An Initiative from the Umma?

The news that the president of Indonesia called for other countries to become involved in creating a peace settlement in Iraq should be welcome. This is the first time that a Muslim country has made such a suggestion publicly. Would that Indonesia were in the Middle East, but a successful initiative that included much of the umma--the Muslim Community--could have several benefits that would help make the region more stable. The umma has been unable to act effectively together, even against Israel, which has contributed to the growth of extremism, of Al Qaeda and its allies. And the umma, if it could speak with one voice, would be more likely to be heard by the factions killing each other than any Western voice.

A Muslim initiative would be unlikely to make Iraq more democratic, however. Democracy, after all, is not valued as highly by Saudi Arabia, Syria, or other Muslim countries as it is by the United States, the Bush administration in particular.

Because a Muslim initiative would probably not be designed to foster democracy, the Bush administration may be reluctant to encourage such an initiative or to reject it if it were made. In addition, the administration was reluctant to give up control in Iraq to the United Nations or anyone else after we broke (and owned) Iraq and has been equally reluctant to rely on diplomacy, with the compromises its requires, to achieve its goals. Unless it is prepared to lose everything in Iraq, both diplomacy and the cession of control will be required, sooner or later.

The Baker commission is likely to recommend diplomacy, which may be the push the administration needs.

Revenge or the Other Cheek?

When the Republicans took over the House of Representatives 12 years ago, they unseated a Democratic leadership that had been in power for 40 years. Resentment among those who now found themselves in charge was rife. The Democrats had indeed been arrogant and self-satisfied in the way they ran the House. Cooperation with the minority party was better than it is now, but the distribution of the resources available and the procedures adopted because the majority could left the Republicans severely disadvantaged.

The Republicans of Gingrich's new 104th Congress promised not to do to the Democrats what had been done to them. In recent years, however, the House of Hastert has done everything it could to make the minority party powerless, even to the point of not including Democrats in Conference committees to negotiate differences in legislation with the Senate.

The House of Nancy Pelosi has an opportunity to foster cooperation between Democrats and Republicans that their Republican predecessors abandoned. With growing opposition among Republicans to the policies favored by the President and what appears to a growing group of conservative and moderate Democrats, it would seem to be to everyone's advantage to blur the ideological divisions that have poisoned the atmosphere in Congress and made it markedly less effective than it might have been.

The problems this country are severe enough, the choices we need to make unpleasant enough, that cooperation across party lines will be essential if we are to resolve them without forcing or facing crises. Watch, then, how the Pelosi House deals with the people on the other side of the aisle. Revenge would be bitter; better would it be to turn the other cheek.

Rule by the Insincere

Michael Kinsley wrote a marvelous essay for the Book Review section of Sunday's New York Times (registration required). Two paragraphs, somewhat repetitive, captured my own view of the problems of political dialogue today:

In my view, the worst form of cheating in American democracy today is intellectual dishonesty. The conversation in our democracy is dominated by disingenuousness. Candidates and partisan commentators strike poses of outrage that they don’t really feel, take positions that they would not take if the shoe was on the other foot (e.g., criticizing Bush when you gave Clinton a pass, or vice versa), feel no obligation toward logical consistency. Our democracy occasionally punishes outright lies but not brazen insincerity. When we vote after a modern political campaign run by expensive professionals, we have almost no idea what the victor really believes or what he or she might do in office.

The biggest flaw in our democracy is, as I say, the enormous tolerance for intellectual dishonesty. Politicians are held to account for outright lies, but there seems to be no sanction against saying things you obviously don’t believe. There is no reward for logical consistency, and no punishment for changing your story depending on the circumstances. Yet one minor exercise in disingenuousness can easily have a greater impact on an election than any number of crooked voting machines. And it seems to me, though I can’t prove it, that this problem is getting worse and worse.

It would be naive to the extreme to expect reasoned statements from all politicians all the time when they are on the campaign trail. But surely we can do bettter than we do. One of the most frequent comments about the Bush administration's attack on John Kerry after his botched joke about serving in Iraq was that no one believed that Kerry really believed that those fighting the war were stupid. (By the way, who will remember what he said six months from now?)

You can applaud the Bush attack as brilliant politics. Perhaps it was. But the disingenuousness of the charges was, to my mind, disgusting. That word is strong and used too often, but it describes accurately my visceral, perhaps overblown, reaction to the episode.

Not that the Democrats are better. Every announcement by the Bush adminstration, every story about a Republican is followed by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and a score of other senior Democrats parading to the microphones to relay some predictably contrary message. Some Republican is corrupt in some way. Some interest of the American people is being harmed somehow. Someone should resign, and now. How much of this do they believe; how much of the angst and anger they show is merely tactical, stemming from the desire to have their side win? From all indications, most of it.

It may be that in this day of ubiquitous news coverage and sound bytes little else is possible. Putting on a good show for the cameras is indeed necessary for political success. But there is little sign that the real work necessary for governing is being done. With too few exceptions, policies that might solve the severe problems that we will soon face are neither being formulated nor advanced by those we have elected. The disingenuous rule.