Think Tanked

Victor Davis Hanson's Obama Glossary

Hoover's Victor Davis Hanson wrote an 80-entry glossary of "The World of Obama" for National Review's "The Corner" blog. 

With no shortage of cheap shots, Hanson's entries also takes on racial under-, or over-, tones with entries like:

white person: Often “typical” and “bitter” with “untrained ears,” and likely to “cling” to religion and guns; in short, full of “antipathy”

Or how the Skip Gates incident was characterized:

beer summit: Where investigating an apparent break-in is defined as acting “stupidly”

A few others worth noting:

cowards: Won’t talk nonstop about race

elections: Only sometimes have consequences

filibuster: Archaic and obstructionist parliamentary maneuver except when used to stop reactionary appointments

“yes, we can”: Inspiring slogan that went out of use during the summer of 2009

Check out more of Hanson's entries.

Hoover's Varadarajan on New York Debate

Tunku Varadarajan, Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Fellow in Journalism at the Hoover Institution, offers his take on last night's New York gubernatorial debate (?) at the Daily Beast. The whole thing was a total mess, but one thing's for sure: Paladino's done.

This was not a debate in the conventional sense: There were too many talking heads competing for airtime for a back-and-forth between candidates to have been feasible. Instead, they answered questions for 90 minutes—dealing directly with the moderators and questioners in the audience, and not with each other. As such, it was a series of 90-second vignettes—vignettes that quickly grew dull over time.

There can be no question that after this debate, Paladino is over: finito.  He was fidgety, furrow-faced, almost entirely unsmiling, and largely inarticulate. The Republican Party’s candidate, it is remarkable to relate, even sounded less impressive at times than Ms. Davis the ex-madam, who uttered the zinger of the evening. Describing what would happen if the state didn’t reduce its burdens on entrepreneurship, she said, “Businesses will leave the state quicker than Carl Paladino at a gay bar.” (Later, in addressing a question on the Metropolitan Transport Authority, she said, “The difference between the MTA and my escort service is that I kept just one set of books and delivered reliable and on-time service.”)

Victor Davis Hanson on Russia & Putin

Hoover's Varadarajan Worried Over Tea Party "Success"

Hoover's Tunku Varadarajan is none too happy about the Tea Party victories this primary season and seems completely at a loss for what to do about it, only calling for "alternative ideas" because "Slogans and scare-mongering won't cut it."

The Tea Party has won its precious primaries. And I am stomping my foot as I write this, because that party has succeeded in handing American democracy back to the floundering Democrats.

[...]

The Tea Party was a great conservative and libertarian engine: I use both concepts, conservative and libertarian, because the activists are not ideological purists. Some want this, some want that, and some want who-knows-what. Tea Party-supporting Americans are not identical. I have met several, and I have yet to be able to plot a reliable graph based on their politics.

Victor Davis Hanson (Doesn't) Want Obama to Bomb Iran

In a bizarre episode of reverse psychology/wishful thinking/I don't know how to explain it, Hoover's Victor Davis Hanson may, or may not, want Obama to bomb Iran. Hanson argues that a poll-desperate Obama, embarrassed by the unemployment rate and debt, may well turn to an aggressive stance on Iran for some semblance of success.

As a candidate, Obama criticized the Bush administration for not reaching out and talking with Iran’s theocratic leadership. As president, Obama has done that. He even muted his criticism of the brutal Iranian crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations after the 2009 election. But Obama soon found that the Iranians saw his outreach as appeasement, and so only increased their breakneck efforts to get a bomb.

Now everyone from the Israelis to the Sunni Arab nations is pressuring the United States to do something before a radical and nuclear Iran changes the complexion of the entire Middle East. If the erstwhile peace candidate Barack Obama were to confront Iran, conservatives might well support his resolve. Then Democratic candidates would find a more united nation that was suddenly far more worried about Mideast armageddon than unemployment and record deficits. Unlike past October surprises, in this one the pro-Obama media would probably be far less cynical in its coverage of presidential motives.

But Iran won’t go nuclear in the next two months. So let us hope that the current unpopular administration waits for a while before deciding between the rotten choice of using military force against Tehran and the even worse alternative of a nuclear Iran.

Hanson has argued against it during the Bush administration, but has also said, "That option is still down the road."

Are Twitter and Facebook Good for Think Tanks?

Alvin Rabushka, David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, compares public policy dissemination between the time he got in the business in 1969 and now. It's easier; it's more vast--but is it better?

Rabushka's not sure. 

Citing the relatively large numbers of Twitter and Facebook followers he writes:

...numbers show that a handful of political personalities can overwhelm the think tanks in communicating with the policy-interested public. Should think tanks try to embed their research into these communication networks to reach a larger audience?. Not clear. There is a danger that the scholarly-based policy work emanating from think tanks embedded in the networks of prominent personalities would be instantly politicized and rejected out of hand by the broader public as biased or tainted.

What then becomes the business model of the research-based think tank? The pre-high tech model of transmitting a clear signal through static, itself difficult. has been replaced by pointing decision makers in the direction of finding diamonds in mountains of ore. Much harder. Moreover, in the next five to ten years, new technologies will be developed that further clog the arena of ideas. Much as the Internet helped elect Barack Obama as president, the fleet afoot will have a disproportionate influence on policy, while those clinging to the old approach will languish.

Hoover's Thomas Sowell on the November Elections

Hoover's Sofaer & Brookings' Singer on Drones

A Decade Later, Pipes Catches on to Empire

Hoover Institution Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow Daniel Pipes issues a warning with a new piece at National Review Online called "The Left's New Enemy: 'Empire.'"

There is nothing new, however, about Empire. Pipes refers to (but doesn't actually discuss) the book from 2000 by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri by the name of Empire--always capitalized with no definite article, something Pipes finds bothersome.

Empire, for those who didn't follow, was one of the rare books by academics that achieves rock star status for its ability to take on questions of globalization from a theoretical perspective that took priorities of the left seriously. For months on end (perhaps years) following its publication, it was discussed by every major publication for the point of celebration and for its controversy (it was too theory-laden, or jargon-ridden, etc.)

But even with all the extra time, for all the mischaracterizations by Pipes, it is clear that he did not read it. Nonetheless, he did feel comfortable making quite serious (and erroneous) charges against both the book and the surrounding discourse.

This, for example, appears nowhere:

The United States, of course, is the Great Satan, accused of hoarding disproportionate resources. Its military oppresses the poor so its corporations can exploit them. Its government promotes the pretend danger of terrorism to aggress abroad and repress at home.

And Israel is the Little Satan, serving as Empire’s sinister ally — or maybe the Jewish state is really the master? From World Social Forum meetings in Brazil to the United Nations anti-racism conference in Durban and from mainline churches to NGOs, Zionism is represented as absolute evil. Why Israel? Beyond not-so-subtle anti-Semitism, it alone of Western countries lives under a barrage of constant threats, which in turn compel it to engage in constant wars. “Stripped of all context,” Sternberg notes, “Israel’s actions fit the needed image of aggressor.”

The conclusion? Empire is a threat to humanity.

So much for those fashionable theories of two decades ago, trumpeted as the Berlin Wall fell, about the end of ideology. The Left retrenched after the fall of Leninism and now threatens humanity with a new version of its anti-Western, anti-rational, anti-liberty, anti-individualist ideology.

Hoover's Steele on Jewish Scapegoating

In today's Wall Street Journal, Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele had this to say about "Jewish scapegoating."

The most interesting voice in all the fallout surrounding the Gaza flotilla incident is that sanctimonious and meddling voice known as "world opinion." At every turn "world opinion," like a school marm, takes offense and condemns Israel for yet another infraction of the world's moral sensibility. And this voice has achieved an international political legitimacy so that even the silliest condemnation of Israel is an opportunity for self-congratulation.

And then there is this juxtaposition of characterizations of Israel and Palestinians, respectively.

Israel does not seek to oppress or occupy—and certainly not to annihilate—the Palestinians in the pursuit of some atavistic Jewish supremacy. But the merest echo of the shameful Western past is enough to chill support for Israel in the West.

The West also lacks the self-assurance to see the Palestinians accurately. Here again it is safer in the white West to see the Palestinians as they advertise themselves—as an "occupied" people denied sovereignty and simple human dignity by a white Western colonizer. The West is simply too vulnerable to the racist stigma to object to this "neo-colonial" characterization.