Categories
Domestic issues Election 2008 McCain

Those Republican Leftists!

There are about 10 things to argue with in Steven Calabresi’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Let me pick one for the moment. Calabresi appeals to those who are considering voting for Obama:

The net result is that the legal left will once again have a majority on the nation’s most important regulatory court of appeals.

Sounds frightening. Of course, that does suggest that the legal right controls the Courts now.

A point of fact: 61% of judges in the various Courts of Appeal were appointed by Republican presidents. And 7 of the 9 Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans. The fact that these Courts are now regularly called “leftist” seems to tell us more about how far the Republican party has moved than it does about the political leanings of the justices.

Categories
Election 2008 McCain Politics The Opinionsphere

Jindal 2012

Over at TNR’s The Plank, they’ve begun a discussion of 2012 Republican contenders.

Bobby Jindal is one candidate who I think has the chops to truly challenge Obama if he were to run in 2012- as a reform-minded governor who has strong relationships with the conservatives and christianists in the Republican party that does not contradict his independent streak and reform instincts. McCain’s maverick streak often came at the expense of his party and especially the christianist base. But I think that Christopher Orr might be right when he points out that this campaign has hurt Jindal more than any other Republican candidates

…a large portion of the GOP’s closing argument this cycle has been to stoke white, working class fear and suspicion of the Other. The dark-skinned man with the foreign-sounding name may be a Muslim, or a socialist, or a friend of terrorists, or a racial huckster, or a fake U.S. citizen, or some other vague kind of “radical.” You may never be sure which he is (maybe all of the above), but in your gut you simply don’t “know” him the way you know the other candidates. This is not, to put it mildly, a message likely to benefit Bobby Jindal.

I don’t think this rules Jindal out. Although campaign messages and narratives have a way sinking in for partisans more than actual policy positions (see the Hillary Clinton primary voters), a good candidate, the right circumstances, and the right policy messages can counteract that (see the Hillary Clinton primary voters.)

Daniel Larison (and David Weigel over at Reason seems to agree) thinks that this the fallout from the election of Obama given the campaign McCain has run would have precisely the opposite effect Orr predicts:

…never underestimate the Republican desire to get on the high horse of anti-racism and egalitarianism, to say nothing of the even greater desire to demonstrate that they are in no way racist…

I agree with that as well – but as Larison points out – this especially applies to the “elite Republicans” and less so to the rank-and-file. I think Larison undestimates the poisonous atmosphere that is motivating much of the vicious anti-Obama rhetoric and fear though – an atmosphere that McCain and Palin decided at one point to stoke.

But what I think both miss is that – although if the VP nominee had been Jindal this time around, the Republicans would have rallied to him, because racism is not inherently Republican – by running a campaign that stokes fears of the “foreign,” the Republican party has changed.

If McCain loses – and probably if he wins, but slower – the Republican party is due for a crack-up – as all the various factions fight over what vision they have for America and for their party.

Sarah Palin is clearly a contender – representing the old-style class warfare with a new wink and nice clothes. Most of the neoconservatives will back her, at least to start the 2012 positioning.

Bobby Jindal would be the new fresh face, the reform-minded christianist with an independent streak – the closest to the McCain brand without the baggage of being labeled a traitor by much of the party. He will be the candidate of the Republican elite, the candidate of David Brooks, of Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. He’ll be the guy whose candidacy will attempt to reform the Republican party with a new policy focus.

Mitt Romney would be the business candidate – and the one with the most chits to cash in. He’ll be the safe choice, the establishment candidate, the next in line.

Mike Huckabee would be the nice guy, the runner-up again. This time around, most prominent evangelicals will back him.

The dark horse, again, will be Newt Gingrich – who this year declined to enter the race after long and public deliberation.

And so, in 2012, the candidates would neatly divide the Republican party into old-style and reform, business and christianist. It’s hard to imagine someone other than Romney taking it with this crowd though. Jindal is the one to watch – the guy who would be able to pull the Republicans out of this most quickly.

Categories
Election 2008 McCain National Security Obama Politics The War on Terrorism

What Al Qaeda Really Fears

Paul Waldman in The American Prospect:

…what does al-Qaeda really fear? What they fear is being marginalized. They can only continue to obtain recruits, raise money, and move about as long as they maintain support in Muslim countries, both active and passive. They fear not another American invasion of a Muslim country, but an American foreign policy that makes them less relevant. They fear a decline in anti-American sentiment. They fear Muslim publics that don’t hate America quite as much, and so are unwilling to tolerate extremism in their midst. They fear losing their enemy.

Categories
Economics Election 2008 Libertarianism Politics

The Legitimacy of the State

ka1igu1a over at the Freedom Democrats makes the obvious point in response to the hysteria arising over the Redistributionist:

If you accept the legitimacy of the State, then you necessarily accept the legitimacy of income/wealth distribution.

Of course, ka1igu1a opposes the legitimacy of the State. But he nicely evicerates McCain’s attempts to play up this non-issue by pointing out the obvious.

McCain doesn’t oppose the legitimacy of the State – he just adopts rhetoric and attitudes to win votes creating an ideological muddle.

Categories
Economics Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Fuming Over Their Own Confusions

It’s become a minor meme on the right that Obama keeps changing his tax plan – which is their way of suggesting that YOU(!!) could be the next person he taxes.

McCain said on Sunday on Meet the Press that under Obama’s plan those who are exempt keeps changing:

…now it’s $200,000.  I guess last week it was $250,000. It changes with ever – whatever the polling data tells him and his advisers.

And now, over at The Corner, Mark Hemingway steams:

Wait, we’ve been hearing endlessly that Obama will never raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000!

But that Krugman is saying it is for those heads of household with:

an income, after deductions, of $182,400 a year.

Of course, Hemingway’s source on this change in the Obama plan is Paul Krugman – who doesn’t describe it as a change, and who certainly isn’t someone who speaks for Obama’s campaign.

But the easier explanation is that either Hemingway and McCain are confused or they are being deliberately misleading. Obama’s tax plan calls for those individuals making under $200,000 to be exempt, and those married couples making under $250,000 to be exempt. Hence what McCain claims is inconsistency is in fact a consistent plan. As for Hemingway, he’s just a dumbass who read what he wanted into Krugman’s description.

I’m guessing that $182,400 after deductions is about $250,000 or more before deductions – as the difference is about 26% – lower than the average tax rate.

The question becomes – are these people deliberately trying to confuse others – or have they confused themselves by attempting to look for changes without understanding the underlying plan?

Update: Missed Byron York chiming in. He has the same issue – in an ad, Obama claims that he will cut taxes for any family making less than $200,000. York cries foul – he said $250,000 before. But again – the problem is he never looked at the plan which calls for a tax cut for those making below $200,000 with no additional taxes for those making between $200,000 and $250,000. Again – the plan is consistent. The descriptions of different parts of it vary – depending on whether you are saying whose taxes will be raised versus whose taxes will be cut, and other distinctions.

Updated again: Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic points out the same things I have.

Categories
Election 2008 Libertarianism McCain Obama Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere

The Worst Are Full of Passionate Intensity

[digg-reddit-me]Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. – or Lew Rockwell – has decided that this election calls for non-participation. “[T]here is no lesser of two evils,” he says. “There is socialism or fascism.” We will – by boycotting the vote – instill fear in our leaders that they are “ruling us without our consent.”

I expect little better from Lew Rockwell, a man who saw fit to promote racism in the service of a libertarian ideology. (I do not blame libertarianism for it’s promoters, but I can fault the individuals who used explicit race-baiting as Rockwell did.) What disturbs me about this opinion piece is in part it’s resonance – as demonstrated by it’s support on reddit. But what bothers me more is that it seems rooted in the same tendency to demonize opponents, the same desire to re-make the world in the service of ideology, the same rejection of pragmatism, the same denigration of “the masses,” as other ideologies from Communism to neoconservatism.

For the sake of clarity, Rockwell, rejects any truths too subtle to fit into a propagandist slogan – and so – Obama becomes a socialist, and McCain a fascist.

There are real problems with voting and our financial system and the centralization of power that Rockwell touches on – and for a libertarian citizen, neither candidate offers a clear libertarian policy vision. Each seems to offer government encroachment in different areas of life. But a libertarian philosophy does not necessarily lead to this theology of dueling evils that Rockwell invokes – in which we presume only our own innocence and purity while we attack anyone with power or who might gain power as inherently corrupt. There is a healthy skepticism needed about power and the powerful – but Rockwell goes beyond this.

He is one of those who is certain, full of passionate intensity. Which is why he can see Obama and McCain as two competing evils – and why he must simplify their pragmatic politics into two ideologies of certainty: fascism and socialism. But his appeal here is insidious – it is not just to those who share his certainties but to the uncertain. He calls on us to reject all alternatives in favor of … nothing – justifying this with the flimsy excuse that by shunning the political process we may have a psychological effect on the politicians.

My duty as a citizen, my duty as a political being, is to inform myself and to vote and then to participate in governance. It is an abdication of this duty to throw up my hands, moved by an old man’s bitterness at repeated defeat and disappointment, and to despair.

To be a grown-up in this world, to be a citizen, means to act even when the alternatives are only dimly understood – for we can only dimly understand our world.

We live in a complex environment where every action has unintended consequences – and the right path is rarely clear. By failing to act, we enable those whose secular or religious theology leads them to certainty to monopolize power and drag us from one extreme to another, as we have often seen in the past thirty years in America.

Which is why I will vote on November 4th.

Categories
Economics Politics

Unintended Consequences

The law of unintended consequences has been demonstrated once again as the healthy banks are using the infusion of cash from the Treasury not to make loans as they were supposed to, but to buy up other banks – or so claims a New York Times reporter, Joe Nocera, who managed to sneak onto an internal employee-only conference call at JPMorgan Chase.

The centralization of the finance industry is one of the factors contributing to this ongoing crisis – and it was the mistakes of companies too big to fail that forced the government to intervene to stabilize the entire financial system.

Now, after this crisis has passed we are likely to be left with fewer and bigger companies – ones that absolutely cannot be allowed the fail.

After this crisis has passed we need to figure out what to do with institutions that are so big they can cause systematic damage if they fail. Whether that means we need to break them up or regulate them further – we cannot allow the power to destabilize the entire financial system to rest in the hands of a handful of executives in a few firms with no accountability to the people who will be affected by their decisions – a kind of market-enabled tyranny.

I don’t know that there is an easy solution to this – but after the financial emergency has been dealt with, we have to remember that it was the centralization of power in a handful of banks that contributed to this mess.

Categories
Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics

The Promise Versus the Proposals of Obama

[digg-reddit-me]”I just don’t know him,” people say.

It has become a constant refrain, by now even a cliche – as political pundits declare that Obama has not “closed the deal.” At first, it was decided this was the flip side to Obama’s new-ness. But, after nearly two years on the national radar, countless debates, and a constant media presence, this reason seems less convincing. And contrast this uncertainty about Obama with the certainty about Sarah Palin – who has been a national presence for just two months. Yet many of the same people who still don’t “know” Obama claim to “know” Sarah Palin very well.

Many commentators attribute this to racism – and I’m sure that plays a part for some. But I think the essential uncertainty about Obama has its root in something else – the perceived difference between the promise of Obama and his prosaic proposals.

Few would dispute that Obama’s campaign has been imbued from the start with a sense of promise, a sense of restoration, a sense of hope, of change (you can believe in), of possibility. He invokes with prophetic resonance the essence of the American dream – “not what is seen, but is unseen, that better place around the bend.” In the midst of the financial crisis, he gives a speech in the midst of a powerful storm and calls on us to stop despairing that “the rains will never pass” but to remember that “these too shall pass, and a brighter day will come.” There is a sense that this moment is a turning point in American history, if we will seize it. And there is a hunger for change that is palpable in America.

And yet Obama’s policies seem small, undramatic, safe. They certainly are change – but not enough change to reverse the tides of history. Obama’s policies would not re-order our society; they would not transform America – either our foreign policy or domestic policy. Obama is not some libertarian or liberal or progressive or socialist or neoconservative or fascist or communist ideologue. Rather, he proposes moderate and pragmatic steps to address long-simmering issues – the squeezing of the middle class, climate change, terrorism, a broken politics, an expansive executive branch, our dependence on oil, and now, the financial crisis.

He does not propose a new ideology that will offer us all the answers. He proposes instead to tinker – to preserve the system as it is – while tinkering with the processes where we can; to create positive incentives for behavior we need; to stop policies that exacerbate the problems; to try different things, regardless of what ideology promotes them, and stick with what works.

There is great promise in this approach. Tinkering is – as the prophet of this financial crisis, Nicholas Nassim Taleb, has said – the best we can do in a world we only imperfectly understand. But it seems less dramatic than the promise of Obama that we sense.

It is on this perception that John McCain’s entire campaign is based – as they describe Obama as someone with something to hide, as inauthentic and dishonest; as they claim he is a socialist, a Marxist, a radical. Those who don’t “know” Obama fear him because they sense this contrast between promise and policy. Some fill in this gap with stories of a “secret Muslim” sleeper agent or “terrorist bloodlines”. Others claim he is a secret radical – a Communist or Socialist – who hates America and secretly will raise taxes on everyone once he gets into the White House. Yet others just remain uncertain.

Many commentators warn that Obama supporters will inevitably be disappointed in him once they realize he will not re-make the world.

Yet – this precisely is the promise of Obama. He is not a revolutionary. He is a pragmatist, offering to put  the culture war of the past decades on hold in order to focus on those serious issues that we have been hearing about for just as long, yet doing nothing about. They aren’t fixable overnight – we know that. But the promise of Obama is that he will begin to address them – and that we can start making progress.

The promise of Obama is not that we will create some utopia – but that we will set our country on the right path again. The middle class will not be stabilized by Obama’s economic policies by the end of the first term; terrorism will still be a festering issue; we will still be contributing to global warming – but the hope is, the promise is, we will have started going in the right direction.

For the moment, that’s enough.

Categories
Election 2008 McCain Morality National Security Obama Politics

The World Is Blowing Up. We Can’t Be One-Issue Voters Today.

Chuck Hagel, a Republican, is quoted in the most recent New Yorker in a piece by Connie Bruck:

There was a political party in this country called the Know-Nothings. And we’re getting on the fringe of that, with these one-issue voters—pro-choice or pro-life. Important issue, I know that. But, my goodness. The world is blowing up everywhere, and I just don’t think that is a responsible way to see the world, on that one issue. And, interestingly enough, that is one issue that stopped John McCain from picking one of the people he really wanted, Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge. [my emphasis]

Categories
Election 2008 Libertarianism McCain Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere

The Collapse of the Republican Consensus

In the event of a Republican bloodbath a week from this coming Tuesday, a battle is clearing brewing between competing visions of the Republican party – neoconservatives, the National Greatness Conservatives, the libertarians, and the christianists.

It should be interesting to watch – and I make no claim to specials powers of vaticination.

David Brooks’s last column was especially poignant – as he points out that the Republicans in this election have ceded the center and abandoned the legacy of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. He has been speaking for some time of the need for a pro-government conservative movement – which he calls National Greatness Conservatism.

Meanwhile, Radley Balko, editor of Reason, editorializes that the Republicans must lose so that in their time in the wilderness they can become, once again, the party of limited government.

I don’t think both of these visions can work together very well – as Bush’s neoconservative/christianist presidency demonstrated.