Archive for January, 2009
Feith: Bush Snookered Country into War
If, like me, you have a masochistic streak and aren’t yet tired of peeling back the layers of hubris, sophistry, stupidity and arrogance behind the war in Iraq, you might want to pick up the latest copy of Political Science Quarterly, with a review essay by Robert Jervis covering George Tenet’s and Douglas Feith’s books side-by-side. (Sorry, the essay isn’t online.)
In it, Jervis wades through a lot of the sorry history we already know, but makes some interesting observations and teases out some striking inferences, particularly from Feith’s book, of which he is more critical. Perhaps the most interesting argument Jervis makes in the piece is that, by any fair definition of the verb “to lie,” Feith makes clear that the administration lied in taking the country to war:
Feith’s central justification for the war is that even without active WMD programs or ties to al Qaeda, Saddam’s regime was by virtue of its tyrannical nature and previous behavior such a menace that it had to be removed. Inspections would fail not because Saddam might hide things, but because they were irrelevant to the real problem. This makes some sense, but renders the administration’s public position dishonest, since it insisted that its target was Saddam’s WMD programs, not his regime. In Feith’s telling, even if Saddam had cooperated with the inspectors, had shown that he was not actively pursuing WMD, and had dismantled some dubious equipment, he would have remained an intolerable threat because he could have resumed his dangerous activities at some time in the future. ”President Bush had already committed his Administration to changing the regime in Iraq” (p. 305), just as the critics claimed. The diplomacy and the insistence on inspections were a charade; only by going into exile or being replaced in a coup could Saddam have avoided an invasion, and not only were these possibilities slim, they risked leaving in place the Baathist regime, which is why Feith opposed such proposals when they emanated from the CIA (p. 200). Thus, although only in January 2003 did Bush tell his cabinet that “war is inevitable” (p. 342), in fact this was implicit much earlier. While Feith is correct to say that the administration did not lie about its mistaken beliefs that Saddam had active WMD programs and perhaps believed that [he] had ties to al Qaeda, if his account is correct, these were not the essential grounds for war.
[...]
Dean Acheson justified the extreme rhetoric in the early years of the Cold War by the need to make things “clearer than truth.” This is not unusual, although not immune from criticism. But if Feith is correct, what Bush did was much more than exaggerate and present the world in excessively vivid colors. The misrepresentation was fundamental. Feith sees the administration’s failure to clearly present its reasoning as a missed opportunity to build support for the long-term war on terrorism. I doubt it, but it does mean that if Feith’s understanding of the administration’s policy is correct, it lied to the American people about why they needed to go to war.
Jervis has done a lot of work on this topic (see here, for example), and has a book coming out on intelligence and intelligence failures. He is also the author of a (the?) text on the psychology of international politics.
How Will Barack Obama Reform Social Security?
Barack Obama says he will make entitlement reform a central part of his attempt to control government spending. Just how serious is President Obama about entitlement reform? Are private accounts for Social Security on the table? In today’s Cato Daily Podcast, senior fellow Michael D. Tanner weighs in on Obama’s plan for the future of entitlement programs.
“The fact is, of course, private investment would still be a better deal than Social Security, but you have to face the fact that people are scared of the market right now,” Tanner says. “But I think you’ve got to give Barack Obama points for political courage. In addressing the need for entitlement reform he is taking on one of the mainstays of his party.”
Who’s Blogging about Cato
A round-up of bloggers who are using Cato research and commentary in their work:
- Writing about how mainstream comedians will (or won’t) use the new administration for material, Reason Magazine senior editor Michael C. Moynihan cites David Boaz’s blog post about media coverage leading up to Obama’s inauguration. Blogger John Creath also draws from Boaz’s words on his blog, Give Us Liberty.
- John Hood, who writes for National Review’s blog, The Corner, links to Michael D. Tanner’s recent article on health care reform and cites Tony Leon and Marian L. Tupy’s research on Zimbabwe’s tyrannical ruler Robert Mugabe and Steve H. Hanke’s study of hyperinflation in the country.
- Stephen Gordon quotes Michael F. Cannon in a post for The Next Right about health care reform.
- Writing about Obama’s economic stimulus plan, radio host, financial advisor and author Roland Manarin cites David Boaz’s Cato@Liberty post about John Maynard Keynes.
Opportunities for Students
Calling all student writers, bloggers, and filmmakers! Cato on Campus has just launched three new student contests, offering monthly prizes and, later in the year, a top prize of a full scholarship to Cato University 2009 in San Diego.
We are accepting work from three categories: student op-eds, YouTube videos, and school papers.
The Cato on Campus Op-Ed Contest awards students for writing high quality op-eds on issues of liberty.
Our YouTube Contest seeks to support students who combine creativity with new technology to develop short videos that promote liberty and identify libertarian students with the passion and skills to take the message of liberty into the 21st century.
The Cato-in-the-Classroom contest encourages students to integrate Cato’s vast research materials into essays submitted for course credit.
For every contest, the best submissions each month are sent autographed copies of a Cato book related to their submission. The submission of the year will win a full scholarship to the 2009 Cato University at Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego.
Medicaid for All?
Back on January 8, the Wall Street Journal ran a fantastic op-ed on Medicaid by the American Enterprise Institute’s Scott Gottlieb. Excerpts:
Accumulating medical data shows that Medicaid recipients’ poor health outcomes aren’t just a function of their underlying medical problems, but a more direct consequence of the program’s shortcomings….
Now Medicaid is to receive a bolus of federal money, probably as part of the fiscal stimulus plan — the figure whispered in Washington is $100 billion — with no obligation that the program does anything to reverse its decline….
The troubling evidence about the quality of Medicaid patients’ services is a cautionary tale for Mr. Obama as he sets about to administer more of our health care inside government agencies. Turning Medicaid around should be the least we demand before turning over more of our private health-care market to similar government management.
Mitch McConnell: Do as I Say, Not as I Do
Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gave a speech today at the National Press Club outlining his vision for the future of the Republican Party. McConnell called for Republicans to “reassert mainstream conservative philosophies.”
Given that his 2008 reelection campaign focused heavily on his ability to secure pork-barrel spending for Kentucky, those philosophies apparently do not include respect for the taxpayer or smaller government.
Lousy, Ungrateful, Punk Kids!
Yes, the title sounds like a line from the crotchety old man in a movie, but somehow it just seems to fit. In Nevada, the college students have taken to the anger/dance party streets, outraged over a proposal to cut state higher education funding in the face of recession:
Before the rally got underway, students crammed tents to sign petitions and receive information on how to contact state legislators. Others waved signs of protest like “Impeach [Governor Jim] Gibbons” as a DJ spun music near the stage. During the event, students bristled with indignation at the mention of the cuts, while they wildly cheered calls demanding action.
Now, I believe the children are our future and all that, but let’s put this in perspective. First off, everyone has lots of things they think are valuable and for which they want to use their money. Why should they have to support UNLV, or any other college, rather than, say, buy a car? More concretely, as the attached chart from the State Higher Education Executive Officers shows, Nevada has pretty steadily increased public per-pupil expenditures on higher ed over the last few years and, indeed, kept funding pretty stable or growing over the last few decades. Meanwhile, the state’s kept net revenue from tuition pretty constant. Moreover, relative to other states, Nevada is extremely generous, with public per-pupil expenditures of $8,589 in 2007 (versus a national average of $6,773) and per-pupil revenue through tuition of only $1,798 (versus a national average of $3,845).
And so, I repeat the crotchety old man’s line — “Lousy, ungrateful, punk kids!” — with a warning that the Silver State is hardly the only place we’ll see such self-righteous student greediness in the coming months.
Week in Review
Cato Scholars Comment on Obama Inauguration Speech
When Barack Obama stepped to the microphone as President of the United States on Tuesday, he addressed a number of key policy issues, including government spending, terrorism and responsible leadership. After two years of examining candidate Obama’s rhetoric and policy proposals, Cato scholars weigh in on Obama’s first words as president:
John Samples, director of Cato’s Center for Representative Government, offers his take on what he considers the major theme of Obama’s speech: Responsibility. Samples writes:
Obama’s modest demeanor suggests an understanding of his own limitations. If that is true, he may turn out to be more a politician and less a priest, a president content to live within the laws and achieve marginal changes in public policy.
But I wonder. Living in Washington, DC, I have recently had reason to recall Samuel Johnson’s remark about Shakespeare: “In his plays, there are no heroes, only men.” Obama seems to be telling a different story, a tale about charismatic heroes and utopian aspirations. When the talking stops and the doing begins, one question will be answered: Do Americans really want to live out a play where there are no men, only heroes?
In his inaugural address, Obama promised to eliminate government programs that don’t work. Daniel T. Griswold, director of Cato’s Center for Trade Policy Studies, says cutting farm subsidies is a great place to start:
If Senator and candidate Obama could not see the need to end our failed farm policies, it is hard to imagine many if any other programs that will come to an end under his administration.
Director of Information Policy Studies Jim Harper breaks down Obama’s rhetoric on foreign policy and terrorism:
I regret that he raised terrorism again because of the benefit it gives terrorists (knowing that they are in his head). But if it is going to be raised, I can’t think of a better way to do so — no reference to any specific group, just a declaration to anyone considering terrorism: You will lose.
Regulatory Competition between States and Feds Should Be Expanded, not Curtailed
The Washington Post has a fairly lengthy report on the the competing system of bank charters. But rather than analyze how this system of federal and state charters forces regulators to be less onerous, the story presupposes that there somehow is a gap in the regulatory structure that requires attention. This would be a mistake. Indeed, rather than force banks into one national system, the same model should be extended to insurance. Governments — including regulators — are much more likely to act in a responsible fashion when they know their “clients” have a choice:
At least 30 banks since 2000 have escaped federal regulatory action by walking away from their federal regulators and moving under state supervision, taking advantage of a long-standing system that allows banks to choose between federal and state oversight, according to a Washington Post review of government records. The moves, known as charter conversions, highlight the tremendous leverage that banks hold in their relationships with government supervisors. …Some regulatory experts say that eliminating the opportunity to switch regulators is critical to strengthening oversight. …Since 2000, about 240 banks have converted from federal to state charters. Regulators and bank executives say many of those institutions simply wanted to save money. …But the pursuit of leniency is an important undercurrent. …The roughly 1,550 banks with national charters are regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The 5,600 state-chartered banks are regulated under 50 sets of state rules. In a parallel system, the federal Office of Thrift Supervision competes with state regulators to charter savings-and-loans. While every bank and thrift requires a charter to operate, they all have at least two choices. …Critics have long complained that the system allows banks to play regulators against one another, creating what former Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns memorably described as a “competition in laxity.” …A smaller number of banks, about 90, have converted from state to federal charters since 2000.
Terrorism Hysteria Watch
One aim of the conference we held last week at Cato (watch it here) was to encourage the country to adopt a more grown-up approach to combating terrorism — less fear-mongering, more confidence, or as James Fallows put it, “reclaiming Gary Cooper, not Chicken Little, as our national icon.” Chicken-littleism has political causes that we can’t change. But pointing out threat inflation should at least make its authors think twice.
To that end, here are three recent examples of officials or the media hyping terrorist capability.
1. Senator Kit Bond, at Dennis Blair’s confirmation hearing as Director of National Intelligence, said the following:
Our entire way of life is just a few moments away from annihilation if terrorists succeed in obtaining a weapon of mass destruction.
Nonsense. Our way of life survived various wars, the virtual destruction of a large swath of New Orleans, and other disasters. It would survive even nuclear terrorism. Incidents of chemical or biological terrorism are unlikely to cause mass casualties, although they could, and will not collapse our institutions. The danger to American values comes more from our reaction to terrorism than the thing itself. What’s more, these sorts of incidents are not nearly as likely as you generally hear.
Not Just Cato Economists Oppose Stimulus
A Chicago Tribune editorial on the $800 billion “stimulus” plan noted that not all economists support such a scheme, as many stories in the media are suggesting:
John Cochrane, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, says that among academics over the last 30 years, the idea of fiscal stimulus has been discredited and in graduate courses, it is ‘taught only for its fallacies.’
New York University economist Thomas Sargent agrees: ‘The calculations that I have seen supporting the stimulus package are back-of-the-envelope ones that ignore what we have learned in the last 60 years of macroeconomic research.’
That’s what I remember from my BA and MA in economics, so I’ve been surprised by the dominance of Keynesian voices quoted in news stories.
Here are some more stimulus skeptics on a panel at the University of Chicago.
Small-Government Republicans
House Minority Leader John Boehner tells NPR, “I and most Republicans believe that a smaller, less costly government gives us a healthier economy and a healthier society.”
Reality check: How the federal budget grew during the years of President Bush and a Republican Congress:
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on Google+
Cato on YouTube
