By Evan Lisull

Supporters of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA – as in, “Mah fellow Americans, I have committed a grievous arra.”) quickly jumped on the news that the U.S. GDP contracted by a mere percentage point in the second quarter. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute gushed, “The marked improvement in this quarter relative to last is largely due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).”

Unfortunately for them, there is more to the story than meets the blinkered eye. Federal government spending increased 10.9 percent in the quarter – this is true. But the majority of that increase came from an increase in military spending, which ballooned upwards by 13.3 percent. Non-military spending – by and large, the goods paid for by ARRA– increased by 6 percent, contributing a mere 0.15 percentage points to overall growth.

Few economists debate the fact that government spending has the ability to increase nominal GDP (although they will wonder how much that really means). Those that oppose use of “stimulus” measures oppose its long-term effects and question its efficacy over other measures such as a cut in the payroll tax. But the world of economics does not care when it comes to what kind of government spending is used; to use Keynes’ famous example, money spent on “digging holes” has the same stimulating effect as money spent creating the Hoover Dam. (Perhaps this explains why stimulus advocates care little for how exactly the money is being spent.)

Yet honest economics and American politics have very little in common, and so we discover the progressive corollary to the Kenyesian model: all government spending in a recession provides a GDP boost, except military spending. For the Republicans, there is a different axiom: government spending is wasteful, except when it’s perfectly efficient defense spending.

Nowhere are these cognitive dissonances more apparent than in the fight over the F-22 fighter jets. A recent Senate amendment that proposed to spend $1.75 billion for seven new planes ran into only one problem – no one who matters wants it. The commander-in-chief doesn’t want it. The secretary of defense doesn’t want it. None of the fighting forces in Afghanistan or Iraq want it. Sen. John McCain, touted by conservatives as an expert on military issues during election season, doesn’t want it.

But Sens. Chambliss and Isakson want it. The Republic Senators from Georgia, where much of the F-22 production occurs, retorted in a joint press statement that production of the planes “is essential to both our national security as well as the many local economies and thousands of workers that would be devastated as a result of these cuts.” Improving the national infrastructure, and saving jobs? That sounds familiar.

The debate takes on a Bizarro World quality. Conservatives who opposed ARRA’s “wasteful spending” waste no time in stridently defending this important structural improvement, almost perfectly echoing the rhetoric of the big-spenders. Those on the Left who pooh-poohed concerns about waste as petty in a time of economic crisis, have suddenly discovered their inner government skeptic as they pick apart the proposal.

For those forty-three Democratic senators that voted for the stimulus but against the F-22s: if immediate government spending is so important, why does it matter what exactly the money is being spent on? Your own colleague Chris Dodd has pointed out that shutting down this production could cost “up to 95,000 direct and indirect jobs” – so shouldn’t the program be saved in the name of “jobs across America”?

As for those twenty-three Republican senators that voted against the stimulus but for the fighter jets: if government waste is such an issue, why is it so inconceivable that it could occur in the Defense Department? If we should fear burdening future generations with debt, shouldn’t we also cast a worried eye at the unmitigated rise of military spending? And if this really is about national security against our ally India (and not about jobs in Marietta), then shouldn’t Americans be willing to increase taxes to pay for it?

While Democrats, with all the keys of power, can afford such hypocrisy, Republicans, striving for relevance, cannot. Until the party can show that it isn’t as committed to expanding the national deficit as it was during the Bush years, its message of fiscal conservatism will ring false to all but the most uninformed of voters.

Evan Lisull, an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, is a weekly contributor to The DC Writeup. He also writes at the Desert Lamp and The Kosmopolitan.

The 2008 presidential election may seem like ancient history, but it was less than a year ago that Tina Fey famously spoofed Sarah Palin, chirping the now-infamous, “I can see Russia from my house!” Before Trig was a household name, before the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman became as widely read as the Times or the Post, the formal complaints against Palin were rather staid: the governor simply doesn’t have enough foreign policy experience for her position.

We’ve just finished eight years under a former state governor who could see Mexico from his backyard – and look how that turned out.Partly due to this, the office that would have been Palin’s is now inhabited by former Senator Joe Biden, that experienced don of foreign policy. The difference is night and day, and as Andrew Sullivan has insinuated, between life and death. By electing the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee over the wonder from Wasila, America ensured herself a new hope in foreign policy – a new approach to the world that one would be tempted to call humble.

Or so one might think. Instead, Vice President Biden went off the reservation, excoriating Russia in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Monday. While citing the need to avoid “embarrass[ing] an individual or a country when they’re dealing with significant loss of face,” the vice president proceeded to do exactly that, describing the Russian Empire as “clinging” to an unsustainable past in the wake of declining birth rates and a “withering economy.” As if the comments themselves weren’t enough, Biden had to make them while chumming it up with Georgian President Mikhail Saakhashvili, who may or may not have instigated a war with Russia last summer.

Biden’s record as a gaffe machine is long lasting – in fact, it is the second time that his mouth has triumphed over his brain. Just three months ago, Biden urged American’s to avoid using public transportation during the outbreak of the almost entirely nonfatal H1N1 virus.

The issue comes not from the statements themselves – although attacking Russia for holding onto past glory is rather rich, coming from the man from Scranton. Rather it is the fact that he is making such assertions as vice president of the United States. In making these statements in his official capacity as the second-highest ranking executive in the nation, in effect he speaks on behalf of the entire country. Yet Biden seems entirely unaware that he cannot ramble as if he were a Delaware state representative, that holding such a high-ranking position requires a modicum of restraint. He pronounces off-the-cuff theories with all the self-restraint of a drunk collegian studying abroad, describing in slurred pidgin exactly why the world is the way it is. Yet rather than being forgotten in the haze of Sunday’s hangover, the ramblings of the VP become a matter of public record, a primary source for observers of American foreign relations.

Sarah Palin visits Alaskan troops stationed in Germany

Sarah Palin Visiting Alaskan Troops in GermanyPopulists are, however, obsessed with straight talk; to use already dated vernacular, they value ‘keeping it real’ over realism. As the featured comment on the Journal‘s page put it, “Who gave Joe Biden the truth serum? The only person I’m beginning to respect in the Obama administration is Biden, go figure.” But as Dave Chapelle illustrated on his popular sketch comedy show, keeping it real can often go horribly wrong. There are few places in which it can be worse than in foreign relations, in which even the misplacement of an article can lead to bloodshed.

This brings us back to Palin, who still dominates the headlines even as she flees from them as though they were style handbooks. Even as bad as Biden might be, the punditry cautions, Palin would have been far worse. Perhaps so – but then again, perhaps not. After all,McCain’s iciness towards Palin – both during and after the campaign – have illustrated that the love-fest was little more than a shotgun wedding of political expediency. Is it so unreasonable to suggest that McCain’s attitude toward the vice-presidency would be far more controlling that the current loose leash? If McCain and his staff didn’t trust Palin on the campaign trail, why would they trust her with foreign affairs, a field in which Sen. McCain revels? In all likelihood, a Vice-President Palin would wait idly, biding the time and preparing for the 2012 race (although an exception might be made for a visit to Berlusconi’s Italy).

Each vice presidential candidate had their Russia gaffe. Palin’s, had it been issued from the Vice President’s desk, would certainly make the country look stupid. But Biden’s comment, which was actually issued, makes America look downright bullying. While Sarah Palin might have been unqualified, Joe Biden has proven himself incompetent. The former should lead to skepticism, but the latter should lead to denunciation.Thus far, however, Vice President Biden has only been described as an “asset” by the White House spokesman. Perhaps Gibbs misheard the question as an economic one.

Given these options, America would be wise to return to the old tradition of the do-nothing vice presidency. It is a long and storied tradition of being that “most insignificant office,” and later compared unfavorably to a “bucketful of warm spit.” In recent years, however, the vice-presidency has risen to far more powerful heights, thanks in large part to the ceaseless scheming by Dick Cheney. Gene Healy has chronicled the cult of the presidency, but concurrently there has risen a cult of the vice-presidency. A vice-president that did nothing but wait for the president to die is simply unacceptable in the eyes of an impatient “don’t stand there, do something!” citizenry. At the very least, though, we might hope for a muzzle.

A version of this piece was published in The D.C. Writeup.

A striking quote from Christopher Hitchens’ piece:

Iran and its citizens are considered by the Shiite theocracy to be the private property of the anointed mullahs. This totalitarian idea was originally based on a piece of religious quackery promulgated by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and known as velayat-e faqui. Under the terms of this edict—which originally placed the clerics in charge of the lives and property of orphans, the indigent, and the insane—the entire population is now declared to be a childlike ward of the black-robed state. Thus any voting exercise is, by definition, over before it has begun, because the all-powerful Islamic Guardian Council determines well in advance who may or may not “run.”

This is the core of the theocracy – we are all God’s children, but someone has to play Jack Merridew. “Nanny state” is usual used to criticize far less authoritarian powers – the ban on trans fat, say, or politically correct priggishness. But the principle, whether it is founded in Islamic theology or utilitarianism, is the same: we know better than you do.

There is a strong case to be made for “nannying” children – this is called parenting. There is a strong, but weaker, case to be made for nannying the indigent. Yet the mission creeps, and each class becomes more and more in need of a helping hand from Papa State.

So what does one do with an impudent child? Well:

It’s easy to catch a Byronian pan-Persian fervor here, as Andrew Sullivan has (read him if you aren’t already), but this story is far from black and white. Juan Cole’s considerations aside, it’s not at all impossible that Ahmadinejad may, in fact, have won the election. As this piece puts it:

The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin – greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election.

. . .

The breadth of Ahmadinejad’s support was apparent in our pre-election survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasised his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favoured Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.

Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.

. . .

The fact may simply be that the re-election of President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted.

Here democracy reaches its limit. Assuming that democracy is the highest virtue, then Moussavi’s movement is an anti-democratic one. Warmongers for democracy should not only refuse Moussavi any direct support, but should in fact support Ahmadinejad until his vote tally falls below 50 percent (if, in fact, it ever does). To support Moussavi is to subvert the democratic will of those who voted for Ahmadinejad.

Yet there are higher principles than “democracy,” for democracy is simply a means that has generally correlated with that principle of liberty. There are exceptions to this erst-while rule, and it is why our own constitution explicitly avoids 50+ majoritarianism,  why our constitution is, in fact, anti-democratic. Contra our own immigration authorities, the most important right is not the “right to vote,” but rather the right to not vote – a subset of the right to self-determination. When one wishes to show support for a candidate, a free society permits them to do so. Critics of Iran must remember that even if the vote counts are 100 percent accurate, that is no excuse for the actions of the Islamic State and her hired goon squads – who are, after all, watching out for the well-being of the Iranian people. The issue is not the election results, but their aftermath – a reminder of what an unfree state really is.