From the right: Dems Disgraced the Senate
The deserved mockery of Cory Booker’s “Spartacus moment” at the Kavanaugh hearings obscures the more important point about the senator’s antics, avers Noah Rothman at Commentary. Booker claimed to be releasing documents in a way that broke Senate rules, but those docs were cleared for release. Says Rothman: “Booker was adamant, however, that he had undermined the Senate’s integrity. You see, that, not transparency, was his true objective.” Then there was Sen. Kamala Harris’ dishonest editing of a video of Kavanaugh to make it appear he was saying something he wasn’t, and Dianne Feinstein’s public passing of vague assault claims against Kavanaugh from high school to the FBI. Far from harmless shenanigans, “Democratic committee members took a sledgehammer to the foundations of the institution in which they are privileged to serve.”
Conservative take: Bolton Is Right To Take On the ICC
National Security Adviser John Bolton recently “launched a blistering attack on the International Criminal Court,” writes Jonathan Tobin at JNS.org, and liberal critics compared it to the behavior of “authoritarian tyrannies.” But while the ICC might have been founded in 2002 with good intentions, it’s become “just another example of how such institutions are easily corrupted and become sclerotic, incompetent bureaucracies” — one with predictable anti-American biases. It has only convicted eight suspects in its 16 years, and “has proffered despots like the dictator of Venezuela or the kleptocrats of the Palestinian Authority the same influence as democracies.” Plus, it “recently made clear its plans to investigate U.S. forces fighting Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan.” All of which makes Bolton’s posture toward the ICC “both necessary and correct.”
Culture file: Nike Is Winning ‘Kneeling’ Battle
Major corporations have been openly siding with progressive causes, and they’re paying no price for it, explains David French at National Review. Take Nike: “Days after it announced a multi-million-dollar deal with Colin Kaepernick, prompting a minor stock dip and a torrent of stories detailing how foolish the company was to ‘alienate half its customer base,’ its stock gained back all the losses and it was reported that its sales had actually ‘skyrocketed’ in the days after it launched its campaign.” The reason: Not many Americans pay close attention to political news cycles, and even fewer make purchasing choices based on politics. Indeed, “the only major sports league that’s showing a real and broad increase in viewers” — the NBA — “just so happens to be the most political.”
From the left: Candidates Matter, Not Just Ideology
Democrats are getting a lesson in the importance of likeability. At The New York Times, Frank Bruni admits that “Democratic moderates have found more validation than progressives in 2018,” but says overall that “Candidates matter. Campaigns count. Voters use more than bullet points, spreadsheets and the marching orders of the Democratic Socialists of America or the New Democrat Coalition to make decisions.” Of course there are “exceptions aplenty,” Bruni says. But “if Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Jon Tester in Montana, Joe Manchin in West Virginia” and other red-state Dems win, it’ll be “because they have managed, through deft interpersonal skills and dexterous campaigns, to garner the affection and respect of their constituents, and because the Republican opponents that they happen to be facing aren’t rock stars.”
Economist: We Mishandled the Financial Crash
A decade on, insists Dean Baker at the Los Angeles Times, the 2008 bank bailouts were unnecessary. There would’ve been no run on the banks, because the FDIC “is very good at taking over a failed bank to ensure that checks are honored and ATMs keep working. In fact, the FDIC took over several major banks and many minor ones during the Great Recession.” As for the supposed crisis in short-term debt companies often need to operate, Baker says, “a $700-billion bank bailout wasn’t required to restore the commercial paper market. The country discovered this fact the weekend after Congress approved the bailout when the Fed announced a special lending facility to buy commercial paper ensuring the availability of credit for businesses.”
— Compiled by Seth Mandel