Tohu Bohu

This Tohu Bohu gets a lot of comment spam. Well, a lot—I don’t really know how much constitutes a lot, relative to other blogs of its circulation. But it seems like a lot to me.

The bulk of the spam falls into three categories. First are the comments that are obviously and upfront about directing people to some web site where they can consume pornography or pharmaceuticals or fancy watches that cannot be distinguished from other fancy watches by people who know nothing about fancy watches. Those are irritating and annoying, but straightforwardly so. I delete them and forget about them. There isn’t anything to think about, other than the small amount of time wasted keeping them off the blog.

The second and much larger category are the comments that appear to be from people who have happened on this Tohu Bohu and are impressed by it. Upon closer inspection, they are linking to some other site, presumably to optimize themselves to the top of search results. This is very dispiriting to YHB—My Gracious Host finds the flattering comment spam makes him feel good, but I get very depressed about all those false compliments. And even more depressed about the fact that I have trained myself to assume that any comment similar to I like your blog! is spam, and delete them all without checking. What if sometime, somebody somewhere actually does like my blog, and tries to say so, and I delete the thing without looking at it? My poor ego!

The last category are comments that appear to be comments about current events. This only started quite recently, but since I have become quite mechanical in deleting the other ones, most of my spam-killing time is spent on these. Generally, some of these refer to some Big News of the last few days—a celebrity scandal, often—and while they may be misspelled or grammatically nonstandard, they have the appearance of actual comments. I can tell that they are spam by (a) the fact that they are in response to notes that have no connection to the content of the comment, (2) the fact that they are (usually) on notes written years ago, and (3) the fact that the identical comment is submitted to different notes with different names attached. Not actually all that clever.

By the way, one of the things about having two email addresses is that often some piece of email spam that manages to come up with a sufficiently apropos subject line, so that I might be inclined to believe its disguise and open it, comes to both addies simultaneously with different sender names. That’s a bit of a giveaway, isn’t it? Actually, fairly often a bit of spam comes to the same email addy five or six times with different sender names but the same subject line. I might possibly fall for one, but I’m not going to get five emails about leaving something at my desk or cancelling lunch plans, am I? Less is definitely more, here, spammers.

Anyway. The reason I’m bothering telling you so is that in the last three or four days, this Tohu Bohu got spammed with dozens of notes about the Cordoba House, AKA the Ground Zero Mosque. As it happens, YHB, like so many fools, wrote something on the Ludicrous Kerfuffle a few weeks ago, so it wouldn’t altogether shock me to have some stranger drop by and try to set me straight about a few aspects I got wrong. However, these notes were spam; they were not written in response to my blog, were not an attempt to communicate, and were not going to be published if I could help it. Whoever put out the spam, though, did so by attempting to imitate what one might call a real blog-commenter, which meant that more than a third of the notes that came in were full of vicious and hateful bigotry. Insults directed not only at Our Only President (who is in some sense fair game, being a public figure) but at Moslems and at their religion.

Now, here’s the thing. I know that this is spam. I know that whoever typed in the note, or cut and pasted it, or caused it to be randomly chosen out of recent blog comments elsewhere by some randomizing software, I know that the spammer does not mean the insults or believe that they are true. Or care, probably. They sent notes on both sides of the issue, presumably making it look as if people were engaging each other on a topic of interest, and that the one thing that these various folk agreed on was the importance of linking to a purveyor of pornography. And, you know, I support pornography. I’m a big believer in it. I’m not offended by that part of it.

But my emotional reaction to these comments was severe. I found it deeply distasteful even to look at them enough to delete them. I can’t really justify having such a powerful negative reaction to the spam; it’s only spam, after all. And I am aware that there are—oh, shall we say ten million Americans who foolishly think that Moslems are evil, that mosques are Bad Things, and that We (vaddevah dat means) are and should be at war with Islam (vaddevah dat means, too). It’s distressing whenever I come across such people in Real Life or on the Internet, but I am not, in fact, coming across dozens of such people when I log in to this Tohu Bohu, I am just coming across comment spam. And yet, it feels as if my Tohu Bohu has been invaded by jerks and bigots.

Of course, if there’s something worse than a spammer pretending to be a bigot for the pathetic pecuniary advantage that he thinks spamming this blog will give him, it would be a politician pretending to be a bigot for the electoral advantage he thinks that will give him. Or the ratings advantage. Or book sales. But somehow I expect that, and it feels safely far away, despite the fact that these people have actual political power to make laws and change people’s lives, and potentially to result in Americans and other humans being deprived of their civil rights, their liberty, or their lives. I do get outraged by that, I really do, and I should take advantage of this Tohu Bohu to say it again. But that’s a kind of outrage that I can feel good about and even enjoy, to be perfectly frank about it. This comment spam just makes me sad and angry, and I don’t enjoy that at all.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My Gracious Host posted a comment about the same-sex marriage controversy in which he hoped to be Simplifying one part of the same-sex marriage debate. He breaks down the arguments against same-sex marriage, and points out that in every case, they rely on an assumption, often an unspoken assumption, that it is bad to be gay, and that it would be better if there weren’t so many gay people. If you don’t mind that people are gay, and particularly if you celebrate the differences in sexual preferences and romantic partnership, person to person, which is all part of what makes the world interesting and fun, then not only are you likely to support same-sex marriage, but the arguments against it make no sense to you.

Another occasional GR of this Tohu Bohu is award-winning journalist David S. Bernstein, who in his blog post Gays Head For The Supreme Court tells an interesting story about “ a conversation I had with a leader of a religious anti-gay organization in the South, right after the Goodrich ruling in Massachusetts in November 2004. […] [H]e said that this was inevitable after the Lawrence v Texas Supreme Court ruling overturned anti-sodomy laws the previous year. […] [U]nless homosexual relationships could be defined as outside the boundaries of legal conduct, there was really no justification for denying marriage certificates to same-sex couples.” (I’ve snipped quite a bit, and there’s more to the note about the current situation; Mr. Bernstein does stellar reporting and writing about the conservative money machine, and quite likely knows more about the various groups in the background of the Republican Party than any liberal blogger in the country.)

Anyway, those two made a connection in my mind with something I wrote ever so long ago, between Lawrence and Goodrich, which was that It seems obvious to me that if same-sex marriage becomes legal, that there will be in the future more and better same-sex sex. Jed and I were at the time talking past each other a bit, and may still be doing so. His point (I think) is that there are lots of people who are unwilling to say that they think that it is bad to be gay, and are even really unwilling to think that they think that it is bad to be gay, but are still working from that assumption in being persuaded that the state should only license marriages with two people and one penis. To some extent, the note in Mr. Bernstein’s blog speaks to that idea: if the state has no reason or right to deprecate gay sex, then the arguments against gay marriage collapse. This fellow is in total agreement with Jed’s post, only of course disagreeing with him entirely.

But then, I stopped to wonder: is that really what Jed’s post says? Because Jed does not define being gay in terms of sodomy. In fact, he doesn’t define it at all, other than to explicitly state that he is including “ lesbian, or bi, or whatever”. That’s an excellent choice on his part, and I certainly don’t intend to define it here in this Tohu Bohu. But it’s worth wondering whether the idea of being gay and the idea of same-sex sex are, in fact, the same idea. Or, rather, to what extent they are the same idea, because clearly they are not. Nobody, for instance, questions whether Dr. Jeffrey John is gay. He is gay. He does not have same-sex sex, or any sex at all, evidently. Similarly, there are Modern Orthodox Jews who refrain from sodomy, specifically, because of the halachah, but who are in same-sex romantic relationships and consider themselves, and are considered by others who know them, to be gay. On the other edge, there are plenty of people who have had same-sex sex but who do not consider themselves to be gay; it’s a bit of a joke, but it’s a good joke because it is so recognizable.

So. Where am I going with this. Nowhere, really. I just find the distinction interesting.

And I wonder if the distinction means anything to the various categories of people who oppose same-sex marriage… for the people who think that being gay is bad or that it would be better if there weren’t so many gay people, is it the sex they object to or is the rest of the gayness enough? I know that lots of men find sex between two men to be disgusting—lots of people find two men french-kissing to be disgusting, which wasn’t technically sodomy by the law before Lawrence, was it? And I should probably point out that something doesn’t have to be morally wrong to be disgusting. For instance, people eat green peppers in restaurants—right there in restaurants where normal people are trying to have dinner without throwing up—and while of course it would be better and purer country if this were legally deprecated and so on, it isn’t a moral failing on the part of pepper-eaters, technically. They can do what they want in the privacy of their own diningrooms, as long as I don’t have to see it. Or hear about it. Or, particularly, smell it. I’m just saying: a social norm where the eating of peppers (though legally decriminalized) simply never came to my attention, due to people constantly watching their every statement and action and implication, in order to give a false but pleasing impression.

OK, got off on a tangent there. What I’m wondering about, really, though, is whether there are a fair number of people who would not admit that they think gay sex is morally wrong, but would admit to thinking that it is gross, and that the more of it there is, the worse, from their point of view. And I still maintain (Jeffrey John notwithstanding) that legal gay marriage will lead to more and better gay sex, but maybe, maybe, it isn’t all about the sex.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, and I voted today. It’s the primary here in Connecticut, and we have a couple of reasonable races. For the most part, I have no strong feelings about any of the candidates; I will happily support whichever of them My Party nominates today against the Other Party’s nominees. I wound up having slight preferences in each of the four races, though.

Actually, that’s not quite true. The two fellows who are running for my Party’s ballot line for State Comptroller are very different indeed, and I would much prefer the liberal guy to the conservative. That’s not to say I wouldn’t vote for the conservative guy against the Republican, who will undoubtedly be even more conservative (although the Republican nominee seems to be one of those guys who hangs around on the ballot without really running, so the primary is perhaps more important), but that was one where I could really make the case that one guy was much better than the other.

The big race, of course, is the Governor’s, where two perfectly good candidates are running, and I would be happy with either. I came down on the Dan Malloy side, ultimately, not because I think Ned Lamont would be a bad Governor, but because I think Dan Malloy will have a bit of an easier time working with a difficult Legislature in difficult times. And for Secretary of the State, I went with the younger, slightly more left-leaning fellow rather than the old party hack—I usually go with the party hack (as I did at the top of the ballot), but I was persuaded by this guy. Plus, it’s always nice to vote for somebody who isn’t white, you know? Not that the color thing is a criterion in itself, but like I keep saying about the Bechdel test, there’s a cumulative thing going on, too.

Which I should probably put in a different way, something like this.

Today, in four candidates, I voted for a woman, a (n open) homosexual, a Jew, a Latino, and a grandparent. Doesn’t that sound like a bucket full of diversity?

Today, in four candidates, I voted for three white people, three men, three Christians, three (open) heterosexuals and four married people. Doesn’t that sound like a bucket full of privilege? Well, three-quarters full or more.

I’m perfectly happy voting for Dan Malloy—I’ll be perfectly happy voting for Ned Lamont in October, if he wins today. I don’t mind voting for the straight white Christian guy. I don’t mind voting for the straight white Christian guy two or three or four times. But I will admit that it’s nice to have a bit of a change, now and then.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, Colin McEnroe's blog pointed me to this YouTube video called Reefer Rob. It’s a sort of political attack ad aimed at Rob Merkle, who is running for the other Party’s nomination to run against an incumbent in the US House here in Connecticut (well, in the Fourth District; I am in the First—Go John Larson!). The point of the ad is that Rob Merkle was caught with a joint in his pocket ten years ago (when he was 32), down in Florida where his father was a prosecutor, and wasn’t charged.

But the real point is to sing “Because I Got High” with the lyrics changed to talk about Rob Merkle, and show a bunch of dope-smokers.

But here’s the thing: it seems to me, and I want to point out that this is just my reaction, it seems to me that this video is not going to work. I don’t mean that it’s going to change anybody’s mind, because of course that’s not what it is supposed to do. And maybe it will make Rob Merkle into Reefer Rob Merkle, a total joke who can’t be taken seriously, which is what it is supposed to do.

But—I’m thinking of two groups of people: people who find pot-smoking to be a Bad Thing, and people who would find this video funny enough to share around. Is there a lot of overlap there? I mean, I don’t really know. The people I know, whether they have actually inhaled or not (and I have never smoked a joint, inhaled or not, as it happens) generally think of pot-smoking as anything from Cool to laughable; I don’t think I know anybody well who would be outraged by a thirtysomething guy with a joint. And it seems to me that my friends and the people like them are exactly the people who would find the video funny, recognizing the images and the music (although presumably if Your Humble Blogger is familiar with a song that came out after 2000, every fucking person in the whole world is familiar with it, right?) and generally being amused by the idea. Not that I find it hilarious, you understand, just amusing enough to watch through to the end, and then to mention to, well, Gentle Readers through this Tohu Bohu.

Now, of course, very few people in this group that I’m talking about, the ones who might find the video amusing, are likely voters in a Republican primary in Connecticut’s Fourth District. That’s because there are very few voters in a Republican primary in Connecticut’s Fourth District. But those people who are going to turn out to vote, and who are going to donate to a Republican candidate, and go to rallies and put up signs and all that—is it just a total stereotype of mine that I have a hard time imagining those people watching this video on YouTube, being amused by it, passing it on?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Your Humble Blogger went to the polls this morning for a budget referendum. Y’all know I hate these, right? What happens is that our duly elected City Council (often around two-thirds of the vote, although it’s a wacky system) and especially our duly elected Board of Education (much the same) get together and come up with a budget, and then a group of anti-tax zealots get 6% of the voting rolls to sign a petition, and we have a referendum. Then we have an election, in which perhaps 20% of the town votes down the budget (with perhaps 15% supporting it) and the whole thing goes back to the Council all over again.

Jon Bernstein writes about Democratic Frustration, which he describes as having two major types (in a very large Madisonian democracy such as ours): frustration over losing, and frustration over winning. Frustration over losing is obvious: people work hard at this democracy thing, and still somehow more people vote for the other guy. It’s crazy. Frustration over winning is less obvious: your Party gets in power, and the policy outcomes are not what you wanted. This is a non-Madisonian feature: winning the election but losing the referendum. Or it’s only sorta Madisonian, Madisonian wannabe. Part of the Madisonian system is a brake on purely majoritarian rule, and the budget referendum is certainly a way for a passionate minority to have influence. On the other hand, the genius of Madisonian politics is to make the politicians themselves responsible to their constituents, or out they go on their proverbials on the next Election Day.

This system doesn’t do that at all—neither Council nor Board members have faced any sort of electoral retribution for occasioning constant referenda with their budgets, because a very large majority of the town’s voters support their priorities. The cynical incentive is for those elected officials to produce a phony budget, a fat budget that (presumably through deceptive tricks if not outright dishonesty) makes them look good, without suffering the consequences of having to enact it. The blame for the cuts goes to the Taxxcrazy Association, and then the second budget is the one with some responsibility and seriousness. In fact, I have been impressed by our local officials not doing that—they put together a serious and responsible budget, a bit skimpy to my taste, that pays for itself with a small tax increase and keeps the schools running with at least a few tasty treats now and then. This year, both Parties agreed on the budget—and we’re having a referendum anyway, and I suspect the outcome will be the same as the previous years.

Of course, what makes this a Madisonian feature is that it is a stumbling block put in place through a democratic procedure, a way for the individuals who made up the government to advance themselves through guaranteeing the citizens the right to be thwarted in their policy preferences. And do you know who is at fault? You haven’t been paying attention, have you. It’s the fault of the teacher’s unions, of course. Everything is the fault of the teacher’s unions. If there’s one thing we know about the Founding Fathers, it’s that they would have hated teacher’s unions. Or something.

Well, there it is. Despite everything, I still enjoyed voting this morning. The whole family, getting on the vote boat, and even if I can’t justify calling it the powerfullest scene and show of the Western World, O Best Beloved, it is still moving, in it’s way.

And while I’m on Mr. Whitman, look what NPR personality and Hartford Courant columnist Colin McEnroe posted last night: Choosing Day. You don’t think Mr. McEnroe is a Gentle Reader of this Tohu Bohu, do you?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Y’all have probably already seen the Christopher Beam note over at Slate called The Only Politics Article You’ll Ever Have To Read: What if political scientists covered the news? I think it is intended to be a joke, but I’m not sure; all I know about Christopher Beam is that he is Alex Beam’s kid, which I think makes him the Christopher Buckley of, er, something. Journalism? No, not journalism. Something, anyway.

The point, if you haven’t read it and aren’t inclined to click through, is that all the stuff that political journalists write about is considered by political scientists to be meaningless crap.

At the same time, Obama’s job approval rating fell to 48 percent. This isn’t really news, though. Studies have shown that the biggest factor in a president’s rating is economic performance. Connecting the minute blip in the polls with Obama’s reluctance to emote or alleged failure to send enough boom to the Gulf is, frankly, absurd.

The thing is, while it’s phrased in a lighthearted way, it’s pretty much correct, and journalists not including the stuff that he so jocularly is either tremendously ignorant or tremendously dishonest—I should say, I rather expect that it’s self-delusion, rather than deliberate deception. There are a lot of incentives for journalists (and even more so pundits and analysts) to stay in denial about the ways in which so much stuff that is easy to report and fun to read has nothing to do with the actual processes of government.

While I’m at it, I wanted to ask Gentle Readers if their estimate was more or less the same as mine: in this 2010 election cycle, counting both primaries and the general election, what percentage of the eligible voters in this country will go and vote against an incumbent they had previously voted for in a previous election for that office? I mean any office, anywhere on any of the ballots in this cycle?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your Humble Blogger hates to defend David S. Broder, who really is a perfect example of blinkered Washingtonism, what Left Blogovia calls The Village mentality. But the problem with his Op-Ed called Is President Obama’s Carter moment nearing? is that it is, on the whole, correct. Oh, there’s stupid stuff in it. But where, f’r’ex, Dave Noon is wrong, in my arrogant opinion, is that like with Jimmy Carter and the Hostage Crisis, the practical ability to do something useful has little to do with the popularity of the President.

Look, everybody who follows politics knows, must know, that the President takes the blame for all the bad things that happen while he is in office, and gets the credit for the good things. We know that. If the economy is good, the President is popular. If the Congress can’t pass legislation, the President is unpopular. It isn’t fair, the Divine knows, but it is how it is. If you don’t like it, don’t run for President. The problem is that while everybody knows the general rule, it is one of those general rules that it is difficult to remember to apply to specific situations. When we hear that Our Only President’s popularity is down because a bunch of oil mining and development and refining companies screwed the proverbial, we respond that it’s unfair. Well, so it is unfair, we knew that. The question is how to respond to the unfair situation.

And it’s not as simple as people blaming Our Only President for things that are outside his control. I’ve gone on about this before, I think—the way polls are reported and discussed makes it seem as if Jane Q. Public has a rating for Our Only President, which is updated whenever Ms. Public learns something new about him, his policies, his speeches or his actions. That just isn’t so. Ms. Public does not respond instantly to a news story by thinking hm, I suppose now if somebody surveys me I will respond that I disapprove of the way the President is handling the oil spill, but still approve of the health care plan and the stimulus, and yet I think the country is going in the wrong direction. Perhaps you should write that down, Ms. Public, so you are prepared for the call.

No, that’s not how people are. My guess is that people are more or less evenly split between (a) people like me who will tell the pollster whatever we think makes our Party look better than the other one and so never have to make up our minds at all, and (2) people who make up their minds at the moment the pollster asks. Well, and the other group, that doesn’t answer pollster’s questions. Still. Since the swings in the popularity of the President are driven almost entirely by that (2) group, their answers will be as dependent on their mood at the moment of the question as by data analysis. This isn’t a Bad Thing: if things are generally going well across the country, then more people, on the whole, will be in a good mood at a moment when a pollster is calling. Bad economic times will play in to this more than anything, of course—people who have lost their jobs or are afraid of losing them are more likely to be in a bad mood when the pollster calls. But a persistent bad news story? Also a downer.

This is all independent of what Our Only President has done correctly or incorrectly, of course. I mean, I think he should have been more aggressive about cleaning up the wrecked bureaucracy beforehand, getting more inspectors on the ground, etc., particularly as there was potentially money available for it. And it doesn’t seem like the federal government has been doing a good job at the part that they should be best at, which is coordinating the cleanup efforts in the various localities (and possibly coordinating payment for the shrimpers and them as well). But if he had been doing a great job at all that stuff, it very likely wouldn’t have prevented his popularity from taking a serious hit for this, and possibly preventing him from continuing with his legislative/policy momentum.

Which is the real problem with David Broder’s historical analysis: Our Only President has not wasted his massive legislative majorities, so even if he does become unpopular over something that isn’t his fault and he can’t make better, he will still leave with some accomplishments.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If YHB were a better blogger, you know, this post would be full of links. First of all, I would link to the radio show I was listening to (a week ago, perhaps? If I were a better blogger, I would have written this that day), and then to the fellow who was on it, and then to other people making similar statements, so that it was clear that there was something to be on about. But I can’t remember who was interviewing who, on what show, and frankly I can’t be bothered to search for other people saying similar things. So you should take this with a grain of salt—perhaps I imagined the whole thing.

But I’m pretty sure that a legislator from my Party, a member of the U.S. House, I think, was asked about raising the liability of oil companies when they poison the world. And this person, this legislator, said that we do want to raise that limit, so that any company that was proposing to do offshore deep drilling would have to set aside an enormous sum of money to clean up any damage they caused. And the interviewer, who I am pretty sure was a NPR or APM anchor at one of their top news shows, asked this legislator whether that was worth the rise in gas prices at the pump, because of course the costs would eventually be passed on to the consumer.

And the fellow just muffed it. Just utterly muffed it. Said that he hoped the added safety incentive would mean that there wouldn’t be more spills, so that would be all right. And it seems to me that is a terrible, terrible answer.

But I’m not sure if my immediate answer was the right one. That is, I know it’s logically right, but I don’t know if it’s persuasive. Mine went something like this:

The clean-up is going to happen. We aren’t just going to wade in crude. So the money is going to be spent. What I’m asking is who is going to spend it. Now, you are right that if the oil companies spend the money, then that is ultimately going to come out of the price of gas. But if they don’t spend the money, and we spend it ourselves, through the government, then that money is going to come out of your taxes. The money isn’t going to be magically created, just because we want to spend it; it is going to come from somewhere. You will pay at the pump, or you will pay in your withholding, or if the money isn’t spent and we don’t clean it up, then we are really going to pay.

I mean, the basic truth of the matter is that if you can’t pay for it, you shouldn’t do it, and that is true about drilling as well as everything else. And if that means nobody can afford to do it, then nobody can afford to do it, and it shouldn’t be done. I’m always amazed by the feeling that companies have a right to do business even if they cannot possibly pay for themselves, and that when the government demands that a company pays for its own debts, it is the government that is running the company out of business.

But what struck me about the whole thing was that the interviewer seemed to be working under the assumption that either the public would pay at the pump or they wouldn’t pay at all, and the legislator seemed to let that go. And that’s a problem for my Party, not just for this piece of legislation, but for the ongoing purpose of the Party. And in this case, it was my Party, acting in accordance with its principles, that was against paying for a solution through taxation, and for private industry taking care of it. And the fellow just let that opportunity pass. Gr.

Unless, of course, I’m misremembering the whole thing. But I’m still cranky about it.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Your Humble Blogger has been both busy and unproductive lately, which is never a winning combination. As a result, I have got very far behind my intentions for this Tohu Bohu, not just on the Book Reports (which is really getting out of hand) but on notes of more topical or wide-ranging interest that I mean to talk about. With the Book Report, although I may have forgotten what I intended to say by the time I get around to logging them, they aren’t really topical notes, and can wait. With news items and political commentary, if I don’t get around to noting them within a week or so, I may as well not bother, as y’all will have moved on. Ah, well.

And, of course, sometimes the story has moved on. I might have written a note just after reading the NYT article about Richard Blumenthal and his military service, and that note would have been very different from the note I would write today. Am writing. Hope to finish. Anyway.

Any of y’all Gentle Readers in the Nutmeg State, that is, those who will have to make up their minds to support Mr. Blumenthal or not in his Senatorial campaign, should probably be reading Colin McEnroe’s blog (even if y’all don’t like his radio show, which I don’t much either, alas). Mr. McEnroe appears to be very well-connected within the state government and what remains of the crew who report on it; he also is a bit crazy, which gives him the opportunity to call things as he sees them. It’s a great combination for a blogger.

Anyway, for those who haven’t been paying attention, Richard Blumenthal has been Attorney General of our State for twenty years, during which time it was quite difficult to get a photograph of state leaders without Mr. Blumenthal in it. You know? A terrific AG, and terrific at getting in the news, and all. So, when Chris Dodd moved to Iowa, and we needed a new Senator, Mr. Blumenthal decided to be that Senator, and the deal was pretty much over at that point. Only the other day, the Times reported that Mr. Blumenthal had been claiming that he served in Vietnam, when in fact he did not.

It turns out that it’s more complicated than that. What seems to have been happening, over a period of years, is that Mr. Blumenthal found a formula for saying things that were not false but which gave a false impression. He was in the Marine Corps Reserve from 1970-1975, stateside and part-time, and only joined after his deferments ran out; this not a dishonorable record, but it is not serving in Vietnam. However, it is, technically, serving during Vietnam, it is being in uniform when the soldiers were coming back from Vietnam, and saying those two things are accurate but without the context misleading. Of course, it depends on who you are speaking to. If your audience knows your actual record, and you say you wore the uniform when ‘we’ returned from Vietnam, they will know that you are referring to the attitudes that civilians had toward all veterans at that time, or at least the attitudes that many veterans seem to have been convinced that civilians had (the actual story is much much much more complicated than that)(of course). But if you don’t know the actual record, the audience may well draw a different conclusion.

This is fairly common. It’s not lying, but it can certainly be deceiving, and the speaker should be on the hook for it. It’s not necessarily a deal-breaker for me in a Senatorial candidate, but it needs to be taken into consideration. The habit of saying things that are true in the sense that they are not false, but that lead listeners to believe things that are false—well, that’s not a good thing. And the thing is—if you are running for elective office, you are going to have to say a lot of the things you say not just once but many, many times, and unless you have tremendous discipline, you are going to wind up straying from your usual formulation. If you do have that discipline, of course, the press will call you robotic, so that doesn’t necessarily help. But if you stray from your careful choice of words and say we instead of they or even in some cases just switch the order of your clauses, you can wind up saying something that is outright false. And get caught doing it.

All of this reminds me very strongly of Al Gore. You all probably know both the first and second versions of Al Gore and the internet. The first was that Al Gore laughably claimed to have invented the Internet, as one of a string of bizarre lies. The second was that the media made up the story that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet, as one of a string of bizarre stories they made up about Al Gore’s ‘lies’, none of which were true. The second version is not true either, of course; it was more complicated than that. Mr. Gore certainly never claimed to have invented the internet, true. What he did was take credit for the creation of the internet. While you could argue that he deserves some small portion of credit (he supported federal funding for the project at an early stage), the phrasing was designed to be technically not false while giving the impression that he deserved much more credit than he actually did. And, in fact, there were a string of such phrasings; he was in the habit of using language in that way (including some recent examples that I can’t bring to mind). This is not uncommon among politicians—not just seekers of elective office, but corporate politicians, academic politicians and jockeys of all heirarchies. One difference, though, is that most people don’t have to keep making their claims in speeches, town halls and interviews over a period of months or years, many of which are recorded and searchable.

I hope that Mr. Blumenthal learns something from this experience more than that the New York Times is out to get him. I hope that he understands that he is responsible not only for the technical truth or verifiability of his statements, but for their connotations. That as a Senator, he will carry responsibility not only for what he implies but for what people infer. No, he can’t control it. Neither is he free of responsibility for it, and he should watch what he says accordingly.

I should, when I have time and energy, connect this to the fad for so-called fact-checking, which I hope y’all are taking with a grain of salt. But that will have to wait. For now, really, I’m just observing that when Left Blogovia first condemned Mr. Blumenthal for dishonesty and is now condemning the Times for, well, dishonesty, the truth is it’s more complicated than that. But in interest ways, right?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, Your Humble Blogger lives in a one-Party town. It’s my Party, so that’s not so terribly bad, although I do think it is bad for our officials not to have serious opposition. Not as bad as the other Party winning elections, but still.

The State of Connecticut also thinks it’s bad to have one-Party towns, so we passed legislation that says, if I understand it correctly, that elected town governments (council, selectmen, whatever) can be no more than two-thirds made up of members of one party. This leads to odd elections, which YHB has written about before.

I was complaining in that year about the crazy Republican who got himself onto the council with 31% of the vote. He served, in his way, for one term, and then got voted out of office: this time it was him that got edged by 200 votes or so by the third R. Actually, his percentage of votes went substantially up from 34% to 39%, but all the Republicans did better last year in percentage terms as well as in actual votes. Not enough to, you know, compete with my Party, but better. This year the top R vote-getter came within a thousand votes of the bottom D.

Anyway. The point is that this fellow, who we will call Joe, ran for Town Council, won a seat with 34% of the vote, and then ran as an incumbent and lost, with less than 40% of the vote. Oh, there was one thing he did in between—he was his party’s nominee for U.S. Representative. He got trounced, of course, ending up with all of 26% of the vote.

I bring this up now, because it seems that he is going to be his Party’s nominee again. Which would not be at all interesting, except that this clown has another kind of Party involvement. The guys with the hats with three corners. You know. Tea.

Now, probably what will happen is the same thing that happened before: nothing. But it strikes me that he is a prime candidate for one of the Tea Party PACs to use as a patsy. Here’s a prominent Democrat, caucus chairman in fact, very liberal. Quick, send out a national fund-raising letter. Raise a million dollars for the patsy’s campaign. Spend that million on direct mail, of course using the direct mail company that is owned by the directors of the PAC. It’s a million dollars in their pockets, and all they have to do is give the poor clown a volunteer campaign manager of their choice. In fact, he’d probably be thrilled at the result: national attention, big fund-raising, he would look in some ways like a real candidate, with the light behind him anyway. And what with things being bad for incumbents this year, who knows? He might get 35% of the vote.

So, what YHB is wondering is this: should we here in his town do something about this? I mean, I hate to see it happen, I do; I hate to see it happen anywhere (and it is going to happen a lot this year, I tell you what) but I really hate to see it happen here. It’s fraud, essentially. The local clown is the equivalent of Florida real estate—he turns out to be a swamp, and all the locals know he’s a swamp, but they aren’t going to try to sell him to the locals. They are going to try to sell him to the rubes. And I don’t want the rubes buying this swamp. Not that I care all that much, I suppose, whether the money is in the rubes’ pockets or in the pockets of the direct mail barons—no, I do care, because the direct mail barons are going to use that money to fleece more rubes, and in doing that they are doing a lot of damage to our country’s political culture. But I’m not motivated, honestly, by a desire to do dirt to the direct mail barons, who after all have forty or fifty more choices for patsies this cycle. Really? It’s just that I don’t want it to happen here, in my back yard.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Scalzi posted Yet Another Reminder That When You Call Obama a Socialist Actual Socialists Think You’re Ignorant as a Gerbil, which linked to Ask the card-carrying socialists: Is Obama one of them? by John Blake. Gentle Readers of this blog will be unsurprised to discover that (a) people who call themselves socialists consider that socialist is a word with a meaning, and (2) they don’t consider that meaning applies well to Our Only President and his policies.

Surprise! I don’t particularly like Mr. Blake’s tone in the piece, which is a combination of isn’t that cute, an American Socialist and isn’t the tea party movement full of morons together with we’ll ask both sides and then shrug, as independent verification of a claim is beyond the purview or indeed abilities of a journalist. Still, I’m glad there’s something there, you know? The proverbial mainstream media (or corporate broadcast media, to use a more descriptive term) doesn’t often point out that there really are left-wingers in this country. We’re Here! We’re Red! We’re Not Going Shopping! In Fact, Many of us our Trouble by the Entire Concept of Personal Property! Although Others of our Brethren consider a well-regulated Market in Inessentials a Positive Thing!

Anyway, what struck me was this sentence about how the Health Care Plan is viewed as socialist by the Right, but that the Left doesn’t see it that way: They [socialists] wanted a national "single-payer" health insurance plan with a government option.

Now, if you are like me, the first thing that will strike you is that the sentence makes no sense. A single-payer system does not have a government “option”, it is a government insurance plan. It’s possible, I suppose, to have a single-payer plan with a private option, but I haven’t heard anybody talking about that.

The second thing, for me, was that I doubted the Socialists did support a single-payer system along the Canadian lines. That would still leave privately-owned hospitals and labs, profit-seeking doctors and clinics, and a dislocation between the workers and the means of production. In fact, when I looked up the platform of the Socialist Party on Health Care, it supports “salaried doctors and health care workers, and revenue derived from a steeply graduated income tax”. That is, socialized medicine. A National Health.

So is Mr. Blake simply wrong? I mean, how could a reporter who had a specific task to talk to socialists about their support or opposition to particular policies get this one so utterly wrong? Well, there is an answer: socialists, being people, are different one to another, which is what makes Party meetings so interesting and fun. Frank Llewellyn of the Democratic Socialists of America, in a note called Socialism And The Politics Of Fear says “American socialists (and many more non-socialists, including 86 members of Congress) support HR 676, John Conyers’ Medicare for All single-payer national health plan, which would replace the private insurance industry with a government agency but would preserve personal choice of physician and hospital care.” Well, there you go. Some people who call themselves socialists (admittedly, DS, which are like socialists who believe in—well, the old line is that if Socialists don’t like cats, then Democratic Socialists don’t like cats but are fond of kittens) are in favor of single-payer. Other than the oopsie about the option, Mr. Blake is OK. Which just goes to show.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has been a month shy of five years since I wrote a note called talk about the subject of the conversation, in which I detailed the circumstances where a minority legislative Party in this country could be expected to block a judicial nominee. I pointed out that in a situation where the President comes from the majority party, the minority may well want to block a nominee, and has the right to try. I said, “The question is when should a minority exercise that right, and the answer must have something to do with the nominees themselves.”

I still think that’s true. I thought, at the time, that the Democrats failed to make a case for the nominees themselves being so bad as to justify the block. They came off fairly well politically, I think, although of course they did allow some pretty bad judges and justices to be confirmed. But they have lost several confirmation battles (including yesterday’s withdrawal) and have another Supreme Court nomination (or maybe two) on their hands this summer.

It is true that the Republicans lost badly on Justice Sotomayor, and did so while (coincidentally, not causally) following my advice about making the nominee battle about the nominee. There were a lot of reasons for that, but primary among them was the obvious fact that Judge Sotomayor was a mainstream middle-of-the-road jurist, an impressive person generally, and the Party that wanted to block her nomination is far, far from the mainstream when it comes to what people want in a Justice. Alas, they are not far from the mainstream of the actual Court, but this is a court that is widely disrespected and disliked, so there’s that. The point is that by picking a nominee that the public would support, Our Only President took away the minority party’s option of blocking her.

Let me go into that a moment longer. The reason the Republican Party has been so unpopular is because of all their failures. That is true. It is also true, however, that the Republican Party is simply unpopular on policy grounds; a plurality of Americans support the Democratic policy positions on a large number of substantial issues, and the Republican policy positions on very few. The Democratic Party won the Presidency, of course, and the majority of the House seats, and sixty fucking Senators, which is a huge, huge number, and more than half of the Governor’s seats, in part because the Republican Party had been led by a secretive cabal of crooks and incompetents for a decade, and in large part because the Republican Party was simply offering no solutions that people wanted. Or, more accurately, the people who wanted the Republican Party’s offerings were outnumbered by the people who wanted those of the Democratic Party. And although the generic Representative ballot looks good for the other side now, the self-identification polls still look like they have for a long time.

Why is that important to this discussion? Because when we talk about the subject of the discussion, that is, when we talk about the nominees themselves, we will very likely be talking about a person who is right in the mainstream of America (from a political standpoint). It is possible, of course, that Our Only President will knock my socks off with some wildly lefty nomination (there are still lefties in the law schools, I’m told), but that seems unlike him and unlike our Party. When was the last time a Democratic President submitted a nominee that was to the left of the leftmost sitting Justice? Arguably LBJ in 1967, although you could argue that Justice Douglas or Justice Brennan were more liberal in their thinking than Justice Marshall, in which case the answer is FDR in 1939 or so. I’m thinking, here, about the reputation at the time of the nomination, not the eventual reputation of an Earl Warren; for our purposes, I’m just saying that it seems to me unlikely that Our Only President will nominate anyone much to the left of Ruth Bader Ginsberg or Stephen Breyer, notable pragmatists and cautious liberals.

What that means to me is that if the Republicans attempt to block the nomination(s) and to talk about the subject of the conversation while doing so, they will lose. This is not a Robert Bork situation, or a Charles Pickering. Or even a Samuel Alito situation, where the record was on the edge of the mainstream. And if you don’t have a legislative majority, and you don’t have popular support, while it’s still possible to block a nominee, it’s very, very unlikely and comes at a tremendous cost.

Which, I think, contains in it a lesson for any political Party. Which is (a) do not allow yourself to be led by a secretive cabal of crooks and incompetents, and (2) either keep your Party platform within hailing distance of the public, or move the public within hailing distance of your platform. It ain’t all about the base.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Added: I wrote this on Saturday and evidently failed to post it. In the meantime, a couple of things have come up: Jon Bernstein wrote a note called Wanna Fight, in which he details an analysis in favor of the kind of nominee I predict OUP will choose. Left Blogovia has, in general, seems to have lined up to support a truly liberal nominee (although I haven’t seen many actual names). I want to make a couple of distinctions, as long as I’m writing about the general topic. There’s a difference between advocating for a liberal Justice and promoting an analysis of the politics of nominating such a person. I think (along with Mr. Bernstein) that such a nomination is unlikely, and could quite likely not pass the Senate under current circumstances. I don’t know if nominating a liberal and not getting that nomination through the Senate would be bad for Our Only President’s policy aspirations; I don’t know if the Robert Bork situation turned out badly in the end. But it’s certainly possible that the Republicans in the Senate will successfully block a nomination.

But, again, there’s nothing wrong with Left Blogovia saying that they want a liberal Justice, and that they will be disappointed with a moderate. We should do so. There’s no downside to advocating; if we actually get a liberal, it’s good for our country (as we perceive these things, being liberals ourselves), while if (as I predict) we get a moderate, we have helped the political framing and whatnottage.

But my point up there is that it’s an advantage to any Party to be able to talk about the subject of the conversation, that is, the nominee herself and the policies and philosophy of the Party as they affect the actual government of the nation. Since we can do that, I would rather see Left Blogovia concentrate on advocacy than analysis.

Posted by Vardibidian at 7:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My first response will not surprise Gentle Readers of this Tohu Bohu: Joe Biden was right. This is a big fucking deal.

Nor will my second response surprise GRs, I think: it’s more complicated than that. I mean, yes, it is a big fucking deal, but it’s not like it is done, particularly. There’s an awful lot of work left to be done with it, not just with the Senate patch but successively, from year to year. The main thing is that there will now be a perennial battle about how we fulfill with the national responsibility to ensure (or insure) access to health care, or how well we fulfill it, rather than if we fulfill it, or if that responsibility exists at all. But, like early childhood education, the perennial battle may be answered with cheaply and shoddily, which ain’t much of a legacy. So, yes, a big fucking deal, but the deal ain’t done.

I don’t know if y’all will have predicted my third response, although it is pretty predictable: Where Theodore Roosevelt promised a Square Deal, and Franklin Roosevelt promised a New Deal, and Harry Truman promised a Fair Deal, the new social contract is the Big Fucking Deal. I am totally liking that, and totally using it. I am hoping that it fulfills its promise: a sequence of programs aimed at fundamentally changing the protections that the federal government can offer individuals against the vagaries of illness, unemployment, homelessness, and natural disaster. That would be a Big Fucking Deal indeed.

And fourth—does it seem odd to have anyone use the phrase big fucking deal in a positive sense? I mean, yes, Joe Biden is a dialect unto himself, really, but in my experience, the phrase is always, always, always used negatively. When you say that something is a Big Fucking Deal, you are saying that it is not important. Even more so, of course, with the initialism version, which I have used more frequently, but still: if we are going to use the phrase to describe things that are important, I’m going to need to recalibrate my profanity meter.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I should probably say something profound or something about passing a Health Care Finance Reform bill. It’s, um.

Well, let me say this: If you had told me, in, oh, 2005, that within five years we would have passed a Health Care Finance Reform that would, essentially, expand health insurance to cover everybody (or very nearly), with subsidies for those who cannot afford it and regulations to prevent the insurers from denying insurance to those who need it most, or kicking out those who cost the most, well. I don’t think I would have believed you.

And, of course, in 1995, if you told me it would take fifteen years, I would have been sadly disappointed.

Still. Not bad. Not bad. But as with any kind of democracy: now’s the time to really start work.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I found myself wondering, as I picked up the census envelope this afternoon, whether I had written about the census before. It turns out I have not. Not altogether surprising, really, since ten years ago I hadn’t started blogging yet. We don’t do these all that often, it turns out.

And I started thinking that it is a bit odd, isn’t it, that the census is actually mandated in the Constitution. I mean, yes, it does make sense from a practical standpoint, given that many of the arguments had to do with the varying levels of population and population density in the States. I don’t know anything about the history of it, but it’s not hard to imagine that there were, in the Constitutional Congress, differing views about exactly how many people there were in Virginia (and how many “people”), and that it was considered important to (a) have an actual enumeration, (2) to have a plan for before that enumeration is completed, and (iii) to have a plan for after you have that enumeration. And somebody would realize that the different rates of population growth would give them and their State more power soon, if the Census were retaken, and managed to slip in a plan for a new Census later.

On the other hand, it’s not hard to imagine that the language might simply say that an enumeration must be done from time to time or even that reapportionment, whenever it is agreed is necessary, must be preceded by an enumeration. At any rate, instead of what we have, a mandated ten year cycle, the Census could have been at the discretion of the Legislature.

And if that was the case, if it was not absolutely compulsory on the clock but could be postponed from year to year, and it figured to cost ten or fifteen billion dollars, and would, when completed, mean that some Representatives would lose their seats, and other departmental budgets would have new requirements (mostly more, but with always the risk of less), and that whatever happened, it would be change, and always at least a trifle unpredictable…

Would we ever take a Census again? In our system, with it’s myriad veto points and methods for delay and obstruction, with the magnificent Madisonian self-interest appeals and incentives that keep the old eye on the re-election ball, with any proposal on the timing of the thing being subject to partisan politicking and public demagoguery, can you imagine it would ever pass?

I’m just thinking about it, since at the moment, of course, reapportionment seems likely to be Bad for My Party, as the last one was, and since My Party is in the majority, they would not be well-advised to spend ten billion on it, in a recession and a war (or two). And if it was Good for My Party, the Other Party would throw a fucking fit if they tried to ram it through. I mean, some of them are having a fit anyway, but you can’t do anything about that; some of them are going to be crazy about whatever shit happens.

Just a thought. No real point to it. My instinct is generally to resist those kinds of restrictions, as if the Legislature isn’t doing some combination of what the people want and what responsible governance requires, there is an electoral remedy. And maybe my imagination is just wrong on this, too influenced by the politics of the moment. Still. That’s what went through my mind.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am wondering how much credit the Democrats in Congress (or Our Only President) will get for bipartisanship in passing a Jobs Bill. For those of y’all who aren’t following the minutae, the vote in the Senate was 70-28, with the Nelsonator crossing the aisle to vote Nay and thirteen of the forty-one Republican Senators crossing to vote Aye.

The interesting thing about this, and about how it plays out in the minds of the masses, is that there was a so-called bipartisan bill that was the subject of some (evidently) serious negotiations between Sen. Baucus and some Republicans. Majority Leader Reid made a point of pissing on that bill. As well he should have, as the bill stunk. So the Democratic Leadership achieved a bipartisan vote without doing any serious bipartisan negotiations. Do they get credit for that?

On the other hand, the bill itself is mostly tax cuts, evidently, and not all that many of them. It’s not like the bill that replaced the negotiated bill was a partisan bill, as these things go. There was every reason for a Republican to vote in favor of it, particularly if it was going to pass anyway—not much risk against a pretty good reward, that reward of course being the ability to go home and take credit for job creation and tax cuts. Whoo Hoo! So sure, the Democratic Leadership brought to a vote a bill that was likely to attract some support from across the aisle. Do they get credit for that?

Figaro, in a note on the topic, claimed that bipartisanship was an oxymoron. That is, since partisanship meant doing things for the sake of the party, rather than (or at least in addition to) for their own sake, bipartisanship meant doing things for the sake of two parties, which doesn’t make any sense, since in our system anything good for one party must be bad for the other. This is a clever observation, but it doesn’t actually describe politics. There are lots of things that are good for both parties, and usually when you have the support of a majority of each party (as the first Patriot Act did, I think, and most confirmation votes, and so on) it has that bipartisan support because it is for the good of both parties in addition to being popular policy.

Digression: Since bi specifically denotes two, one could also reserve bipartisanship to refer to efforts by the two parties to support the two-party system and diminish the support or influence of any other parties at their expense. This behavior does exist, and would be a perfectly good definition for the word, if it weren’t for the fact that the word already exists and has a different meaning. You would have to pay it extra to take on the new meaning, and then you would presumably have to pay your readers and listeners extra to accept it. End Digression.

What’s interesting is that I really don’t think that a third of the Republican Senators thought it was good for their Party to cross the aisle and that the other two-thirds disagreed. Nor do I think that they thought it would be good for their Party to have a third of it cross and the other two-thirds stick. No, I think this vote was based on the personal political calculations of the individual Senators for their own benefit. As well as on policy grounds, of course, but I’m not talking about those here.

But—I wouldn’t be surprised, if the general approval of their Party was improved by this example of co-operation. My prediction is that in six months time this vote will be remembered, if at all, as an example of the Republican Party’s willingness to work together with their opposites to Get Things Done. And the amusing part is that the analysis will be wrong in so many ways that it will almost be right.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just a few quick points pertaining to recent political discussion and language:

I got a call from Rasmussen recently, and told the automated pollster that I thought Our Only President was doing a great job, and that I felt strongly about that. Now, that is not exactly descriptive of my feeling—I am not exactly disappointed, but he hasn’t made me chuckle every day, either. But (1) I don’t mind misleading Rasmussen, who has no intrinsic right to know my precise opinion, and (b) I am aware that the results of these polls will be used for political purposes, and for my political purposes, it is better if the results are presented as Our Only President having high approval ratings. Similarly, I said good things about every proposal, action or inaction of my Party in the Legislature (hah!) and bad things about every proposal, action or inaction of the other Party (well, sure). When you read the report of this or any other poll, keep in mind that the citizen respondents in a democracy are political actors with agendas of their own that may just possibly outweigh their responsibility to give pollsters correct information.

On another topic, can we just be clear that Mirandizing someone does not grant them any rights at all? Any person has exactly the same rights whether they are Mirandized or not. Mirandizing them just informs them of their rights. If, for instance, it were later found that a Mirandized suspect was not entitled to legal representation, the erroneous statement on the Miranda card would not be held legally binding. And if a suspect were not informed of a right to counsel, and were in fact deprived of a right to counsel, the courts could (and do) hold that they still have that right. I should correct the above statement, though: we have held that one of the rights people (not citizens, people) have in this country is to be informed of their rights, so while Mirandizing them doesn’t grant them any new rights, it concretizes a right they are held to have.

I do wish news writers would not refer to people as missionaries unless there is some evidence of actual missionary work. Actually, I’m not sure that I like the idea of the press referring to the people in as missionaries at all, unless they are entitled to it by some formal authorization from an established institution. In the case of the Haitian baby-snatchers, it seems obvious that referring to them as missionaries is taking their side in a case where facts are very much in dispute. Alleged kidnappers sounds harsh, but would be nearer objectivity. American citizens arrested for kidnapping might work for me. Dunno. I’m not absolutely convinced that it would be accurate to describe the orphanage business as missionary work even if there was, you know, an actual orphanage, but in the absence of an orphanage, I’d certainly try to avoid the loaded term.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Your Humble Blogger will stick a tiny toe back in the waters of political rhetoric for a moment to respond to the demand for a US version of the PMQ. Now, I yield to no-one in my love for the PMQ. I think that was the topic of this Tohu Bohu’s very first Puff Piece lo these many. And in that, I said

Now, not much is actually done in that time. I doubt any opinions change, no compromises get hammered out, and any subject that gets brought up is touched on in the shallowest manner possible. There’s a lot of party squabbling, a good deal of point-scoring, some grandstanding, some petty beefing, and above all, muttering, nodding, coughing, and foot-shuffling. It’s not the finest hour for the Mother of Parliaments, but scarcely the worst; it seems to mostly be a diversion, almost an entertainment.

And it is entertaining. In the last seven years or so, however, there has been an increase in available political entertainment, to the point where I’m no longer sure we need more of it. And, as Jonathan Bernstein points out, the presidential press conference, with a Q&A, is an American tradition that serves much the same purpose, and has essentially died over the last decade. That’s a shame, even with our current press, and a POTUSQ wouldn’t make up for that.

Here’s the benefit of a POTUSQ, as far as I’m concerned. First, it would be entertaining, and specifically it would be entertaining for me. Second, it would be to a limited extent prevent a President allowing himself (or herself) to be totally insulated from criticism. A President can allow his people (particularly his Chief of Staff) to filter his information to the point that criticisms of his policies and politics are made to seem fringe and unsubstantial. I think it’s a Good Thing for a President to be reminded, now and then, that there are a large number of serious, patriotic and intelligent people who think he (or she) is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. Third, um. Not a lot of third.

It’s hard to see how it would lead to better legislation. It’s hard to imagine it really changing the policies of either the Executive or the Legislature. It certainly doesn’t do that in England, where they have had it for ten thousand years, and where in theory a PM who doesn’t Q well can be turfed at any moment. It is possible that it would actually make negotiations over pending legislation more difficult, although in the current circumstances that’s not really possible.

I suppose, after a few years of POTUSQ and perhaps similar GQ (er, that doesn’t work at all), we may start to choose legislators, in part, due to their ability to ask entertaining questions of our executives. I mean, as compilations of those questions would appear on the web at campaign time, and quite likely on television, too. This would be, in general, bad for incumbents, which would make our elections more entertaining as well. On the other hand, it would distract and detract from actual legislating which has never been much fun to televise. You know?

Just to clarify: I’m not against Our Only President or any of Our Future Presidents choosing to answer questions from the Legislature. I’d be happy if that become the norm, so that any President who avoided it for more than a couple of months was derided as cowardly and out of touch. I’d be happier if that supplemented (rather than supplanted) the norm of answering questions from the Press, however defined. It’s all good. I just don’t expect that it would be anything more than entertainment.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know what just occurred to me today? It occurred to me that if the Republican Party really were interested in expanding health care financial coverage to everybody (or nearly) and if Senator-Elect Brown were the sort of person who has or could recognize really good legislative ideas…

Then he could very easily get a health care finance reform bill passed, with overwhelming support, and in doing so would almost certainly guarantee himself re-election in Massachusetts forever.

That would be the dead hand of James Madison high-fiving the world, wouldn’t it?

I mean, no, of course the Republican Party have no interest in reform of any kind, and if they did, they would still rather kill it than have it pass under the Democrats. And there is no evidence that Senator-Elect Brown is the kind of legislator who is interested in, you know, legislation or legislating. Or, evidently, remaining Senator for more than two years.

Actually, to be fair, he is quite likely to win re-election anyway, and he may be counting on that. But seriously, if he walked in to the Senate on Groundhog Day with a Edward M. Kennedy Memoral Universal Health Care Act that had four Republican co-sponsors and that the Democrats could (however grudgingly) endorse, is there any chance he would ever lose an election in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? That he won’t do it seems to me conclusive evidence that such a Bill does not exist and will not exist so long as the Republican Party is led by the current gang, both the elected officials and the broadcast and direct mail tycoons.

It just seemed worth saying.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your Humble Blogger will not be posting the Whitman today. It’s not Election Day here, for one thing, as the various emails I’ve been getting are mistaken about my being a resident of the Commonwealth (although likely enough I haven’t been taken off the rolls, now that I think about it). It’s not Election Day across the country, so there will be no ballot-shower from coast to coast. But I would guess that something approaching half the Gentle Readers of this Tohu Bohu live in the Bay State, so I would like to recognize that today is Election Day for them, and hope that they enjoy it.

Not likely?

Look, y’all know how I feel about nose-holding and voting. And I’m not going to attempt to persuade you to vote for Martha Coakley—one of the advantages of an exclusive little blog like this one is that y’all have already calculated the benefits and costs, and we don’t have to pretend that I know any of that better than you do. Although I should probably say that if you are considering voting for Ms. Coakley without holding your nose, you should probably do a little more research.

What I’m concerned about is that Gentle Readers may be so disgusted by all the stuff surrounding the election that they will not take a moment or two to enjoy the election itself, the choosing not the chosen. Remember, as you vote, that your vote counts the same as anybody else’s vote, not more nor less. Not more than the person who you judge to be an ignorant dupe, not less than the person who considers you to be an ignorant dupe. Not less than the millionaire, not more than the guy who cleans the millionaire’s executive washroom. Not more than the unemployed millionaire, not less than the union-protected MBTA driver. All the same.

All coming together to have an equal say, for one day, in the governance of the country, that is, in choosing a Senator to do the work of legislating and compromising, of log-rolling and earmarking, of bluffing and standing on principle, of being Senator so you don’t have to. Or so that one woman can’t, the one who was gratuitously rude to the poor sap at the coffee counter—and both of those votes count, and count the same with yours.

Oh, there are problems with the system, all right, serious problems that have a serious impact on your life and even more on other people’s lives, good luck to them all. There are problems with your system, too. And with mine. Particularly with mine—I was gratuitously rude to someone the other day myself, and my vote is still as good as anyone in this Nutmeg State of mine. And no, that’s not a reason for complacency, not a reason to rest, not a reason to lord it over the places on this earth that have their own systems with their own problems and charms. But it is a reason to take a moment, even on a day when you find yourself voting for Martha Coakley—or on even on a day when you find yourself voting for someone else on a ballot that has Martha Coakley on it.

By the way, those of you that want to follow turnout and rumour would probably do well to follow Shorty-nominated political microblogger David S. Bernstein over the course of the day. That’s my recommendation, anyway. Please comment with your preferred source of Election Day not-quite-information, as well as (for Massachusetters) your Election Day experiences. There will be an award for best description of the stench coming off the ballot, but only for those who are wearing a sticker that says I Voted!.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There has already been plenty of mockery in blogovia about Thomas Geoghegan’s Op-Ed about the filibuster. I don’t really understand the article at all. He seems to hold that the inferred sentiments of individual founders (in op-ed newspaper columns, yet) should have more constitutional weight than the actual text of the Constitution itself. But I’m not terribly interested in the question of the filibuster’s theoretical Constitutional status—the possibility of a Supreme Court finding the filibuster unconstitutional in the next ten years seems utterly remote to me.

Nor, really, am I interested enough in the filibuster itself to defend it or attack it. Twenty years ago, if I remember correctly, I saw an out round in an APDA tournament where the gov team posited removing the filibuster, and it was viewed as a tight case—not like blind-people-should-get-hunting-licenses, but the feeling at the party was that the opp was screwed. Ever since then, I have felt a grudging fondness for the filibuster, not based on its merits but on that debate party.

I do think that it would be possible to reshape the rule to prevent a determined and disciplined 40-vote bloc from stopping all progress in the Senate while still allowing a passionate minority to extend debate indefinitely in unusual cases. Allow, for instance, a limited number of such delayed bills at once, while not allowing a bill that is being filibustered to be withdrawn without a vote. Or something. The Senate can make its own rules. That’s in the Constitution. If you figure out what you want the filibuster to do (extend debate indefinitely while the passionate minority has a chance to whip up public sentiment against a bill, to prevent a majority coalition from steamrolling through changes of which the public is unaware) and what you want it not to be able to do (effectively create a supermajority Senate, with little public awareness of individual filibusters), you can figure out rules to make it happen for a while, until people figure out how to game it and you have to tweak it again. Those parenthetical aims, by the way, are mine; one of the problems of the Senate is that I don’t think there are fifty out of a hundred who can manage to get their parenthetical aims to overlap, but that’s an electoral problem, not a constitutional one.

No, the thing that interests me, at the moment, is the whole idea of the slow-down Senate. There’s no question in my mind that the Madisonian purpose of the Senate is to prevent the House from going nuts. The House is susceptible to sudden waves of public opinion, has (potentially) a higher turnover from one year to the next, and is liable to suddenly proclaim some crazy shit. The Senate’s job is to look at stuff and say yes, no or maybe; to have a longer institutional memory, and to finally go along with the stuff that looks likely to last. Does it do that job? Sometimes. Sometimes not so much. It’s politics.

In 1995 or so, maybe 1996, I remember feeling a sense of awe that the Madisonian system was working so well. The Republicans had taken back the House, the long shift from post-war liberalism to anti-government resentment was in one of its swells, we had a centrist President who had not shown a real spine for negotiating, and I was seriously afraid that Newt Gingrich and his Party would go nuts. And do some extent, they did go nuts, but very little of their Contract with America got actually legislated, and that was largely because the Senate slowed everything down to the point where the more obviously bad ideas were, well, obviously bad.

In 2010, or rather in 2009 and continuing, Democrats and the left are feeling frustrated with the Senate’s slowness. This is quite right. We should be frustrated by the slowness of the Senate, and we should do everything we can to speed up the pace. Probably including getting rid of the filibuster altogether, certainly altering the rules to increase the cost of filibustering—but the point isn’t that the Senate should be trying to speed up the pace, or that the Senate Democrats should be trying to speed up the pace, but that the country should be trying to speed up the pace. The Senate is constructed to slow it down, almost independent of the actions of the Senators, organized or individually.

This is the point I keep coming back to, and I don’t know if I can make it properly because (of course) I am somewhat ambivalent about it anyway. But I’m inclined to think that it is a Good Thing to have those structural slow-downs, and to have to overcome them with a combination of popular support and painstaking rolling of logs. It is a Bad Thing when it is slowing down good legislation, or legislation that at least improves government, but it is a Good Thing when it is slowing down bad legislation responding to momentary passions and prejudices. Weighing the costs and benefits is not easy. Certainly the filibuster, specifically, has been and likely will be used mostly to slow down good legislation (and has generally been only able to slow it down, not block it, particularly when against public opinion), and I can’t really defend it in its current form. But the Senate is loaded with weights to slow down legislation—the six-year term, for one thing, and the committee system, and the calendar, and the geographic distribution. And the original idea to have the Senators chosen by the state legislature was designed even more strongly to have sober grandfathers representing their states and their honored traditions (who may well have been the radicals of twenty years previously, but there is nobody more hostile to new change than Young Turks grown old and respectable).

I guess my point is that we are in an unusual moment in Party Politics—a huge, huge majority in the Senate, largely aligned ideologically rather than divided geographically, with a majority in the House, with the White House as well. It is a moment for great ambitions. It won’t last. It is the moment that a Party should have a glint in its eye. And it is the design of the Senate to take the glint out of the eye, to turn a moment that anything is possible into a month where something is practical. Which, as it is my Party, and it is my moment, is a Bad Thing. But it has been the other Party before, and will be again.

On the other hand, none of those lovely Madisonian procedural niceties is getting prenatal vitamins into the bloodstreams of pregnant mothers. The people who are out of work are still out of work, and the idea that perhaps someday the factor that is working against them will work in favor of the things they like, when they have been dropped out of society and its comforts, well, that idea won’t keep them warm at night. And, of course, when there are millions of refugees from low-lying countries that are under high-lying water, under air that is 500 or 600 ppm carbon, those refugees may or may not benefit from the Senate being slow to victimize them in the panic of nationalist fervor, because who knows? We may not even have a Senate at that point.

So, for all those people who are furious at the Senate, I think you are right, and I certainly don’t blame you for your anger. In fact, I encourage you to broadcast that anger high and wide; it’s the best possible thing. But when Left Blogovia (and others) calls it the World’s Most Dysfunctional Deliberative Body, what I think they are missing is that the Senate is functioning just fine—it’s doing just what is supposed to do. And I can’t say I’m happy about it, but I see the point of it. The parts are designed to work together, and Left Blogovia’s doing its job and the Senate is doing its job, and with any luck, we’ll eventually improve the level of health care (and reduce the level of expenditure on it), eventually, eventually, eventually.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I keep meaning to mention that Jonathan Bernstein has a blog. Some of y’all may know him—he’s David S. Bernstein’s brother, for one thing—and he’s a social acquaintance of mine from way, way back. He is a political scientist, and his blog is about politics, mostly current politics, although he does have both a background in theory and experience working on Capitol Hill, which occasionally provoke a really informative post. He also has (probably not by coincidence) an attitude toward representative democracy that is very near to YHB’s own.

Here, for instance, is something I completely endorse: To be active—to really engage—in democratic politics means constantly being confronted with just how different everyone is, and how much that feels right and important and necessary to you is going to be threatened.

Now, as y’all know, I think the fact that people are different, one to another, is what makes the world interesting and fun. But I do understand that it also makes the world complicated and confusing. I think Jon is right that what makes real engagement in politics so frustrating in a democracy is that you cannot escape that difference for a day or an hour.

On occasion, and even sometimes in this Tohu Bohu, I say to people that if I could appoint a President, anyone that I thought would be the best at the job, I wouldn’t do it. I would rather have a crappy President elected than a great one appointed. The point being that democracy is more important to me than good governance, and in a democracy, one person’s good governance is another person’s waste, fraud and abuse. And just because I’m right, doesn’t mean my rightness has any more weight than another person’s wrongness.

This means that the health care finance reform bill that now seems very likely to pass is not going to be my bill. I suppose that is easy for me; my bill was so far off the table that our Socialist Senator didn’t even introduce it. I think it’s a lot more frustrating for people who thought for some reason that the House Bill (leaving aside Sen. Stupak’s Amendment) was their bill. Or for people who have not (yet?) adjusted to that confrontation with political difference, and learned to celebrate it. Or for people who prefer good government to democracy.

Which I understand. I mean, it matters that this bill will not achieve Health Care for All. It matters that the redistribution of wealth that surrounds health care is in a direction that is bad for people. It matters that we have not really tackled the problems of private insurance as they affect people’s health. It matters that the resources within health care are so badly distributed. It really does matter. And when I am faced with somebody who tries to avoid paying out-of-pocket on a cold and then goes to an overburdened ER which is not able to treat their pneumonia—and maybe gets another infection on top of that—it isn’t all that much relief to mention that she lives in a democracy, where votes count equally, whether they know anything about health care or not. Or that the Senate is designed to slow down the pace of change, a feature that made me extra-happy in 1995 and 1996. Or that I really do think, in the long, long run, that the battle is for the broad sympathies of the culture, and that we are winning it, slowly, slowly. Slowly.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So. There’s this Health Care Finance Reform Bill. Y’all have heard about it? And it’s immensely complicated, largely because—You know how the Big Dig attempted to take a major highway that ran on an elevated road over Boston and put it instead through an underground tunnel, and do it without ever shutting off traffic on that highway? The plan here is to take a way of paying for health care in this country that (a) leaves ten percent of the population without any way of paying for needed care, (2) taints an enormous chunk of medical decisions with bizarre structural incentives, both financial and procedural, that result in diminishing actual health for more millions of people, and (iii) diverts lots and lots of money from business and households that are more productive than the insurance industry into that industry, to take that way of paying for health care and alleviate the excesses of it without shutting off traffic to the insurance companies. It’s doable. But it’s very expensive, complicated, time-consuming, and chunks of hospitals will probably crush people’s cars for years to come difficult to oversee.

So the bill is two thousand pages long. It’s a big stack of law. I mean, it’s not all that big a stack of law, when compared to other law, but if you have a basic contempt for legislation (as most Republican legislators seem to have), the big old lump of law is bad in itself. But Paul Waldman (in asking Please, Enough With the Length of [the] Bill) has covered the substance of that already. I’m just hear to talk about the rhetoric.

This was a quote cleverly designed to make the news: “This [stack of paper], twenty pounds is the size of many people’s turkey next week. That’s what most people in North Carolina think about the bill, too.” That’s Senator Burr of NC (video), in a press conference thingy that did not allow any supporter of the Bill to immediately respond. So I’m opening it up as a Retort Contest for Gentle Readers!

My Best Reader actually started it off with

And most people in North Carolina would be thankful for health care, too, if they could get it.

My entry is

I guess the Senator hasn’t been to a food pantry lately. There are a lot of people in his state who won’t be able to afford a twenty-pound turkey, much less health care. But we can do something about it.

Let’s have yours. Rules: You do not have to actually support the Bill to enter the contest, but the Retort should be from the point of view of a supporter. The Retort can be crude, profane or obscene, but it should be to the point. Dick jokes are OK, as are jokes involving the name, background and colleagues of the Senator from North Carolina, but should be connected somehow to the Bill. Let’s keep it to, oh, fifty words or shorter, ideally. And entries will be taken (via comments on this note of course) until the end of the day on Wednesday, so feel free to pace up and down coming up with just the right mot.

The judging will be by a panel of Undead Zombie Celebrities (Zombie Cicero! Zombie Barbara Jordan! Zombie Williams Jennings Bryan!) who will give points for brevity, wit, savvy, viciousness, unanswerability and sweet, sweet brains. The prize will be—should YHB come up with an actual prize? I’m in a good mood, I just might.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I don’t think I ever actually posted a response to My Gracious Host’s note Okay if we do it, awful if they do it, in which he decries the use of double standards in political argument, saying Sometimes each party uses argument X to support the things they like, and says that argument X is ridiculous when the other party uses it to support the things they like. The comment may seem straightforwardly reasonable, but it made me feel all defensive, and I half-wrote two or three different responses to it. I think I deleted them all without finishing them, as none of them were particularly scintillating.

My point, in all of them, is that the situation he describes is much more frequently only the appearance of that situation than the reality. For one thing, each party has several people in it, and often the process-focused people within the party will not touch argument X even when it is in their favor, and will hock on about the ridiculousness of argument X when it is being used by the other party, and then different people within the party will happily use argument X when it works and leave it alone when it doesn’t. This gives an impression of hypocrisy, since it’s often hard to remember which party spokesman made which arguments at which times, but I don’t think that it holds up on examination. And again, seeming symmetry is very rarely actual symmetry when it comes to politics. Republicans in the Senate, f’r’ex, were willing to support using the reconciliation process when they had a majority but not sixty votes, and are appalled by the suggestion of the Democrats doing so now. On the other hand, the Senate was at the time passing a budget, which is (more or less) what the reconciliation process was designed for, as opposed to a health care finance reform, which is a massive and entirely new legislation effort. I don’t hold the position myself, but it’s neither dishonest nor a double standard to posit that reconciliation in the Senate is OK for certain kinds of bills and not others. In other words, the arguments have the same structure but different content, and the content does matter.

None of which is to say that Jed is wrong in his point. Sometimes the situation really does happen, and even more than that, it’s fair to suggest that if it appears to be happening, particularly if the Good Guys are doing it, well, it’s worth looking into with a skeptical eye. Yes? While keeping in mind that appearances are proverbial.

So why am I writing about it now, after all this time? Your Humble Blogger complained, a lot, about the high-handed way the Republicans ran the Senate (and the House, but more so the Senate) when they were in charge under Our Previous President. There were two aspects that I found particularly galling—well, three, one of which was the bit where the Senate Leadership would negotiate and then the White House would come in at the last minute and tear up the deal. That isn’t happening so much now, but the other two are worth looking at. One was the majority-of-the-majority rule, where the Party leadership would not allow a vote unless the Majority Caucus supported it, even if there were enough in his Party that would join the Opposition on a specific matter to make a majority in favor of the thing in question. And the other was the 50%+1 rule, that if you had a majority that was bigger than that, you could push the bill further to the Right (as they were on that side) until you lost a few more supporters.

And, of course, on the face of it, that’s what My Party is doing, now that we are in power. Or, and this is more so the case, when My Party failed to stop the Stupak Amendment (a vicious hunk of shit) from coming to a vote, it went against the majority-of-the-majority rule, and I would have preferred that the leaders of My Party keep to that rule in stopping the damned thing. And then, with the Bill itself, we crafted a Bill that would pass by the narrowest of margins.

Is this a symmetrical situation? Not entirely, of course, because the fundamental asymmetry is that we are right and they are wrong, and so nothing will ever really be the same on either side. There is also the passing of time: when the Republicans took over in 1994, there were still the leftover bits and pieces of the Old Way, with conservative Democrats in the South, liberal Republicans in New England (and New York, a bit), and a variety of regional and industrial coalitions possible. The Republicans, in part through the governing in the way I’ve talked about, accelerated the sweeping away of those coalitions in favor of true national Party structures. Now, there are no more than a handful of Republicans in the Senate or House worth being bipartisan with, and the remaining moderate Democrats stand out by themselves far more.

There’s also a fundamental asymmetry to the Party structures, in that the Republican Party tends to pick leaders that are to the right of the median for their party, whilst the Democratic Party tends to pick leaders that are to the right of the median for their party. (Note, by the way, that the how-people-vote-on-bills ranking does not work for people in leadership positions, who will vote with the Party as leaders more often than they otherwise might—the fact is that Harry Reid is right-of-the-middle, Dick Durbin to the right of him, and in the House, Nancy Pelosi is just-to-the-left, Steny Hoyer just to the right, Jim Clyburn a bit on the left) (the point being that I’m exaggerating, but not much; Democrats tend to pick leaders in the middle of the caucus, rather than to the left) (which is not to say that the more liberal members do not gain tremendous amounts of power through committee chairmanships and so on, just that they don’t get to be Leader or Whip that often) (I’m comparing them to Mitch McConnell amd John Kyl and John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Mike Pence on the other side, btw) (I’ve forgotten where I was or what punctuation to use, so I’m delaying closing this preposterous series of parentheses). A bill that gets the support of Harry Reid is not going to be the symmetrical opposite of one supported by Mitch McConnell or Bill Frist, is the point, however many votes it winds up getting.

And then there’s the fact that the Health Care Finance Reform Bill is still to the right of the country in many ways. The legislation that the Republicans passed earlier in the decade was way outside the mainstream. So there’s that asymmetry as well.

But then, the real asymmetry is this: it’s OK when we do it, it’s awful when they do it.

I mean, seriously. I’m sure there are people on the other side who have lots of reasons why it works in the other direction, and when our side is pushing partisan legislation through driven by the left of the left it demolishes the whole procedural whatsit. But they are wrong, you see. And I am not.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So. Michele Bachmann, who is as crazy a gadfly as needs to be in the Republican House Caucus, called a rally in DC for last week. Some thousands of people showed up, and—this is the key news—Their Party Leader in the House, the Whip, a former Leader and Whip, and a dozen or so other members of the House all came and spoke. As Joshua Micah Marshall points out, this was not a Republican Party event, organized by and under the Party leadership. This was a Michele Bachmann event, organized by and under Americans for Prosperity and Fox News.

In other words, the tail is wagging the dog.

This isn’t a new analysis. Nobody who follows Party politics in this country is surprised to discover that there is a division between the establishment Republicans and another powerful group of movers and shakers. The NY-23 Special Election for Congress that increased the Democratic majority is another part of that story, and it was right up at the top of the news. I think David S. Bernstein in the Boston Phoenix is on top of it with his election analysis: Doug Hoffman was a patsy for fund-raisers who didn’t care if he won or lost—and care even less about governance or legislation—but could and did use the media, direct mail, and talk radio to raise money for themselves in his name. The Party went along with it, knowing that their interests were being ditched, because they had no choice; as Mr. Bernstein points out, a question of credibility. The Party establishment doesn’t have any.

So when the tail wags, the dog has to wag, too.

Why do I care? I mean, it’s not my Party, let ’em cry if they want to.

Mostly, I care because (a) as a matter of principle, it’s a Bad Thing to have a Political Party controlled by profiteers who don’t care whether the Party is elected or passes any legislation, and (2) it’s a Bad Thing for my Party not to have an Opposition that is at least somewhat responsible, and (iii) these profiteers are willing to increase the amount of nationalism, racism, sexism, religious bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, fear, hatred and resentment in the country in order to increase their profits, and I am opposed to the increase of those things, which make the world worse.

And there’s another thing: while I do believe that Alan Keyes and Tim Phillips and Ralph Reed are cynically manipulating the rabble they despise in order to fill their pockets with pelf, I don’t know that I believe that Michele Bachmann is of their ilk. We have certainly seen the manipulated rabble, the ones who believe the bullshit, rise to positions of real power. Which is scary.

…

Your Humble Blogger wrote this note a few days ago, and in the interim, I have had pause to reflect, and the question I have paused on was this: am I a concern troll? After all concern trolling, at its most basic, is giving electoral advice to the Party you want to see lose. And it generally takes the form of advising the Party to abandon its core principles, its base constituency, and its policy positions. In my defense, I am not really giving advice, and I am rambling here in my own blog rather than on some site frequented by Republicans. Still, here’s the question: if Dennis Kucinich had called a rally in favor of Single-Payer and against the current Health Care Finance Bill (which I am happy to see passed the House while this note was resting), and if several thousand angry people showed up ranting against capitalism and the vicious, dangerous insurance companies, and if Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn felt they had to attend, wouldn’t I be ecstatic? How would I react to someone who talked about it showing that the Party was being held hostage to a group who were uninterested in winning elections or governing?

Two responses to myself come to mind. First, there is the simple fact that there does, really, exist a multi-million dollar industry on the other side, and there does not, really, exist a comparable one on mine. I could be wrong about that—I know about the industry largely through David S. Bernstein (at the Boston Phoenix, and in conversation, because (I have disclosed this before) we know each other socially, and have since Hector was a pup), and Mr. Bernstein is a liberal, which might conceivably have led him to overlook or conceal such an industry on ‘our’ side or to exaggerate the differences. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think the facts really are different, one side to the other.

And, of course, there is this: Rep. Kucinich did not get on MSNBC (or whatever), did not get thousands of people to rally, and the Party leaders did not feel they had to pay any public attention to him or to other gadflys of the left. If those things happened, while I might personally be ecstatic about it, I would hope there would be very serious discussion in the Party about the possibility that, you know there was a problem there, and also, you know, I would want to make sure I wasn’t standing under any of the flying pigs.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let’s be clear about this, since we’re all girls together here, and there’s nobody listening: yesterday’s election results were a disaster for Our Only President. I don’t mean that the populace at large has rejected his policies. That’s crap. The populace at large doesn’t know what his policies are, and when the do know, they like ’em just fine. Nor is the contrary story of what happened accurate, that the fact that the individual voters based their preferences on local issues rather than national trends means that this isn’t a disaster for Our Only President. No. Individual voters based their preferences on local issues rather than national trends, and that means this was an utter disaster for Our Only President.

Now, when I say it was a disaster—obviously, he’s still a favorite to win re-election in three years, if the economy picks up at all. But he is trying to get some policies in place, and he has to work with people to do that, and if Senators Baucus and Nelson and Landrieu and Nelson and Collins and Snowe and so on and the Blue Dogs in the House, curse them, feel that Our Only President was weakened by the election results, then he was weakened by them, and that’s the end of that.

But look: the Governor of New Jersey is an unpopular scumbag. He is also a pretty good Democrat who supported the President in a bunch of ways. His opponent ran, essentially, on the platform that the Governor was an unpopular scumbag, that the voters associated his name with failure and corruption, and that whatever he was, it wasn’t that. This was, unsurprisingly, a successful campaign, as Gov. Corzine was reduced to saying that although he was, in fact, an unpopular scumbag, the other guy was a scumbag too, really, and, um, look, isn’t that Our Only President? And in the end, the people who were probably willing enough to vote for the unpopular scumbag on the D line never made it to the polls.

Why is this a disaster for Our Only President? Look, the main leverage that the President has in negotiating with unpopular scumbags in the Congress is that he can get them re-elected. That he will stand on the stage with them at rallies in the week before the election and they will look less unpopular and less scummy (or baggy, depending). In particular, if he can get a bunch of people who like Barack Obama more than they like anything else in politics out to the goddamned polls on the first Tuesday in November, that’s gold for an unpopular scumbag with a D by his name.

But he can’t.

Or at any rate, he couldn’t yesterday. And I don’t see any reason to think that he will be able to next year, unless Things Change, and unfortunately, the main Things that would have to Change involve passing legislation through the defenses of some Senators and Representatives who have just seen how little he will be able to give them. Which means, if things were working normally, that our Senate Leader would have to trade more actual stuff to get their support. Only, just as a coincidence, our Senate Leader is an unpopular scumbag himself.

Or, perhaps, I’m just cranky, because if Our Only President had put his ass on the line in Maine, he would have one victory to show off, and a lot of people would be free from a particularly nasty and unnecessary bit of vicious discrimination. But hey! Come to Connecticut. Where our unpopular scumbag of a Senator is very likely to win, even if Our Only President was weakened yesterday, and where two lovers can get married today.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I do this every year, not quadrienially, so here it is:

Election Day, November, 1884, by Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, Book XXXIV: Sands at Seventy.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes--nor Mississippi's stream:
--This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name--the still small voice vibrating--America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board and inland--
Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
--Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify--while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

Download the mp3

This year it may not be the powerfulest scene and show, but the local nature—the only thing decided today in my neighborhood is which of the candidates of the minority party will fill the slots reserved for the minority party by charter on the school board and town council, where all the people I voted for are certain to get in—just emphasizes the ways in which electoral politics are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for democracy. It is, if you will allow me the metaphor, the visible manifestation of invisible democracy; it is our American sacrament (secument?). Whether your vote matters or not, your voting matters, even in an off-year. And to quote Mr. Whitman again: Always inform yourself; always do the best you can; always vote. Cross-stitch that on a sampler and hang it on your wall; it may be the most American thing ever said by the most American man who ever lived.

Or, if that's not the America that exists, it's the goal America, the Langston Hughes America, The land that never has been yet—And yet must be, which after all, is the real America anyway, which has always been more aspiration than actuality.

Go vote. Be part of that aspiration. Go vote. The act itself the main. Go vote.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I learn from Bill Donohue in the Washington Post that not only am I one of a vast network of Secular Saboteurs, but I am a sexual libertine as well.

Libertine! If only I could be louche, but I will settle for libertinism.

I believe that Mr. Donohue’s post was actually printed in the Post; I haven’t seen a printed copy of that newspaper for a few years, myself, and they don’t indicate a page number on that link, but I don’t suppose it matters, really. The point is that it’s about sexual libertines, who (according to Mr. Donohue) run the world (but don’t procreate—breeders evidently are doin’ it wrong), motivated most of all by a pathological hatred of Christianity.

No, stop laughing. You depraved saboteurs and your shoes—well, us depraved saboteurs, anyway—may think it’s all about the flesh, but it’s really about the Spirit. We are termites, libertine termites, and, um, that’s a bad thing, you see, because, on the whole, it’s better to have repressed termites, or just termites with very low libidos. Right? On the other hand, religious conservatives are like rabbits, who presumably have high libidos, or at least short gestational periods, and don’t walk their dogs, because rabbits walking dogs would be against Scripture, like multiculturalism and scrubbing. Scrubbing, very bad. Also bathing. Cleanliness, evidently, is metaphorically quite far from the Divine.

OK, just for fun, here’s us, according to the column: nihilists, saboteurs, libertines, malcontents, elements, radicals, anarchists, menaces, students, Yaleys (now that’s a low blow), secularists, activists, blasphemers, artists, masters, charlatans, zealots, and termites. We scrub, we club, we tear, we annihilate, we wage war, we attack, we pervert, we hate, we shudder, we seize, we politicize, we denigrate, we insult, we bash, we harbor, we bash, we lie, we ban, we punish, we are flagrantly insubordinate, we walk dogs and bathe and (this is the great part) we are losing the culture war. Which you can tell by the way we are in charge of everything (seriously, “the gay activists are in charge” of the Democratic Party) and still “In the fight over gay marriage, the scorecard is 30-0”. He doesn’t say which way, though.

Yeah, see, that’s the thing. We are too busy being sexual libertines to get gay marriage legalized in Vermont, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and somewhere else, can’t think of it, begins with a C. It’ll come to me. Sorry, too busy to look it up. Libertinism really takes it out of a fellow.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A few weeks back, Mark Schmitt wrote about Left Without Labor, saying that while it was difficult to conceive of a progressive movement without organized labor at its core, that did seem to be what was happening. And in many ways, he says, it’s good that the coalition of professionals, young people, women and minorities can win without the working class. That makes the Republican strategy of splitting off the working-class whites, playing on resentments of lost privilege, less effective. Still, as he points out, while Joe the Plumber was a fake, it’s a problem if our Party is not the party of “the real Joes, Josés, and Josephines of the working middle class”.

I agree with him on that last part. I believe in organized labor. The folks that brought you the weekend, you know. And that brought you, oh, workplace safety standards and overtime pay and so on.

So as easy as it is to get fired up by Barack Obama, when he works a crowd, for Labor Day this year I’m just going to send you over to the Blog of Frequent Name Changes, where a Gentle Reader has gathered some good foot-to-behind stuff.

I think the lesson of Labor Day this year is that you gave to get out and work for it. Right?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The news that Bush daughter Jenna Hager joins TODAY staff has set off a blogstorm about meritocracy and whatnot. Glenn Greenwald has an uncharacteristically short but characteristically caustic note about it called It’s time to embrace American royalty. Broadly speaking Left Blogovia is whacking Conservatives over the head with their (perceived) hypocrisy in combining inherited privilege (and outright nepotism) with rhetorical support for meritocracy and disdain for preferences and support, particularly in connection with Justice Sotomayor and her personal history.

Um, and they are right so to whack. My contrariness isn’t so overdeveloped to disagree. I mean, rhetorically they are right, and I think this sort of situation emphasizes the extent to which (a) there exists an elite connected to the Republican Party, who use their connections and status for their own personal gain, and (2) the members of the elite are startlingly, wildly and deliberately out of touch with people outside that elite. Meaning you, sister, and meaning me.

But I am sufficiently contrary to note that some of the residents of Left Blogovia fundamentally misunderstand the difference in worldview between Conservatives and Progressives. Or at least pretend to, and pretend to convincingly and not to much point. So I am going to talk about merit, meritocracy and Conservatism as I understand it.

Digression: Andrew Cline over at Rhetorica has several times complained about his local newspaper having op-ed space devoted to columns labeled From the Left and From the Right, which he says encourages a fact-free partisan pissing match. He is probably empirically correct; I am certainly not going to read the columns in question to find out. But my contrary defense of the idea of such columns led me to make the point that it would be really wonderful for a newspaper to devote space to detailed explanations from the Left and Right of how their differing worldviews and biases interacted with the policy urgencies of the moment. That is, how (f’r’ex) support of the proposed health care reform followed from a Liberal viewpoint, and opposition from a Conservative one. That would be a tremendous benefit for readers, most of whom don’t (I think) really get how the two Parties do have fundamental differences that lead them to come to different conclusions on most policy matters, and that leads to differences in how people’s lives actually work, depending on which Party is in power at which time. Oh, there are lots of variations, and people can certainly start from the same assumptions and come to different conclusions on particular issues, but on the whole, there is a Left and a Right, and it matters.End Digression.

Here’s the question I’ll be talking around: Can a person inherit merit? Which of course demands the question: what is merit?

You see, when we talk about meritocracy, I think we are talking about different things, Liberals and Conservatives, in large part because we have different ideas of merit. I’m going to make a stab at what those ideas are, on both sides. My ideas of Conservatism are based more on Clinton Rossiter than Newt Gingrich, but I think that when it comes to the worldview, the underpinning biases, Mr. Rossiter has great insight coming from a largely historical view of his own. And for the Liberal end, I’m going with my own biases, largely, I’m afraid, so y’all will have to supplement, correct and clarify.

A Liberal view of merit: Merit is derived largely from an accumulation of good actions; the appropriate metaphor is a ledger or bankbook, in which deposits to your merit are made in the form of accomplishments, and withdrawals in the form of failures. Thus, a person will have different amounts of merit at different times; the Peter Principle (people will rise to a level of their incompetence) is a kind of guiding spirit. There are, however, characteristics commonly associated with merit: intelligence, persistence, discipline, compassion, honesty, and so on. In looking to see if someone has merited their position, you would attempt to judge those qualities together with their record of accomplishments and failures.

A Conservative view of merit: Merit is derived largely from adherence to an inherited value system; The appropriate metaphor is not a bankbook but a seal of approval. While it is true that a meritorious person will backslide or stray, the mark of merit is the return to traditional values. These values include honesty, discipline, intelligence, persist, compassion and so on. Application of those values is often associated with success in business or other endeavors. In looking to see if someone has merited their position, you would take into account their record of accomplishments and failures together with their fundamental values and character traits.

A Liberal and a Conservative talking about merit may talk for a long time in the large overlap without ever realizing they are talking about different things. And then suddenly a Liberal will be astonished that a Conservative seems to take breeding into account, as if being born into a good family is an accomplishment. Or a Conservative is perplexed that a Liberal seems to thing being raised by a single parent in an impoverished ghetto is a good thing. But where do you get your family values from, if not a good family? And isn’t overcoming obstacles an achievement?

Liberals, or at least progressives, tend to knock the idea of meritocracy as being blind to antecedent benefits and burdens. Conservatives tend to knock the idea of meritocracy as being a front for quotas and officiousness. I think the Liberals are correct, of course, being a Liberal myself. No surprise there. But we still knock meritocracy.

While, of course, supporting it. Meritocracy is the baby that shat in the bathwater. We can’t quite bring ourselves to throw it out. It would be such a lovely baby if it didn’t smell so bad. And, you know, you can clean it! But then it starts to stink again. Oh, well. It’s cute, and maybe someday it’ll grow up.

Another Digression: while many Conservatives are not racist as such, or even xenophobic as such, Conservatism my its nature preserves the ISRVs, and if those ISRVs are racist or xenophobic, then preserving them is racist and xenophobic. And even of they aren’t racist or xenophobic in attitude, the preservation of the status quo is very likely to be racist in execution. If, for instance, a good family is important to inculcating good family values, then the Conservative will place great emphasis on good family. Unless you are willing to do a lot of work to eliminate the natural pattern-matching that misleads you into thinking that good families look alike, you are going to have racist misperceptions. And even then, simple arithmetic is going to preference the majority. It takes a commitment to actively fight racism, that is, it takes active affirmation to effect a Conservative view of meritocracy without a racist result. Sadly, in our country, only a tiny minority of Conservatives believe in that kind of ongoing affirmative action. End Digression.

My point, to get back to it, is that Conservatives can certainly believe in both meritocracy and nepotism. There is nothing necessarily hypocritical in that, so long as you understand what is meant by merit. On the other hand, it’s not clear to me what merit could be inherited by the great-grandchildren of Prescott Bush at this point.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Spring I could have looked at the candidate’s policy proposals in detail, but (as Mark Schmitt put it so well) within the campaign context, it’s not what the candidate says about the issues, it’s what the issues say about the candidate. It’s easy for analytical types (such as YHB) to fool themselves into thinking they are voting for a policy platform, but of course the moment the candidate takes office, those policy proposals will become subject to all kinds of changes. Which is as it should be. So my recollection of the public health policy and health finance debates in the primary is extremely vague: John Edwards was supporting something universal and relatively progressive, Hillary Clinton was supporting something not-quite-universal and not-quite-progressive, and Barack Obama was in the middle.

That may not have been true. That’s my recollection now of my impression at the time.

I bring up my vagueness now, because my impression of the current state of the debate is dependent on that earlier sense, which may be wrong. Be that as it may, I’m going to tell y’all about my current impression and then throw it open for y’all to get me back on track. Because, you know, it’s a blog.

Here’s the thing: I think Barack Obama is not very progressive on economic issues. There are aspects of governance where he is very radical, aspects where he is worrisomely Conservative (to me), but on economic issues he seems to be, well, happy with Larry Summers. You know? Bill Clinton-ish, not Teddy Kennedy-ish. By instinct and inclination, I mean. Of course, circumstances dictate the actual policies a person will support at any time. Bill Clinton had prosperity to deal with, and dealt with it accordingly; had he been president with ten percent unemployment and serious financial structure problems, he would have dealt with that differently, I suppose.

So I’m not convinced that Barack Obama was ever personally persuaded that the public option—essentially a Medicare for All option—was important to him. I don’t really know. It’s awfully tempting to try to read the minds of politicians and claim that people you like are really in favor of policies you like, even though they never support them and occasionally vote against them. It’s also tempting to claim that all of them are in the pockets of Big Bidness and have no principles or even preferences other than whatever gets them the most money for their next campaign. I try to avoid that, generally. Still, it seems to me as if the bill we’re going to wind up getting in October or so will be a lot like the bill the Barack Obama of the primaries would have liked: largely an extension of the status quo with enough government intervention to ease off the pressure for fundamental change of the resource-profit structure of the system.

This is infuriating to me, of course, because I would like to change the system altogether. The idea of a quote-unquote reform bill that seems designed to funnel money to the insurance companies seems outrageous to me. The idea that with a majority in the House and sixty fucking seats in the Senate and a Democratic President we still can’t nail the insurance companies to the wall is depressing. We’re not going to get a bigger majority in the Senate; it’s astonishing that we have twenty more than the other Party now. We’re unlikely to get Senators within the Party that are much further left; we’re certainly unlikely to get Senators from the other Party that are much further left.

Unless, of course, there is a basic change in the national debate.

Which is how it should work. When there’s a big change (and I suppose health finance reform counts as a big change, as it affects not only people’s health care but their employment conditions, mostly) the change has to be broad and deep. We have to talk to each other about it, rather than waiting for the candidates to direct it.

And yet… haven’t we been talking to each other about it for twenty years? I mean, isn’t the huge Democratic majority in part due to the national conversation about health finance coming around to the idea of nailing insurance companies to the wall? I’m not sure how much further we can go on that road. Hmph.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to whine about the bill in this note. The point of this note is that it seems to YHB that Barack Obama has an astonishing ability to make getting beaten in the legislature a useful step in getting the policy he wants. And on one hand, that’s clearly problematic for the Party and the future of the democracy. And on the other, he is getting Presidential policy through the legislature, which ain’t easy.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been listening, now and then, to National Public Radio. Not all day, and not for very long at a time. And I haven’t (thank the Divine) been watching news on television, either cable or broadcast. So I don’t really know whether this has been going on and I’ve been missing it, or whether really nobody is saying this. But I have heard people interviewed who are on the radio to support my Party’s health care reforms, specifically people who support the public option, and they are asked what will be different if the health care reform gets passed. And I haven’t heard any of them say anything like this.

Well, the main thing, for most of your listeners, is that if they change jobs, they won’t have to worry about their health insurance. If your job stinks, but your current health care is decent—and there are a lot of people like that—the public option would make it possible to back to school, or to start your own business, or to work for a non-profit for a while. If you have a good job with good insurance, this reform won’t change that. If you have no insurance, this reform will make sure you do have insurance, and—can I be honest, here? Even if you think you don’t need insurance, this reform puts you in the pool. I think that’s a plus. But the big difference between our plan, that has a last-resort option for public insurance, and the current plan, or whatever plan the Republicans are claiming they have, and we haven’t seen it yet and I don’t think we will—the difference between our plan, Terry (or Renee or Neil or whoever), is that nobody will ever again be trapped in a lousy job because their children’s insurance is being held hostage.

Am I wrong? Aren’t there about fifty million people who have had that conversation with someone, where their niece or their old college buddy is talking about what they would do, but they need to keep their health package? I think the people that you have to convince, to get poll numbers up to the point where legislators feel pressure they can’t resist, are people who have decent health insurance themselves. The political plan has been to emphasize that you could lose your health insurance, but (a) that hasn’t been working, and (2) many people don’t really think that bad things will happen to them, until they do. I don’t mean to say that they should altogether stop that line of attack, because it is, after all, true—your employer could go bankrupt, after all, and lots of them do—but I think the trapped-in-a-lousy-job line is a persuasive one, and one that fits a lot of people’s worldview.

Particularly, I would think, people who listen to NPR. Which is why I am griping about not having heard it. I’m hoping that it’s just been one of those coincidences, that the moment I shut the thing off and go in the house, somebody is on about being trapped by their health insurance. Or it’s on television pundit shows, which I am unwilling to watch even to correct my impression of this.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So. Y’all know about this birther business? You know, this thing where lots of people believe that Our Only President is Constitutionally ineligible to be Our Only President, because he was not, in fact, born in Hawaii, as all available public and private records indicate, but was in fact born on the mooooooooon?

I read David Bernstein’s politics blog in the Phoenix, mostly because I know the guy from way back, but also because he seems to be one of the people who gets things right about national politics, as evidenced by his often predicting things which later happen. And he doesn’t write all that often, so it’s not that big a deal to keep up with him. And (although I don’t generally read his commenters anyway), he generally gets very few comments. Until he wrote about Birthers In The Mainstream, and got umpty-’leven comments, not all of them entirely whatsit. You know?

And I started to think: Really, there are only two possibilities. (One) The man was born in Hawaii. (Bee) He got away with it.

That’s it, right? I mean, there is no chance—zero chance—that any evidence now produced is going to remove the man from office before the end of his term. If this really is a conspiracy big enough to fiddle with the records that would have to have been fiddled with, and hush up the people who would have to have been hushed up, then he got away with it. End of story. If you suddenly discover a film of his birth, in Guayana, together with the attending midwife’s sworn affidavit, his fingerprints, a lock of his hair (for DNA sample) and the Archangel Gabriel willing to witness that when he tapped him on the upper lip, it was not in US territory, then all you are going to get yourself is an unmarked grave, my friend, because if this guy is that good, then he’s better than you are.

What do these guys expect to happen? I mean, is there any possibility that a court, any court, is going to exercise some sort of jurisdiction over this in such a way to get the man out of office? The US Supreme Court have already looked at the matter, you know. Or do you think he’s going to sit still for an impeachment based on this? After the last twenty years of American politics, do these guys really expect that the US House is going to impeach, and the US Senate convict, because there is doubt that the President was born in the US? And if there is evidence, do you think the President of the United States has insufficient power to hush it up? When it has already been hushed up during a year-long presidential campaign?

I am, in some ways, serious. Most of my friends on the left believe that the Presidential Election in 2000 was stolen (at least in the will of the electorate of Florida was, in the majority, for Al Gore, and that therefore the electors from that state should have cast their ballots for him, and thus he should have been sworn in as President, and not that other guy). On the other hand, by January 20 or so, most of us, almost all of us, I think, had accepted that it was over. That he got away with it. That there was no evidence, obtainable at that time, that would cause him to step down, or would cause his removal from office on that basis. We may still have been outraged, some more than others, but it’s not like we thought anything would come of it.

And insofar as it’s conservative media titans (to use Mr. Bernstein’s phrase) that are talking about this, they don’t think anything will come of it. They can make money off of it, they can whip up their people with it, they can take some focus off other issues by talking about it, and that’s good enough for them. But I have the sense (perhaps wrongly, of course) that the Vardibidians of the Right, the bloggers-and-bullshitters who care about politics but don’t make a career out of it, they really think they are on to something here.

My point is not that the whole thing is egregious nonsense. It is. Obviously. To me. My point is that even it is all terribly, terribly true, so what? It’s over. He got away with it. All the more reason (from their point of view) to distrust the man, but do they need any more reasons? There are plenty of them for sale, I tell you what.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Your Humble Blogger would just like to make it clear: I know nothing about constitutional law, or law of any kind, so there's that. But I do think that, in many cases, a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences will reach a better conclusion than a white male.

Can I break it down just a bit, for a rhetorical flourish?

• I believe that there exist wise Latina women. I have met two or three that I can think of off the top of my head, which may not sound like a whole lot, but is probably right in line, percentage-wise, with other groupings of ethnicity and sex.
• While I agree with Judge Sotomayor that there can never be a universal definition of wise (that line was actually a reference to Martha Minnow, is intended as a critique of the wise old men and wise old woman line, and is the sentence before the famous one in the speech), a decent working definition of wisdom would probably be “agreeing with YHB on the substance of issues”. Given the demographics, the polling data, and my own policy preferences, it seems likely that wisdom would be fairly common among Latinas.
• It's not clear to me that, in the context of judicial whatnot, a better conclusion necessarily means the overturning or upholding of the lower court decision. It might well mean that the decisions a wise Latina puts her name to will be better written than those of the white men. The Latina judge will (very likely) have a wider range of experiences writing to a wider range of audiences, and will therefore be less likely to trap herself in legalese. No, not really. I'm just kidding on this one.
• I believe that there exist white males. Further, I think that white males who grow up in this country largely share certain overlapping experiences of whiteness and maleness. Not all the aspects of those experiences will be the same. If there are, say, a thousand typical aspects of whiteness and maleness, very few white males will have experienced all thousand of them, but very few white males will have experienced fewer than, say, three hundred of them. As a result, any two given white males will likely have quite a few of those experiences in common, but it is possible that the two will not have any in common, while still having plenty of whiteness and maleness. Therefore, the category does make sense.
• Many of the common experiences of whiteness and maleness of which I speak are negative ones, that is, the experience of not experiencing some aspect of nonwhiteness and nonmaleness. In my personal experience as a white male, there have been many of those. Also, my experience is that it is much easier to recognize those after they have happened than while they are happening, whilst the correlating positive cases of nonwhiteness and nonmaleness are easier to recognize while they are happening. And, in fact, it is fairly easy to ignore them altogether. Two people who have shared experiences that neither of them has ever thought about for a moment still share those experiences, however (this speaks further to the existence of the category).
• Further on the existence of the category: If I (a white male) were presented with the hypothetical list of a thousand experiences of whiteness and maleness, I might very likely focus on the hundreds of those experiences I have not had. However, as I understand it, most people who do not belong in those categories are more liable to focus on those experiences on their own hypothetical lists that they have had. I have much the same instincts as a member of a religious minority. Thus, while whiteness and maleness are in some sense categories like nonwhiteness and nonmaleness, they are in another sense entirely different.
• As those categories do exist, and, in fact, roughly correspond to actual things in an actual world with actual history, the sentence A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences will reach a better conclusion than a white male is significantly different than the sentence A wise white male with the richness of his experiences will reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman. The logical correspondence between them does not make them similar in content. It is possible that either statement could be uttered by a racist, but the utterance would mean something very different in either case.
• The categories exist, and there are people in them. The statement is comparing the categories, not the people. This is problematic. However, the problematic nature of such a comparison does not mean it can't have more of a positive nature than a negative one. So there.
• Within the context she originally was discussing, and within its context, we need to look at the overlaps of groups and categories. The question of the day is not whether a wise Latina woman will come to better conclusions than a white man, but whether a group of nine Justices that includes a wise Latina woman will come to better conclusions than a group of nine white male Justices. This seems to be obviously true, even if we assume the wisdom of the white male Justices in question. While there are limits to the practical possibility of racial and gender representation in a small group, and there are limits to its value even to the extent that it is practicable, there is a value in a diversity of experiences.
• The general truth or applicability of this version of the statement should not be held to automatically mean that any specific Latina would bring greater marginal value to the Supreme Court than another specific white man, or than a white woman, or a South-Asian man, or any other combination of race and gender. The specifics of the individual are very important. However, the specifics of the individual would need to be argued as specifics. This does not invalidate the general statement in any way.

One of the things that I have experienced that is (as I understand it) common amongst minorities is the pressure to speak as a representative of a group, in addition to as an individual. I grew up with that experience without really understanding it: as a Jew, when I did something, it reflected on Jews everywhere, bringing shame or pride, or providing explanation or bafflement. I thought of it as a Jewish thing, to the extent I thought about it at all. It wasn't until I was an adult of sorts, in college, that I experienced pressure to represent the group of males or white people or even white males. I was baffled and angry about it, when it happened. Surely it was not only unfair but utterly preposterous to be tasked with that stuff. And it is, of course, although the unfairness and preposterousness felt very different than the (logically similar) unfairness and preposterousness of the previous experience. A bunch of Senators and commentators seem to be feeling baffled and angry by Judge Sotomayor, and her very interesting speech. Which, by the way, I would like to quote from a bit more to bring this note to a better conclusion:

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

I accept that, too, and I welcome it.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your Humble Blogger lived in Massachusetts when William Weld resigned as Governor to pursue (but not catch) confirmation as Ambassador to Mexico. I lived there when the next governor, Paul Celucci, resigned to actually serve as Ambassador to Canada. During that time, I attempted to formulate a Theory of Political Resignation that went something like this: an elected official cannot ethically resign his post except to accept a higher office, or if earlier ethical lapses make resignation the lesser violation of the public trust.

This is actually fairly tricky. I mean, the obvious rule is that if you are elected to a term of office, you are obligated to fulfill that term. On the other hand, I think that it’s pretty widely understood that if, f’r’ex, a Senator is appointed to the Cabinet, that’s an opportunity and a responsibility that overrides that obligation. I think most voters understand that, and consider it reasonable.

It does leave open the question of what constitutes a higher office. This is where the Theory comes in. I think there are tiers in our national government that help to some extent but there are still substantial judgment calls to make. For instance, clearly the Presidency and the Supreme Court are the top tier; I would consider anyone under that level who resigns to take one of those jobs justified. The next rank down are Senator and Governor, and they seem to me to be more or less on the same level. Which makes it a judgment call: William Weld ran for Senator from the Governor’s office, and was willing to resign to take the other job. I might make the call the other way, but it’s not clearly wrong that way. Generally, because of the two-year terms, US Representatives aren’t faced with resigning their seats to take new jobs as Senators or Governors, but it can happen and that seems to be clearly OK. And, as well, a State Legislator of any kind resigning to take up a federal post seems reasonable. And there are others that are very vague: a Lieutenant Governor who becomes an Ambassador, a Judge who becomes a US Attorney or a State Attorney General, that sort of thing. Judgment calls.

And then there’s the question of whether it’s ethical to resign an elected office to run for a higher office. Bob Dole resigned his Senate seat when he was nominated as the Republican candidate for President in 1996; I don’t know that it wasn’t a violation of his promise to his constituents. On the other hand, both Barack Obama and John McCain effectively suspended their Senatorial work during their campaign. Was it less of an ethical breach to stay in the Senate but not work at the job, coming back to vote every three or four months? What about Christopher Dodd, who continued to work in the Senate but became essentially inaccessible to his constituents here in Connecticut, moving his family to Iowa in pursuit of a longshot primary campaign?

But those are not resignations, and I don’t know how much they help with a Theory of Political Resignations. A Resignation is a violation of the public trust on a different level. When Newt Gingrich resigned his House seat after winning re-election, because he was going to be ousted as Speaker of the House, that was astonishing to me. He just walked away from his job. And nobody seemed to mind.

Well, and now Sarah Palin seems to be walking away from her job. Those of us who dislike her (for whatever reasons) find her stated reasons incomprehensible and bizarre. Joshua Micah Marshall, over at TPM, says that the only conceivable explanations are scandal and insanity.

I get the sense, though, that those of my countrymen who admire Governor Palin think that she is, in fact, resigning to take up a higher office. That office is unelected and self-appointed, and is essentially Movement Conservative in Chief. Much of the tone, both hers and from the (admittedly very limited) supportive reaction is that actually governing a state is a crappy job that she just wound up in, and she would be crazy to stay in it when she has a chance to make a difference on the national stage.

And this is where my Theory of Political Resignation falls to the ground. Underlying the theory is an assumption that Governor, or State Senator, or Mayor, or Judge, are terrific jobs, even if they are crap to actually do, that they are respected positions and worthy of respect, and that people who run for those jobs and ask for our votes for those jobs and take oaths of office to serve in those jobs actually want to do those jobs.

I mean, yes, they are often stepping-stones to some other job, and I fully expect that my State Senator, for instance, will have an eye on congressional, but then, I have half an eye on another job at the library while being perfectly happy about my own job. I think you can be a very good State Senator, and fulfill all your obligations as State Senator, and respect the job of State Senator, and still intend to run for the first available place that’s higher up the ladder. And then you can feel good about having done a good job at that level, while still feeling it was a stepping-stone.

I’d like to think that this was a Republican Party problem, and in fact I do think that it is a Republican Party problem, of the generation that was told that bullshit about government being the problem (which was, for the Reagan/Bush/Dole generation, always bullshit to front the unpopular policy positions they held that required government assistance for industry) and somehow believed it. I think there are a lot of Republicans who run for office simply to keep Democrats out of office. Having accomplished that, I think some of them find themselves less than persuaded that they are doing valuable work by governing or legislating. Still, to the extent that it is a Republican Party problem, it’s obviously not a problem typical of the Party. Most Republican office-holders serve out their terms. Very few resign, and even fewer resign without some obvious reason. And I suspect that it’s a small subset of the Republican Party that does see Sarah Palin as having a legitimate, ethical, reasonable path to resignation with a year and a half left of her term. But perhaps that’s wishful thinking.

The point? I suppose I should get around to having a point. Hm. Oh, yes. The point is that I think that my Theory of Political Resignation is worth talking about, because if you run for office, you should have some idea of what your constituents expect of you, and your constituents should have some idea of what you expect of yourself. A question such as Under what circumstances would you consider it appropriate to resign the office you are seeking? may seem like a dumb one, but it’s only dumb if we’re all working with the same Theory, and the only way to know if that’s true is to argue about it a little.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I feel as if I should post something about Judge Sotomayor; this used to be one of those pundit blogs that commented on politics all the time. And also because I remain ambivalent about Left Blogovia generally. On the one hand, there is a certain pride that my neighborhood tends to be both independent and rational. On the other, there’s a certain disappointment that we don’t immediately start hollering about betrayal and wishy-washy centrism.

Here’s the situation as I see it: The Big Blogs of Left Blogovia (let’s say Kos, TPM, Eschaton, for a Big Three) are viewed as pushing from the Left. From a strictly evidence-based point of view, this is preposterous, but that’s the Story, and that’s how it goes. If all three set up a howl immediately after the announcement that the Left had been abandoned by that moderate-in-sheep’s-clothing that we call Our Only President, and that he had passed over some handful of preposterous and underqualified socialists in order to appease the mushy middle, that would be a Story. And that’s a Story that the Press tends to eat right up. It would make it even more difficult for the Right to howl that Judge Sotomayor was an unreconstructed liberal activist, which for the sake of clarity I would like to point out she is not, by any evidence-based point of view, not that it matters. Well, it wouldn’t make it more difficult for the Right to howl that, but it would make that particular Story less appealing; the story that Our Only President has once again smoothly sailed between the hard place and the proverbial is a proven seller, and they surely do like proven sellers.

Instead, what to they do? They try to outline her positives and negatives, point out that she is extremely well-qualified by the criteria that have been in use recently, and declare themselves satisfied. And then MoveOn sends out an email passing along the White House’s talking points! I mean, really. These people seem more interested in honest discussion than in gaming the system to score political points.

And the thing is, I’m half serious. Well, not half. A third. A fifth. Something like that. Because, after all, the political points can (even if our Senators sometimes forget this) be cashed in for actual legislative achievements that make actual changes for actual people. Or to get some bottoms on the bench that will improve actual people’s actual lives.

Of course, if the Big Three (plus MoveOn, LGM, Pandagon, Crooks and Liars, ThinkProgress and a handful of others) were to take on the role of the talk radio conservatives, I for one would stop reading them. So there’s that.

As for me? Well, the Judge appears to be fully qualified, and although she is far from my ideal candidate, I would say she looks likely to be an improvement over Justice Souter, who was a pretty good Justice. The main drawback, as has been discussed, is what seems to be a tendency to defer to the executive branch and law enforcement, and a squishy view of freedom of speech. Still. Mainstream jurisprudence, solid on women’s rights and reasonable on labor, and of course personally inspiring. I’m afraid I support Our Only President in his wishy-washy moderation, here. But where’s the political capital in that?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just a quick note—as I was chatting with a twenty-one year old who isn’t particularly into politics and I said something that I realized was my own thought rather than being related from some other blog. So I thought I would expose that thought here for sharpening and whatnot, because, you know, it’s a blog.

Somebody had made a connection to this young person between the current situation in the US regarding torture (and also extraordinary rendition, and some other things) and the situation in South Africa in the 90s, after apartheid was overturned. So I said that part of the goal of the Truth and Reconciliation commission, there, was to prevent gangs of vigilantes dragging random white people into the streets and beating them to death. This was also true, to a greater or lesser extent, in some other places around the world in the last two decades that have had unpopular gangs of miscreants suddenly deposed after a long period of oppression. When somebody leveled an accusation of collaboration, there was no chance of a trial by an independent judiciary; angry mobs would tear people to bits, the innocent and the guilty together.

This was particularly dangerous in South Africa, where of course the Afrikaans and English were easily spotted because of that pink skin thing. And because the decades of misrule had left the economy of the place in a position where even wiping out the guilty (and there were a lot of guilty, depending on your definition of guilt) (and there were lots of good reasons for those angry mobs to have expansive definitions of guilt) would result in increased misery for everyone down the road.

Now, it seems to me, just my own perception of the universe informing me here, that the situation in the US is not like that. We have people in the government who committed crimes (note: I don’t say who have allegedly committed crimes because I am myself alleging it, rather than simply alluding to the allegations of others), and others who collaborated and others (I’m guessing) who have been accused of collaboration who are innocent. So far, we have not had a problem with gangs of vigilantes pulling former White House operatives into the street and beating them to death. Or beating them at all.

We don’t need Reconciliation. We have a working judiciary (OK, that’s a whole different argument, but let me maintain that for the purposes we are talking about here, our judiciary works reasonably well) and I can’t see any harm in beginning prosecutions. Sure, it makes some sense to keep an eye on things, and if it gets crazy, and people are finking on each other out of spite and malice rather than legal pressure, and if the masses are being whipped up into a dangerous mob ready to tear apart any judge who shows impartiality, pull the collaborators from their cells and hang them from the willow across the way, well, I suspect we can change our path before that happens.

In the meantime, the purpose of any commission looking into crimes of the last administration should be determining who committed crimes and prosecuting those people in a court of law. That’s it. That’s how the country works. Yes, there needs to be prosecutorial discretion, the purpose of which is to better prosecute people who have violated our laws. If the Congress is looking into having that prosecution coming from outside the Justice Department, well, there are arguments for that, although I ain’t persuaded at the moment.

The argument that we need to have reconciliation rather than prosecution, though, seems to assume that we were oppressed by tyrants and have been only shakily liberated, and that fending off civil war and civil violence is the top priority. That is not the case, thank the Divine. As furious as I still am that our Federal Executive was in the hands of a secretive cabal of crooks and incompetents for eight years, I remain on the whole glad that, for instance, Irv Libby wasn’t strung up from a lamppost.

Or am I way off on this Truth and Reconciliation Commission reference that I hear people making? Do they mean something else by it altogether?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Your Humble Blogger has surprised himself by having something to say about the Tea Parties. I haven’t been writing about politics much lately, largely because after reading the political blogs that I read, I generally don’t feel I have anything to left to add. Oh, I disagree, now and then, but for some reason Left Blogovia hasn’t been provoking me to write my own shit lately. Probably a good thing, in general.

I do feel, though, that a lot of Left Blogovia has got hold of the wrong end of the Tea Party stick. It seems to me that the general feeling has been amused contempt, along with a certain glee that the Right (if that’s what they are) is no better at holding protest rallies than the Left (if that’s what they were), with perhaps a dash of resentment that the protests came off a lot better on TV than they ought to have.

Oh, right, and the dick jokes. I liked the dick jokes. Well, technically I suppose they were scrotum jokes, but I think they fall into the same category, right?

Anyway, much of Left Blogovia has portrayed these protests, scheduled for April Fifteenth, the day taxes are due, as tax protests, and then mocked the protesters for protesting tax hikes when most of them are presumably getting tax cuts this year. I mean, statistically, it seems likely. The other aspect that has been repeated endlessly is that Boston Tea Party was protesting Taxation without Representation, while these Tea Parties were protesting Taxation with Representation. Before I begin griping, let me acknowledge that from a political or persuasive point of view, that is a good response. It emphasizes two important points: (1) The Democratic Congress and President have cut taxes on almost all taxpayers, and (b) the Republicans are so unpopular (because of all their failures) that they lost the elections, and now the Democratic Congress and President are substantially more popular, because of their successes. So that’s fine. The portions of Left Blogovia that consider themselves to be rhetorical support for the Party, in much the same way as Talk Radio considers itself to be rhetorical support for the Other Party, are pushing that frame, and that’s a good thing.

Since this Tohu Bohu is a nice boutique blog, meaning that YHB has no wider political influence, I can go back and forth between pushing the frames I think are politically useful and actual rhetorical analysis. And it seems to me that if Left Blogovia really thinks that the Tea Partiers are, well, like their caricatures of them, then they don’t really get America and American politics.

Back, oh, a long time ago, when the trope in the public media was all about how the crazy fringe who opposed the invasion of Iraq were proved wrong by how easy and quick it had gone, YHB wrote a post about the various reasons various people opposed the war. And I put myself in the category that I thought was probably the largest, the Bush-haters. This was the group who felt that whatever else was going on, simply the fact that the invasion would be headed by that group of crooks and incompetents was enough to be against it. I felt at the time, and still feel, that it was a perfectly reasonable position.

So a lot of the anti-war rallies and protests wound up muddling their messages, largely (looking back) because a fair amount of the Bush-haters felt that it was perfectly reasonable to bring up the fact that the administration were a bunch of crooks and incompetents, along with various other historical grievances. And the people who didn’t share those grievances were, unsurprisingly, not persuaded by giant puppets of Uncle Sam blowing the House of Saud. Just as tying a bunch of teabags to a tricorne hat didn’t strike Left Blogovia as particularly persuasive.

I’m getting to a point, now. In case you were wondering.

Here it is: A temporary and moderate tax cut or tax raise is irrelevant to people who think that the Federal Government as grown far outside its proper bounds. In fact, by fulfilling his campaign promise to cut taxes on 95% of the people who pay taxes while increasing the scope of the Federal Government to deal with our economic problems, Our Only President has set up enormous pressure to raise taxes (or at least revenues) when the immediate economic crisis is over in a few years (touch wood). If you feel very strongly that America pays too much in taxes and that our Federal Government is far too active in our economic life, now would be an excellent time to protest. And if your examples of why the Federal Government intrudes too much in our economic life are restrictions on firearms and a lack of restrictions on abortion, showing that They Cannot Be Trusted, then those would make excellent topics for signs.

Not persuasive signs, I’ll admit. But I can see why somebody would think they ought to be persuasive, just as I can see why somebody thinks the giant Uncle Sam puppet ought to be persuasive. And some of the stuff (like the NAFTA Superhighway and the re-education camps and the gummint going into people’s houses to take their guns and the one-world-currency and weather control) really isn’t happening, which, you know, makes the people at the protest look bad. There’s some of that, too, at the protests on the Left, although I have to say not as much. Or, rather, I would say not as much based on incredibly biased and limited reports of the protests, which isn’t fair, either.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Your Humble Blogger was just asked, by a recorded message over the telephone, whether “marriage between only one man and one woman should be legal in the state of Connecticut”. I froze. I mean, I would be against making marriage between only one man and one woman illegal. That seems harsh. On the other hand, since the National Organization for Marriage, which paid for the robocall, would probably represent all the yes responses as being from people who oppose gay marriage, it would be bad to inflate that number. But then, responding yes would clearly label me as a moron, right? And it’s possible, just, that the yes responses would be used as some sort of they want to ban heterosexual marriage strawman, and I don't want to contribute to that, either, do I?

After a few seconds of silent panicking, I heard the machine say that the survey would terminate if they didn't hear yes, no, or repeat, so I stayed silent and let the thing sign off.

I remain a bit perplexed, though. I mean, assuming that the writer and the voice actor meant to ask whether I thought that only marriage between one man and one woman should be legal, how did they screw up the sentence? It’s not like the other way reads better, in fact, it was so obviously screwed-up that my response was to the screwed-up word order, rather than to the content of the question. Or, perhaps, I’m still a stickler, underneath. Which should still be legal, in the state of Connecticut.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-V.

Posted by Vardibidian at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So, look. I don’t get macroeconomics, and for all I bleat about it, I can’t say I really get national politics, either. But where are the Governors? Here in the Nutmeg State, the Land of Steady Habits, our illustrious Governor has come out with a brutal budget, and the towns are coming out with brutal budgets as well, because it’s a brutal time. And as a brutal time, brutal budgets are going to feel particularly brutal—Left Blogovia has been hocking about public transportation cuts just at the time when people can’t afford alternatives. My own home town is considering (or talking about considering) cutting back to half-day kindergarten, purely as a cost-cutting measure, which of course will add day care costs onto the burden many of us are sweating.

Meanwhile, our Federal Legislators are considering a stimulus bill that started moderately large and is being whittled down—and much of the whittling is being whittled out of aid to State and Municipal budgets. And where are the Governors? And the big-city Mayors? Why aren’t they on television Sunday morning and on my radio in the afternoon saying We’re doomed! Doooooooomed!

OK, my own Governor is a Republican, and presumably has little interest in getting this recovery bill passed. But there are lots of Democratic governors, aren’t there? And Mayors? Who can talk about the libraries they will have to close, the roads that they won’t be able to resurface, the kindergarten schedule they will cut, the bus stops that won’t have buses, the homeless shelters, the help lines that will go to answering machines, the DMV offices that will cut hours or staff, the job agencies that will be laying off staff, all of that stuff, particularly on the kind of street level thing that people don’t think about.

To take me and my town, off the top of my head, in addition to this kindergarten business, there’s the project to replace the traffic lights with some sort of futuristic LED or something that will cut the electricity budget by twenty thousand dollars a year or something, but the money has to be put out up front, and this isn’t the time. There are the swimming pools; I expect the hours for those will be cut, or the season, or both, and the fees will go up, almost certainly past the point we are willing to pay for a season pass. We already have surprisingly few field trips in the schools, we may have fewer next year, despite being located near the state Capitol, an Opera House, a good symphony, an excellent regional theater, the Mark Twain House, the Noah Webster House, and the Wadsworth Atheneum. All of which (including the Capitol, viewed as a historical/cultural destination) will undoubtedly be tightening their budgets for next year. The branch libraries will be closed on Sundays this summer, I expect, so we will have to find some other sort of activity. Free activity. The Elmwood Center will have, at a guess, fewer classes, and more expensive ones; my Perfect Non-Reader may not get to the Cheerleader Day Camp she wants this summer. Parking will get more expensive, as will, probably, permits of various kinds; if we had budgeted to get the work done on the house this summer, we would have to rebudget, I suspect. The bus system, already terrible. The budget for detailing police to help with traffic problems, conceivably; that could get ugly. The general budget for police, particularly for traffic calming but also for general patrolwork.

And I live in an affluent suburb.

Yes, we screwed up by not investing as heavily as we might have done when the money was good, but I think our situation is fairly typical. And our town can appeal to the State for help, but the State is broke. And both the town and the State are prevented, structurally, from borrowing heavily either to spur economic activity or to alleviate its citizens misery. Which leaves the Feds.

So, if I were managing the passage of this package through the Senate, I would have every Governor I could get onto as many screens and speakers as possible, talking about how this and that could be done, if only the bastards on the Hill would get off their asses and vote.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

T’other day, Atrios linked to the Wikipedia list of current Senators by seniority, and I was surprised by the list. Before I link to it myself, so you are guessing and not skipping ahead to find the link and check, how many current Senators would you guess have been serving for two full terms? How many for three? How many for more than three?

OK, here’s the list. Two terms would be the ones elected in 1996 and taking office in 1997, eight of them, to add to the 39 with greater seniority making 47 with at least two full terms. Less than half. Three terms would be the class of 1990, right? None of them are left, but Sen. Akaka was appointed just before that election (and re-elected in that election), and he is twenty-sixth in seniority. Just over a quarter.

That surprised me. Half the Senate is in their first or second term and another quarter in their third; it’s more complicated than that due to partial terms and all, but still. Looking at the remaining quarter, many of them were elected in the eighties, people like Harry Reid and John McCain (in their fourth terms) and Tom Harkin and Chris Dodd (in his fifth term). Carl Levin, Thad Cochran and Max Baucus just started their sixth terms, joining Dick Lugar and Pat Leahy. And Daniel Inouye is in his eighth term, Ted Kennedy is in his ninth (with the first a partial), and Robert Byrd is in his ninth full term.

What I’m seeing is that most Senators serve one, two or three terms, and that there are a few more who serve a bit longer, and then there are a small number who sit for more than thirty years , and a very small number who sit for fucking ever. Because of the seniority rules and norms of the Senate, the quarter who are around for longer than the others accumulate more power and prominence, so I hear a lot more about those guys, and then my image of "a Senator" becomes somebody who has been there for thirty years. That’s not the typical Senator, although it’s the typical committee chair.

That made me think about term limits in a different way. I’m still against them as basically anti-democratic, but if the point of limiting service to, say, three terms is not to limit the power of incumbency to win election but to limit the power of those outliers like Dick Lugar and Carl Levin, it makes more sense. Sure, those Senators’ constituents are happy with them, but it looks, on the face of it, as if it’s likely to be detrimental to the Senate as a whole to have those atypical Senators gather all the power in their hands. Of course, a much better solution would be to modify the seniority rules. But since the rules are largely in the hands of those outliers, it could certainly be awkward.

In the House, the situation looks much the same, except perhaps more so. Half have been in for less than ten years; three-quarters less than eighteen years. An eighth for twenty years or so, and only 25 got to the House in 1980 or before. Those 25 outliers, though, include 10 of the 21 committee chairs. The seniority system isn’t as powerful in the House, but still, it’s not only that a group of six percent of the house has half the chairs—after all, only 21 people can be committee chairs, so that will be five percent anyway—it’s that the group of six percent are obvious outliers.

And one of the effects is that group of outliers comes to seem less like outliers and more like the typical case.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So a quick question about politics. It seemed likely to me that all the Republicans in the House were going to vote against our stimulus package, and that’s what happened. Given that we have a President who both campaigned on avoiding partisan politics and appeared to take seriously the idea of sitting down and talking with the other Party, any support from that Party would be viewed as proof of Our Only President’s post-partisan credentials. Although it might have been in the interests of one or two Republican Representatives to cross the lines and burnish their own post-partisan credentials, the discipline of that Party over the last fifteen years or so works against that, both in providing examples of the hammer coming down on such ‘moderates’ and in replacing such Representatives, either with Republicans who disdain bipartisanship and therefore gain nothing by engaging in it, or with Democrats. What’s left of the Republican Party in the House isn’t as vulnerable to such temptations, and then the Party did their job of whipping the vote into shape. I don’t blame them for that, except of course that as far as actual governing goes, it stinks.

But as we so often observe about politics here in this Tohu Bohu, there’s what happens, and then there’s the story of what happens. So what’s the story here?

There are two obvious and competing storylines, it seems to me. One is that Our Only President, for all his post-partisan rhetoric, when the rubber hits the road is the same old partisan politician doing the same old partisan things. The other is that Our Only President put this and that into the package and took this and that out of the package, all in negotiation across the aisle, but when the rubber hit road, the Republicans turned their backs on the whole thing.

So here’s a question to Gentle Readers all. Which story about what happened are you hearing? I don’t mean what actually happened, which is (surprise!) more complicated than that. And I don’t really mean which story are the specific outlets reporting, as some are reporting one and some the other, just as you would expect, and the some are having people on to argue it back and forth, just as you would expect. I will say that the cable news people are pretty obviously going with the one that’s good for Republicans, but again, that’s what you would expect. No, what I’m interested in is, as far as you can tell from the general zeitgeist, which story is becoming the story? Have you heard actual humans talk about it without being paid to do so? If so, have they settled on a story?

The power of rhetoric is, at heart, the power to tell the story of what happened, often before it happens. If Our Only President loses this one, it’s a bad sign.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

One of these days, about twelve o'clock/this old world is gonna rock.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

To celebrate the combination of Martin Luther King day and the Day Before, here's a quote from the Reverend Doctor M.L.K., Jr., from a speech on April 10, 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Oh, this is a period for leaders. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity. Leaders not in love with money, but in love with justice. Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause.

Oh, Gd give us leaders. A time like this demands
great leaders.
Leaders whom the lust of office does not kill
Leaders whom the spoils of life cannot buy
Leaders who possess opinions and will
Leaders who will not lie
Leaders who can stand before a demagogue
and damn his treacherous flatteries without winking.
Tall leaders, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
in public duty and in private thinking.

And this is the need, my friends, of the hour. This is the need all over the nation. In every community there is a dire need for leaders who will lead the people, who stand today amid the wilderness toward the promised land of freedom and justice. God grant that ministers, and lay leaders, and civic leaders, and businessmen, and professional people all over the nation will rise up and use the talent and the finances that God has given them, and lead the people on toward the promised land of freedom with rational, calm, nonviolent means. This is the great challenge of the hour.

And if we will do this, my friends, we will be able to speed up the coming of this new order, which is destined to come. This new world in which men will be able to live together as brothers. This new world in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. This new world, which men will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks. Yes, this new world in which men will no longer take necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. This new world in which men will learn the old principle of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They will hear once more the voice of Jesus crying out through the generations saying, “Love everybody.” This is that world. Then right here in America we will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrims pride,
From every mountain side,
Let freedom ring.

The quoted poem is Josiah Gilbert Holland's “Wanted”; fairly freely paraphrased. I suspect that Mr. Holland would be somewhat surprised to have found his words in Rev. King's mouth, and in my mind not only today, but tomorrow, when another tall man, sun-crowned, answers our desperate need for leaders, and tells us again that this is that world.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So there’s been a bit of a blogsnit about Justice Alito skipping lunch with Our Incoming President. It’s true that snubbing the President-Elect because he voted against your confirmation whilst in the Senate seems petty and small. And if it’s true that there’s a Supreme Court Justice who will not walk one the same side of the street as the Senate Office Building, it calls into question his ability to interpret the Constitution.

But it is an awkward thing, when you think about it. And I did think about it, and I wondered—when was the last time a President came into office while there was a sitting Supreme Court Justice against whose confirmation he had voted? Clearly, it must have been a while. It’s hard to compare Justice Alito’s behavior against the last person in his position, when that last person is… well, neither Our Nearly-Erstwhile President nor his father served in the Senate, nor did the sandwiched Man from Hope. Nor Reagan, nor Jimmy Carter, nor Gerald Ford. Richard Nixon did, but somehow I hadn’t realized that he served only two years; he did not vote on any of Harry Truman’s appointments. Which means that we would have to go back to Lyndon Johnson, who voted for Potter Stewart and John Harlan, as did John Kennedy; the others during that time were all voice votes. Truman’s entire Senate career was under FDR, so I assume he wouldn’t have voted against those nominees.

In fact, unless I miss my guess, the previous Supreme Court Justice (before Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito) to greet as new President a man who voted in a roll call against his confirmation in the Senate would be Louis Brandeis and Warren Harding. Then-Sen. Harding definitely voted against confirming Mr. Brandeis in 1916. I don’t see any other possibilities in the last ninety-two years.

The President before Warren Harding to have sat in the Senate was Benjamin Harrison, who presumably would have voted against Grover Cleveland’s nominees in 1888, but he was out of the Senate as of March 1887. As an extra bonus there, Benjamin Harrison would have sat in the Senate alongside Lucius Lamar (1877 to 1885).

Andrew Johnson would be before that, and the nomination of Nathan Clifford in January 1858. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the 19th-Century Justices refused to meet with the Presidents from the other Party, particularly if the Justice was pro-slavery, the vote before the Civil War, and the post-Civil War President was, you know, Andrew Johnson. Actually, I’m not absolutely certain that Andrew Johnson voted against Nathan Clifford’s confirmation. He was representing Tennessee in the U.S. Senate in January 1858 as a Democrat, but he was a War Democrat; Then-Pres. Buchanan was a Democrat, but a doughface. The vote was 26-23. But I haven’t been able to find out who voted which way, and there were 66 seats, so a fair number of people didn’t vote at all. And there were 20 Republicans, who may have all voted against the pro-Slavery Democrat, or perhaps some of them didn’t vote, but at least one Anti-Slavery Democrat must have voted against his party, but was it Andrew Johnson? Gentle Readers with access to the Congressional Record from 1858 should let me know.

It doesn’t look as if James Buchanan voted against any Supreme Court candidates that were confirmed, although I don’t really know anything about his relationship with the rest of his Party in the Andrew Jackson/Martin Van Buren years. Similarly, Franklin Pierce would presumably have voted with his Party, so it looks like His Accidency John Tyler would have been the previous nay-voter to meet a Justice as President, presumably Roger Taney in 1836—wait, no, John Tyler had resigned his Senate seat on February 29, and the vote on Roger Taney was on March 15. And the earlier ones were voice votes or losers.

So. Trivia question: How many times has a Supreme Court Justice served with a President who voted against his confirmation whilst in the Senate? Answer: Once definitely, maybe twice. And twice more on Tuesday. Unless, of course, I've screwed up my research.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was asked a while ago what I thought of Barack Obama’s designated Cabinet. As I’ve been the one hocking about the importance of a President being surrounded by good people rather than by a secretive cabal of crooks and incompetents, I suppose it’s a reasonable thing to expect me to pass judgment on this crew. So. Here we are, and I am indebted again the the CQ cabinet watch for the list and certain insights. I’m going alphabetically, and shallowly. Remember, these are the initial reactions of a blogger who has not been paying close attention recently.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack There seem to be two reasonable reactions to this choice. First is to point out that only Nixon could go to China, and that perhaps only Tom Vilsack can battle King Corn. The other reaction is Yyyyyyiccch. I lean to the second. CQ had not put the Governor on their short list; Our Incoming President could, it seems, have done worse.

Attorney General Eric Holder I don’t have much feeling about Mr. Holder, who seems qualified. He doesn’t seem to be a crusader, but there’s no obvious evidence that he is an incompetent or a crook.

Secretary of Commerce Bill Richardson, of course, was Our Incoming President’s choice, and although I yield to no-one in my admiration and fondness for Gov. Richardson, that appears to be because there’s no need to yield. Not really a traffic jam at the intersection of fondness and admiration in Bill Richardson Square, is there? It’s still possible that Austin Goolsbee will slip into the Cabinet here, and I would just like to point out that (a) I once attempted to rhyme Austin Goolsbee’s name in a song, and (2) I’m fairly sure that in four years on the APDA circuit together, we never once were placed in the same round.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates Meh. I see the point of it, of course, and I should probably point out that Secretary Gates is not, by all available evidence, a member of the s.c. of c.&i., but I have to say I would have preferred somebody else there. It is my hope that after overseeing a withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, handing over the permanent military installations to the Iraqis and pigs flying in formation around HappyLand’s Cloud Palace, Secretary Gates retires to spend more time writing his bitter, rueful memoirs.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan The advantage of a hoops-buddy of OIP being given charge of education is that it is likely that issues at the department will be brought to his attention with some frequency. On the other hand, I don’t see that Mr. Duncan will have much clout. On the other other hand, I’d just as soon see federal interference in local school retreat for a little while, other than just handing over great big overflowing buckets of money. We still do that, right?

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu The only question I have is whether Mr. Chu will have the political chops to get things done. I’ve never heard anything bad about the man, and symbolically speaking it’s a wonderful choice, but not only is the Secretary of Energy going to be busier than a one-legged man in a four year ass-kicking contest, the Secretary of Energy is going to be in an ass-kicking contest over the next four years, and I just hope he’s got good shoes. And two legs.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Daschle I don’t much like Tom Daschle, but certainly OIP signals with this appointment that he is serious about reforming the way we pay for health insurance and health care. A strong choice, and that’s a good thing, and a choice that shows (unsurprisingly) a respect for legislation and legislators and the legislative process, which may work well since whatever happens will have to get through the Congress.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano Meh, Meh. I’m not convinced that her heart is in the right place. In my secret heart of hearts, I cherish the delusion that OIP will abolish the DHS, which was a terrible idea and should be recognized as a panicky power-grab with disastrous consequences. Admittedly, there’s never been any inkling whatsoever that OIP recognizes that, and this choice fits into the mainstream of thought on the topic, rather than my own comfy fringe.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan I’m a big believer in the federal role in Housing and in Urban Development, so there’s a sense in which I’d love to have seen him give the thing to Barney Frank, along with enough real power and money to tempt him to take it, but as that was just never going to happen, I don’t mind giving it to a successful bureaucrat with an architecture degree. I haven’t seen Big Ideas about Housing from OIP, but then I haven’t been looking.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar The worst thing about Sen. Salazar is that he was part of the Gang of Fourteen Assholes. That’s bad enough.

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis She’s a fine symbolic choice, and I don’t have any question about her being good in the position, neither a crook nor an incompetent. On the other hand, I’d love to see somebody with serious clout in this position, somebody who knows where the bodies are buried, someone like Dick Gephardt. On the other other hand, the problem with picking people with clout is that it prevents fine symbolic choices who are also perfectly good picks.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton This choice of course has expanded to fill all available conversational space, and I don’t really have anything to add to what’s been said. I still don’t understand why she wants to do this job, but good luck to her.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood Another symbolic appointment, and although I would love love love to see somebody truly powerful and connected here, I am reasonable. It’s not a bad choice, all things considered, although part of the symbolism is that OIP doesn’t think the Department of Transportation is at all important. Sigh.

Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner No surprises here. Nothing particular to say, except that it is unfair the extent to which I suspect that he will turn out to be both a crook and an incompetent. No basis for it, other than the whole Kissinger and Associates, IMF, Citigroup stuff. Which ain’t beans. In fact, you know how four years ago, I said that one way to distinguish between candidates for the nomination was to ask yourself which ones would nominate a Jack Snow? Tim Geithner strikes me as Jack Snow. I hope I’m wrong.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki Knockout choice. Talk about an ass-kicker. This choice (and Gen. Shinseki’s agreement to it) showed OIP’s imagination, persuasiveness and smarts. The question of course is whether those things will do much good, but it’s still kinda nice to see them.

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa P. Jackson Jersey in the House? Say Yo! Seriously, what they hell is with EPA and New Jersey? And is it clear that serious Environmental Policy (that is, everything relating to climate change) (that is, everything) is not going to be in her hands?

Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag In case it hasn’t been absolutely clear, this is yet another signal that OIP wants to work with the legislature, and with people who work with the legislature. That’s a good thing. And this guy seems honest enough, for an economist.

Trade Representative Ron Kirk Hey, he’s the black Jack Snow! No, that’s totally unfair, but seriously, this is not a guy I want to be in the room when the economic policies get made. Not a crook, not an incompetent, he’s a pro-business Democrat who lobbies for energy companies. Again, I hope I’m wrong about this guy.

Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice Seems fine. Not a crook, not an incompetent, and (importantly) not a loose cannon. I’d rather have a negotiator (since the Secretary of State will not be one), but that’s my preference, not OIP’s.

Director of National Drug Control Policy Did you know the Drug Czar gets to be in the Cabinet? That’s just crazy.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel Never say anything bad about Rahm Emanuel.

Vice President Joe Biden Nine months ago, I didn’t like Joe Biden; he was one of the guys way down low on my list of Good Democratic Senators. And I’m still cross about the Bankruptcy Bill. But he’s grown on me, and I like the idea of him sitting in on important policy meetings.

So. To sum up. I’m not knocked out by most of the choices. He’s put his most powerful people in Health, State, Defense and Agriculture. I’m focused on Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. That doesn’t mean that nothing will get done in those areas; remember that Our Erstwhile President chose Rod Paige as Secretary of Education and pushed through a huge (and devastating) change in our elementary education system.

By the way, when CQ went and gathered short lists of three for each of seventeen chairs, they wound up including the eventual choice in only seven of those lists. What that says to me is that either Congressional Quarterly are totally out of touch (which is possible, but not terribly likely) or that Barack Obama made up his appointments with an eye toward something different than the CQ informers were thinking. I suspect that much of the difference in thinking was that Barack Obama is unusually focused on making a cabinet that he believes will work well with the Congress, specifically with the Senate.

On the other hand, there are people who could well come out of the Cabinet and run for Governor or Senator (I’m thinking Hilda Solis, Shaun Donovan, Arne Duncan, Lisa Jackson, even Steven Chu) if there’s an opening there. It’s not a group of elder statesmen or ivory tower academics and authors. And certainly I don’t think that he’s gathering a secretive cabal of crooks and incompetents. It’s a perfectly reasonable Cabinet for a man who has been positioning himself as a perfectly reasonable President. Can he achieve greatness by making that greatness seem perfectly reasonable?

… we’ll see, won’t we? But I don’t think anybody’s ever gone broke through overestimating Barack Obama.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

About a week ago, in a restless night of troubled sleep, I had a dream that I’d like to tell you about. Comfy?

In this dream, Francis Heaney was upset because he kept being quoted in magazine articles and on blogs as an example of a liberal who was disillusioned with Barack Obama because the Cabinet was shaping up as moderate-bipartisan. I was trying to reassure him and his Brooklyn hipster friends that it was perfectly okay that the mainstream press was erroneously reporting that Left Blogovia was bitter at Barack Obama’s sensible moderate stances, because it made Our Next President’s progressive policies appear to be moderate, and thus more likely to become the actual policies of the actual government.

The conversation didn’t go well. Mostly, Francis was on about how he knew that President-Elect Obama was putting together a pretty good cabinet, and hadn’t betrayed the Left at all, and was just upset at being misquoted, or having his words twisted anyway, which made him look like an idiot. He was focused on the dishonesty of it, and how he was being portrayed as wild-eyed and ignorant, and he didn’t see why all of that was perfectly all right because it had some theoretical marginal modicum of rhetorical use for the Party. Meanwhile, one of his hipster friends was arguing that Barack Obama really had abandoned the progressive netroots, and that she really was upset about it, and that my point about how Left Blogovia wasn’t really upset was totally wrong, and also my point about how it would help get progressive policies in place was totally wrong, because the appointments showed that Our Next President wasn’t really interested in progressive policies. And I kept trying to make my point to each of them, or rather to both of them, which wasn’t working, because when I made a particularly good point about the Cabinet’s progressive cred, Francis dismissed it, saying he knew all of that and it didn’t mean that the press should lie about him, and when I made a particularly good point about how even if it sucked for him it built up this useful-but-phony idea of Left Blogovia for the White House-to-come to triangulate against, his hipster friend objected to being called phony and argued against the progressive cred of the appointees.

I should probably add that Francis was wearing a dark blue suit, or maybe a silk shirt in a solid dark blue; something totally outside his rather famous fashion sense, anyway. And his friend was a young woman with short brown hair and no visible tattoos or piercings, making her equally improbable as a Brooklyn hipster, I suppose. It was a dream, you know? And I don’t think I’ve seen Francis face-to-face in twenty years.

Anyway, over the last couple of days, in real life, I’ve been musing about this idea, which is that Left Blogovia, if we really want to help Barack Obama enact progressive policies whilst looking like a centrist, has to do its part by screaming and yelling about how we’ve been betrayed, and how all of our people are getting shafted, and where are the progressives in the cabinet? The problem with all of that is that much of Left Blogovia is made up of people who are neither incredibly stupid nor aggressively dishonest. I’m not saying they’re a race of philosopher-kings, but frankly, I think the idea of working the ref seems a little distasteful to most of them. They pride themselves on knowledge and insight. Like Francis (in my dream), they would rather not look like idiots, and frankly none of them seem to have the kind of identification with the Party or loyalty to it to take one for the team. Nor is that sort of thing shown itself to be an effective way of getting or keeping a Left Blogovian readership. I mean, yes, you can attract readers with blistering (or snarky) attacks on the DNC or Hillary Clinton or Harry Reid, but (a) attacks on Barack Obama from the left haven’t been a real advantage so far, and (2) stupid made-up craziness hasn’t been a real advantage so far.

So there’s kind of a strategic problem, I’m thinking. And then Barack Obama invited Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Now there really is something for Left Blogovia to get outraged about. No dishonesty needs to be involved, nor do we have to pretend that something is important when it isn’t important. Yes, this invitation is of only symbolic importance, but it is of major symbolic importance, and some of the folks in Left Blogovia are particularly good at expressing the ways that symbols (like who is asked to speak for the country at what times) have real consequences in the lives of real people. And others are just really good at sifting through the record to find abhorrent comments by people who like to make abhorrent comments. And others who are just really good at snark. Well done, Barack Obama! You successfully pissed off Left Blogovia, realio trulio pissed ’em off! Well done, you big jerk!

Er, except, oh shit, it doesn’t work if I say well done. And really, it only works if we really do express our anger—and please understand that I really am angry about this, and for all of that dream conversation I sure wish he hadn’t invited that man to speak at our inauguration. The man has said horrible things about some of my favorite people in the world, and deliberately intended to deprive my countrymen (and incidentally, my friends) of their rights. He has made bizarre, violent and seemingly ignorant comments about our foreign relations. He has lied, again and again, about matters of public policy. He has supported intolerance and hate. He is bad, bad, bad, and I am seriously outraged that he will be representing America at the inauguration of Our Next President, and that the aforesaid inauguration will happen under his benefice.

Now, you knew all that stuff, Gentle Reader, I’m sure. But here’s my point: you should be saying it. If this is a careful political maneuver by Barack Obama, it works only if the people who are outraged by it on the Left say so, get out of the chat rooms and into the streets, and make it clear that Barack Obama is far, far, far from the Left on many important issues we hold dear. If it is not a careful political maneuver, but a careless misjudgment of Rick Warren, it is even more important that those of us who are outraged declare our outrage, and do so in the strongest terms we can.

My feeling, particularly between the triumph in November and the Inauguration in January, is that on the whole we should give Our Incoming President the benefit of the doubt. We should remember that he has many constituencies to negotiate, and has to actually govern as effectively as possible, which means compromise. I try to remember that he is a very smart man, who again and again during the campaign did or said things (or chose not to do or say things) against all the advice that I was muttering at my screen, and again and again his campaign succeeded. I think we should keep hope alive, not only for the future America and the future world that we want to see, but for the success of this incredibly important man at an incredibly important moment.

Sometimes, though, that hope and that benefit should not translate into shrugging our shoulders at the most perplexing and infuriating decisions. Sometimes we need to rant and rave, not despite that hope, but because of that hope. The election is over, but our democracy is not; we voted (we all voted, didn’t we?) and some of us donated and made calls and marched and put up signs and registered voters, and our work is still not done. Nor, please the Divine, will it ever be done. And it seems to me that our work today, and over the next three weeks, has to include a large amount of ranting about Rick Warren.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Your Humble Blogger is hoping to get a couple more Book Reports done, and we are within inches of having a full set of Cabinet Nominees for me to appreciate, but none of that is going to get a note written tonight. Sorry, Gents. This week’s notes were far too long, and now I can’t get back in the typing mood. Plus, there is much to do around here away from the keyboard. So.

So. I’ll just mention, that if anybody had told me, oh, eight years ago, that the fellow who was going to be Our Only President for the next two terms—two terms!—would be in a country we had invaded and occupied, and some crazed local journalist would fling his shoes at the President of the United States in anger and contempt, and that much of the world would (a) react with sympathy for the shoe-flinger, and (2) immediately believe the unconfirmed and biased report that the shoe-flinger had been severely beaten in prison after being dragged away, well… I didn’t like the guy, and I remember thinking that he would be a lousy President, but that it probably wouldn’t be all that bad, certainly not worse than Ronald Reagan.

And if you told me that not only would our standing around the world be so low, but that a good portion (possibly most) of the population of this country would react with sympathy and would believe that report… and that I would react that way as well…

Look, he’s the President of the United States, and as I’ve been saying, he’s the only one we’ve got (for a while yet, anyway). I should take the insult to the President at least somewhat as an insult to this nation (which it was), and should bridle at the idea that people should fling shoes at the President. And I do bridle at it. Don’t fling shoes at the President, people! Just don’t do it! No more!

Whew. I managed to work myself up to it. It wasn’t easy, though.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Your Humble Blogger is probably on record somewhere around here as not being particularly concerned about corruption in my government officials. I mean, I don’t like it, but I am willing to accept a certain level of it, if the officials are also doing their jobs. The image of Mayor Curley, f’r’ex, sitting in the front parlor of the house in Jamaica Plains (built with kickbacks and ’donated’ labor and outright bribes) taking a line of petitioners and promising them government jobs in return for votes—well, it ain’t quite James Madison, but the subway got extended. How many times have I told my African Dictators joke?

Anyway, most corruption is a matter of scale, as far as I’m concerned. Favors, gifts, jobs for nephews, fund-raising, arranging a meeting, dropping hints about future private-sector positions. Your Humble Blogger is happy to wink an eye at that at one level, but when it gets up into the five or six digits, or seven, or eight, that’s a different matter altogether. If I hadn’t disliked Diane Wilkerson (unfairly, but if she had done a damn thing about flood abatement in the Fenway when I lived there, I might have cared if I was being unfair), I would have pointed out that she only took as much cash as she could stuff into her bra. Yes, put her in cuffs, but seriously, that’s the level of skimming (and meddling in who gets what liquor licenses) that doesn’t really change much in the big picture.

Selling a Senate seat? A trifle different.

You know, when Joshua Micah Marshall mused about a State Corruption Contest, allowing his reader to point out that the final three are undoubtedly Alaska, Illinois and Louisiana, he immediately got gazillions of emails from people outraged that their own states (Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Arizona) were deserving of that final cut. And my thought, as a Nutmegger, was that thank goodness all we had was our last Governor having served a short prison term and he’s now out. Well, and the Senate Minority Leader asking the mob to beat up his granddaughter’s boyfriend. And the mayor of Hartford having his countertops done by the company that was supposed to be paving Park Street, which company never quite got around to sending him all those invoices (or pulling permits, for that matter). And the same for some of the Hartford city council. And the mayor of our biggest city being a cokehead. And the previous one getting convicted on 16 federal racketeering charges. Oh, and I forgot about the current Governor’s chief of staff who claimed not to have read the memo that banned leaning on public officials to lean on their staffs to attend fund-raisers, and then it turned out that she had written that memo. Oh, and the thing where a staff attorney for the State Ethics Commission forged a letter of complaint against the last Governor’s political enemy. But nothing really serious.

So now I’m wondering—do y’all think there has been an increase in the frequency and severity of corruption scandals in the last twenty years? Or is it the Recency Illusion, and most of this sort of thing gets forgotten very quickly? Or have our standards for corruption become stiffer, so that the sort of thing that would never have made the papers a generation or two ago now are prosecuted in court?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Some Gentle Readers will be aware that YHB lives in the Elm State, and thus is represented in the United States Senate by the interesting Chris Dodd and the …even more interesting… Joe Lieberman. OK, he’s an asshole. Not Senator Dodd. The other one. You know, the one that couldn’t win his primary as an incumbent.

Well, and it seems as if my Party has decided to make him chair of the Homeland Security Committee, because he was already there, and it would be a lot of work to put somebody else in charge. Or something. Because he is the best possible person to head up a Senate Committee on Homeland Security. Because he has shown terrific judgment on all those issues. No, wait, he hasn’t shown good judgment. And he’s an asshole.

I know some GRs think of me as a process-obsessed old centrist party hack because I occasionally break into singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” and am all in favor of letting the Senate be the Senate. But seriously, it’s people like me, who call themselves Democrats and want to be part of our Party that should be the most outraged by this. Here I am, trying to convince y’all that there is value to thinking of yourself as part of a Party, as part of a Party that stands for something and has a history and is on the right side of policy questions. And then you get to put that shit-eating grin on your face and ask me is that the party that put Joe Lieberman in charge of Homeland Security and left him there? And I have to admit that yes, it is.

Of course this is obnoxious because after all he is in the Senate because he ran against the Democratic Party and its choice. Then he chose to support the person who ran against the Democratic Party and its choice for President. And in doing so, he not only supported that candidate but other people who were running against Democratic Party candidates for other office. And did so while, as Colin McEnroe puts it, acting like a snake. For all of those reasons, our Party should have repudiated him and taken away his toys purely as a punitive measure.

Aside from the whole election campaign, though, the man has shown shockingly bad judgment on Homeland Security issues for years and years. He has consistently backed terrible laws; he has supported the worst excesses of Our Only President and his secretive cadre of crooks and incompetents; he has shown in the committee, on the floor, on television and on the stump that his ideas about Homeland Security are not just opposed to the Party Platform (which, again, he has repudiated in the context of the campaign) but utterly without merit of any kind. And then on top of that to support John McCain for President on the grounds that his Homeland Security policies and abilities were superior to those of Barack Obama… well, I just can’t imagine defending my Party giving him that chairmanship.

If we were to put him in charge of Labor or the Environment or even Health policy, it would be bad for Party discipline and seem to work against the idea that our Party does stand for anything or take its platform seriously. But it could be defended. Not as a really good choice, but as a practical political matter, claiming that the benefits of perceived magnanimity and bipartisanship outweigh the costs of perceived weakness and lack of principle. After all, it is true that John McCain and Joe Lieberman have between them cornered the market on bipartisanship to the extent that anything the two of them support is bipartisan within the common cultural conversation, and anything the two do not support is partisan, whether either have support from other members of the two parties or for that matter support from anyone else in the country. Let alone whether they might be good policies. It’s astonishing, but it’s true, and we go to govern with the Sunday public affairs television we have, not the Sunday public affairs television we want.

But Homeland Security? The only conceivable way to make this anything but an utter disgrace and disaster would be if President-Elect Obama and Senator Reid have a secret plan to abolish the grotesque mistake that is the Department of Homeland Security altogether, taking its tasks to the appropriate departments of the Cabinet and the appropriate Committees of the Senate, leaving Sen. Lieberman in the Chair of a worthless toothless and newsless void of a Homeland Security Committee, with the utmost personal humiliation involved in the timing and passage of the change.

No, that’s not going to happen. But I can dream, can’t I?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

OK, I’m just saying. There’s a lot of talk about how Michelle Obama is a professional, with an advanced degree, just like Hillary Rodham Clinton was, and that there are lots of dangers for a First Lady who is a professional with an advanced degree. With “an impressive professional background”. While Our Lame Duck First Lady was only, you know, a librarian.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

In among the various things that happened in that election thingie earlier in the week, our Question One, proposing to hold a state constitutional convention, went down to crushing defeat. I mean, crushing. 59%-41%, at latest count. Whew.

For me, the key thing is that this means we will continue to have every state law undergo legislative deliberation (being not hasty in judgment), rather than having a dozen initiatives on the ballot every November. I loathe initiatives. Have I mentioned that? I love representative democracy. And I loathe initiatives. Do you want to see our sample ballot? Two questions, and then I just fill in the little oval next to the people with a D by their names, and I’m done. Of course, it’s more work for those people with a D by their names, when they get to the State Senate or the Assembly, which is why I vote for them.

Anyway, for y’all who don’t vote in Connecticut, the thing that seems newsworthy, but that I haven’t seen talked about quite so much, is that this convention was the only chance that anti-marriage activists had to prevent homosexual marriage from becoming legal in Connecticut. And it failed. And from the limited amount I could tell, the question failed largely because people did not want the anti-marriage activists from potentially taking over such a convention. So this was a tremendous success for marriage, not only legally but socially. We win.

And when I say marriage, of course, I don’t just mean my marriage, which is doing quite well, thank you very much. I mean the right of couples to marry, whether they have two, one or zero penes between them. Or how often. I’m sorry that in California, the county clerks will have to keep checking the pants of people who want marriage licenses. The passage of the California penile code is a serious matter, and I feel terrible for those married couples who have the wrong number and will have to whip it out in court, or whatever will happen to them.

Why not come to Connecticut? We have three more seasons than you do, and you will be able to cross the state border in at least one direction without giving up any rights. I have to put in my pitch for the Elm State over the Bay State, because we are, um, well, look, one of their Democratic Senators has severe brain damage, while one of ours, oh right. OK, how about this: when our sports teams suck eggs, we get rid of ’em. That’s right, none of this waiting for eighty years and then being insufferable about it. We gave our National League team two years, and the second year we made them play their home games in Brooklyn. And the Whalers, too.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I would like to write a note about the experience of voting, of watching the news about the voting, about watching the returns, about waking up this morning to the news. About seeing the hand-lettered Yes We Did sign while I was driving home from dropping off my Best Reader at work. But the thing is, I keep bursting into tears. It’s not a very dignified way to blog.

A couple of days ago, I watched one of those videos, those little YouTube movies where people sing and play instruments and we can watch intercut shots of celebrities, news images and unknown photogenic people, and it was really, really moving. And I thought that one of the things that this election would be about, culturally, is whether people who looked at that video saw America. That is, whether people saw a fat bald black guy with ptosis, and said, that guy is an American. The guy with dreads. The old white woman with the butch haircut. The black woman with the funky haircut and the ripped Black Sabbath T-shirt. The Asian woman. The hulking young black guy in the Texas sweatshirt. The English rock star who wears sunglasses inside. The little white kid with the snow shovel. The slightly effeminate Jewish Hollywood actor. The old black woman with the flag over her head. The old black guy in the uniform. The hostile-looking Latina. Those mobs at the rallies. The immigrant families in those old photos. That kid holding the We are America sign. Martin Luther King, Junior.

Some of us who look at that video and said this is who we are, this is us. And, I’m afraid, some of us look at that video and see outsiders, troublemakers and aliens. Some of us couldn’t look at the two candidates and think that one is like me, and that one isn’t. But it turns out that a lot of us, an awful lot of us, can look at them and think that one is like me, and that one… that one is also like me.

Over at TAPPED, Adam Serwern writes that We’re All Americans Now. I think that’s why I keep crying. We really are all Americans now. Two hundred and eleven years ago, our forefathers, and I mean all our forefathers, even those of us who aren’t in any way descended from any of them, brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. And it seems that every generation or so, we make this nation new again, a new birth of freedom. We are all Americans, now. All those people in the video, Barack Obama and John McCain, Abraham Lincoln and Reverend King, Your Humble Blogger and that kid with the sign.

Today, every American citizen and millions of people who aren’t American citizens now, and maybe never will be, can look at Barack Obama, and look at the people who filled Grant Park, and the ones who danced outside the White House, and the ones who were booing in the Biltmore, and we can say this is all America. All of it. There isn’t any need to shut anyone out. This is our home. It’s our country. And when I say Yes, we can, what I mean is this:

We’re Americans. We can do anything.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Your Humble Blogger is trying not to get too obsessed with tomorrow’s election. I like elections, but there is the danger that the election becomes the graven idol of democracy, if you know what I mean. So I thought I would just write a little note pointing out that we have, in the United States, accomplished an enormous amount already, and will need to accomplish a lot more after Wednesday, no matter who takes office in January.

I do wish that the tremendous popular movement and organization that Barack Obama and his associates had gathered were focused slightly less on his election and his person, and a little more on potential policy outcomes. If we elect Barack Obama and don’t push for a sane health care and health insurance industry, it won’t happen. If we elect sixty Democratic Senators, and don’t push for a sane foreign policy, a sane relationship between our nation and the rest of the world, particularly the countries who (to quote Sen. McCain), don’t like us very much, it won’t happen. If we elect three hundred Democratic Congressmen, and we don’t push for sane and urgent action on climate change, our atmosphere and our oceans, our energy needs and our energy habits, it won’t happen.

But if we do push for those things, they might. And we have institutions, now, that will allow us to push together. We have symbols, now, to guide us together. We have the rituals, now, that will keep us together. And we have the values, now, expressed for us, to us, and with us, that have brought us together and will bind us together.

So when you go out tomorrow to vote, Gentle Reader, or if you have already voted or even if you aren’t a citizen of our United States and can’t vote, enjoy the election, the marvel that is a nation coming together to put a group of people out of power without having to shoot them. Elections are marvelous miracles, and we should enjoy them. But they aren’t the work of democracy. Wednesday, and Thursday, and December and January and February, and every day is the work of making ourselves a free, self-governing nation, a steward of the world (who isn’t?) and a good and fitting home of the brave.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your Humble Blogger came across Focus on the Family’s Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America (pdf you betcha) and meant to bring it to Gentle Readers as a sort of Hallowe’en spooky scary scarespook frightener. The Dr. Dobson’s gang created “a picture of the changes that are likely or at least very possible if Senator Obama is elected and the far-Left segments of the Democratic Party gain control of the White House, the Congress, and perhaps then the Supreme Court.” The Supreme Court is particularly important, as in the scenario not only do Ruth Bader Ginsberg and John Paul Stevens resign almost immediately, but Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia are also replaced by October 2009. Yes, ten months, four Justices. At least very possible.

And then the crazy really starts.

But the thing is, being a terrible blogger and all, YHB read the thing and then went and washed the dishes and drew moons for the Youngest Member and in the hour since I read it, I’ve gone from wanting to snark my heart out (you will notice that Focus on the Family approves of the idea that religiously affiliated adoption agencies should close down rather than place children with same-sex parents, and then whines about secular agencies not placing children with bigots and zealots) (OK, I can’t resist one more snark—during the four years of a foreseen Barack Obama adminstration, Russia invades and occupies the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria) to having a moderately serious point, albeit one I am repeating from four years ago.

So. This projection includes terrorist attacks on four American cities, killing hundreds of people. Hundreds! OK, enough with the snark. I suspect that we’re going to have the usual round of people who are appalled, appalled, by the idea that someone would have the temerity to suggest that the likelihood of terrorist attacks is dependent somewhat on who is President. This man Round would like it on record that he Objects.

Look. If you really think, if your best judgment and all the information you have, leads you to believe that a terrorist attack (or a Russian invasion of Poland) is more likely under one candidate than another, then of course you should say so. We should be talking about that sort of thing as an important part of the election.

Let’s get logical for a minute. Begin with the fact that we have been spending a lot of money and a lot of effort on preventing terrorism. We have been taking our shoes off at airports, we’ve been opening bags and going through scanners. We’ve turned over library records and store receipts and phone logs. We have put up with prison camps, torture and surveillance. Most of these things are under the direct control of the President of the United States, and most of the rest are under the indirect authority. There are, as I see it, four possibilities. First, there’s the possibility that all of those things we’ve been doing to fight terrorism have had no effect whatsoever and will have no effect in the future, because it doesn’t matter who is President. Second, there’s the possibility that Sen. McCain will institute policies that will be more effective than Sen. Obama. Third, the other way around. Fourth, that the danger of terrorism in the US is so low, in the scheme of things, that even though the chances of hundreds of people being killed would be greater under one candidate than the other, the change is insignificant when compared to the effects of different policies on health care, the economy generally, foreign policy, the environment and preparation for natural disasters.

OK, there’s another possibility that just occurred to me, and that’s the judgment that although it does make a difference who is President, these two candidates have policies on terrorism that are so nearly identical that the choice has little effect on the future in that respect. That may even be true, this time. Certainly the candidates have spent very little time (that I’ve noticed, and I do tend to notice this stuff) detailing the differences in their policies, or claiming that their policies would be more effective than their opponents.

And why is this? Well, can you imagine Jim Lehrer asking Do you think the odds of a terrorist attack would be greater under you or your opponent? No. It didn’t happen, and YHB can’t imagine the outcry if it did happen. Why not?

YHB takes the position number four up there, the one that says that terrorism isn’t really that big a deal, and shouldn’t dictate our policies. I have felt for the last seven years or so that I am way out on the fringe on that one. Am I wrong? Do people agree with me? Why? And if they do, why don’t we stop turning over our records and torturing people and taking off our shoes?

As crazy as the letter from 2012 is, and it is very crazy indeed, the part that doesn’t seem crazy is that Dr. Dobson is saying what he thinks about the danger of terrorism. Or, of course, he’s pretending to believe that crap, but that would be false witness.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Your Humble Blogger is big on representative democracy. Y’all know that, right? It won’t be a surprise to Gentle Readers to hear that the initiative process gets right up YHB’s nose. I mean, seriously. Not just on high-minded principle, although of course I’m right on the high-minded principle, but on the pain-in-the-ass criteria as well. Unless it’s a high-minded principle that I should be able to vote without bringing in a sample ballot fully marked out so there’s some chance of getting through it in five minutes or less.

Anyway. Here in Connecticut, the land of the elm and the home of the whatsit, we do not have initiatives, because we elect legislators to, you know, legislate. That’s their job. At least I assume that’s the whole point. Anyway, there is here as everywhere a big chunk of people who want to write laws but don’t want to get them actually passed by a deliberative legislature. So.

In Connecticut, for good and sufficient reasons, we poll every couple of decades to see if we want to hold a Convention at which all limits are off, and everything is up for grabs. It’s on the ballot this time around, and it looks like it may pass, and largely because people want to amend the state constitution to allow for initiatives.

Do y’all remember how I occasionally defend the ad hominem argument? That is, sometimes it’s a good idea to take into account not just what the argument is, but who is making it. The people pushing this Constitutional Convention are a coalition of (a) initiative fanatics, (2) social conservatives, and (iii) tax crazies. If it would be a good idea in the abstract to have a constitutional convention to deliberate amendments, it would not be a good idea to let these three groups into that convention. And they would be in that convention. I don’t think, in the end, we would amend the constitution to ban homosexual marriage and curtail abortion rights, but it would be on the agenda, and it might well pass. And the initiative probably would pass, and the tax crazies might just get us our own Prop 13.

So, if any of y’all vote in the Elm State, please vote no on 1.

The Voter Information Guide for the state of California is 144 pages. The State of Connecticut has a ballot question guide that lists every ballot question in every town in the state and it’s only six pages long. In San Francisco, there are the 12 state propositions and 22 local propositions.

And if you like, here’s my idea for a poster. Here’s the sample ballot for San Francisco: a vote for yes on 1. Here’s the sample ballot for Hartford, a vote for no on 1. I know, it’s trying to persuade on the pain-in-the-ass side, not the “bypass […] legislative scrutiny ” side (to quote from the League of Women Voters of Connecticut), but it might just point out the consequences of the vote.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With apologies to Adlai Stevenson, it may be true that all real americans will vote for Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin, but thankfully, he still needs a majority.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, and since watching that last debate (which was not a pleasant experience, although occasionally opening the laptop and checking the baseball score improved it a lot), I have been ruminating about persona and Presidential politics.

People (including YHB) have roundly mocked the idea of voting for the candidate you would like to have a beer with. And that’s a Good Thing; once the idea got out into the big old marketplace of ideas, it deserved to be mocked. But after watching the debate last night, it occurred to me that if a pollster asked me which candidate I would rather have a beer with, I might well take that as a sort of shorthand or signifier, or perhaps more accurately as a euphemism for which candidate I find least annoying.

I was thinking, again, about this idea I’ve been hocking about all summer, that there are a variety of audiences for political television, debates and conventions and speeches and such. There’s a sense in which the key audience for a debate is the undecided voter; most truly undecided voters will not watch the whole debate, but will catch bits and pieces of it through broadcast news and entertainment shows over the next few days. I should add this time the possibility that an undecided voter will catch bits of it on YouTube or other on-line sources; I think the number of people who (a) are undecided as of three weeks before the election, (2) are going to bother to watch YouTube clips, and (iii) will bother to vote is pretty small, but anyway. But we’ll include them in with those undecided voters who may be swayed by the debates.

I was trying to imagine what it’s like to be part of that group. They don’t find politics entertaining; if they found it entertaining, they would almost certainly have decided by now, and if not, they would have found so much other information that the debates would be the least of it. They do find it important, because they do vote. So I’m guessing that they find all discussion of politics unpleasant, in a range from annoying to disgusting. They watch the evening news or the Today Show, and when something comes up about politics, they grimace and shrug and roll their eyes. Now, that’s going to be at its worst during the campaign season, when there are going to be lots of clips and sound bites and whatnot, but throughout the next four years, one of these guys is going to be President, and that means that one of those guys is going to be on the TV every few days with a sound bite or photo op.

So on one level, if that was who I was, I would be inclined to vote for the guy I found the least annoying. The guy I wouldn’t mind (as much) seeing on the TV two or three times a week. The guy I wouldn’t mind (as much) having a beer with, if it came to that.

Now, as I say, I think that it’s important to mock that idea, because I think that it’s important that people do feel a little guilty that they don’t put a little mental elbow grease into their own governance. And to some extent, the guy who is the most annoying is likely to be annoying because he’s short, or he has a funny accent, or his face is annoyingly expressive, or he repeats himself a lot, or he’s from a different ethnicity, or he’s a woman. And that’s bad for democracy and bad for the government. But often the guy who is the most annoying is annoying because he is stubborn, or he seems indecisive, or he doesn’t listen to the moderator, or he keeps blathering on about stupid things, or he is contemptuous of women, or he dismisses as unimportant the things that really make a difference in the life of the undecided fellow. And those things can be a reasonable heuristic for the same things that high-information voters (such as YHB) base their highly informed judgements on. I mean, not to be all Blinky, but people really do have remarkable capacity for making snap judgments, at least to the point that those snap judgments are often the same as the highly-informed judgments that they come to after getting all that information.

On the other hand, Al Gore really was annoying. So was Our Only President, of course, but I could very easily imagine somebody just dreading the idea of having Al Gore on the television three or four times a week, totally unrelated to any policies or capabilities. And John McCain is annoying, too.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Can I get this off my chest? It’s all over now, and there’s no particular point to whining about it, but you know how all the news articles said that in order to get the Seven Hundred Billion Dollars through the Senate, they had to add A Zillion Dollars in Sweeteners? That’s a lie. Or it’s as close to a lie as dammit, so in effect, it’s a lie.

And an obvious lie. I mean, aside from everything else, it isn’t even plausible that anybody came up with all the pork-barrel crap in that bill between the House vote and the Senate vote. Seriously, is it within the realm of imagination that a tax break for children’s wooden arrows was negotiated with the Senators from Oregon and inserted into the bill in order to get their votes? And if it was, why did they only get one Senator to vote yes? Was the other Senator holding out for another ten bucks an arrow?

No, look. What happened was this: it is blatantly unconstitutional for the Senate to pass a financial rescue plan that hasn’t already passed the House. All money bills must start in the House. That’s the rule. But the House wouldn’t pass it, and the Senate would. So they cheated.

They took the hundred billion dollars in tax breaks that they already had sitting there and stapled the seven hundred billion dollars onto the back of it, and pretended that it meant that it wasn’t a new bill at all, just a little change in the old one. That’s pretty sleazy. And of course as a result instead of the tax break stuff getting passed on its own, or getting rejected, it was held hostage to the so-called rescue plan (one of those interesting grammatical structures in that it wasn’t a rescue, and it wasn’t a plan, but it sure was a rescue plan) so that anybody who wanted to vote for the pork-barrel stuff had to vote for the plan, and veezy verzy. That’s pretty sleazy, too. And yes, the Senate did just happen to have sitting around a bill for hundred billion dollars in tax breaks for exporters of wooden arrows for toy bows and other worthwhile causes, just in case some controversial bill or other needed to be attached to something nice and porky. That’s pretty sleazy as well. But it’s how the Senate works, and none of it’s a particular surprise.

And I’d also like to say this: if this business of “larding up” the seven hundred billion dollar pork roast is that contemptible, surely the two groups who escape such contempt are (a) Representatives who voted for the bill without the added lard, and (2) Representatives who voted against the bill with the added lard. In other words, there are about twenty people who could seriously be identified as having voted to pass the bill because of the sweeteners. They mostly belong to one political Party, I can’t remember its name, something associated with unpopularity and failure, though.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Gentle Readers have undoubtedly been waiting for me to blather on again about the candidates for President and the people with whom they surround themselves. What? No? Where’d everybody go?

Perhaps y’all are headed over to Congressional Quarterly’s site, where you can play with their Cabinet Maker. The link there is to the Republican version, which is the one I found really interesting. After all, Barack Obama is running as a Democrat; for all his post-partisan rhetoric, all the stars and hacks of the Democratic Party are available to him. Not so the Maverick. One consequent of actually betraying your party over and over again is that somehow the bench of people on your side gets mighty thin. And then there’s the fact that Our Only President has surrounded himself with a secretive cabal of incompetents and crooks, and that he and the Republicans in the Legislature are so tremendously unpopular because of all their failures. Anybody he picks from that crowd is tainted with the stink of mixed metaphor failure and unpopularity. And yet, who else is there?

So when the CQ reporters cadged together a Top Three for each seat, for five out of the 14 seats they had to include the current occupant in their list. Now that’s change we can believe in.

And can we talk a little about the fact that James Woolsey is on their Top Three for both Secretary of State and Secretary of Energy? No? How about that James Woolsey is clearly the best of the three for State? Seriously, the other two are Joe Lieberman (Asshole-CT) and, believe it or not, John D. Negroponte. Negroponte, Woolsey, Lieberman. Can somebody ask John McCain to comment on that?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So. Your Humble Blogger wrote last week about the way that John McCain misinterprets the word precondition in Barack Obama’s foreign policy statements. In short, Sen. Obama uses the word to mean a meaningful concession made before a negotiation can even begin. Sen. McCain pretends to understand Sen. Obama to mean any conditions or terms whatsoever.

Then, last night, there was the following exchange:

BIDEN: Yes, well, you know, until two weeks ago—it was two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o’clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that, he said George—we’ve made great economic progress under George Bush’s policies. Nine o’clock, the economy was strong. Eleven o’clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis. That doesn’t make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he’s out of touch. Those folks on the sidelines knew that two months ago.

IFILL: Gov. Palin, you may respond.

PALIN: John McCain, in referring to the fundamental of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce. That’s a positive. That’s encouragement. And that’s what John McCain meant.

Now, is the disagreement about fundamentals the same as the one about preconditions? In both cases, the candidate said something that was widely understood to be a gaffe, or at least a statement worth mocking. In both cases, the candidate now claims that the word he used is now being misunderstood by the mockers. So is it the same?

I honestly don’t know. I am inclined to think that they aren’t. I have a sense that the term precondition in the context of diplomacy did have the meaning that Barack Obama now claims. The other interpretation requires the interpreter to believe that Barack Obama is has a policy that doesn’t jibe with his written policies, nor with common sense. But perhaps that interpretation only requires it to have been a misstatement, or perhaps the sort of slip that reveals a deeper disorientation with the topic. Certainly, my interpretation of his meaning is going to be charitable. I like the man.

On the other side, I don’t actually know what the fundamentals of the economy are. The GDP? The labor market? Productivity? Per capita savings and debt? I don’t think there’s any wide agreement about the term. So in that sense, when John McCain said the fundamentals of the economy were strong, he wasn’t really committing himself to any actual meaning that could be empirically checked. Maybe he did mean what Sarah Palin says he meant. Certainly, my interpretation of his meaning is going to be uncharitable. I don’t like the man.

See, I think there’s a difference, and here’s what I think it is: If you accept Barack Obama’s explanation after the fact, it means something. It’s a policy you can agree with or disagree with, and it is connected with his other foreign policy positions. If you accept John McCain’s explanation (via his running mate) after the fact, it means nothing.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The best one-line pundittery I’ve seen about last night’s Vice-Presidential debate is that Sarah Palin beat Tina Fey, but Joe Biden beat John McCain. I think even that is a bit tricky, as Ms. Fey gets her rebuttal tomorrow. But Sen. Biden showed remarkable discipline, I thought, in refraining from attempting to debate Gov. Palin. In the end, very few people are going to be casting votes because of these two people; this is a chance to talk about the fellows at the head of the ticket when people have been suckered in to watch by, well, by Tina Fey. I think Ian Gillingham over at Willamette Week’s blog makes a good point comparing the visualizations of the word frequencies of the two.

With the warning that I have no idea if these are even remotely accurate, here’s Sarah Palin’s:

First thing you spot, I hope, is John McCain. Then there’s the idiosyncrasies of her speech patterns: also, going, just, know. The stuff she wanted to get across: America/American/Americans, energy, can, will. Then it gets muddy.

Now, here’s Joe Biden’s side:

What jumps out? John McCain. And then Barack Obama. Then going and said, which I assume is his own speech pattern coming into play, and then what do you see? one, people, get, change, policy, know, voted, Afghanistan, billion. I can’t think either Sen. Obama or Sen. Biden would be at all disappointed in that picture.

Mostly, though, I’m impressed by his restraint. He was quite right to be restrained, partially because he doesn’t want to be perceived as picking on his opponent, but mostly because his side is winning and that’s the winning side’s strategy. Still, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. When Gov. Palin said

Up there in Alaska, what we have done is, with bipartisan efforts, is work together and, again, not caring who gets the credit for what, as we accomplish things up there. And that’s been just a part of the operation that I wanted to participate in. And that’s what we’re going to do in Washington, D.C., also, bring in both sides together. John McCain is known for doing that, also, in order to get the work done for the American people.

YHB would have said something like Really? Does anybody in Alaska think you worked well with bipartisan efforts? ’Cos that’s not what I’m hearing.

And when Gov. Palin said

Well, the nice thing about running with John McCain is I can assure you he doesn’t tell one thing to one group and then turns around and tells something else to another group…

YHB wouldn’t have been able to help saying something like You mean, except David Letterman, right?

And it would not have helped Sen. Obama at all.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So in that debate thingy, they spent a crapload of time (actually 1.3 craploads) talking about preconditions. I thought Barack Obama did a very bad job responding to Sen. McCain’s nonsense, so I’m going to type in an alternate response, which I think he should have had prepared.

John McCain: What Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand that if without precondition you sit down across the table from someone who has called Israel a stinking corpse, and wants to destroy that country and wipe it off the map, you legitimize those comments. This is dangerous. It isn’t just naive; it’s dangerous. And so we just have a fundamental difference of opinion. Blah, blah, blah. And we ought to go back to a little bit of Ronald Reagan’s "trust, but verify," and certainly not sit down across the table from—without precondition, as Senator Obama said he did twice, I mean, it’s just dangerous.

YHB pretending to be Barack Obama: John, I’m sorry, but it seems like you think that when I say I won’t demand preconditions for negotiations, I mean I’ll have an open door and any maniac or tin-pot dictator can just waltz in, stand on my desk and give a speech on worldwide satellite TV. That’s just wrong. That’s not my policy. And if you misunderstood it, well, I need to take responsibility for that and fix it. So I’d like to explain what my policy will be, and how it’s different from the Bush policy you’ve been supporting for eight years. And then, John, I’d like you to respond to my actual policy, not to whatever you’re talking about. All right?

John McCain: You said without preconditions! No backsies!

YHB pretending to be Barack Obama: Here’s the Bush policy, John. If we want some concession from somebody—we want Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program, we want Russia to recognize the territorial sovereignty of the Ukraine and Georgia, we want a trade deal or cooperation of any kind with another nation— President Bush has been demanding all those concessions as a precondition for negotiation. In other words, we won’t negotiate with Iran about their nuclear weapons program unless they give up their program before we even start!

Now, that would be a great policy. If it worked. If we got everything we wanted before we even sat down at the table, that would be great. And if it worked, then sure, I would support it. But it doesn’t. It didn’t work with North Korea—and even George W. Bush had to agree to come to the table eventually—it didn’t work with Iran, it hasn’t worked with Russia. It doesn’t work. People will not give up all their bargaining chips as a precondition of bargaining.

My policy is this: My State Department will engage with other countries at all levels. I will welcome chances to negotiate for what we want. And I will do that without preconditions for that negotiation. The Bush policy, which you’ve been supporting for eight years, is to demand those preconditions. Mine is, simply, not to. That’s what I’ve been talking about, and that’s what I would like to hear you respond to.

John McCainBut you said no preconditions! It’s dangerous! Blah, blah, blah.

…anyway, it’s not like John McCain would have broken down and wept, or that he would have stopped claiming that Barack Obama’s first day in office would involve tea with Hitler, Stalin and Peter the Hermit. But people who didn’t know what the hell either one was talking about might get the sense that (a) John McCain is lying, and (2) Barack Obama does know what the hell he’s talking about.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have two comments about last night's debate, and I think I’ll split them into two different notes, just to take up more room. What the hell, right?

So John McCain has spent his career doing the bidding of bankers and their lobbyists fighting against earmarks, right? He talked about it a lot. He thinks it’s a terrible system. He blames the earmark system for corrupting congressmen; congressmen are, he says, under federal indictment because of (*cough* personal accountability *cough*) earmarks. Earmarks are “a gateway to out-of-control spending and corruption.” He’s made the fight against earmarks the center of his career, he says.

Also, the amount of money allocated via earmarks—“Do you know that it’s tripled in the last five years? Do you know that it’s gone completely out of control?”

Let’s recap. John McCain has been fighting earmarks in the United States Senate, where they have tripled in the last five years, to $18 billion. What will they be like if he fights them for four years from the White House? Fifty billion? A hundred?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Your Humble Blogger is a cranky guy. Do you want to hear what I’m griping about today? Aside from the weather and stuff? Because it’s raining all day and will rain all day tomorrow. And my Best Reader will be away tonight, so I’ll have to watch the stupid debate by myself.

So here’s the thing about the debate. It’s a sham. Everybody knows that. Anybody who cares enough (and has enough time) to watch ninety minutes of information about the presidential campaign has already made up their mind who to vote for. To the extent that the debates have an effect on the still-undecided voters, it’s through the filter of news programs and talk show clips. That is, after the pundit class gets their hands on it and decides on the story of what happened.

I know it’s a sham. OK? If the candidates decided not to bother with them, I wouldn’t be particularly upset about it. It’s a sham. A sham. OK?

And yet, I think it’s a good idea, for the purposes of creating a democratic society, which is after all the point of a democracy, to pretend that it isn’t a sham. To talk about how the candidates are airing their views and explaining how their positions and priorities differ. Giving the populace a chance to see them side by side and judge between them as they argue their cases. By participating in the sham, but participating fully in it, we can hold the candidates to certain norms of behavior, and hold ourselves and our compatriots to certain norms of behavior, that are beneficial to the democracy. We can make the debates less of a sham by buying into them, but buying into them on our own terms.

Instead, what do we get? This morning’s Hartford Courant (which I am planning to cancel on Monday) has an article above the fold on Scoring Obama-McCain Debate; the print edition I read over my bagel had the subheader Panel Lists Six Factors Debate Watchers Should Consider. Katherine Q. Seelye has a piece on the Times website called What to Look For in Tonight’s Debate. These are preparations for being a pundit; if you read them carefully, you will be prepared to go on television after the debate and declare somebody a winner. You may be prepared to predict what story the actual pundits will decide on, or even pick out which clips will get play.

No. Wrong. Bad.

The newspapers do not need to train us to be amateur pundits. The newspapers should be pretending that we are participating citizens, as we should be pretending that we demand the information we need to be participating citizens. If we all pretend hard enough, it will be difficult to tell the difference between people who are just pretending, and people who are actually participating.

Here’s the article they should be printing: Tonight’s Debate: Things to Watch For Pay attention not only to what the candidates say about their policies, but which policies they choose to bring up. That’s the way to gauge the priorities of the candidates, to know what they will be willing to spend political capital on. Spend some time beforehand thinking about your preferences, not so much in policy (you don’t need a debate to compare your policy platform with the candidates’) but in worldview related to the current policy issues. Remain aware that you cannot necessarily tell if someone is sincere, but presidents who commit to supporting some stupid stuff to get elected most often wind up supporting it when they are in office, for the same political reasons, so take most of what is said on policy to be a reasonably accurate predictor of action. Try to avoid being swayed by rhetorical tricks of presentation, particularly presentation of their personas. On the other hand, their presentation of persona is also likely to remain constant, so if it’s something that will be detrimental to success in office, take it into account. Finally, try to distinguish the question that you hear the moderator ask with the question that the candidate hears; the difference will reveal differences in your fields of interest, perceptions of the universe, assumptions about the role of government.

Oh, and I’d append a list of probable topics of discussion and links to the candidates’ position papers, so that the viewer could check to see if the candidates could remember what their positions were supposed to be, and remember which one was Georgia and which one was Wachovia. But that sort of thing is asking a little much, don’t you think?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 6:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I know it isn’t really funny, but Barry Ritholtz over at The Big Picture says that trading desks are getting an email today containing a REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

If you receive any communications from a person calling himself Secretary of the Treasury or Henry Paulson, contact the national fraud center immediately.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your Humble Blogger has for some years thought it was important to draw a distinction between candidates that wanted to be President and candidates that wanted to get something done that required them to be President to do it. I’m heightening the distinction, of course; anybody who gets the nomination of a major Party is ambitious enough, surely, to satisfy the first claim. I do think it’s a useful distinction, though, and says something about how the person uses the office.

I used to think that on the whole the distinction was a Party one, in recent times, anyway. Democrats, who believe in using the might of the federal government to protect those who need protection, tend to want to be President to institute some policy or other that protects some group or other. Republicans, who don’t believe in using that might, tend to want to be President because they are the right type of person.

I now think that’s wrong, and probably always was. Going backward, it seems likely that Our Only President had a vision of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and transforming the global balance of power that nobody else was going to accomplish, and that he wanted to be the person to accomplish anyway. Our Previous President, on the other hand, wanted to be elected President, which may well have been his primary accomplishment, and after that seems to have primarily wanted to run the place well (by his understanding of running an Executive office well). The fellow before him rather famously didn’t do the vision thing; he was Presidential but it wasn’t clear that he wanted to do anything with it. Ronald Reagan on one level just wanted the part, but on another wanted to be the Man Who Won the Cold War. Jimmy Carter didn’t appear to figure out what he wanted to accomplish as President until he had done it, and Richard Nixon just wanted to stop anybody else from being President.

As for those who got the nomination but not the office, I think Al Gore had a job in mind, but I don’t know the John Kerry did, other than winning the election. Bob Dole never seemed to have any particular tasks in mind, but neither did Michael Dukakis. Walter Mondale may have had some goal, but who would have listened long enough to find out?

As for our current crop, well, it will be easier with hindsight, but it seems to me that Barack Obama has a goal of transforming politics, a fairly nebulous goal, but I think he has some sense of what it means, and means to do it. Just as a comparison, Hillary Clinton clearly wanted to be the President Who Got Health Care Done; I think Sen. Obama would like to get health care done, but that’s not why he’s running. I also don’t get the impression that he is running to be First Black President; that’s surely a source of tremendous pride for him, but doesn’t seem to be what’s driving him, either. I rather suspect that like Bill Clinton, he really wants to be elected President, and that if he wins he will have to hunt around for something to get excited about accomplishing in office. Not that it’s such a terrible thing—I trust his priorities and instincts, so I think whatever he decides to focus on will be a Good Thing.

As for John McCain…why is he running for the office? He doesn’t seem to be enjoying the campaign in the way that Sen. Obama or Bill Clinton did, or even that the two ticket-sharers are enjoying themselves. He wants to reform Washington, and I think that’s real, but I don’t have any sense of what it means. Or, rather, I suspect that the bulk of it is paying back grudges against people who he dislikes. It’s obviously not reducing the influence of lobbyists. His experience changing the actual procedures by which policy and law gets made is not such that makes me think he has any interest in getting involved in actual reform, nor do his stump speeches about reform betray the kind of familiarity with the issue that makes a person think of a man itching to get to work.

Contrast here with, say, Rudy Giuliani, who was so obviously itching to get his fingers on the law enforcement and intelligence powers of the Executive, or with a Steve Forbes or a Jack Kemp.

Now, good Presidents don’t necessarily have to have gone into the job with a Big Goal, and Presidents who go in with a Big Goal don’t necessarily achieve that goal, or if they do, may regret it (or the rest of us might). There is always plenty for a President to do. Most of the job is not going to be taking care of the Big Goal anyway, and you never know what is going to come up and take center stage. So I don’t think it’s necessarily a disadvantage to a President to come into office having already achieved the height of his ambition, that is, of being elected rather than serving. Once you are there, your instincts and your priorities and your skills and your advisors will carry you along. I don’t like John McCain’s instincts, and I don’t like his priorities, and I don’t think much of his skills, and I abominate his advisors, but then, why wouldn’t I.

But I’m just wondering whether my view of the two candidates aligns, more or less, with yours, Gentle Readers. Do you think that Barack Obama has a Big Goal other than transforming politics, vaddevah dat means? Do you think that John McCain has a Big Goal in mind?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your Humble Blogger has devoted several posts recently to political partisan whatnot, as Gentle Readers have probably noticed. Some of those have been a bit more… shrill… than YHB’s usual tone. I have, for instance, implied or outright stated that the Republican nominee for the President of the United States lies a lot, seems to have no idea what he’s talking about a lot of the time, crumbles in a crisis, has no friends, and is a braying jackass of a useless pathetic poopy poopyhead. Also, that his party is full of racists and hasn’t done anything good for this country in two generations. Also, Joe Lieberman.

Now, in the past, YHB has tried to refrain from too much sneering and sniping in this Tohu Bohu. I am unashamedly partisan. My Party is the Democratic Party. I do think that the Republican Party not only is wrong on most (well, nearly all) policy issues, but that the Republican Party has encouraged personal and institutional corruption on a scale well beyond what my Party has seen for decades. I mean to say, I think that the evidence shows that corruption, and that while the corruption (and the incompetence, which is something else) is not entirely independent of the policy positions that make the Republican Party inferior in my opinion, it is not necessarily coincident with it, nor is my Party necessarily immune to it.

I’m saying this badly. Look, I’m a liberal. I have spent some time looking into Conservatism, and I think I get some of the basic aspects of the mindset. I certainly understand that people can be good people and be Conservatives, and that good people can feel strongly about Conservatism and utterly reject the Progressive mindset that feels natural to me. As people are different to one another, and that is what makes the world interesting and fun (the essence, after all, of the liberal mindset), one of those differences that I find so interesting and fun is that some people are Conservatives. Fine. And certainly not all Conservatives are corrupt or incompetent. Most, I assume are not personally corrupt, and disdain personal or institutional corruption. But the national Republican Party and its leaders have betrayed those Conservatives. That seems obvious to me.

Having said that, I can imagine if the situation were in my own Party. Could I vote for a candidate nominated by my Party if he were a poopy poopyhead? Yes, certainly. What if the leadership of my Party were revealed to be corrupt on a Tom Delay level rather than a Charlie Rangel level? That would be terrible, but I don’t think it would keep me from voting for my Party, although I would hope I would work within my Party to do something about it. Certainly if one of two candidates were going to be President, and one clearly had a Conservative mindset and was otherwise a man of middling character and the other was a poopy poopyheaded Liberal, I would vote for the Liberal. Even if it became obvious that my candidate would upon taking office surround himself with, say, a secretive cabal of crooks and incompetents? Well. I sure hope I never find out who I would vote for in that situation. It would be gruesome indeed.

So. I apologize to any Conservatives reading this Tohu Bohu, and I hope there are some somewhere, for the unnecessarily vituperative tone of late. I respect Conservatism. It isn’t my worldview, surely, but I would never want to be in a world without Conservatives. I am sure that most people who vote Republican do so, not because they are big poopy poopyheads, but because they think that their Party more closely adheres to their worldview and will therefore govern with better policies. I think it’s terrible that those people have been so badly betrayed by Our Only President and the leaders of the Republican Party. I think it’s terrible that John McCain is behaving the way he is behaving, and I think it’s terrible that the Republican Party doesn’t have a better face at the moment.

Well, and part of me thinks it’s terrible. Part of me, of course, wants the Republican Party to fail, and to become even more unpopular because of all its failures, so that my Party can gain support and govern. But not all of me. And really, I would rather that the Republican Party was an honest and clean Conservative Party, as I think that we’d still be more popular.

I will still bash the Republican leadership and its nominees. I will still make clear my honest assessment of their characters. I will try, however, to make it clear that those assessments are of the characters of the individuals involved, and are not character flaws of Conservatism, or of other Conservatives. They are not. If John McCain is a braying, boasting jackass of a man, that’s him. And if you feel you have to vote for him anyway, because he is the only candidate of your Party, well, that’s how it is sometimes, and good luck to you.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

More about Sen. McCain and his response to Black Bluesday. David S. Bernstein, over at the Phoenix, points out that Sen. McCain has been Walking Backward in this crisis. His point is a little different than the one I’m going to make, but he begins by pointing out that in a crisis, and this seems an awful lot like a crisis to a lot of people, we judge leaders "not necessarily based on their policies or advice, but on their confidence with the issue, their phrasing, even their body language."

He doesn’t toss in Mark Schmitt’s becoming-famous line, so I will: It’s not what the candidates say about the issues, it’s what the issues say about the candidates. Or, to the point, it’s not what the candidates say about the crisis, it’s what the crisis says about the candidates.

Up until two days ago, not only did John McCain insist that the "fundamentals" of the economy (vaddevah dat means) are sound, but that regulation of the financial industry was bad. He talks to Phil Gramm, which no-one with an ounce of sense, taste, or understanding of the economy would do. He has a track record of being the banker’s buddy. None of that changed over the summer, as the credit was drying up. None of that changed as people who know things about the economy were warning about AIG for the last month.

But after the Dow loses five hundred victory points, after Lehmann Brothers declares itself bankrupt and worthless, and after AIG declares that it must have left 80 B-B-B-Billion dollars in its other pants and if you could just spot it until dinner time, its man will go and look for it and send it around in the evening, and after it becomes a crisis, what does the man do? He turns his back on the policies he has professed to believe in, and starts babbling about reining in short sellers and putting a stop to golden parachutes and upholding the social contract.

In other words, John McCain, in a crisis, bailed. He grabbed for something shiny and popular instead of standing up for his principles.

This is not lying, you understand, unless he really doesn’t mean to implement any of the policies he’s talking about, and (if you remember) Your Humble Blogger is adamant that we should take seriously what candidates for office say they will do and hold them to it. No, he’s been lying all summer about his history and the histories of his associates, just flat-out factual lies, but this is not lying. This is caving. This is crumbling. This is pathetic.

The ship of state is headed for the rocks. We all know that. We’ve had a captain for eight years that has been using the wrong map, and has been holding the wrong map upside-down anyway. He won’t listen to anyone who tells him that we’re headed for the rocks, because he started going north-northwest, damnit, and to turn the wheel would be to admit that he was wrong from the beginning, even as the barrels run dry of water and the sails tatter on the masts. So yes, we want a captain that can turn the ship. But for the love of all that’s on her, let’s give the wheel to someone who has something like a pole star of principle to sail her by.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Via Paul Campos over at LGM, evidently Sen. McCain went on CNBC’s Squawk Box and on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning and called for a “9/11 commission type thing” to ”find out what went wrong and to fix what’s going to happen in the future so this never happens again.”

Now, I don’t know that Sen. McCain’s idea of a special commission is anything but a stupid idea to start with. I mean, if he means anything by a 9/11 commission type thing, he means a congressionally legislated bipartisan commission of former office-holders who are not currently legislators or governors. Why on earth would the credit crisis benefit from that, rather than from any of the currently established organizations—the SEC, the House and Senate Committees that cover banking, the Departments of Commerce and the Treasury, and the Fed—who have actual power to make actual changes in the laws and regulations that govern the industry.

Unless what Sen. McCain means by a 9/11 type commission is that he wants a slow, useless commission whose recommendations can be easily ignored. Oh, yes, of course that’s what he means. So: when Sen. McCain says that he wants a 9/11 commission type thing, the obvious follow up question is do you mean you don’t think the FED, the House and Senate, the Departments of Commerce and the Treasury and the SEC should act?

And the next follow-up question is whether Sen. McCain really thinks the credit crisis is as bad as 9/11. I mean, YHB thinks it is; undoubtedly more people have already died because of the credit crisis than died in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the remaining crisis has the power to do far more damage than a handful of ragged terrorists in caves halfway across the globe. I thought my point of view was wildly outside the mainstream, though, that I was (as usual) a raving left-wing blogger. Has Sen. McCain joined me over there? Or, perhaps, is he just throwing 9/11s into his sentences without referent of any kind, as if the sound of it would go straight to voter’s hindbrains?

You know, I might possibly have preferred the claim that Sen. McCain invented the Blackberry.

By the way, Sen. McCain—the joint between the two long parts of your arm, the package holder that lets you touch your finger to your nose, that’s your elbow. Your ass is the other thing.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dan P. asks a very reasonable question, which deserves a shorter answer than this one:

Given that the Democratic Party has been, within living memory, the party of Thurmond (and all that that entails), what do you see in that structure that makes you approach it not just as the currently preferable home of the good but as a good in itself?

My initial response is that my Party is the Party that Strom Thurmond had to leave to be a Dixiecrat. Yes, there were lots of people in the South who were Democrats because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, but for sixty years or so, old-fashioned segregationist Southern Conservatives have been leaving my Party and joining a Party where they feel more comfortable, that is, the Republican Party. Oh, and lots of them have been dying, they should only be reborn as chandeliers. So let’s be clear: Party where old segregationists feel comfortable: Republican. Party where old segregationists feel unwelcome: Democratic.

That’s a bit glib, though, isn’t it? After all, there are more than two political parties in this country, and besides, one doesn’t have to claim any party as one’s own. If you are your own party, independent and alone, then you don’t have to take on the baggage of Thurmond-ism, of Phil Gramm-ism, of Faubus and Wallace and for that matter Andrew Jackson. No, your hands are clean. Of course, you are clean and alone.

No baggage, no party.

Certainly there is much to be said for working alone to improve the community and the country, and certainly there is much to be said for working in your church or your union or your neighborhood watch or your NGO or your charitable organization. All of those can be terrific things, and some of them are better than the Democratic Party. All of them, too, come with baggage: no baggage, no community. But my Party, for all its baggage, and for all the current and future flaws, is among those terrific things that has done and continues to be good in itself, not merely as a bulwark against the Other Party, and not merely as the lesser of evils.

In the middle of the summer, YHB wrote about Noelle McAfee and a taste of one of her ideas. I had outlined the narrative that she rejected, which is the political journey from dependence to independence, but I never talked about her suggested replacement, which is the political journey from silence to participation.

I find that narrative deeply moving. As we work our way deeper into, as we politically mature, we move further and further into participating in the civic life of our country. That may mean the participation of voting on Election Day, or the participation of commenting on this blog, or the participation of serving as President of the United States. Or, most importantly, the participation of conversation of Americans together about our politics and our world.

Independent judgment, as a goal, is a goal of casting off fetters, while participatory politics, as a goal, is a goal of choosing which loads to shoulder.

Or, more to the point, independent judgment seems to be antithetical to compromise, while participatory politics seems to lead directly to compromise. I say seems, because of course it’s more complicated than that: the entire concept of compromise requires the independent judgments of those doing the compromising, nor is the exercise of uncompromised independent judgment possible. But we are dealing here with the stories of what the world is like, and the world is made of stories and made by stories, and seems is a mighty word.

So it seems good to me to say that the Democratic Party is my Party, that it is a good Party, that it is, as you say, a good in itself. Not only because nearly every major governmental innovation, nearly everything the government has done for the public good, nearly every expansion of civil rights and civic dignity over the last half-century and more has come about because of Democrats working as members of the Democratic Party, but because the party itself is an example of the best of America. If you watched the convention on C-Span, watched the camera panning across the state delegations in their goofy hats, dancing in the aisles, community organizers and shop stewards, civil rights activists and veterans, African-Americans and Whites and Latinas and Asians and Native Americans, straights and queers, the self-made and the heirs, people who remember FDR and people who were too young to vote four years ago, then you saw the ongoing fulfillment of Walt Whitman’s dream. Democracy is not about creating a good government. Democracy is about creating a people who can create a good government.

Getting those people all together in that room, even if we lose the election, even if that grand coalition doesn’t get access to health care for everyone, even if we don’t moderate the bankruptcy laws, even if we don’t stop the war and stop the drain of public treasure into private pockets, just getting those people together in the same room to participate in the struggle for those goals makes my Party a good in itself. Read, Gentle Reader, this excerpt from one of the greatest speeches ever made by an American, Jesse Jackson in Atlanta to the 1988 Democratic National Convention:

Common ground. America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth. When I was a child growing up in Greenville, South Carolina and grandmamma could not afford a blanket, she didn’t complain and we did not freeze. Instead she took pieces of old cloth — patches, wool, silk, gabardine, crockersack — only patches, barely good enough to wipe off your shoes with. But they didn’t stay that way very long. With sturdy hands and a strong cord, she sewed them together into a quilt, a thing of beauty and power and culture. Now, Democrats, we must build such a quilt.

Farmers, you seek fair prices and you are right — but you cannot stand alone. Your patch is not big enough.
Workers, you fight for fair wages, you are right — but your patch labor is not big enough.
Women, you seek comparable worth and pay equity, you are right — but your patch is not big enough.
Women, mothers, who seek Head Start, and day care and prenatal care on the front side of life, relevant jail care and welfare on the back side of life, you are right — but your patch is not big enough.
Students, you seek scholarships, you are right — but your patch is not big enough.
Blacks and Hispanics, when we fight for civil rights, we are right — but our patch is not big enough.
Gays and lesbians, when you fight against discrimination and a cure for AIDS, you are right — but your patch is not big enough.
Conservatives and progressives, when you fight for what you believe, right wing, left wing, hawk, dove, you are right from your point of view, but your point of view is not enough.
But don’t despair. Be as wise as my grandmamma. Pull the patches and the pieces together, bound by a common thread. When we form a great quilt of unity and common ground, we’ll have the power to bring about health care and housing and jobs and education and hope to our Nation.
We, the people, can win.

Even though we lost that election, we did something good for the nation by hosting that speech at that time. And even though we have not managed to fix health care, even though housing is again a problem, even though jobs are slipping away and education remains a concern, we knew that would happen. We know that there will always be fights to be fought and improvements to be made. Michael Dukakis wouldn’t have been able to make the world perfect and Barack Obama will not make the world perfect. But we can always come together, on common ground, to fight for a better world.

And when we do, when we do what my Party does, when we bind ourselves to ourselves with the common thread, and form that great quilt of a Party, even if we lose those fights, we have made something good.

e pluribus unum.

Out of many, one. We don’t lose the many, but we make one new thing, every day one new thing, one community that has a new face, a quilt with a new patch, another step in the journey from silence to participation. That’s what the Democratic Party is.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

While I’m on about what I’d like to see lefty bloggers and columnists and broadcast personalities talk about, here’s another one. Due to an unfortunate tradition, it’s considered inappropriate for Sen. Obama to discuss possible cabinet members and advisors before the election. I’d love for him to present a shadow cabinet, but it’s not going to happen, and it would probably backfire. But there’s no reason why various of us can’t come up with our own versions.

To be cautious here, I’m not necessarily talking about My Ideal Cabinet, which would be put together to institute all of my policies and to shoot the shit with me over tea and biscuits. I’m talking about putting forward a few names of people who Sen. Obama could reasonably appoint and work with, who could get through a Senate that still allows forty Opposition members to stop a confirmation, and who would work to institute Sen. Obama’s policies, which are not my own.

Before we start, though, I’d like everybody who accepts my challenge (oh, let’s make it a meme and a challenge and all that: write about three potential members of a Barack Obama administration in 2009) to begin by describing the scene in that second week in November. Sen. Obama would be sitting down with his advisors and staff to work on that transition. Joe Biden would be there, giving him the benefit of a truly massive experience with Senate confirmations, as well as with what different kinds of people have made of different positions. Who else is there? I would guess that there would be some member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet, possibly John Podesta or Leon Panetta or possibly Bill Richardson. I would guess that there will be somebody from the legislature other than Joe Biden, perhaps Rep. Hoyer or Rep. Boehner.

Now imagine that meeting with John McCain, should he win the election. First of all, forget about Sarah Palin giving him advice on picking a Cabinet, and forget about him taking advice from her. Who else is going to be giving him advice? Joe Lieberman, sure, and Phil Gramm. Anyone else? Will there be anybody who has experience in the White House? How many of his Senate or House colleagues can stand him, and even if they can, can he stand them? Who’s going to be giving him advice, Trent Lott? Seriously, even before we get to the paucity of Republicans available to serve in his Cabinet who (a) can work with John McCain, and (2) aren’t part of Our Only President’s cabal of crooks and incompetents, and (iii) aren’t under indictment, and he needs a dozen plus another half-dozen to serve as Directors of agencies, he’s got to get together a transition team. I know it’s a lousy economy, but I think picking lettuce with a short hoe has got to be a better job than that.

Anyway. Three picks for an Obama Cabinet is my goal. The easy one is John Kerry as Secretary of State; I will make that one of my three, even though I’m not wild about it. How about Parris Glendening as Secretary of the Interior? And Jennifer Granholm as Attorney General. That’s three. As lagniappe, let’s see, Thomas R. Fitzgerald (Chief Justice of the Illinois State Supreme Court) as Attorney General. Just a guess, but I would think that Justice Fitzgerald knows Barack Obama and would get along well with Joe Biden, and would be an Attorney General choice that showed dedication to the Department of Justice rather than to the Democratic Party, and dedication to the rule of law rather than to the rule of the President.

See? Fun and easy. I tell you what, let’s all do this game on the left, and challenge the guys on the other side to pick John McCain’s Cabinet, and then we’ll set up our guys against their guys head to head and see who punts first.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Post Script: McCain Taps Lobbyist for Transition according to Michael Scherer over at Time Magazine.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s September, and time for Democrats across our fine nation to panic and wail. Waaaah! Elections are hard! Run! Flee from the wrath of Giblets!

Your Humble Blogger remains cautiously optimistic. There are still lots of paths to losing, but the only thing that has been ruled out is the highly unlikely scenario that Barack Obama would win in a walkover, maintaining a double-digit lead for the two months between the conventions and the election, and could spend the bulk of that time heading up the legislative campaigns. That would have been nice. But no, it turns out that we have an election on our hands.

I don’t have any particular advice for Sen. Obama. I think he’s doing OK, and he seems to have a better grasp on winning elections than I do. Unlike John Kerry, who did an impressive job in the 2004 primaries, Sen. Obama did not benefit from having his opponents largely self-destruct. And he won. I suspect he is fully capable of winning even if John McCain runs a vicious and dishonest campaign. Continues to run such a campaign. Because—nothing against Sen. McCain, or against vicious and dishonest campaigns, which are a glorious part of the history of our fine nation, but damn.

So. David S. Bernstein, over at the Boston Phoenix Talking Politics blog, mocks McCain’s Super Powers. While I repeat that I have no advice for Sen. Obama, I do advise lefty and anti-Republican bloggers and writers to abuse John McCain specifically on his braggadocio. The image of Sen. McCain as old, cranky, out of touch and economically incompetent is already pretty solidly out there. I’d like to paint that with a nice layer of braying jackass. I mean, come on. He’ll catch Osama bin-Laden, but he won’t tell anybody how? Bullshit. That’s the kind of boasting that doesn’t make you look strong, it makes you look weak.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

OK, let's be clear about this: there is no reason why having a daughter who is an unwed pregnant teenager disqualifies a person for high office. None at all. But since everyone is talking about it anyway, may I just point out that one of three things seems to be the case:

1. Gov. Palin told Sen. McCain something like before you offer me the nomination, you should know that my daughter is seventeen, single and PG, although she is planning to marry the boy and raise the kid. And then Sen. McCain said something like no problem! Let's not mention it for a few days, though, all right?. And then the two of them wound up being backed into making an announcement the opening day of the convention, when there wasn't any actual convention, nor (thank the Divine) was the hurricane apocalyptic enough to take up all the news energy.
2. Gov. Palin, when asked if she would accept the nomination, and if there was anything Sen. McCain needed to know, thought something like should I tell him that I'll be a grandmother soon? Nah, why would he care about that.
3. Gov. Palin was unaware that her daughter was five months pregnant.

I mean, logically, unless I'm missing something, one of those three has to have happened. The first shows political incompetence that seems astonishing even for a Senator from Arizona, and if that's the case, it seems to indicate as clearly as anyone could ask that Sen. McCain is simply incapable of leading his Party, much less the country. The second shows a level of political imbecility on the part of the Vice-Presidential nominee that seems to indicate that she may be incapable even of fulfilling the constitutional office of Vice-President. The third, while on a personal level frightening and appalling, has little to do with her qualifications or Sen. McCain's, although one could at a stretch perhaps question her communication conduits with colleagues and underlings. Still, a mother-daughter relationship is significantly different from a working relationship; I don't think that situation, if true, constitutes anything but a personal scandal.

Of course, that third possibility is the one that would, if it were found out, force the Governor to withdraw.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 6:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Well, and that’s the end of the convention. I have to say, it was a tremendous convention, the sort of convention people in the business will be talking about for some time. Barack Obama seems to know how to hire the right people, which isn’t a bad qualification in itself. I’m not talking about the speakers, of course, although I like them, but the event staff; there are now enough events in the country that there’s no excuse for trying to hold a national political convention on the cheap with amateurs. Lots of Dems complained, over Our Only President’s first term, about how rigidly he controlled his image—all those backdrops, the careful placement of the podium to make sure that the lights and the background were just right. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no great virtue in being incompetent at that sort of thing. It would be good for a President to have some time outside the bubble, to incorporate a certain amount of improvisation in the carefully controlled image factory, but it also would be good to have a President who knows that a bad image is a bad thing, and makes a difference in the end.

And the key thing is this: The Republican party has to work really hard not to look like pishers next week. They don’t have a lot of star power, and there is no way they can get eighty-thousand people into the tent. Unless I miss my guess (which happens a lot), any mistakes or glitches in the running of the show will be harped on by the sort of puerile pundits that are looking for easy insights. It’s easy enough to make comparisons between the music and lights, between the security lines, between the Tele-Prompt-R handling and the cheers of the crowds of the two conventions. Comparing the two policy platforms is takes work, intelligence and knowledge, and comparing the abilities, priorities and temperaments of the two candidates takes wisdom, experience and insight. Comparing the confetti just takes a mouth and a hindbrain. It’s nice, for once, to come out on the good side of the easy comparisons.

I will, however, say that if the rumors turn out to be true, and John McCain will pick Sarah Palin to run with him, it’s a startlingly good pick, on the theater of it. On first glance, I don’t dislike her any more than I would dislike any Republican with enough experience to be chosen. And there is just the slightest possibility that such a choice will convince people that John McCain does after all “get it”, that the times they are a-changin’.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The convention was wonderful last night, with several moments of real drama (or at least theater) and emotional highs. It was as good as I could imagine. I watched almost the whole thing, staying up later than I had intended, but I didn’t take very many notes. I did, however, exchange a lot of text with Dr. Cline over at Rhetorica; you can read the whole night’s liveblogging at the rhetorica site; I don’t think I’ll bother getting my sparse notes into shape for this Tohu Bohu. I will try to write a note about Bill Clinton’s speech, and another about Joe Biden’s, and I have the kitchen table note still to write, not to mention I still haven’t actually watched Michelle Obama’s speech, Clare McCaskill’s speech or Hillary Clinton’s speech, much lest written about them. And they’re doing it again tonight, although I will almost certainly miss the whole evening, what with brush-up rehearsal and all.

Anyway. I do want to write about the actual nomination. If you weren’t watching at that point, you probably missed it, and I don’t think the newspapers are conveying how well it was done. It was aimed mostly at the conventioneers, and to a lesser extent to hard-core convention watchers like Your Humble Blogger. You need a little background to enjoy the show, for this one, so even if you were watching last night, if you hadn’t watched a bunch of roll-call votes, you might have missed the drama. So, here’s a little description of what the roll-call is usually like, and then I’ll get to yesterday afternoon’s version.

Before 1968, in the days when it wasn’t absolutely sure who would win the roll call, this was the center of the convention. The whole reason for it, in fact. Speeches were made to persuade the conventioneers, who were free agents, near enough. They would call out each state, and each state’s delegation would cast its votes, and there would be a tally, and when nobody had more than half, they would do it all again. There weren’t as many states, then, of course.

After the McGovern Commission (and its refining) took away the purpose of the roll call, it became a ritual. I think I remember the 1976 one, and I certainly remember 1980; everybody knew who was going to win, but they went through the states anyway. The Great State of Blurvidia, home of the national champion high school bridge team (go Bashers!), birthplace of the cigar-store Indian, and proud neighbor to the home state of the next vice-president of the United States, casts one vote for its native one Emil Grabecky! (wild cheers), and twenty-glob votes for the next President of the United States, whats-his-name!! And the Secretary of the Convention repeating it, and the tally of the votes. The states go in alphabetical order, but the rules allow for a state to pass and come back, or for a state to yield to a different state, to change the order. The tradition was for the candidate’s home state to cast the votes that gave the candidate a majority, so that the candidate’s home delegation got to put him over the top. It was a nice tradition, a bit quaint and formal, but with people wearing lobster hats and a billion buttons. I believe that last cycle they simply nominated by acclamation, that is, instead of going through the roll call at all, they just have everybody shout “Aye!”, nobody shout “Nay”, and declare that the man was nominated. Faster, but not as much fun.

This year, as usual, all of the losing candidates have released their delegates and indicated that they are voting for winner. There are no more delegates “pledged” to vote for anyone but Sen. Obama, although many delegates have said they will be voting for Hillary Clinton anyway (as is their right, under the rules). Off they go on the roll call, then. American Samoa spoke in Samoan (I think referencing Daniel Inouye, but I don’t, you know, understand spoken Samoan) and then in English. I tried to figure out whether the fellow who spoke for Arizona was a Goddard; it looked a bit like one, but bald and thickset, where Terry is slim and has hair. I don’t know if the other Goddards are involved in politics. Arkansas, one of Hillary Clinton’s home states, cast all its votes for Barack Obama, despite Sen. Clinton winning the primary by a landslide. That seemed like a big deal, a signal that whatever CNN imagined, there was not going to be contention or protest.

And so it went, with California passing (California has umpty-’leven gazillion delegates, so it made some sense for them to pass if there was going to be a chance for a lot of other states to cast votes before there were two thousand for Barack Obama) and Illinois passing (so that it could be yielded back to them for the votes to put him over the top), and on until New Mexico. Barack Obama was still six or seven hundred votes shy of the total at that point, so when the great state of New Mexico (Land of Enchantment, Tierra Nuevo Mejico!) yielded back to Illinois, it didn’t make any sense to me. But then Illinois yielded to New York, just as both its Senators, its governor and its Charlie Rangel (shouldn’t every state have a Charlie Rangel?) walked onto the floor.

Wow, I thought. They’ve planned it so that Hillary Clinton will announce that New York casts all its votes for Barack Obama, and then they will yield back to Illinois, and that will put him over and end it, and it will be Hillary Clinton doing it. Which, I have to say, would have been cool. But what actually happened was cooler than that.

Sen. Clinton asked, after a very brief but quite moving speech, in the name of unity and in support of Barack Obama, the next president of the United States, for the convention to suspend the roll call (by a two-thirds voice vote) and to nominate Barack Obama by acclamation. Which they did.

So, after a magnificent and mostly fictional drama about supposed disunity between the Clintons and their associates and Barack Obama and his associates, Hillary Clinton took the floor and personally introduced the adoption of consensus in support of our candidate. Which was carried, with cheering and applause and dancing and everything but the confetti.

I’m not sure if I’ve given an idea of how what a surprise this was (to me—some people evidently had advance notice) and how moving it was (again, to me). I don’t think there could have been any better way for the party to signify unity. And I don’t think it could possibly have been clearer that these two people, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are the leaders of our Party. I have my disagreements with each of them. But they are fascinating, intelligent, charismatic people, and (what with, if you haven’t heard, neither of them being a white man) it makes me proud that my party did not exclude them or belittle them. It makes me proud that my country is a country where the leaders of its majority party (in both houses of the legislature, as well as the largest party by registration or by self-identification) are a woman and a black man. I like the fact that in my party, Barack Obama did not feel that he had to crush his rival or hide her from view. I like the idea that the Next President of the United States, please the Divine, will be someone who is capable of that kind of diplomacy, not just of saving face for people he needs to beat but of honoring them.

I sure hope Barack Obama gives a magnificent, powerful and inspiring speech tonight. But I doubt I will be as moved tonight as I was last night. I mean, leaving aside the whole bit where I won’t actually get to watch it.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So. National Political Party Conventions are strange things at this point in their evolution. As you watch them (or don’t, but if you don’t, then you can probably skip this note), one of the things that keeps coming up is the tension between the various audiences, and the various things that the Party wants from those various audiences. I would identify four different audiences with very little overlap, and with very little overlap in what the Party wants from them.

Let’s start with the two small audiences. One of those is the crowd in the hall itself, the conventioneers. They are largely there as props for the television audience. Yes, there are also some big donors there, and this crowd has a lot to do in GOTV and other local parts of the campaign, but most of these people would do most of that stuff anyway. They are activists. They do politics either for a living or as a hobby. The Party does need them, but the Party generally has them, and as long as they don’t screw it up, it’ll be fine. On the other hand, when the speakers make their speeches, the crowd is vitally important. Not only does an enthusiastic and attentive crowd look and sound good on television, they give back energy to the speaker. When you watch the thing in your living room, you may not feel part of the connection between the speaker and the live audience, but you can (whether consciously as a critic or not) tell whether that connection is there. The conventioneers most important task is to cheer, to chant and to, er, something else that begins with a ch. Not choose, though.

The other important small audience is the press, mostly the people there at the hall. They have to be persuaded to tell a particular story of the convention. This time, for my party, it’s a particularly compelling story—will the Clinton and Obama wings of the party work together? Will Bill Clinton flip out and call Sen. Obama a ******* on live television? Will Sen. Obama pull a knife? Or will they all join hands and pledge to a cause that is bigger than any of them, the cause of America?

I’m being snarky, but actually, what the Party wants out of the press is not just to be a perfectly transparent window into the convention (which is not going to happen) but to frame and tint things in a way that is to the advantage of the Party. The press are largely sophisticated, educated and informed people, so if you are going to manipulate them, you usually need something shiny, or some barbecue. Tragically, they are as likely to eat the shiny thing and put the barbecue in their pockets as the other way around. But you have to try.

Then there’s the big audience that I’m in, the people who are going to vote for the Party’s nominee no matter what, and who are tuning in to be entertained and consoled. We’re looking to get a peek at next cycle’s candidates for one thing and another, and to get a peek at the campaign’s themes and signs and all, and we like to be told we’re right about our policies and prejudices. But it’s not going to affect our votes, because our votes are in the right place. This year, Sen. Obama’s campaign would like us all to donate twenty bucks or so, where because of an oddity in the law, that wasn’t very important in previous cycles. And it’s always nice if the Party can get us off our asses so we can make a few calls, too, but most of us aren’t going to do that, and it’s pretty unlikely that we are going to be persuaded to do it over the television, anyway. Really, the most important thing that the Party wants me to do, after watching the thing, is to talk to my co-workers and neighbors and friends about how wonderful it was, and how I’m going to vote for Barack Obama. I was going to vote for him anyway, but perhaps I wouldn’t have brought him up in conversation, or perhaps somebody else in the fourth audience will bring it up and I can say that it was a great speech and a great convention, and all.

That fourth audience is the group of people who have not yet made up their minds who to vote for, or whether to vote. In some ways, this is the most important audience, since the candidate that gets most of those voters will almost certainly win the election. On the other hand, very few of those voters are sitting down to watch the convention. Maybe they will sit down to pay attention to the Big Speech, or to two or even three Nearly Big Speeches by the vice-presidential nominee or the previous President. More likely, they will see a report on an evening newscast, or hear about it on the radio, or see a headline on an on-line portal page or even on a good old-fashioned newspaper. Or, with luck, they’ll talk about it with a coworker or neighbor or relative.

So. The Party, and each of the people within the Party (each of whom likely has his or her own separate sub-goal, an appointment or nomination or meeting or whatnot), have to work all four of those audiences simultaneously, largely all from the same podium, and their success with each group affects their success with some of the other groups. Any individual moment may be for one group or another; any individual moment may be attempting to work in different ways for different groups. When the action on the podium stops and the music starts blasting for the crowd to dance, that’s getting the crowd ready to cheer for the next speaker, and it’s also letting the networks cut to a commercial or chat with a pundit. Some of the scheduling is aimed at me, and some isn’t.

So when you are watching, and I’m guessing almost all of my Gentle Readers are in the third audience, those that have already made up their minds (unless any of y’all are still seriously considering voting for a third Party), it’s interesting to look at the things that are aimed at the other groups. The moments that are for the crowd, the ones that are for the press, the ones that are for the swing voters. In a way, ours is the least important audience. Unless I do my job and start some conversations.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Tuesday I missed the first three hours or so, alas. Here are the notes from the couple of hours I watched.

Janet Napolitano. Magenta Nehru jacket, black pants. Nehru jackets must be the thing. She’s giving the business about the AZ politicians who lose presidential races. "I wanted to say something positive tonight about Senator McCain." "He doesn’t understand the policies he has supported." "can’t afford more of the same" use of specific name, which doesn’t thrill me, but is one of the Accepted Political Speech bits. "Green-collar jobs" is a nice phrase though, and I think we’ll get it into the public discussion.

Town hall. Gov. Jennifer Granholm hosting. Better hair than Brown or whatever his name was. This panel is just as dopey as the other one, though. No back-and-forth, no discussion, just a prepared question and prepared speech. If you’re going to do that, just have them give speeches, and give up the stools and hand mikes. A. Cline over and rhetorica and I have been amusing ourselves coming up with the ground rules for the debate. Rule one: panelists may not speak to each other or look at each other. Rule two: panelists will be given the question in advance, and may give only the prepared and approved answer. Rule three: the Moderator will lead, or rather feed. With a great big spoon. Rule four: the debate will go on as long as the networks need to run ads or have their pundits blather about other things.

Jim Whitaker, Mayor of Fairbanks. Republican. Endorsing Barack Obama. "realistic and resulting wisdom"? I like his fifties necktie and brown suit. Suits him. Shifts and whims of the marketplace which are subject to shifts and whims of dictators.

Gloria Craven, described in the on-line schedule as "Laid-off North Carolina textile worker with huge medical bills" I was kinda figuring this would be bad, but it’s actually great: plain-talking woman, very matter-of-factly talking about how awful the Republicans are, and how the Democrats actually have different ideas and priorities. With a nice class hostility (although not hostile enough for me).

Nancy Floyd, energy tech money. Wasn’t paying much attention, I’m afraid.

Kathleen Sebelius, Gov. Kansas. Starts with Barack Obama’s Kansas roots. Ad astra per aspera, which is nice and the Kansas motto. Best Reader points out that she’s a good speaker, but she’s not having much fun. My Best Reader misses Ann Richards. Gov. Sebelius is very dull.

Federico Peña, former Mayor of Denver, former Sect’y of Energy. More energy coming in. Crowd still wandering around chatting. "America is on a liquid leash" Back to man on the moon.

Nydia Velazquez: Now, that’s a jacket. And emerald necklace? Jet? Jade? Awesome, whatever. She’s going after Sen. McCain. I’m glad tonight has shown a lot more willingness to go after McCain. It hasn’t coalesced into a clear caricature, though, which is what we need.

Robert Casey, Jr. Gov PA. A slight reference to his father’s refusal to endorse Bill Clinton in 1992, and the refusal to let him speak at the convention about his anti-abortion position. Just a slight reference, though, and no reference (yet) to his own anti-abortion stance. Pushing how comfortable Sen. Obama really is with working-class Pennsylvania voters. "He’s one of us." "Native son Joe Biden!" Now talking about Hillary Rodham Clinton in glowing terms. "When she endorsed Barack, she called on all of us to do whatever we can to get Barack Obama elected President of the United States." Another Abraham Lincoln reference. Now an explicit reference to his anti-abortion opinion, and saying outright that his present tonight shows blah blah blah. I suppose it’s a good thing for Sen. Obama, and he can scarcely get up there and say his dad was a prick.

Four more months! Four more months!

Lilly Ledbetter: Very serious looking. Jaw locked. She’s the one in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, where the Supreme Court shut down the rights of more people to use the courts for redress. She’s a good prop for pointing out that the Supreme Court, and thus the Presidency, is important. Bad delivery, though, and bad gesturing. The audience is good to her, though, and I don’t grudge her the time. I wonder if CNN or the others showed her at all.

Musical interlude: "I’m So Excited". There are many men in the crowd who know the words. To the verses. I’m just saying. And there were two bull-dykes who didn’t know the words even to the chorus but who waved their rainbow flags.

Mark Warner with the keynote: I took some separate notes so that I can write this up as an entry of its own. Maybe later today, or events may pass me.

Ted Strickland: Applause for Stephanie Tubbs-Jones. Then going into a speech of his own. kitchen table reference again. I like the kitchen table stuff. "more likely to lose a neighbor to foreclosure than to gain a neighbor with a mortgage" "John McCain is sleeping better than ever" Stuck in the past. I like stuck in the past. Particularly used as a modifying phrase: a stuck-in-the-past energy policy, etc. Started on third, stole second. Instead of some starting on third, giving everybody a chance at bat.

Deval Patrick: That is who we are. That is also what we stand for as Democrats. The poor are in terrible shape, but the middle class are one paycheck away, one serious illness away from being poor. The generation did all of that. I don’t get the focus on that. "A well-educated America will make things again." John McCain is one of those say one thing do something else guys. The same folks. "Democrats don’t deserve to win just because Republicans deserve to lose" This is not working. Lots of greatest generation stuff. "Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together". Lost the crowd, I think.

Gov. Schweitzer comes on in a bola tie and has lots of energy. I shut down the computer at that point, and was ready to head off to bed, but he grabbed me and didn’t let go. That was a fun speech. Clearly the highlight of the night. So far.

I’ll add Hillary Clinton to the list of Big Speeches that I need to go back and watch when I get the chance.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I did wind up watching quite a bit of the first day of the convention, and I took some very sparse notes. Here they are, for what they are worth. I'll try to write a couple of more coherent essays (brief essays, I hope) about some of the bigger issues, like the sense of powerful women in the Party and some contradictory and conflicting images around that, the tensions between the convention for the Party and the convention for the swing voters, and the color scheme that makes pale blue shirts for men look so atrocious.

Rev. Leah Daughtry, the CEO of the convention. Angry black woman in bright blue. And pearls. “The least, the last and the lost”. That’s good.

Video about The West. Governors and Senators from NV, WY, AZ, MT, WY, NM, CO. That’s pretty impressive, actually. Video is too long. Interestingly, includes a plea to get together and work on the campaign; that can’t be aimed at the conventioneers, but who else is watching at this point? Not that there’s anyone in the hall yet. Ends with AZ Gov. saying we have never elected a president from Arizona, and at least for this cycle, she’d like to continue that precedent. Hee hee.

The Credentials Committee: Eliseo Roques-Arroyo, Puerto Rico. Si se Puede. A good speaker. Then Jim Roosevelt. Unity talk. Stiff and squinty. Announces that MI and FL delegates get votes, and gets a big round of applause for it. Alexis Herman (former Secretary of Labor) on Hope and Determination. Then Dr. Dean adopts the report on voice vote.

The Rules Committee: Sunita Leeds. Pearls. Nervous-looking. Announces a new committee to look at superdelegates and caucuses. Mary Rose Oakar from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination League, looks very Jewish to me. Ohioan. Nominates Nancy Pelosi as convention chair, other women as officials of the convention. Gov. Walker, then, who I missed, appears to nominate other officers, men this time. Then Dr. Dean gets the aye, and then he adds some other officers.

Note: Dr. Dean, in identifying the people who will be, I think Sergeants at Arms, some purely nominal post anyway, says that one of them is an “LGBT activist”. Amazing to think that (a) only four cycles ago, having an openly gay speaker was a Very Big Deal, and (2) the head of the DNC can now casually refer to LGBT without explaining or identifying further. This is the first of the moments where I find myself shocked, not by how progressive and egalitarian and diverse my Party is, but by how recently those changes have happened. More on this later, I hope.

Anyway, here I skipped a bit.

From the platform committee, Patricia Madrid, AG of NM. Patriotism is working to improve the country. Examples of patriots are are Martin Luther King, Jr., Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta. Then Judith McHale, who talks about letting America be America again. Shout-out to Hillary. Dull, boilerplate speech. Tiny mouth, very serious. Nancy Pelosi gavels it aye.

Skipped some more.

The Hispanic Caucus. Missed the first bit. Silvestre Reyes, not a very likeable man. Jose Serrano, US Rep. from the Bronx, starts with “Hello, New York! Helllloooooooh, Puerrrrrto Rrrrricoooooooooo!” Speaks Spanish with a Bronx accent. Little moustache. I like him.

Nancy Keenan, from NARAL. “My Party, the Democratic Party.” Right to choose contraception. Stand with women who choose adoption. “How is it moral, John McCain…”

Amanda Kubik, speaking for young delegates. Making our change visible. “Yes we can! Or as we say up in Fargo, Yah sure, ya betcha!”

Emil Jones, Jr. IL State Senate (minority leader? Former minority leader?) South Side. Very tough looking. Nice suit. “We were not a likely pair.” Says that Sen. Obama told him “You know I like to work hard”, so sent him to work with Republicans on ethics reform. His nose is wider than his mouth!

Reg Weaver from the NEA. Black pinstriped suit. Big fellow, black, bald, with a big white walrus moustache.

Best Reader asks “what’s with the disco?”

IL AG Lisa Madigan. Wearing purple, no pearls. Very likeable. Underscoring Sen. Obama good for women. Pushing the IL state senate stuff, which of course is all he’s got, really. Important, though. Perhaps they should have saved some of this for later?

Dan Hynes. Illinois State Comptroller. Lost to Sen. Obama in the primary for Senate. “No-one likes to lose, but it’s a lot easier when you respect and admire the person who wins.”Pale blue shirt, pale blue tie, looks odd against the blue DNC background.

Alexi Giannoulis, IL State treasurer. Appears to be eighteen years old. "basketball buddy" Blue tie with a HUGE knot, very loose around a thick neck. Actually 32.

Randi Weingarten, AFT. Very angry. Good with the audience. Teachers must be partners, not pawns. Join us in this quest.

…

John Legend, singing. Not very interesting R&B. If you are out there? Tomorrow is starting now? Yawn. Clearly my break isn’t over.

…

Panel discussion on the economy. This is dumb. It’s like a parody of a Sunday morning politics show. It turns out that Barack Obama would be good for the economy! And John McCain bad! With no specifics! But lots of chatting. But I kinda like Sherrod Brown with his goofy hair and cheap-looking gray suit.

Nancy Pelosi video. It’s OK. A bit eulogy-ish, if you know what I mean.

Nancy in white. A disco pantsuit, or Nehru jacket thingie. Also, my Best Reader hates the podium. Awkward gavel business.

Margie Perez, N’awlins musician. She’s hot! Katrina, of course. Can’t afford to let John McCain drown our hopes in the same failed policies. Musician’s Village, Habitat for Humanity. A nice, if odd, bit when she grabbed the fleur-de-lis she wears around her neck, as if it were an amulet.

Video about Katrina. Which appears to be also the Jimmy Carter video. Pres. Carter gets to make the Louisiana is the third-world thing out of personal experience (with both), without making it sound insulting.

Hey! Jimmy Carter is there! With Roz, I guess. It doesn’t look like he’ll speak. They’re playing “Georgia on my Mind”. …aaand, he’s gone. Hmph. And now we’re back to a video, evidently about Barack Obama in law school.

Maya Soetoro-Ng. Comes out and hangs five (later looks this up, Wikipedia calls it the shaka sign). She doesn’t look polished (in the negative connotations), and seems strangely comfortable up there. Now she’s settled in to read from the teleprompter, seeming less comfortable, stiffer, more prepared. “Bounteous opportunity. It is a gift he has already given us in this campaign.” I don’t really like that already-historic meme that seems to be popping up.

The hall has filled up, now, at last.

Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. “first political convention in history to take place within sight of a mountaintop.” Again, already-historic. Not the right tone. More of his IL legislative history, which is nice. “party establishment was skeptical”. He’s not his father. He is good, though, within the normal parameters of good. Sets up the party establishment, and then says that the election wasn’t decided by them, but by the voters, the people of IL, and IL is America. An odd then about the He and the We and the She. “The well being of the ‘we’ depends on the well being of the ‘he’ and the ‘she’.“ Very awkward sounding. “The Selma generation, my father’s generation”; I like that, point out the generational thing, and that it’s effectively John McCain’s generation, as he was old enough (by 1964 at any rate) to have helped with the movement, and didn't. “I know Barack Obama, I have seen his leadership at work.” In Denver, a mile high, “Freedom has never rung from a higher mountaintop than it does today.” The music isn’t as bad as four years ago. That’s something. I’m not saying it’s good, I’m just saying it doesn’t make me want to hurt the musical director. Yet, anyway. Where’s Will.I.Am?

It’s been five minutes now of music and panning over the Big Tent. I love the Big Tent, but it does seem like a programming problem.

Homes for our Troops? Each convention site-meaning here and in Minneapolis? Didn’t get this.

Mike and Cheryl Fisher, talking about lunch with B.O. before the IN primary. Kinda cute. Very much an aw, shucks.

Tom Balanoff, SEIU Chicago. This guy isn’t much of a speaker. OK. His tie works on TV better than it ought to. Why did they give him a prime-time slot? Is anybody other than C-SPAN going to show it?

Caroline Kennedy (Schlossberg) enters to the tune of “Sweet Caroline”, which I think means that the Sox won. “Barack Obama and Edward M. Kennedy. Their stories are very different…“ Ya think? “Barack Obama is making them feel hopeful, the way they did when my father was President.” “I’ve never had someone inspire me the way people tell me my father inspired them. But I do now, with Barack Obama.” Uncle Teddy. “If you… Teddy is your Senator, too.” wonderful.

Video tribute opens with water. A. Cline points out that Teddy and water are not necessarily the right combination. Wish that chap would quit it, if you know what I mean. The tribute thing has a touch of noblesse oblige, what with the yachts and all. Comment about Joe dying in war, a bit awkward but nice.

They are going to let him talk! Oh, wow. I am a little worried that this undermines the message, particularly the generational message. But wow. I’m teared up, a little. “we are all called to a better country and a newer world.” “For me, this is a season of hope.” Moon stuff. Not a great image, since we left it and didn’t go back. “not merely victory for our party, but renewal for our nation. And this November, the torch will be passed again…” “The work begins anew! The hope rises again! And the dream lives on.”

They’re playing “Still the One”. Ah, well. Time for a break, again. Last time, I came to loathe the musical director with the hate of a hundred … er … hatey things. Maybe I should go to bed.

Tom Harkin comes on and gives a brief two or three sentences in American Sign Language, with an interpreter to speak for him. Lovely. Now he’s introducing Jim Leach, a Republican Rep from Iowa.

Jim Leach is giving a dull speech. I’m knocking off for the night. I’ll watch the last two big speeches, sooner or later, right?

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I feel that perhaps Gentle Readers are waiting for me to chime in on the current political controversy of whether John McCain and his wife own four homes, as their spokesman claims, seven, as the television ad states, or twelve, which is the number I just made up out of my own head. I like it, though. Twelve homes.

Can I say, though, that if I were stinkin’ rich (and I’m not), I cannot see wanting to own more than three places? I’m talking Cindy McCain rich, by the way, not just rich-beyond-the-dreams-of-avarice but nice-country-I-think-I’ll-buy-it rich. Richer than Willard “Mitt” Romney. You know how there’s rich like the movie stars or athletes who make ten or twenty million for a few months’ work? And then there’s rich like the people who can buy a movie studio or a ball club? I’m talking about that kind of rich.

Anyway, here’s what I would think: I would want to own a place in whichever city was my primary residence. Then I would want to own a vacation home, a lake house or beach house or cabin in the woods, whatever. And I could imagine owning an apartment in another big city, that is, I can easily imagine wanting to own a flat in London, because four or five times a year I would spend a week or two seeing theater and buying unbelievably wonderful suits. But owning a home is a pain in the ass, and although I get that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages for your primary residence, and even for a vacation home that you can set up just the way you like it, once you get past that, why not stay in a hotel?

I mean, here’s the thing. The McCains have a condo in the DC area, of course, and a primary residence in the Phoenix area, which also makes sense. Then he’s got the Sedona complex. Again, they are stinking rich, so fine, they wants to spend their leisure time on a big Sedona complex with buildings they built to their exact specifications, hey, it’s nice to be rich.

Now, like a lot of Arizonans, they vacation in the San Diego area. I did that, growing up. And if I were stinking rich, there is much that would appeal to me about staying at the Hotel Del Coronado. You know, if you’re that rich, you can afford a suite. You can afford two suites. You can tell the hotel you want a whole damned floor held for you every July and August, and they will do it. They will cook your meals and bring them to you, and if you don’t like their cook, there is a good chance they will fire that cook and hire a new one that you do like. Or at least let you bring your own cook and let him cook for you in their kitchen.

The McCains, however, rather than staying at the Del (or any other luxury hotel in the area), bought a condo on Coronado. Well, two condos, because sometimes their kids come, too. Oh, and another condo in La Jolla. Huh? No, wait, that’s Ms. McCain’s father’s old condo, that hardly counts at all.

I guess some people don’t like staying in luxury hotels. People are different, one to another, I suppose, which is what makes the world interesting and fun.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Your Humble Blogger watched almost all of last cycle’s Democratic Convention, and blogged a lot of it, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I particularly enjoyed blogging the not-ready-for-prime-time stuff. And I would enjoy watching and blogging again this year: this evening will be a dozen or so Representatives with whom I am mostly unfamiliar, the Attorney General of Illinois, Sen. Klobuchar, some union folk, eventually Sens. Harkin and McCaskill, and of course Michelle Obama. And I will watch some of it, I hope. But not much.

Part of that is simply the time zone thing. Today’s action starts at three in the afternoon, Mountain Time, which is five in Connecticut, not a good hour for focusing on the live stream . The two or three hours that follow are also bad; I could have the stream on, but I will be eating dinner with my family (a very important thing, which I have missed far too often this summer), and then playing with my children and getting them to bed. I can’t say I know for sure when Ms. Obama will speak, but the schedule calls for her to be the last speech, likely at around ten o’clock our time. I may watch, or I may turn in early; I am still catching up on lost sleep from being in a show.

Anyway, I will probably make the odd comment or two, but I’m afraid that for full convention blogging you will have to look elsewhere. Or do it yourself! I’ll open this Tohu Bohu to guest posts on the convention, or you can comment on these posts. Help a brother out, Gentle Readers.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Republican Presidential campaign has once again made an ad where they oh so subtly connect Barack Obama to young white women in a context with sexual overtones. Such a surprise.

I’m not saying that the DNC or Sen. Obama’s campaign should get involved in this, but it would be nice if some of the celebrities in this country who are of mixed race would get up on television and say “This is the sort of crap my parents had to put up with”. Derek Jeter, The Rock, Vin Diesel, Halle Berry, whoever, this is my advice: Relate an anecdote or two that your parents told you, together with the circumstances of the telling (if you were young, teenage, becoming famous, etc). Talk about how you, personally, have never had to deal with that (if it’s true), and that you keep thinking that nobody got all worked up over multiracial sex anymore. That it’s just a few old people that make any sort of fuss about it. Do not mention Sen. McCain by name. Do not say the phrase race card. If asked if somebody is playing the race card, say something like “I don’t play cards, I play baseball [golf, parts in movies, piano, whatever]. My daddy [mama, grandmother, big sister] told me to call them like I see ’em, and what I see in those ads is the sort of crap my parents had to put up with, way back when.”

Just my gut feeling. It seems to me that the frame that we want to put around this election is Republicans are old, with old-fashioned ideas and old-fashioned prejudices. I think that on the whole Barack Obama’s response to the Jeremiah Wright mess helped with that, as the image that gets taken away was that old people sure say crazy stuff, don’t they? My own grandmother…

I also think it would be a good idea to get this out in the open before the conventions: it has been predicted more than once that in the last month before the election, there will be a news story about some white woman who Sen. Obama dated, probably in high school or in college. I have no idea whether there will be any actual news or anything, but somebody will turn up. OK? When she does, I would like the general response to be yep, that’s what we thought would happen rather than zOMG! How do we handle this? So if you happen to be in a conversation about race and the election, or happen to be writing an op-ed column or an essay, or happen to be interviewed on television, please drop that in.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your Humble Blogger hasn’t been blogging much about the presidential campaign lately. I have been following the news, believe me. I just don’t have much to say about it. I remain moderately confident that Barack Obama will win the election, although I suspect it will be fairly close. I remain amazed at how lousy a candidate John McCain is, but don’t think that will matter very much. I remain concerned more about the congressional elections than the White House, and very happy about what’s going on there, particularly how well Sen. Obama’s campaign seems to be integrating with local campaigns.

I suppose the thing I find most interesting, from a rhetorical standpoint, is the decision to hold Sen. Obama’s acceptance speech outside the convention hall. Really, it’s a terrific thing. I am fond of the FDR precedent of speaking directly to the convention, but now that it has been the common practice for a generation, it has lost its power. It’s far more powerful, as a story, to walk out of the smoke-filled room and speak to the rank and file directly. And, of course, with fifty thousand or so people in Mile High Stadium, all of whom are eager to provide him with great television, I suspect the moment will be a triumph.

John McCain can’t do the same thing, of course, partially because it would look bad to copy the innovation (yes, I know, not really an innovation) of the Democratic Nominee, and partially because he is not good at big speeches in front of big crowds, and even with 50,000 Republicans rooting for him, it would be too likely to fail. Also, while both candidates have reputations as being independent from the Party Line, John McCain’s is (a) slightly more grounded in actual hostility between him and much of the Party, and (2) in the public mind, more based on his maverick rejection of the Party Line than on an outreach across it. Where Sen. Obama can walk out of the convention and take the Party with him, if Sen. McCain walked out of the convention, he would be viewed as leaving it behind.

So what can John McCain do that would get lots of publicity, help with the narrative of his campaign and play to his strengths? Realistically, just keep expectations low, give a boring speech at a boring convention, like everyone expects, and hope nobody notices it or remembers it. Which they won’t, probably. And then we move on to the debates, where Sen. McCain should do very well. But what if he didn’t give a speech at all?

Just an idea, and probably a bad one, but what if he simply didn’t give an acceptance speech? If he stood on the floor with the delegation from Arizona, let himself be nominated, and waved his thanks from the floor? Then he lets himself be interviewed by the news programs, one after another, on the floor of the convention, while the crowd celebrates and chants (and bands play) and various popular Republicans come by, interrupt the interviews and slap him on the back. Gently. You know. It would have to be very well organized, and the Senator would have to fully commit to the choreography (as would the Republican officeholders and celebrities), and still it might not work. But it might?

And perhaps in addition, either before counting the votes or the next night, how about some sort of panel discussion about policy with Sen. McCain, Newt Gingrich perhaps, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee or someone from the primaries, and somebody from the administration (that isn’t under indictment), to set up all those ad lib bon mots that John McCain does very well. It’s his strength as a speaker, such as it is.

My Best Reader suggested that, since realistically my idea has no chance of being even considered, the wild news-making idea might be for the candidate and his vice-presidential ticket-mate could give a combined speech, passing the ball back and forth in a conversational but still formal manner. That has the chance of putting the Senator at ease and giving him some opportunity for repartee, while still mostly giving people what they expect, the candidate at the podium in prime time. I see that, although then he really must pick someone he can banter with, which leaves out almost everyone who can help him win the election, right?

Or, of course, he could go Old School, not go to the convention at all, and have some surrogate read his acceptance from the telegram.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Your Humble Blogger has picked up a book by Noelle McAfee, who blogs over at gonepublic. She seems to be a very interesting thinker, and a few pages provoked a great deal of thinking on my part, as well as a sense that YHB will very frequently be using slightly modified versions of her metaphors and framing devices to discuss political matters. So don’t read her book, dammit! It’ll ruin the whole thing.

Anyway, the one thing I thought I’d throw out there for Gentle Readers to kick around is her idea that instead of looking at political maturity as a progress from dependence to independence, we should look at it as a progress … wait, before I get to that point, let’s look at her rejected paradigm to see if (a) it’s a straw man that nobody sensible would actually argue, or (2) it’s a very solid idea that we reject only at great cost.

The idea, and I’m going to try to articulate it myself, without resorting to her language, is that traditional views of democratic participation and citizenship have, as their ideal, the citizen as an independent rational actor. Given two policies, the ideal citizen will use abstract reason to determine the preferable one. This citizen will not be swayed by the individuals proposing their ideas, nor the rhetoric with which the ideas are communicated. You will know the ideal citizen, in fact, by his (or her) ability to strip away the inflammatory rhetoric, the appeals to passion, fear and ambition, the partisan jockeying that poisons our political discourse. No, the ideal citizen will vote for the man, not the party, and for the policy, not the man. It’s all about issues. Not to be distracted by flag pins or swift boats or a comparison of spouses styles, but to keep eyes on prize, that prize being, of course, policy.

There are two problems with that ideal that come to YHB’s mind after dipping into Ms. McAfee’s book. One is, of course, that it’s preposterous bullshit. Nobody does that. We might as well have an ideal citizen who is impervious to cold or heat, who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, or who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. People may attempt to vote or deliberate without being tainted by emotional appeals, but they will succeed mostly in deceiving themselves about their supposed rationality.

On the other hand, the preposterous bullshit may serve a useful purpose. If we hold to our ideal citizen as described above, we gain merit by learning not to be deceived by rhetorical tricks. The more we try to achieve that ideal, the less we are swayed by fear and hate, and the more our ultimate decisions will be good ones. For all that everybody’s perception of the universe is incomplete and inaccurate, yet the universe does exist. I can apply my skills to it and improve my perception without the hope of some attainable perfection. We will, you see, make better decisions if we fool ourselves into acting as if this ideal were attainable. So that first problem is not necessarily a disaster, although it should be pointed out that perhaps basing self-governance on self-deception is not altogether a pleasant thing.

The other problem that comes to mind is that on a deep level, the emphasis on individual reasoned decision-making makes it difficult for people to reconcile their differing views. That is, if I come to a rational decision, based on all the facts and not tempered by my emotional or tribal attachments, and you come to a different decision, then you are wrong. Oh, yes, it’s possible to agree to disagree, to weigh different kinds of costs differently and to interpret evidence differently, but the way it actually works is that you are wrong. I have done the ideal citizen thing, and you have been duped by demagogues. This is a serious danger: George Santayana felt that democracy was inherently flawed because the minority could never really accept the legitimacy of the majority when the majority was wrong, and of course the minority would always think the majority was wrong or else they would join it. This is exacerbated by our ideal of the independent citizen; if I pride myself on coming to my political conclusions independently, rather than being influenced by my community, then it is easier for me to reject the individuals who have come to different (and inferior) decisions, who are independently and individually responsible for those decisions.

On the other hand, there is much to be said for sticking to that individual, minority view. As long as we accept the process, we can grant the legitimacy of a government with which we disagree. And for all the trouble we’ve had in the last two decades (or more) of the Parties questioning the legitimacy of each other’s electoral victories, would it have been any better if the groups were any less assured of the rightness or independence or rationality of their decisions? Surely our ideal citizen would, in his rationality, his independence and his relentless focus on The Issues, be less susceptible to the pettiest aspects of those decades of partisan bickering. Instead, the ideal citizen would focus on those areas where such disagreements affect governance, which would make it all the harder for politicians of either Party to achieve dubious goals by distraction and division. If the problem is, to some extent, factionalism, then having the ideal citizen who disdains to aggregate himself with any faction is a brake. Although, here, too, it may not be a good thing for a community to eschew communitarianism outright.

So. Gentle Readers. We start with this idea, that the ideal citizen is the product of a growth from dependence to independence. First, we have no political ideas at all, nor any way to express them. Then as children, we learn a little about politics, but are incapable of formulating independent ideas or of rationally analyzing platforms and candidacies, and our entire worldview is dominated by our family and school to the point where even if we had the skills to analyze or formulate, we would be either imitating or rebelling against those other views rather than being independent. Then, as we get more sophisticated, we learn to set aside our biases, to disagree or agree with our parents, teachers and friends based on the facts at hand, rather than our relationships. We learn, as well, to view the statements of politicians skeptically, and to brush aside empty rhetoric and misleading appeals. Ideally, now, we arm ourselves against demagoguery and deception. We don’t just accept the advice of our parents or our pastors or our union bosses; we view their advice, also, with a skeptical and rational eye. We spot logical fallacies and reject fallacious conclusions. We judge, based not on our emotions and attachments, but on reason and evidence, and we do so as individuals, independently, each going in to a voting booth, pulling the curtain closed (perhaps metaphorically), and registering one single vote, to be tallied with all the other individual votes, each aspiring to the rationality and unbiased impartiality of the ideal citizen, cumulatively guiding a state aspiring to rationality and impartiality itself.

Does that seem like a fair description of our cultural ideals, and the assumptive ideals of John Rawls and Immanuel Kant and Isaiah Berlin and John Stuart Mill and John Dewey and Robert Nozick and G. A. Cohen and Milton Friedman, as well as of James Madison himself? Of course not, that would be preposterous bullshit to claim. But the point, I think, is that there is a fundamental mindset that binds up ideas of individual autonomy with democracy and liberty, that makes this development—from dependence to independence—a fundamental story we tell ourselves about ourselves as citizens, and that we set up our democratic states in accordance with that story. Which leads to two questions: is it a true story, and is it a good story?

And another: what would be a better story?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Your Humble Blogger was on the road last night (heading for rehearsal, in fact) and heard General Wesley Clark on All Things Considered. I thought that considering how obvious his point was, he seemed both to have a hard time saying it, and to have a hard time getting it through the head of the interviewer, Michele Norris. It seems very simple to me, so let me see if I can say it in a way that makes sense.

Being an officer in the military can give you two kinds of experience: combat experience, and administrative experience. Nobody questions that John McCain had combat experience, and I (that is, Wesley Clark) say and Barack Obama says and nearly everybody says that his experience getting shot down and his experience as a POW were important, were honorable, and were an important test of his character and his person. When you are thinking about what kind of person John McCain is, you should certainly take into account his brave and honorable record in the military.

However, the job that he wants is an administrative job in the Executive Branch of the United States Government. The head of the Executive Branch. And it would be silly to describe his military career in terms of applicable experience for an administrative job heading the Executive Branch of our government. That’s the sense in which I said that being shot down is not a qualification for the Presidency.

Now I can say that because I was the big brass. Let’s be clear about this: I was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe for the NATO countries. That’s not just a combat post, it’s an administrative post. It meant meeting with heads of state, negotiating with ministers of defense and foreign ministers, making those executive decisions and being accountable for them, and holding together an alliance to achieve a goal. Which, Michelle, I achieved. I can’t see that it in any way disparages Senator McCain’s valiant service to say that that’s a job he simply never held. So when I talk about qualifications, when I talk about the administrative experience, the executive experience, that’s what I’m talking about.

Norris: So what national security qualifications does Sen. Barack Obama have that Sen. John McCain does not, if you were to put them side by side and compare their experiences?

That’s the question we all have to answer for ourselves in the voting booth. But I will tell you this: My experience dealing with allies, negotiating, administering an immense organization, tells me that the first thing to look for is judgment. And on the major issue of the day: should we invade Iraq the way we did, without the UN, with a coalition that lacked the support of much of the Arab world, with the troops that we had available at that moment—well, John McCain said yes, he thought it was a good idea, and Barack Obama advised against it. I think that tells you that Barack Obama has the judgment we need in the Oval Office, combat experience or no.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some of us here in the Nutmeg State are following the story of Christopher Dodd (our good Senator) and Countrywide Financial Corp. The Hartford Courant is on it. Yesterday’s story was called Dodd Denies Loans Deal; today’s is Dodd Tops Lender’s Contributions List. As far as I can tell, there are four plausible interpretations of the events. Some of these may be ruled out later, by more information, but I think these are all still available.

First Plausible Scenario: Nothing Happening Here Despite appearances, nothing untoward happened at all. The deal Countrywide gave Senator Dodd on refinancing his two properties was a good one, but his credit was good, and those sorts of deals were being made in 2003. In this interpretation, the VIP list is a bit of marketing meaninglessness. Your Humble Blogger has been told by various financial institutions that I am a particularly valued customer, and have even been given a Platinum Credit Card with a variety of fees waived. It turns out that the card was not made of platinum at all, that they charge me the same fees they charge everyone else, and that I am not actually Very Important to the bank. But it could look fishy.

Second Plausible Scenario: Naive Melody Countrywide kept telling Senator Dodd that he was Very Important to them, and that they were waiving all kinds of fees, and Senator Dodd assumed that it was a bit of marketing meaninglessness, but they thought they were bribing him. But, as Colin McEnroe pointed out in a blog note that he posted after I started writing this one, “the smart, smart thing to do when somebody tells you you’re in a VIP mortgage program is to say: ‘It’s not because I’m a Senator, is it? Because I’m not allowed to accept things like that.’” Of course, Sen. Dodd may have done that, and the loan officer may have said ‘no, of course not’ and then Sen. Dodd may have said ‘did you just wink at me’ and the loan officer said ‘there was something in my eye’ and Sen. Dodd said ‘ok, then.’ Seriously, I don’t find this at all implausible, because, again, lots of people have offered me VIP discounts, and I am not a Senator, and they aren’t really discounts.

Third Plausible Scenario: Texas Two-Step: A Texas politician is said to need the ability to take their money, shake their hands, drink their whiskey, smoke their cigars, and then vote against them on the floor. Well, and in some versions have sexual relations with various members of their families. But let’s keep our eye on the ball: in this version, Sen. Dodd took their quid and gave them bupkes. This is not technically honest (nor is it staying bought, which some people think of as a virtue, although that’s mostly the people with the purchasing power), but the dishonesty is personal. The important thing, after all, is what he does, and he didn’t give them any breaks. It’s worth noting that he voted against bad Bankruptcy Bills both before and after the loans in question, and that he has been very strongly critical of the banking industry, particularly relating to sub-prime loans and unreported and unregulated credit-default swaps. If he also screwed them out of campaign contributions and points on a refi, well, more power to him, right?

Fourth Plausible Scenario: Guilty, Guilty, Guilty Of course, although we know what he did in public, we don’t know what he did behind the scenes, and we don’t know what he didn’t do. Did he sit on some information, back in 2003, that could have been made public about the shaky (not to say dishonest) financial situation of Countrywide? Remember, also, that given his history and his constituency, a public reversal would have been much more than Countrywide was willing to afford, or indeed needed. It’s perfectly plausible that they bought his acquiescence to a deal that was being worked out deep in the fine print. A few lines slipped into a bill could make millions for a financial services company; a Senator on the right subcommittee would have been in the right position to force a vote on those lines or not, to leak them to the press or not, or to hold up the whole package or not. Those of us following the adventures of John McCain, Banker’s Buddy, have been reminded that the best favor a Senator in the minority can do for a lobbyist is sometimes to bring something to a vote and vote no. He votes his conscience, his constituents love him, and the legislation passes. And everybody’s happy, except, you know, the people who live under the bad legislation.

I want to make it clear that I don’t know which of these four actually happened. I like Senator Dodd, and I would like to defend him with a clear heart. At the moment, though, I’m stuck with saying that he could be as innocent as a newborn babe, and could be as guilty as a … what’s the proverbial phrase? As guilty as a Republican?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those Gentle Readers who wanted to know the result of the budget referendum I was on about last week, well, the budget went down in flames. Turnout was 29%, and the final result was 65% No.

Just to tell the story as I see it, we elected a Town Council (and School Board) who have as their main job deciding what the town will do and pay for, and then we rejected the budget they came up with. And then, after we did that, we re-elected the Town Council because they were doing a good job with the budget, and then after we did that, we rejected the budget they came up with. As far as I can tell, the pressure on that Town Council to come up with some accounting shenanigans that allow them to fraudulently claim to be doing the things people elected them to do without paying for them must be immense.

Only some 19% of the registered voters came out to the polls to say no; it’s plausible that all of those people had voted against the incumbents on the Town Council, or at least against the ones who supported the budgets, and that the greater number of people who voted for the Town Council mostly stayed home and let them twist slowly, slowly in the wind. Fooey.

Mostly, I wanted to highlight one quote in the Hartford Courant’s story (which I linked to above). Daniel P. Jones quotes a 68-year-old town resident as saying about the town’s schools: “They’re just way overdoing it. ... They’re paying for a private school education with our tax money…” Are you as stunned by that quote as I am?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Your Humble Blogger notes this morning that George F. Will in the Washington Post writes about Contempt of Court; not so much agreeing with the Court’s decision in Boumediene as disparaging the, well, contemptuous manner in which opponents of that decision greeted it. An example of that contempt is John Yoo’s piece in the Wall Street Journal called The Supreme Court Goes to War. Seeing these two conservatives publicly disagree about the proper behavior of the Judicial and Executive branches is interesting, and faintly disgusting, but it did lead me to wonder if my Party and the middle-left have done a good job talking about why we agree with the Boumediene decision, and what we want our policy to be.

First of all, I’d make it clear: the U.S. should, when at war, take prisoners, and those prisoners should be treated as prisoners of war, fully complying with our obligations under the Geneva Conventions we helped to write and then signed. We believe in fulfilling our responsibilities; we don’t believe that agreements are to be followed only so long as they are convenient to us, and discarded the moment we fear some consequence or chafe under inconvenience. We keep our word. That’s the policy of the Democratic Party; the Republican Party may have another policy.

Second, we believe in our courts, and in the ability of crimes to be prosecuted in our courts. When we catch people who we think have committed crimes, we want to take those people to court and try them, fairly, because we have confidence that we will get the right people, and we will collect the evidence, and we don’t need to bend the rules to do it. That’s the policy of the Democratic Party; the Republican Party may have another policy.

Third, we believe in our judges. If we are going to throw a fellow in jail, we are willing to go to a judge and explain why, and we have confidence that the judge will rule correctly. We aren’t scared that we won’t be able to explain to the judge why we need to keep him. We aren’t scared that we won’t be able to explain to the judge why we need warrants, or why we need to keep security matters in closed sessions, or why we need this or that special treatment. Because we won’t make that shit up. And if we did make shit up, the judges should catch us. That’s the policy of the Democratic Party; the Republican Party may have another policy.

It’s very simple. If the US goes into another country, and takes people prisoner, keeps them anywhere—on a military base overseas, on a ship, in a prison—there are, it seems to me, only two possibilities. One, those prisoners are prisoners of war, and should be treated as such. Two, they are accused criminals, and should be treated as such. That’s it. If they aren’t prisoners of war, and they aren’t accused of specific crimes, then we should not be keeping them prisoner. That, it seems to me, should be the policy of the Democratic Party; the Republican Party may have another policy.

And I’ll take it one step further. If there is some other circumstance, some special case where we need to keep somebody imprisoned, someone who is not a prisoner of war, somebody who has not violated any law, if there is some circumstance that I can’t currently imagine that requires such behavior on the part of the United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, we don’t think that the President gets to decide it, alone, secretly, without appeal, without explanation, and without review. That seems to be the policy of the Republican Party; the Democratic Party has a different policy, one that believes in the rights of man, equality before the law, due process and liberty and justice for all.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A lot of people have been discussing the prospects of Hillary Clinton becoming President of the United States by running in some future election. It’s possible, of course, but people should remember that my Party in general prefers to nominate people who are running for the first time. We nominated Barack Obama on his first go, and we nominated John Kerry on his first go. We did nominate Al Gore on his second, but before that we nominated Bill Clinton on his first, and Michael Dukakis on his first, and Walter Mondale on his first, and Jimmy Carter on his first. And George McGovern on his second, but I count the modern primary-based nomination process as starting in 1976. Still, if you count George McGovern, rather than one out of the last seven, you’ve got two out of the last eleven, as none of Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson or John Kennedy had unsuccessful runs before gaining the nomination. Nor had Adlai Stevenson run for the nomination without getting it, nor Harry S. Truman, nor Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Republican Party, by contrast, prefers to choose candidates that have unsuccessful runs at the Presidential nomination under their belts. John McCain, of course, ran unsuccessfully in 2000. George W. Bush was a first-timer, but Bob Dole had run unsuccessfully in 1980, as had George H.W. Bush. Ronald Reagan, of course, ran unsuccessfully in 1968 and in 1976. So that’s one out of the last five. Gerald Ford never ran unsuccessfully for the nomination, nor did Richard Nixon (although, like Adlai Stevenson on our side, he had failed as the nominee before), nor Dwight Eisenhower; the run does not go back so far on their side.

Still, going back to 1976 (which, as I say, I count as the beginning of the modern era in Presidential Party politics), the Republicans have only once chosen a non-incumbent who had not come before them as a challenger for the nomination, and the Democrats have only one chose a contender who has.

Of course, arguing from recent trends shouldn’t really persuade people, as the trends will end sometime, and why not now? On the other hand, I suspect that it would be very difficult for Senator Clinton to get the nomination of my party in the future.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Your Humble Blogger lives in a smallish suburb of a biggish city of a wealthy state. There are certain rules imposed on us by the state, which include (a) the requirement to tax residential property at a single mill rate across the town (with another mill rate for all commercial and industrial properties), rather than allowing either a progressive tax structure or a neighborhood rate, and (2) the ability to force a referendum on the budget with quite a small number of signatures (6% of registered voters, in our case). Since people generally do not like to have their taxes raised, this year (like last year), we will be having a referendum on the town budget, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of voters (but a minority of residents) oppose the budget.

I support the budget. There are half-a-dozen reasons I support it, from my preference for high-tax high-service municipalities to a general distaste for referenda, but I don’t think that my more general reasons will be persuasive, particularly in a conversation that begins with accusations (on the No! side) of waste, fraud and abuse, which could be magically done away with if we only vote against them.

The proposed budget for our town is $215,779,968; the proposed budget for the school district is $124,884,718 which is an increase of 6.02% over last year’s budget of $117,796,851. It seems to me preposterous that we would have a tax increase of less than 4%, that is, that we would be able to cut $6 million from the proposed budget, without taking a lot of it from the schools.

The increase in dollar terms is $7,087,867. Of that, the cost for transportation has gone up $890,547, and that isn’t really negotiable. The increase is sudden, but that’s because we had in the past negotiated an excellent deal that ended with the past fiscal year; we’re getting back to current market rates. Our heating costs went up by $516,012; that’s potentially negotiable, but I suspect is already a tad lowball. At any rate, the cost of oil and gas is pretty much taking up $1.4 million, or 20% of that increase, and we don’t really have any choice but to suck it up and pay, right? I mean, we need to be budgeting for huge increases in our domestic oil-and-gas budgets, and I don’t see any way to get around that.

Then there’s the health insurance. It goes up, in the proposed budget, by 2,098,625, which is an increase of 13% or so over last year, and that stinks, but again, I don’t think we can do anything about it in the budget. Maybe we could elect people who could appoint better negotiators, but I don’t think that’s realistic, and besides, it wouldn’t turn up in this year’s budget. We’re now up to $3.4 million that is just inflation in the areas where inflation is expected to be particularly bad.

Then there are the salaries. The increase in all the salaries across the school comes to $3,924,179. If we include all of that, we’re up to $7.3 of the $7 million increase. In other words, other than salaries, oil-and-gas and health insurance, the school budget has been cut. But fine, salaries is a big category, and includes all that administrative waste, fraud and abuse, like giving principals a 4% raise or nurses a 3% raise. Just counting teachers ($2,257,603 increase) and paraprofessionals (who are mostly in classrooms and libraries, as I understand it) ($366,040 increase), that’s another 37% of the increase accounted for.

Why so much? It’s because we are starting to successfully retain teachers. That means they get seniority and more pay. That’s certainly an area where the budget could be tightened. If we were lousy at teacher retention, and lost more of our teachers to nearby towns or other careers after a few years, we would save money. But tightening that budget is fundamentally incompatible with keeping good teachers in classrooms, and there we are.

The rest of the town budget is similar: salaries going up $1.5 million, benefits another $1.5 million for two-thirds of the $4.5 million increase. I suspect that there could be some savings—there was a letter to the editor in this morning’s Hartford Courant in which Robert Goodman complained about the Town planting flowers, which certainly costs money. I like beautification projects, myself, particularly when they involve a few flowers here and there, but these are legitimate subjects for discussion.

But there is no way we’re going to make up for ten million dollars more due in oil and gas and salaries and benefits by holding off on the flower planting for a year. That isn’t how it works. We could, maybe, close it up by selling off one of the (five) parks to developers, or by closing up one of the (two) senior centers, but that’s not being discussed. Which is fine with me. I like the parks and senior centers, and when it comes down to it, I’m willing to help pay for them. I doubt I have to convince many Gentle Readers of that—y’all may well prefer to live in low-tax, low-service towns, but you don’t expect to live in low-tax high-service towns, with no waste, fraud or abuse. Or flowers.

The question is this: what will get my neighbors out to the polls next Tuesday to vote? I suspect the numbers won’t change anybody’s mind, but they also won’t help people remember to vote, nor will they make people passionate enough about it to make them remember for themselves. I suspect that when it gets down to it, most of the voters are more or less resigned to the tax increase: they understand that they have to pay for what they are getting, but they have a suspicion that if the council had been smarter or more honest or something then they wouldn’t have to pay so much. If they were forced to vote on the budget, they would vote Yes, but frankly they’d rather not think about it.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, and it’s over, and Barack Obama is the nominee of my Party. Almost certainly. If all goes well and the creek don’t rise. Excellent. He’s a terrific politician, should run a fine campaign, has (I think) a fifty-fifty chance of winning or possibly slightly better, and if he does win, may well be a magnificent President. Also, more people voted in Democratic primaries than ever before, more people were actively involved in the process of our Party choosing its candidate than ever before, and even if that necessarily means that more people were involved in supporting some other candidate than was eventually nominated, the involvement is in itself a Good Thing, right? Of course, right.

I know that we’re all supposed to take today to vilify Hillary Clinton for her refusal to accept the conclusion of the process as well as her and her surrogate’s behavior during the campaign. And I think that’s important, but frankly, I can’t be bothered. Am I bovvered? See my face? Does my face look bovvered? Threshold, RFK, swing states, hard-working white Americans, popular vote, Jesse Jackson, voting present, Lanny Davis, Appalachia, electability, no decision, am I bovvered? No, I am not bovvered. I deny bovveration. Bovvered is what I am not. Neither am I bovvered. Ain’t. Thank you for your concern.

No, Your Humble Blogger wants to talk a bit about Barack Obama. My initial reaction to Tom Schaller’s TAPped note America’s First Black* Major-Party Nominee was that it was trivial. Mr. Schaller points out that unlike most successful black politicians in America, Sen. Obama does not have two black parents, is not descended from people who were held in slavery, did not come from a clerical background (neither his own or his parents’), did not grow up in a major urban center, and did not go to a historically black university. Not that all five of these aspects have been necessary for successful black politicians, but that going oh-for-five and having success is very unusual. My first response, as I say, was that Mr. Schaller was simply pointing out that a very unusual man with extraordinary success was an exception to the general rule; I rather expect someone in that position to be an exception. Furthermore, it isn’t a surprise that a black politician who finds success outside the black community will derive strengths from areas other than those whose support did not extend much beyond the black community, any more than it’s surprising that leaders within, say, labor or the religious right, will differ from those leaders who have affiliations with those groups but get most of their support outside them.

But then, as I was puttering around the house, I kept coming back to the idea of Barack Obama’s personal history. And to how much binds together the personal histories of most of our successful politicians. Not that they are all the same, but that there are a handful of aspects that are common. There’s the Gerald Ford/Bill Bradley/Mo Udall/Jack Kemp/Ronald Reagan story of parlaying national prominence as an entertainer into a political career. There’s the Al Gore/Mitt Romney/George Bush/George Bush/Kennedy/Kennedy/Kennedy story of the scion of a political family taking on the torch of a new generation. There’s the Jimmy Carter/John McCain/Bob Dole/John Kerry story of a military career followed by coming home and linking up with the local political machine. The other story, the Bill Clinton/Mike Dukakis/Walter Mondale story, where a guy goes to law school, maybe practices or teaches law for a while, then wins local office and then statewide office and then runs for national office, is closest to Barack Obama’s story.

The question, for me, is whether that’s a story that will win votes. I hope it is. It’s a great story. To me, that’s the anyone-can-be-President story. Not that there’s any greater truth to that one than the others, or that the anyone that goes to law school is more anyone than the anyone that plays basketball or calls ballgames on the radio or the anyone that serves in the military. Logically, of course, those are anyone stories, too. But not to YHB.

You know, I used to say that the thing that was inspiring about the Al Gore story was just how far you could get in politics on nothing but brains, perseverance, good looks and family connections. The joke being that the man has absolutely no talent for politics, you see. Well, the thing that’s inspiring about the Barack Obama story is just how far you can get on nothing but brains, perseverance, good looks and a talent for politics. John McCain had the family connections, he married an heiress, which I suppose is another thing that anybody could do, but gave him more family connections, and I hesitate to pronounce about his talent for politics. But it seems to me that if Barack Obama can become President of the United States of America, then anyone can become President of the United States of America—anyone, that is, who is incredibly smart, tremendously charismatic, breathtakingly gorgeous, ludicrously perseverant and unbelievably disciplined. But then, those are all good things to have in a President. Even gorgeousness.

I’ll also point out, and I don’t know how absolutely relevant this is, but Michael Tomasky claims that Barack Obama is not only the first dark-skinned (or substantially dark-skinned) person to be a major party’s nominee for the Executive in America, but the first in what we might call the West. Just a thought. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it wasn’t true. Ah, well.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Your Humble Blogger was listening, yesterday, to a bit on NPR’s Day to Day about Voters Who Plan to Hold Their Noses. I know that many Gentle Readers are frustrated by electoral politics, generally, and I know that not everybody here is a supporter of my Party, or of our nominee presumptive, and I haven’t used this Tohu Bohu to argue for that support. Perhaps I should. It’s not like I have a lot of platforms for such argument. Still, as much as I do support Sen. Obama’s candidacy, and as much as I do support the Democratic Party, I spend much more of my time supporting something much more vague and much less interesting: representative democracy, our constitutional system, our inheritance from James Madison, and the ideals of compromise and persuasion that I think go along with them.

So. Just in case nobody has said this recently, Gentle Reader, because I didn’t hear anybody say it on NPR, here’s the thing to remember: You are supposed to hold your nose and vote. Your candidate stinks. If you can’t smell the stink coming off your candidate, that’s because you haven’t been paying attention, and you are supposed to pay attention. We aren’t governed by angels. We are governed by ourselves, that is, by people, and people are different, one to another, which is what makes the world interesting and fun, and also means that you are different from your candidate, from all the available candidates, from the ideal candidate. Hell, even if you are the candidates, you should have to hold your nose to vote for yourself. You know better then anybody how bad you stink. You know the things you have done that disqualify you, the poor judgments you have made, the people you have trusted that didn’t deserve trust, the positions you held that were poorly thought out, or held for political advantage. So don’t waste your time and energy looking for a perfect candidate. Actually, it’s more than a waste. It’s an active disparagement of Madisonian representative democracy, and that search works to the detriment of actual governance, and thus to the actual lives of actual people.

Get your hands dirty. Not only do flowers grow in shit, but your search for clean chemical fertilizer is ruining the soil. Shit is better. It stinks, but it works.

I’ve never voted for a perfect candidate. The best I’ve ever had, Sen. Kennedy, was a drunk and a womanizer, whose personal irresponsibility made him a national laughingstock and undoubtedly made his (and his staff’s) work negotiating important legislation much harder. He is also one of our history’s greats, and I was moved almost to tears by the opportunity to vote for him, but I also held my nose. I held my nose when I voted for John Kerry for the Senate, and I held my nose when I voted for him for the Presidency. I held my nose when I voted for the local school board, where perfectly competent people have failed to see their way out of the financial pinch coming from the combination of retirees and young families. I held my nose when I voted for Barbara Boxer, and I held my nose when I voted for some Socialist instead of voting for Diane Feinstein (who was going to win anyway, and who I felt needed some reminding that the state was still on her left, and not just when she looked north). I held my nose when I voted for Bill Clinton, and I held my nose again when I voted for him again, and I would have held my nose a third time, had we not passed a bizarre and anti-democratic constitutional amendment that prevents us from voting while holding our noses.

Look, we stink. We all stink. We are all terrific, and we all stink. Every one of us is a compromise, and we all get votes, and every one of us votes for a compromise, and it all stinks. Hold your nose. But do it anyway, because the alternative, holding out for the guy who doesn’t stink, well, you may as well wait for Elijah to give the nominating speech and the host of angels to second the motion. And while you are waiting, people are dying.

And do you know what? They stink, too.

There is work to be done. Actual work, by actual legislators, actual executives and their staffs, actual people who actually stink. You can hold your nose and help, if you want to. And if you don’t want to, fine, but you still need to hold your nose. Anyone who thinks that they don’t need to hold their nose while voting for Bob Barr or Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney or Chuck Baldwin Brian Moore or John McCain or Barack Obama, well, they stink, that’s what.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Mark Schmitt, who as Gentle Readers will recall is the utter cat’s pyjamas in the eyes of YHB, has an article in The American Prospect called Can Identity Politics Save the Right? It’s a fascinating piece, largely because Mr. Schmitt’s understanding of the history of American party politics is broad enough to keep him from getting too much caught up in the moment-to-moment vagaries. He can take his eye off the Presidential race and look at the condition of the national parties, which means the conditions of the state parties, and then look back to the Presidential race in that light. And he points out that the reason why the Republicans are so unpopular right now is because of all their failures. You know how I like to see that.

I do, however, wonder whether Mr. Schmitt is overstating the Republican Party’s problem. I think his point about the handful of successful “moderate” Republican governors with Democratic legislatures is interesting, and may possibly constitute a pattern, but really, there aren’t that many of them. And, of course, the obvious pattern for that is Mitt Romney, who Mr. Schmitt dismisses. I think Gov. Romney has got to be considered the favorite for the 2012 nomination, no? Whether or not Sen. McCain puts him on the ticket this year.

Mr. Schmitt also states that “Future governors, members of Congress, and policy initiatives will emerge from state legislatures…” I wonder how true this is. Y’all know that I like my Governors and Senators to have state legislative experience, but I wonder whether the trend toward statewide nominees from the business world, as well as state Attorneys General, prominent mayors and other non-legislative figures will mean that Republicans (perhaps particularly Republicans) will have other options available to them. For a long time, the state legislatures were seen as a farm team, but now… I really should do the research on that, and look at the last four or six years of nominees for Senator and Governor, seeing if they have legislative experience. See if there’s a difference between the two parties, as well. The information is all available, I just need to, you know, set down and do it. Maybe next week, right? Meanwhile, in the absence of relevant facts, I will opine that the trend is the way I sense it is, and if you don’t like it, do your own damn research, Pomeranz.

Anyway, perhaps it’s just my natural skepticism. Perhaps I am, as Mr. Schmitt accurately describes my Party, a trifle too risk-averse, a trifle too “easily spooked by the confident swagger of the Republicans”. I am inclined, when my observations and Mr. Schmitt’s observations differ, to yield to his.

I will say this, though. Mr. Schmitt quotes David Frum, in Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, as saying that Democrats are “people who identify with the ‘pluribus’ in the nation’s motto, ‘e pluribus unum.’” Oh, yeah. That seems like another way to say the thing I’ve been saying for a long time, you know, about people being different, one to another, and that’s what makes the world interesting and fun? And how my Party is the Party that believes that, and that the Republican Party seems to believe that people being different, one to another, makes the world scary and dangerous. Well, my Party is the Party that identifies with the pluribus, that thinks that the pluribus is the important part. The Republican Party is focused on the unum. Now, different people will have different takes on the motto (for instance, I think that the motto should refer to a constant process of becoming rather than a past-perfect state of became), but I think that if you were to ask people which Party was the pluribus and which the unum, they wouldn’t have much difficulty choosing. The question Mr. Schmitt asks, and I think it’s a good one, is whether being the unum, in the absence of any conspicuous policy success, is enough to win elections.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Once in a while, a politician will say something dumb. Are you with me so far? Once in a while, the dumb thing will become news and take over the airwaves and column-inches to a really horrifying extent. We’ve got an example of it this morning, and I think it’s worth us all taking a look at it and talking about the phenomenon.

Let’s start with the dumb thing. Here’s Hillary Clinton, in response to a question about whether she should drop out of the race now, rather than waiting until the primaries are over in June:

Between my opponent and his camp, and some in the media, there has been this urgency to end this. And, you know, historically that makes no sense. So I find it a bit of a mystery. [interviewer: you don’t buy the party unity argument?] I don’t, because, again, I’ve been around long enough. My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just, I don’t understand it. There’s lots of speculation about why it is, but [interviewer: what’s your speculation?] You know, I don’t know. I find it curious.

This made the front page of the Hartford Courant, made the above-the-fold part of the New York Times on the web (and I think made the front page of the print below the fold, but I’m not sure about that), made the Guardian, and of course made all the blogs and web sites, too. Sam Boyd, over at TAPped, in a note called Oh No She Didn’t says “Hillary Clinton suggests, elliptically at the very least, that she’s staying the presidential race in case Barack Obama is assassinated.” Hunh? But yes, that’s how it seems to be playing. Katharine Q. Seelye, in the New York Times article, says that “the comments touched on one of the most sensitive aspects of the current presidential campaign—concern for Mr. Obama’s safety.”

I’ll try to be brief here with my analysis of the actual statement, since I don’t think the actual statement is terribly important. It’s obvious to me that Senator Clinton was invoking a historical argument to say that it is perfectly fine to have a nomination contested until June, because it has been so contested in the past without problems. And we remember about June, because it was June when Robert Kennedy was killed, which we remember. This is unpersuasive as an argument because (a) the calendar, news media, and cultural context is very different than it was in 1992 and even more different than it was in 1968, (2) 1968 was a disastrous year for the Party, even before the assassination, and (iii) the nomination fight in 1992 was essentially over after New Hampshire, when the Comeback Kid took second and was assumed to romp on Super Tuesday in his home South, which he did, and that took care of Paul Tsongas. You could make an argument that, independent of anything else, June is plenty of time to pick a nominee for an August convention, much less a November election, but the historical stuff is irrelevant to that. Or you could make the opposite sort of argument, from uniqueness, that there has never been an election so close, where two candidates had so many pledged delegates, and where both were still winning primaries so far into the calendar, and that for that reason we should savor it and see it through, rather than rushing to stop it. But nobody who wants the Senator to withdraw now, or who wanted her to withdraw after the Texas primary, will be convinced by a historical argument, nor should they be.

OK. Fine, it was a bad argument, and like the arguments about which states count and which methods for counting the total number of votes cast count, and most of the other arguments about how she could realio trulio be the nominee, is both unpersuasive and a trifle embarrassing. In my opinion, the stuff that implies that pale-skinned voters should be the deciding factor in our Party’s nomination is more offensive than the reference to a historical event, but evidently that’s just me. This one is the big news. Why?

I think it’s because the dominant narrative—the story of what happens, rather than what happens—has become Senator Clinton’s desperate struggle to stay afloat. In this story, she is lashing out, trying anything, no longer caring who gets hurt, grasping at the lowest-probability straws. The thing about this story is that it ends with her utter destruction. Not just her losing the nomination, mind you, but abandonment by all her political friends and allies, and the total loss of power over others and control over herself. I’m not saying that will actually happen, mind you, just that it’s the way the story goes, and that if that’s the story that we are telling ourselves nationally, that’s the story we will see. Fortunately, there is always the chance that in a couple of years we will be telling ourselves an entirely different story. A couple of months, even. We’re easy that way.

The other narrative that I think is making this whole thing click is the Camelot story. Handsome young man goes to Washington, bringing fresh energy, new hope and a generational change, and They kill him. That story, combined with the deeper but vaguer fear of racial violence, leads us to be very sensitive to the idea that Barack Obama is peculiarly vulnerable to assassination. Honestly, I think there’s something to that, in that I know there are a lot of violent racists in this country, but then I think that there are a lot of violent misogynists in this country, and Hillary Clinton has been vilified for more than fifteen years. A disturbed young fellow in his early twenties may not remember a world without people saying on the radio that Hillary Clinton was a murderess. Of course, I am astonished that there haven’t been close calls with Our Only President himself. He is mildly disliked by a lot of people, but he is actively hated by quite a few as well, some of whom have never accepted his legitimacy in office, and some of whom fear that, having disregarded many provisions of the Constitution, he will not leave office in January 2009. I am pleased that nobody, domestic or foreign, has made serious attempts to murder the man, but I am surprised. Particularly since there were two or three attempts on the life of Our Previous President, some sort of foreign conspiracy to take the life of the President Before That, the One Before That was actually shot, and in fact most of the Presidents of my lifetime have had attempts on their life, from Squeaky Fromme to the guy who tried to hijack an airplane.

Anyway, I think a lot of us have a real and only somewhat irrational fear that Barack Obama will be assassinated. And, of course, a Kennedy has been in the news recently; that’s presumably part of why Senator Clinton had it in mind and repeated the comment (which she has evidently made more than once). I think it’s not altogether shocking that our pattern-matching brains put the two together.

The problem is that I want my journalism to be smarter than that. I want my newspaper editors and yes, even my bloggers to be aware of the temptation to go along with the narratives, and to resist it as much as they can. It’ll still happen, of course, but maybe it’ll be less annoying in between times. At least for me. What do you think, Gentle Readers? Are you seeing a different set of narratives? In what context does the placement of this story on the front page make sense to you?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I should have something to say about the news that Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. I don’t. Some blogger I am.

I will, however, state (as I have before) that Sen. Kennedy is a great legislator, a giant figure in American history, and (professionally speaking) a terrific role model for my children. I wish that more of our Party’s prominent people were inspired to follow his example, to settle down to do the day to day work of legislating and negotiating, to be willing to sponsor bad legislation that is better than what it’s replacing, to compromise to achieve incremental benefits, to understand how what the government does and leaves undone affects people who didn’t inherit gazillions of dollars as well as those who did.

Senator Kennedy is, in my opinion, an argument for the existence of the Senate, and there aren’t a lot of those around. I hope he recovers and serves a good many more years, but even more, I hope that other Senators (perhaps from New York) become even better, and that he won’t be missed as much as I fear.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think I have spoken before about the idea that I picked up from some marketing guru that a brand can be held hostage by its consumers. Do you know? Birkenstock may make a fine shoe, but there are an awful lot of people who will never buy a shoe from them because those shoes are Birkenstocks, and we all know about people who wear Birkenstocks. You may find them comfortable, but you are not wearing them to work. Unless you are, because that’s the kind of place that you work, but you see my point. If I were to wear them to work, my place of employment would be making the statement that this is the kind of place that hires Birkenstock-wearers, not the statement that one of their employees finds Birkenstocks comfortable. That’s too bad for Birkenstock, which after all is selling shoes, not hippies, but they can’t do anything about it. I mean, they can’t stop selling Birkenstocks to the kind of people who wear Birkenstocks, because those are their best customers, right? And as long as they do sell them to those people, then those are the kind of people who wear Birkenstocks, and people who don’t want to be associated with them won’t buy them. They are hostage to their customers.

Much the same thing happens in politics. Atrios over at Escaton calls it Assholes, Assholes, Everywhere, pointing out that “at this point in the campaign it should go without saying that every candidate has their asshole supporters, and generally neither the candidate nor their non-asshole supporters should be judged by them.” This is true, but not helpful, and Atrios is not altogether innocent of judging a leader by his followers himself. And why should he be? There are a ton of occasions where a leader should be judged by his followers. When the supporter is famous, it’s an endorsement. On the other hand, particularly when you get to the national scale, a lot of assholes are going to support somebody, right?

From a rhetorical point of view, one of the interesting if unappealing things that’s been happening in this race is the creation of the typical supporter of the other candidate. Sen. Clinton’s campaign has attempted to create the typical Obama supporter: young, black, urban, affluent, idealistic, naïve, overeducated, overcaffeinated, and overexcited. Sen. Obama’s campaign has attempted to create the typical Clinton supporter: old, suburban, ill-educated, old, uncomfortable with minority leadership, cranky, old, elderly and old. Some people, presumably, were persuaded that they didn’t want to be like that, for whichever that, and some weren’t.

Matthew Yglesias, over at the Atlantic, writes about the war in a note called Against Unity that “Paradoxically, a lot of folks find [Sen. Clinton’s] massive wrongness on this hugely important issue reassuring […] war opponents were all a bunch of hippies.” I think that’s something that was really very important at the time of the invasion; for a variety of reasons, the war opponents did come off as a bunch of dirty damned hippies. This was a massive rhetorical failure on their part (sadly, I cannot say our part as my eventual anti-war stance came late, late, late), and I get a trifle cranky when (some of) the people who were right back then blame everybody else for their rhetorical failure, but the point stands that Sen. Clinton was wrong about the invasion of Iraq, and Sen. Obama was right.

Happily, as various people have pointed out, Sen. Obama won the nomination of our Party largely because he was right about the invasion. It was close enough, in the event, that there were several things that, had they been different, might have changed the outcome, but one of them was certainly the war. But since the “base” (vaddevah dat means) of the party is strongly anti-war, Sen. Clinton’s campaign did not attempt to portray the typical Obama supporter as anti-war. Similarly, none of Sen. McCain’s opponents could usefully portray the typical McCain supporter as a hawk. I think the general election will be interesting, in that regard. Will Sen. Obama be held hostage by the anti-war “left”, or will Sen. McCain be held hostage by the pro-war “right”?

Honestly, I’m hopeful. Sen. McCain himself looks like the typical McCain supporter I would want in everybody’s mind, while Sen. Obama looks—well, Sen. Obama actually looks a lot like the typical Obama supporter Sen. Clinton’s campaign wanted in everyone’s mind, but he doesn’t look like a guy who wears Birkenstocks, does he?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here’s an idea for one of those Internet thingies for someone to do, someone who isn’t lazy or busy or anything. Take ten years or so of legislation that had fairly close votes in the House (easily obtainable from Thomas) and make a quiz where the quizee reads the (CRS) summary of the bill and guesses which Party (mostly) supported it. I suspect that nearly everybody would figure it out nearly every time. Bills that protect labor, the environment, the poor, non-white people, none-straight people, the ill-educated and foreigners would be supported by Democrats, and bills that protect property rights, management, owners, and religious racial or sexual majorities would be supported by Republicans, right?

I really would be curious to know how people would do on a quiz like that. I wonder if I would do as well as I think I would.

The point that I would be trying to make, of course, is that there are political parties for a reason, that they espouse different philosophies of government, and that it is in fact perfectly reasonable to vote for the Party, not just the candidate. On the other hand, if I’m wrong, and most people can’t differentiate the Parties on legislation, then that’s a useful thing to know, too, isn’t it?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So. I was having a conversation with myself, the way I do, and I wanted to make a point about the generational shift in our concepts of race and politics, and I told myself this: If the sentence Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a communist agent makes any sense to you, then you were probably born before—what—1955? At any rate, people who are fifty years old or younger, now, presumably grew up with MLK as a national hero, or at any rate as an establishment figure in race relations. People who are sixty or older presumably had conversations about whether he was a communist agent. Oh, Gentle Readers (who are all, I think, under fifty, yes? Happy to be wrong, as usual) are knowledgeable enough to be aware that he was accused of being a communist, but that’s different, that’s history.

John McCain was born in 1936; he was nineteen or so when the Montgomery Bus Boycott brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to the public eye. Barack Obama was born in 1961. It seems to me that somewhere in between those birth years is a generational line that separates the people who had or heard debates over MLK and those who didn’t. Maybe not, maybe it’s down to people born after 1968, like YHB. But I think that difference will make a difference in how people view this election. Just a guess.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So. It seems that every time there’s a new bar the Barack Obama campaign has to clear to count Hillary Clinton out, the result of the voter’s Fosbury Flop is a sort of graze that shivers the bar. Different observers have different opinions about whether the bar actually fell. This is because sports metaphors, although exciting, do not accurately model politics.

I think that this time, though, despite Senator Obama failing to win Indiana, observers are pointing up at the bar still resting on the standards and saying “he did it”. More to the point, every time a state (or territory) awards its delegates, the bar for Senator Clinton’s campaign gets higher and higher, and it’s now just barely visible up there. The sequence of events that leads to almost all the remaining superdelegates casting votes for Sen. Clinton (or many delegates, super or standard, who are expected to vote for Sen. Obama voting for Sen. Clinton instead) is not very plausible. What’s in it for them? Surely Barack Obama is as capable of showing gratitude as Hillary Clinton, and although I grant that it is very very important for a Democrat to be in the White House over the next four years, even if I thought that Hillary Clinton was a slightly better candidate in the fall all things being equal, I don’t think that a nomination at that kind of convention would make her a better candidate. And at this point, a superdelegate would be putting his career on the line by colluding to swing the nomination to her, and wouldn’t be putting his career on the line by voting for Sen. Obama. Seems like an easy choice.

Anyway, the point is that the competitive part is over. Sen. Clinton can (and should, in my opinion) contest the remaining primaries, but she won’t get the nomination. So I’ve been looking back, or around, at the whole thing. You know, Gentle Reader, that there is a kind of conventional wisdom that says that we elect people who are good at winning elections rather than at doing the job of President, and they are very different jobs. But is that true?

What are the character traits that enable somebody to win a nomination fight? First of all, tremendous stamina; it's a physically grueling trip, and mentally grueling because you have to keep going when you are worn out. The ability to avoid gaffes, even when you are tired, hungry and sick. The ability to delegate responsibility, and to find good people to delegate to, and to know when to get rid of people who aren’t doing the job, and to help your people when they need it. A candidate has to be persuasive, of course. More than that, a candidate has to be able to persuade a variety of different people, on a variety of different topics. A candidate has to be able to draw the support of key people, and use that support. A candidate has to be able to keep the support of both X and Y, even when X and Y dislike and distrust each other. A candidate should be able to find the levers that move supporters, and get them to give time and energy and money, not just votes. And it helps if a candidate can figure out how to weaken the support of his opponents, either by getting them to change camps, or by making them less willing to support their choice with time, money and energy. Also, a candidate should be able to think both tactically and strategically, to know when a plan isn’t working, and be able to adapt it to changing circumstances. And do it all for a really long time, even when things are going badly, and just keep getting up in the morning and doing it, again and again, until it’s over.

All of those are useful skills and traits for a President. Politically, in dealing with the Legislature and the country, those skills will be used. For all the silliness of the three-ay-em- phone call, it’s a job where burning the midnight oil could do a lot of good. Barack Obama has, in my opinion, shown a tremendous ability to do the political job of being President. Frankly, so has Hillary Clinton, but that’s not important now.

There are two problems with all that crap I was just saying, though. One is that all of this has nothing to do with policy, and that the President does set a lot of policy, so all of this character stuff, although important, doesn’t make for a government that governs well. But there’s a second problem, which is that it’s all utterly false.

Has John McCain shown those character traits that I was talking about a minute ago? Did Our Only President show them in the 2000 primary? Did Al Gore show them in the primary? What about Walter Mondale? Bob Dole?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As long as I am writing things sparked by My Gracious Host, I should write here that I’ve been ruminating on his post about Clinton, Obama, sexism, feminism, etc, and the response to it. Jed wound up regretting having posted it, and of course he has to assess the positives and negatives to him, but Your Humble Blogger found the post, the article and the responses very helpful for complicating some of the world in a productive manner.

The article in question is Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!, by Rebecca Traister in Salon, and although I it is a far from perfect article, I think it’s informative and provocative. One of the things that I find interesting is what different people see in the article, as its focus and as its agenda.

My take on it (which is the right one, because this is my blog) is that Ms. Traister is focusing on a reporting that, as the subhead says, “Young women are growing increasingly frustrated with the fanatical support of Barack and gleeful bashing of Hillary.” The headline is, then, in the voice of the young women of the subhead, rather than in Ms. Traister’s voice. Having identified this more or less widespread situation, Ms. Traister goes on to document a handful of instances of this frustration and makes a few attempts to identify the causes of the frustration.

Some other people have a different take. In their perception, it’s Ms. Traister in the the headline that is shouting at Obama Boys to back off. I certainly understand that, and although (as I say) I don’t perceive that as the essence of the article, it isn’t strange to me that many supporters of Barack Obama are upset by being called fanatics, and being told that they are upsetting young women. Furthermore, Ms. Traister suggests that one of the causes of the discomfort is that supporters of Barack Obama are regressive on feminism, consciously or otherwise, and even that the reason that they support Sen. Obama (or don’t support Sen. Clinton) in the first place is subconscious patriarchal residue. Nobody likes being told that the reasons they give for doing things are not the real ones. Either these people are lying (to themselves and others) or they are dupes, right?

Or there is more going on?

Ms. Traister reports that there are a lot of young women who share a feeling at the moment. Let’s call this set of women A. Ms. Traister convinces me that the set A is not empty, but I’d be happier with the article if I felt it showed how big set A actually is. That is, of the bigger set of women who support Sen. Obama, is A half? A third? A handful? Well, anyway. The set exists. The characteristic of the set A is that people in A feel that male supporters of the Illinois Senator often express themselves in a way that demeans not only the New York Senator but the members of set A. Are they right? Is this fair?

I don’t honestly know. I sus