How is the Iraq debacle affecting Bush’s popularity? This is the subject of another “intriguing APSA paper”:http://home.gwu.edu/~voeten/VoetenBrewerAPSA1.0.pdf, co-written by Erik Voeten and Paul R. Brewer.[1] Like most papers being presented at APSA this week, it’s a work in progress – for one thing there’s a couple of months’ more data to be collected – but it makes some very interesting arguments.

A couple of key points emerge. First, public opinion on the war is affecting Bush’s popularity – but the relationship is complicated. The paper suggests that public opinion on the war can be disaggregated into three different evaluations – (1) of whether the war was a good idea in the first place, (2) of whether the President is doing a good job in prosecuting the war, and (3) of whether the war is going well. According to the paper, evaluations of whether the war was a good idea in the first place should have the strongest relationship with Bush’s popularity. However, they’re also the most strongly rooted of the three, and thus the most difficult to change. Evaluations of whether the war is going successfully or not, are the most likely to be changed by events – but also have the weakest effect on Bush’s popularity. A 1% change in the number of respondents who think the war is going well corresponds to a.29% shift in the evaluation of Bush’s performance in Iraq, and only a .17% shift in the the number of respondents who think the war was worth it.

The data suggest that there is a strong relationship between support for the war and Bush’s approval rating. A 1% increase in support for the war equates to a .74% increase in Bush’s approval rating (and vice versa). However, support for the war seems perhaps to be becoming less important in relative terms – there is some tentative evidence suggesting that economic confidence is now becoming an increasingly important influence on Presidential approval ratings.

The paper is an empirical investigation rather than a political brief, but it’s hard to avoid the temptation of trying to draw political lessons from it. First, it suggests that the war is hurting Bush’s popularity – but that in order to really make substantial gains, the Democrats would have to convince waverers not only that the war is going badly, but that it was a misconceived project in the first place. Given the rather remarkable level of cognitive dissonance that many war supporters seem prepared to tolerate, this is a tall order. However, as Erik and Paul note, a major event in the war could have quite substantial positive or negative consequences for Bush’s support. Second, while the war is still a key political issue driving support (or the lack of it) for the administration, the economy may be starting to play a more important role. Structural explanations of public opinion have their limitations of course – they can’t capture the more evanescent political controversies that may affect elections. Even so, there’s good reason to believe that the war and the economy are going to continue to have a powerful effect on people’s voting intentions – and on current form, that can’t be good news for Bush.

fn1. Full disclosure – Erik is a colleague of mine at GWU and a grad-school mate of Kieran and Eszter’s.

A while ago, I discussed the idea that the forthcoming US election would be a good one for the Democrats to lose, eventually reaching the conclusion that the damage that would be caused by four more years of Bush would offset any political benefits from finally discrediting the Republicans.

Now Niall Ferguson looks at the same question from the other side. Like me[1], he thinks this would be a good election for either party to lose. But, since he’s taking the Republican side of the debate, the damage that a second Bush term would cause is an argument in favor of his case. He concludes

moderate Republicans today may justly wonder if a second Bush term is really in their best interests. Might four years of Kerry not be preferable to eight or more years of really effective Democratic leadership?

fn1. Though not for exactly the same reasons. He puts more weight on criticisms of Kerry than I think can be justified, and less on the extent to which painful economic adjustments are already inevitable.

I’ve got to give today’s MVP in debunking to Fred Kaplan at Slate.

Here, one more time, is the truth of the matter: Kerry did not vote to kill these weapons, in part because none of these weapons ever came up for a vote, either on the Senate floor or in any of Kerry’s committees.

This myth took hold last February in a press release put out by the RNC. Those who bothered to look up the fine-print footnotes discovered that they referred to votes on two defense appropriations bills, one in 1990, the other in 1995. Kerry voted against both bills, as did 15 other senators, including five Republicans. The RNC took those bills, cherry-picked some of the weapons systems contained therein, and inferred that Kerry voted against those weapons. By the same logic, they could have claimed that Kerry voted to disband the entire U.S. armed forces; but that would have raised suspicions and thus compelled more reporters to read the document more closely.

What makes this dishonesty not merely a lie, but a damned lie, is that back when Kerry cast these votes, Dick Cheney—who was the secretary of defense for George W. Bush’s father—was truly slashing the military budget…

I’m not accusing Cheney of being a girly man on defense. As he notes, the Cold War had just ended; deficits were spiraling; the nation could afford to cut back. But some pro-Kerry equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Zell Miller could make that charge with as much validity as they—and Cheney—make it against Kerry.

The whole thing is great.

P.S. In the comments to a thoughtful Obsidian Wings post, a few people have said that delegates were chanting “Hang ’em” when Kerry or Edwards (or maybe just Edwards) were mentioned. Can anyone confirm or deny? Is there a reasonable story behind this?

I just wanted to be part of the Allelujah chorus on this:

Atrios reports gleefully that a Republican Congressman, asked point-blank about his sexual orientation, refused to answer.

Good for him! (The congressman, I mean.) The right answer to that question, from anyone except a potential sexual partner, is “None of your f—ing business.”

I really, really disapprove of gay-baiting, even if the gays being baited hold disgusting political positions. And I thought that attitude was part of the definition of liberalism.

When did that change? Did I miss the memo?

The Republicans are dismayingly insane. Moving right along, I’m wondering whether, when copyright gets extended – as it did with Bono – works get taken out of the public domain and made private IP. That is, when copyright went from life + 50 to life + 70 some public domain works that had passed the 50 mark, but not the 70 mark, ceased to be public domain? Has this created legal trouble or controversy? Suppose I made (and copyrighted) an edition of a recently liberated public domain work that, when the hammer of copyright extension fell, ceased to be such. Would my edition, legally produced during a window of opportunity, cease to be legal? Never mind whether I am a retroactive pirate – a time bandit, if you will. Can I continue to publish my work because I produced and copyrighted it during a window of opportunity?

In short, does Congress have the right not just to extend copyright but to re-enclose the public domain? And if Congress has the right to re-enclose the public domain, is there any limit to that power (apart from the fact that it could only reassign rights to the distant descendents of authors and creators – you know, so as to foster science and the useful arts.)

UPDATE: Oh, the wikipedia tells me that no expired copyrights were reinstated. This does imply that the life + 70 term is not strictly definitive. There are works that fail that test that are actually public domain? So the date of Bono – 1998 (?) – becomes quite crucial for calculating whether a given work is public domain?

2nd UPDATE: This recent decision (June 19, 2004), “Luck’s Music Library, Inc. v. Ashcroft” (PDF) (via this page), seems to establish Congress’s power to remove works from public domain retroactively. Although I guess Bono did not actually do anything of the sort. Interesting.

“Tariq Ramadan has an article in the New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/01/opinion/01ramadan.html responding to the revocation of his visa and to some of the accusations made against him.

Today’s Telegraph has two reviews of Philipp Blom’s Encyclopédie: one by “Graham Robb”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/08/29/boblo29.xml&sSheet=/arts/2004/08/29/botop.html and the other by “Anthony Daniels”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/08/29/boblo229.xml (aka Theodore Dalrymple). It sounds like another volume to add to my Enlightenment pile (some of which I’ve even read). From Daniels’s review:

bq. Because censorship was still strong, though not completely inflexible, in the France of Louis XV, the authors of subversive articles in the various volumes had to adopt an indirect Aesopian approach (a most aesthetically and intellectually satisfying technique that is closed, alas, to authors who have no censorship to evade). My favourite practitioner of such subtle subversion is the Abbé Mallet, who undermined religious dogmas by discussing them in deadpan and literal-minded fashion. He meditates, for example, at great and pedantic length on the precise geographical location of Hell – was it in Terra Australis, in the sun, or in the environs of Rome? And how many species of animal Noah would have had to take aboard the Ark, how many bales of hay and straw, and how often he would have had to clean out the animals’ stalls? No dogma can long withstand the onslaught of this kind of concrete-mindedness, posing in the garb of credulous orthodoxy.

At some point soon I want to write an extended post on the Enlightenment and the common references on blogs to “the Enlightenment Project” and “the values of the Enlightenment”. Pending that, here’s a link to Robert Wokler’s essay “The Enlightenment: The Nation-State and the Primal Patricide of Modernity”:http://www.colbud.hu/main/PubArchive/DP/DP46-Wokler.pdf (PDF) which digs overs some of the questions concerning the relationship between the Enlightenment and “modernity”. (The essay also appears in a collection co-edited by Wokler and “Norman Geras”:http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/ — _The Enlightenment and Modernity_).

Zell “‘I am a Democrat because we are the party of hope'”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3600710.stm Miller says John Kerry has been “more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure”:http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/9557575.htm. Except maybe that guy who delivered Clinton’s keynote a decade or so ago and is delivering Bush’s now. What’s his name again?

Miller could have used some bits of the “Bush Twins Speech”:http://www.slate.com/id/2106067/ to better effect than they did. “And as to my fifty year career in the Democratic Party … Well, when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible!” Would’ve played much better.

Anyway, all in all a ringing endorsement of the the cardinal conservative virtues of steadfastness, loyalty, constancy and, in the words of “another well-known Democrat”:http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_08_29_dish_archive.html#109409968493733425 a “partisan,” “crude” and “gob-smackingly vile” effort “jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric.” Vote for Bush because _Zell Miller_ told you Kerry flip-flops and we shouldn’t “change horses in midstream”:http://www.buzzflash.com/filmfan/04/08/fil04002.html.

OK gang, you know how much you love your mates at CT, now it’s time for you lot to do something for us. We need to get the Wisdom of Crowds to work to come up with an idea that will make us[1] all rich. There’s quite likely to be an election in the UK within the next twelve months, which means that anyone who wants big and lucrative government contracts needs to start donating to the Labour Party now.

Footnote:
[1]In case it’s unclear, I am not using “us” here in any sense that might include you lot.

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The non-political Vietnam Veterans of America have condemned the Purple Hearts band-aids worn as jokes by some Republican delegates.

Vietnam Veterans of America has received reports of delegates at the Republican National Convention disseminating and wearing “Purple Heart” band-aids in mockery of one of nation’s most distinctive honors, the Purple Heart medal…

The spirit of the award recognizes the personal sacrifice of our troops without regard to the severity or nature of the wound. It is the wounding itself that merits the honor. To demean the decoration and the sacrifice it symbolizes demeans all veterans and the patriots who honor them.

With our nation’s sons and daughters at war to protect global freedom, demeaning military service in this way is especially hurtful. Vietnam Veterans of America urges all Americans to decry this type of outrageous, disrespectful, and infantile behavior.

(Bitter rant with links to Bush-supporters who thought this was funny deleted)

Good.

Via Oliver Willis

As a fellow prohibitionist I decided to send an email to Mr Hastert asking him either to assure me that he has turned over the evidence he has of Mr. Soros’s wrongdoings to the relevant authorities or, if there is no evidence, to withdraw his accusations as prominently as possible. I got this very odd message after I send my email:

bq. Due to Congressional franking rules I cannot send a personal response to people outside the 14th District of Illinois. Your opinion is still important to me though and will be registered.

What on earth does this mean? The Speaker of the House is not allowed to correspond with people outside his district? Can this be right? I am not asking this frivolously, or to make a partisan point against the Speaker, since my experience of US electoral and campaigning laws is sufficient to know that it is labyinthine and bizarre in the extreme; incredible as it is I’m entirely willing to believe it. I ask so that some of the experts out there can explain what it means.

Fred Clark has two excellent posts (here and here) about the Republican vision of the “ownership society.” I can’t help but quote this:

Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., began his speech Tuesday at the Republican National Convention by talking about his father. “My dad, a family doctor in Tennessee for 50 years,” he said.

That would be Thomas Frist Sr., the founder of Columbia/HCA — a giant chain of more than 500 for-profit hospitals, outpatient centers and home health care agencies. HCA is worth about $20 billion.

So your basic Tennessee country doctor then.

Or this:

… The Republicans’ agenda … potentially involves a historic restructuring of the American system of government. Roughly two-thirds of taxable income is paid to workers in the form of wages and benefits. The other third goes to reward capital, or accumulated savings, in the form of corporate profits, dividends and interest payments. If Bush’s economic agenda was fully enacted, the vast bulk of these payments wouldn’t be taxed at all, and labor would end up shouldering practically the entire burden of financing the federal government.

In a new book, “Neoconomy: George Bush’s Revolutionary Gamble with America’s Future,” Daniel Altman, a former economics reporter for the Times and The Economist, describes what such a system might look like. “The fortunate and growing minority who managed to receive all their income from stocks, bonds and other securities would pay nothing — not a dime — for America’s cancer research, its international diplomacy, its military deterrent, the maintenance of the interstate highway system, the space program or almost anything else the federal government did. … Broadly speaking, that fortunate minority would be free-riders.”

That is President Bush’s goal and agenda for the next four years. Sound good to you?

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This probably doesn’t mount to all that much, but it’s been irritating me slightly for the last couple of days …

We all know that the second most dispiriting phrase in the English language is “Steve Milloy has a devastating critique …” (the first most dispiriting phrase is “My new column is up at Tech Central Station”.) The original reason why the Volokh post linked above irritated me was that it came the day after a post on Tim Lambert’s marvellous spot on the radians/degrees error in that global warming error. It rather irked me that Tim Lambert should get referenced with caveats (“Of course, that’s the claim; if there’s a rebuttal somewhere, please point me to it”) while Steven Milloy got three paragraphs of direct quotation with no caveats at all. Anyone wh knows even a little bit about the two chaps knows that Tim has always been tirelessly and scrupulously accurate, while Steven Milloy, proprietor of “junkscience.com”, is a bit of a hack, who got his start with a bit part towards the end of the single largest and most impressive work of intellectual dishonesty of the previous century[1], the effort to discredit the scientific work on the link between tobacco and lung cancer.

So I decided to take a look at the “devastating critique” to see whether it was really all that.

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“The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.”

That’s a quote from a Supreme Court ruling in 1972. It’s also apparently a state secret, as the Justice Department tried to black it out on a court document.

It’s part of a complaint brought by the ACLU (.pdf file). One aspect of the Patriot Act is a gag provision that prohibits anyone who receives a National Security Letter (a request for information) from “disclos[ing] to any person that the [FBI] has sought or obtained access to information or records.” The ACLU is contesting this, and their legal documents are subject to redacting by the Justice Department. This quote from the Supreme Court was one of many portions redacted.

If you’ve ever thought about becoming a member of the ACLU, this might be a good time.