Debra Saunders Argues with the Voices in Her Head

I remember this one time many years ago, in a Burger King at the Sacramento Greyhound station, there was a woman carrying on a heated argument with herself in two different voices. It was a little unnerving.

I hadn't thought about that woman for at least a decade...until I read this column by Debra Saunders:

THERE ARE certain arguments that partisans repeat as if they are holy and certain -- until the arguments are no longer convenient. Here are some bromides and political arguments that were broadly used in the last few years, but now have outlived their usefulness, so you probably won't hear them much in 2007:

What, the reader asks, are those arguments? Are they real arguments, advanced by people who are...y'know...real? Or are they...something else?

Let's take a look:

The Pottery Barn Rule: You broke it, you own it. There was a time you couldn't go a day without hearing an Iraq-war opponent invoke former Secretary of State Colin Powell's famous warning about sending U.S. troops into Iraq. Apparently these folks never really believed in the rule, because they now want America to disown an Iraq mired in chaos.

I don't recall anyone using this as an argument against invading Iraq, and a fairly diligent Google search confirms my recollection: not a single pre-war use of the line as an argument against invasion.

Except for those voices, of course.

Impeachment is an attempt to overturn a popular election. The left used that argument repeatedly when the GOP House impeached President Bill Clinton. Funny, you don't hear the left making that argument when Democrats call for the House to start impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

This is the Debra Saunders Rule of Semantic Moral Equivalence: if the same label can somehow be applied to two different things, then those things are exactly the same, as long as their equivalence bolsters one's preconceptions. (If it doesn't, then they're totally different.)

The president should be more skeptical of U.S. intelligence on Iraq. Forget former CIA chief George Tenet's assurance that it was a "slam dunk" Saddam Hussein had WMD. Bush was supposed to not believe that finding of U.S. intelligence on Iraq. But now, when U.S. intelligence estimates suggest that Iraq is unwinnable, editorial boards across the country assume the intelligence must be accurate.

So the voices in her head tell her the problem was too much deference to the CIA, not manipulation of dubious 'intelligence' for political ends. Meanwhile, the liberals in her head were calling for more manipulation of intelligence by the executive branch. That makes real liberals total hypocrites when they say the president should pay attention to actual intelligence instead of making up their own.

It all makes sense.

Washington's deficit spending is unconscionable. This year, Republicans will want to maintain the Bush tax cuts and Democrats will be enjoying their return to power. In 2007, many 2006 deficit hawks from both parties will go wobbly.

Right. Because if the Democrats, after six years of arguing against the tax-shifting bills that got us into this mess, don't immediately abandon their own spending priorities (while leaving in place said tax shifting), they're total hypocrites.

Americans need to sacrifice and cut back on their energy use to fight global warming. Global warming remains an article of faith, but you can say bye-bye to the notion that fighting global warming will require good citizens to cut back. GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sees no problem with owning four Hummers and tooling around in a private jet -- while he orders the state to reduce its output of greenhouse gases. Former veep Al Gore, who once wrote that fighting global warming would require "sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation of society," now tells gullible movie-goers that fighting global warming will be good for the economy and create jobs.

That Schwarzenegger--he's like the poster child for liberal hypocrisy. Except for, y'know, not being a liberal. No matter how much those voices say he is.

And if you can find the contradiction in what the voices in her head tell her Gore is saying, you're a better Republican than I am.

Bush hasn't asked Americans to sacrifice because of the war in Iraq. Most of the folks I see making this argument aren't sacrificing anything to further the war effort either -- they're just using the war to bolster their support for higher taxes on the rich. And they want the need for sacrifice to turn Americans against the war. Now that polls show that Americans don't support the war, the pro-sacrifice crowd will ditch the phony sacrifice argument. [emphasis added]

Isn't it nice that the voices in her head tell her all about the future as well as the present? Don't you just want to call her up and ask her for tips on the horse races...and bet on any horse but the ones she recommends?

[That's all, folks]