Given these facts, what are the odds that our hypothetical president would be able to convince Congress to give him the legislation he wants?

Had I not lived through the last few months, my answer to this question would be “no chance in hell.”

From a purely political standpoint, I find it virtually incomprehensible that Democrats are not tripping over each other to oppose granting immunity to the telecoms. I understand that many Democrats live in constant fear of being labeled “soft on terror,” but this issue is easily severable from the issue of surveillance law generally. It has nothing to do with the president’s surveillance authorities going forward, and any voter can readily understand that. This is about a president (who is painfully unpopular) asking Congress to do something totally unreasonable (blindly grant sweeping immunity for unspecified illegal conduct) on behalf of huge corporations (whom no one much trusts or likes) who are more than capable of taking care of themselves (they have massive legal budgets and top-notch lawyers). If Democrats in Congress don’t think they can present their opposition to such legislation in a way that the public will understand, then they might as well pack up and go home because they’re clearly not cut out for this line of work.

Opposition to telecom immunity should be a political no-brainer for Democrats. It is passionately opposed by virtually all left-leaning activists and bloggers (as well as many non-left-leaning folks), and it is hard to see what possible political downside there could be to opposing immunity. Sure, Republicans could try to use such opposition to paint Democrats as weak on terror, but it’s not going to be very convincing to anyone (“unless you retroactively immunize AT&T, the terrorists win!”).

Moreover, as recent history has shown us again and again, Republicans will accuse Democrats of being soft on terror no matter what they do. It has never much mattered to them what the Democrats’ actual positions are (they’ll just make stuff up). And let’s not forget that Republicans ran on surveillance-related issues in 2006. They rammed FISA legislation through the House and accused those who opposed it (as well as those who didn’t) of being soft on terror. And then they got trounced at the polls.

I’m glad that Sen. Dodd has shown some real leadership on this issue (and that others are now following his lead), but I’m frankly shocked that any real leadership was necessary. The political optics (not to mention the merits) of this issue cut so overwhelmingly against the Bush administration that opposition to it should be the default, reflexive position of every Democrat. At the very least, the reflexive position should be that immunity is not on the table until members of Congress know what it is they’re being asked to immunize. That’s such a simple, clear and easily defensible position that there is really no excuse for saying anything else.

It is understandable why people insist that the right and left in this country are mirror images of each other. We do, after all, live in a country with only two major political parties, parties that have been fairly evenly matched historically and have enjoyed a similar degree of political success. This, combined with the American journalistic norms of objectivity and balance, naturally leads to a sort of symmetrical, yin and yang approach to covering politics. Nancy Pelosi is treated as the left-wing equivalent of Tom Delay. Al Franken is the left-wing equivalent of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. And the editorial position of the New York Times is the yin to the Wall Street Journal’s yang.

For some reason, we are all supposed to pretend this is true, that the only real differences between the left and the right are ideological in nature. It’s completely taboo to point out what every close observer of American politics knows, i.e., that the difference between the left and right is not just ideological but tactical. Put simply, there is a far greater willingness among right-wing partisans in this country to push the boundaries of honest discourse, to move beyond mere spin and into the realm of outright deception. Our political discourse is asymmetrical.

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that there are no hacks or demagogues on the left or that all right-wing partisans are dishonest. I’m merely suggesting that, on balance, there is a real and significant difference in the tactics that right- and left-wing partisans are willing to employ to achieve their desired political ends.

Perhaps someday when I have more time I’ll try to write a book defending this thesis, but for now you’re going to have to settle for a single (albeit highly illustrative) example. This week there were a number of developments, in both the House and the Senate, with respect to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation. These events resulted in dueling editorials in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

The Times editorial board was, not surprisingly, disappointed by what happened in Congress. The Times editorial describes the House and Senate bills and the legislative wrangling that produced them, and then chastises the Democrats for not putting up more of a fight. While argumentative throughout, there are no claims in the editorial that are misleading factually. The bill and the state of the law are accurately described. The most provocative line, by far, in the whole piece is this:

The question really is whether Congress should toss out chunks of the Constitution because Mr. Bush finds them inconvenient and some Democrats are afraid to look soft on terrorism.

That’s certainly an argumentative claim (as you would expect in an editorial), and there’s no doubt that supporters of the Senate bill would find it very unfair. They’d claim that the bill helps the government better protect the American people and is not unconstitutional. Ultimately, though, the “truth” of this claim depends on how you interpret the Fourth Amendment, which in turn hinges on what you think constitutes a “reasonable search.” In other words, we are far from the realm of demonstrable falsehood. Whether you agree or disagree with the Times’ conclusion, it’s pretty clear that it is genuinely held and is not a calculated attempt to deceive.

Compare that with Monday’s Wall Street Journal editorial on the same subject. The Journal’s editorial board offers lukewarm praise for the Senate compromise bill and then observes:

This is a major defeat for the political left and most House Democrats, who want to treat the war on terror like domestic law enforcement. Under their preferred rules, a U.S. President couldn’t even eavesdrop on a foreign-to-foreign terror call if by chance that call was routed through an American telephone switch.

This is, and I can’t put too fine a point on it, an intentional and demonstrable lie. Indeed, it is false on several different levels. First, as a general matter, no member of the “political left” or the Democratic Party has ever suggested that the president should not be allowed to eavesdrop on terror calls. The debate is about when officials should be required to get warrants (which a secret court stands ready to approve at a moment’s notice and which can even be sought after surveillance has begun). More important, though, it is simply not the case that House Democrats want the law to require warrants for foreign-to-foreign communications, even when they pass through American telephone switches. The very first section of the Democratic House bill would clarify beyond all doubt that no warrants are required for such surveillance. The Journal’s editors know this and are intentionally lying to their readers.

The Journal’s editors then go on to critique what they see as the major “problems” with the compromise bill. They write:

Worse for Presidential authority, the Administration has agreed to let the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court pass judgment after the fact on its overseas wiretap findings and procedures. This is an expansion of judicial power from the 1978 FISA law, which applied to domestic wiretaps.

Again, this is just not true. The 1978 FISA law, Section 101(f)(2), requires individual warrants for “the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire communication to or from a person in the United States, without the consent of any party thereto, if such acquisition occurs in the United States.” In other words, warrants were required not just for domestic calls, but for international calls to or from someone in the United States. The Senate compromise bill would not require any court oversight of purely foreign communications, and it would allow the government to intercept international calls involving someone inside the U.S. subject only to an after-the-fact review of the procedures used to ensure that no purely domestic calls are intercepted. That is, by any definition, an expansion of the executive’s surveillance powers and a contraction of judicial power. To suggest the opposite, as the Journal does, is ridiculous.

In the very next line, the editors write:

No President has ever conceded that his ability to eavesdrop on a foreign enemy abroad could be second-guessed by judges. And no court has found that the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful searches apply to foreigners working out of Karachi. This bill creates a bad precedent on both counts.

This passage is incredibly misleading. While it is true that no court has found the Fourth Amendment to apply to foreigners in Karachi, Pakistan, this is a complete non sequitur because no one has ever claimed otherwise and nothing in the proposed bill would provide any protections to foreigners in Karachi. The limited oversight measures contained in the bill are intended solely to protect the rights of U.S. persons, and as stated previously, the bill actually dilutes the protections that existed under the 1978 law. And to the extent the Journal’s editors are claiming that no president has conceded that his ability to spy abroad can be subject to judicial oversight, that too is simply not true. FISA has always applied to wire-based communications between someone inside the U.S. and someone abroad, and no president until the current one has ever asserted the power to disregard FISA’s warrant requirement. They all followed the law. But again, the editors know this; the goal here is not to inform but to deceive.

I realize these two editorials together provide only a single example of the sort of rhetorical asymmetry I’m alleging exists, but I think they’re fairly representative. Again, if I had a lot more time, I might try to document this phenomenon in a more comprehensive way, but alas, I have a day job. Moreover, this is the kind of thesis that could never be proved in a way that would convince right-wing partisans. I do wish, however, that more mainstream journalists and pundits — who, at least on some level, know that what I’m saying is true — would acknowledge it once in a while. The truth is that the right and left are not mirror images of each other, and the two sides don’t always fight by the same rules.

I’m not holding my breath, though. Many of you may remember the controversy that erupted in the fall of 2004 when someone leaked an internal memo written by then ABC News political director Mark Halperin. Halperin wrote:

The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done. Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn’t mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides “equally” accountable when the facts don’t warrant that.

What Halperin wrote was obviously true. By this point in the campaign, Bush was essentially running against a completely fictional caricature of John Kerry. His stump speech and campaign commercials completely misrepresented Kerry’s positions on just about every major issue. And the reverse was simply not true.

Nonetheless, when Halperin’s memo was leaked to Drudge, conservatives went nuts (Power Line: “Drudge has the most astonishing media bombshell ever”) and cited it as evidence of the media’s intense liberal bias (which is kind of funny if you actually know anything about Mark Halperin). The fallout from that episode, which led to calls for Halperin’s head, will no doubt discourage others from pointing out the asymmetry of our political discourse, even internally. This phenomenon, this honesty gap, shall remain — at least for the foreseeable future — the Great Unmentionable.

The subject of this post is Iran and the incoherence of the competing rationales for war being offered by the Dick Cheneys and Bill Kristols of the world.

A number of bloggers have already noted the ominous parallels between the speech Vice President Cheney delivered over the weekend and statements he made back in 2002 and 2003 regarding Iraq. As he did with respect to Iraq in 2002-2003, Cheney warned that if Iran stays on its present course, it will face “serious consequences.”

Needless to say, I too found Cheney’s speech to be deeply concerning (though not particularly surprising). But instead of trying to predict what the Bush administration will do, I want to focus on the various substantive rationales for war that Cheney laid out in his speech.

There are two principal arguments that Iran hawks make for confronting Iran militarily, both of which were represented in Cheney’s speech. The first centers around Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We’re told that Iran is run by a uniquely irrational regime, one that is undeterred by traditional means. This regime cannot, therefore, be allowed to get its hands on nuclear weapons because if it does, it is likely to use them (despite the fact that the U.S. and/or Israel would surely retaliate in kind and obliterate the country). Cheney even quotes Bernard Lewis in his speech, the same guy who — as Fareed Zakaria reminds us — predicted in an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal last year that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would try to end the world on Aug. 22, 2006.

The second argument, which is of more recent vintage, centers around Iran’s alleged meddling in Iraq. According to this argument, Iran’s leaders are not crazy and irrational, but clever and strategic. Here’s the way Cheney described Iran’s strategy in his speech:

Operating largely in the shadows, Iran attempts to hide its hands through the use of militants who target and kill coalition and Iraqi security forces. Iran’s real agenda appears to include promoting violence against the coalition. Fearful of a strong, independent, Arab Shia community emerging in Iraq, one that seeks religious guidance not in Qom, Iran, but from traditional sources of Shia authority in Najaf and Karbala, the Iranian regime also aims to keep Iraq in a state of weakness that prevents Baghdad from presenting a threat to Tehran.

Putting aside for a moment the validity of these claims, has anyone noticed that the behavior and motives being attributed to Iran under Argument for War 2.0 are inconsistent with the claims of Iranian irrationality that are central to Argument for War 1.0?

The truth is, of course, that Iran has an enormous interest in the outcome of our Iraq experiment, and it is perfectly rational for Iran’s leaders to attempt to influence events there. Remember, Iraq is a country that invaded Iran in 1980, leading to a bloody eight-year war in which nearly a million people died, the majority of them Iranian. It’s probably fair to say that nothing is more important to Iran’s national security than the character of the regime that eventually emerges in Iraq. To expect that Iran would just sit back and not try to influence events there is profoundly naive.

And it is clear, even accepting the administration’s largely unproven and at times illogical allegations of Iranian meddling in Iraq, that Iran is being very careful and strategic in what it is doing. The chief allegation the administration has made is that Iran has been supplying a certain type of deadly improvised explosive device to Iraqi “militants” (a vague term used by the administration to obscure the reality that Iran is, at worst, only supplying Shiite groups, not the Sunni insurgents who are responsible for the vast majority of U.S. casualties). But why just IEDs? Iran indisputably possesses much more sophisticated and deadly weapons. If its goal were primarily to hurt U.S. troops, why not supply Iraqis with missiles or shoulder-fired antiaircraft weaponry, the kind of stuff it supplies to Hezbollah?

The fact that Iran is not alleged to be supplying Iraqis with anything of this sort (at least for use against the U.S.) suggests that Iran is not particularly interested in harming U.S. troops but, rather, in bolstering Shiite elements in Iraq vis-à-vis their Sunni rivals (which is perfectly rational given that the previous Sunni regime invaded their country!). Iran’s priorities could change, of course, should we do something reckless and provocative like, say, attacking Iran. It would be tragic if we had to learn the hard way what real meddling is like.

If the Iranian government is indeed attempting to cause harm to U.S. troops by supplying IEDs to Shiite militants, I don’t mean to belittle that or suggest that it’s not important. But whatever you want to say about Iran’s policy toward Iraq, it’s pretty hard to argue that it is either overtly aggressive or irrational. Cheney himself describes a cautious policy designed to advance Iranian interests in Iraq, but always under the radar screen and in a way calculated not to provoke a fight with the United States. This is the behavior of a rational regime (though on the latter score, the Iranians may have overestimated the rationality of our leaders).

Moreover, this second, Iraq-centered argument for attacking Iran presupposes that Iran has a rational regime that can be deterred by force. The idea is that if we bomb the country, it will know we mean business and will stop meddling in Iraq. But if the Iranians are a bunch of nut jobs with a death wish — a regime with no “residual rationality,” as Rudy Giuliani recently put it — what reason is there to believe that bombing Iran will do anything to change their policy?

It’s well past time to force the Iran hawks to settle on one consistent rationale for war; they can’t keep having it both ways.

I’ll leave you with this passage from Zakaria’s latest column in Newsweek, which I think helps put things in some perspective:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism.” For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

When the relatively moderate Mohammad Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn’t have a nuclear button yet and won’t for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can’t be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a “residual rationality,” he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao — who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them — were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history’s greatest mass murderers.