THE END OF DISAGREEMENT

As you have probably noticed, there haven't been any updates in a couple weeks. After thorough consideration and by consulting with the other posters, we have decided that we have spread ourselves too thin online and off.

You can still read Daniel's, Michael's, and Laurence's posts at their respective sites. Adam and I will still be writing non-political posts at the No-Lyfe Journal.


I have some ideas in the works for political posts in the future. If I have anything that I absolutely must write in the short term, it will be at Reductio ad Absurdum. I am taking a brief break from all posting for the time being as I tend to personal matters, but those are the two places you can find me.

The site will remain up indefinitely, but will not be updated. Please feel free to remove all permalinks.

QUESTIONS I DO NOT KNOW THE ANSWER TO

A. Since the current primary system has been in place, has any presidential incumbent running for re-election who did not have a serious primary rival lost a general election?

B. Since the current primary system has been in place, has any presidential incumbent with a serious primary rival won a general election?

Now, the "current primary system" was not, I believe, in place when Eisenhower ran for re-election in 1956, but even if it was, Eisenhower was unchallenged in the primaries and won.

The next incumbent to run was Johnson in 1964. I do not believe that he had any serious internal opposition and won re-election. Is that belief correct?

Nixon in 1972: Did Schmidt run against him in the GOP primaries or did he simply bolt to run third party? Would he count as a serious intraparty challenge? I really don't know.

Ford in 1976: Reagan ran against him in the primaries, he lost the general election.

Carter in 1980: Edward Kennedy ran against him in the primaries, he lost the general election.

Reagan in 1984: Did not have any serious internal opposition that I know about, won handily.

Bush 1992: Buchanan won New Hampshire and would thus qualify as a serious challenger. Bush lost the general election.

Clinton in 1996: No primary challenger, won.

So the questions then become:
(A) Do weak incumbents simply draw primary challengers and thus a primary challenger is indicative of a problem?
(B) Do primary challengers make the candidate appear even weak and therefore have a detrimentally negative effect on the president's odds for re-election.

Democratic Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey considered running against Clinton in 1996. For whatever reason, he chose not to. In the run-up to the election, Clinton's re-elect numbers were not all that great. In fact, I believe a "generic Republican" ran about even with him. Nonetheless, when Bob Dole won the nomination, Clinton's re-election seemed imminent. Would a Kerrey challenge have changed that perception? Or did Kerrey simply know that since the economy was doing well, Clinton would thus be strong because that was the issue he'd run on in 1992? In other words, was Kerrey's decision not to run based on a percieved lack of weakness (A) or was Clinton's sailing through to re-election a product of coming out of the primaries with a party unified behind him (B)?

What did Bush's numbers look like when Buchanan filed to run against him?

Anyone have any thoughts or answers?

INS AND OUTS OF POWER

Jane Galt has a great post about the parties in and out of power. The crux of it is Jane's Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

She also goes on to explain her belief that Clinton's impeachment was done right: Clinton should have been impeached, but should not have been removed from office. While I don't precisely agree with her and believe that Clinton should indeed have been removed from office, her explanation of the entire situation is stellar:

I am the only person I've ever met who actually thinks we got about the right result in the impeachment. We impeached the guy, to say "No, you can't just commit perjury", but we didn't remove him from office over a minor civil suit. (Although Democrats who are planning on deluging me with elegant arguments about how he shouldn't have had to answer those questions -- I agree with you, except for one little thing, which is that he signed, with great fanfare, the law that made it so he had to answer those questions. As far as I'm concerned, therefore, he's the only guy in America who should have had to answer such questions under oath.)

But I could see how you wanted him impeached, and I could also see the argument for not impeaching him. It was a judgement call.

Except that a substantial portion of the Republican Party seemed, long before, to have lost all judgement. They were insane on the subject of Clinton. It wasn't enough that they disagreed with him politically; nothing would do but that he be the AntiChrist. They flooded the airwaves and newsprint with vituperative rants about the veriest trivialities of his administration. They raged impotently at the people in America -- THE FOOLS! -- who couldn't see that Clinton was the AntiChrist, even though it was as plain as the nose on your face. Every tiny shred of news about Clinton, no matter how innocuous, was waved about as evidence of his perfidy. I recall listening to some radio commenter go on and on about some Rose Garden ceremony for some law that was, as laws go, blandly heartwarming though ultimately useless, rather than, say, totally antithetical to basic concepts of liberty. The radio host used this law, which was so boring that I can't remember its topic except that it had something to do with kids and learning, as proof of Clinton's inherent evilness. How dare he cavort with children in the Rose Garden when, as we have already seen, he's EEEEVVVVVIIIIILLLL.

This was my conflict during the entire process. I was a Clinton defender and later apologist for most of his presidency. In fact, my very first column for the Daily Cougar outlined why I viewed impeachment as a mistake. In my generally tempered style, I fell short of explaining what I really thought: Republicans were insane.

And even though I now agree that there were grounds for Clinton to be impeached and removed from office, I still believe that they were. Not those that thought that lying under oath was an impeachable offense, of course, because I'm one of them. However, that's just the charge that they caught him one. Republicans had been aiming to get him removed since the 1996 election for whatever it was they could find. An investigation of a land deal became an investigation of marital indescretions resulted in impeachment on a crime that had not yet been committed when the investigations began. I don't say this because I think it lets Clinton off the hook because I obviously don't believe it does. Instead, I want to look at how irrational it all was and how they innoculated Clinton to the point that the public rallied behind a confessed adulturer, liar, and perjuror.

Bill Clinton was accused of everything from murder to treason. The former charge is thoroughly discredited and the latter is specious at best, but the point is when you accuse a man of being the Satan incarnate, discovering that he is an adulturer, liar, and perjuror just doesn't seem so bad. They had spent so much time trying to charge so much against the man that by the time actual wrongdoing was discovered, the people were sick of it.

On political grounds, Republican criticisms of Clinton's politics were equally inept. I remember a classic political cartoon that explained it all in a nutshell:
Panel 1:
Republican: Bill Clinton is liberal, liberal, liberal!
Arrow to Panel 2
Panel 2:
Democrat: Isn't it great to have a president that stands up for what he believes in?
Arrow to Panel 3
Panel 3
Republican: Stands up for what he believes in? Bill Clinton has never stood up for anything in his life!
Arrow to Panel 4
Panel 4
Democrat: Doesn't that just go to show how nice it is having a president that is so open to compromise.
Arrow to Panel 5
Panel 5
Republican: Compromise? Bill Clinton is taking credit for all our ideas!
Arrow to Panel 6
Panel 6
Democrat: How wonderful it must be for you that Bill Clinton supports Republican initiatives.
Arrow to Panel 1

The Republicans tried to attack President Clinton on every front at once to the point that the attacks were mutually exclusive. I don't know if it was irreconcilable hatred of the man or a desperate attempt to see what will stick.

Whatever the case, the parallels with Democratic criticisms of President Bush. Whereas Republicans vascilated between Bill Clinton having no principle and being a liberal hatchetman, Democrats do so between the notion that Bush is this machiavellian prince and that he's a moron (or smirking money or empty hat). Bush may well be defeated in 2004, but it will be despite, not because of, the Democratic's undisciplined, unfocused opposition to him.

In the post-Watergate era, only two elected presidents have not been re-elected: Jimmy Carter and George H. Bush. In both cases the economy weighed very heavily in their defeats. More than that, the opposition was able to make the case that the problem was the man in the White House and that replacing him would amount to change. More than even that, the case against them was very focused on their job performance. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that neither were hated by the opposing party nearly as much as Reagan and Clinton were. To put a finer point on it, Carter and Bush were difficult men to hate on a personal level so they were able to approach the situation with more level-headedness. Or maybe they were difficult to hate because they were inept.

Either way, at the present time Bush is more reminiscent of Clinton and Reagan. The Democrats lack a unified theory. Is Bush a conservative firebrand out of touch? Is he a machiavellian prince without any principle other than politics (note: you are running against Bush, so don't say "well Rove is this way and Bush is that way and together they unite to form the Axis of Republican Evil!")? Is he inept and his incompetence is to blame for percieved failures in Iraq and on the economy?

Lieberman presently strikes me as the only candidate who has a chance primarily because he's the only one who has picked an answer (ineptitude) and run with it. Unfortunately for him, his answers on foreign policy are largely incompatible with the Democratic primary electorate, so he will not win the nomination. Edwards is the only candidate that has to potential to have a chance because he hasn't closed any doors yet so he could make a case that he would be better than Bush on both foreign and domestic policy. Given his lack of experience, it's an uphill climb, but his lack of exprience also serves to explain why he hasn't developed a comprehensive plan, as opposed to John Kerry, where every new thing he says that contradicts something he's previously said serves as yet another example that he is a victim of a Gorean identity crisis and given that just about everything he has said this point has been already contradictory of something else, I just don't think there's much hope.

Bob Graham also could win, but by all indications he has appeared to have lost his mind, so I'm not sure what to say about him. Gephardt is running on the economy. He didn't get the memo.

Of course, the above analysis is in large part dependent that Iraq is not in the middle of a civil war that we're involved in and we're not in the middle of the Second Great Depression. If that's the case, everyone who isn't named Sharpton, Braun, or Kucinich could concievably win.

But praying for rain is not a political strategy.

So to wrap this post around, the point is that unbridled hatred only serves to insulate the party that's in power. The "insanity" of Republicans prior to impeachment innoculated Clinton when wrong-doing was demonstrated. Similarly, the current "insanity" of Democrats is innoculating Bush for 2004.

THE INFINITE TOLL-WAY

A couple brief stories:

1.
My mother was once on a plane with James A. Baker, who was serving as Secretary of Treasury at the time. He was approached by someone who had an idea for easier taxation. The man said that everyone should have to pay for things with what today are called debit cards (but were not as prevalent at the time) and a portion of each purchase should just go straight to the government. Baker was polite (one suspects that he got ideas on taxation from strangers often) and explain, "Yes, that would make it simpler to collect taxes and a lot simpler to raise them."

2.
A left-of-center friend and I were getting gas on our way out of town for a road trip. Gas prices were abnormally high at the time and there was an ongoing debate as Republicans were pushing for them to be lowered. My friend saw a sticker on the pump that explained that fifty-three cents of every gallon was going to pay for local, state, and federal taxes. "Why do they do that?" he complained, "it's like they want to blame the government for the high gas prices."

I responded that if the government was responsible for fifty-three cents on the gallon, it's more than fair to say so. It's like when stores don't include sales taxes on their prices.

Turns out he also had a problem with that.


Charles Kuffner links to a report on taxes in passing that caught my interest. It explains the good and bad ways that states tax:

Of course, the burden a tax system must carry varies from state to state. There is no such thing as a perfect structure, no template that all, or even most, of the states could use. One of the glories of the American system of governance is that states are free to offer different degrees of service to their citizens. The main commonality is that they must raise whatever revenue they need to meet their chosen level of service. Raising money to meet irresponsible spending doesn’t make for a good tax system. But utilizing well-balanced streams of revenue and avoiding unsupportable tax cuts are critical, regardless of whether a state wants to have a Cadillac government or a Chevy.

Fair enough. I am generally in favor of balanced budgets, so tax cuts that create massive deficits are undesirable to me (though much more desirable than spending that creates deficits, which is why Democratic criticisms of Bush ring hollow to me, but that's an aside).

The question is what makes a taxism more or less fair than another? After all, a balanced budget is balanced whether the revenues are generated via sales, income, corporate, or property taxes. There's always the question of who is getting taxed. Income taxes are usually favored by liberals and sales taxes favored by conservatives since the former can be aimed at the wealthy and the latter are less likely to be targetted. There is also the question of what the taxing promotes and penalizes, conservatives arguing that the progressive income tax penalizes work, many arguing that property taxes discourage home ownership, and so on. But the report doesn't really explore these issues.

It's primary concern is making taxation as psychologically untaxing (pun intended) as possible.

States with unbalanced tax systems are particularly ripe for misinformation and misconception. In Texas, sales and property taxes are high because there is no income tax. Even though Texas ranks near the bottom in tax burden — per capita or otherwise — its citizens “think of themselves as overtaxed,” reports Judith Stallmann, a professor at the University of Missouri.

This kind of veracity vertigo wouldn’t be such a bad thing if complaining about high taxes were like complaining about the weather. But politicians who want to stay in office regularly disregard their better instincts and follow their citizens on a path to misbegotten policies. Tennessee’s tax structure, with its over-reliance on high sales taxes, is, for instance, famously dysfunctional and inadequate to state needs. Well-informed observers have long argued in favor of adding a state income tax to the mix. “Many in the legislature believed the income tax was the right approach to funding government,” says Bill Fox, a nationally known tax expert and professor at the University of Tennessee. “But the percentage who was willing to vote for it was different.”

Damn those voters! Always complaining about taxes! Except their complaints get in the way of bigger government!

I'm being hyperbolic, but I get a whole lot of that in Texas. Over and over again I'm told how low our state taxes are compared to other states and how if we're really going to be able to pay our bills, we're going to have to incorporate a state income taxes. Whether or not we should have a state income tax is, of course, open to debate. But I don't want to sign on to more taxes and more government in Texas because taxes are higher elsewhere. If the current taxes are "inadequate," as they presently are, they we either need to pare down state government to the point that they are adequate or raise current rates to meet our needs. How we raise rates is statistically insignificant as long as the money actually comes in.

That last part is important as in recent history states (including Texas) have pursued quick-fixes in the forms of state lotteries that have promised more revenue than they've brought in. But the article states as clear as day that income taxes are just as susceptable to the ebb and flow of the economy as are sales taxes and so on. So really it's not so much pushing for a state income tax.

What it is pushing for, though, is diversified taxation. In other words, a little taxes everywhere (income, sales, corporate, and property) so that people are less inclined to notice or be deeply psychologically scarred for life by the government taking its chomp out of our wallets. Hyperbolic again, but you get the point. What they're getting at is a desire to make taxes easier and less noticeable.

That's where I just can't agree. I want taxes to be noticeable. I hate counting out pennies because of sales taxes, but that reminds me that $8.25 of every $10 goes towards the government. When Pasadena raised their sales taxes from .075 to .0825, I didn't notice some macroeconomic manner of mildly increasing prices, I noticed that something $20 costed a buck and a half more. Black and white. Cut and dried. As it happens the people of Pasadena voted for the tax increase and that's perfectly fine. I'm sure they're happy with it. The buck-fifty isn't the point. The point was that taxes went up and people were made immediately aware of it.

Truth be told, I might not mind a state income tax if it were institution in place of, instead of in addition to, the current structure. Like the federal income tax, it wouldn't be hard to determine exactly how much bite of the apple the government is taking. It'll make voters think twice before that next tax hike. As someone who is generally anti-tax, I consider that a good thing. That's why I don't consider psychologically painful taxes to be such a bad thing: they keep us from getting to economically painful tax rates.

On a last note, there is one area on which I do agree with the report.

the golden rule of tax equity: collect the lowest possible rates on the widest possible base of taxpayers.

I call this the "divide and conquer" strategy. Tax hotels because theoretically (but not actually) those are paid for by out of towners (and some of those in-town hotel guests would just assume no one know that they... ahem... frequent hotels). Tax cigarettes cause smokers are a minority and you can add a moral dimension to it. Tax every concievable vice, and we'll all end up paying in the end, but we'll all have our barrels pointed at different taxes and they'll be much more difficult to fight.

The article calls that form of taxation the most "fair." While I maintain that the difference in fairness is marginal, I would call that taxation the most likely to be passed and the least likely to be reversed, so Ima ginnit.

ENJOY OKLAHOMA, BOYS, AND DON'T COME BACK

A few interesting facts:

California:
2000 Election: 58% Gore/Nader, 42% Bush
Statewide elected officials: 10-0 (100%) Dem.
Congressional Delegation: 34-19 (64%) Dem.

Texas:
2000 Election: 59% Bush, 40% Gore/Nader
Statewide elected officials: 29-0 (100%) GOP
Congressional Delegation: 17-15 (53%) Dem.

If the 2000 elections had gone to the U.S. House, the same state that elected and re-elected Bush (by an astounding margin) would have cast its congressional vote for Al Gore.

In February I commented that while the House Majority Leader whose initials are TD (I am not supposed to mention his name in a negative context. Long story, bear with me) had a point about the Democratic tilt of Congress's congressional delegation, the GOP had its chance at redistricting to change that and they blew it. As such, the Texas GOP should not be pursuing redistricting after the 2002 election.

I take it back. Goodspeed House Majority Leader Tommy D!

When I first read the title "Democrats AWOL" peering over at someone else's edition of the Houston Chronicle on my way to jury duty today, I assumed it was a hyperbolic title about the relative impotence of the Democratic Party in our fair state. But no, a fair number of those little buggers, henceforth referred to as the Texas Democratic Coalition For a Permanent Minority (TDCPM) have actually fled Texas proper into our northern-most county, Oklahoma, which is by some freak occurance of history outside Texas's jurisdiction.

For those of you unaware, Texas legislature rules require 2/3 (100 of 150) to meet quorum. In order to duck the redistricting fight, Democrats have taken over 50 legislators across state lines. Why across state lines? Because Texas Rangers (the real ones, not the ball club) and the DPS were looking for them. Their jurisdiction ends at the Oklahoma border and as such, the Texas Democratic Coalition for a Permanent Minority have become the opposition in exile. Meanwhile, MSNBC, CBS News, and Fox News are eating it up. Why not? It's a funny story.

Except the joke is on us.

And I'm not laughing.

In fact, I am completely reversing my position on the issue of redistricting. Why? Because before I felt that the Texas GOP, lead by Tommy D, were using dirty (but constitutional and in accordance with with the letter of the law) tricks to make up for their shortcomings in redistricting. While I didn't disagree with their aim of having a state delegation that represents the views of the state, I did disagree with the notion that they get a "do over" just because they didn't like the results last time around. So what do the Democrats do? They use dirty (but constitutional and in accordance with the letter of the law) tricks to make up for their shortcoming of being in a state whose electorate repudiates their politics nearly every chance it gets. While I am sympathetic to their arguments that the GOP shouldn't get a do-over, they took our dirty laundry and waved it in front of the rest of the country.

Kuff and Lofty suggest that this is only a rational response to GOP strongarming. Quintessentially, the argument is that "They started it!"

That's true, but this little publicity stunt has taken it up about sixteen notches. The last time this parliamentary trick was used was in 1991, when liberals used it to get Governor Ann Richards to promise to return funding for Kindergarten programs. While I'd need to know the specifics to know whether or not I agree with the liberals on that issue, at least they pulled out the biggest gun in their arsenal for an actual issue! What are they doing it for right now? So that a staunchly Republican state continues to send a Democratic congressional delegation, all the while moaning and groaning on how it's the Republicans that are trying to subvert democracy and disenfranchise voters. Democrats are losing on almost every issue in the state (even some that this writer wishes that they were winning) and their response for being continually beaten up in the boxing ring of politics is to blame their opponent.

Well, Dems, you've drawn the line in the sand. It's not progressivism vs. conservatism or active government versus limited government, it's Republican vs. Democrat in a state that leans at least 55% Republican. Good luck with that.

BEST DESCRIPTION OF MODERN CONSERVATISM I'VE SEEN IN A WHILE...

and it's from a die-hard liberal who is frightened by it!

These broad objectives may sound reactionary and destructive (in historical terms they are), but hard-right conservatives see themselves as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance and individual autonomy from the clutches of collective action and "statist" left-wingers. They do not expect any of these far-reaching goals to be fulfilled during Bush's tenure, but they do assume that history is on their side and that the next wave will come along soon (not an unreasonable expectation, given their great gains during the past thirty years). Right-wingers--who once seemed frothy and fratricidal--now understand that three steps forward, two steps back still adds up to forward progress. It's a long march, they say. Stick together, because we are winning.

He goes on to explain why this self-assessment of conservatives is wrong. He's right, to a degree, that the effects of conservatism are not as grand as the vision. The same, of course, can be said of liberalism. This brings me back to my tug-of-war theory which states that one must not agree with one side or the other completely to be constantly tugging the political center to that side.

I CAUGHT MICHAEL SAVAGE ON MSNBC TODAY...

What an obnoxious little twit.

IN OTHER NEWS...

There are rumors that they're lining the pipes in Hell for a coming cold spell.

LICENSE TO PREACH

There were some points I meant to get to in the below post that I never quite did because below was focused primarily on Bill Bennett. Now I'm going to take it to the abstract.

What makes someone a hypocrite?

Hypocrisy is conventionally defined as a "do what I say, not what I do" mentality. Thus, someone who is doing one thing but then saying that it shouldn't be done or vice-versa, they are a hypocrite. That much is pretty clear. If Thursday night, with a beer in my hand, I call a friend and tell him that alcohol drinking is a sin, then take another swig of my beer, I am a hypocrite.

Past vs. Present
Someone can also be a hypocrite for having done something and then telling someone not to do it, provided that they do not renounce their former deed. So, if I spent my teenage years getting high, I cannot tell my future kids not to do so unless I make an admission that I was wrong for doing so. If I make such an admission, then I am actually free to lecture hypocrisy-free. If I were to say "It was different in my day" and try to convince the kid that it was okay for me to do it (and therefore fail to renounce my involvement) then that is hypocrisy unless a forceful distinction can be made between "in my day" and "now." That would be possible when it comes to an older person's sexual escapades younger in life and now because of the prevalence of STD's. (inversely, the kid could argue that abortion is legal now so the difference actually works in his favor in that regard).

Rationale Overlap
Additionally, someone can be a hypocrite by condemning one thing and doing something else when the reasons for prohibition of one ought to apply to the other. For instance, if I am a Catholic woman preaching against homosexuality because it is contrary to my church's faith and then turn around and take the pill, I am being a hypocrite for engaging in an act different from the one I am committing by virtue of the rationale overlap (if one shouldn't be gay cause Catholicism says it's wrong, then they shouldn't have abortions either). Even if I don't invoke Catholicism but argue that homosexuality is wrong because it does not lead to procreation and yet I take the pill, I am also being hypocritical by virtue of the rationale overlap. This, like PvP, can be avoided with credible distinctions. In the case of the pill and homosexuality, I cannot think of any distinctions remotely credible. In other cases, their may be but such distinctions usually lead to two distinct rationales (homosexuality is wrong because it leads to indefinite non-procreation while one can go off the pill, thus not making the issue non-procreative sex but rather the indefinity of it).

Same But Worse
Lastly, someone can be a hypocrite by a hypocrite by condemning one thing and doing something similar. If I say "Heroin is bad because it messes with your mind" and then turn around and take LSD, I'm being a hypocrite. This is ostensibly similar to rationale overlap, but is different insofar as it is generally harder to get out of. If I say that heroin is bad because it messes with your mind but next Friday, just like last Friday, I'm going to get drunk again, I may or may not be a hypocrite depending on if a distinction can be made. Needless to say, it's much easier to make one between alcohol and heroin than LSD and heroin. For instance, if you are publically intoxicated, you have more freedom to roam about because you don't have to worry as much about getting caught. and therefore the amount that it messes with your mind is of less importance. Mostly, however, one messes with your mind to a much greater degree than the other so a distinction can be made about how much of the mind is messed with by any given narcotic.

There may be other cases where hypocrisy charges ring true, but these are the ones that come to mind. The only time that it is necessarily hypocrisy is when one is committing the very same act that they are condemning. Beyond that, it is up to the accuser to explain where the hypocrisy has occured, because this is not hypocrisy:

Sins In The Eyes Of Some
Someone is not necessarily a hypocrite if they engage in acts viewed wrong by many if they preach against other acts as viewed wrong by many, even if the finger-waggers are in league on some, or most, issues.

For instance, if I'm pro-life and so is Jerry Fallwell, and I donate money to his pro-life organization, does it then follow that I am held accountable for his views on homosexuality? Generally not. But let's say that I am someone believes that gambling, smoking, and drinking are wrong. Can I not be outspoken on those matters if I engage in homosexual acts because most organizations that oppose drinking, smoking, and gambling also oppose homosexuality? Would it make me a hypocrite if I was outspoken? It might if the reason I used was that "The Pentacostal Church says that gambling, smoking, and drinking are wrong, so we must not do it. Now, excuse me while I go have sex with other men." That would be hypocritical because Pentacostals also hold homosexuality in very low regard.

On a tangent, I once saw a CNN debate between Pat Buchanan and another fellow on abortion and the death penalty. They literally alternated in pointing out that the Vatican says that what they oppose is wrong. Neither addressed any form of distinction as to why the Vatican was right as far as they were concerned and wrong as far as the other was concerned. Both left themselves very much open to charges of hypocrisy as there were not any other substantive cases that either of them made.

My point is that it does not follow that someone who preaches virtue would necessarily have a restricted role of what's acceptable in every aspect of life. By viewing some things more restrictively than others isn't hypocritical, it's making distinctions.

There is a view on the left and the right that it's all black or white when it comes to intellectual consistency. If you're not a puritan but you're outspoken on the things that you do believe are wrong, you are a hypocrite to the left. The endgame of this is to just get you to shut up. It's a sign of the moral relativism on the left. Just because you view it wrong for you to do doesn't mean that you should view it wrong for others to. Or at least if you do, don't tell anyone lest we hold you accountable for views that are not your own.

On the other side of the gallery, of course, are the moral absolutists of the right. Those that believe anything fun is wrong. As for sex, well go ahead and do it since we have to for the preservation of our race, but don't enjoy it, lest you be labeled a hedonist.

In between is the center left, which doesn't mind vague platitudes of right and wrong but get very testy when someone says "It's wrong for me to do this, but it's wrong for you, to" when it comes to something not everyone agrees with. In an age where infidelity is publicly defensible, the boundaries of acceptability are becoming quite broad indeed. The epitome of this mindset are those that are pro-choice who say that "I wouldn't have an abortion but I believe it should be a woman's right" (a perfectly respectable position) but then when I say I view abortion as being wrong regardless of who is having it (with some very narrow exceptions) object not on the grounds that my views are wrong, but rather because I am judging others.

To the right of them and left of the puritans are those of us that are very vocal about what we view as being right and wrong, though are not inclined to push laws forcing our views on everyone else. I find myself getting increasingly testy when I'm constantly being told that I shouldn't call what's wrong wrong because I'm not allowed to judge the actions of others.

Chuck says in a comment to my post below, "It really is about glass houses and stones. If you care that much about how I lead my life, you'd better be sure your own life is in order."

That's a perfectly reasonable position insofar that if I say "Joe, you're doing wrong because you are cheating on your wife," Joe can turn around and say "You're doing wrong because you're living with a woman you are not married to"

Now, I either believe that premarital cohabitation is right or wrong. If I believe premarital cohabitational is okay and Joe doesn't, he is free to call on me and I am free to ignore him. If Joe believes in polygamy but that that premarital cohabitation is wrong, he can then disregard my condemnation as someone whose moral axis is screwed up. If he views both as being wrong and he sleeps better at night believing that all sins are created equal, power to him, I guess.

However, if Joe does not believe that premarital marriage is wrong but is merely bringing that up to shut me up, he is being fundamentally dishonest.

That is my problem with what Bill Bennett's critics are doing with him. I'd be much less bothered by all this if I believed that his critics actually believed that gambling is morally wrong. If I felt that were Joshua Green and Jon Alter's point, I likely wouldn't have written either of these two posts. I wouldn't agree with Green (I am generally in favor of legalizing gambling), but I'd chalk it up to a difference of opinion and my post (if I had one) would likely be on the subject of legalized gambling.

What they're doing, however, is telling us what we should believe. He's telling Bill Bennett what Bill Bennett must believe. It would be one thing if he made an argument that Bennett's views are inconsistent (as Michael Kinsley did), but it was not posited for a discussion and it did not invite any rationale response. Instead of making Bennett's beliefs (and the possible incoherency thereof) the issue, they made Bennett himself the issue. In the end, I'm forced to conclude that either Green and Alter are startlingly inept, or that was precisely the point: To silence a critic.

The message: Don't even speak of morality or we will hold you to standards above and beyond those that you are advocating.

Let me be clear that I am not a Bill Bennett fan. I disagree with him and his ilk on a number of issues. That's not the point, what is the point is that my personal views on premarital sex should not be the fodder by which my views on drug laws are shot down.

I'll go even further to say that I consider his actions, if true, immoral. Not the gambling so much as squandering $8M on such a self-gratifying enterprise. If I had $8 million, I would put quite a lot of it into an industry that didn't make its money in the dubious ways that the gambling industry does. It's one thing to gamble away play money (and I don't care how rich you are, $8 million is not play money, it's money that could go to some very worthy investments either via charities or companies that would improve our way of life) where you are essentially paying for the entertainment it provides. There isn't enough time in the world for that to be worthy of $8 million. But wait, since I don't believe that homosexuality is immoral, I suppose since I consumed a bunch of alcohol before hitting 21, I'm not allowed to talk about Bennett's immorality...

UPDATE: OTHER PERSPECTIVES

In the Comments Section below, Daniel pointed to a Michael Kinsley article on the subject that is definitely worth reading:

1) He never specifically criticized gambling. This, if true, doesn't show that Bennett is not a hypocrite. It just shows that he's not a complete idiot. Working his way down the list of other people's pleasures, weaknesses, and uses of American freedom, he just happened to skip over his own. How convenient. Is there some reason why his general intolerance of the standard vices does not apply to this one? None that he's ever mentioned.
[...]
2) His gambling never hurt anyone else. This is, of course, the classic libertarian standard of permissible behavior, and I think it's a good one. If a hypocrite is a person who says one thing and does another, the problem with Bennett is what he says—not (as far as we know) what he does. Bennett can't plead liberty now because opposing libertarianism is what his sundry crusades are all about. He wants to put marijuana smokers in jail. He wants to make it harder to get divorced. He wants more "moral criticism of homosexuality" and "declining to accept that what they do is right."

In all these cases, Bennett wants laws against or heightened social disapproval of activities that have no direct harmful effects on anyone except the participants. He argues that the activities in question are encouraging other, more harmful activities or are eroding general social norms in some vague way. Empower America, one of Bennett's several shirt-pocket mass movements, officially opposes the spread of legalized gambling, and the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, one of Bennett's cleverer PR conceits, includes "problem" gambling as a negative indicator of cultural health. So, Bennett doesn't believe that gambling is harmless. He just believes that his own gambling is harmless. But by the standards he applies to everything else, it is not harmless.

Bennett has been especially critical of libertarian sentiments coming from intellectuals and the media elite. Smoking a bit of pot may not ruin their middle-class lives, but by smoking pot, they create an atmosphere of toleration that can be disastrous for others who are not so well-grounded. The Bill Bennett who can ooze disdain over this is the same Bill Bennett who apparently thinks he has no connection to all those "problem" gamblers because he makes millions preaching virtue and they don't.

3) He's doing no harm to himself. From the information in Alter's and Green's articles, Bennett seems to be in deep denial about this. If it's true that he's lost $8 million in gambling casinos over 10 years, that surely is addictive or compulsive behavior no matter how good virtue has been to him financially. He claims to have won more than he has lost, which is virtually (that word again!) impossible playing the machines as Bennett apparently does. If he's not in denial, then he's simply lying, which is a definite non-virtue. And he's spraying smarm like the worst kind of cornered politician—telling the Washington Post, for example, that his gambling habit started with "church bingo."

Even as an innocent hobby, playing the slots is about as far as you can get from the image Bennett paints of his notion of the Good Life. Surely even a high-roller can't "cycle through" $8 million so quickly that family, church, and community don't suffer. There are preachers who can preach an ideal they don't themselves meet and even use their own weaknesses as part of the lesson. Bill Bennett has not been such a preacher. He is smug, disdainful, intolerant. He gambled on bluster, and lost.

This is the most worthwhile commentary I've seen on the subject. This one actually bothers to make an argument that Bennett is hypocritical. A pretty good argument, too.

This falls into the "Rationale Overlap" category above. If he opposes pot because of the "environment it creates" and does not oppose gambling, he is either (a) completely unaware of the troubles gambling causes or (b) draws a distinction between the two. One such distinction may be that pot is illegal and gambling is not. Given that likens gambling to alcohol, which is legal and also ruins some lives, that is actually a quite plausible. So what about legal behavior such as infidelity? Presumably he gauges those by the damage they cause to non-participating parties. And homosexuality? The only thing I can think of is that homosexuality always hurts the participants in his eyes, whereas gambling only hurts the poor. It's a stretch, but being pro-gay rights, I am biased towards seeing it as such.

So, if Bennett believes that something must be (a) illegal, (b) injurious to non-participating parties, or (c) always harmful to the participants, it is immoral. Of course, it would be immensely helpful if he would explain it this clearly, but then again politicians (which I consider him one) rarely explain everything clearly.

On the other side of the aisle is a great column by Jonah Goldberg.

I guess Aesop's Fables are now wrong.

You see, Bill Bennett's Book of Virtues contained various moral lessons from Aesop's Fables. So, if Bill Bennett has made a mistake in his personal life, he must have been wrong about the educational utility of everything in his book. And, come to think of it, every other virtue and moral and fable and story he ever promoted, advanced, or advocated must be wrong now as well. It's okay for kids to do drugs now, too, I suppose. And I guess it's okay for the president of the United States to enforce sexual-harassment laws while he plays the Sultan and the Slave Girl with an intern and then lies about it under oath. Hell, it must be okay for terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center now.

This sea change is all because Bill Bennett plays high-stakes video poker from midnight to 6:00 AM.

That seems to be the upshot of Joshua Green's and Jonathan Alter's newsitorials about Bill Bennett's gambling.

I find it hard to recall a more asinine and intellectually shameless "gotcha" story in my adult lifetime.
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I can surely see why some religious conservatives who take a dim view of gambling might be disappointed in the man. But I can assure you that any man — or woman — held in high esteem will disappoint the public in one way or another when scrutinized. "Disappointment," however, is not a standard taught at the Columbia School of Journalism. Usually, to have caused a "scandal," a public figure is supposed to have broken the law, lied, cheated, stolen, been hypocritical, or victimized someone in some significant way. But no one has charged any of these things. The only conceivable victims here are the Bennett family, and a little bird tells me that they'll do just fine. The same bird tells me that Alter and Green couldn't give a fig about Bennett's family. As for hypocrisy, neither author mentions the word.

Indeed, the stunner of the story — that Bennett wagered $8 million over the last decade — isn't even as stunning as Green and Alter desperately want it to be. There isn't any evidence that he lost $8 million dollars, only that he's bought $8 million in chips over a decade. If, as is more likely, his losses are half that, he'd have spent less than what numerous movie stars and CEOs spend on their country estates, private jets, and divorces.
[...]
In fact, you can always tell there's a hit job in the works when the victim is criticized for not being hypocritical. "The popular author, lecturer and Republican Party activist speaks out, often indignantly, about almost every moral issue except one — gambling," writes Alter in Newsweek. "It's not hard to see why." Green is windier on this point, but writes, "If Bennett hasn't spoken out more forcefully on an issue that would seem tailor-made for him, perhaps it's because he is himself a heavy gambler." In other words, if Bennett had spoken out against gambling he'd have been denounced for hypocrisy. And if Bennett had spoken in favor of gambling, he'd have been denounced for defending his preferred vice. If he's in the crosshairs for A, he'd surely be in the crosshairs for not-A as well.

I don't know that liberals are saying or implying that everything Bill Bennett says is naturally 100% wrong. They do seem to be (a) saying that this demonstrates that because Bill Bennett doesn't make it so, which is quite true, and (b) implying that anyone with a percieved moral blind spot has no business talking to anyone about morality. This argument would carry a lot more weight if his accusers actually thought Bennett had done something wrong. Instead, they're telling Bennett that he should believe that he has done something wrong. Why? Because people who are not Bennett say so.

But I digress. The lack of a journalistic angle is one of the things that has bothered me. If the articles hadn't been written by two liberal figures I wouldn't be reacting as I have. Even if it had been the New York Times (which I consider to be a liberal publication), it would have at least explored the issue from a couple of angles, gotten a substantive POV quote from someone against gambling, in favor of gambling, a Bennett support and a Bennett opponent (or six).

Which brings me to my primary disagreement with Goldberg, his assertion that there is no story here. I'll also tackle Andrew Sullivan's assertion that Bennett's privacy rights have been violated.

I believe that someone who puts himself into the public square automatically sacrifices some of his privacy. This is particularly true of someone who makes personal morality a staple of their niche. If a self-described paragon of immorality is doing something that many of his fellow travellers consider immoral, that's news. Why? Because it raises questions. It raises questions as to what Bennett truly believes, if he is a hypocrite (note, this is a question, not an answer), and why he breaks with his fellow social conservatives on this issue. But these are questions it raises, not answers.

Where I fall out of agreement with Bennett's critics is the "so what?" phase of the article. Namely, that Bennett is a hypocrite that should be ignored seems to be taken for granted, with only Kinsley explaining why that's the case. The "hypocrite" assumption is what I am mostly objecting to, not the "invasion of privacy."

"HYPOCRITES AND HERETICS WEAR THE SAME FACE THROUGH THE YEARS"

For those of you that that are not politically inclined and yet for some reason still read this page, critics of conservative moralizer Bill Bennett have discovered that he has the gambling bug and accused him of... well that's just it, they haven't accused him of anything. In fact, there isn't too much to accuse him of unless you're willing to go out on a limb. Except gambling, of course, but most of his accusers don't have a problem with gambling. But what they're really trying to say is... what, exactly? They're just trying to say that Bennett is a gambler, shame on him (even though they don't necessarily think that his gambling is wrong), and leave the readers to fill in the blanks.

So what are the blanks that need filling? Bennett is a moralizer who is doing something that many view as being immoral.

Well, yeah, that's true enough.

The missing link here, I believe, is a misperception among liberals of conservative thought. While I won't go as far as to say that liberals lack moral conviction -- because they don't -- they often misunderstand the unilateral and multifaceted nature of the conservative view of morality. They are also deeply uncomfortable with the conservative black/white view of the world in which they call what they see as a spade a spade, when liberals (and libertarians, moderates, and even other conservatives) see a club. When many conservatives see someone doing wrong, they are more inclined to say "that's wrong" and, for them, the discussion ends there. With liberals, on the other hand, that's where the discussion begins. "Did they do wrong? Well, what makes it wrong? What makes this wrong committed by him worse than the wrong committed against him by society? If it is in fact wrong, will punishing him really make him less inclined to do wrong in the future or will it in turn isolate him and thus make him more likely to commit wrong in the future?"

To be sure, I'm painting both sides with a very broad brush here, but in their most extreme forms conservatives clutch to their inner convictions even when they're based on ignorance and liberals eschew not just easy answers, but often any realistic answer. Bill Bennett and his accusors, Joshua Green and Jonathan Alter, are not at the extremes of conservatism and liberalism, but nonetheless often see each other through that lense. I got a letter from Bill Bennett the other day, in fact, suggesting that contemporary liberalism's goal is to bring us all into some post-reality world in which all wrongs will be overlooked in the name of tolerance. Green and Alter, on the other hand, naturally assume that because Bennett is a conservative, his doing something that conservatives oppose is scandalous and make the assumption that Bennett doesn't have a problem with gambling because he is a compulsive gambler as opposed to the notion that his ambivalent views towards the evils of gambling influenced his decision to go on numerous trips to Atlantic City.

The undercurrent of Green's and Alter's arguments are basically "Conservatives view gambling as wrong, Bennett is a conservative, and Bennett is a gambler. Discuss. Condemn.

This is in many ways an effort to catch conservatives with their pants down. Conservative opponents of gambling must either condemn Bill Bennett, with whom they agree overwhelmingly on other issues, or they must face the charge of hypocrisy. Inversely, Bennett must eschew his fellow-travellers and would-be condemners or face a similar charge of hypocrisy by allying himself with those that believe his actions are immoral. Charges of hypocrisy, sometimes righteous and sometimes not, are the stock of liberalisms opposition to conservative moralizing. It essentially sets the bar for personal morality so high that one must be sinless to have anything to say on the matter of sin.

Nowhere was this more evident than during the impeachment trials in 1998. Liberals combed over the history of all of Clinton's accusers for cases of sexual infidelity. In many cases they hit their mark. Henry Hyde not only cheated on his own wife, but he did so with another man's. When Newt Gingrich resigned and was replaced with Bob Livingston, they hit the gold mine. Case after case and woman after woman came forth and Livingston was exposed as an adulterer the likes of which Clinton surely envied. Then a funny thing happened, Republicans called on Livingston to resign. It would later come out that those that exposed Livingston never intended that to happen. Rather, they were trying to prove a point. Conservatives, as usual, didn't get it. There are those that suggest that conservatives only pushed Livingston to step down as a public relations measure, and that's partially true, but a good part of it was the sincere belief on the part of many Republicans that such a person was not suited for leadership of the party. People within the GOP who ordinarily would have bit their tongue instead spoke out and, before he was even elected leader, Livingston was driven to early retirement.

It has since come out that many others involved in the proceedings had skeletons in their closet. Gingrich himself was cheating on his cancer-ridden wife and outspoken Clinton critic Tim Hutchinson later left his wife for his twenty-something secretary. Liberals are inclined to say "See? Hypocrites!" but the anger directed at these two individuals within the conservative community was palpable. When Gingrich resurfaced condemning the state department (an argument conservatives are partial to), it mostly fell on deaf ears. Mainline Republicans didn't appreciate the attacks on Bush and grassroots Republicans had forsaken Gingrich some time ago, in part because of his failure as a leader but in large part because of his hypocrisy. Hutchinson got the GOP nod for re-election, but when he lost the general election I don't personally know a single conservative that felt the fault lied anywhere but with him and his actions.

In Dinesh D'Souza's Letters To a Young Conservative, he argues:

The conservative virtues are many: civility, patriotism, national unity, a sense of local community, in attachment to family, and a belief in merit, in just desserts, and in personal responsibility for one’s actions. For many conservatives, the idea of virtue cannot be separated from the idea of God. But it is not necessary to believe in God to be a conservative. What unifies the vast majority of conservatives is the belief that there are moral standards in the universe and that living up to them is the best way to have a full and happy life.

Conservatives recognize, of course, that people frequently fall short of these standards. In their personal conduct, conservatives do not claim to be better than anyone else. Newt Gingrich was carrying on an affair at the same time that Bill Clinton was romancing Monica Lewinsky. But for conservatives, these lapses do not produce an excuse to get rid of the standards. Even hypocrisy—professing one thing but doing another—is in the conservative view preferable to a denial of standards because such denial leads to moral chaos or nihilism.

While people may philosophically have a problem with the notion that we should hold ourselves to a standard that we cannot all achieve, this succinctly explains the conservative view on the subject. Puritanical ideologues aside (and no, we don't all fall into that category), most conservatives have a rather realistic grasp on the impossibility of human perfection. Nonetheless, most of us also see a reason to strive for these goals as much as possible and when people falter, not to make excuses for them. So if a Republican president were caught with his pants down and lying about it, would the GOP step up to the plate to defend him? In the name of pragmatism, most people allied with said president would. However, that would not fly in the conservative community and such a person would likely face a serious primary challenger in the next election, but I'm almost certain that he would meet a fate very similar to Mr. Hutchinson's. In an increasingly conservative state, he lost the conservative vote. Most straight-ticket Republicans still voted for him, but conservative-leaning independents didn't and many party-liners stayed home.

Liberals oftenly take a different view. Namely that personal morality should not only be taken out of lawbooks (which I agree with), but taken out of the public square. The recent round of attacks on Bennett are an indication of that mindset. The idea that "You should be careful to condemn others for what they do because there are those that would condemn you for what you do."

And there is some logic to that argument. Perhaps Bennett should have just stayed out of the morality racket altogether by virtue of the fact that he has what many view as an immoral hobby. But I think this line of reasoning lends itself to a number of dangerous ideas. Namely "let he that is without sin cast the first stone" squared is that no stones are ever cast ever. I think we've seen a lot of that in recent decades. Spouses are replaced with newer or more luxurious models while the welfare of children hang in the balance and people no longer bat an eye as long as that person's name isn't preceeded by Senator or Congressman. Even then, it's often overlooked. If we don't enforce morality by legal codes, and I don't believe we should, it makes it all the more imperitive that we do it societally.

Whether gambling or pornography or other ostensibly victimless crimes (except, perhaps, for the people that choose to participate) fall into this category is subject to debate. But waving your finger and saying "hypocrite" is not an adequate substitution for debate. Neither is yelling "homophobe" or "religious zealot." Inversely, societal standards are not adequately defended by saying "moral relativist!" or "heretic!"

I'd love to know what Green and Alter think about gambling and whether or not Bennett is right or wrong. Alter's article is typically vapid, but Green has the following to say:

Few vices have escaped Bennett's withering scorn. He has opined on everything from drinking to "homosexual unions" to "The Ricki Lake Show" to wife-swapping. There is one, however, that has largely escaped Bennett's wrath: gambling. This is a notable omission, since on this issue morality and public policy are deeply intertwined. During Bennett's years as a public figure, casinos, once restricted to Nevada and New Jersey, have expanded to 28 states, and the number continues to grow. In Maryland, where Bennett lives, the newly elected Republican governor Robert Ehrlich is trying to introduce slot machines to fill revenue shortfalls. As gambling spreads, so do its associated problems. Heavy gambling, like drug use, can lead to divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, and bankruptcy. According to a 1998 study commissioned by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, residents within 50 miles of a casino are twice as likely to be classified as "problem" or "pathological" gamblers than those who live further away.

So then am I to understand that Green views legal gambling as a threat to our national health? Is he opposing casinos? He mentions the problems associated with gambling on a couple of occasions, but fails to take a position or cite anyone else taking a position on the issue (as opposed to making Bennett the issue, which he does). I suspect that's because Green isn't opposed to gambling as a public policy (though probably opposed to the Maryland governor instituting it), but saying or implying such would take all the air out of the story built on the hot kind.