A man in the arena

I have always considered myself to be someone who straddles the line between idealism and realism in foreign policy. But a quick review of my blog would show anyone that I am shifting to idealism.

I will not accept German Idealism in its pure philosophic form, but I was highly persuaded by Fukuyama’s book “The End of History and the Last Man”. Since my reading of that book, my position has been that democracy is not inevitable, but that it is sustainable and self-generating. I will not dig down into this complex issue here, but to say that I always thought that the U.S. really could not do much to affect a democratic revolution in the world, no matter how beneficial that would be. My opinion is changing.

The cause: events. Afghanistan is a democracy. Iraq is a democracy. They both are on their way to stability. Most importantly Lebanon is pushing for a democracy because they see that the Iraqi’s have one. Democracy is spreading, and we are the agent of change.

This is a chaotic and dangerous process. Some prudence is vital, not prudence in the philosophical Conservative sense, but prudence in the pragmatic sense. There will be no invading China anytime soon, but the Mullahs of Iran should be nervous. In one instance we will use openness and the free-market, in the other coercion. This is pragmatism.

The democratizing storm that the world is caught in is dangerous and can blow in many different directions. But as the President said years ago, there is an angel in the whirlwind.

While googling to get info on the Iraqi election for my posts today, I came across all the negative press in January. It was only a month ago, and I already forgot how the chattering class was so wrong and Bush was so right.

p.s. If you go to the link, go through a few of the results pages to get the drift.

The perfect ad for the Republicans to use right now is outlined below.

1. Fade into a clip of Sen. Kennedy: "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam,"

2. Show a clip of Sen. Kerry: “I mean, it's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote.”

3. Show a montage of pictures and videos of the Iraqi people voting: huge crowds of robed men and women walking to the polls, people carrying the elderly to vote, etc.

4. Show a clip of the President Bush at the Inauguration: “The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

5. The words: FREEDOM MATTERS

6. Brought to you by the U.S. Republican National Party

The catch-phrase could be changed. What is important is that Republicans remind America that we are the party of Freedom, and we are the party that liberated Iraq. Americans love freedom, and only one party when to the mat to fight for it.

Peggy Noonan has a column on OpinionJournal.com that is suspiciously blog-like. This is quite unfortunate because if she becomes a blogger, than the rest of us can just hang it up. Well, not really. But she will be a requisite stop in the blogosphere.

Two thoughts. First, her take on Hunter S. Thompson is akin to mine. Well it would be if mine was well written, insightful, and kindhearted. Second, she is getting better. I read her books in the 90s. They were excellent. But her comment on the Summers Incident seems to betray a much deeper grasp of political philosophy than she had in the past.

There has been a tremendous outpouring of words at the death of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Thankfully they have not all been hagiographic baby-boomer nostalgia trips written by snivelling Ivy League alumni rhapsodizing about the vitality of the 1960's counter-culture while drinking French wine in their million dollar homes.

Some people actually point out the truth. While Thompson was a highly entertaining writer, his journalism was horrible. Journalism should have something to do with reality. Hunter S. Thompson had nothing whatsoever to do with reality.

But there remains a raw energy in his work: the overwrought sarcasm of the perpetually fried mind. But this energy has faded with time. Both the detachment from facts and love of self-indulgence that characterized the 60s are a dimming memory. The impact that this ethos will have on future generations, like the impact Thompson will have on future writers, will be negligible.

So if you if you can spare a moment at the bar this weekend, raise a glass to Hunter. He went all out in trying to remake journalism and his times. He was an American character: the extraordinary failure.

Alan Dershowitz, while disagreeing with Summers' comments on the innate abilities of women, says that Harvard is in a time of “crisis.”

"The crisis is over whether a politically correct straightjacket will be placed over the thinking of everybody in this institution by one segment of the faculty."

Dershowitz is not a man of the right. But he is a man of the academy who can read the writing on the wall.

(Hat Tip: Belmont Club)

There are rumors afoot that Syria is going to pull out of Lebanon. You cannot keep the Lebanese down when they see the Iraqi’s have a free election. And the Bush Doctrine continues…..

Australia is doubling its troop commitment in Iraq. This will add 450 troops to defend Japanese engineers. Any support that we get from the Aussies in Iraq is a good thing. Prime Minister Howard just got reelected on an unabashedly pro-War on Terror campaign. Any cooperation between the two of the biggest and longest standing democracies in the Pacific, Japan and Australia, is also a good thing.

Our Senators are visiting Iraq. Senators McCain and Clinton are leading the delegation. This is all well and good. Regardless of what they thought, or think of the war, they should get some first hand knowledge about what our troops are dealing with.

But what is Sen. Russ Feingold going to say to the Iraqis? What do you say to a recently liberated people when you voted against liberating them?

“Glad you’re free. Sorry I did everything I could to keep a murderous tyrant in Baghdad. My bad.”

The President is on a make-the-Euros-feel-good tour. And this morning he told them that:

"No power on Earth will ever divide us."

I am sure that the caveat that was supposed to follow was lost in editing:

“unless the French decide to screw us for short money selling oil to tyrants.”

Foxnews has a startling photo of a Shiite who cut himself in celebration of a religious holiday. This part of our planet is frightening. Next time let's invade Tahiti. I will volunteer.

You may recall that Larry Summers, President of Harvard, got into some trouble for implying that "innate" differences between men and women may account for the larger amount of men who achieve tenure in the science and technology field. You may also recall that the women at the conference he was speaking at went berzerk, and called for apologies which he has given repeatedly.

This was ridiculous. The idea that there may be differences between men and women is not crazy, although it is, alas, controversial. It is a question for modern neurology, and the social sciences in general. But obviously you cannot ask that quetion in the Ivy League. They obviously have a priori knowledge that shut the door on research in this area.

Why am I rehashing this? Because I thought that the blogosphere was pretty much in agreement that Summers got attacked because his academic question was politically incorrect. And furthermore that this was an example of the severe lack of academic freedom in America today. Wrongo. The American Prospect's blog has a post today accusing Summers of being provocative, (Heaven Forfend!) and offers a lame pop-sociology reason on why Summers is all wet.

Read it. It is sad. But it may remind you that sometimes it is quite nice to be on the Right.

I was just searching through the links on conservativepunk.com and saw a website called anti-anti-flag. This guy's page starts with a motto damn near one that my Bostonian friends and I have used for years.

I'm not closed-minded. You're just wrong.

Someone needs to run for Senate on that line.

p.s. We have used "I'm not narrow minded; you're just wrong."

The best thing about Democrats claiming that they need to frame their political goals in moral terms is that there is not a snowball's chance in hell that it will work. Liberal political goals are based on ideas about justice and ultimately class warfare. Conservative politics are based on ideas about morals and freedom. The rhetoric for one set of ideas will not explain the rationale for the other set of ideas. If the Democrats keep going in this direction their constituency will be so confused that we'll have President Jeb Bush in 2008, President George P. Bush in 2016, and President Jenna Bush in 2024. And frankly, 2024 is too damn soon to hear another President brag about Texas for eight years.

There has not been a major war in the Far East since Vietnam and China went at it in the 1970s. A huge factor in the 25 years of peace is U.S. diplomacy. By guaranteeing the safety of Taiwan and South Korea we force China and North Korea away from military action. They won't pick a fight they cannot win. By not being aggressive or seeking dominance over the countries in the Far East we are seen as protectors of commerce and are not considered a threat. And by keeping Japan from militarizing we keep China and North Korea from desperate actions.

The biggest threat to this balance is that a rising China will either 1) seek conflict with the U.S. or 2) convince Japan to militarize creating an arms race. Japan's ministers talking publicly about China to American diplomats is a public demand that we reaffirm our commitment to their defence.

A few words from the President for peace and order in Asia being the first priority of U.S. policy would go far in calming the situation. It won't make Chinese dissidents happy. But we need to avoid military conflict with China so that the economic freedom there can work it's magic and upend the tyrannical political structure.

Think Chile. Think USSR.

For the purposes of your own edification, read the headlines on the The Australian today. There are two articles about the threat of American litigation to Australian firms. Great. I was just thinking that what the world really needs is to adapt the American system of exploiting human pain to move wealth from the people who created it to the legal-aristocracy.

At what point in history will U.S. lawyers become the most dangerous threat to International trade?

Bill Cosby will not be charged for groping a drugged women. It seems there was no evidence. But the media did get an opportunity to bring up his affair from three decades ago. And Cosby must feel wonderful reading this headline on CNN:

Cosby groping investigation ends without charges

Has Bill learned his lesson? He is now considered a Conservative. All allegations are now true until proven otherwise. At which point we all know they must be true but the vast-right-wing-conspiracy has suppressed them.

I am getting some good feedback from the people who read this blog. Ergo I am going to try and publicize it a bit better.

First I am going to throw up more single paragraph blogs (obviously I am not starting with this post.) That will force me to be concise, allow me to blog more, and, most importantly it should be more entertaining.

If you look at the bottom of each entry, next to the word "comments" there is an envelope symbol. If one post is particularly witty (i.e. I was blogging while drunk) hit that envelope and e-mail the post to somebody you know. I would appreciate it.

I also joined Sitemeter and Technorati. Although I am not entirely sure how to use Technorati, this should add to my traffic.

Self-aggrandization is a strange process. Thanks for reading.

A few days ago, I read an article in Newsweek while in Borders. If I felt the urge to pay Borders for the magazine because I read an article in it, then I would also feel the urge to sue Newsweek, demanding financial compensation for the space in my brain occupied by the inane whining they call journalism.

The entire article was about how hard it is to be a mom. Ok nothing new there. Now of course society changes and every generation is confronted by new expectations. This is an interesting subject. If Newsweek had taken a sociological angle on raising kids in a hyper-meritocracy, that may have been interesting.

Alas, the article was all about how demanding children are, and how women can’t have full lives outside their families, and how you can’t have it all….yada yada yada. And this horrible situation is, you guessed it, SOCIETY’S FAULT. Society has created the awful difficulties in raising children. And the solution is, and I hope you guessed this, GOVERNMENT SPENDING. If only we had cheap high-quality daycare and host of other free services women could have it all.

The ludicrous idea here is that these people have had something done to them. They chose to have children. Yes, having children is a choice not a right. I am not going to have any pity for a news anchorwoman who complains that life is too hard. Please. If you want to run IBM someday you will sacrifice free time, vacations, and a social life in order to get there. If you want to raise decent kids you will sacrifice some part of your career, free time, and social life and put the time in to raise them. No amount of government spending is going to change this. And no amount of government spending is going to alleviate your responsibility for your own decisions.

Say it with me: There is no such thing as a free lunch.

A bunch of Green peace protesters tried to disrupt the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) in Great Britain. They got the ever-living piss kicked out of them.

They snuck through a security door and marched on to the trading floor with whistles and foghorns. Their stated goal was to disrupt trading. And this is what one of the protesters said “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.” How obnoxious can you get? Someone is supposed to “listen” to you because you have forced yourself into their life and disrupted their job.

These arrogant protesters think that posing behind non-violent methods means they can do whatever they want to anyone they want. Maybe smacking them around is socially unacceptable. But it’s damn funny.

National Review Online is reporting that John Negroponte is going to appointed Director of National Intelligence. He is a State Department guy who may have had some clandestine experience in Latin America.

But he was an aide to Kissinger and the Human Rights crowd hates him, so that works in his favor. But I would have preferred someone with real intelligence experience. Why did they waste Goss on the CIA?

Paul Krugman used to be a front runner for the Noble Prize in Economics. Now he is a hack columnist for the New York Times. No writer in America is a better example of the angry ranting relative that you avoid on holidays. We all know the guy who knows half the story but has all the answers, and explains them to you as loudly as possible.

His latest piece is a defense of Dean as a “fighting moderate.” Let us rip this silliness apart. First off, Dean was a moderate Governor. He had a balanced budget, supported gun rights, created civil unions as opposed to gay marriage etc. But he ran for President on an anti-war platform. He has positioned himself as a liberal, or as he claims he is the representative of “the democratic wing of the Democratic party.”

Krugman writes that Dean is “squarely in the center of his party on issues like health care and national defense.” Sure. He wants nationalized healthcare and is anti-war. That may put him in the center of the democrats. But being in the center of the left party doesn’t make you a moderate. Lieberman is a moderate. And Dean is no Lieberman.

It is also mildly insulting that Krugman is trying to appropriate the “fighting” label for Dean. This was the New Republic’s term that they used to try and rally the party against people like Dean. But I guess Krugman just assumes that his readers are too dumb to read other news sources.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: What happened to this guy? Krugman used to be a liberal with a balanced view of reality. Really. Check out his book “The Age of Diminished Expectations.” It is dated and liberal. But he actually describes the views he disagrees with. In the 21st century, Krugman’s enemies are all greedy right-wing war profiteers. Where do I sign up?

Somewhere I just read another inane comment about Bush’s “go it alone” foreign policy. And that just pisses me off. This “go it alone” attack has been a left wing weapon for a few years. And it is a useless phrase.

First, let us do the unchivalrous thing and take the statement out of context. At what point did anyone think that going it alone is a bad thing? In a culture where we are all Individuals who adhere to the doctrine of Tolerance how is going it alone a bad thing? At what point in time did your parents advise you that if everyone jumped off a bridge that you should too? Of course we all live within general social mores, but we want to see ourselves as free to do what we believe is right. And we want to raise children who will also do this.

It is a fact that we live in a culture that celebrates the individual who does the right thing in spite of the opinions of others. Best movie of the 1990s (aside from Rushmore) was Brave Heart: a movie about one man’s heroic struggle against tyranny. Most popular movie The Titanic: a movie about a girl who breaks free of her family’s stifling social conformity. We lionize Harry Truman in politics, and Bill Gates in business.

Now back to foreign policy. When you make an action (i.e. go to war, sign a free trade theory, etc.) you want to do it with as many allies as possible. It makes life easier. But it does not legitimize anything. In foreign policy, like all aspects of life, there is the right thing to do and then there is what everybody else thinks. These things are not always congruent. Right now, the right thing to do is to kick the hell out of the bad guys, and what everybody else thinks is the UN General Assembly. You know that place. It is where Germany France, the U.S., and Japan are considered to be morally equal to Cuba, Libya, and North Korea.

So buck up. Quit whining, get up off your butt, go have a hamburger, and kick some ass. We won’t be popular, but we’ll be right.

Ok Arthur Miller is dead. Let us leave aside the fact that his most famous play, well one of his most famous, "The Crucible" is an attack on the 1950s. Yes McCarthy was an idiot and a bastard. But unlike the foolish non-witch girls in the play, Hiss was a commie and the commies were trying to infiltrate and overthrow the U.S. government. If you do not agree with this you have not read anything about the opening of the Soviet files in the Kremlin after the end of the Cold War. If you have read anything about them and you still think the commies were not infiltrating the government, you are deliberately ignorant.

I was once deliberately ignorant. I once claimed, ignorantly, that "Ally McBeal" was a good show. I chose deliberate ignorance because it allowed me to watch Lucy Liu every week. Sue me.

Obviously I have left nothing aside. But, of all the clips about "Death of a Salesman" playing in the media, one irks me. It has the wife ranting that "attention must be paid" to her husband's life. Attention must be paid? Who speaks like this? Did anyone ever speak like this? Who is she the Pope?

I do not care if he was the greatest playwrite of the 20th century. Broadway is dead. And not least because it fell into the morass of hating America.

CNN has an article about some author who hates Valentine's Day and thinks a cat is better than a man. Good grief. Do we need any more world-weary poses from the cynical? I am all for sarcasm and vicious humor. But this false sense of skeptical wisdom is pathetic.

What the hell is wrong with our generation? We need a little less whining and a little more Tom Wolfe style embracing of this hog-stomping baroque life in the best damn country ever.

On my comment about Peter Singer I wrote that he believed an abortion was okay after a child's birth up until a "child's brain functions enough to feel pain."

This statement is true but incomplete. Singer is a Utilitarian who sees good/bad in terms of joy/suffering. He has a more nuanced description for his post-birth abortion then what I wrote. What I wrote makes his ideas seem simplistic and absurd, when they are really quite complex and absurd.

I apologize for the lack of blogging this weekend. I was out protecting America from the evildoers.

No seriously, I was at my first Air Force Reserve Drill. And it was awesome.

National Review has an article regarding embryonic-stem-cell-research and Governor Mitt Romney today.

I have no idea what to think about this issue. Except that the issue is going to be vital to how we see ourselves. The Right understands this. To K-Lo at NRO it is an issue about life and how we respect it. But the left avoids the discussion about whether life is involved at all. They go straight for the emotional "we want to save lives" argument.

Presumably, we could experiment on live adults and learn things that would save lives. Maybe we could save many more lives then would be lost in experimentation. Is this abhorrent? Sure, we would all agree on the basic right of an individual to live. Does that right influence our view of embryonic-stem-cell-research? Maybe, but the Left cannot ask fundamental questions about abortion. They fear the outcome.

Which reminds of what Peter Singer once said. He believes that a parent should be able to "abort" a child after birth up until the point that the child's brain functions enough to feel pain ( I think he estimated that time at about 6 months.) At least Singer addresses the idea of life. What he said that was so interesting was that only he and the Pope are intellectualy honest on this issue. And you know he is almost right.

Now maybe Bill Cosby is a twisted sexual predator who uses drugs to molest women. Or maybe speaking against liberal pieties is an excellent way to make yourself a target.

Ask yourself if you believe any of this would have come up if Cosby had not forcefully spoken out against the current culture. Now the accuser(s) deserves to be treated respectfully by the police and prosecutors, and her claim should be heard and weighed by our legal system. But what do you think?

This garbage has been going on since the Left destroyed Bork’s Supreme Court nomination. And I always thought it was quite rich when Bill Clinton decried the “politics of personal destruction” when his team publicly destroyed the reputations of both of the women we know he had affairs with (Flowers and Lewinski.)

So it is now reported that U.S. female interrogators used their sexuality against Muslim detainees.

So what?

Interrogation is not pleasant. The goal is to get information that will save lives. Everything short of torture should be done. If some guy cannot handle seeing a girl in a tee-shirt, you are damn right we should use it against him.

Does anyone realize that on the battlefield we are trying to kill these guys? Now the press wants us to give them milk and cookies.

Jimmy Carter won a Nobel Peace prize in part because he brokered the deal with North Korea in 1994. You may remember that deal. It ensured that we would give resources to North Korea so that they would stop working on Nuclear Weapons. Of course, It just gave them the diplomatic cover they needed to keep on building. And now a totalitarian regime run by lunatics is a nuclear power.

Thanks Jimmy. Stick to building houses you abject failure.

The Washington Post has an opinion piece today by Jim Hoagland that is worth reading. It is a brief description of Cheney’s entrenched power in Washington. Essentially his power is based on two facts: 1) the President trusts him and 2) Cheney is not running in 2008 so he will say whatever the hell he wants whenever he wants.

This article doesn’t come close to beating Walter Russell Mead’s article last fall in Esquire. Mead is obviously torn between thinking that Cheney is either the Churchill of our age or Darth Vader.

Note: You know you have problems when you buy a magazine with Angelina Jolie on the cover, because you want to read the article about Dick Cheney.

Max Schmeling has died. His obit is worth reading. I have been reading a lot about Germany recently. During the Nazi years there was a small group that resisted. Peter Drucker's excellent autobiography has a few pages describing these resistors who were fundamentally decent Prussian Lutherans. I am willing to bet that Schmelling falls into that category.

These people were not representative of Germany, and they were completely overwhelmed by the Nazi movement. But they are worth studying. We need to know more about the struggle of common decency in the face of tyranny. Especially when decency fails.

I am going to send another article to National Review. The idea is that the country would be better served if we accepted Social Security as a welfare system for the unfortunate, then if we turn it into an investment program. Simply put, Social Security is an entitlement. If all americans own stock through the government, there will be immense pressure to use the government to secure the people's entitlement. People will choose security over risk and reward. This could become quite dangerous to the free-market.

I heard President Bush speak yesterday. C-Span Radio is a wonderful thing.

Contra my point on Rice below, Bush himself sounds exceedingly Hegelian. It really is shocking to hear. His fundamental belief is that everyone wants freedom and that democracy is the only way they can get this. He states that this is the natural desire of every human being, and that this desires comes from God. While that is different than Hegel's idea of the Spirit, it has the feel of an American restatement of his basic theme.

There are two important points here. Functioning democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to look an awful lot like vindication of this idea. Whether you agree with the metaphysics of it or not, pragmatically if these cultures can support democracy any culture can. There will always be other constraints on developing democracy in a region such as personal income, education, etc. But these complaints become tactical, the strategic argument will be over.

The second point is that this idea is profoundly unconservative. Buckley, Will, Kissinger, Nixon, even Theodore Roosevelt would have abhorred this idea. It doesn't take into account important cultural distinctions that conservatives so deeply respect. This is a triumph of the neoconservative idea. Not the "evil neoconservatives" (read: Jews) that the media attacks. But it is the triumph of Irving Kristol and the old school neocons who came over from liberalism in the 1960s and brought their idealism with them.

We should not underestimate the extraordinary shift in History that will accompany a functioning Iraqi democracy.

Below is the text of an article I attempted to get published in National Review. I failed this time. It is a comment on a New Republic article.


Partisanship is the necessary evil of any democracy. Its necessity is that it is the glue the binds groups together. Groups that can then act together and pass laws. Its evil resides in the fact that it can act as a funnel that narrows perspective and limits deliberate thinking.

The New Republic has recently given us an excellent example of what can happen to the partisan mind. The article “Future Perfect” by Jeffrey Herf illustrates the loss of perspective that can develop from an attempt at the partisan polemic.

Herf’s article is a brief synopsis of what he sees as the critical moment of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s most recent testimony before Congress. It is now well known that Rice was treated roughly in her confirmation. Senator Boxer (D) has become a folk hero of the MoveOn crowd for her line of attack, and formerly moderate Candidate Kerry has morphed back into Liberal Senator Kerry with his vote against Rice’s confirmation. But it also known that Rice handled herself well and said very little that could damage her or the President’s remaining tenure in the executive branch.

Herf sees this differently than the conventional wisdom. While accusing Rice, perhaps not unfairly, of evasive answers to the Senator’s questions, he still believes that he has discovered the quote that reveals Rice’s dark Hegelian side. Rice’s is a closet historical determinist and believes the ends justify the means. In his view she is not simply a Hegelian, she is the moral equivalent of Marxists, Nihilists, Stalin, Castro, and anyone else who caused trouble in the 20th Century.

The words that reveal Rice’s dark side are as follows:

“I know enough about history to stand back and to recognize that you judge decisions not at the moment but in how it all adds up. And that's just strongly the way I feel about big historical changes. I'm being as straightforward with you as I possibly can.”

To use this quote to justify an accusation of Hegelianism is absurd. The quote does not reference any kind of historical determinism or German idealism. Rice is talking about perspective. Any major decision made be a Head of State or a Foreign Minister is going to have immediate effects. It is also going to have secondary and tertiary effects. These effects have to be accounted for before the major decision is judged.

An example: if one is to say that President Truman’s decisions before and during the Korean War were good or bad decisions, one has to take in the perspective of history. At the time, many Americans felt that we had left enough dead men in foreign lands for one generation. Many also felt that removing the well respected General Macarthur was a horrible error. The Americans did judge Truman at the moment, and he left office with abysmal approval ratings. And history has judged differently. Truman is held in high regard in our time not least because he successfully defended the freedom of millions of South Koreans without starting World War III. Perspective is necessary to make this judgment. Herf has missed Rice’s point entirely.

And because of his error regarding Rice’s philosophical position he continues his essay and impugns her morality. Herf claims that Rice’s statement puts her in a category of intellectual that believes that the sweep of history justifies obvious immoral actions in the current time. He goes as far as to quote Castro’s defensive remark "History will absolve me." It is an intellectually reckless comparison to put a person who said “you judge decisions not at the moment but in how it all adds up”, in the same category as a tyrant and a murderer. The comparison is both reckless and false.

It is reckless because of course the ends can justify the means. It just depends on what ends and what means are being justified. Besides the ends what else would justify the means? Aimless action is a virtue? But the comparison is false because it is a badly constructed straw man argument. Rice is talking about the perspective needed in making judgments not the justification of immoral acts. Herf’s original error of believing that he had rooted out a secret Hegelian, leads directly to his misguided attack on Rice’s sense of morality.

The article is an attempt to create another high-brow boogeyman. This time it isn’t the evil Neocons, it is the evil German Idealists. A professor of Modern European history should know better. But this is the sort of reasoning that can follow partisanship. Especially the kind of partisanship that exists when a party is out of power and knows that is going to stay out for a long time.