Death Or Glory»

We’re underway! Start with substance: Yglesias brings out the green shirt/radioactive-luminescent green tie combination that is his formal-wear trademark. Chris Hayes Chris Chris Hayes of The Nation approves…

Brian Katulis has now twice referred to fellow-panelists Rand Beers and Kurt Campbell as “old hands.” Stop the violence!…

Before he starts making the Heads In The Sand case, Yglesias fiddles with his iPhone… National security issues post-9/11 left Democrats in a state of political anxiety and a condition of ideological and expert disarmament. The party’s move to the right — “Get the hawks in charge!” — enabled a catastrophe and prevented Democrats from taking political advantage of a war many of its leading figures supported. (One might call it unilateral ideological disarmament.) Yglesias observes that by 2006 as he was writing the book, liberals began to rectify the problem, with institutions like CAP (didja know that CAP owns this blog?). The primary campaign “what the progressive movement is going to stand for on national security issues.” That should be, Yglz says, traditional liberal internationalism and the destruction of the actual-existing-al-Qaeda, and not the Islamofascists-plus-Cobra-Commander wet dream of the right… Yglesias pauses. “Should I wrap up…?” Brian says yeah. “You don’t get into, like, sitting around on your laptop all day because you want to be a public speaker.” Big laughs.

Where does Rand agree and disagree. “First of all, Matt, I appreciate the understated fashion in which you’ve written the book,” he observes. The criticism: it’s harder to make the adjustments Matt prescribes than Matt realizes. During the Kerry campaign — Beers was Kerry’s chief nat-sec adviser — the “Mission Accomplished” moment shadowed everything, meaning people didn’t think that the public was prepared to hear in 2004 that the war was a failure, a mistake and a disaster. “The polling during the campaign never completely tipped in the other direction,” so advisers wanted to focus on the domestic stuff. … The polling shift on the war occurred in 2005, laying the groundwork for the “counter-Iraq campaign.” Rand says that as late as January 2006 pollsters were advising Democrats that Iraq couldn’t give them the election. … “I do not disagree with your strategic thesis,” but he’s “cognizant of the difficulties.” Clinton thought Somalia presented a “great opportunity” to show the U.N. could work. “That became a lessons-learned for the Clinton administration,” and also a bonanza for conservatives to argue “that international institutions don’t work.” This is all to say not that Matt is wrong but “to be cognizant of the difficulties” in making his case.

Kurt Campbell! “This is a book that is worth buying.” Whoa! Assymetric ideological warfare. The praise is effusive. “I served in the Roosevelt administration,” he says. You’re in fine form, Mr. Campbell. … He says Democrats told him in the aftermath of 9/11 that the party didn’t have a problem on national security and la la la la I can’t hear you. Almost as if they had their Heads In The Sand! … On the new media: it’s a positive effect on the nat-sec debate. “But there’s a tendency in our community toward what I would call coarseness.” There’s one guy he describes who went after CNAS who was “short and in his pajamas” in person and timid. Katulis shoots me a look: was it me? It wasn’t! I’m not timid in person and don’t own pajamas. (Also I haven’t attacked CNAS. Have we talked about me enough? Never!) … Iraq: getting out, “in a difficult way” if a Dem is in power “it will have very negative consequences not only to how Democrats will be perceived at home but how [America] will be perceived abroad.” But, he said, how can we deal with all the other challenges if “our three priorities are, as Secretary Gates says, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.” … Kurt Campbell is winning over the liberal blogosphere! This “gap about national security closed considerably” between 2004 and 2006. But the “fact that we are not” dominant on nat-sec after all the Bush administration’s failures “is something that we have to address and be quite honest about.” … Who’s gonna get what jobs in what administration? There’s “about eight to ten guys” who want to be SecDef in a McCain administration; but he doesn’t know anyone on the Democratic side who wants that job. (Really? Still? Wow.)…

Yglesias reacts: “no substitute for power, responsibility.” We have moved from the Green Lantern Theory to the Spider-Man Theory! “But public opinion was continually evolving” — he means on Iraq in 2004 — “even without leaders” pushing it. So Kerry’s campaign really did represent a missed opportunity. Not enough liberals or Democrats wanted to argue against the Bush agenda in the press, and so people in a political vacuum presume there is no debate and Bush is making the only reasonable case…

Brian: Should progressives fight fire with fire or go bipartisan, or is it all a false choice? Matt: “Utimately you have to embrace the reality, that we have a more polarized political climate… and if you want to play the game you have to engage in it.” Dems complain about the GOP politicizing national security, but “these are literally questions of life and death… and the decisions are ultimately made by politicians” so “voters ought to be listening to arguments about which party is better, which politician is better and who’s going to do what.” Don’t do it cynically, but have the people who actually know what they’re talking about get involved in politics.

Rand: In this timeframe, “there’s a potential and a risk.” The potential is that Iraq gives an opportunity for Democrats to break through the “traditional notion that Republicans have a better national secuity agenda than Democrats do.” The risk is that politicians and the media reduce the debate “to a shorthand” so “we still hear ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run’” as the parties’ Iraq positions. Withdrawal’s complexities and supplemental actions still don’t cut through in the press.

Kurt: Beyond the campaign. Imagine “magical place where a Democrat has actually won an election.” Clinton’s coalition-building on international efforts like NAFTA across the political aisle “was valuable and there was a dignity to that.” Bush’s polarization — “it sticks with you… and there will be a temptation among many Democrats” to “practice a similar form of governance.” But if “we succeed, it will be on the idea of a new kind of governance” — meaning openness and bipartisan — “and I think the tension will be very real.” Also the lesson needs to be that Anything But Bush will be as destructive to the country that Anything But Clinton was under Bush…

Brian: what, Kurt, are the highlights of the campaign? “The highlights?” he asks. Seriously, Kurt Campbell is a witty and likable fellow. OMG! I’m corrupted! Heed not the siren song of comity! Help!… “Deep down I’m very worried,” he says, conceding “this is the most obvious political point.” Democrats hold grudges very well “and that has been the case for 30 or 40 years” and he worries that the Obama-Clinton fight will replicate the experience. Kurt kind of seems to want the generation “seared by Vietnam” to move aside for the Yglesias Generation. But we’ll be seared by Iraq!…

Rand: “I’m not hopeful as you[, Kurt,] at the passing of the Vietnam generation, and I am of the Vietnam generation.” Yglesias mutters: “Zombies!” Rand makes the good point that the Vietnam generation has passed the hang-ups onto their proteges. … Yglesias mentions that in 2004 TAP’s editors pressured him to analogize his stuff to Vietnam. Bob Kuttner = Dick Cheney! Mike Tomasky = Scooter Libby!… “It’s frightening to watch mom and dad fighting, but it’s the only way you can resolve these questions.” It’s too good an image to provide context… Substantively, Yglesias laments that the Clinton and Obama campaigns aren’t explicitly clarifying any fundamental differences they have about America’s role in the world…

OK this is long enough. Q & A highlights coming soon!