David Brooks has measured the ambition of President Bush’s Katrina recovery plan, further elaborated here, here, and here. I think that Brooks has hit the nail on the head: this is GWB’s true experiment in compassionate conservatism. Traditional Republicans and Democrats have different reasons to be concerned, but I think Bush will seize the moment and push this plan very hard.

Update: Stephen Moore has many serious reservations about the plan, some more convincing than others. He can’t, for example, be serious in comparing the costs of rebuilding Chicago, San Francisco, and Galveston in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to the costs of cleaning up toxic muck and restoring transportation and communications infrastructure today. But waste, fraud, and mismanagement are a sufficiently serious risk that the President ought to appoint someone--please let’s not call him a czar and give him another layer of bureaucracy--to spearhead the reconstruction effort. I nominate J.C. Watts, whose support was central to the Bush Administration’s domestic policy initiatives in 2001, who has demonstrated the capacity to work well with non-profit and faith-based groups, and against whom it would be next to impossible to play the race card.

Update #2: The folks at the Heritage Foundation have some good ideas about how to make this program work.

Katie Newmark calls our attention to the WaPo’s Think Tank Town, a blog that covers, you guessed it, the think tank beat.

Ken Masugi has an excellent post, with good links. Most importantly, he calls our attention to a colloquy during the Roberts hearings between Tom Coburn--not a lawyer--and John Roberts, with the former pushing toward, and actually mentioning, natural law and the latter apparently resting content with the common law tradition. One can quarrel with Coburn’s characterization of the theological character of the tradition--natural law, after all, is a deliverance of reason, not revelation--but it is striking that Roberts, who by all accounts is a good Catholic, did not seize the teachable moment. One can only hope that it was his (flawed) political judgment that led him to remain silent.

Had Christopher Hayes demonstrated any awareness of God on the Quad, I might have been inclined to say this was a decent bit of follow-up reporting, accompanied by ideologically flawed analysis. He quite often lets his subjects speak for themselves, admits some variety and nuance in the position he examines, and does not snark too much in his own commentary.

Here’s an example of his analysis, taken from his discussion of the role of "Christian worldview" in evangelical higher education:

[T]he insistence on the quantity and even the rigor of the debate obscures the real issue: just what is subject to debate. What a worldview does is cleave the world into two, identifying in one column those first principles that are taken as given (there is a God, Jesus Christ is His only son) and, in the other column, the many beliefs, values, and positions that one might hold that are less certain (like under what conditions preemptive war is justified). Exactly which beliefs get put in which column is going to have profound political consequences, even if the worldview isn’t taught with an explicitly or predominantly political end in mind. If you suggest to students that an opposition to abortion and a defense of “traditional marriage” are foundational aspects of a Christian worldview, you will very likely produce reliable Republican voters.

As he comes back to it time and again, this appears to be pretty close to his real sticking point. His preferred position is what he calls the "fact-value split," which, he says, "embodies a kind of forced humility that, frankly, keeps the entire liberal democratic enterprise running." But he never explains why abortion and marriage are (or ought to be) "private matters of conscience," like "dietary choices" (note the word) or "which day to worship," and not "public matters of law." It sounds to me like he has a "worldview" that isn’t subject to debate.

Finally, his complaint that colleges and universities that teach a "Christian worldview" end up producing Republicans may say as much about the Democratic Party as it says about the colleges and universities. If the Democratic Party were genuinely a "big tent" on these issues, if it had not effectively become (as the Roberts hearings revealed all too clearly) essentially the "Party of Roe," then other issues--poverty, the AIDS crisis in Africa, and so on--might loom larger for students and faculty at these schools, with a somewhat different partisan split emerging as a result.

I am going to commit conservative heresy:

The rebuilding spending for New Orleans should be paid for with a tax increase. I would propose a one-year, 1% surtax on all income tax brackets (not just "the rich" as the liberals always fantasize). The fiscal purpose is obvious; we can’t let the deficit get totally out of hand. The political purpose is more important: all taxpayers should feel more directly the cost of the huge run up in government spending. Then maybe they’ll start to demand a bit less of it. And maybe it will provide some discipline to some of the slop that is no doubt going to be spent on the Gulf coast.

September 17th is Constitution Day, the day we commemorate the signing of our fundamental law in 1787. In honor of this day, Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit will be delivering the Seventh Annual Robert E. Henderson Constitution Day Lecture entitled: The Judiciary: having "neither Force nor Will, but merely judgement"? The lecture will be at 7:30 pm this evening in The Ashbrook Center. If you are in the area, please come by for what promises to be a very timely discussion, and if you are not, you may listen live via the Internet here. For those wishing to learn more about Judge Batchelder, Christopher Flannery wrote an excellent article about her for NRO, and our own Peter Schramm describes her as "the judge Bush should get to know" here.

The stories in my dailies (WaPo, NYT, WT) make it tolerably clear that Roberts is unlikely to win any Democratic support in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Well, some Democrats are saying they’re conflicted, but I’m not convinced.

There’s only one scenario that might produce a couple of Democratic votes for Roberts on the committee, and that’s if someone wishes to gain credibility as an "honest broker" in order to be able to oppose the next conservative nominee more effectively. But I don’t expect that. Having spent so much time and effort portraying Roberts as an arch-conservative, the liberal interest groups can’t afford to permit an influential Democrat to contradict them, for fear that such credibility as they have will be weakened in the next round.

The case for opposing Roberts is, as many have noted, that he "lacks a heart," which I guess means that he decides on behalf of the little guy only when the Constitution requires it, not all the time.

Still, if Democrats need some cover in supporting Roberts despite the best efforts of Americans United, PFAW, and the others, there’s these quotes:

He is not in the mold of Scalia and Thomas," said Steven G. Calabresi, a law professor at Northwestern and a chairman of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group. "They have more of a theory of how to decide cases, and they look to text and original meaning. Roberts will look at text and original meaning, but he will also look to precedent and the consequences of his decisions."

Professor [Cass] Sunstein said that Judge Roberts’s testimony was in an entirely different vein than his early writings.

"He doesn’t talk like someone who believed at any level in changing the current understanding of the Constitution," Professor Sunstein said. "He’s not the same person he was in his 20’s."

On the other hand, I find this comforting:

Prof. Charles Fried of Harvard, a former Republican solicitor general, applauded Judge Roberts for adhering to his views of the law, even when doing so led to outcomes his opponents have attacked. "I wonder whether the critics are not really complaining that Judge Roberts didn’t start with a result - their result - and then wrestle the law around until it fitted," Professor Fried said.

"He knows the difference between law and politics," Professor Fried said. "Judge Roberts seems to understand this down to his shoes."

With many analyses and responses trying to put a negative spin on the President’s speech, it was hard to find a positive take, though I did succeed, in perhaps the unlikeliest place--the New York Times. What’s more the NYT’s analysis struck me as more even-handed than the WaPo’s, which, by the way, is to some degree undercut by its own front page story.

I did learn a couple of things from reading all this. First, although he didn’t mention it in the speech, the President is calling for education vouchers for displaced families. I’d love to see them, and I wonder if the Democrats think they can afford the risk of opposing this proposal and obstructing the package of which it’s likely to be a part.

Second, I learned that Michael Gerson had a hand in the speech, which may explain why I liked it as much as I did.

The Atlanta paper published my Constitution Day op-ed, where I took a page from John Zvesper’s book and focused on Benjamin Franklin’s (Jerry Weinberger wants you to click on the link) speech on September 17, 1787.

No mugs, because it is far from profound. But make my mama happy and read it anyway.

This was a great speech, acknowledging pain, sacrifice, and heroism; looking forward to a better, brighter tomorrow; offering an account of and proffering a solution to the special vulnerability of the neediest; and "presidentially" rising above partisanship to take responsibility for any governmental shortcomings and leading the way toward a better response in the future (followed by the folks in the states and localities).

There are some, of course, who will object to Bush’s "big government conservatism," but the emphases on self-help, home-ownership, and strategic government intervention to promote individual self-sufficiency represent the best of Bush’s "compassionate conservatism." This is an agenda I get support and one that it will be hard for his adversaries effectively to criticize.

Richard Reeb call our attention to this deconstruction of Dianne Feinstein’s inane comparison of Nazis and religious conservatives.

Ted Rall makes an even nastier version of the argument I critiqued here: Because charities can’t foot the bill for Katrina recovery, and because some allegedly use charitable giving as a substitute for, and argument against, government action, we should stop giving to charities. It’s time, he says, to "starve the beast," by which he means "private charities used by the government to justify the abdication of its duties to its citizens."

I don’t know of anyone in the Bush Administration who thinks that charitable giving can completely substitute for government spending in dealing either with disasters or ordinary neediness, so this is a straw man. Charitable supplements to or (limited)replacements for government action (in this and other, more routine cases) offer some of the following advantages: efficiency (leveraging voluntary gifts of time, money, and expertise, and responding flexibly and less bureaucratically); reaching hard-to-reach populations, especially where there is a special cultural, religious, or ethnic connection or the organization is already present "on the ground" or "in the neighborhood"; promoting self-reliance, responsibility, and life-transformation by engaging swith "clients" over the long term; and, finally, avoiding "Leviathan" government, where isolated individuals depend upon and are subject a monolithic government. Clearly Rall doesn’t care about diversity, self-reliance, or independence, either in this case or in any other.

An environmentalist from the Earth Policy Institute wandered through Iran recently and offers this report on her surprise at America’s popularity there. It was no doubt disorienting to realize that Iranians are more fond of America than many American environmentalists are.

Sample:

“Where are you from?” a young man outside one of the many carpet stalls asked me.

Sigh. “The U.S.,” I replied.

“U.S.?” His face screwed up in puzzlement. “U.S., U.S.,” he repeated, brow furrowed, the wheels turning. “Aaah!” the light bulb turned on. “U.S. Aaaahh! United States of America!” his dark eyes now gleaming, looking like he would hug me, were it permitted. “Welcome to Iran!”

Such interactions were repeated many a time throughout my stay in Iran. Curious people, perhaps tipped off by my blue eyes or the awkward positioning of my headscarf, would approach me and ask, in English, where I was from. After learning that I was from America, their responses varied from the inquisitive to the exuberant: “America! We love America!”

Winning in the District Court.

Update: Hugh Hewitt thinks this calls for nominating Michael McConnell to the Supreme Court. Eugene Volokh thinks this helps conservative Court nominees politically. Yup to both views.

After the election last fall, I noted in a several places that liberals still couldn’t get used to the idea of being in the minority, as though the election of 1994 never happened. For evidence I pointed to a New York Times article on the new Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in which Sen. Joe Biden, said this: "The idea that people are looking at Harry to sort of be the spokesperson of the Democratic Party, that’s not a role all majority leaders have filled before."

Wait a minute: What did he say? Let’s roll the tape again: “That’s not a role all majority leaders have filled before.” "Majority leader"?? Majority leader? News flash, Joe: Your team hasn’t had a majority for ten years now (excepting those few months brought to you courtesy of Jim Jeffords), and you’re not likely to be in the majority again for a while. Deal with it. And learn to start saying the word "minority," as in "minority party."

Ditto for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who told the Times in the same article: "If we keep going on this way, we’ll be a minority party." Hello? News flash Dianne: You’re there already. This is rather like Captain Smith, looking at the Titanic’s propellers pointing up at the sky remarking, “if the water keeps coming in at this rate, the ship might be in danger of sinking.”

Comes now the following correction to an item published yesterday in slate.com:

"This article originally and incorrectly identified Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as Majority Leader of the Senate. He is the Minority Leader. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is the Senate Majority Leader."

It turns out that the real cause of the government’s alleged or possible shortcomings in hurricane and flood relief (about which more here and here, the latter containing the whole of the President’s carefully worded statement) is the faith-based initiative. Say what?

In a meandering and insidious column, Boston Globe columnist James Carroll can’t actually offer evidence or even much or an argument, just a few factoids and insinuations. To wit:

The church-state divide, undercutting norms of supervision and accountability, means religious groups, even while entrusted with public functions, can embody antipublic values. To take last week’s most glaring example, Operation Blessing, one of the FEMA-recommended relief agencies, is affiliated with Pat Robertson, an advocate of assassination as a tool of foreign policy. Why were American citizens being encouraged by the United States government to support Pat Robertson’s enterprise?

I defy you to find the "antipublic values" on Operation Blessing’s website. Here’s Charity Navigator’s evaluation of Operation Blessing: it receives the highest marks for organizational efficiency and capacity, with 99.4% of its expenses being devoted to its programs. Of course, guilt by association is enough for The Nation and Americans United, whose talking points Carroll repeats. Don’t get me wrong: I hold no brief for Pat Robertson politically or theologically. His statements about Hugo Chavez were far beyond the pale. But there’s no evidence that money that goes to Operation Blessing for Katrina relief does anything other than help the victims.

Of course, Carroll doesn’t stop there. Apparently, it’s impossible for those who are moved by religion to help their neighbors in need not to impose on them:

The missionary impulse is implicit in the good works of religion. Mother Teresa required nothing of those she helped, but she still hoped that the compassionate face of Christ shined through her eyes. To some of us, it surely did -- but that hope itself can become an imposition on those who are in need.

If I love my neighbor as myself because he or she is created in God’s image, my action--the work, without which faith is dead, as John Kerry regularly insisted on the stump--is suspect. Carroll would seem to require that I launder my compassion through a secular agency. After all, secular compassion, however patronizing, is apparently not an imposition.

In the final analysis, all we have is the stock criticism of the faith-based initiative--that it’s simply an excuse the dismantle the social safety net, which having been dismantled, failed in hurricane relief. There is of course not a shred of evidence that FEMA’s failings, such as they are, had anything to do with vouchers going to faith-based alcohol and drug rehab programs, or to welfare-to-work programs sponsored by churches or FBOs, to take a couple of prominent faith-based initiative programs.

And yes, the poor people of New Orleans, many of them mired in a culture of dependency, were not well-served, to say the least, by any level of government, certainly not before or during the crisis. But the levees didn’t fail because the government had subcontracted with FBOs to shore them up. And the buses weren’t submerged because the government had hired pastors to drive them. And the poor people in New Orleans were in rough shape long before George Bush came into office, through many Democratic administrations in Washington, D.C. and Baton Rouge, after decades of Democratic dominance on Capitol Hill. I’m far from arguing that a welfare-to-work program run by an FBO is necessarily better for everyone than a government, secular, or for-profit program. But the state of the argument and evidence regarding the faith-based initiative has nothing to do with the quality of federal, state, and local disaster response.