Tag Archives: kentucky

Jim Webb Is the Democrats’ Rand Paul

by GabrielMercier Posted on January 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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One of the most hyped potential candidates of the 2016 presidential campaign has clashed frequently with his party’s higher-ups. He is known for his outspoken views on the surveillance state, his opposition to overseas entanglements, his warnings about the broken criminal-justice system, his desire to expand the party’s tent to include voters otherwise alienated by identity politics—and for the Confederate-flag-waving supporters who’d follow him anywhere.

Unfortunately for Jim Webb, I’m talking about Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

Since launching a presidential exploratory committee last month, the former one-term Virginia senator, author, Navy secretary, and Vietnam vet has spent the first weeks of his nascent campaign drawing a contrast with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the party’s most likely nominee. The little-touted candidacy of Webb, who was floated as a running mate during President Barack Obama’s first campaign, is a reminder of how far the ground has shifted since his first run for office nine years ago. Two years after leaving the Senate, Webb’s ideas are finally ascendant—but under a different banner.

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Jim Webb Is the Democrats’ Rand Paul

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Obama Just Blew A Chance to Crack Down on Coal

by RonnieDonahue Posted on December 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on Grist and is published here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On Friday, the Obama administration quietly passed up an opportunity to make the coal industry clean up its act.

The EPA issued a final rule on the disposal of coal ash, a byproduct of coal burning that contains toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, and selenium. Up until now, disposal of coal ash hasn’t been regulated by the federal government at all. Now it will be regulated, but not very strongly.

“Your banana peel that you throw away has stronger protections when it winds up in a dump than coal ash does,” says Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, who is highly critical of the new rule.

More than 100 million tons of coal ash are produced annually in the US, and much of it is simply dumped into open pits. In recent years, there have been large coal-ash spills into rivers in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Groups like the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council wanted EPA to declare coal ash “hazardous waste” and thereby subject it to more stringent federal regulation. Pesticides, for example, are in that category and so they must be disposed of “in a way that prevents releases … to the environment.” That means in a leakproof container meeting various requirements.

Coal ash will instead be categorized as “solid waste,” also known as garbage, and its disposal will be held to a lower standard. The rule does include requirements about where and how coal ash is stored that are intended to prevent leaching into groundwater. It has to be placed “above the uppermost aquifer,” and protected with a geomembrane and a two-foot layer of compacted soil. But environmentalists say that’s not strong enough. Also, old coal-ash dumps won’t have to be cleaned up or improved unless problems are discovered. And the EPA’s new rules won’t even be enforced by the federal government; enforcement will be left to the states.

Greens are disappointed. “We believe coal ash meets all the qualifications of being hazardous,” says Hitt. “It’s tied to cancer among other problems.”

NRDC legislative director Scott Slesinger issued a statement saying, “The EPA is bowing to coal-fired utilities’ interests and putting the public at great risk by treating toxic coal ash as simple garbage instead of the hazardous waste that it is.”

The climate angle

While most of enviros’ complaints focus on the risk to water, air, and surrounding communities, this decision also has bad implications for climate change.

Coal-burning power plants are the biggest source of US greenhouse gas emissions, and the coal industry’s ability to belch CO2 and conventional pollutants without paying for the damage they cause has made coal power cheaper than renewables.

President Obama is said by his fans to be doing everything he can to address greenhouse gas emissions. With Republicans in Congress blocking legislative action, Obama has supposedly put coal in a vise with the EPA’s new regulations on mercury and forthcoming regulations on CO2 emissions from power plants. The centerpiece of Obama’s Climate Action Plan is using his authority under existing laws to limit power-plant pollution or make coal uneconomical by requiring the industry to pay for cleaning up after itself.

But here Obama has passed up a prime opportunity to raise the cost of using coal. Indeed, industry’s complaints about earlier, stronger proposals from the EPA were that they would hobble the coal industry. Exactly — and that would have been a good thing.

“One of the reasons that coal has been such a fixture in our electric sector is they have huge loopholes that they don’t have to deal with pollution the way other sectors of the economy do,” says Hitt. “This is another one of the egregious loopholes that the industry has secured for itself.”

And make no mistake, this weak rule comes from the White House, not apolitical bureaucrats at EPA. As a ProPublica investigation in July demonstrated, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which is part of the White House Office of Management and Budget, used its review of the proposed regulation to weaken it. From the story:

The EPA sent OIRA its proposed new rules in January 2013. The agency submitted five options from which it would choose the final rule. In its draft, the EPA indicated it would likely pick one of two options, which it listed as “preferred.” Both set relatively tough standards on power companies.

In the weeks leading to OIRA’s completed review of the coal ash limits, a number of utility industry lobbyists and lawyers met with the office. While OIRA makes public a list of attendees and documents given to the office’s representatives at meetings, it does not disclose the substance of their discussions. …

When the rule on coal ash effluent emerged from OIRA, three more options had been added, a diluting of the two options the EPA favored. OIRA’s draft dropped the tougher of EPA’s preferred rules and identified those new, less demanding options as favored.

The office also recast the EPA’s scientific findings. The agency initially stated that using ponds for storing the most toxic form of coal ash, the emissions captured in the smoke stack’s final filter, did “not represent the best available technology for controlling pollutants in almost all circumstances.” Revisions made during OIRA review recommended eliminating this conclusion, giving no explanation why.

Why do the coal and utility industries have such influence in a Democratic administration? What was Obama afraid would happen if he cracked down on them? That he’d be accused of fighting a “war on coal”? That his approval ratings would tank in coal country? That Democrats would lose Senate races in Kentucky and West Virginia? What, exactly, did he have to lose?

Obama has rewarded his enemies, screwed over his friends, and blown one of his precious few chances to help move us to a clean energy future.

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Obama Just Blew A Chance to Crack Down on Coal

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Colorado Dems: We Caught James O’Keefe and His Friends Trying to Bait Us Into Approving Voter Fraud

by CarriRosado Posted on October 20, 2014

Mother Jones

James O’Keefe, the conservative provocateur, has been on the prowl in Colorado, the setting of a close Senate race between Democratic incumbent Mark Udall and GOP Rep. Cory Gardner, as well as a nip-and-tuck governor’s contest. Last week, O’Keefe and two of his collaborators tried to bait Democratic field staffers into approving voter fraud involving Colorado’s universal vote-by-mail program, according to three Democratic staffers who interacted with O’Keefe or his colleagues.

More stories from the MoJo archive on James O’Keefe:


Why Do We Keep Falling For O’Keefe’s Smear Jobs?


Pimps, Lies, and Videotapes: Inside James O’Keefe’s Right-Wing Video Fantasy Factory


Colorado Dems: We Caught James O’Keefe and His Friends Trying to Bait Us Into Approving Voter Fraud


Flowchart: How to Make Your Lie Go Mainstream in 26 Easy Steps

Democratic staffers in Colorado recently came to believe they were the subject of an O’Keefe operation after campaign workers became suspicious about would-be volunteers who had asked about filling out and submitting mail-in ballots for others. Recently, the 30-year-old O’Keefe has targeted the Senate campaigns of Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor and Kentucky Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes by filming undercover videos of staffers or the candidate.

Last Tuesday, a man who appeared to be in his 20s showed up at a Democratic field office in Boulder wanting to volunteer to help elect Udall and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), according to a Democratic staffer who met with him and asked not to be identified. The man introduced himself as “Nick Davis,” and he said he was a University of Colorado-Boulder student and LGBT activist involved with a student group called Rocky Mountain Vote Pride. Davis mentioned polls showing the race between Udall and Gardner was tight, and he asked the staffer if he should fill out and mail in ballots for other college students who had moved away but still received mail on campus. The Democratic staffer says he told Davis that doing this would be voter fraud and that he should not do it.

On Friday, Udall campaigned with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus. After the event, a woman calling herself “Bonnie” approached a different staffer and, according to this staffer’s boss, asked whether she could fill out and submit blank ballots found in a garbage can. The staffer, according to her boss, said that she told her no.

That same day, the guy identifying himself as “Nick Davis” returned to the Democratic office in Boulder. He was accompanied by a man wearing heavy makeup and a mustache, according to the Democratic staffer who had met Davis three days earlier. Davis introduced his friend as a “civics professor” at the University of Colorado-Boulder and the faculty adviser to Rocky Mountain Vote Pride. Davis and the professor, who said his name was “John Miller,” picked up Udall campaign literature and canvassing information.

On Monday, O’Keefe tweeted a photo of himself with a mustache and said he’d recently posed as a “45yo” for one of his “election investigations.”

The repeated questions about submitting other people’s ballots led Democratic staffers to suspect they were being targeted. Later, the staffers viewed photos of O’Keefe—including one taken in Colorado showing O’Keefe sans mustache and sporting a Udall campaign sticker and a Women for Udall button—and they concluded that O’Keefe and the college professor were the same person. They also said the image O’Keefe tweeted of himself with a mustache matched the man who visited the Boulder office on Friday.

O’Keefe and two male colleagues also targeted a progressive nonprofit named New Era Colorado, according to New Era executive director Steve Fenberg. On Saturday, Fenberg says, O’Keefe and his friends contacted New Era’s Fort Collins office to set up an in-person meeting and identified themselves as activists affiliated with Rocky Mountain Vote Pride. The three men arrived carrying Udall campaign literature, Fenberg notes, but a New Era organizer met them outside the office’s front door and refused to let them enter with the Udall materials. Outside groups such as New Era cannot coordinate with political campaigns, and Fenberg says he believes O’Keefe and his collaborators “were trying to establish evidence we were working together.”

James O’Keefe and one of his collaborators

When New Era’s staffers began taking pictures of O’Keefe (including the photo embedded at left), Fenberg says, O’Keefe and a colleague went to their car and returned with a large video camera and a microphone. “If you want to take photos of us, we’ll take photos of you,” O’Keefe said, according to Fenberg, and the New Era staffers closed the door while O’Keefe and his friend tried to push it open and stick their microphone inside. Fenberg says New Era filed a police report about the incident.

Rocky Mountain Vote Pride doesn’t seem to have much of a footprint. There is a website and Facebook page for the organization, both created in July, but they provide no information about who’s behind the group. Searches for Rocky Mountain Vote Pride in the University of Colorado-Boulder student newspaper, the Denver Post, and the Boulder Daily Camera turned up no results. A search of Nexis archives for the past two years yielded zero mentions.

Chris Harris, the communications director for the Udall campaign, accused O’Keefe of “using sleazy, deceptive tactics to undermine the public’s trust in democracy.”

O’Keefe is best known for his undercover videos attacking the community organizing group ACORN. Those videos, hyped by Fox News and the conservative blogosphere, led the GOP-led House of Representatives to hold more than a dozen votes to defund ACORN, and the group disbanded soon after. In 2010, the FBI arrested O’Keefe and three others for phone tampering at a New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). He was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and three years of probation and fined $1,500.

This fall, O’Keefe’s group, Project Veritas, launched a political offshoot with its sights set on high-profile campaigns and organizations. Project Veritas went undercover to try to get campaign staffers for Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes to contradict the candidate’s pro-coal message. In Arkansas, O’Keefe’s group secretly filmed Sen. Mark Pryor speaking to a local LGBT group in an attempt to expose him as privately supporting marriage equality, which he has publicly opposed. Project Veritas also sought to bait workers for Battleground Texas, the group formed by Obama campaign alums to register and organize Democratic voters, into taking improper actions, but a Texas special prosecutor dismissed the group’s video as “little more than a canard and political disinformation.”

Neither New Era nor the Udall campaign was aware of any other contacts by staff with O’Keefe or his colleagues, and it was not clear whether other organizations in Colorado might have been contacted. Stephen Gordon, a spokesman for Project Veritas, declined to comment. “We’re not making any comment on potential operations in Colorado at this moment,” he said. “But watch for our upcoming videos.”

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Colorado Dems: We Caught James O’Keefe and His Friends Trying to Bait Us Into Approving Voter Fraud

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Election Rule #34: Process Gaffes Matter. Policy Gaffes Don’t.

by MNXMarcosxmfl Posted on October 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Last year, it was conventional wisdom that Republicans had a very good shot at gaining control of the Senate in this year’s midterm election. But then GOP candidates started to falter a bit in Kansas, North Dakota, and other swing states. Charles Pierce comments on how this has played out with Joni Ernst in Iowa and Cory Gardner in Colorado:

The meme looked a little weak and faltering. It was time to make it strong again. And then we saw one of those remarkable moments in which the keepers of Our National Dialogue moved to shore up their own endangered credibility, thereby reviving the meme. Instead of being a demonstration that Joni Ernst’s entire previous political career was built on fringe bushwah, her ability to “distance” herself from these positions was presented as a demonstration of how politically deft she is. Out in Colorado, Cory Gardner, who has spent every second of his time in politics as a proud anti-choice loon, is now ahead of incumbent Mark Udall at least in part because of the credit Gardner has accrued for shrewdly “softening” his long history of extremism. That this might be naked opportunism seems lost in the narrative somewhere. I don’t think it’s entirely out of line to believe that a lot of people in my business need the Senate to change hands in November to vindicate how smart they were in February.

Maybe. Or it might just be the usual preoccupation that political reporters have with process over substance. For example, Steve Benen notes today that Kentucky Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes recently dodged “a straightforward question about whom she voted for in the 2012 presidential election” and got hammered for it. But in Iowa, when Ernst refused to say if she wants to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency or what she’d do for those who’d lose health care coverage if Obamacare is repealed, the reaction was mostly crickets.

The difference is that Grimes was clumsy over her handling of a process issue: her support for a president of her own party. Reporters feel free to go after that. Ernst, by contrast, was crafty over her handling of policy issues: in this case, environmental policy and health care policy. Likewise, Gardner is being crafty about his handling of abortion and contraceptive policy. That sort of craftiness generally invites little censure because political reporters don’t want to be seen taking sides on an issue of policy—or even rendering judgment about whether a candidate’s policy positions have changed. In fact, being crafty on policy is often viewed as actively praiseworthy because it shows how politically savvy a candidate is.

There are exceptions to this rule if a candidate says something truly loony. But the bar is pretty high for that. Generally speaking, policy views are out of bounds for political reporters, regardless of whether they’ve changed or whether they’re transparently absurd. Ernst knows that. Grimes apparently didn’t.

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Election Rule #34: Process Gaffes Matter. Policy Gaffes Don’t.

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ECB Finally Shows Signs of Taking Lousy Economic Growth Seriously

by ChristiSheppard Posted on September 4, 2014

Mother Jones

In a surprise move, the European Central Bank cut interest rates nearly to zero today And there’s more:

The central bank said that in October it would begin buying asset-backed securities, bundles of loans issued by banks to businesses and households….Perhaps more significantly, Mr. Draghi said that the central bank’s governing council was ready to take further measures if needed — a clear reference to quantitative easing, or broad-based purchases of government bonds or other assets.

“The governing council is unanimous in its commitment to using additional unconventional instruments,” Mr. Draghi said at a news conference….“Q.E. was discussed,” Mr. Draghi said. “A broad asset purchase program was discussed.” He said some members of the governing council favored starting such purchases, but others did not.

More from the Wall Street Journal:

While the ECB had in recent months indicated it was considering an ABS purchase program, the addition of a covered bond program and rate cuts was a surprise, and an indication that officials have grown increasingly concerned that the recent period of very low inflation could persist longer than first thought and may threaten the currency area’s economic recovery.

“In August, we see a worsening of the medium-term inflation outlook, a downward movement in all indicators of inflation expectations,” Mr. Draghi said. “Most, if not all, the data we got in August on GDP (gross domestic product) and inflation showed that the recovery was losing momentum.”

It’s still too little, too late—as usual with the ECB—but at least it suggests that European leaders are finally taking seriously the combination of low inflation and lousy economic growth in the eurozone. More please.

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ECB Finally Shows Signs of Taking Lousy Economic Growth Seriously

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No, Obama’s Ukraine Policy Isn’t “Muddled”

by Mohamed43S Posted on September 3, 2014

Mother Jones

Time’s Michael Scherer writes today about President Obama’s foreign policy:

“NATO must send an unmistakable message in support of Ukraine,” Obama said. “Ukraine needs more than words.”

The rhetoric hit its marks. The message, however, was muddled.

As he finished his speaking engagements, several questions remained about how he intends to deal with the multiple foreign policy crises facing his administration. He again condemned Russian incursions into Ukraine, and promised new U.S. and European help to train, modernize and strengthen the Ukrainian military. But his “unmistakable message” of support stopped short of defining or ruling out any additional U.S. military role should Russian aggression continue.

While he pointedly promised to defend those countries in the region who are signatories to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Obama offered no similar assurances to Ukraine, even as he highlighted that country’s voluntary contributions to NATO military efforts. Instead, Obama asked for a focus on a peace process that seems, for the moment, elusive.

“Since ultimately there’s no military solution to this crisis, we will continue to support Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s efforts to achieve peace because, like all independent nations, Ukraine must be free to decide its own destiny,” he said, minutes after the Kremlin denied reports it had reached a ceasefire with Ukraine. As NATO leaders gather to consider imposing additional economic sanctions on Russia, Obama hailed the success of the U.S.-led sanctions regime, which has hurt the Russian economy but without stopping additional Russian military aggression in Ukraine.

This was not the only issue on which he left gray areas.

For excellent reasons, foreign policy statements nearly always include gray areas, so it would hardly be news if that were the case here. But it’s not. In fact Obama’s statement was unusually straightforward. He said the same thing he’s been saying for months about Ukraine, and it’s really pretty clear:

We are committed to the defense of NATO signatories.
Ukraine is not part of NATO, which means we will not defend them militarily.
However, we will continue to seek a peaceful settlement; we will continue to provide military aid to Ukraine; and we will continue to ratchet up sanctions on Russia if they continue their aggression in eastern Ukraine.

You might not like this policy. And maybe it will change in the future. But for now it’s pretty straightforward and easy to understand. The closest Obama came to a gray area is the precise composition of the sanctions Russia faces, but obviously that depends on negotiations with European leaders. You’re not going to get a unilateral laundry list from Obama at a press conference.

The rest of Scherer’s piece is about ISIS, and it’s at least a little fairer to say that policy in this area is still fuzzy. But Obama has been pretty forthright about that, and also pretty clear that a lot depends on negotiations with allies and commitments from the Iraqi government. That’s going to take some time, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I should add that nobody on the planet—not even John McCain!—knows how to destroy ISIS. Everybody wants some kind of magic bullet that will put them out of business without committing any ground troops, but nobody knows what that is. So until one of the blowhard hawks comes up with an actual plan that might actually work, I’ll stick with Obama’s more cautious approach. I figure he’ll do something, but only when politics and military strategy align to provide a plausible chance of success. In the meantime, mindlessly demanding more bombs—the only action that most of Washington’s A-list apparently considers worthy of a commander-in-chief—is just stupid.

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No, Obama’s Ukraine Policy Isn’t “Muddled”

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Temper Tantrums in the Air May Be Good For All Of Us

by LacyEastham Posted on September 3, 2014

Mother Jones

Three times makes it a trend!

Amy Fine wanted to nap on Delta flight 2370, from New York to Palm Beach, Fla., so she laid her head on the tray table. The passenger in front of her wanted to relax with some knitting. She reclined her seat — smacking Fine’s head and sparking an emotional explosion.

The resulting screaming match caused an unscheduled landing in Jacksonville, Fla., the third diversion in nine days caused by passenger fights over shrinking legroom.

My position is that the passengers getting into these fights are doing us all a favor. If this happens a few more times, nobody will ever recline their seat again for fear of causing a flight-diverting temper tantrum. Fear can be a wonderful motivator sometimes.

Of course, there are dynamic effects to be worried about here. If this continues, perhaps airlines will start disabling the recline mechanisms in their seats once and for all. Just not worth the trouble. And once they’ve done that, some bright spark will figure out that they can reduce legroom even more. And then we’ll all be worse off than before. No one will be able to recline and everybody will have their knees jammed into the seat in front of them. Something to look forward to.

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Temper Tantrums in the Air May Be Good For All Of Us

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Republicans Mysteriously Decide to Become Hawkish Again

by BBWWilbert Posted on September 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Apparently the kinder, gentler version of the Republican Party is quickly disappearing:

Remember when the Republican Party was quickly shifting toward a new brand of Rand Paul-esque foreign policy non-interventionism?

No more.

Less than a year ago, just 18 percent of GOPers said that the United States does “too little” when it comes to helping solve the world’s problems, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Today, that number has more than doubled, to 46 percent.

….The results echo a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll which showed higher GOP support for airstrikes in Iraq.

So what to account for the shift?

Hmmm. That’s a poser, isn’t it? What, oh what, could account for the shift?

Well, let’s cast our minds back a year or two. We were fighting in Libya, a war that President Obama got us involved in. We were fighting in Afghanistan, a war that Obama ramped up as soon as he took office. We were fighting drone wars in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, all thanks to Obama.

Then what happened? The civil war in Syria heated up, but after a brief bout of indecision Obama decided not to get deeply involved. Russia ramped up military action in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and Obama decided not to get deeply involved. ISIS took over a huge chunk of Iraq, and Obama decided not to get deeply involved.

So let’s review. A year or two ago, we were involved in three overseas wars, all of them supported by Obama. At the time, Republicans were unaccountably dovish about military interventions. Today, Obama is refraining from getting deeply involved in three overseas wars. And guess what? Republicans have suddenly become hawkish again.

Yep, this is a poser. What could possibly account for this change in Republican attitudes?

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Republicans Mysteriously Decide to Become Hawkish Again

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Has Vladimir Putin Painted Himself Into a Corner?

by Kennith30E Posted on August 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Max Fisher writes today that Vladimir Putin probably never wanted to invade Ukraine. So why did he? It all started when he was elected to a third term as president amid continuing economic stagnation:

Putin expected another boisterously positive reception, but that’s not what he happened. Instead, he got protests in major cities, opposition candidates, and, even according to the highly suspicious official tally, only 63 percent of the vote.

Putin panicked. He saw his legitimacy slipping and feared a popular revolt. So he changed strategies. Rather than basing his political legitimacy on economic growth, he would base it on reviving Russian nationalism: imperial nostalgia, anti-Western paranoia, and conservative Orthodox Christianity.

….Then the Ukraine crisis began….In March 2014, Putin indulged his own rhetoric about saving Ukraine’s ethnic Russians — and seized an opportunity to reclaim a former Soviet strategic port — when he launched a stealth invasion of Crimea….This is when the crisis began to slip beyond Putin’s control….The nationalistic rhetoric inside Russia was cranked up to a fever pitch. Putin’s propaganda had built a parallel universe for Russians, in which the stakes in eastern Ukraine were dire not just for Russia but for the world….But the violence in eastern Ukraine was spinning out of control, with Ukrainian military forces looking like they were on the verge of overrunning the rebels.

In a rational world, Putin would have cut his losses and withdrawn support for the rebels. But, thanks to months of propagandistic state media, Russians do not live in a rational world. They live in a world where surrendering in eastern Ukraine would mean surrendering to American-backed Ukrainian Nazis, and they believe everything that Putin has told them about being the only person capable of defeating these forces of darkness. To withdraw would be to admit that it was all a lie and to sacrifice the nationalism that is now his only source of real legitimacy. So Putin did the only thing he could to do to keep up the fiction upon which his political survival hinges: he invaded Ukraine outright.

Is this basically correct? It’s more or less the way I view events in Russia, so it appeals to me. But I don’t know enough about Russia to have a lot of confidence that this is really the best explanation for Putin’s actions.

It’s also not clear—to me, anyway—that Putin is truly stuck in a situation he never wanted. I agree that this interpretation makes sense. Eastern Ukraine just flatly doesn’t seem worth the price he would have to pay for it. But that’s easy to say from seven thousand miles away. I wonder if this is really the way Putin sees things?

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Has Vladimir Putin Painted Himself Into a Corner?

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There Are No Lessons of History

by SheilaMartindal Posted on August 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Adam Gopnik argues that knowing history won’t really help you understand the lessons of history. There are just too many of them, and you can always cherry pick whichever lesson supports the thing you wanted to do in the first place. Rather, it should teach us humility:

The best argument for reading history is not that it will show us the right thing to do in one case or the other, but rather that it will show us why even doing the right thing rarely works out.

….The real sin that the absence of a historical sense encourages is presentism, in the sense of exaggerating our present problems out of all proportion to those that have previously existed. It lies in believing that things are much worse than they have ever been—and, thus, than they really are—or are uniquely threatening rather than familiarly difficult. Every episode becomes an epidemic, every image is turned into a permanent injury, and each crisis is a historical crisis in need of urgent aggressive handling—even if all experience shows that aggressive handling of such situations has in the past, quite often made things worse.

Unfortunately, I doubt that Gopnik is right. Outside of academia, I haven’t noticed that a knowledge of history is correlated in any way with a calmer perspective on our current problems.

Take President Obama. He’s a smart guy. He knows history, and he has an instinctively level-headed attitude toward life in the first place. What’s more, he very famously won office partly on the strength of his skepticism toward military intervention and his opposition to “dumb wars.”

So what happened after he took office? He almost immediately approved a surge in Afghanistan. Then another surge. That didn’t work out especially well, and by 2011, when Libya was going up in flames, Obama was obviously reluctant to get involved. But he did anyway. And that turned into a complete clusterfuck. But even that wasn’t quite enough. Two years later he almost got talked into intervening in Syria before turning aside at the last minute. And that brings us to the present day and the threat of ISIS.

As near as I can tell, Obama is now, finally, genuinely, skeptical about military intervention. That’s why he’s been so reluctant to approve wider air strikes against ISIS even though there’s hardly a more deserving target of a bombing campaign anywhere in the world. He understands in his gut that it’s not likely to work, and that it definitely won’t work without an Iraqi government that can competently provide the ground troops to do the bulk of the fighting. Right now that doesn’t exist, so Obama is refusing to be drawn into an unwinnable quagmire. He finally understands.

But this isn’t because of his knowledge of history. It’s because of Afghanistan. And Libya. And Syria. It took three consecutive slaps in the face to finally convince his gut of what his brain probably believed all along.

In the end, I think this is why I sympathize with Obama’s foreign policy choices even though I’ve been at least moderately opposed to all his interventions. I’d like to think that I would have made different decisions if I’d been in his place, but the truth is I probably wouldn’t have. The institutional and political pressures in favor of military action are just too strong. More than likely, I would have caved in too until I eventually learned better from bitter experience.

Is Gopnik’s brand of historical fatalism any better than historical blindness? It’s hard to say. But it probably doesn’t matter. When it comes time to actually do things, we learn from experience, not the past.

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There Are No Lessons of History

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