Watson, I have deduced Jeb Bush's actual answer!
Paul Krugman recaps how John Ellis Bush has waffled the nation toward a discussion we need to hold.
Jeb Bush definitely did us a favor: in his attempts to avoid talking about the past, he ended up bringing back a discussion people have been trying to avoid. And they are, of course, still trying to avoid it — they want to make this just about the horserace, or about the hypothetical of “if you knew what we know now”.
For that formulation is itself an evasion, as Josh Marshall, Greg Sargent, and Duncan Black point out — each making a slightly different but crucial point.
And here's what "respectable journalists" and "serious politicians" still don't want to admit.
...Iraq was not a good faith mistake. Bush and Cheney didn’t sit down with the intelligence community, ask for their best assessment of the situation, and then reluctantly conclude that war was the only option. They decided right at the beginning — literally before the dust of 9/11 had settled — to use a terrorist attack by religious extremists as an excuse to go after a secular regime that, evil as it was, had nothing to do with that attack. ...
... this isn’t hindsight. It was quite clear at the time that the case for war was fake.
... a lot of Very Serious People were effectively in on the con. They, too, were looking forward to a splendid little war; or they were eager to burnish their non-hippie credentials by saying, hey, look, I’m a warmonger too...
Even if you buy the idea that Bush at first misunderstood the question and thought he was being asked if he would have launched the war based on what was known at the time, note that he didn't actually put forward any case for war. His immediate response was simply "Hillary did it too." That's sadly true, but the fact that Bush's only retort was the same as that used by a five year old defending his actions per the cookie jar, should be a red flag to everyone.
Sum it up, Mr. Krugman.
the crucial thing to understand is that the invasion wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime. We were lied into war. And we shouldn’t let that ugly truth be forgotten.
Come on in. Let's see what other punditry abounds this morning.
Frank Bruni on money, money, money.
After two terms of sucking it up for the citizens of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee itched to cash in. So he signed on as a pitchman for a bogus diabetes remedy and rented out his mailing list to charlatans peddling Scripture as a cure for cancer.
Chris Christie isn’t paid a king’s ransom. But Jordan’s king has his back. The monarch treated the New Jersey governor and his entourage to a weekend of posh partying in the Middle East, to which they’d flown on a casino magnate’s private plane. It was hardly the only time that Christie had traveled like royalty.
And for Marco Rubio, a Florida legislator’s compensation wasn’t nearly enough. So he cozied up to a billionaire auto dealer who continues to underwrite his existence all these years later, affording him a lifestyle beyond his means as a United States senator. What a smooth move.
Just remember that Huckabee is the blue collar choice who appeals to the everyman, Christie is the tough-talking guy next door, and Rubio is the up from the bottom immigrant. Don't let facts, or income brackets, get between you and these just-folks candidates.
So many of the candidates who raise their hands for “public service,” in their self-congratulating parlance, aren’t at peace with the economic humility that the phrase connotes. For more than a few of them, “public service” is a fig leaf over private cupidity. In many cases, it’s a prelude to a lucrative payday that they’re counting on.
Ross Douthat on religion and the poor.
Last week two prominent Americans — an eminent social scientist and the president of the United States — decided to answer the question: How have America’s churches failed the poor?
Their answer was one deeply congenial to the progressive mind: They’ve been too obsessed with the culture war.
Oh, spaghetti jebus and all the little meatball saints, I can see where this one is going.
It would be too kind to call these comments wrong; they were ridiculous. Not only because... believers personally give abundantly to charity, but because institutionally the churches of America use “all their resources” in ways that completely belie the idea that they’re obsessed with culture war.
Yes. It's not as if churches have been devoting energy to social issues, or handing out guides to voters, or... well, just take Douthat's word for it.
Nicholas Kristof wanders away from the usual subjects to talk about... wandering.
This is arguably America’s greatest hiking trail, a 2,650-mile serpentine path running through desert and wilderness from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. The Pacific Crest Trail meanders through cactus and redwoods, challenging humans with rivers and snowfields, rattlesnakes and bears. ... I’ve been backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail since I was a kid, inspired by the first person to complete a thru-hike from Canada to Mexico, Eric Ryback, who wrote a book published in 1971 about his feat.
Fewer people have hiked the full Pacific Crest Trail than have reached the summit of Mount Everest. Yet, this year, so many want to hike it that a limit has been placed on permits so that no more than 50 thru-hikers can begin at the Mexican border each day.
I love hiking, though I've never set foot on the PCT and have only done a bare handful of days on the venerable Appalachian Trail. These days I set my sights lower, with hopes to knock off some gently rolling miles on the Ozark Trail in between days on the job. While Kristof lays the increased traffic on the PCT at the feet of author Cheryl Strayed, which is likely true, I have a hard time being upset about that. Not only did I enjoy Strayed's hiking memoir,
Wild, but I'm absolutely besotted with her advice columns and life stories collected as
Tiny Beautiful Things. If you haven't read it... stop here and come back when you have.
Dana Milbank has me rummaging in my backpack for some kind of award...
Love or hate George W. Bush, you can’t deny that he was a decisive, forceful leader. When I covered his White House for The Post, I found it easy to know what Bush was going to do next — because he did exactly what he said he was going to do. The man was not given to nuance and reflection, and when he declared he was going to do something — tax cuts, wars, private Social Security accounts — he pounded away at it until he won or lost.
Now comes his kid brother, firm as Jell-O. First, Jeb told Fox News that, even knowing what we know now, he would have invaded Iraq. Then he said he misunderstood the question, “I guess,” and wasn’t quite sure what he would have done. Then he refused to say what he would have done because it would do a “disservice” to those who died. Then he allowed that “anybody would have made different decisions” but said he would “draw the line” at dwelling in the past.
Ah, here's the reward. It's a large rock hammer. Now, Dana. Just. Hold. Very. Still... Seriously. What kind of $#@!&$! idiot would, at this late date, wax nostalgic for George W. Bush's "decisiveness?" Would I rather have someone who thinks twice, isn't locked into an idea right or wrong, and changes their mind when confronted with new evidence? Oh hell yeah, and twice on Sundays. Would someone near Milbank give him a slap for me? This may be the single stupidest column of the week—and I'm including George Will in the sample. Who would have thought it was possible for someone to write a column about Bush's flub that made me more sympathetic to
Bush. I don't think I can get across how utterly wrong headed this column is.
Ruth Marcus on candidates and questions.
Let us talk about answering hypothetical questions, gotcha-type questions and no questions at all. That is, let us talk about Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee and Hillary Clinton.
Bush first flubbed his answer Monday to a question from Fox News’s Megyn Kelly about the war in Iraq. ... Wednesday was even worse — not only hiding behind the notion that hypothetical questions don’t deserve answers, but wrapping that dodge in concern for fallen soldiers. ...
Running for president can fairly be described as an exercise in hypothesis: If you were president, how would you handle X, Y or Z? If you don’t want to hypothesize, don’t run.
That candidates—and politicians in office—are so frequently allowed to wave away "hypotheticals" is a crime against journalism.
Next up, Huckabee. On CBS’s “Face the Nation” last week, host Bob Schieffer asked the former Arkansas governor about hawking a dubious diabetes cure.
Huckabee: “You know, I don’t have to defend everything that I’ve ever done. I am not doing those infomercials, obviously, now as a candidate for president.”
Actually, running for president means precisely having to defend everything you have ever done. If you don’t like it, don’t run.
Damn. I'm liking Marcus' column this week.
Finally, there is She Who Does Not Deign to Answer Questions. Certainly not questions from pesky reporters. ...
According to NPR , Clinton has held zero news conferences, granted zero interviews and answered — judging generously — 13 media questions since announcing. The Clinton campaign cautions that she is still ramping up — engaging with everyday Americans, just not everyday reporters.
You know, Ruth, you're right. And you deserve some answers. Just don't send Milbank.
Leonard Pitts visits that case of the most famous non-Obamacare patient.
Luis Lang would like you to send him some money.
He has taken to GoFundMe (gofundme.com/s78e9w), the crowd-funding website, trying to raise $30,000. Lang, who is 49 and lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina, is slowly losing his eyesight to diabetes. Without surgery, he’ll go blind. Those grim facts notwithstanding, some may not find Lang the most sympathetic candidate for charity.
In the first place, as some observers noted after reading about him in a Charlotte Observer story by Ann Doss Helms, he has a $300,000 home and a wife who doesn't work; why, they ask, can’t he raise the money from them?
In the second place, Lang has had diabetes for years, but has not always followed doctor’s advice to control it.
In the third place, he’s a smoker who is still smoking despite his bleak prognosis.
But there’s a bigger reason some may find it difficult to feel his pain, and therein lies a tale. It seems Lang, who is a Republican, knew the Affordable Care Act — the dreaded “Obamacare” — required him to buy health insurance, but he refused to do so. He figured he was making a pretty good living as a self-employed handyman and prided himself on paying his own medical bills.
Luis Lang's story makes a wonderful case for plain old socialized medicine. The funny thing is, Lang seems to have assumed we already had it.
Wait. Has anyone started talking about how all those new IRS agents probably blocked Lang's health care access because they realized he was conservative, and now he can't get a doctor because Obama turned him in to a death panel? Surely they have.
Science Daily on a study that shows that, while childhood vaccines are definitely a good thing, overuse of antibiotics among kids is not.
A new study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota has found a three-way link among antibiotic use in infants, changes in the gut bacteria, and disease later in life. The imbalances in gut microbes, called dysbiosis, have been tied to infectious diseases, allergies and other autoimmune disorders, and even obesity, later in life.
Please remember that when your kid has a cold, or other minor ailment, it doesn't require a trip to the doctor for a dose of antibiotics (not to mention that most of the time, the antibiotics handed out to worried parents don't have any effect on the problem at hand).
Wait. Is Dr. Greg up this morning? Forget I was giving pediatrics advice. Nothing to see here. Move along to the comments.