Michael Wolraich's Blog

When Hillary Clinton released emails from her personal account last week, many assumed that her attorneys had personally reviewed the messages before sending them to the State Department, but that’s not what happened. As detailed in her press statement, the review team used keyword searches to automatically filter over 60,000 messages, flagging about half as work related.

“I have absolute confidence that everything that could be in any way connected to work is now in the possession of the State Department,” Clinton declared.

I’m afraid that I don’t share her confidence, and I speak from experience. Twenty years ago, I used the same method to sort the Clinton administration’s email communications, including those of First Lady Hillary Clinton. It failed miserably.

Read the full story at New York Magazine

Thanks to Michael M. for highlighting Matthew Yglesias's Cassandra prophesy at Vox: "American Democracy is Doomed." In the piece, Yglesias warns that political polarization will sooner or later trigger "a collapse of the legal and political order" in the United States. "If we're lucky," he adds gloomily, "it won't be violent."

You don't have to be a seer to see that the federal government is in crisis. We have been reading about congressional paralysis for five years straight. The immediate cause is no mystery--the American checks-and-balances system does not handle polarization well. The founding fathers, in their zeal to prevent totalitarianism, designed a system that empowers its various branches to sabotage one another for political gain.

If Yglesias had limited his conclusions to these observations, the result would have been an interesting if prosaic political commentary. But where's the fun in that? Headline-grabbing doom prophesies trend much better than humdrum political commentary. Fortunately for the health of American democracy, they are invariably specious, and this one is no exception.

To his credit, Yglesias knows enough history to recognize that partisan polarization is nothing new. Inter-party hostilty has plagued federal government for most of American history. But he argues that this time is different because the polarization is ideological, in contrast to the spoils system that divided the parties in the Gilded Age.

That characterization is not completely accurate, but the real flaw in Yglesias's argument is another confusion.The political system he portrays is a rigid thing, shackled in place by ancient Constitutional chains. In fact, our government is perpetually evolving to deal with political crises like the one we face today.

For example, Yglesias cites the filibuster crisis as one threat to the Republic. To be precise, we should call it the Senate filibuster crisis, for there is also such a thing as a House filibuster--or at least there used to be. In the late 1800s, congressmen from the minority party used to "vanish" whenever the clerk called roll for a bill they opposed. They remained in their seats, but by pretending to be absent, they denied the Speaker his quorum, and the vote could not proceed. Such obstructive tactics would tie up the House for weeks, effectively killing the legislation.

Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed solved that problem in 1890 by pushing through a new set of rules that abolished the disappearing quorum trick and granted additional power to the Speaker. Democratic congressmen reacted with a fury that easily outclasses any modern examples of partisan polarization:

A hundred of them “were on their feet howling for recognition,” wrote a reporter. "Fighting Joe" Wheeler, the diminutive former Confederate cavalry general, unable to reach the front because of the crowded aisles, came down from the rear “leaping from desk to desk as an ibex leaps from crag to crag.” As the excitement grew wilder, the only Democrat not on his feet was a huge representative from Texas who sat in his seat significantly whetting a bowie knife on his boot.

-- Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower

Eat your heart out, Ted Cruz!

What worked in the House 125 years ago can work in the Senate today. If the effectiveness of the Senate continues to deteriorate, some future Senate Majority Leader will follow Speaker Reed's lead and eliminate the filibuster by invoking the so-called nuclear option. Perhaps journalists of the 22nd century worrying about some future political crisis will forget that the filibuster ever existed.

Yglesias also points to the conflict between modern presidents and Congress, remarking on the overheated charges of "dictator" leveled against both George W. Bush and Barak Obama. Yet, long-dead legislators have routinely hurled the same epithets against every assertive president in American history, though they used to say "monarch" instead of "dictator."

In fact, the expansion of presidential power is another example of how our government has evolved to overcome Constitutional constraints. Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory. Andrew Jackson wielded the presidential veto. Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves. Theodore Roosevelt prosecuted the trusts. FDR packed the courts. Bitter legislators warned of despotism just like they do in response to Obama's executive actions, but their doom prophesies were quickly forgotten. Today, the same presidents are lionized for decisive leadership, and the powers they assumed are taken for granted.

So don't fret too much. Yes, American democracy is in crisis, but it has survived worse.

The Roosevelts, a new PBS documentary by director Ken Burns, presents President Theodore Roosevelt as a political superhero. In photo after photo, Burns’s famous pan-and-zoom effect magnifies Roosevelt’s flashing teeth and upraised fist. The reverential narrator hails his fighting spirit and credits him with transforming the role of American government through sheer willpower. “I attack,” an actor blusters, imitating Roosevelt’s patrician cadence, “I attack iniquities.”

Though exciting to watch, Burns’s cinematic homage muddles the history. Roosevelt was a great president and brilliant politician, but he was not the progressive visionary and fearless warrior that Burns lionizes. He governed as a pragmatic centrist and a mediator who preferred backroom deal-making to open warfare. At the time, many of his progressive contemporaries criticized him for excessive caution. The “I attack” quote, for example, came from a 1915 interview in which Roosevelt defended himself from accusations that he had been too conciliatory.

Read the full article at New York Magazine's culture website, Vulture.com

Topics: Arts & Entertainment

As ISIS pursues its genocidal dreams in Syria and Iraq, Bruce Levine asks, "whether we as human beings living in the most powerful nation in the world can stand by yet again and do nothing -- as thousands or tens of thousands of innocent human beings  are slaughtered."

The question conceals a heavy premise: that we have the power to stop the slaughter if we choose to exercise it.

I do not deny the premise, at least in principle. If we unleash our full military and economic might, we can surely defeat ISIS forces and build stable, peaceful states in Iraq and Syria. But full mobilization and massive nation-building projects are not realistic options in the current political environment. We may muster the will for limited military operations in Iraq, but we're unwilling to do what it takes to succeed. Consequently, our efforts to stop the slaughter are doomed to fail and may make the situation even worse.

Topics: World Affairs

As Michael Wolraich argues in his sharp, streamlined new book, “Unreasonable Men,” it was “the greatest period of political change in American history.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-unreasonable-men-on-p...

Topics: PersonalPolitics

Hi folks, I want to offer my gratitude to everyone who helped out with the dagblog upgrade, both those who tested the new site and those who contributed to the development cost. I received $424.22, which by coincidence almost exactly covers the cost. You guys are the best!

Topics: Potpourri

Hi folks, I want to offer my gratitude to everyone who helped out with the dagblog upgrade, both those who tested the new site and those who contributed to the development cost. I received $424.22, which by coincidence almost exactly covers the cost. You guys are the best!

Topics: Potpourri

There is something odd about the chorus of criticism against President Obama's foreign policy. Normally, the age-old debate over military intervention revolves around a particular conflict. From WWI to the Iraq War, hawks and doves have always squabbled over the ethics, efficacy, and necessity of attacking a particular enemy at a particular time.

But Obama's critics haven't focused on any particular conflict or enemy. They speak of the peril in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Ukraine, and the South China Sea. They warn of threats from Putin, Khamenei, Kim Jong-Un, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, or, more generally, dictators, fanatics, and terrorists. George W. Bush's Axis of Evil has become a Legion of Doom with new enemies, like ISIS, regularly joining the pantheon of international bad guys.&nbsp[Read more]

Dear friends,

Dagblog will turn six years old this September, which is 42 in blog years. Like many of us in our forties, the site has become a little chunky. OK, I'll be blunt. Dag's fat. Way fat. 9290 blog posts, 442 creative posts, 5250 news links, and 109,567 comments. Along with williamkwolfrum.com, who hangs out on the same server, dagblog often violates the 640 MB RAM limit, which is why it's been stalling and crashing so often.

Topics: Potpourri

If revolutions eat their children, then Eric Cantor is the plat du jour. Just a couple years ago, he was the supposed leader of the right-wing House insurgency. The press waited hungrily for him to revolt against John Boehner and claim the Speaker's crown for himself. But Cantor chose to wait it out, and now the same insurgent spirit that bolstered his ambition has tossed him out of the House entirely.&nbsp[Read more]