1) The more you run him down, the worse getting beat by him looks on you.
2) If you want to call him the “affirmative action” president, remember that for every president up to Woodrow Wilson, formal sanctions kept African Americans and women away from the opportunities that could lead to the Presidency. Feel free to call President Obama the “affirmative action” president, but keep in mind that this description also applies to every president from (at least) Wilson right back to Washington.

On Iraq:
You leave out the actual political reality: the status of forces agreement, which even some conservatives have noticed does not favour your original intentions. In brief:

1) The current agreement gives you six months from President Obama’s inauguration to cease combat operations in all major Iraqi cities.

2) The agreement gives you until the end of 2011 to withdraw all troops.

3) The agreement forbids you to employ any of your current basic rights to conduct operations outside of Iraq (meaning no strikes from Iraq on Iran or Syria.

4) Iraq will have criminal jurisdiction over all non-military, non-diplomatic personnel (i.e. contractors).

Now that a prominent conservative has admitted it, perhaps you will accept that the democratically elected government of Iraq has politely but very firmly shown you the door. If you want to evaluate the performance of the Democrats in office, you have to accept that they have virtually no political warrant to conduct operations in Iraq.

I will accept correction from Ymar and Mitsu, and await the spectacle of Mitsu firing away at the Left in the future.

I applaud Mitsu for enumerating positions he supports or has supported in the past. It takes some courage to be FOR something.

On that note of happy accommodation, I am off to pastures new.

As for your discussion of “secret” government powers concerning national security, I would ask that you tell me why you believe in that and not the principle of the unitary executive, which both operate on relatively the same idea: opaqueness in certain government operations.

I would also ask for your condemnation of the New York Times and other media outlets that routinely reveal national security secrets and counter-terrorism plans to the rest of the world.

As for the “regulation” argument, I would ask for your condemnation of the excesses of the 5th estate (the press) which would merit regulation by your argument. Would this or would this not stifle the 1st Amendment? Should all of these systems of checks and balances be under scrutiny?

You are using that word “moderate” again, which you cannot define as of yet on its own. You must realize that your views of what is moderate or not have no place here as they cannot be verified, checked, or agreed upon. You should not use it.

I appreciate that you, compared to some of your friends, are less beholden to the Left, but that does not make you a “moderate”. In my opinion, your views are not compatible with most of those of the Democratic party and its constituency, which would lead me to believe that these are not really your views, since you are most definitely a Democrat. What do you really believe and why should I take it at face value? How can you be against the War in Iraq but for the surge? I was the under the impression that most “liberals” could not support the surge because they saw it as doomed to fail. How do you support a tactic and not the war it is used in?

Goldsmith’s analysis is flawed because, in the case of Teddy Roosevelt whom he heaps great praise on, there was no reason for the executive aggrandizement. Roosevelt, admirable and charismatic as he was, created an activist government that never went away, unlike Lincoln’s government which was swiftly swallowed up by the turmoil of Reconstruction. I don’t see how you can’t see that perhaps the conservatives that support Bush think that his (failed) attempts to expand presidential power that he did it for a good reason? That perhaps he was trying to fight the War on Terror? That perhaps he thought that the President would need more power to properly pursue nation-building? It seems disingenuous that you would suggest that Bush expanded presidential power for himself, as whomsoever inherited the position would gain all of the privileges of the presidency! What if Bush’s successor was a Democrat? Wouldn’t that undermine all of Bush’s rulings and possibly leave the country in a worse spot overall?

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

I’m not sure what you mean by this; my position is completely consistent. I believe in *some* regulation, but obviously it must be relatively moderate in scope, and certainly it must be checked for abuse by the courts, Congress, the press, the public. When it comes to national security, obviously one must be much more careful with secrets, which is why only select members of Congress are informed, why you use a secret national security court to review things, etc. The whole point is, exactly: you balance the competing forces.

As for Cato, yes, of course, they are libertarian, but that does make them champions of many conservative causes (but not all, naturally). However they’re obviously not the only principled conservatives critical of Bush’s “unitary executive” theory: for example, Jack Goldsmith, a conservative who worked in the Bush Administration:

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/19/entertainment/et-rutten19

Goldsmith concludes that Bush’s “accomplishments will likely always be dimmed by our knowledge of his administration’s strange and unattractive views of presidential power. The American people know better today than during the Civil War and World War II that Lincoln and Roosevelt, in [Arthur] Schlesinger’s words, regarded ‘executive aggrandizement as but a means to a great end, the survival of liberty and law, of government by, for, and of the people,’ and that ‘they used emergency power, on the whole, with discrimination and restraint… .’ We are unlikely to come to think of President Bush in this way, for he has not embraced Lincoln’s and Roosevelt’s tenets of democratic leadership in crisis.”

This must be why Mitsu here touted regulation as the salvation to the problems de-regulation has wrecked in this economy of ours. It is okay if there are many organs, like Mitsu’s pet government regulations, but it is not okay for the Executive branch to satisfy the balance of powers created when the three branches were created. Oh no, then it is too much: then it is out of balance.

This is a matter of judgment and Mitsu doesn’t have it. Notice that the ability to judge well isn’t related to intelligence, accent, or level of education (or level of income).

I don’t believe your criticisms of either side will explain away the problems in your own arguments, Mitsu. I do not think folks here particularly care that you criticize some things from the Left. After all, McCain does the same thing but that doesn’t make his judgment and arguments on McCain-Feingold valid, now does it.

As for Mitsu’s guns only aiming at the right, I believe that is false. If you want an example of that, look at Ozzie from Bookworm Room. Mitsu has problems, although those problems are not easily categorized as normal Leftist ones.

I’ve mentioned what I thought those problems were but I won’t go into irrelevant details at the moment: for now, let it be sufficient to say that Mitsu has seemingly right philosophical goals and objectives, like John Spragge, but those beliefs eventually fail in the detail segment.

The economic issue of regulation vs de-regulation is one example.

As I’ve said many times before, I have disagreed with the Democratic Party on many occasions, and with Barack Obama as well. I do, however, find his general attitude towards bipartisanship to somewhat resemble my own, so I am a strong, though hardly uncritical, supporter.

You have the lofty goals of Mitsu, which seemingly are the same things classical liberals here believe in. Delve into the details a bit and you find out something else completely.

Again I have to ask: I’ve actually laid out my political positions pretty clearly here. You seem to be having a hard time deciding whether my positions are moderate from their actual content, and have taken to questioning my “motive” for “claiming” to be a moderate. It seems to me quite odd that you don’t actually seem to be able to use the political positions I take as evidence, or not, of my politics.

Finally, I’ve already said that the term “moderate” is not exactly accurate in describing my views, because it implies “somewhere in between right and left”. That’s why I chose the slightly tongue in cheek “radical centrist”. For example, I strongly favor gay rights. But, I was in favor of welfare reform (particularly welfare-to-work). I am a strong supporter of free speech rights. But, I was in favor of the first Gulf War (because I agreed with Bush Sr. that naked aggression of that sort must be resisted, to set a precedent for the post-Cold War era). I believe the current Iraq war is a strategic disaster. But, I was in favor of the surge (I posted about that on Belgravia Dispatch at the very beginning). I believe in some regulation. But, I am a vehement opponent of Soviet-style central planning. I believe Marx’s analysis of the economy is fundamentally flawed, because he makes oversimplifying assumptions about stored capital. But, I believe some state assistance in health care is a good idea. But — I think it makes more sense to have competition in health insurance, rather than a single-payer system. I believe that war is sometimes necessary. But, I believe it should be engaged in only as a last resort.

I could go on. Rather than making vague speculations about my “motive” in “claiming” I am a moderate, you can call my politics whatever you like, but you can also judge for yourself what my political views are from my actual views.

There are a number of reasons to be doubtful about Mitsu’s claims of moderation based on his behavior in this thread, but four will suffice in the interests of brevity.

First, there are rhetorical and positional advantages to be gained by claiming to be a moderate, which boil down to being able to claim that your opponents are extremists. (I recall that Uncle Joe Stalin was a master of this tactic in the late 20″s and early 30′s!) Since there are advantages to being perceived as a moderate, claims of moderation should not be considered to be self-authenticating.

Second, when I look at Mitsu’s rhetoric, it it characterized by irresponsibility and an unwillingness to take accountability and give credit. It is these characteristics that give moderation its moral authority. He doesn’t have them.

Third, Mitsu’s guns only aim at the right. He must be aware of the principle “No enemies on the Left.” A true moderate would have a lot more principled criticism to make of all hyper-partisans. As it is, he needs to show evidence of good faith in his claims.

Fourth, to call the Cato Institute a “conservative” institution reveals a failure of discrimination that is common on the Left. I understand Cato to be Libertarian and anti-collectivist. They are only Conservative in the in sense that they are against the Left and against big government. That is to say, they are only “Conservative” if your definitions are inherently Leftist.

Mitsu, you may take it as given that I don’t lead and have not lived a sheltered life.