... when Meade asks her why he should "be ashamed" of himself. That's at the end of this uncut 7 1/2-minute video, shot outside the Capitol this afternoon.
In the beginning, a man demands that a woman explain her sign, which reads "Public workers don't need collective bargaining." She's double-teamed by the man's wife, who finds it "odd" and "socially irresponsible" that a person would have a sign yet choose not to lay out her argument for discussion and dialogue. When the man says that she has a choice but other people don't, Meade begins questioning him. After a short interchange, a bunch of anti-Walkerites converge on Meade. One man grabs his camera. Another blows a whistle close to his face.
Somehow, I can't escape the feeling of obligation to post about this. It's a bit annoying to me, because I cannot stand when people jump to the conclusion that someone they want to believe is stupid is being stupid when they say something that seems wrong. Think first. Is it wrong?
And I hate the converse — the assumption that the supposedly smart person has said something smart. Stop. Slow down. Read/listen closely. It's often the case that what we have is a banal political disagreement. And that's what I think this O'Donnell/Coons thing is.
I really wish I had the verbatim transcript of the colloquy, and that's the main reason I've been dragging my feet posting on this. The reporters aren't presenting the quotes in a reliable fashion. And we need to begin with stark clarity that the text of the Establishment Clause is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
So let's look at the reporting:
"Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked while Democrat Chris Coons, an attorney, sat a few feet away.
Plainly, the Constitution does not say "separation of church and state," so there's nothing stupid there. It's provocative, because many people like that gloss on the text.
Coons responded that O'Donnell's question "reveals her fundamental misunderstanding of what our Constitution is. ... The First Amendment establishes a separation."
He's talking about interpretations of the text, and she was talking about the text. What we're hearing is 2 individuals talking past each other.
She interrupted to say, "The First Amendment does? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment?"
She's telling him to pay attention to her limited point about the text.
He noted again the First Amendment's ban on establishment of religion.
Ah, here's where I hate reporters. Give me the quote. I don't think Coons quite gets it. Ah. Here. He says: "Government shall make no establishment of religion."
O'Donnell reacts: "That's in the First Amendment?" And, in fact, it's not. The First Amendment doesn't say "government." It says "Congress." And since the discussion is about what local school boards can do, the difference is highly significant.
Also, it isn't "shall make no establishment of religion." It's "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." There's a lot one could say about the difference between those 2 phrases, and I won't belabor it here. Suffice it to say that it was not stupid for O'Donnell to say "That's in the First Amendment?" — because it's not. Coons was presenting a version of what's in the cases interpreting the text, not the text itself.
The 2 were talking past each other, trying to look good and make the other look bad. It is a disagreement about law between 2 individuals who are not running for judge. It's not detailed legal analysis. It's a political debate and this is a political disagreement. An important one, no doubt. But it can't be resolved by laughing at one person and calling her an idiot, something I find quite repellent.
The challenger, Ryan Frazier, is being pretty annoying and keeps waggling his finger in what I would say was Perlmutter's air space. This makes me laugh every time I watch:
Poor Perlmutter! He's behaving in an instinctive and not genuinely violent way. It's actually pretty friendly, and Frazier had to know he was wielding that finger annoyingly. But Perlmutter touched! Do not touch! And Frazier does such a perfect "Don’t hit me man. Come on."
To help you organize your reaction to the incident: Perlmutter's the Democrat, Frazier is the Republican.
CORRECTION: I typo'd "laps" for "slaps." Ha ha. What a picture!
The senator began the debate with a gentle reminiscence about his mother, who took in wash from the brothels in scruffy Searchlight, Nev.
Angle could have told the poignant story of her German immigrant great-grandmother who died trying to save laundry hanging on the clothesline in a South Dakota prairie fire, which Angle wrote about in her self-published book, “Prairie Fire.” But instead the former teacher and assemblywoman began hurling cafeteria insults. “I live in a middle-class neighborhood in Reno, Nevada,” she said. “Senator Reid lives in the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C.”
But, so... Dowd's point is that Sharron Angle is a high-school "mean girl." Hey, I wonder if she read my October 8th piece answering Slate's question "Who gets to be a feminist?" I wrote:
So what am I supposed to care about here? You don't get any special rights or privileges for being a feminist, so what difference does it make? "Who gets to be a feminist?" Is it some high-school clique with mean girls deciding who gets in? Are there guardians at the entrance? The entrance of what? Nothing hinges on it. One woman says, "I am a feminist" and another says, "No, you're not." This is political polemic of a very dull sort.
I see the liberal women as having the exclusionary "mean girl" attitude, but Dowd is trying to pin that stereotype on Angle. How does Angle's failure — in a political debate — to rhapsodize about an ancestor exclude anyone? I can see that Reid might wish things had stayed sweet and gentle, but how is a political debate a time for hugs? If women are to be in politics, we need to rise above the socialization toward niceness and not hurting anyone's feelings.
And how is it "hurling cafeteria insults" to question Reid about how he got so rich when he's spent nearly his whole career in politics? It certainly wasn't saying my neighborhood is better than yours — which might be mean-girlish. He lives in the Ritz-Carlton in Washington!
Dowd is hot to flip everything around. If you want to talk about mean girls, she's the mean girl! But look at how she portrays herself:
... I was getting jittery....
As the politicians droned on and my Irish skin turned toasty brown, I worried that Governor Brewer might make a citizen’s arrest and I would have to run for my life across the desert. She has, after all, declared open season on anyone with a suspicious skin tone in her state....
After the debate was over, Angle scurried away and so did I — in a different direction. I was feeling jittery again. If she saw me, she might take away my health insurance and spray-paint my locker.
Dowd is my age — nearly 60. Isn't there something really awful about presenting your emotional life in adolescent terms when you are that old? Especially when you're cozily situated on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Here's Dowd's description of Sharron Angle:
Even sober and smiling beneath her girlish bangs, the 61-year-old Angle had the slightly threatening air of the inebriated lady in a country club bar...
Now, click over to Dowd's column and see how she looks: sober and smiling beneath her girlish side-swept bangs, the 58-year-old Dowd has a slightly threatening air. Which is just fine! Don't get me wrong. A columnist should feel threatening. But she's not a timorous girl. Or maybe she is when she gets out in the world, out of her comfort zone. If so, that's not fine. And it's not Sharron Angle's flaw.
AND: You can really feel the disrespect for O'Donnell in that clip. Whether it's because she's a woman or not, I think it stirs something instinctive in many women. It's dangerous for men even to seem to give off the vibe that they're really saying: You don't really belong here, little lady. Hillary has often tried to get us to feel that vibe, and it's worked for her quite few times.
Watch Russ Feingold confidently assert that he represents Tea Party values. Marvel at the importance of reading the Constitution at an early age and carrying it around all the time. Consider the question whether we should want a millionaire in the Senate. Feingold says it's good to have a nonmillionaire, like him, in the Senate, because the Senate is so full of millionaires and it provides some balance. On the other hand, a businessman who's made millions, like Johnson, has proven something about his ability and his knowledge of how the world works.
ADDED: You can watch the whole debate here. I thought it was interesting to see how well the new guy, Johnson, was able to look polished and competent alongside Russ Feingold.
Gee, it wasn’t long ago that Tea Partiers were a fringe group of astroturf bigots or something. Now it seems like everyone wants to be a Tea Partier! Who on earth could have seen this coming?
The answer, of course, is: Instapundit. I must say, when those tea parties began, I thought they were kind of embarrassing. I didn't get Instapundit promoting them all the time.
The 2d of 3 of his wives quotes or purports to quote Newt Gingrich as he spoke to the minister who was — allegedly — brought in to counsel the couple through what turned out to be their crack up.
He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused. He'd just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he'd given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values. The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, "How do you give that speech and do what you're doing?"
"It doesn't matter what I do," he answered. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live."
I got distracted at this point in writing this post by a little boy arguing passionately toward his mother who was walking away from him out of this café. I didn't catch what the argument was about, but I could tell from his tone and a few of the words that he was making an argument based on the kind of principles that constitutional lawyers use: liberty, equality, fairness. Like grammar, these principles are built into the human brain. Just as toddlers naturally learn to speak, they learn to use these concepts to argue for what they want. The lawyerlyhuman little boy was perhaps 3 years old.
Anyway, you don't have to be much more than 3 to call bullshit on Newt. The things husbands say to their wives! (And wives to their husbands.) Laughably unprincipled assertions that you'd never inflict on anyone other than a spouse — these words will make a fool of you if they are ever quoted to the general public. And God help you if you're caught on audiotape: "I deserve to be blown fast! Before the fucking Jacuzzi!" Ha. That never gets old. Seriously, I think the phrase "Before the Jacuzzi!" should become a witty comeback that you use to mock your spouse when he (or she) makes an argument of the sort that is only used intra-marriage and that one would never even attempt to aim at someone who wasn't maritally bound to you. "Before the Jacuzzi" = You only think you can say something like that to a human being because that human being is your spouse.
There's a lot of enthusiasm about Obama's appearance at the GOP retreat — enthusiasm among Obama supporters. I skimmed the transcript late last night without finding something I could say. Obama seemed to be haranguing the Republicans about bipartisanship again, as he did during the State of the Union address, and I didn't see what this added, other than that it was nice/bold of him to show up at their event — give them some face time. But obviously, he's reaching out now because he needs them, as he did not before. Why, then, should I be impressed, and, more importantly, why should the Republicans help him now?
But given the amount of enthusiasm — e.g., Marc Ambinder gushing about "An Amazing Moment" — I decided — now that it's not late at night anymore — to take the time to watch the video and, as I go, blog from the transcript. Since that will take a little time, let me end this post now, so you can get the conversations started. Here's the video of the speech, and here's the Q&A section.
To give you something to chew on, here's Ambinder:
The moment President Obama began his address to Republicans in Baltimore today, I began to receive e-mails from Democrats: Here's an except from one of them: "I don't know whether to laugh or cry that it took a f$$@&$* year for Obama to step into the ring and start throwing some verbal blows... I'm definitely praying at mass on Sunday morning that this Obama doesn't take another 12 month vacation."
Well, that's a funny contrast to Obama's big theme of bipartisanship!
This e-mail comes from a very influential Democrat.
Hmm. Who? Some Catholic. Some Catholic who's praying to God that his guys kick the other guys' asses.
Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may turn out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months. Debating a law professor is kind of foolish...
Heh heh... bring it on, baby!
... the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama's weakness -- his penchant for nuance -- into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president. (By the way: can we stop with the Obama needs a teleprompter jokes?)
Okay, I will be looking for the strengthful nuance that knocks down all arguments.
More than the State of the Union -- or on top of the State of the Union -- this may be a pivotal moment for the future of the presidential agenda on Capitol Hill. (Democrats are loving this. Chris Hayes, The Nation's Washington bureau chief, tweeted that he hadn't liked Obama more since the inauguration.)
Got it. The Prez's people loved it. Maybe this wasn't really about inspiring bipartisanship but firing up the base. That's fine. If he does anything well, he deserves credit for the thing he does well. Let's just be clear about what the thing is.
During the presidential campaign, it was John McCain who proposed a form of the British Prime Ministers' questions for the president. It was derided as a gimmick. This is no gimmick. I have not seen a better and perhaps more productive political discussion in this country in...a long time. 90 minutes worth!
Maybe since Al Gore debated Ross Perot on NAFTA. Republicans may have wished they had spoken to John McCain about what happened to him in the presidential debates before they decided to broadcast this session.
No, it's the Democrats who shut down the cameras when they think things won't look pretty.
The president looked genuinely engaged, willing to discuss things. Democrats believe that he tossed away the GOP talking points and lack of real plans into a bludgeon against them.
How do you toss away the lack of something into a bludgeon? To be fair, it was the "lack of real plans." There could have been some fake plans that, when tossed away... but even if the packet of fake plans hit somebody, it wouldn't feel like a bludgeon. Maybe paper cuts.
"The whole question was structured by a talking point," he told Jeb Hensarling....
"He"? Who's "he"? Obama? That Catholic guy? (And sorry about that last link. I thought it was "Hensnarling.") And what "whole question"? Is that a way to refer to all the questions?And is Ambinder's whole blog post copied (sloppily) from a Democratic talking point?
Ed Kilgore asks. (Kilgore... hmmm.... resist making wisecrack about name....) Why have the "many years of painstaking efforts to explain climate change to the American people and get them concerned about it" come undone? Kilgore offers 3 reasons.
1. Dealing with economic troubles takes precedence. (My question: Isn't an economic downturn automatically making the contribution that environmentalists had wanted to compel? Less production entails less carbon production. Why not celebrate the downturn? It's what you wanted. Or is it that you wanted conscious, deliberate sacrifice?)
2. Maybe it's "a byproduct of the radicalization of the Republican Party." Amusingly, he fails to pair this with the suggestion that it's a byproduct of the radicalization of the Democratic Party. The article is illustrated by a picture of Sarah Palin (wearing a winter hat). Is Sarah that attractive? It's more likely the repelling force of the drastic changes pushed by the party in power.
3. Maybe it's "the determined effort by the hard-core anti-environmental right to dominate the discussion and change its terms." Hmmm. #3 is so much like #2 that my response seems too obvious to bother to type out.
Kilgore concludes:
This is one area of public policy where “respect for contrary views” and “editorial balance” is misplaced. Sure, there are many aspects of the climate-change challenge that ought to be debated, and not just between those at the ideological and partisan extremes. But we shouldn’t be “debating” whether or not the scientific consensus on climate change actually represents a vast conspiracy to destroy capitalism and enslave the human race, any more than we should be debating whether “death panels” are a key element of health care reform.
So: Crush debate. On this and on health care. Because those people on the other side are terrible radicals.
