6/16: Walking The Line

The post-election tumult in Iran continues to captivate bloggers on both sides of the political divide. Conservative bloggers reacted critically to Pres. Obama's first public response to the events in Iran, in which he said that he was "deeply troubled" by the violence but that he did not want the U.S. to become a "political football" in Iran's domestic politics. Hugh Hewitt is annoyed that Obama didn't offer "a blunt condemnation of the killers" while Michael Rubin complains that "Obama's silence is a failure of leadership and a betrayal of freedom on a Carter-esque scale."

Liberal bloggers, on the other hand, are defending Obama's careful approach to the situation, as they believe that an aggressive U.S. response would only hurt the cause of the protesters. Steve Benen writes: "If Iran's regime is on the defensive, pushed by massive protests by Iranians taking to the streets, active U.S. intervention runs the risk of throwing [Pres. Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad a public-relations life preserver."

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers were impressed by Obama's speech to the American Medical Association, although they remain quite critical of the AMA as an organization. Conservative bloggers (Erickson, Tanner) were not impressed by Obama's speech.
• Liberal bloggers (Lewison, digby, Aravosis) are stepping up their criticism of Senate Budget Cmte Chair Kent Conrad (D-ND), who is pushing his co-op model as an alternative to a public health insurance option.
• An unlikely alliance of liberal bloggers (Hamsher, Heller) and conservative bloggers (Erickson, Morrissey) continues to lobby against passage of the 2009 Supplemental Appropriations Act. Both lefty and righty bloggers are buzzing about rumors that WH CoS Rahm Emanuel is trying to cajole vulnerable GOPers into voting for the bill.
• Liberal bloggers (Moulitsas, Singer) are wondering if Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) will resign her Senate seat early now that she appears to be running for governor. Bloggers are also discussing the upcoming Senate primaries in PA, FL, and MO.
• Conservative bloggers (York, Hinderaker, Walpin, Field) continue to accuse Obama of firing inspector general Gerald Walpin for corrupt reasons.

OBAMA: Where's The Outrage?

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama's response to the situation in Iran:

• Michelle Malkin: "Where's Barack Obama? Sitting on the sidelines, 'troubled.'"
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Fun fact: Whereas The One was 'shocked and outraged' by the murder of George Tiller, the most he can muster here for mass beatings and cold-blooded killings across Iran is that he's 'troubled.' Make of it what you will."
• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "[Obama] affirmed his belief in Iranian sovereignty. But does sovereignty reside in the people or the mullahs? If it resides in the people, now is the time for him to say so, but Obama didn't say so. Instead, Obama followed his avowal of Iranian sovereignty with the assertion that he was 'deeply troubled by the violence I've been seeing on television.' I believe that 'deeply troubled' is about five notches more acceptable than 'unacceptable,' which is how Obama described the Iranian nuclear program he has come to accept. He should be able to overcome the disturbance of being 'deeply troubled' in the next few days."
• Townhall's Hewitt: "We have to hope that the United States Congress acts today to stand with the demonstrators against the killers and in uncompromising terms, and that the president tries to get the message right a third time. (Strike one was the Veep on Meet the Press. Strike two was last night's incoherent statement about abhorring violence. A blunt condemnation of the killers isn't that hard to draft.)"
• NRO's Rich Lowry: "Obama has to be judicious here, but his statement just now was pretty weak: 1) he seemed to take the election-review process seriously, when it's going to be a rubber stamp; 2) there was a sense in which he seemed to be patting the demonstrators on the head and saying, 'Nice work -- but better luck next time'; 3) he went way, way out of his way to say he'll basically negotiate with Ahmadinejad no matter what."
• NRO's Rubin: "Obama's silence -- and his lack of moral clarity -- are quickly making his reaction akin to George H. W. Bush's infamous 'Chicken Kiev' speech, when the elder Bush effectively sided with Moscow against the freedom of the Ukraine. Indeed, had Obama not broken with formula and recognized the ayatollahs as the legitimate representatives of the Iranian people during his Nowruz greeting, he might not have found his reaction so constrained. Regardless, Obama's silence is a failure of leadership and a betrayal of freedom on a Carter-esque scale."

Salon's Glenn Greenwald thinks these conservative bloggers are hypocrites: "Much of the same faction now claiming such concern for the welfare of The Iranian People are the same people who have long been advocating a military attack on Iran and the dropping of large numbers of bombs on their country -- actions which would result in the slaughter of many of those very same Iranian People. [...] Imagine how many of the people protesting this week would be dead if any of these bombing advocates had their way -- just as those who paraded around (and still parade around) under the banner of Liberating the Iraqi People caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of them, at least."

Atrios agrees: "Like Glenn, I really don't get how certain people square their support for the Iranian people with their desire to bomb the shit out of them."

OBAMA II: The Right Approach

Liberal bloggers are defending Obama's response to the situation in Iran:

• The Washington Monthly's Benen: "[House Min. Whip Eric] Cantor is outraged by the administration's 'silence.' But in our reality, the administration hasn't been 'silent' -- it's been speaking out strategically, in statements and in media interviews, raising doubts about the legitimacy of the election. It's not about passive disinterest; it's about avoiding steps that would be counterproductive. If Iran's regime is on the defensive, pushed by massive protests by Iranians taking to the streets, active U.S. intervention runs the risk of throwing Ahmadinejad a public-relations life preserver."
• The Washington Independent's Spencer Ackerman: "[A]n American voice is more likely to be counterproductive than helpful. The cardinal rule ought to be to follow the lead of the Iranian opposition. As I reported, the Obama administration isn't considering endorsing Ahmadinejad's bogus victory, and everyone from Vice President Joe Biden on down says that the United States is going to highlight electoral discrepancies. For the United States to weigh in on what Iran ought to do can't possibly help. It's time to treat Iran in terms of what aids the opposition, not what makes us feel good about ourselves. 'We should not have the U.S. lead,' Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran told me over the weekend. That's prime-directive stuff."
• TAPPED's Tim Fernholz: "[T]he last thing the Iranian opposition needs right now is an aggressive response from the United States. The tone struck by the administration thus far has been the appropriate one: questioning the announced results of the election, condemning human rights abuses, but not prejudging the outcome or explicitly allying themselves with opposition candidate and 'real' election winner Mir Hossein Mousavi. For one, as many have observed, a Mousavi victory will not necessarily change the balance of interests in the region, but even if he will put a more pragmatic face on Iranian policy-making, explicit U.S. support will hurt his popular legitimacy and give Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies credence in claiming authenticity. This last point will probably strike many as pretty obvious, but it's apparently never occurred to Bill Kristol."

The American Conservative's Daniel Larison: "As John [Schwenkler] has already said, U.S. involvement in the Iranian election controversy in any form is unwise. Except for the most generic statements condemning violence and urging peaceful resolution to the crisis, Washington should say nothing, and I mean nothing. After all, whose interests do we serve by having our government speak up? The casual assumption is that condemning foreign election fraud, of which there was probably a great deal in Iran, is both some kind of moral imperative and a strategically wise thing to do in order to aid Mousavi, which in turn is based on another questionable belief that Westerners are somehow obliged to aid him and his supporters. The first part of this is very dubious, and the second is clearly wrong."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Impact Of The Iranian Election

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein:

"There are a couple things to say about [the situation in Iran], all of them depressing. First, those of us who have long argued for the fundamental rationality of the Iranian regime have seen our case fundamentally weakened. A rational regime might have stolen the election. But they would not have stolen it like this, where there is no doubt of the theft. This is like robbers leaving muddy footprints and a home address. Tehran's evident vote-tampering is tempting both domestic revolution and international isolation. That they appear to fear neither says something very unsettling about the mental state of the regime.

The second is that it is likely to disrupt what was, to my mind, a very positive trend in the United States: the long-overdue effort to pressure Israel on the settlements. Among America's points of leverage was that Israel desperately needed our help to handle Iran. Among the trends freeing our hand was the apparent quieting of Iran's drumbeat of provocations. Now that Iran appears to be more of an independent problem and less likely to fall into a period of relative quiet, it's hard to imagine either Israel or America spending too much time worrying about their relationship with each other.

The third is that energy prices tend to dislike turmoil in the Middle East. The economist James Hamilton has previously argued that rocketing oil prices were the key driver behind the recession of 2008 and 2009. Conversely, some of the recent pick-up in the economy is presumably related to the fact that energy costs had fallen pretty sharply (due, in part, to the slackening demand brought about by the recession). In recent weeks, however, oil had been trending back upward, and if things devolve in Tehran, we can expect it to spike. And a spike in oil prices is exactly the sort of things that could choke off an emergent recovery."

LEST WE FORGET: Academic Humor

From Overheard in the Office:

Art teacher, looking at another eating Pringles: Pringles are the perfect chip, based on the texture, shape, and lines. They fit perfectly in your mouth.
History teacher: I don't know. If you asked me, I'd just prefer a Lay.