Conspiracy Theories

Bloggers are speculating that perhaps Chrysler dealers were closed for selection on the basis of donations to Republicans (via Jonah and sfexaminer.com).

To quickly review the situation, I took all dealer owners whose names appeared
more than once in the list. And, of those who contributed to political
campaigns, every single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates.
While this isn't an exhaustive review, it does have some ominous implications if
it can be verified.

I doubt the Administration would do anything so colossally stupid, at least directly. I expect that list was compiled by Chrysler people, and how could they receive such directions without leaving a paper trail?

It is conceivable that the Administration was consulted on the list, and drew Congress into those consultations, and that lists with more Democrats were discovered to have various business problems, and that such business problems kept emerging until the list became Republican through a process akin to natural selection. It's also possible that the demographics of the redundancies in Chrysler's network overlapped with the demographics correlated with Republican membership. We would have to see a pattern of Republican dealerships closed in proximity to Democratic dealerships, and that against the patterns we would expect from some reasonable business logic, and without a plausible business logic for those patterns.

If there is an apparent pattern, it deserves scrutiny. But it would be shocking to see that this happened on any plausible basis. Let's remember that a lot of these dealers are getting screwed, and the Republicans among them already dislike this Administration, so they are primed to see something sinister.

More Mush

We see that, above all, in how the recent debate has been obscured by two
opposite and absolutist ends. . . . On the other end of
the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two
words: "anything goes."

Barack Obama, 21 May 2009

Just a few days after preaching at Notre Dame on fairness among disputants, the President is reducing his opponents' arguments to a caricature. Perhaps "enhanced interrogation" was a mistake, and perhaps the legal justification was faulty. But even if the Bush Administration was wrong about the rules, it certainly took pains to abide by them as it understhood them.

More could be said about the President's speech. He deploys his usual rhetorical devices to mask his assertions under the guise of argument, and to expand his supporting facts well beyond any reasonable implication. Those tools are most effective when the subject matter is soaring principles. When applied to more pedestrian details, it becomes easier to notice their inaccuracies and misrepresentations. And he is here deploying these tools against a core constituency, disappointed at the continuity of his terror policy with that against which he ran, and so less likely to uncritically applaud his conclusions, and more likely to first study the substance of his argument.

The President is popular, and seems successful as the economy and markets have seemingly improved, and still enjoys the prestige of what he might achieve in Congress. But his few achievements are still untested, and the possibilities face enormous hurdles. As he is tested, people will review the founding principles he has laid out, and will find that they do not hold together, or do not respond to the actual critiques and so miss the actual problems, or do not correspond with the promises of his campaign. His popularity has depended on the suggestion that he can meet the many conflicting hopes, and on a vision of egalitarian and prosperous promises. As he disappoints those hopes, his supporters will scrutinize his principles more closely. I do not think they will be satisfied by the rigor they find there.