The Corruptibility of One Man

All things being equal, I think a government which entrusts power into the hands of a few is more corruptible than one that entrusts power into the hands of the many. Although Pompey and Crassus were able to bribe their way to the Roman consulships of 55 B.C. at great cost, the sheer expense of the operation helps explain why vote buying hasn't subverted more representative governments than it has since then (it's still around, though, commonly in the guise of political machines). Nero and Caligula would certainly argue that dictatorship is the better shield for the commitment of great crimes. Nonetheless, corruption seems to always be with us to some degree regardless of form of government, time, or place. Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, accused of attempting to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat for profit, seems to be a perfect example of a modern, corrupt American politician.

The Blagojevich story doesn't make me despair over the state of the American Republic, but it does suggest to me some of the vulnerabilities of our system. Part of the problem is how Blagojevich came to power in the first place. Political machines are still very much a part of Illinois politics, and they ensure that there is not a level playing field in elections. Candidates beholden to the machine and cooperative with it benefit from its power; on the other hand, those who refuse to feed the machine are often consumed by it. The whole Blagojevich mentality is rooted in the idea of favors and payback -- I'll do what you want if you do what I want, I'll help you now if you help me later. That's how political machines work; everyone owes somebody something, from the voter in the booth to the crook in the governor's mansion. Ideally, favors do to some extent "trickle down" to the common populace, but there is really no benefit for a political machine to enact policies that help everyone, including those not part of the machine. The other side of the problem is the concentration of power in one man, the governor. Blagojevich certainly never had absolute power by any stretch of the imagination -- indeed, he is very likely to pay dearly for his abuse of office. Still, he had enough power to subvert representative government. The fault is mainly his, but I also wonder about the wisdom of letting one official appoint another official to serve in an office that is normally filled by election. Should Blagojevich -- or any other one individual -- be in a position to appoint a senator? The 17th amendment to the Constitution, which also established the popular election of senators, gives governors this power, perhaps in order to ensure the efficient running of the Senate. Unfortunately, efficiency has a price. There will always be corrupt men like Blagojevich who will seek positions of prominence, but their corruption will be always be limited by the power vested in the offices they hold. Too much power vested in a single office makes the inevitable corruption more damaging when it occurs. Improperly assigned powers have the same effect.

Still, I wouldn't call the American system broken. It actually seems to be working fairly well in this case -- the allegedly corrupt official, Blagojevich, has been found out. He will have to face up to his crimes. I'm not sure what it will take to reform Illinois politics, but at the very least the Blagojevich experience should make future machine pols a little more cautious about how they go about their business. The governor might have been entrusted with too much power, but his power was not unchecked. In the name of hampering corruption, I think it's possible to make government too weak -- one advantage of the checks and balance system is that it does allow for a fairly strong yet still limited government. Ultimately, however, I would rather see vacant Senate seats filled by special election rather than by executive appointment. That would let the appointing of senators be strictly a duty for the voters in all cases, and it would close a door to corruption for the Blagojeviches of the world.

Some Final Thoughts on the 2008 Presidential Election

The election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States has been greeted with both exuberance and despair, but it was hardly the most surprising of results. Polls had shown the Illinois senator to be leading his Arizonan rival consistently for weeks prior to Election Day. Even more importantly, Obama ran the far superior campaign. Obama did what I think every presidential candidate should do: he openly expressed his political ideas at every opportunity offered to him. As basic as that sounds, certain prevaricating politicians often seem to me to not to have any real ideas at all, merely positions which shift with the political wind. At times, Obama was lambasted for being if anything too open -- for instance, John McCain was shocked that Obama would openly speak of conducting military operations against al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The president-elect was also open about his plan to "spread the wealth" of America around by raising taxes on the wealthy and on corporations in order to fund social programs and reduce the taxes of the non-wealthy. There are aspects of Obama's policies that I like and aspects that I don't like, but I've always appreciated how willing Obama was to lay out his positions openly and also how he was always willing to defend those positions philosophically. Obama's campaign was about Obama, as it should have been. Unfortunately, McCain's campaign was also about Obama, and there was no reason that it needed to be that way.

The McCain '08 campaign will probably be remembered as a very negative one which focused to a large extent on Obama's character, but McCain was also "negative" in the sense of being reactive and I think that's what hurt him the most. McCain was in permanent "compare and contrast mode" from start to finish in the general election. "Obama's tax policy is about spreading the wealth; mine isn't. Obama isn't pro-life; I am. Obama isn't experienced; I am." Compare and contrast definitely has a place in political argument (and Obama made good use of it), but what McCain too often forgot to do was make the philosophical case for his policies. He presented himself strongly as being against Obama's ideas, but he didn't always seem to be really for his own ideas. I ultimately think that McCain did do a good job articulating his tax policy, but I can't really think of any other issue that McCain really made his own (earmarks, perhaps). Even when it came to foreign policy, ostensibly the Republican's strength, McCain seemed to prefer to lambast his opponent's willingness to meet with unfriendly foreign rulers rather than explain why he personally favored a more standoffish, "carrot and stick" diplomatic approach. McCain always seemed to be reaching out to people who already knew that they agreed with him -- he was always preaching to the converted. Because McCain spent so much of his time criticizing Obama, I think his campaign was actually perceived as being dirtier than it really was; even valid criticisms of Obama's policies strike a dischordant note if they aren't balanced with positivity. The silliest thing about the McCain strategy is that Hillary Clinton followed quite a similar path to defeat in the Democratic primaries. I doubt I'll ever understand why McCain would try to copy a losing strategy instead of challenging Obama in a new and different way. That said, this was a tough year to run as a Republican -- voting the incumbent party out is a basic way for the electorate to express their disgust with their current government, and a lot of people are pretty digusted with the Bush administration right now. I'm not so sure Obama will be the president who will clean up Bush's messes, especially when it comes to civil liberties, but just the fact that the Republican didn't win this election makes it more likely that those messes will be cleaned up eventually...perhaps even by another Republican!

How will Obama handle the presidency? I actually think people SHOULD feel apprehensive about how their representatives will behave once in office, but there is probably too much fear of an Obama presidency in certain quarters. Not every conspiracy theory can possibly be true, right? In fact, if Obama simply governs as a reasonable moderate of a liberal persuasion, he'll erase much of the ill-will his political opponents feel towards him. How Obama's tax and spending policies will affect a weakening economy is my biggest concern, but, honestly, I'm interested in finding out even though I'm also scared. I've lived through the Clinton tax hike followed shortly by the Clinton tax cut followed by the Bush tax cut so I'm curious to see a real world test for the "bottom-up" taxation strategy Obama has consistently supported. I think it would probably be wiser (or at least safer) to not repeal any Bush tax cuts but yet to also go ahead with a small middle class tax cut if spending can be cut in other ways. Of course, the amount of any tax hike is going to be very important -- if it is small and targeted enough, it may not exactly encourage hiring or investment or the starting of new businesses, but the costs will probably be absorbed by the affected parties and life will go on after an initial bout of hemming and hawing. My greatest hope is that an Obama administration will be able to avoid any new, unnecessary wars (my main fear under a McCain administration)...I think we've got a decent chance of this, but Obama is not exactly a non-interventionist by any stretch of the imagination. Considering that the economy is likely to be Obama's biggest concern over at least the first year of his administration, I wonder how many of his other goals he'll be able to achieve. Will plans for universal health insurance fall to the wayside...again? Will alternative energy investments be neglected, in part due to falling gas prices? As I see it, the advantage Obama has by having a Democratic legislature in his corner is somewhat offset by the pressing nature of the recession -- like most presidents, I expect Obama will have trouble delivering on his campaign promises. It'll definitely be interesting to see how things play out. I don't see Obama as a "do-nothing" type of president, but he'd have to be Superman to get everything he wants done in this kind of economic environment.

One thing we're definitely not any closer to in America is a third party. The 2008 election was an Obama and McCain show, with no room for anything else. I really wish at least one of the three general election presidential debates could set aside some space for Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, and/or Cynthia McKinney. Several important issues were swept under the rug in this election cycle simply because the two major party candidates held similar views on them, including the bailout, illegal immigration, and America's relations with Israel (Joe the Plumber's analysis of Obama not withstanding). Nader and crew would have brought some different ideas to the table on these and other issues -- it's a pity that most of America never got to hear those ideas. That said, if America would get off its collective butt, go online, and start researching third party and independent candidates more we wouldn't be so reliant on the mainstream debates. Heck, Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin had a couple of debates of their own in the past month (with Barr also participating in one) that I didn't even hear about until days after the fact...I'm definitely part of the problem here, not the solution! Well, there's always next election, right?

Slavery and the Constitution

I don't consider the U.S. Constitution to be a dated document. It was designed to be the framework for a government that would change with the times. While some of the language used may sound a trifle unusual to modern readers, there's little about the content that is firmly rooted in the century in which it was written. In my opinion, reading the Constitution remains the best way for anyone to learn about the American system of government as it was and as it still is. Still, although you won't find mention of pantaloons, powdered wigs, and muskets there, the body of the Constitution nonetheless was a product of a time and a place. Although the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery provides the definitive word on slavery's present legal status, there remain within the Constitution references to slavery which seem to acknowledge that the "peculiar institution" was an acceptable aspect of life in a supposedly free country.

Unfortunately, slavery is a black mark on many of mankind's early forays into representative government. Slaves could be found in the Athenian Democracy, the Roman Republic, and the Venetian Republic. It is as if it was relatively easy for people to take that first step and say, "Some people deserve rights and representation." To take the next logical step and extend equal rights and representation to all people, however, was extremely difficult, particularly when economic interests were involved. I can easily imagine some slavery defender of the past declaring, "But the slaves do the jobs that we don't want to do! Abolition will destroy the economy!" Americans can find some solace in the fact that slavery as an institution has been fiercely opposed from the very beginning of the United States. Even the writers of the Constitution disagreed vehemently on this issue. Still, it's impossible to call the pre-13th Amendment Constitution an anti-slavery document; you can at best say that slavery is inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution, but, considering that Section II of Article IV cavalierly affirms the rights of slave owners to have their "property" restored to them if an escaped slave moves past state lines, that argument can be taken only so far.

I suppose the Constitution must be considered a historical document as well as a political one. Just as slavery is an inextricable part of American history, so too it must be an inextricable part of the U.S. Constitution. Still, the most important thing to me is that slavery, though enshrined within the Constitution, was ultimately abolished by the Constitution as well. Although the battle for civil rights is an ongoing on, continuing to the present day, at least legal slavery was put to an end once and for all. The United States moved further along than Athens, Rome, and Venice did; it did take a while, but it's still something Americans can feel proud about.

Isn't All Taxation Income Redistribution?

I think the most interesting issue of this year's presidential campaign has been taxation. While both John McCain and Barack Obama have presented themselves as being tax cutters, McCain has consistently supported across the board tax cuts whilst Obama has emphasized that tax cuts should be geared towards those who need them the most and, at the same time, taxes should be increased for those who can afford to pay more in his view. On a number of issues, Obama and McCain hold similar views, but there is a real difference in their attitudes towards taxation.

The McCain position is essentially that taxes are a necessary evil and that America's current tax rates are too high. Though no one will ever able to agree on the perfect tax rate, I think it's indisputable that high tax rates make things difficult for a lot of people, from the middle class family trying to eek by to the small or large business that needs money to expand and hire new workers. McCain, like President Bush, sees cutting tax rates as one of the best ways to spur new growth. Compared to Obama, McCain is more concerned with getting past the recession, not surviving it. Ideally, McCain's tax policies would help the American economy zoom through the recession and start thriving again quickly, but there's certainly no guarantee this will happen. There is also a philosophical component to McCain's position which is based on the idea of America being a land of the free and also a land of limited government. Reducing taxes reduces the imposition of government on the people; at the very least, it gives people with money more freedom to spend that money as they will. Furthermore, reduced tax revenue puts pressure on government to slim down which jives well with McCain's call for a government spending freeze and his long-running crusade against wasteful government spending. It doesn't necessarily go so smoothly with certain of McCain's other positions, however, notably when it comes to foreign policy: one indisputable lesson of Iraq is that wars cost a lot of money.

For Barack Obama, the end justifies the means when it comes to taxation. No one likes paying taxes, but there's a difference between the pang an American taxpayer feels when writing a check out to the IRS and the pain a burn victim feels as he is pulled out of the flames. Obama thinks that the good that can come out of government spending outweighs the ills of taxation; he believes that increasing access to health insurance and health care, cleaning up the educational system, and otherwise aiding the masses is more important than the free spending of the wealth one has earned. Furthermore, he doesn't seem to think that the ills of taxation are quite so severe as McCain believes. Lower taxes may encourage companies to expand, but big companies have also made the "golden parachute" into a household phrase. It's not only government that engages in wasteful spending; it's rife in the corporate world and among the wealthy as well. Obama essentially makes the argument that the rich and businesses should pay more in taxes because they can afford to do so -- profitable businesses will still be able to expand and make more profits and the rich will still be able to invest because there is so much wealth floating around, but by trimming the fat of the wealthy the country as a whole can benefit. I think whether this is really true or not is very situational. Some businesses and some people really probably can afford higher taxes without cutting back too much , but not everyone will be able to bear the increased burden so lightly. The recent financial crisis has demonstrated how easily even huge businesses can fail quite suddenly so we shouldn't treat a change in tax policy in any way but seriously. Let's also not forget that Obama is an anti-tax crusader himself when it comes to the middle class. First and foremost, I think Obama's tax cuts will make it easier for folks to survive the recession even if they have been hit hard by the mortgage crisis and credit crunch; I think it's more of a humanitarian gesture than an economic one. At the same time, those tax cuts should encourage consumer spending which is good for the economy and could help keep a lot of businesses afloat. Obama also seems to believe very much in the power of government spending to create jobs and boost the economy; for instance, he wants the government to take a leading role in the drive towards alternative energy sources and he also supports increased government spending on infrastructure (public works projects can create a lot of jobs and give a nice boost to the construction and related industries). To an extent, Obama wants to use government to provide the economic boost that McCain hopes his tax cuts will encourage the wealthy and businesses to provide. Personally, my biggest beef with Obama is that he is not more focused on the most important goals he wants to achieve when it comes to spending -- for instance, I really don't believe spending money on encouraging community service is something the government needs to be worried about right now.

Clearly, McCain and Obama aren't on the same page when it comes to taxation. On the other hand, they're not quite as different from one another as the McCain campaign wants people to believe. Obama has been repeatedly branded an income redistributor and a socialist (and perhaps by extension "un-American") of late because of his tax policies, but we've had the progressive income tax in America for a long time now. I don't think it's fair to call someone who wants to make an adjustment within a system of taxation that has existed through many such adjustments over many years an agent of radical change. In fact, McCain also wants to make adjustments to that system but in the opposite direction. McCain certainly doesn't seem to mind disproportionately relying on the taxation of the wealthy to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; he probably won't mind relying on it again if another war or two starts under his watch. Granted, McCain has spoken of the flat tax sympathetically in the past, but it doesn't seem to be a part of his current platform. As I see it, ALL taxation is income redistribution -- it always involves the government taking money away from individuals, away from families, and away from businesses and spending it in a way that the previous holders of the money can generally only influence indirectly. McCain may want to reduce the amount of income redistribution rather than increase it as Obama wants to do, but both presidential candidates are redistributers. I don't understand why the social spending advocated by Obama is often treated as if it was in some way worse than other government spending. Perhaps taxation for war spending seems less like income redistribution to some because the troops are fighting for everyone, but the fact remains that all war funds raised by taxation were taken forcibly and spent without the explicit approval of the taxpayer. While Obama does want a bigger government, I don't think any of his policies are really more socialistic in nature than some of the government's recent attempts to address the financial crisis -- AIG, for instance, has essentially been nationalized...a really, really, REALLY socialistic thing to do. I think Obama and McCain both make superb arguments for their respective views on taxation; I'd even go so far as to say their arguments have raised the level of discourse on this subject in American society for the time being. At the end of the day, though, they're both essentially income-redistributin', reluctant socialists, just like FDR and Ronald Reagan. McCain is being disingenuous by claiming to be something else.

The Detail Man and the Populist

Tonight's vice presidential debate pitted two campaigns against each other that have moved in very different directions of late. Obama/Biden has been surging as banks have failed and the stock market has tanked. Meanwhile, McCain/Palin has been struggling as McCain quasi-suspended his campaign last week to supposedly focus on the financial crisis and Palin has come under fire because of a pair of uncomfortable interviews with Katie Couric. A great deal of scrutiny has been placed on Palin lately, with some pundits even going so far as to call on her to step aside from the campaign. Sarah Palin, thus, had much more to prove tonight; Biden, on the other hand, needed only to attack McCain and praise Obama to fulfill his duties. In my view, both succeeded in their missions.

Following the Republican Convention, Governor Palin has come across to me as more unprepared than incompetent. I suspect that even the most "experienced" of politicians must struggle to remember the specifics of bills and voting records; Palin has reminded me of a student who hasn't studied for a test rather than one who couldn't find a way to pass even if she had studied. Apart from this unpreparedness, I think she has also been a little too eager to spin rather than answer questions directly; she certainly should have been able to speak freely to Couric about where she gets her news from, for instance, but she probably got afraid that she'd mention some news source deemed too liberal by the conservative establishment. Of course, it's also likely that she gets a lot of news updates from her staff -- still, I imagine she's looked at a few national newspapers in her time that she could have mentioned...at least I hope she has. The one positive to emerge from Palin's bad press is that there were no expectations on her going into this debate. As long as she didn't sound too uncomfortable or say anything too ridiculous, she would exceed many people's expectations. I didn't really notice any glaring gaffes from her in tonight's debate. While she didn't address every topic raised directly, she had a lot to say and she did a fine job of projecting warmth and confidence. She didn't seem scared or unprepared; she sounded like a perfectly suitable vice presidential candidate, in fact.

That said, I think Joe Biden clearly won this debate. Palin may not have sounded unprepared, but Senator Biden was if anything overprepared. He has a habit of making reference to specifics in debates, but his discussion of particular bills, voting records, and even the constitutional role of vice presidents tonight suggested an almost encyclopedic knowledge of American politics. He was impressive, and Palin struggled to score points for her team on the issues because Biden seemed to be ready for just about any argument. In stark contrast to the sharp back and forths of the first McCain and Obama debate, this vice presidential debate was a considerably gentler affair, and the attacks were largely focused on the presidential candidates. Palin seemed to thrive in this gentler atmosphere; in particular, she did a very good job throughout the debate of appealing directly to the proverbial average American. For instance, she stated very directly that the blame on the mortgage crisis should be placed squarely on predatory lenders, not the regular folks who bit off more mortgage than they could chew. She tried to articulate some of the anger that the victims of the crisis feel by essentially declaring that the American people won't be fooled again and unregulated financiers will never be allowed to run amok again. Palin seems careful not to promise too much, though; as much as she wanted to demonstrate that she empathizes with the common man and woman, she largely steered clear of making specific policy commitments geared towards the masses. In that way, she may not seem to fit the classic model of a populist candidate, but she has definitely been more of a people-oriented than issue-oriented candidate so far. While Palin did an excellent job of presenting herself as a warm and caring person, she had a harder time defending her running mate against Biden who seemed to know about just about every congressional vote Senator McCain has ever made. She couldn't effectively respond to Biden when he mentioned McCain's past opposition to alternative energy or McCain's agreement with Bush on the "important issues," for instance. Her very pro-regulation stance in the debate seemed to be at odds with McCain's past positions, which Biden also criticized repeatedly. I'm not sure what to make of this other than possibly that the financial crisis has made McCain more in favor of regulation of the financial industry than he has been in the past.

I thought Palin made two effective attacks on Obama/Biden, and both were related to foreign policy. First, she attacked Obama's characterization of the American mission in Afghanistan as air-raiding villages and killing civilians. That remark, though made by Obama while he was explaining why he wants to change America's policy in Afghanistan (he's actually in favor of much MORE American involvement in Afghanistan), does paint a rather ugly picture of the American military. All wars are ugly, but unless Obama decides that he wants to cease involvement in Afghanistan I strongly suspect civilians will continue to be killed unintentionally there. Palin's second effective attack was actually directed against Joe Biden who seemed to be trying to paint himself as a dove who had never really supported the Iraq war. I heard the same Democratic debates that Palin referenced in her attack, and I also don't believe Biden and Obama were originally on the same page when it comes to Iraq. "Joe Biden" and "dove" don't belong together in the same sentence! Granted, it is true that Biden and McCain haven't supported the exact same strategies and/or tactics in Iraq, but Biden has never been a leader of the anti-war movement. Palin's other attacks weren't nearly so effective, and one was particularly poor. Her attempt to criticize Obama for voting against a war funding bill backfired badly on her when Biden pointed out that McCain had also voted against a (different) war funding bill -- neither senator really wanted to leave the troops stranded, but they both used their votes to make opposite political statements regarding timelines for withdrawal at different times. Neither of them has any business righteously chastising anyone on that issue...Biden, though, just might because he voted for funding even when Obama didn't. Palin was foolish to bring this topic up. Another bad moment for Palin came when she suggested it might be be nice if the vice president could have more power -- I don't think that's something even Republicans want after eight years of the shadowy Dick Cheney, and Biden was quite eloquent and erudite when he discussed the proper role of a vice president (and criticized the aforementioned shadowy Cheney).

While Palin's comfortable performance should reassure those McCain faithful who are skeptical of the Alaskan governor's fitness for office, Biden's better showing may win over some more undecided voters to his ticket. Most pundits say that vice presidential debates tend not to have much impact, and I'm not sure this one will be any different. Palin, though, was the "story" many people had on their minds before the debate; as such, her decent performance may very well prove to be more valuable for her campaign than Biden's superior performance is for his. Palin definitely didn't provide the disaster that I'm sure many Obama supporters were hoping for...the governor is probably going to get her first good night's sleep in a while tonight.

The Ole Miss Presidential Debate

I always find presidential debates interesting, but I'm not sure I've anticipated one so eagerly before as I did tonight's debate at the University of Mississippi. After months of ads, fighting surrogates, lightweight political forums, and solo speeches, Barack Obama and John McCain finally met together on one stage for a face-off. The surprising behavior of McCain over the past few days made things all the more interesting. While I was very interested in hearing Obama and McCain spar over the economic crisis and foreign policy, I have to admit I was also quite interested in the more mundane political matter of whether or not McCain's campaign was still in a "suspended" state.

As far as I can tell, McCain's campaign was unsuspended as suddenly as it was suspended. I really cannot believe McCain would make such an aboutface without any explanation given during the debate. Still, that seems to be just what has happened. I heard no mention of a suspended campaign tonight; I didn't even hear anything about how McCain was desparately needed in Washington to help save the economy. Unless there is some further clarification forthcoming, I have to interpret McCain's behavior as all but admitting that the suspension of his campaign was indeed a mere political ploy. Theatrics. McCain deserves the title of maverick, but he has proven that he is first and foremost a politician.

That said, I tried not to let my surprise over McCain's behavior to color my view of the debate. In my opinion, both candidates performed well in Oxford. The format of the debate allowed Obama and McCain to question (or, more often, attack) one another after they responded to moderator Jim Lehrer's initial query. There was a lot of back and forth between the two candidates which I rather enjoyed. True, there was a fair bit of the sniping that often makes political debates very tedious to witness, but both candidates were able to get their shots in tonight without taking too much time away from expostulating their own views. McCain did seem to make a theme of pointing out Obama's "naivete" particularly when it came to matters of foreign policy. Obama tried, as he has consistently done in speeches, to link McCain with President Bush's policies. While Obama is in my view far superior at giving long-form speeches than McCain, I think McCain is a rather underrated debater; he was able to hold his own against Obama quite well in my opinion.

Probably the most interesting section of the debate to me was devoted to the economic crisis. While both Obama and McCain support the bailout in the short term, they have very different plans for encouraging economic recovery. Obama had harsh words for the philosophy of trickle-down economics that he says Bush and McCain espouse, noting that some people were experiencing economic crises of their own long before the Wall Street and banking giants started tumbling. Obama's bottom-up strategy is instead designed to alleviate economic pressure on those least able to recover from economic catastrophe, at the expense of a corporate America that exploits loopholes to evade paying taxes yet throws away huge amounts of money to greedy executives. McCain, in contrast, took pains to praise business, noting that lower taxes for businesses encouraged economic activity and provided jobs. He also emphasized the importance of cutting spending and even dwelled at some length on one of his favorite topics of years gone by, earmarks. To hear McCain speak, it sounds like he intends to veto any bill loaded down with earmarks. In practice, I imagine this would lead to a very adversarial relationship between the president and Congress -- if people think Congress is slow to move now, just wait until McCain starts vetoing every bill that carries a whiff of wasteful pork barrel spending. McCain has done a good job of doing what I suggested some months back; he has positioned himself more or less as a small government, lower taxes kind of guy. He's also attempted (less successfully in my view) to paint Obama as someone who will tax everyone and spend prodigally; Obama has strongly and consistently refuted the claim that he will raise taxes on everyone and did so again tonight. The spender label is harder to avoid. Obama seemed secure in his commitment to his ambitious but expensive energy and health care plans, though he did acknowledge at least in the case of his energy plan that the economic crisis could delay its implementation. Throughout the debate, Obama did well in tying the energy crisis to other issues, such as foreign policy and economic recovery. McCain definitely came across as the more fiscally responsible of the two to me even though I'm skeptical that he'll be quite the earmark vetoer he is painting himself as. On the other side, I find myself sometimes wishing Obama had more of a pragmatic air about him when it comes to economic issues. While I don't think Obama has any desire to tax middle and lower income people hard, I somehow can't imagine him cutting taxes on the rich and lowering the capital gains tax like Bill Clinton did -- having an idealist committed to social justice in the White House could bring about a lot of good things, but we do have a recession to beat as well. Although trickle-down economics is often used as a negative term, I actually think the underlying idea behind it has some merits if it is not taken to extremes. This has been a really long paragraph.

On to foreign policy. McCain does seem to have a natural advantage when it comes to foreign policy relative to his younger opponent. All those years haven't been wasted -- McCain, as a soldier and as a member of the United States government, has travelled the world. He knows foreign leaders. He's passionate about America's security. He's genuinely interested in foreign policy and defense issues. Obama can't compete with McCain when it comes to experience and perhaps not even in enthusiasm when it comes to foreign policy. What Obama does offer, however, is a rather different take on world affairs. He continues to advocate for a timely withdrawal of troops from Iraq. McCain, by contrast, is closely associated with the surge strategy in Iraq that has led to reduced violence but an increased troop presence in Iraq. I have to admit I personally was totally wrong about the surge -- I thought it would lead to a surge of violence in the short term, and Obama seems to have thought about the same thing. The success of the surge strategy is perhaps the brightest feather in McCain's foreign policy cap; in my view, the surge has definitely led to a better situation for all in Iraq. For Obama, though, the Iraq war will always be a mistake and a distraction no matter how successfully the war effort is waged; he regards Afghanistan as the primary theater of the war on terror and feels that al-Qaeda has grown stronger in recent years because we have not been committed enough to winning that war. Although Obama does seem to place more emphasis on diplomacy relative to McCain, I'm not sure I would classify one as a dove and one as a hawk. Obama essentially wants the surge to move from Iraq to Afghanistan; he wants the troops out of Iraq not so much because he expects peace to result as because he thinks the troops would better serve their country if they were deployed elsewhere. Obama certainly seems to take a harsher view of Pakistan than McCain does, for instance, and he definitely leaves the door open for military operations within Pakistan's tribal areas. Both Obama and McCain condemn Russia's invasion of Georgia and see it is a threat to the United States' allies in the region. McCain did seek to portray Obama as being not quite enough on Georgia's side, but I would say they're both pretty much on the same page there even down to NATO membership for former Soviet republics.

The most vigorous foreign policy argument between the two was over whether or not an American president should ever meet with a roguish leader like Iran's Ahmadinejad without preconditions. McCain attacked Obama for being willing to engage in such a meeting; in fact, McCain didn't just attack...he mocked. He acted like a condescending teacher trying to explain a ridiculously simple concept to some obtuse schoolboy. Honestly, though, I'm not sure I got the lesson either. McCain's argument seems to based on the idea that an American president who meets with an enemy leader without preconditions is somehow legitimising that leader in the eyes of the world. Ahmadinejad is definitely a villain in my view, but I don't see how he can be considered anything but legitimate -- he is an elected member of the Iranian government. Like it or not, he's part of the reality of Middle Eastern politics at the moment. I tend to think that wise diplomatic policy requires keeping in contact with all sorts of nations and governments. Sometimes the relations between countries will be more or less hostile, but if circumstances dictate that enemies should meet then so be it. I don't really think fears about legitimising an evil leader should prevent us from engaging in diplomacy that could possibly avert a war or prevent nuclear proliferation. We certainly have no reason to be overly friendly towards Iran. We shouldn't placate or appease the Iranians. We should be able to talk to them, though, and if for some reason there's an advantage to having a president meet up with Ahmadinejad without preconditions I just don't see what's so terrible about that. Obama did try to make the point that a meeting on the presidential level would not necessarily occur between the United States and Iran -- he emphasized instead the importance of lower level diplomatic meetings. Theoretically speaking, I don't see anything wrong with Obama's stance. Maybe I'm wrong about this just as I was about the consequences of the surge, but at the very least I think McCain could have made his point more clearly and more respectfully.

As puzzled as I continue to be about McCain's pseudo-suspension, I'm glad that this debate happened and I am looking forward to the upcoming October rematches. Both McCain and Obama are very much in this race -- yes, I think McCain will survive the weirdness of this week, especially given his strong debate performance tonight. I would classify the debate overall as a draw with McCain doing better than expected in the economic portion of the debate and Obama doing better than expected during the foreign policy segment.

There's No Suspending in Politics

John McCain's decision to suspend his presidential campaign little over a month before an election will likely be controversial for as long as people study American history. Was it a political ploy or an act of patriotism? I doubt we'll ever know for sure. McCain is undoubtedly capable of making personal sacrifices for his country -- he's proven that beyond a reasonable doubt already. He is also quite passionate about issues that he believes in. Up to this point, McCain hasn't seemed to me to be all that passionate about economic issues, but the present American financial crisis is by all accounts an extremely serious one. If McCain truly believes that a bailout could possibly prevent another Great Depression, I can imagine him dropping everything and investing himself fully into making that bailout happen. At the same time, Senator McCain is also a man who has wanted to be president for many years. Because Barack Obama has opted not to suspend his own campaign, McCain will now be able to paint Obama as someone who cares more about his own political ambitions than the good of his country. An "unsuspended" McCain will be able to play the hero whilst Obama will be forced to continually defend his choice to campaign through the crisis. Even if McCain is deeply worried about the economic crisis, I'm sure he was quite aware of the political leverage he could gain by suspending his campaign.

That said, McCain has taken a big political risk. All this talk of suspending campaigns has reminded me of when Ross Perot left the race for several months in 1992, a move that happened to devastate a kid who was playing close attention to a presidential election for the first time. (The kid later grew up to be a political blogger even though he didn't pay much attention to politics for years after Perot's failed bid.) Perot's decision in all likelihood was not a political ploy -- it certainly hurt his campaign. McCain's suspension could similarly hurt him. Already there are some veiled (and not so veiled) suggestions about McCain's mental competency floating around, just as there were with Perot. McCain will probably be best served if he can unsuspend his campaign quite quickly. If he does not, then he runs the risk of becoming a somewhat forgotten figure or, worse, perhaps a pathetic one. The truth is McCain has no power to really suspend his campaign -- he can control himself and his staffers, but he cannot control the American electorate who are very much a part of every campaign. Voters certainly haven't stopped assessing the candidates, and they haven't forgotten that there's an election in November. They're still going to be deciding if they want to vote for McCain regardless of whether he is on the stump or in the Senate. There is no pause button in a political election.

I do think McCain's decision to suspend his campaign is a tacit admission of something I've thought for a long time: people who have other political responsibilities should NOT run for president. Both McCain and Obama have been neglecting their senatorial duties for two years so they could try to become president. What they are doing is acceptable in the current political culture, but I don't consider it to be the honorable choice by any means. It's fine and good that McCain is willing to stop his presidential campaign to help avert a crisis, but I wonder if having a fewer number of distracted senators over the past couple of years might not have helped us avoid some other future crises as well. Regardless of who wins or loses, this election is taking three senators and a governor away from their duties...I don't see how that can possibly be a good thing for the country.

I've just learned that McCain has decided to show up for tonight's debate in Mississippi. I'm surprised -- I was just about to predict in this post that McCain would not show up because that would seem to be a backing away from his principled stance. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised: McCain has been consistently unpredictable throughout his career and if anything he is growing even more mercurial with age. At any rate, though, I'm very glad that the two leading presidential candidates will finally have a real political debate.

Voting for Vice President

I think it is safe to say that American politics has grown more democratic in spirit over time. The establishment of the popular election of senators, the development of the primary and caucus system, and women's suffrage are all examples of this trend. Two of these changes have come about as a result of amendments to the Constitution, and it could be argued that as America becomes more and more democratic it moves further and further away from the dogma of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution. The conflict of ideas fought between those who believe that people should have more control over their government and those who believe that the power of the people must be checked in order for the stability of the nation to be maintained has shaped our political system...and made it all a little confusing as well.

The vice presidency is perhaps the most confusing federal office in the land. Although a vice president never has to win an election on his or her own merits alone, the office entitles its holder to become president should the sitting president die and to cast a tie-breaking vote in the case of a 50-50 deadlock in the Senate. While technically the vice president is elected, the voting public is essentially shut out of the process of nominating a person to fill this important office, and they only get the opportunity to vote for vice president in combination with a particular presidential candidate on a ticket. Considering that the vice president is the lesser office, the vice presidential candidate is always overshadowed by the presidential candidate; practically speaking, most people seem to vote for president, with the vice president being an afterthought if even a thought. This current situation exists largely by decision of the political parties -- they, in effect, have taken it upon themselves to check the power of the people, though their existence is not even acknowledged in the Constitution.

I don't mean to damn the political parties. They have played a role in the democratizing process I mentioned earlier; the fact that voters can essentially choose each party's nominee for president now is largely due to the beneficence of the parties. The party system was alive and well in the 19th century, though the players weren't exactly the same as they are today, but voters simply weren't allowed this nominating power -- they could vote in the general election, but choosing a party's nominee was a task reserved for the political establishment. Still, I think if the voters are good enough to nominate a presidential candidate they should also be able to nominate a vice presidential candidate as well. After all, the vice president could become president at any time and he or she acts as the 101st senator also. Although it may be lacking in day-to-day responsibilities, the office of vice president is not unimportant. I think it is time for it to be taken a little more seriously.

I'm sure that any vice presidential election would be overshadowed by the presidential election just as vice presidents today are overshadowed by presidents, but that's OK. I just would like to see vice presidents chosen not for political expediency but based on their perceived merits as candidates. Considering that they may become president, vice presidential candidates should have to prove themselves to the people they hope to represent, just as presidents and senators must. There should be primary and caucus voting for vice presidential nominees. There should be separate popular voting in November for president and vice president, just like the Electoral College does it. Theoretically, we could end up with a Republican/Democratic presidential combo this way, but in practice this probably won't happen very often, if at all. Adams/Jefferson part 2 wouldn't be the end of the world, anyway. What we might see an end to is the picking of weird vice presidential candidates in order to appease some wing of a party or to try to win a certain swing state or to compensate for some perceived shortcoming in a presidential candidate. Rather than having regional vice presidents or fringe politics vice presidents or vice presidents chosen because of their race or gender or age or experience, we'll have vice presidents that can actually represent the broader nation. With all due respect to Dan Quayle, Joe Lieberman, Geraldine Ferraro, and Dick Cheney, I do believe this would represent progress.

Will John McCain Move Beyond National Security?

I've been thinking today about which of the remaining presidential candidates I feel like I know the best at this point in time. After some reflection, I realized that Barack Obama feels more familiar to me than John McCain. This surprised me a little -- after all, John McCain has run for president before. I wasn't following politics too closely in 2000, but I do remember that McCain's campaign for the Republican nomination was pretty much the most exciting thing about that election prior to election night. Obama, on the other hand, is someone I hadn't heard of until 2006. How can I possibly feel like I know Obama better than McCain?

I actually think the recent past explains my feeling of familiarity with Obama at the moment. After all, Obama's been in the limelight for the whole year. He's been battling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, after all -- never mind that the battle was essentially over for all accounts and purposes months ago. McCain, on the other hand, has been somewhat out of the public eye following his dispatching of his Republican rivals. The one other lingering Republican, Ron Paul, failed to win enough votes to be a credible McCain challenger or even a political thorn in the side of the Arizona senator. Clinton and Obama's struggle for the nomination was theater -- hard to watch at times, for sure, but theater nonetheless. It has in recent months eclipsed McCain, a candidate who did nothing wrong other than win too easily. The ugliness of the Clinton-Obama fight may very well benefit Obama in the long run. While Obama probably wishes Reverend Wright had not become a household name, I think it's far better for him that the country became acquainted with Wright when it did rather than later. Likewise, it's good for him that he's already been called an elitist and that his Islamic ties have been revealed. The fact that this stuff is already out in the open means that McCain can only get a limited amount of traction out of any of these issues.

John McCain in contrast hasn't really been exposed in the media much so far. The Republican nomination process had its nippy moments, but it wasn't a particularly bruising affair. McCain was able to defeat his challengers essentially on one issue: national security. Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney all sought to sound like the kind of president who would keep America safe, but McCain's military and political experience made for a far more impressive national security resume than anything the security trio had to offer. I honestly think McCain could win the election in a similar fashion; national security is the issue for many people right now, and McCain has a strong experience advantage over Obama. Obama, however, won't be trying to out-do or out-tough McCain on national security issues like Romney, Thompson, and Giuliani attempted. He'll be arguing for different policies and different approaches. Thus, there will be a different dynamic to their matchup. The question voters ask themselves won't be, "Who is the best man to lead us through war?" but rather, "Which man has the best strategy and philosophy?" Ultimately, I think McCain will make his general election campaign about a lot more than just national security. The challenge for him will be choosing which issues to emphasize. Unlike a Tom Tancredo, McCain is not a one-dimensional candidate. Like a Tom Tancredo, McCain's stance on the issues can be polarizing even within his own party. I really don't expect McCain to make immigration one of the centerpieces of his campaign; neither do I expect campaign finance reform or pork-barrel spending to be strongly emphasized by McCain in the runup to November. Those are issues that McCain is passionate about, but they are controversial issues among his fellow Republicans. It would be safer for McCain to be the anti-tax candidate, the smaller government candidate, the personal liberties candidate...but does he really want to be any of those things? If not, he could find himself losing votes to Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. While McCain's vice presidential choice will likely appeal to some important base of the Republican party somewhat alienated by McCain, I'm not sure that alone will be sufficient to energize disaffected voters.

Although I hope we've got the most dirty politics of 2008 out of the way already, it is probably inevitable that McCain will be attacked on character issues just like Obama has been. McCain's marital history certainly makes for ugly reading; as much as I don't want to judge McCain the candidate based on what McCain the man did thirty years ago, I must admit that I think of Carol McCain just about every time I see Cindy McCain on TV now. I don't want to, but I do...that's the power of a sensationalistic story. I have no idea if McCain's personal life is going to become a big campaign issue or not, but I'm sure something similarly non-political will hit McCain over the head sooner or later. How well McCain is able to step out of his national security comfort zone to defend himself and win over skeptical voters could have a very big impact on the election.

Mike Gravel and the National Initiative for Democracy

Mike Gravel recently announced his retirement from active politics after Bob Barr became the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee. There will be no independent run from the colorful former senator from Alaska this year -- it seems Gravel will be spreading his message through books, the Internet, and other media from now on. He undoubtedly deserves the rest after his truly marathon presidential run. I don't think there's any question that Gravel enriched the presidential process. Above all else, he made us think. There may not be another person on this planet who has exactly the same set of political views that Gravel holds yet the Alaskan never seemed to hesitate to state his opinion in a debate or interview. Iran? It's no threat! Illegal immigration? It helps the economy! Democracy? The people need to take charge of things themselves! I don't agree with Gravel on a lot of issues, but I love how he made me think about common issues from a new perspective. In fact, it was rather hard to ignore Gravel at any event to which he was invited -- he was combative to the point of rudeness in the debates, the cantankerous old man par excellence. He would have made a most unlikely president, but many people who would never have voted for him will nonetheless miss seeing him on the campaign trail.

Mike Gravel's mission to bring direct democracy to America in a big way will surely continue. The National Initiative for Democracy aims to let the people play a much larger role in establishing policy than they currently can. In effect, Gravel and the Initiative want the people to become another branch of government equal to Congress, the president, and the Supreme Court. There is something undeniably appealing about making decisions for yourself rather than trusting someone else to make those decisions for you. I would definitely have liked to have been consulted about going to war with Iraq, for instance. I certainly no longer believe that elected representatives are "more qualified" than average people to make political decisions -- I refuse to accept that I myself, my friends, and my family are part of the "rabble" than cannot be trusted whilst Larry Craig, David Vitter, and others of their ilk are members of an "elite" who will make sound decisions even in times of crisis. The Craigs and the Vitters do still have an advantage over the average person, though, and it is a big one: they're professionals. Politics is their job. They go to meetings, attend hearings, and have advisers who are experts in various fields -- if they are still ignorant about the issues, it is entirely their own fault. The average person cannot focus on politics to the same extent and as such would struggle to make well-considered decisions when it comes to issues he or she is not that familiar with. The idea of giving the people a direct voice in politics still has some merit, but direct democracy would probably be most effective when it comes to "big picture" issues that tend to affect everyone.

It's fun to think of how the people might change government if they had the chance. I imagine the federal budget might look a little different after it was given the direct democracy treatment. Somehow, I can't imagine health care and education being underfunded. That doesn't mean defense spending would necessary be decimated (I suspect it would be reduced, however) because national security is on a lot of people's minds as well. I have a hard time imagining popular approval for billions of aid to Pakistan, especially since many people think Pakistan is the reason Bin Laden is still on the loose. In general, I suspect more attention would be paid to internal problems and less to foreign policy issues in a direct democracy; this would undoubtedly have both good and bad effects. America would perhaps no longer be an interventionist, but it could find itself in a position of weakness and vulnerability in the international sphere. Who is to say that the people wouldn't adjust, though? If foreign policy experts make the case for aid to Pakistan in terms anyone could understand and market the message directly to the people, perhaps that aid would continue even in a direct democracy. It's harder to say if people would always vote for policies they perceive would be in their economic best interest regardless of how such policies would affect other people and the economy as a whole. Would, for instance, the masses vote for a 75% income tax on the rich to pay for bread and circuses for themselves? Aristotle would probably say, "Yes." I concede that this is a danger zone, but it isn't because regular citizens are inherently greedier than politicians. The real problem would be that economics is a subject a lot of people are pretty uncomfortable with -- direct democracy is likely to fail if people are forced to make decisions without either knowledge or experience to guide them.

Although Mike Gravel thinks the federal government has been corrupted by corporate interests, he is not exactly arguing for its extermination. Rather, he sees the people as being a complement to the government -- direct democracy would in effect coexist with indirect democracy. Ideally, the people will make the government better and perhaps vice versa as well. The important thing is that the voice of the people will be heard on a national level. How the National Initiative intends to make this happen is somewhat peculiar. It sees the government and the people as fundamentally opposed so it doesn't seem to think that elected officials would ever support any idea to give the people any of their power. So the Initiative is collecting signatures and donations at the moment. Their big plan seems to be to amend the Constitution without the support of Congress or the state legislatures. Personally, I think this is a flawed strategy that has no constitutional basis. A better approach, in my opinion, would be to lend support to candidates who support the principles behind the Initiative so that they can change government from within. Perhaps the reason this idea has been rejected is because supporters of the Initiative think that only corporatists can win offices these days; personally, I'm not quite so cynical. If 50 million people are willing to "vote" in a National Initiative, why wouldn't they be equally willing to support pro-direct democracy candidates in legislature and congressional elections?

As always, Gravil is making me think. Thanks for everything, Mike.

The Eternal Campaign

The extended battle for the Democratic nomination has provided this election cycle with much of its drama. In a way, I think any such fight to the end is good because it ensures that voters in all states will at least have something of a choice as they should in a republic. However, there is definitely a different feel about this contest compared to the Republican nomination process. It wasn't so long ago that the last Republicans still standing were Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain. Paul, in fact, is still in the race, but he has been gaining a bit more attention of late for his new book than for his campaigning. Considering that Paul is libertarian-leaning, Huckabee is a religious conservative, and McCain is a neo-conservative, these three candidates had little choice but to campaign on ideology. The Democratic presidential campaign, however, has been about character and personality almost from the very beginning. While the horse race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has been exciting, the early withdrawals of the other Democratic candidates has ultimately made the nomination into more of a popularity contest than a political debate.

My personal name for Hillary Clinton's political strategy against Barack Obama is "Death by a Thousand Cuts." For months now, Clinton and her campaign have sought to attack Obama on all matter of character issues. (I don't mean to imply that Obama and his campaign haven't been attacking Clinton from day one as well, but I do think Clinton has been more systematic in her approach! Additionally, I think Obama has intentionally tried to play the gentleman in the debates while Clinton has been very aggressive in them -- that definitely has affected my perception.) I've felt that this strategy has greatly weakened Clinton simply because most of the issues she attempted to hit Obama over the head with didn't seem to be all that important -- at least, not important enough to determine who to vote for. If anything, these flimsy attacks reflected poorly on the attacker. The Clinton campaign must have assumed that, sooner or later, some character issue raised by Clinton would really resonate with the voters -- it's only the law of averages at work. Arguably, Clinton is trailing Obama in the delegate race because none of the character issues raised really did "stick" to Obama as much as Clinton had hoped...certainly that was the case until relatively recently. In my view, Obama really did say something offensive when he suggested that the culture and political leanings of small town America are a direct result of economic factors -- from a sociologist such an analysis could be expected, but I think a presidential candidate seeking small town votes should be more respectful, particularly when it comes to the religious views of Americans. Obama's gaffe probably occurred too late to matter overly much, but I imagine Clinton must have been relieved that her patience finally paid off. Perhaps now Hillary will realize that it is far more effective to attack an opponent's obvious weaknesses than to try to invent weaknesses which don't really exist.

The paramount question surrounding the campaigns of Clinton and Obama has become, "When does this all end?" Obama has the delegate lead as well as the lead in the popular vote acknowledged by the Democratic Party. Clinton, though, seems to be only strengthening as a candidate despite the late date. I thought she clearly won the last debate, and more importantly she is also coming off of a primary win in Pennsylvania, though the margin of victory was less than some expected. For her to quit now would seem strange. How, though, can she ultimately win? A superdelegate-led victory or convention shenanigans would lend a distinctly un-democratic air to the Democratic Party, and neither scenario seems very likely to happen. Indeed, I've lately gotten the impression that Clinton has no serious intention of playing the role of the villain who snatches the golden sceptre right from the hands of the heir apparent. Instead, I think Clinton could be in this for the really long haul. Imagine, for instance, that Obama gets the Democratic nomination and loses to McCain in the general election. Clinton might get some blame for this, but if that does happen I strongly suspect that "security voters" (rather than Reverend Wright voters or bitter small town voters) will put McCain over the top. Clinton has tried to portray herself as more trustworthy on national security issues than Obama, but McCain's military as well as political experience will be tough for either Democrat to brush aside. If Obama does not win the general election, then I think Clinton would be in good position to contest the nomination again in 2012, and she's tenacious enough to want to do so. If Obama wins, then I think there's a good chance that Clinton will run in 2016, perhaps with Obama's endorsement. In short, don't expect an end to the Clinton campaign any time soon. It may outlast all of us.

New Homes for Old Pols

Third parties have two pools of potential voters to recruit from. The first pool is people who either already belong to a party but are dissatisfied with it or consider themselves independents. These are voters who clearly have some degree of interest in politics and already have experience with the process. The second pool is composed of the disinterested masses who do not vote at all. People don't vote for all sorts of reasons -- some definitely do feel alienated and disenfranchised by the two party system and thus have reason to be interested in a third party alternative -- but I think the majority of people don't vote because they are busy with their daily lives and don't follow politics very closely. Those who have been reading this blog for a while know I belonged to that category myself for a long time. It is arguably easier to recruit an active voter to join a new party than it is to convince a non-voter to join the process. "Why don't you start voting so you can support a candidate like me who has virtually no chance of winning?" That's not a great selling point.

Since smaller political parties really do need to court current voters, nominating an established candidate formerly associated with another party can seem like a very appealing prospect. Established candidates have name recognition -- if you doubt that is a powerful thing, remember how great Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson did in the early presidential polls. Established candidates are also seasoned campaigners with useful experience, contacts, and perhaps even an existing organization. There is, however, a big potential downside to welcoming in such candidates. People don't always leave parties for purely ideological reasons. Sometimes they leave because they don't agree with the party leadership on organizational matters or simply don't get along with a particular person or group of people within the party. This being the case, it's possible that an established candidate can leave one party and join another armed with the very same set of ideas and beliefs. The new party, then, risks being hijacked by the candidate -- this seems to be just what happened to the Reform Party when Pat Buchanan joined it and ultimately became its presidential candidate in 2000.

Several of the potential presidential candidates competing for small party nominations are already well-known politicians. Alan Keyes has left the Republican Party and strongly hinted that he wants to become the Constitution Party's presidential candidate. We'll know more after the Constitution Party Convention next week. I don't know enough about the Constitution Party to judge whether Keyes fits there, but one Mississippi CP member is already saying, "No Thanks, Alan Keyes." At least the title of his blog post is polite. Mike Gravel has also left the Democratic Party and is now seeking the Libertarian Party's nomination. This is more than a little wild. Gravel surely has some libertarian leanings when it comes to foreign policy, individual liberties, and abolishing the IRS, but I've never thought of him as someone who wants to drastically reduce social spending like many Libertarians want to do. To tell you the truth, I thought Gravel was much more likely to join the Green Party than to become a Libertarian. Instead, another former Democrat has become the likely Green nominee: Cynthia McKinney, a former Congresswoman from Georgia. She gained some notoriety for hitting a police officer in 2006 -- I had an impression of her being a mentally unbalanced individual probably entirely due to the media coverage of this incident. She actually seems to be quite a good and downright levelheaded speaker, however, and she has done very well in the Green primaries so far. Judging from how the Greens have embraced her, perhaps McKinney's crossover makes the most sense.

In any case, Keyes and Gravel and McKinney are at least bringing some attention to three minor parties. McKinney will probably be a presidential candidate in the general election. We'll have to see about Keyes and Gravel. I imagine that there are a lot of people who right now perceive Keyes and Gravel as being Buchanan-esque hijackers and will oppose their nominations for the long-term good of their parties, but I think both Keyes and Gravel could win over a lot of people if their voices are allowed to be heard. I don't know enough about the other candidates from the smaller parties, but I'm willing to bet Monopoly money that at least a few aren't any more "ideologically pure" than Keyes or Gravel. Ideological purity and political parties just don't seem to go very well together.

Let Ralph Nader Run in Peace

I don't care much for the team mentality that many Democrats and Republicans adopt. Voting for someone only because she belongs to your party or vilifying someone else only because he is of the other party are the acts of an automaton, especially considering that "Democrat" and "Republican" have become almost useless labels given the different factions that exist in each party and the geographical variations in ideology that seem to be accepted by both parties (for example, pro-life Democrats can be commonly found in conservative areas and pro-choice Republicans are prevalent in liberal areas). I personally think there are a lot of people like me who would vote for different parties if presented with different sets of candidates. We consider the differences among the candidates to be more profound than the differences among the parties, and we don't like the idea of voting for candidates we don't believe in on the assumption that they'll tow the party line once enshrined in office. The party faithful expect us to ultimately pick a side; indeed, sometimes they act as if they feel that their parties have some sort of right to our votes.

This attitude of entitlement is often displayed in Democrats who blame Ralph Nader for Al Gore's loss to George W. Bush in 2000. That intensely close presidential election left a bad taste in many mouths. Allegations of election fraud and government conspiracy still circulate to this day -- it's a pity that a fair and full recount of the vote in Florida was not allowed to take place given the importance of the occasion. Still, it's one thing to protest at what you perceive as a stolen election, a fraudulent result; it's quite another to tear into someone who is exercising his right to seek office and those who are exercising their rights to vote for the candidate of their choice. Nader has been enveloped in a cyclone of bitterness spawned perhaps above all else by sour grapes. Those who argue that Nader votes would have voted for Gore instead of Bush are in all likelihood right, but how can the preference of those voters for Nader over Gore be dismissed and pushed aside? Nader voters could have voted for Gore or Bush or someone else; they chose not to. Gore has no right to any votes that were not cast for him.

Since Nader has recently decided to seek the presidency once again in 2008, his critics have again arisen in protest, some angrily and some derisively. I strongly doubt that Nader will be the next president of the United States, but nonetheless I feel he deserves as much respect as any other candidate. His road as an independent candidate will be more difficult than that traveled by the Republican and Democratic nominees; indeed, it is probably harder for a Nader to win 2% of the vote than it is for a Republican or Democrat to garner enough votes to win the election. He has as much right to voice his ideas wherever he can find listeners as anyone else. I don't deny that someone who officially runs for president three times probably really likes national attention, but I suspect the other candidates like that attention to some extent as well. Nader is surely not the only one feeding an ego on the campaign trail, so I don't think he should be the singled out for ego-related criticism. It is shameful that running for office can be widely considered a shameful act.

The Company You Keep

In the small town where I live, politics is still very personal. In a typical campaign season, it isn't only the candidates themselves who will canvas neighborhoods, going from door to door armed with a few prepared words and a flyer. Almost inevitably, the candidate's spouse or child or parent will be drafted into the effort as well. Some campaigns make it almost seem like their true "candidate" is not just the person running for office, the name on the ticket, but also that person's entire family and other associates. Too often for my taste local candidates seem to seek votes based on where they went to school, the churches they attend, and the roles their friends and family members play in the community.

National politics is more issue-oriented, but the idea that a candidate's worth depends in part on the people who are related to or otherwise associate closely with that candidate has nonetheless affected the current presidential race. There have been too many muckraking stories about the candidates' inner circles to list them all in a single blog post; few, if any, candidates avoided having their character called into question due to the actions of some person connected to them. I've often had difficulty deciding what to take out of these type of stories. They may be truthful but yet they are often surely promulgated in order to taint a particular campaign. Take the story that emerged last year concerning Rudy Giuliani's current wife as an example. She has been accused of repeatedly demonstrating a surgical stapling technique on live dogs to potential medical customers as part of her former job at U.S. Surgical. Following the procedure, the dogs would be put down having fulfilled their "purpose" in the sales presentation. This is an ugly story, but how does it help us judge Giuliani as a presidential candidate? I suppose one line of thinking is to assume that since Giuliani showed a lack of judgment by choosing to marry a monster he would also show a lack of judgment when making political decisions. I can't quite adopt that line of thinking -- otherwise sensible people often seem to make decisions that often seem questionable to the people around them when it comes to love and relationships. Would you choose not to promote someone who was superb at his job just because he married someone awful? I don't think I could do that personally. At any rate, Mayor Giuliani may not have even known about his girlfriend's past when he married her. I've never been married, but somehow I doubt "dog torture for profit" is a topic that comes up very often during a typical courtship. That's a bomb that gets dropped a few years into a marriage, I imagine. This story is quite typical of its type. On one hand, the details are ugly enough to sway some votes, but on the other hand the degree of separation between the candidate and the acts mentioned is great enough that most people would simply shrug it off. A few votes here and there can ultimately have a big impact on a race, though.

The latest candidate to run into trouble because of the company he keeps is Barack Obama. Obama's patriotism and racial views have come under question merely because the former preacher at Obama's church, Jeremiah Wright, has a history of making controversial political and racial statements. The attention accorded to Wright's statements created enough furor that Obama ultimately decided to deliver a speech to explain his close relationship with Wright and the differences in their views. It was an effective speech, I thought, but I very much wonder if it is wise to hold presidential candidates accountable for the words of everyone around them. Granted, Obama has acknowledged that Wright has been an important influence in his life, but they remain two very different men. To be honest, I don't really hear the acerbic words of the firebrand Wright reflected in Obama's speeches at all. Some of their ideas are similar, but the manner in which they are expressed are worlds apart. Manner inevitably influences interpretation. Contrast Wright's infamous sound bite "God damn America!" with Obama's message of "Let's change America and make it better" (my paraphrase). Both statements acknowledge that America isn't perfect, but Wright's message seems to focus on what he thinks is wrong with America today and what wrongs he believes that America has committed in the past while Obama instead focuses on what America could be in the future. Obama's view of the present and past seems a fair bit rosier than Wright's view as well.

I think judging the politicians based on their own actions and their own words is the best policy a voter can adopt. Like Obama, I have family members with racial views I don't personally subscribe to. I've never distanced myself from them -- in fact, I believe they have a right to those views, though I also exercise my right to argue with them from time to time. Indeed, I don't think I personally know anyone who agrees with me on most issues that are important to me. If the same rules applied to me as some would like to see applied to presidential candidates, then I would be saddled with an enormous host of views that I don't personally hold or even have any sympathy with. If the same rules applied to everyone, then anyone with a family member who does something wrong of his or her own free will should be accused of being a bad sister or a bad parent or a bad husband or a bad third cousin twice removed, and, by association, a bad person. I don't think you can judge people effectively based on the company they keep. At the very least, you would surely need to study the dynamics of each individual relationship to discover the nature of the sympathy of sentiments that exists between two people -- to understand to what extent Obama and Wright see eye to eye, we would need to listen in on their private conversations, not just their public speeches. Since we don't have that kind of access (nor should we), I think Barack Obama should be the #1 authority on what Barack Obama believes.

Privacy Policy

AdSense has recently requested that all publishers using its service now include a privacy policy on their site. I wasn't too thrilled about this at first -- I'm just a blogger, after all. I'm not collecting names, addresses, or Social Security numbers here. I don't know the ages, the genders, or the tastes and preferences of my readers. Why do I need a privacy policy?

I've thought about it a little more now and have decided that a privacy policy isn't such a bad thing to have though I'm not so sure I should be allowed to write one. Google particularly wants users to know about cookies and web beacons and how those two things relate to ads. Cookies and web beacons are two things that people probably don't know enough about, so I'm happy to spread some knowledge around. Quite possibly I'll end up spreading some misinformation as well since I'm not an online privacy expert, but Google AdSense asked for it!

First, let me reiterate what I stated in the first paragraph. I'm not collecting personal information on my visitors. Although web analytics tools exist that could tell me where my visitors come from, what their IP addresses are, and other such information, I'm currently not using any such software with this blog. The only thing I can possibly know about you is what you choose to reveal of yourself via comments or email, and I promise to try to forget any such user-revealed information as soon as possible.

Third party advertisers on this site may be collecting information on you through the use of cookies and web beacons, but you can choose to what extent you wish to allow them to collect this information. Web beacons can take various forms -- some are even images that are too small to be seen -- but their basic use is to collect information on a web user when that user visits a specific site or even reads a particular email: stuff like your IP address, browser of choice, and the time at which you visited the site may be recorded. Cookies are also identifiers, but they can actually be quite useful even for regular users. For instance, shopping sites often use cookies to help keep track of your virtual shopping basket as you add and delete items prior to actually making a purchase. Other sites use cookies to identify returning visitors so that those visitors do not have to manually reenter their login name and password on every visit. As useful as those uses of cookies might be, some companies undoubtedly use cookies along with web beacons largely for their own benefit. Imagine, for instance, that an enterprising sock manufacturer is able to discover that people who click on Mike Gravel ads also have an inordinate fondness for red socks. The potential revenue opportunities would be endless...but do you really want to participate in unpaid market research in that way? And what if there are aspects of your online activities that you'd rather not be linked together? Government web sites can issue cookies as easily as corporate sites can...for that matter, spammers and other online criminals can track you as well! Luckily, all major browsers allow users to disable cookies if they so choose, and many offer more advanced cookie management features (look around the privacy options in your browser to discover these features). Personally, I have my browser set to delete all cookies at the end of each browsing session. This allows me to make use of the features of cookies that I like while I surf, but it prevents me from being tracked on a long-term basis. It's harder to avoid web beacons altogether, but you could at least try surfing behind a proxy to prevent your true IP address from being revealed.

Google AdSense uses the DART cookie to help decide what ads should be shown based on a user's previous web surfing activity. So, for instance, you might tend to visit Democratic-leaning web sites. On this nonpartisan blog, you might get to view Democratic rather than Republican ads because of your past visits whilst a more Republican-leaning surfer might see other ads catered more towards his or her surfing. This might all seem a bit Big Brotherish, but you don't have to let Google tailor ads for you in this way if you find it objectionable -- you can opt out of the program altogether.

More useful information can be discovered via Wikipedia: check out the articles on cookies, web beacons, and proxies to become better informed.

The Two Phases of a Presidential Election

I've decided that I disagree with those people who complain that the presidential race starts too early. Iowa and New Hampshire may have begun the race in one form, but they also represented the end of the race in another form. Consider the winnowing of the race that started right after the first caucus and first primary. Even a few well-funded and well-supported candidates such as Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and John Edwards are now finished. Even though many voters have yet to have their say in the nomination process of either party, their choices have become very limited. Indeed, this phase of the election is very much of a process -- we are now in the midst of determining just who will be the nominee of each party, and after that we will move on to determine who will be the next president. It wasn't always like this.

I must admit that the 2007 side of the election wasn't always enjoyable, even for a budding political junkie like myself. It was hard work watching all those debates and researching all the candidates. Personally, I skipped a few debates and neglected several candidates; I still regret not looking more at the candidacy of Chris Dodd. Nonetheless, I find myself sometimes wishing we were back in that phase of the election again -- I call it the ideological phase. Back then there wasn't a process underway, really; instead, there was a battle for attention as each candidate scrambled to get his or her message out. Although Mike Gravel and Ron Paul are still in the race, candidates with alternative viewpoints are heard much more often and much more loudly in that first phase of an election. That's not entirely due to the media -- the race itself draws attention away from candidates with limited support once primaries and caucuses begin to be won or lost. I can't even argue that winning the ideological phase is vital to later success in the election. John McCain's candidacy, in particular, seemed to really start thriving in the process phase. I do feel that the ideological phase is vital to the intellectual health of America's political debate, however, and I'm already looking forward to 2011.

That isn't to say that the general election will be bereft of ideological debate. If, for instance, John McCain ends up the Republican nominee and Barack Obama obtains the Democratic nomination, then we'll have two candidates expressing very different views on important issues like Iraq and health care. Still, we'll only have two voices, and I suspect that those voices will frequently be speaking of "experience" and "hope." Personally, I'm casting a vote for hope right now with a prayer: political gods, please grant us a strong third party or independent candidate that can get in the post-convention debates and help shape the dialogue!

Super Tuesday: Do People Vote in Groups?

I tend to think of voting as being a very individualistic process. Each voter must ultimately cast his or her own ballot singly so it seems natural to me that each voter should also make his or her mind up concerning who to vote for more or less independently as well, though of course everyone is influenced by the people and circumstances that surround them. That isn't quite how most political pundits seem to see it, and perhaps not quite how most politicians see it either. The pundits talk on and on about groups whose support a candidate has earned or is attempting to win. The candidates themselves seem to vie for the support of groups by attending special events geared towards certain groups and sometimes by pandering directly towards a specific group in speeches or debate performances. Which is it...do people vote more often as individuals or as parts of groups?

Exit polling data from Super Tuesday seems to make it fairly clear that group affiliation does play a big factor in how many people choose to vote. Barack Obama won a startling 80% of the African American vote yesterday, but, as the linked article also notes, Hillary Clinton garnered a large degree of support from the Hispanic community. Although Mitt Romney didn't have the day he had hoped for, it certainly wasn't because Mormon voters didn't support him in droves. Some of these percentages are just too big to ignore. How could Obama possibly win 94% of the African American vote in Illinois or Mitt Romney win close to 90% of the Mormon vote in Utah? In my experience, nine out of ten people don't agree on much of anything -- these overwhelming majorities at least raises the possibility that there are a significant number of people out there who aren't voting for a president so much as they are voting for their own race or religion, especially when you consider that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hold many similar political positions just as Mitt Romney and John McCain do. Mike Huckabee arguably benefited more than anyone else from religous voters because the Christian conservative vote powered him to primary victories in several Southern states, though Huckabee didn't win a huge majority of these votes. There are similar stories to be told concerning women supporting Clinton, young people supporting Obama, and older voters supporting Clinton and McCain, but we also don't see 80% of any of these groups supporting a single candidate. Clearly, group affiliation impacts elections, but most groups don't cluster overwhelmingly around a single candidate, so individuals acting relatively individually still have a big impact.

Perhaps one of the great cultural questions surrounding this presidential election has been whether or not candidates like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney could draw widespread support from outside their particular groups. Neither sexism, racism, nor religious chauvinism has prevented men from supporting Clinton, whites from supporting Obama, or non-Mormons from supporting Romney. If nothing else, this presidential election ought to encourage many people from diverse backgrounds to at least consider running for president in the future. Given that race and religion seems to have influenced the vote for Romney and Obama so much, it seems likely that there was also a sizable percentage of people voting for other candidates for whom Obama's race or Romney's religion were negative factors. Nonetheless, when all was said and done, Obama and Romney remained viable candidates after Super Tuesday...though Obama is now in a much stronger position than is Romney. At the end of the day, it seems like it can finally be said that anyone can be elected president, though the coming general election will likely also add another chapter to this story.

I can well understand why some people would look at the 80%+ support for Obama among African Americans and Romney among Mormons with dismay and disappointment. Such a plurality does suggest that an awful lot of people are still voting for whoever seems to be most like them, just as critics of democracy that fear the "rule of the rabble" have long predicted. The fact that other groups did not vote so much in "lock-step" is one positive, and I think there is another factor worth considering: namely, that Obama and Romney are actually strong candidates with wide bases of support. Obama's candidacy is not centered around the fact that his father was from Kenya, and Romney has not made his Mormonism the focus of his campaign. Both have a history of success in politics, albeit not particularly long histories; Romney has also been successful in the private sector. My feeling is that it is the quality and electability of these candidates that has enabled such large majorities to be built within their particular communities. It's not fair to say that most African Americans or most Mormons that are voting for Obama and Romney are primarily motivated by their candidate's group affiliation; it is closer to the truth to say that Obama and Romney's group affiliations are just another positive that have encouraged (not caused) African American and Mormon support for Obama and Romney, respectively. My evidence for this? Al Sharpton, Carol Moseley Braun, Orrin Hatch. Good presidential candidates, all, but as I recall none of them made a big splash in the races they competed in. Sharpton won 17% of the African American vote in the 2004 South Carolina primaries, in contrast to Obama's comfortable majority in 2008.

Is Ron Paul Too Economical When Discussing Economics?

I'm much more a saver than a spender at heart, so I'm quite reluctant to condemn anyone for being too economical. In Ron Paul's case, however, it isn't his frugality with money I'm concerned about, but rather instead his economical use of language. Paul is easy to understand when he talks about the war in Iraq and other wars like it. He expresses his ideas both forcefully and in terms most anyone can comprehend. Indeed, it is sometimes his opponents who are less clear in their language when they throw out phrases like non-interventionism in criticism of Congressman Paul. One of Paul's other favorite things to discuss is the economy and his idea of government's quite limited role in economic affairs. Given the gloomy economic outlook that many have right now, I think people are interested in hearing about alternative approaches to economic issues. Thus far, however, Paul hasn't seemed very effective at pushing forth his economic message in an easy to understand manner.

One of the things I like about Ron Paul is that he is a reader and a thinker. He has been quite good at appealing to the intellect of those who are willing to give him the time of day, and I think his lasting political legacy will be the interest in politics and economics that he has sparked in the minds of many people, including numerous young people and others who don't ordinarily pay much attention to elections. I doubt Paul relishes the role of teacher, but his unorthodox politics have essentially necessitated that he try to appeal to an audience that has not already been converted to his views (as Paul discovered in 1988, there simply aren't enough libertarians to elect a libertarian president on their own). In that sense, Paul has a much harder road to the White House than a religious conservative candidate whose supporters base their core political beliefs on their faith or a socially liberal candidate whose supporters have been voting for pro-choice, pro-education candidates their entire lives. Sure, Paul also has a base of true believers to call his own, but it's relatively small compared to the base of voters that will support a Mitt Romney or a Hillary Clinton. Paul has had no choice but to sway minds in order to win votes.

Swaying minds is much more difficult when one speaks above the head of one's audience, however, and I think this is a mistake Paul makes too often, especially during the debates when discussing economics. For instance, in the last Republican debate at the Reagan Library, Paul made a reference to the "guns and butter" tradeoff that governments must face when planning budgets and setting policies(the guns represent defense spending and the butter represents social spending). It is a classic dilemma that just about everyone who has ever studied economics is familiar with, but there are an awful lot of people who have never studied economics to any degree. Paul should realize that a lot of people have never given economics a chance; "guns and butter" is going to sound like gibberish to them, even though the concept being referenced is actually very easy to understand. Paul would be more effective if he went straight for the concept and left the confusing lingo behind. Talking like an economics textbook isn't wise in a country where economics textbooks rely on a captive audience of college students to account for most of their sales. Similarly, when Paul talks about monetary policy and the gold standard in vague terms he is also losing the attention of some of his audience. Some of the people who are listening to him have never even thought about what gives their currency value; some of them don't understand what the gold standard is; some probably think American money is still backed by gold and don't know what the big deal is about. To effectively reach a large audience with wide differences in education level and interests, Paul needs to do some explaining as well as expressing. That is hard to do during a debate, where speaking time is limited, but Paul needs as many people as possible to both hear and understand his message.

Although I've singled out Paul in this post, I think most politicians could probably be more effective if they avoided vague language and terminology that might be unfamiliar to much of their audience. For instance, I personally feel uncomfortable with the oft-repeated term "Islamofascism." My first thought on hearing that term is that Al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists have formed a government that operates similar to how Mussolini's Italy did. The term is confusing to me because I primarily associate fascism with a certain time and place in history; I don't just think of it is as a political ideology. I was also taken by surprise by John McCain's recent attacks against the Alternative Minimum Tax, but only because I had no idea what that was until he started mentioning it. I was curious enough about the tax to google it, and I thus discovered that one of the controversies surrounding this tax is that a lot of people don't learn about it until after they start to owe it. What one politician thinks is a big issue is often something the people he or she is speaking to have never heard of; politicians sometimes need to inform before they can persuade.