Henry,
You raise a few interesting points. First, I would just note that your major premise is one that we've discussed a few times at Boys' events, although I can't recall whether you've been present for any of those discussions. It was the subject of a short but prescient book by Cass Sunstein titled Republic.com. He argued, precisely as you have, that proliferation in media sources will fuel self-selection of sources that confirm preexisting biases, undermining our cultural common ground and fragmenting our social beliefs. I think the threat is real, but can be overstated (as I'll discuss further below).
Second, I know exactly what you're talking about with regards to the comment sections on news sites. That stuff is purely toxic. It's even worse than you find on the purely partisan blogs and forums (e.g. DailyKos or RedState). News sites and YouTube comment threads and things of that nature appear to draw the absolute dregs for commenters. It's disturbing to read it, but ultimately I don't think that amounts to much. I suspect that it really is a very small percentage of the people who read the news stories or watch videos who post those comments (and probably with a high percentage of repeat players from one site to another). The numbers of people who participate in sites like DailyKos and RedState are more significant. Of course, those people also tend to suffer from groupthink and hyperbole and certainly represent a fragmentation in worldviews. But again, I'm not yet convinced that this is especially problematic. Their influence is ultimately fairly limited, as each party's Presidential primary this year demonstrated. In both cases the netroots favorites (Edwards for the Democrats, anybody-but-McCain (Ron Paul?) for the Republicans) failed to win.
Ultimately I think the democratization of public discourse via the Internet has been a tremendous win for the public. Contrary to your contention that we've seen a disappearance of sincere public discourse, I think we're seeing the emergence of new and important avenues for public discourse. There is a dialogue taking place on a community of blogs that surpasses in intelligence and candidness anything I can recall from the pre-Internet (or early Internet) days. To name just a few: Andrew Sullivan, Obsidian Wings, Matt Yglesias, Nate Silver, Al Giordano, Dan Drezner, Greg Djerejian, Ezra Klein, Tyler Cowen, John Cole, Cunning Realist, Josh Marshall. This short list covers a pretty broad spectrum of opinions (and certainly there are many others out there). These people are intelligent, generally well-educated, have diverse areas of expertise, and are interested in honest and sincere dialogue. Better yet, many of them read one another (and many other bloggers) and actually engage in back-and-forth discussion.
While the readership of the blogging community is still not at the same level as traditional media consumption, I think its influence is considerable. The bigger blogs (Sullivan, Marshall) draw in the neighborhood of a million page views a day, which is not insignificant. Moreover, that readership is disproportionately drawn from politicians (or at least political staffers), policymakers, and the media. This blogging community has the ability to affect campaign narratives. I think this is one of the reasons the McCain campaign flailed so wildly from one narrative to another over the Summer and Fall. The McCain strategists, all Karl Rove proteges, couldn't understand why their Obama narratives were not sticking the way the Al Gore - fibber and John Kerry - aloof liberal narratives stuck. The bloggers ripped their idiotic narratives to shreds and were quick to pounce if the traditional media went too far astray.
The emergence of this community presents a challenge to Sunstein's predictions. Certainly there is plenty of evidence on the Internet of Sunstinian self-selection and reinforcement of biases. But there is also a conscious acknowledgment among others that in order to be relevant as a thinker and a political writer one must be willing to inhabit the same world as other writers and one must be willing to engage differing views on more than a superficial level. Certainly this creates some tension between the self-reinforcing Freepers and Kossacks and the reality-based bloggers. On the conservative side this tension has spilled over into something like open warfare with the Freepers and Redstaters attempting to expel any conservatives who do not fully acquiesce in the Bush/Rove Republican orthodoxy. It's not clear how this is going to play out, although it seems inevitable that it will end badly for the Freepers, who are at this point quite remote from reality.
To conclude, I think, Henry, that you and Sunstein both had useful insights into the impact of hugely diverse media landscape, but I think the danger here is easily overstated. The broad expansion of the media landscape has occurred because the barriers to publication have dropped to almost nil (case in point: the Boys Weekend Journal), and the elimination of these barriers has also had tremendously positive effects. It does require people to be more savvy in their consumption of, and interaction with, the news, but the Internet has also made a great many people far more savvy about news media than the public has previously been. And the ease of entry into the market and the ease with which consumers can move from one product to another has allowed for something much closer to a true meritocracy than has ever existed in the traditional media. Nate Silver could never have gone from obscure bystander to political media powerhouse in less than a year in the old media market. I would go so far as to say we are entering a renaissance of political discourse. But the interplay between substantial number of people who have defied Sunstein's expectations with the still considerable masses who have conformed to his expectations does warrant continued observation. While relations between the two groups may frequently be strained, I think by virtue of pure merit alone the reality-based bloggers will always remain relevant and important.
Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 03, 2008
Election 2008 -- Viewing Guide
I've collected a few sites to check on election night as the polls come in.
First, here's Nate Silver on what to watch for.
Here are the poll closing times:
Intrade's realtime electoral vote predictor:
CNN Election Center:
MSNBC results:
First, here's Nate Silver on what to watch for.
Here are the poll closing times:
Intrade's realtime electoral vote predictor:
CNN Election Center:
MSNBC results:
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Lessig on Technology Policy
Here, in just over 15 minutes, Larry Lessig says basically everything I've ever tried to say about telecom policy on the blog (in the context of a critique of John McCain's tech platform). Take a look, it's well worth the time:
Also, for a number of weeks I've been meaning to post a link to this ars technica article on customer-owned fiber. Projects like this, or like Utah's UTOPIA seem to present the best way forward for the domestic telecom market.
Also, for a number of weeks I've been meaning to post a link to this ars technica article on customer-owned fiber. Projects like this, or like Utah's UTOPIA seem to present the best way forward for the domestic telecom market.
Monday, July 28, 2008
A Gaffe That Draws Blood
I have to concede, I am really quite pleased that John McCain started running his mouth about the Anbar Awakening. Before he did, the Conventional Wisdom on the Surge was so firmly established as to appear immovable. Everybody knows, the Surge worked. The fact that there is very little evidence to support that assertion really never came up. And if anyone tried to bring it up, they were scoffed at (as Obama was in the USA Today editorial above). Now that McCain has brought to the fore the fact that the Anbar Awakening, one of the most critical elements of our recent success in Iraq, was unrelated to the Surge, we can start to revisit the Conventional Wisdom.
What I think we'll find is that the real root cause for the turnaround in violence in Iraq had less to do with the additional 20,000 troops than with a change in tactics of which the Anbar Awakening was one element. The dramatic rise of David Petraeus marked the military's final grudging acceptance of the need to engage in actual counterinsurgency operations. After several disastrous years fighting the insurgency, it dawned on the Pentagon that their only real successes came where officers like Petraeus and H.R. McMaster eschewed the major operations that were up to that point the mainstay of the Iraq occupation and adopted classic counterinsurgency tactics. Hell, Petraeus wrote the book on the topic. Petraeus's ascension and this shift in tactics is what made the Anbar Awakening and the later success of the Surge possible.
This is a fairly important distinction, for a couple of reasons. First, is its obvious political impact. McCain has staked much on the fact that he supported the Surge when few others did, and the apparent success of the Surge is supposed to justify any number of prior errors of judgment with respect to Iraq (note how the USA Today article asks Obama to admit he was wrong about the surge, but it doesn't ask McCain to admit he was wrong about invading). If the Surge was not the answer, what does McCain have left to hang his hat on? Even if McCain did back counterinsurgency tactics, and it's not clear he did, that wouldn't be a terribly unique position. This humble blogger criticized the major ops approach to fighting the insurgency as far back as 2003, called for the implementation of counterinsurgency tactics in early 2004, and praised the military's movement in that direction in late 2005. Where was McCain all that time? I could have used his help back then.
Aside from the 2008 election, this debate has other long-term implications. Crediting the Surge for all that has gone right serves the right-wing's ever-popular Green Lantern Theory of Foreign Policy. According to the Green Lantern Theory ("GLT") any military failure is caused by a lack of willpower, and any military objective is achievable given a sufficient reserve of willpower. A corollary to the GLT is that any domestic criticism of either the decision to engage in a military conflict or the conduct of such conflict is a direct attack on the one resource necessary to win such a conflict (willpower) and thereby equivalent to treason. Proponents of the GLT have long scorned concepts such as nationbuilding, the exercise military restraint, respect for local culture, winning of hearts and minds, and, indeed, just about every other element of a traditional counterinsurgency operation. Not only are such things considered to be pointless, but they might weaken our resolve and are therefore deemed harmful to the cause.
Pinning all success in Iraq to the Surge is a perfect narrative fit for the GLT. Just when everyone else wanted to discuss withdrawal, George W. Bush rode the rescue with bulging reserves of willpower and not only refused to withdraw, he upped the ante as a tangible demonstration of his generous endowment of resolve. And lo, victory was achieved. If this is the narrative that comes out of the Iraq war, we will all live to regret it. The United States and Iraq alike paid a painful and bloody price to learn the lessons that the GLT proponents hope to obscure in a haze of Surge-o-philia.
In truth what we learned this time around are a lot of the lessons we should have learned from Vietnam. Indeed, Robert McNamara basically did learn those lessons. It is no coincidence that so did David Petraeus and H.R. McMaster. Petraeus wrote a doctoral thesis at Princeton titled "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam." McMaster also wrote a doctoral thesis on the mistakes of the American military in Vietnam. The lessons were there to be learned, but few among conservative policymakers and the Pentagon brass did, enamored of the GLT as they are. Will we walk away from Iraq with the public and policymakers learning all the same wrong lessons so that the next time around we will, at terrible cost, have to rediscover the right ones all over again? I surely hope not. And I hope that McCain's gaffe will open the door to a more robust public dialogue on this topic.
What I think we'll find is that the real root cause for the turnaround in violence in Iraq had less to do with the additional 20,000 troops than with a change in tactics of which the Anbar Awakening was one element. The dramatic rise of David Petraeus marked the military's final grudging acceptance of the need to engage in actual counterinsurgency operations. After several disastrous years fighting the insurgency, it dawned on the Pentagon that their only real successes came where officers like Petraeus and H.R. McMaster eschewed the major operations that were up to that point the mainstay of the Iraq occupation and adopted classic counterinsurgency tactics. Hell, Petraeus wrote the book on the topic. Petraeus's ascension and this shift in tactics is what made the Anbar Awakening and the later success of the Surge possible.
This is a fairly important distinction, for a couple of reasons. First, is its obvious political impact. McCain has staked much on the fact that he supported the Surge when few others did, and the apparent success of the Surge is supposed to justify any number of prior errors of judgment with respect to Iraq (note how the USA Today article asks Obama to admit he was wrong about the surge, but it doesn't ask McCain to admit he was wrong about invading). If the Surge was not the answer, what does McCain have left to hang his hat on? Even if McCain did back counterinsurgency tactics, and it's not clear he did, that wouldn't be a terribly unique position. This humble blogger criticized the major ops approach to fighting the insurgency as far back as 2003, called for the implementation of counterinsurgency tactics in early 2004, and praised the military's movement in that direction in late 2005. Where was McCain all that time? I could have used his help back then.
Aside from the 2008 election, this debate has other long-term implications. Crediting the Surge for all that has gone right serves the right-wing's ever-popular Green Lantern Theory of Foreign Policy. According to the Green Lantern Theory ("GLT") any military failure is caused by a lack of willpower, and any military objective is achievable given a sufficient reserve of willpower. A corollary to the GLT is that any domestic criticism of either the decision to engage in a military conflict or the conduct of such conflict is a direct attack on the one resource necessary to win such a conflict (willpower) and thereby equivalent to treason. Proponents of the GLT have long scorned concepts such as nationbuilding, the exercise military restraint, respect for local culture, winning of hearts and minds, and, indeed, just about every other element of a traditional counterinsurgency operation. Not only are such things considered to be pointless, but they might weaken our resolve and are therefore deemed harmful to the cause.
Pinning all success in Iraq to the Surge is a perfect narrative fit for the GLT. Just when everyone else wanted to discuss withdrawal, George W. Bush rode the rescue with bulging reserves of willpower and not only refused to withdraw, he upped the ante as a tangible demonstration of his generous endowment of resolve. And lo, victory was achieved. If this is the narrative that comes out of the Iraq war, we will all live to regret it. The United States and Iraq alike paid a painful and bloody price to learn the lessons that the GLT proponents hope to obscure in a haze of Surge-o-philia.
In truth what we learned this time around are a lot of the lessons we should have learned from Vietnam. Indeed, Robert McNamara basically did learn those lessons. It is no coincidence that so did David Petraeus and H.R. McMaster. Petraeus wrote a doctoral thesis at Princeton titled "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam." McMaster also wrote a doctoral thesis on the mistakes of the American military in Vietnam. The lessons were there to be learned, but few among conservative policymakers and the Pentagon brass did, enamored of the GLT as they are. Will we walk away from Iraq with the public and policymakers learning all the same wrong lessons so that the next time around we will, at terrible cost, have to rediscover the right ones all over again? I surely hope not. And I hope that McCain's gaffe will open the door to a more robust public dialogue on this topic.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Is Experience the New Electability?
In 2004 John Kerry became the Democratic nominee because of a consensus that he was electable. In other words nobody voted for him because they wanted to vote him, they voted for him because they thought other people would want to vote for him. Turns out they were wrong. Electability never had any real meaning in substance, although there were certain traits that people assumed defined it: a long political record, national exposure, lots of money, military service, a boring enough personality to stay out of trouble. But the reality is that no one really knew how any of these traits related to a candidate's general election prospects (and we ultimately found that they relate very poorly). Despite the utter lack of a rational basis for the electability theory, however, there was an overpowering consensus among talking heads and political wags that electability existed and had the basic form described above. I found it infuriating at the time, and still do.
A considerable amount of ink has been spilled in the past few weeks on Barack Obama's prospects as a candidate, and I'm concerned that I'm starting to feel a new, and equally unfounded (and equally pervasive), consensus forming on the matter of experience. Take, for example, this Slate column by John Dickerson. Dickerson's experience discussion is focused on Vladimir Putin's provocative remarks at the recent Munich security conference.
(As an aside I'd like to mention how remarkably refreshing it was to see Bob Gates respond to Putin in a responsible and helpful fashion. It's taken six years, but the Bush administration finally found someone who can talk foreign policy without sounding like a petulant child.)
Dickerson compares Obama to John McCain, who in Dickerson's view clearly has the requisite foreign policy experience to be a good candidate. Obama, he suggests, doesn't have the experience to "sit across from blunt and tough leaders like Vladimir Putin". But the fact is very few Americans do have experience dealing with foreign leaders. Some of them have already been president, most of the others were cabinet secretaries (who for whatever reason rarely run for the presidency), and maybe you count a few senators like McCain (and longstanding senators have hardly distinguished themselves as successful presidential candidates). In general the vast majority of presidential candidates have been in the exact same position Obama finds himself today. Why is his experience level being singled out?
Dickerson gives Obama a backhanded compliment saying that at least he has more experience than Bush did in 2000. But rather than compare Obama to the worst foreign policy president in recent memory (maybe ever), why not compare him to some of the better ones. How much foreign policy experience did Bill Clinton have when he took office (or, if you're so inclined, Ronald Reagan)? It wasn't experience that made Clinton successful, it was his intelligence, diligence, compassion, and empathy. He learned about foreign nations, analyzed problems, and was able to connect with foreign leaders and people.
And how has experience helped John McCain? Dickerson's example of McCain's response to Putin shows that at least he has some judgment, but what about Iraq? McCain has been monumentally wrong for the past four years about the biggest American foreign policy blunder in decades. How has his experience helped him there? McCain, maybe more than any other politician I'm aware of, demonstrates the danger of too much experience in Washington. He's been burned too badly and too many times and is simply not the man he was six or eight years ago. His long exposure to the viciousness of national politics has consumed him.
Obama shares all of the traits that made Clinton one of the most internationally popular presidents in US history. He is phenomenally intelligent, broadly educated and well-read, intellectually curious, and intuitively able to connect with audiences and convey important ideas so that they can be understood by everyone. And his mixed national, ethnic, and racial heritage gives him, as Dickerson acknowledges, a leg up on the competition in terms of foreign perception of him, and, by extension, the US.
As Obama gets further into the process and has to formulate more of a foreign policy agenda, I will certainly be open to substantive criticisms of his positions and plans, but can we please not discount him based on this specious conception of the need for foreign policy experience? At this point he looks at least as good as anyone else in the race on foreign policy, maybe better. Let's just wait and see what he has to say before riding him too hard.
A considerable amount of ink has been spilled in the past few weeks on Barack Obama's prospects as a candidate, and I'm concerned that I'm starting to feel a new, and equally unfounded (and equally pervasive), consensus forming on the matter of experience. Take, for example, this Slate column by John Dickerson. Dickerson's experience discussion is focused on Vladimir Putin's provocative remarks at the recent Munich security conference.
(As an aside I'd like to mention how remarkably refreshing it was to see Bob Gates respond to Putin in a responsible and helpful fashion. It's taken six years, but the Bush administration finally found someone who can talk foreign policy without sounding like a petulant child.)
Dickerson compares Obama to John McCain, who in Dickerson's view clearly has the requisite foreign policy experience to be a good candidate. Obama, he suggests, doesn't have the experience to "sit across from blunt and tough leaders like Vladimir Putin". But the fact is very few Americans do have experience dealing with foreign leaders. Some of them have already been president, most of the others were cabinet secretaries (who for whatever reason rarely run for the presidency), and maybe you count a few senators like McCain (and longstanding senators have hardly distinguished themselves as successful presidential candidates). In general the vast majority of presidential candidates have been in the exact same position Obama finds himself today. Why is his experience level being singled out?
Dickerson gives Obama a backhanded compliment saying that at least he has more experience than Bush did in 2000. But rather than compare Obama to the worst foreign policy president in recent memory (maybe ever), why not compare him to some of the better ones. How much foreign policy experience did Bill Clinton have when he took office (or, if you're so inclined, Ronald Reagan)? It wasn't experience that made Clinton successful, it was his intelligence, diligence, compassion, and empathy. He learned about foreign nations, analyzed problems, and was able to connect with foreign leaders and people.
And how has experience helped John McCain? Dickerson's example of McCain's response to Putin shows that at least he has some judgment, but what about Iraq? McCain has been monumentally wrong for the past four years about the biggest American foreign policy blunder in decades. How has his experience helped him there? McCain, maybe more than any other politician I'm aware of, demonstrates the danger of too much experience in Washington. He's been burned too badly and too many times and is simply not the man he was six or eight years ago. His long exposure to the viciousness of national politics has consumed him.
Obama shares all of the traits that made Clinton one of the most internationally popular presidents in US history. He is phenomenally intelligent, broadly educated and well-read, intellectually curious, and intuitively able to connect with audiences and convey important ideas so that they can be understood by everyone. And his mixed national, ethnic, and racial heritage gives him, as Dickerson acknowledges, a leg up on the competition in terms of foreign perception of him, and, by extension, the US.
As Obama gets further into the process and has to formulate more of a foreign policy agenda, I will certainly be open to substantive criticisms of his positions and plans, but can we please not discount him based on this specious conception of the need for foreign policy experience? At this point he looks at least as good as anyone else in the race on foreign policy, maybe better. Let's just wait and see what he has to say before riding him too hard.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Off the Bandwagon
First order of business: I am officially off the John McCain bandwagon. It's one thing for McCain to whore himself out on various issues that may not have been critical to him. But he has long defined himself on the two issues of democratic reform and fiscal conservatism. When he declared himself in favor of making the Bush tax cuts permanent (as mentioned in this story) it became crystal clear to me that the John McCain I fell in love with no longer exists. He is, in the immortal words of Obi Wan, more machine now than man, twisted and evil. Perhaps someday when Emperor Cheney is flinging lightning into his son the little sliver of humanity left in McCain will resurface, but I'm not counting on it.
Friday, June 02, 2006
More Than Bullshit
While poking around Slate to find the Metcalf article linked in my Fukuyama post, I came across this article on Iraq by Fred Kaplan. Kaplan is roundly disappointed by the approach of John McCain and Condi Rice to the violence in Iraq, which in McCain's words is to tell them to "stop the bullshit." Kaplan is absolutely correct that this is not a mere matter of bullshit or miscommunication, there is a structural problem with Iraq that threatens to rip apart any democratic government put in place. It's the problem I posted on a month ago (May 2nd) that where people identify themselves more by ethnicity or religion than by other political concerns, democracy only deepens the divisions. Every election in the foreseeable future in Iraq will have the same outcome: Shiites win. If you are a Sunni or a Kurd, democracy means you lose.
The issue of how to structure a government that can satisfy all three groups was a major question before we even set foot in Iraq (and one I raised in several contexts pre-TBWJ). They tried to hash this out in the constitutional convention and failed miserably, and basically left the constitution completely open-ended, deferring the problem to later. Now Iraq has struggled month after month just to put together a government after the December election. They haven't even broached the difficult (and likely intractable) question of creating a coherent state in which Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds can all be satisfied. That is not bullshit. That is likely game over for our grand plan to plant the seed of democracy in the Middle East.
Breaking Iraq into three independent nations will have consequences we won't like (destabilizing Turkey (and possible Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia) and creating an Iranian client state in the south), but it may be the only way to end the violence. But as Kaplan points out, there is really no one who can implement a plan like that. The Shiites (who will rule the country as it now stands) have no interest in it. The US and the UN don't appear to have the ability or wherewithal to impose it. Iraq appears to be completely dead in the water, adrift in violence and chaos with no route out.
I give Kaplan credit as well for trying to establish the distinction between Realpolitik and realism that I've argued for here before.
The issue of how to structure a government that can satisfy all three groups was a major question before we even set foot in Iraq (and one I raised in several contexts pre-TBWJ). They tried to hash this out in the constitutional convention and failed miserably, and basically left the constitution completely open-ended, deferring the problem to later. Now Iraq has struggled month after month just to put together a government after the December election. They haven't even broached the difficult (and likely intractable) question of creating a coherent state in which Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds can all be satisfied. That is not bullshit. That is likely game over for our grand plan to plant the seed of democracy in the Middle East.
Breaking Iraq into three independent nations will have consequences we won't like (destabilizing Turkey (and possible Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia) and creating an Iranian client state in the south), but it may be the only way to end the violence. But as Kaplan points out, there is really no one who can implement a plan like that. The Shiites (who will rule the country as it now stands) have no interest in it. The US and the UN don't appear to have the ability or wherewithal to impose it. Iraq appears to be completely dead in the water, adrift in violence and chaos with no route out.
I give Kaplan credit as well for trying to establish the distinction between Realpolitik and realism that I've argued for here before.
Friday, April 14, 2006
McCain Madness
Just wanted to comment a little on all the John McCain discussion going around (inspired mostly by Howard Kurtz's obsession with covering it blow-by-blow in his Media Notes). I caught the interview with him on the Daily Show a couple weeks ago when McCain was going to speak at Liberty U. and Stewart told McCain that he was killing him. It was possibly the most absurd interview I've ever seen. I've been a huge McCain fan for a long time, and I still think he does a lot of good things in the Senate, outside the spotlight, that people tend to overlook (see my Lobbying Reform post of March 30), and I was really quite tolerant of his whoring himself to the Bush campaign in '04 as a matter of political necessity. I don't necessarily want to jump on the anti-McCain bandwagon, because I feel like a lot of it is sour grapes by people who never liked him and were just looking for a good excuse to vent. But I have to say he's coming awfully close to losing me, and if he keeps pushing for evangelical Christian support, he'll do just that. McCain has fought so hard and so long to maintain his integrity, I really can't express how disappointing it is to see him sell his soul now...
Thursday, March 30, 2006
The Lobbying Reform Bill
The Senate's lobbying reform bill passed today. It's kind of a joke really, but at least it serves as a roll call of senators who prefer more than token gestures (i.e. the 8 who voted against the bill):
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)(go figure...)
Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC)
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) (I don't know why Inhofe voted against..)
Senator John Kerry (D-MA)
Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
Senator Barak Obama (D-IL)
The few, the proud, the U.S. Senators who care about our federal government.
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)(go figure...)
Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC)
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) (I don't know why Inhofe voted against..)
Senator John Kerry (D-MA)
Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
Senator Barak Obama (D-IL)
The few, the proud, the U.S. Senators who care about our federal government.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Silly Libertarians
I was really hoping this article/speech by Bradley Smith, former FEC commissioner, would give me a chance to discuss the substantive objections to campaign finance reform. Then the guy referred to the Microsoft antitrust litigation as a "seemingly senseless regulatory legal assault" intended to extract campaign contributions from Microsoft. Uhh, right. It's amazing how quickly a person can drag their credibility through the gutter.
Smith's analysis of the harms of unregulated campaign money is largely limited to efforts to find quid pro quo returns on investment for corporate contributors. He takes this as far as analysis of the stock market reaction to McConnell v. FEC for companies that make political soft money contributions. What is this supposed to prove?
This sort of analysis is overly complex and makes it difficult to produce any sort of meaningful empirical data. What sort of scorecard do you use here? There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of influence (not least of which the Microsoft example that Smith himself raised). Smith acknowledges that the data he presents has many critics, but claims that since they don't have better data, that makes his data somehow valid.
A simpler analysis is this: our system is based on democratic, one person-one vote principles. Does campaign money subvert those principles? Does it give influence beyond one-vote to big money donors?
In this view the analysis of harms should be considered from the other end. Does the money influence election outcomes? According to opensecrets.org, the odds of a challenger for a house seat in 2000 beating an incumbent were nil for challengers who raised under $500k, 24:1 for challengers with $500k-$1m, 15:1 for challengers with $1m-$1.5m, and 3:1 for challengers with over $1.5m. That looks a lot like influence. Obviously there are still confounding factors here (primarily that one might suppose that campaign money flows to more attractive candidates). But this seems like more meaningful data than the sort referenced by Smith. Additionally you've got quotes like this one (one of my all-time favorites) from Senator Fritz Hollings:
"The body politic has got a cancer of money. I ran in 1998, and I raised $8.5 million. That's about $30,000 a week, each week, every week, for six years. If I missed Christmas and New Year's weeks, I'm $100,000 in the hole. So the race begins the next day [after your election]. We're collecting for six years out. That means we don't work on Monday. We don't work on Friday. I've got to get money, money, money, money. And I only listen to the people who give me money. With the shortage of time and everything else, you've got to listen to the $1,000 givers. I mean, no individual is corrupt, but the body has been corrupted."
It seems, to me at least, fairly obvious that money impacts election results. It seems also obvious that this gives political power to people who wield that money. That is problematic for a one person-one vote system. Smith never discusses this problem.
But he does talk about other evidence of corruption, apparently to show that BCRA is insincere. The hiring of spouses and children of politicians as lobbyists, contributions to personal foundations, and book contracts, for example. Frankly this only amplifies the need for regulation of money in politics. If anything this should support expanding BCRA into broader territory.
Smith criticizes McCain for speaking at a fund-raising dinner for the Brennan Center that raised money to support BCRA and to help defend it against McConnell's legal challenge. Apparently McCain also raises money to support campaign finance reform through his own Reform Institute. This is the sort of self-defeating argument often leveled at McCain and Feingold and other finance reformers: how can they argue for campaign finance reform when they accept the sort of contributions they argue against? A better question would be: if their argument is premised on the fact that the current political environment makes it necessary to raise large sums of money to get anything accomplished, how could McCain and Feingold hope to accomplish anything without raising money? Only people in the system can change the system. They have to play the game to change the rules. And ultimately this is not a discussion of the substantive merits of the issue anyway. It is merely smear attack against proponents of reform.
Here's an interesting thought I'd like to see some of these folks discuss. The Supreme Court appears to be increasingly coming under the control of Scalian originalists. There is a strong argument to be made that the original meaning for the First Amendment was merely to prevent prior restraint of speech. This was a system used in England where printers needed to get prior government authorization of material to be printed. The Sedition Act of 1798, for example, seems to our sensibilities to be a clear violation of the First Amendment. But no one seriously thought it was a violation at the time, and the courts never struck it down. The Republican (Jeffersonian) reaction against the Act was politically motivated (it was a Federalist device to squelch Republican press) and focused on the issue of federalism rather than the First Amendment. It did not implement prior restraint, and it allowed truth as a defense. This was free speech as compared to the English system. An originalist interpretation of the First Amendment would create a tremendous amount of breathing room for campaign regulation. I wonder how keen some of the conservative court cheerleaders would be for that..
Smith's analysis of the harms of unregulated campaign money is largely limited to efforts to find quid pro quo returns on investment for corporate contributors. He takes this as far as analysis of the stock market reaction to McConnell v. FEC for companies that make political soft money contributions. What is this supposed to prove?
This sort of analysis is overly complex and makes it difficult to produce any sort of meaningful empirical data. What sort of scorecard do you use here? There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of influence (not least of which the Microsoft example that Smith himself raised). Smith acknowledges that the data he presents has many critics, but claims that since they don't have better data, that makes his data somehow valid.
A simpler analysis is this: our system is based on democratic, one person-one vote principles. Does campaign money subvert those principles? Does it give influence beyond one-vote to big money donors?
In this view the analysis of harms should be considered from the other end. Does the money influence election outcomes? According to opensecrets.org, the odds of a challenger for a house seat in 2000 beating an incumbent were nil for challengers who raised under $500k, 24:1 for challengers with $500k-$1m, 15:1 for challengers with $1m-$1.5m, and 3:1 for challengers with over $1.5m. That looks a lot like influence. Obviously there are still confounding factors here (primarily that one might suppose that campaign money flows to more attractive candidates). But this seems like more meaningful data than the sort referenced by Smith. Additionally you've got quotes like this one (one of my all-time favorites) from Senator Fritz Hollings:
"The body politic has got a cancer of money. I ran in 1998, and I raised $8.5 million. That's about $30,000 a week, each week, every week, for six years. If I missed Christmas and New Year's weeks, I'm $100,000 in the hole. So the race begins the next day [after your election]. We're collecting for six years out. That means we don't work on Monday. We don't work on Friday. I've got to get money, money, money, money. And I only listen to the people who give me money. With the shortage of time and everything else, you've got to listen to the $1,000 givers. I mean, no individual is corrupt, but the body has been corrupted."
It seems, to me at least, fairly obvious that money impacts election results. It seems also obvious that this gives political power to people who wield that money. That is problematic for a one person-one vote system. Smith never discusses this problem.
But he does talk about other evidence of corruption, apparently to show that BCRA is insincere. The hiring of spouses and children of politicians as lobbyists, contributions to personal foundations, and book contracts, for example. Frankly this only amplifies the need for regulation of money in politics. If anything this should support expanding BCRA into broader territory.
Smith criticizes McCain for speaking at a fund-raising dinner for the Brennan Center that raised money to support BCRA and to help defend it against McConnell's legal challenge. Apparently McCain also raises money to support campaign finance reform through his own Reform Institute. This is the sort of self-defeating argument often leveled at McCain and Feingold and other finance reformers: how can they argue for campaign finance reform when they accept the sort of contributions they argue against? A better question would be: if their argument is premised on the fact that the current political environment makes it necessary to raise large sums of money to get anything accomplished, how could McCain and Feingold hope to accomplish anything without raising money? Only people in the system can change the system. They have to play the game to change the rules. And ultimately this is not a discussion of the substantive merits of the issue anyway. It is merely smear attack against proponents of reform.
Here's an interesting thought I'd like to see some of these folks discuss. The Supreme Court appears to be increasingly coming under the control of Scalian originalists. There is a strong argument to be made that the original meaning for the First Amendment was merely to prevent prior restraint of speech. This was a system used in England where printers needed to get prior government authorization of material to be printed. The Sedition Act of 1798, for example, seems to our sensibilities to be a clear violation of the First Amendment. But no one seriously thought it was a violation at the time, and the courts never struck it down. The Republican (Jeffersonian) reaction against the Act was politically motivated (it was a Federalist device to squelch Republican press) and focused on the issue of federalism rather than the First Amendment. It did not implement prior restraint, and it allowed truth as a defense. This was free speech as compared to the English system. An originalist interpretation of the First Amendment would create a tremendous amount of breathing room for campaign regulation. I wonder how keen some of the conservative court cheerleaders would be for that..
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Second Thoughts on McCain
Mary Lynn Jones has a column in American Prospect questioning liberal support for John McCain. She writes that for all that Democrats have favored McCain and pandered to him and tried to trump up their connections to him, he is still the enemy.
I can understand her wariness towards the party trying to embrace him in any official sense as he is clearly committed to his party and not interested in abandoning or betraying it, but I can't agree with her overall thesis. While I am quite dissappointed by the degree to which he has allowed himself to be whored out to the Bush campaign, John McCain is still a rare figure in national politics.
McCain is a man of great character and integrity. Appreciation for him should and does cross party lines. His efforts to attack pork-barrel politics and preserve the integrity of the political system against the invasive influence of campaign funding, and his rejection of base partisanship to productively engage the opposite party make him a valuable asset to the entire nation. It is well that Democrats recognize this and talk about him during their campaigns. It demonstrates that they also value (or at least play at valuing) the healthy approach to policy that McCain embodies. I will admit that it did get a bit silly during the primaries when candidates were competing to see who really was best friends with McCain. But it would be sad for me to think that even someone of McCain's quality should need to be regarded more by their party label than their personal qualities.
I can understand her wariness towards the party trying to embrace him in any official sense as he is clearly committed to his party and not interested in abandoning or betraying it, but I can't agree with her overall thesis. While I am quite dissappointed by the degree to which he has allowed himself to be whored out to the Bush campaign, John McCain is still a rare figure in national politics.
McCain is a man of great character and integrity. Appreciation for him should and does cross party lines. His efforts to attack pork-barrel politics and preserve the integrity of the political system against the invasive influence of campaign funding, and his rejection of base partisanship to productively engage the opposite party make him a valuable asset to the entire nation. It is well that Democrats recognize this and talk about him during their campaigns. It demonstrates that they also value (or at least play at valuing) the healthy approach to policy that McCain embodies. I will admit that it did get a bit silly during the primaries when candidates were competing to see who really was best friends with McCain. But it would be sad for me to think that even someone of McCain's quality should need to be regarded more by their party label than their personal qualities.
Monday, June 21, 2004
Bush and McCain Play Nice
Hopefully this story [WP] will put to bed those nagging rumors about McCain serving as Kerry's running mate.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
You Call Yourself a Patriot and a Republican?
From this article in today's NYT:
Today, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert was asked about Mr. McCain's view that Congress should not enact tax cuts during wartime because it keeps the public from developing the sense of shared sacrifice that war requires. Mr. Hastert, who was discussing tax cuts, the Republican budget and $50 billion for the war in Iraq, had had enough.
"Who?" asked Mr. Hastert as he heard Mr. McCain's name. "Where is he from? Is he a Republican?"
Then Mr. Hastert really unloaded on Mr. McCain, who sustained lifelong injuries as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
"John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda," Mr. Hastert said. "There is the sacrifice in this country. We are trying to make sure they have the ability to fight this war, that they have the wherewithal to do it. At the same time we have to react to keep this country strong not only militarily, but economically. We have to have the flexibility to do it. That is my answer to John McCain."
According to Noted Now [ABCNews], McCain responded thusly:
"I fondly remember a time when real Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility. Apparently those days are long gone for some in our party."
Today, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert was asked about Mr. McCain's view that Congress should not enact tax cuts during wartime because it keeps the public from developing the sense of shared sacrifice that war requires. Mr. Hastert, who was discussing tax cuts, the Republican budget and $50 billion for the war in Iraq, had had enough.
"Who?" asked Mr. Hastert as he heard Mr. McCain's name. "Where is he from? Is he a Republican?"
Then Mr. Hastert really unloaded on Mr. McCain, who sustained lifelong injuries as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
"John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda," Mr. Hastert said. "There is the sacrifice in this country. We are trying to make sure they have the ability to fight this war, that they have the wherewithal to do it. At the same time we have to react to keep this country strong not only militarily, but economically. We have to have the flexibility to do it. That is my answer to John McCain."
According to Noted Now [ABCNews], McCain responded thusly:
"I fondly remember a time when real Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility. Apparently those days are long gone for some in our party."
Friday, May 07, 2004
Rumsfeld's Senate Performance
The Washington Post has the transcript of Donald Rumsfeld's appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee today. Pretty entertaining. John McCain's session was by far the best. Here's an excerpt:
MCCAIN: Thank you.
I'd like to know who was in charge of the -- what agencies or private contractors were in charge of interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were their instructions to the guards?
RUMSFELD: First, with respect to the...
SMITH: We did not bring it.
RUMSFELD: Oh, my.
SMITH: Yes, oh, my is right.
RUMSFELD: It was all prepared.
SMITH: Yes, it was, indeed.
RUMSFELD: Do you want to walk through it?
MCCAIN: Anyway, who was in charge? What agency or private contractor was in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions that they gave to the guards?
SMITH: I'll walk through the chain of command and...
MCCAIN: No. Let's just -- you can submit the chain of command, please.
WARNER: General Smith, do you want to respond?
MCCAIN: No. Secretary Rumsfeld, in all due respect, you've got to answer this question. And it could be satisfied with a phone call. This is a pretty simple, straightforward question: Who was in charge of the interrogations? What agencies or private contractors were in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions to the guards?
This goes to the heart of this matter.
RUMSFELD: It does indeed.
MCCAIN: Thank you.
I'd like to know who was in charge of the -- what agencies or private contractors were in charge of interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were their instructions to the guards?
RUMSFELD: First, with respect to the...
SMITH: We did not bring it.
RUMSFELD: Oh, my.
SMITH: Yes, oh, my is right.
RUMSFELD: It was all prepared.
SMITH: Yes, it was, indeed.
RUMSFELD: Do you want to walk through it?
MCCAIN: Anyway, who was in charge? What agency or private contractor was in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions that they gave to the guards?
SMITH: I'll walk through the chain of command and...
MCCAIN: No. Let's just -- you can submit the chain of command, please.
WARNER: General Smith, do you want to respond?
MCCAIN: No. Secretary Rumsfeld, in all due respect, you've got to answer this question. And it could be satisfied with a phone call. This is a pretty simple, straightforward question: Who was in charge of the interrogations? What agencies or private contractors were in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions to the guards?
This goes to the heart of this matter.
RUMSFELD: It does indeed.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
So You're Saying There's a Chance...
Boston Globe's analysis on a McCain nomination can be found here.
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