynasty (Clinton presidents number 42 and 44)?

The mainstream media, which long ago declared Hillary Clinton the Democratic "front-runner" - - actually "presumptive nominee" seems more accurate - - based on nothing but name recognition and how much money she was expected to be able to raise, have, of late, expressed muted concern about this dynastic issue, if only at the margins. For example, Nancy Benac, in a September AP story, wonders, "Does a nation of 303 million people really have only two families qualified to run the show?" And an Agence France-Presse article earlier this month ("US Ponders Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton White House") makes the obvious connection between dynastic politics and the decisive influence of big money in the political sphere.

For a succinct statement of the irony of this outbreak of dynastic succession in the United States, we can turn again to Phillips, this time in a 2004 BuzzFlash.com interview:

[D]ynasties are something that the United States came into being fighting against. We have George III in 1775 and 1776. I don't see any reason why, in the last 25 years, we should have George I and George II, and think about Jeb I [three years later, this seems highly unlikely, thank god] and so forth. It's pernicious, almost, by definition of what America's all about.

Unfortunately, pernicious it may be, but dynastic privilege is clearly on the rise throughout American society, and not just in the political realm. Take the entertainment industry: given the prominence of actors from Michael Douglas (son of Kirk), to Gwyneth Paltrow (daughter of Blythe Danner), Nicholas Cage (nephew of Francis Ford Coppola), and Ben Stiller (son of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara) - - the list here is endless, frankly - - and directors like Sofia Coppola (daughter of Francis) and Nick Cassavetes (son of John), can anyone doubt that one of the most important success factors for those seeking a career in Hollywood is family ties? Although less pronounced, the same can be said for recording artists - - examples include Natalie Cole (daughter of Nat "King" Cole), Jakob Dylan (son of Bob) and Julian and Sean Lennon (sons of John). Ditto for television journalism, which has come to exhibit the nepotism characteristic of other "celebrity" spheres - - Chris Wallace (son of Mike), and Andrea Koppel (daughter of Ted), are two examples.

We see dynastic privilege at work in the spheres of politics and entertainment because, given their nature, these are especially visible to the general populace. Less visible, but, if anything, more rampant and pernicious, is the nepotism that is constantly at work in academia (where the children of wealthy alumni are given admissions preference at elite universities), and the world of business and finance, particularly at elite levels. To take just a single example, the children of Sanford Weill, Wall Street deal-maker and one of the world's richest individuals, both held top positions in his Citigroup empire - - son Marc was chief investment officer until he was forced out due to personal problems in 2000; daughter Jessica was mutual fund marketing chief for Smith Barney (owned by Citigroup's predecessor Travelers), before striking out on her own in 1999. It is unlikely in the extreme that either of these individuals would have gotten these positions on their own merits.

The fitness of these people for the work they do is not the relevant issue. Presumably, any number of people would have the necessary talent to occupy these roles. The question is, who is afforded the opportunity to hold these privileged positions and why?

What all of this reflects, it seems to me, is the coalescence of oligarchical power and control in the United States. In the mid-1970s, wealth inequality in the US, which had been generally declining since the onset of the Great Depression, began an inexorable rise. The following chart, taken from a Wikipedia article on the "gini coefficient," a key measure of income and wealth inequality, shows the postwar trends (for income distribution, in this case), for several countries, including the US:

[Click on chart for full-size version]

The cause of this steady growth in inequality is obvious: the period since the late-1970s - - the era of neoliberalism - - has seen a relentless attack by elites on the living standards of the mass of the US populace, through massive tax cuts that have primarily benefited the ultra-wealthy, deregulation of business, multilateral "free trade" agreements, offshoring of production to low-wage countries, undermining and destruction of labor organizations, etc. That this tremendous increase in the share of societal wealth controlled by a tiny minority should correspond to the mushrooming of dynastic privilege throughout US society is unsurprising.

When the issue of the potential for a multi-decade dynastic lock on the US presidency is considered by the mainstream media, it is generally attributed to the importance of "branding" in contemporary political campaigns (as pretty much everywhere else in American society these days), and, ultimately, to the power of money in determining which candidates are deemed "viable." In this view, wealthy donors are more likely to contribute to the campaign of the offspring (or spouse) of a former president, because this candidate has immediate national name recognition and media attention, and, thus, a better chance to win. This seems akin to the movie business, where investors, focused on ROI, generally favor sequels to blockbuster films over new material.

Although not incorrect, this view seems superficial. To understand the importance of branding, we must ask ourselves what a presidential brand might actually mean to these well-heeled donors who, it is taken as a given, have the primary power to select candidates for public office under our system. It seems to me, in this context, the dynastic brand is about safety and continuity. It goes like this: The first Bush and Clinton proved trustworthy in giving elites the key things they wanted (tax cuts, regulatory "relief," free-trade agreements, dismantling of the "welfare state," etc.), so it would be assumed that the second Bush and Clinton would faithfully serve elite interests, as well. Much of these latter dynasts' early "campaigning," then, would consist of offering private assurances of the validity of this assumption.

Interestingly, in the specific cases of George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton, there seems to be another factor at work, one that may or may not be generalizable: A key attraction of both of these politicians to their patrons consists of their potential ability to overcome political contradictions. In the case of Bush II, he was able to unite the primarily working and middle-class fundamentalist Christian base of the Republican Party, with the wealthy elite "country club" elements who have traditionally controlled the party, despite the fact that the latter effectively dictate a policy agenda that undermines the living standards of the former. In the case of Clinton II, the fact that she is a woman, and thus, potentially the first woman president, is no doubt viewed by elites as helpful in putting a progressive gloss on a fundamentally conservative candidacy, and, on that basis, forestalling the defection from the Democrats of millions of voters fed up by the party's craven support for militarism abroad and erosion of democratic rights and the living standards of average Americans at home.

Peak Exports: The Real Reason Behind War in the Middle East?

I have long suggested in discussions on the war in Iraq (and the coming war on Iran) that the conventional wisdom (expressed by commentators across the ideological spectrum) that sees the Iraq War as having become a disaster for its neocon champions is seriously flawed. This is especially the case if it is taken to mean (as many believe) that the war is recognized as a disaster in the eyes of Bush regime insiders themselves.

The notion of the war as a catastrophic blow to the neocon project rests on the belief that what the US ultimately wanted in Iraq was something that at least bears some resemblance to what the invasion's architects said they wanted: a stable, secure, and at least somewhat prosperous country, firmly subordinated under the US-led regional military "security" umbrella, open to US multinational corporate "investment" (and that of other Western countries of our - - not their - - choosing) for resource extraction and other purposes. This supposed ultimate goal is generally taken at face value, not only in right-wing and mainstream circles (where it is called an effort to create a "democratic" Iraq), but on the left, as well.

The standard left analysis is implied by my statement of this premise above: What the US wanted was not to bring "democracy" to Iraq (unless that term is taken as a euphemism for "openness to corporate penetration"), but, rather, what is very nearly its opposite: to place Iraq under classic neocolonial control. Such control most certainly implies a fundamental cession of Iraqi sovereignty: it would lose the authority to inhibit multinational corporate penetration of its economy, and it would cede any pretense of independent military power that could in any way challenge the hegemony in the Middle East of the US or of its local surrogate, Israel. Indeed, this latter element involves a concrete loss of sovereignty, in that Iraq's territory, itself, would be open, as necessary, for the installation of US military bases, to function as a staging-ground for further military aggression in the region.

Nonetheless (and this is the critical point), what this left view does not imply is the total destruction of Iraqi society and infrastructure. In fact, this model seems to envision what I suggested above: the creation of a reasonably stable and (given its immense resource wealth) prosperous country, albeit, with much greater inequality of wealth than under the Baathist regime, and with a significant share of that wealth flowing into the coffers of Western, not indigenous, elites. In this view, then, the fact that Iraq has been laid waste by the US invasion must mean that the US project has been a colossal failure from the perspective of its architects.

Well, what if, as I've long suspected, this is not the case? What it the real goal of US war planners (one that, for obvious reasons, they could never broach publicly) was to decimate Iraq, to turn it into a shambles? Were this the case, it would necessitate a thoroughgoing reexamination of the meaning of the invasion, as well as a significantly revised analysis of our current historical conjuncture, nearly five years on.

When I suggest to people that, from Bush's perspective, the war in Iraq may be fundamentally a success, the response is usually incredulity, followed by an argument that runs something like this: "Why on earth would the neocons have wanted to create this quagmire? Sure, they had no interest in bringing real democracy to Iraq, but how does it serve their interests to have sown chaos there? If they were trying to get their hands on the oil, it seems that instability would be counterproductive, since US multinationals will be required to invest tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure costs in order to get the oil out profitably. Who's going to invest in Iraq when you have insurgents regularly blowing up pipelines and murdering contractors?"

Until recently, I didn't have a compelling counter-argument to this. I would generally cite broader geopolitical imperatives that seemed to be trumping neocolonial ones; in particular, the determination of US policymakers that under no circumstances would any other country (except, of course, Israel) be permitted to even aspire to a regional leadership role in the Middle East that might in any way, now or in the future, challenge US hegemony there. I surmised that Iraq had been seen as so potentially dangerous to US long-term interests (given its resource wealth, educated populace, strategic location, etc.), that only by utterly shattering the country could this threat be deemed neutralized. Not implausible, perhaps, but not entirely compelling either.

This is where the concept of "peak exports" comes in. I won't provide a general discussion of the meaning and import of the peak oil theory here (any reader unfamiliar with this theory - - essential, in my view, for understanding the current state of the world - - should click on the "Resource Depletion" links on this blog, or pick up a copy of Richard Heinberg's The Party's Over). The peak exports theory deals with what's likely to happen to petroleum production once we pass the global peak (as I'll detail in a future post, several recent studies convince me we have already done so - - at least with respect to conventional oil). Hubbert theory posits a gradual downslope of post-peak production, roughly matching the trajectory of the upslope - - that is to say, a classic bell-shaped curve. Were post-peak production to follow this path, we might expect an annual decline rate of perhaps 2 to 5 percent.

Make no mistake, a decline rate in this range is hardly good news - - it would have grave, even catastrophic consequences for industrial societies. The notion of peak exports, however, moves us from the catastrophic to the apocalyptic. Jeffrey Brown, a Texas petroleum geologist and a frequent contributor to The Oil Drum (under the name westexas), as well as to the GraphOilogy blog, recognized that when one considers the implications of peak oil, one has to be careful to avoid conflating production with exports. To do so is to ignore the impact on exports of rising consumption within exporting countries, themselves. This rise in internal consumption coupled with a decline in production results in the tendency of exporting countries to cannibalize exports to feed internal demand, which leads to a much sharper export decline rate than the standard Hubbert production curve would indicate.

How much sharper? Brown and a colleague (Khebab at TOD and GraphOilogy) created a theoretical model for a hypothetical exporter Export Land. Here's a description of the model available here, at GraphOilogy:

In previous articles posted on The Oil Drum we outlined a simplistic export model for a hypothetical country with Ultimate Recoverable Reserves (URR) of about 38 billion barrels (Gb), labeled the Export Land Model (ELM). The model showed the effect on net exports of a country that hit peak production and started declining at 5% per year. The exporting country consumes 50% of its production, and that consumption is increasing by 2.5% per year. The 5% decline rate is loosely based on the post-peak Texas decline rate of about 4% per year. The ELM is shown graphically below, Figure One.

Figure 1

While this is a simplistic model, it has some important lessons for us.

First, assuming ultimate recoverable reserves of 38 Gb, and assuming that Export Land peaked when it was about 55% depleted, Export Land would have about 17 Gb of remaining recoverable reserves, after peaking. The model shows that only about 1.7 Gb, or 10%, of remaining post-peak recoverable reserves would be exported.

Second, the overall exponential net export decline rate, about 29% per year over the eight year net export decline period, is much more rapid than the production decline rate of 5% per year, because net exports in a given year are the net difference between two exponential functions: exponentially declining production and (generally) exponentially increasing consumption.

Third, the net export decline rate in a given year accelerates with time, from an initial year over year change in net exports of -12.5% to a final year over year change in net exports of -47.6% (last year of net exports) [emphasis added].

Brown then compares his model to the real-world cases of the UK and Indonesia, and he discovers that, in both cases, these countries' post-peak export decline rates exceeded the 28.8 percent rate posited for his hypothetical Export Land based on his model (they were 55.7 and 28.9 percent, respectively). He acknowledges that the decline rate for world exports is unlikely to be as high as even that of the model; however, Brown expects the export decline rate to be considerably higher than that of the production decline, and he expects this rate to accelerate over time.

It's not just Brown who is concerned with this issue; discussion of peak exports is suddenly everywhere. For example, it was a major topic of conversation at the recent ASPO USA conference in Houston, as noted by Tom Whipple in his article reviewing the meeting:

The most ominous development for countries such as the U.S., which must import most of its oil, is the emerging concept of “peak exports” which was discussed by several speakers. Peak exports simply means that oil-producing countries are using more and more oil at home – leaving less to sell abroad. Moreover, sentiment is starting to develop in many nations that they must save some oil for future generations, not just sell it to the foreign devils as quickly as possible.
This clearly means that major oil importers will face a shortfall in their ability to obtain oil many months or years sooner than they had been anticipating. The fall in the amount of oil available for purchase is likely to drop much more quickly than declines in production. When world oil exports fall, if they have not started doing so already, effects are likely to sharp and painful.

And here's a quote from an interview [scroll down for the interview transcript, which is in English] that David Strahan conducted at the ASPO-USA conference with Robert Hirsch (he of the now-famous Hirsch Report on peak oil, "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management," [.pdf] prepared for the Department of Energy in 2005):

One of the things that it seems to me is that peak oil to many people is not yet real. When it becomes real, I think that a number of oil exporters will stop and think about what they are doing with their resource for the longer term. When peak oil is realised, oil price will increase dramatically so there [sic] will have another major windfall, financial windfall. Some of those folks, I think, are very likely to say that they will cut back on their exports in order to husband the resource for a longer period of time for their own country. In fact Mr. Putin in Russia already has said as much.

Other people in the Middle East have made noises that they may do something like that also. It becomes a matter of an individual country deciding what is best for itself versus what is best for the world and individual countries really ought to look out for their own well being which could mean that indeed a number of them decide to hold back on exports for their own purposes and that would mean that peaking would occur earlier than might otherwise be the case, and be much more abrupt. So the decline rates in a situation like that would be I think much larger than one would calculate if one thinks only about the geology.

The significance of this is breathtaking. Quite simply, it suggests that, if market forces are allowed to work unhindered, oil importers (of which the US is, of course, the world's largest), could face the prospect of their fossil energy supply literally going off a cliff following the worldwide production peak. Without doubt, the result for these societies would be rapid, total collapse.

In this light, I believe that I finally understand the logic behind the destruction of Iraq. Given the reality of peak exports, even neocolonial business-as-usual becomes a woefully insufficient outcome. What is needed is the near-total destruction of internal demand for fossil fuels within exporting countries, such that, eventually (even if pacification takes years), we can take all of it for our use. If this is the goal, the best way to accomplish it would be to thoroughly destroy the exporting country's modern infrastructure and to kill or drive off as large a share of the population as possible. Sadly, this appears to be just what is occurring in Iraq.

It's interesting to note that Iran claims that it wants to build up a nuclear power infrastructure so that it can meet internal energy demand in a manner that will have as minimal an impact as possible on fossil fuel exports. [See, "Why Iran might need nuclear power after all"] Whatever one thinks of nuclear power as an energy source, the fact is that, from Iran's perspective, a search for non-fossil energy sources for internal needs makes eminent economic sense. The US, however, appears to have a different, and far more sinister plan for how to deal with the increase in Iranian domestic energy consumption.

If all of this is correct, then it is not hyperbole to suggest that the recent actions of the US in the Middle East constitute crimes against humanity of the highest order.

Al Gore, Media Pariah

After Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, Paul Krugman ran a column in the New York Times about what he called “Gore Derangement Syndrome.” By this, Krugman meant the irrational hatred of Gore on the part of right-wing media organs like the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the National Review. Krugman identified three key motivating factors for this hatred: 1) the right-wing’s guilty knowledge that Gore actually won the 2000 election (although Krugman doesn’t put it quite this starkly); 2) the fact that, since that time, Gore has consistently been right when he has taken positions against the right-wing consensus (with respect to climate change and Iraq, for example); and, 3) the right’s supposed frustration over the failure of their attempt to discredit and marginalize Gore (exemplified, for Krugman, by the Nobel Prize award).

Krugman’s analysis is valid as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Pointing a finger exclusively at the right saves Krugman from having to confront the implications of the much more troubling reality: mainstream media are just as guilty of having engaged in a relentless campaign to demean Al Gore.

This very point is made in a piece by Robert Perry, of Consortiumnews.com, responding to Krugman, entitled "Why Big Media Slimes Al Gore". Perry's essay represents the latest installment in his ongoing effort to explain the mainstream media's consistent denigration of Gore. He rightly traces this phenomenon back to the 2000 election campaign and to the post-election debacle, during which the MSM exhibited blatant anti-Gore (and pro-Bush) bias.

Perry then moves on to the press coverage of the results of the post-election re-examination of Florida ballots, which were announced in November 2001. As Perry notes, this review demonstrated conclusively that, if all of the votes had been counted in Florida, Al Gore would have won the state - - irrespective of what approach was taken for undervotes, overvotes, chads and the like. Despite this, all key MSM outlets headlined their coverage with precisely the opposite message (for example, the Washington Post's November 12, 2001 headline read: "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush.") [Although Perry doesn't address the particulars in this essay, the MSM were able to (lamely) justify this interpretation based on the fact that the partial recount asked for by Gore, had it been carried to its limited conclusion, might have resulted in a tiny Bush "victory." Of course, they failed to note that Gore had asked for the partial recount, rather than a full one, only because he had already been thrown on the defensive by the media's scornful dismissal of his post-election efforts to have the votes counted as the divisive delaying tactics of a sore loser.]

In Perry's view, media obfuscation of the true result of the ballot review was due to 9/11 - - to a felt need to rally the country around George W. Bush in the aftermath of the attacks. But for 9/11, Perry implies, the November 2001 headlines would have proclaimed the truth: "Gore Won Florida, Should be President." As for the MSM's post-9/11 fawning coverage of Bush, and its continuous belittlement of Gore, whether over his having dared to criticize Bush's "war on terror", or his having had the bad grace to be awarded the Nobel Prize, or his having dared to grow a beard without permission, Perry ascribes this to "senior news executives [who] apparently still feel that it is more important to ingratiate themselves with President Bush and his powerful admirers than it is to show some fairness to the man who was the choice of a plurality of American voters in 2000."

Just as with Krugman, who he rightly criticizes for doing so, Perry, too, pulls his punches. As Perry himself acknowledges, the media stance vis a vis Gore was firmly in place in 2000. It has been entirely consistent ever since. Later events such as 9/11 have not had a significant impact on this, as he claims. This anti-Gore bias remains firmly entrenched today, Nobel Prize be damned.

During the 2000 campaign, it was painfully obvious that, regardless of which candidate particular press organs may have "endorsed," as an institution, the MSM favored Bush. Gore was subjected to a relentless campaign of lies and innuendo, intended (somewhat perversely) to define him as a serial liar. This campaign had all the appearances of a meticulously designed disinformation campaign (and, in this, it can be seen as a foreshadowing of the fraudulent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction media campaign, as well as the current campaign to demonize Iran). Moreover, it was led, not by Fox News, but by those supposed paragons of the "liberal media," the Washington Post and the New York Times. One need look no further than an April 2000 article by Robert Perry himself, this time in the Washington Monthly, for an excellent overview of this campaign, and its key operatives, Ceci Connolly of the Post and Katharine Seelye of the Times. Another excellent source is The Daily Howler. This piece, from February of this year, provides a good overview. Or browse through that blog's year 2000 archives for post after post on media distortions and outright lies regarding everything from Gore's supposed retention of Naomi Wolf as an "alpha-male advisor", to Gore's supposed claim that he invented the internet, that he "discovered" Love Canal, etc., etc. In truth, it seems clear that Al Gore was denied the White House (that is to say, the election was close enough for Bush to steal it), because of this relentless campaign carried out by the mainstream media.

Why did this happen? It seems to reflect, in particular, the following factors: 1) the huge multinational corporations that own the (increasingly concentrated) MSM, and the ultra-wealthy layers that control these corporations, almost unanimously wanted Bush, not Gore, in the White House; and 2) journalists, themselves, over the last several decades, have become highly compensated figures, celebrities even, increasingly distant in their insular interests and concerns from the mass of the populace. Journalists have also been the object of a relentless winnowing process, whereby those who are too incisive and probing in the "wrong" directions are shunted aside, while those who aren't - - and who can thus be "trusted" - - are promoted and paid substantial sums. These layers, too, largely favored Bush. Those few who favored Gore bent over backwards to appear "balanced," lest they reveal the dreaded "liberal bias" that might threaten their privileged position.

All of this was especially obvious after election day in 2000, as the winner of the election - - Gore - - was subjected to a non-stop barrage of criticism, invective and ridicule. There was virtually no support for Gore from any quarter of the MSM during this period and in the aftermath of the Supreme Court intervention - - not even "liberals" would dare stand up for democratic rights, let alone for Gore. Representative of this is a particularly reprehensible November 18, 2000 piece by Frank Rich, which includes this gem: "Mr. Gore's public protestation that what he is 'focused on' is 'not the contest, but our democracy' offers yet further confirmation of his unctuous disingenuousness."

The blatantly false media coverage of the Florida recount was not due to 9-11 - - this was, at best, an excuse that could be muttered in an attempt at explanation (or, perhaps, justification). From the morning after the Supreme Court's decision was handed down, it was clear that the media were never going to deal honestly with what had occurred. The loser in the Presidential race had just been installed by judicial fiat of a right-wing Supreme Court majority, based on a despicable "opinion" that, to any honest person with legal training, obviously lacked any legal merit; in short, the country had just experienced a soft coup d'etat. But for the media, it was "get over it" time. The New York Times' morning-after editorial is representative: "It is incumbent on citizens and elected officials alike to respect the authority of the [Supreme Court] ruling and the legitimacy of the new presidency whether or not they agree with the court's legal reasoning."

Were Gore to run for President again (as some liberals, including Robert Perry, have urged him to do), he would face this same wall of media disdain. The reason is the same as in 2000: the powers-that-be don't want Al Gore to be President. Just as with elite “journalists”, a relentless winnowing process now applies with respect to national candidates: those who have shown that they can be trusted are showered with cash and afforded "gravitas" by the media. Those who haven't are derided, denied money, and shunted aside.

This is not, precisely, about favoring Republicans over Democrats.  The default MSM stance in this era is undoubtedly pro-Republican, since Republicans can nearly always be "trusted" in the ways that matter to elites. However, the contemporary role of the media is more about systemic stability than it is about partisanship. It may, in fact, be the case that this year, recognizing and adapting to the angry mood of the electorate, the MSM will tacitly favor (or at least, remain neutral with respect to) Hillary Clinton or even John Edwards or Barack Obama. These politicians have shown themselves to be fundamentally trustworthy - - on Iraq, on the coming attack on Iran and other future military adventures, on the maintenance of Bush's tax cuts and ultra-pro-business regulatory policies; in short, on all of the things that the people who rule this country in oligarchical fashion want, but that go against the interests of the large majority.

By these lights, Al Gore, during the last seven years, has only grown less trustworthy, and for precisely the reasons people like Perry (and Krugman) cite with admiration: his public opposition to the Iraq war before it began; his championing of environmental concerns (implicitly at the expense of endless economic growth and the corporate bottom line); his call for all elements in society to show responsibility.

In recent months, many have suggested that in 2008, if this country is to avert catastrophe, we need a new FDR as our leader. In my view, this attitude is naive for a number of reasons (perhaps I'll elaborate on these in a future post). However, taking this attitude at face value, one might ask: When people seek "a new FDR" what are they really looking for? It seems to me that it's more than "liberal policies" people are after. The key characteristic that Franklin Roosevelt exhibited was an essential fairness and sense of responsibility, of "commonwealth", that gave him the courage (and the willingness) to take on entrenched and extremely powerful interests in an effort to benefit the populace (and the nation) as a whole. He persuaded Americans that the federal government was working for the interests of "the people, not (just) the powerful" (to use - - with slight alteration - - Al Gore's 2000 campaign slogan, itself the object of countless media sneers, naturally). It is this characteristic of Roosevelt, I believe, that primarily accounts for the fact that, as is well known, FDR was uniquely beloved by the mass of the populace. What is perhaps less well remembered is the fact that for this same characteristic, FDR was almost universally hated by elites. Indeed, I would contend that the central political project of American elites ever since FDR has been the prevention of the emergence of another FDR.

Al Gore (especially the "new" Al Gore, chastened, no doubt, by his experience of having had the Presidency stolen from him in plain sight), shows some potential of being this "new FDR"; that is to say, someone who might see his role as President as consisting, fundamentally, of acting as an honest broker of competing societal interests (not to mention those of the natural world and of future generations), and who might elect to carry out this role (however imperfectly) based on some kind of standard of essential fairness. It is for this reason above all others that the MSM will work relentlessly, if need be (and, no doubt, successfully) to insure that Gore gets nowhere near the Presidency in 2008.

Which brings us back to Krugman, and the insufficiency of his analysis of Gore. Recall that his third explanation for "Gore Derangement Syndrome" is the fact that "in [Gore's] case the smear campaign has failed. He's taken everything they [here he means "the right" but we'll call it "elites"] could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever." In other words, they hate him because he won and they lost. But is this really the case? When they hated FDR, their enmity was directed at President Roosevelt. Alas, they're never going to have to focus their hatred on President Gore.