Centerfield

Grumbles at Support for Aristide the Tyrant

I'm annoyed at the Congressional Black Caucus for wanting us to unilaterally send troops to keep our man Aristide in power. Aristide jobbed the last elections, and has incited violence against opposition figures, and punishes contrary speech.

Most of them were around to see how much helping our man Diem in Vietnam helped, after he ended all hope of ruling democracratically in S. Vietnam. This looks very similar to me.

Note that, to his discredit, Kerry agreed with them, though he didn't spend anything like as much time talking to the Administration, and sounding just like the people who thought supporting Dictator Diem was the obvious thing to do.

On the other hand, I'm deeply doubtful that it's just about money, as one right-center commentator has suggested.

Regarding free trade and job loss

Here's a topic that should concern all Americans. And since it does, here come the demagogues with solutions meant to gain votes rather than recognize the nature of the issue and figure out how we can do better.

With the disclaimer that my economic expertise is zilch and I understand only small bits and pieces of what I read, here's my take:

Erect trade barriers to keep jobs in the U. S.

This masks the problem by keeping jobs around longer -- but only for a while. Sooner or later the fact of the 'global economy' will make itself felt. It also encourages retaliation by other countries. This is a no win solution.

Encourage corporations to keep jobs in the U. S. with tax incentives.

If this would slow things down a bit, I'm not totally opposed to temporary incentives. In the longer term though, this would become less and less effective.

Free trade benefits everyone. The U. S. loses some jobs but gains other, higher paying jobs. So some workers will lose and others will gain. Just get used to it. The invisible hand watches over all.

There's some hard-nosed truth in this -- as far as it goes. What is not acceptable is to assume that public policy should ignore the problems of those whose jobs are gone.

Here are the kind of policies I would favor:

- Trade agreements should include provisions that encourage better labor practices and laws in developing countries. Promoting a higher standard of living for foreign workers will be better for them and keep American workers more competitive. This is called win-win.

- Focus public policy on easing the transition of workers from one job to another and one skillset to another. In this day and age, that means portable health insurance, unemployment and retraining benefits and incentives for business to provide on-the-job training where practical.

- Make the education of the next generation a major priority now. In the future a family's economic resources should not determine the availability of college or other post-secondary education.

These ideas should contain enough to infuriate ideologues of both left and right. Too bad! Let's start focusing on what maintains and expands the middle class and enables the children of the working poor to do better than their parents.

Trust me on one thing: the wealthy will not go without one single meal. An expanding middle class lifts all yachts!

(originally posted to CivicDialogues.org)

UPDATE here.

Kerry's 100 Days: Plan to Change America

This is the first of a series of posts examining John Kerry's proposals for his first 100 days as president from a centrist perspective. Ideas for initial presidential action, around which a candidate builds a campaign and seeks an electoral mandate, are important indicators of what an aspirant's presidency will prioritize.

I intend to examine each of Senator Kerry's ten proposals individually over the course of the coming weeks. The plan, as a whole, provides substantial source material for an interested voter seeking the centrist voice in the campaign for the White House.

In short, Senator Kerry's 100 day plan is, at its core, a political document that charts a course of action high on political rhetoric and low on substantive action. His plan, therefore, successfully reflects the myriad obstacles to achieving significant victories that he would face in a divided government so shortly following Inauguration Day.

Amid the slogans and soundbites of the Kerry plan, however, centrists can readily discover the foundation for a pragmatic, purposeful presidency that may restore a centrist, middle-ground on core issues important to millions of moderate Americans.

Senator Kerry proposes a ten point action plan for his first 100 days in office:
(1) A New National Education Trust
(2) New Era of National Service
(3) End the 'Era of Ashcroft'
(4) Repeal Bush Assault on the Environment and Make U.S. Energy Independent
(5) Rejoin the Community of Nations
(6) First Major Legislative Plan: Affordable Health Care
(7) Reward Companies that Create Jobs not Phony Corporate Profit
(8) Create a Middle Class Economy and End the Privileged Class Economy
(9) Cut the Deficit in Half in Four Years
(10) End Influence Peddling and Secret Deals

This list presents an opportunity to examine the relative strengths and weaknesses of a Kerry Administration. Centrists have a responsibility to examine Mr. Kerry's alternatives to the Bush Administration based upon who will best advance our cause. I will argue that in each of Senator Kerry's proposals, one finds rhetoric to mobilize the Democratic establishment alongside policy proposals that appeal to centrist Americans. While imperfect, Senator Kerry's priorities for his first 100 days in office provide hope that he would govern from the center in policy areas where the Bush Administration has veered disappointingly to the right.

I look forward to examining Kerry's proposals in greater detail and hope this exercise spurs a fruitful debate and discussion regarding whether a Kerry Administration would better serve centrist interests and values.

The "Spectre" of Protectionism?

A few of us here have mentioned our concern about the populist protectionism that John Edwards has been promoting lately. I know I poo-pooed it a little as something that never amounts to much of anything. Well, Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution reports the following:

High-income Americans have lost much of their enthusiasm for free trade as they perceive their own jobs threatened by white-collar workers in China, India and other countries, according to data from a survey of views on trade.

***

The poll shows that among Americans making more than $100,000 a year, support for actively promoting more free trade collapsed from 57% to less than half that, 28%. There were smaller drops, averaging less than 7 percentage points, in income brackets below $70,000, where support for free trade was already weaker.

The same poll found that the share of Americans making more than $100,000 who want the push toward free trade slowed or stopped altogether nearly doubled from 17% to 33%.

So it seems Americans are developing something of a taste for it these days. I guess maybe we should stay tuned.

Now Cowen is an economist and I doubt he'd be much troubled if I called him a "free-market true believer," as long as I admit I'm a big fan and have learned alot in a short time of checking out his posts. He's pretty convincing whenever he makes the case to get rid of more subsidies and tariffs, even if he doesn't always convince me. I think the easy part of being against protectionism is being against any substantial growth in it, because it always leads to trade wars where everyone suffers.

And I can't help but cast my mind back to that Stossel story linked below that recounts some subsidies that seem like huge wastes. But you can't help but wonder what might happen to many of our domestic industries if we gave up on protecting them. The usual promise is that we'll somehow make it up in new service jobs and that we need to adapt to inevitable trends etc. But I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering if going too far down this road might leave the US with no real products and insufficient wealth to support those new service jobs. If we export all our industries, doesn't that mean that eventually we're all left standing around jerking each other off? And if so, is that a model for a sustainable economy?

So Are We All Fiscal Conservatives Yet?

I'd like to touch again on something I brought up briefly with Heather. It seems to me that, at least in blogtopia, self-identification as a "fiscal conservative" seems awful high. But I'm unconvinced that everyone who says this means the same thing.

I think the easier part of it is to be generally in favor of not spending more than you have, paying as you go. Balanced budgets. Setting aside for future contingencies.This is the simple uncontroversial anti-idiotarian aspect of being a fiscal conservative. Now I hate to be the turd in the punchbowl (well, that might be a lie), but it seems to me that when everyone is smiling and nodding and agreeing on this, (yeah, fiscal responsibility man!) the self-congratulation gets in the way of looking a little deeper.

I think that I'm one of the "fiscal conservatives" that's not especially troubled by a little bit of income redistribution for the common good, of spending on social programs to provide a basline on basic needs.I'm perfectly willing to recognize that government bureaucracies foster waste, and am on board for cutting back inefficiencies. But I don't go so far as being willing to assume that the government can never do it as good as the private sector, and always is wasting money, taxes are confiscatory, etc, etc.

Now the Stossel post below chronicles a lot of abusive programs. They tend to suggest so much more could be cut. But what I want to point out is that if you're fiscally conservative but support some basic important role for the government in social spending, then you've got to recognize that at some point the rubber meets the road. I see stories all over the country where the economic bubble burst has led to drastically decreased revenues, and some towns are going as far as substantial layoffs, eliminating all school sports, etc. This is the point where the VERY fiscally conservative point to growth over the past decade and say that if governments hadn't spent so much in the good times, they'd be OK now.

But the closer you get to a local level, the less this seems a compelling argument. In small towns it's not nearly as hard to see how much dough you collect, and where it is going, and folks, that's where the rubber meets the road. And sure, if you're a true believer in very small government, you can say that if the state and fed'l government would be way less wasteful and let free markets work, etc, then towns would have the necessary funds for local needs. But from the perspective of a town with problems TODAY, this pipedream of a future tiny government free market utopia just doesn't put books and paper and pencils in students' hands, does it?

Anyway, this overlong post is my way of making a renewed appeal that we spent some time hashing over the STICKY points of fiscal conservatism instead of slapping ourselves on the back for the trivial insight that you shouldn't spend more than you've got.

Whaddaya Call 10 Industries Booted Off the Gov't Teat?

A good start, right? Surf over to reason and read John Stossel's great article subtitled How Rich Bastards Like Me Rip Off Taxpayers for Millions of Dollars. It's a stunning chronicle of some ingrained abuses in our system:

In 1980 I built a wonderful beach house. Four bedrooms -- every room with a view of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was an absurd place to build, right on the edge of the ocean. All that stood between my house and ruin was a hundred feet of sand. My father told me: "Don’t do it; it’s too risky. No one should build so close to an ocean."

But I built anyway.

Why? As my eager-for-the-business architect said, "Why not? If the ocean destroys your house, the government will pay for a new one."

Read the whole thing, it's a fascinating chronicle of expensive government foolhardiness. The one he's talking about above is one that really frosts my cake, the government pcking up the insurance tab for people who build and rebuild in flood prone areas.

But Stossel doesn't spare the rod on corporate abuses either. Stossel is an interesting case. He won a ton of emmies reporting on corporate abuses, but when he started seeing two sides to the story, the emmies stopped. I'm thinking of giving his book a try. He seems like a smart guy.

Amazon Dot Gov

This may seem perverse, but I've signed up for the next Dean meetup. While I have been strongly opposed to Howard Dean as a presidential candidate, particularly because of his views on foreign policy, I have admired his Internet operation. I've been especially impress by its ability to raise small contributions from a large number of donors. This is a model for a new, cleaner politics.

Veterans of the Dean campaign, such as Jim Moore, are discussing whether the operation could be turned into an Amazon.com of politics.

There already is a MoveOn, and there's no need for Dean For America to morph into another. What I envision is a place where voters could go, read about all the candidates running for office, and "buy" some. There would be a section for "contributors to Candidate X also contributed to Candidate Y" and so on.

It would probably not be lawful to transmit funds to the hypotheical Amazon.pol and have them aggregate donations and distribute the funds in a lump sum. The EBay model might work better with campaign finance law, with the contribution going directly from donor to candidate.

It's clear that the method of public campaign financing that grew up in the 70's has broken down. Both Kerry and Bush have opted out. Fewer people are contributing through the checkoff on tax returns, partly because their money would go to an abstract system, rather than specific candidates whom they favor.

An Amazon.Pol would not reduce the amount of money spend on campaigns. Rather, it would increase it. But a greater proportion of the funds would be coming in small pieces, from the public at large, and a smaller share from organized special interests.

I had a blast with the small amount of open source programming I did for the Clark campaign. I'm now ready to join with Dean veterans in to create an Amazon.gov. My preference would be for a system that provides clean money to liberals, centrists, and conservatives. But even if this election, the money only flows to liberals, that's okay with me. Republicans will catch on sooner or later, and if the GOP was less beholden to special interests, that would be a good thing too.

Update:
Adam has pointed out that Amazon does have a "store" for Presidential candidates. They clearly have the technology to do this, but the site is much too sparse. It only includes the presidential candidates, not congressional candidates or candidates for state office. Second, it lacks all community aspects which would allow the visitor to learn what people really think about the candidate.

Still, the site does answer some questions.

Is Amazon.com getting paid to do this?
U.S. federal law prohibits us from donating services to any or all presidential campaigns, so we are charging the campaigns our usual and normal Amazon.com Payments fee ($0.25 per contribution and 2.5% of the contribution amount).

We've also decided that we'll eventually contribute the aggregate amount we're paid in fees to Kids Voting USA, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, national organization that works with schools and communities to enhance civics education and provide youth an authentic voting experience.

This therefore does provide a revenue model for an organization to arrange contributions, and charge a fee to cover the costs of hosting the service and software development.

As Amazon is a business, it is necessary for it to be strictly neutral with regard to parties and candidates. That might not be so for an organization that is incorporated as a political group.

I see the positive aspects of developing a system along these lines as changing the balance in the direction of money coming directly from citizens rather than special interest groups. There is arguably a downside in "nationalizing" elections--making funds available from outside the candidates district. But let's not be naive. That's happening already with money coming from special interest groups. Furthermore, except for pork barrel projects, most legislation is national in scope, and we do have a stake in how the various races turn out. Perhaps this Amazon.Gov should only accept contributions for candidates for state and local office to in-state donors.

Greenspan Scatters the Roaches

Yesterday Alan Greenspan suggested that the growing imbalance between incomes and outlays in the social security program was a looming catastrophe best dealt with sooner rather than later.

Greenspan sensibly suggested that things like cuts in benefit amounts and reductions in the inflation growth rate should be on the table.

These comments had roughly the same affect as turning a light on in a room full of cockroaches, as Kerry, Edwards and Bush all took immediate efforts to distance themselves from the harsh light Greenspan shone on a problem that most sensible Americans know is a disaster waiting to happen.

All three preferred to recede into the shadows where it is easy to pretend that more benefits can be paid to more retirees while collecting less money, that the system can be fixed with no pain incurred by anyone.

E-Vote Reform Proposals So Far Too Weak

I wanted to say something about e-voting, because I think that most proposals and media articles on how e-voting should be reformed are too wimpy. Why is this important? Well, is Kerry winning because he's a strong candidate or because some hacker or a software bug chose him? The former seems more likely, but the e-vote parts of his lead aren't something that can possibly be checked the way things are done now. It was possible to tell that Enron went bad, even if it took a long time. After 2000 in Florida, every vote cast could be rechecked by first manual recounters, then a second time by a newspaper coalition. You can't do that with e-voting right now; admittedly, you couldn't pin down results beyond the 5% punch card error bar, but you can't even verify e-votes to 100% error.

There is no way of having faith in an elections system without this minimal level of checking, because for all you know, a random hacker in search of a challenge could have chosen the results. The motive could be anything from pranking to straightforward political motives to money for hacking to hatred of the United States to boredom and disaffection to demonstration of hacking skills. Or, more likely still, it could also be done by a bug in e-vote software.

(note, if you're with an e-vote vendor and reading this, page on to the last section first)

There are reform suggestions, and although they are a good start, I see them as missing a couple of important protections. Most often suggested by the media is giving individual voters a receipt saying how they voted. The second common suggestion is requiring voting software to be Open Source. Both of these suggestions fail to deal with some not-too- hard-to-think-of kinds of system perversions. Just giving individual voters copies of only helps somewhat; first, the computer could have lied about the votes it registered, and second, it still gives the state no way of manually checking the results if fraud is believed. Open Source alone only helps somewhat because an election company could deliver a binary different from what's online.

Even if we had those kinds of guidelines for suspecting questions for e-vote machines, it wouldn't help because no alternate record of votes is kept. If the computer lies, there is no backup. We need to have both backup records and checking of some kind.

It would also be very helpful if we took some measures to make fraud hard. Beyond that, still better would be to take measures to get rid of many of the bugs by requiring as much code as possible to be proven correct.

Absolutely Necessary: Minimal Auditing Checking Requirements

The minimal requirements are that there must be an auditing trail that governments can use to manually check results, and random checking in addition to individual ballot checks. Voter-Verified Ballot Systems comes close to this but misses the need for additional random checks. Added random checks are needed because otherwise the computer lying on printed ballots can easily defeat the only checks in the system.

Votes must be recorded on an alternate medium, preferably one checkable by the voter. Voters should be encouraged to verify their own ballots.

It must be possible to recount all votes manually.

Some precincts must be checked manually always, to see whether they results match in those precincts. If the mismatch is significant, all precincts should be manually recounted, and machine behavior carefully investigated. The precincts to be checked should be chosen randomly and manually, after the election.

Any precinct in which any odd behavior was reported should be checked.

Per-precinct vote counts and vote tallies must be done both by hand and electronically.

Much Better Still: Positive Bug- and Fraud-Reducing Mechanisms

Some have suggested that e-vote machine vendors should be required to release their source code as Open Source. That's definitely a good idea, as it'd allow bugs to be found by the population of programmers at large.

One more step would add alot of strength to this measure. We programmers have a deeply nifty thing in our toolbox called a 'hash'. Among other things, we can identify two given hunks of data as being the same or different with a high degree of probability.

We can use hash IDs to make sure that binaries in voting machines are exactly the same as you would get by compiling the publically available code.

In a similar vein, machine's should not accept software upgrades that aren't digitally signed as being from the vendor.

Each major political party should take responsibility for checking that these publically available codes operate as expected, and blowing the whistle otherwise. We can reasonably assume that other organizations would also happily share in this obligation.

There is an important legal detail here. "Open Source" has a specific definition which doesn't really suit the situation here. The actual thing that should be mandated is that election machine source code be completely available online (as in an actual Voter Confidence Act introduced in the House. Open Source also includes guarantees about letting anybody modify and distribute the source code. I see no reason why this should be required.

Best of All: Proven Correctness

It is possible to write provably correct code that stays to certain languages and limitations on functionality. Although it would certainly be impractical to get 100% proven code, doing as much as is practical this way would be better.

Of course, even if you did have 100% coverage, it wouldn't really mean it's completely reliable. All programs rely on correct hardware and input. It's just an important step.

Other Issues

Another possibility that should be discussed is standards and/or open hardware. If a region faces problems with a vendor that it's very slow to fix, right now the region has to buy an entire new system to get around problems. That's a pretty big disincentive to being tough about bugs in e-vote systems. Therefore, it's important to have standards to make it easier to replace systems piecewise.

There should also be standards with respect to e-vote-related software licenses.

Value For E-Vote Vendors

Note that we should expect to pay for this. Each of my suggestions amount to an increase in functionality, and that doesn't come free.

Another way this helps e-vote vendors is that it'd raise the value of their products. The more trustworthy their products are seen as, the more valuable their product will be, and the more sales they will make both domestically and globally. Therefore, all these proposals are very much in their interests as well.

To Upgrade, or to Downgrade?

In my opinion, it's better for a region to "downgrade" to whatever they used pre-e-vote than to live with the current level of uncertainty. I recommend using the old stuff until both manual verifiability and random checking are set up and read to run. We know the error level of punch ballots - it's < 5%. Could be anything with the e-vote systems. We just don't know. We do know that hackers and software bugs are real and inevitable; one has already broken into an e-vote vendor to make this very point. The accessibility advantages of these machines just aren't big enough to risk the core of our democracy like this.

UPDATE: Oh, the random checks are in the bill already. Whew! Oh, the embarrassment. My miserable exuse is that it was the very last paragraph.

A Time For Tuxedos And Gowns

With the President speaking out in favor of a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage, Joe Gandleman wonders how the issue will play with swing voters. The polls would suggest that the President is taking the popular side

In a poll released by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 59 percent of respondents said they oppose same-sex marriage, up from 53 percent in July. The most significant shift in attitude was among those with a high level of religious commitment -- that is, regular churchgoers -- 80 percent of whom opposed gay marriage, up from 71 percent this summer, the poll said.

I don't claim to be centrist on this. I favor gay marriage. I think it is a "future centrist" position, however, as marriage promotes stability and responsibility. I don't know if swing voters will "get it" in 2004, but they will eventually.

I believe much will depend on how gay activists present themselves this summer outside the Democratic and Republican conventions. Republicans are hoping for the repeat of 1984, when the Democratic convention, held in San Francisco, became something of a coming out party for gay power. The backlash against San Francisco Democrats added one more rock to the landslide that buried Walter Mondale.

Republican operatives would love to bait gay militants into extravagant acts of protest. The best way for gay activists to advance their agenda would be to show up outside the conventions in formal attire and to act with decorum. (I recommend that men wear suits and women dresses, not vice versa).

Bush Supporters Invited

At Centerfield, we aim to provide balanced coverage of Democrats and Republicans. But the truth is, we've been leaning Democrat lately. Part of this is the excitement of the Democratic primaries. But it is also true that some Republicans who initially contacted us about joining our blog have not followed through by actually posting.

Therefore, I one once again pushing this offer. If you are a moderate Republican or supporter of the President looking for a place to engage in reasoned and civil dialogue, you are cordially invited to join our group blog. We really want you. If you're interested, email me at blog@centristcoalition.com.

CNN Reports Steinbrenner-Dean Story

My post about Steinbrenner funding the anti-Dean ads was passed onto Judy Woodruff at CNN by Rebecca MacKinnon, a CNN reporter currently on leave as a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard's Kennedy School. I know Rebecca through the Thursday Night meetings at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School.

The information made in onto JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS yesterday (transcript) in this exchange between CANDY CROWLEY and JOHN MERCURIO:

CROWLEY: Let me -- let me ask you about -- Howard Dean got out of the race this week. But a lot of talk, particularly in his campaign, about those ads that -- with Osama bin Laden ad...

MERCURIO: Right.

CROWLEY: ...very negative that came up in Iowa. What are you hearing about that still?

MERCURIO: Well, you're talking about this -- it was a group called the Americans for Job -- I have to look at my notes, because I forget. It was a long title -- Americans for Jobs Health Care and Progressive Value. It was put together by a guy named David Jones. He's a former fund-raise for Dick Gephardt. They spent about $500,000 on these ads that you're talking about, the Osama bin Laden ads, in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

We heard last month, I think, that Bob Torricelli, a former New Jersey senator, put about $50,000 into it. What we haven't heard, though, I think, is that George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees, through his company -- I think it's called Yankees Entertainment and Sports -- spent twice as much as Torricelli. He spent -- he put $100,000 into these ads.

CROWLEY: Wow...

(CROSSTALK)

MERCURIO: I don't think Howard Dean is going to be a season ticket holder for the Yankees.

CROWLEY: I guess not.

Neither this blog, nor Blogging Of The President:2004, where I cross-posted the information, was credited. That's understandable. TV news would be dreadfully boring if reporters had to footnote every piece of information. But as the story expands into print media and further into the blogosphere, where there is more room for crediting sources, I hope it will be noted that the story first appeared below, on Centerfield.

(and thanks to Scripting News, Drudge Retort, Oliver Willis and others too numerous to mention for giving this story some visibility)

Update:
Eric of Off Wing Opinion makes a convincing case that Leo Hindery, Jr., who I mentioned in a previous post is CEO of the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network, has a consistent record of giving soft money to Democratic campaigns, in contrast to George Steinbrenner. Still, it's Steinbrenner's company, if the Hoover's report is to be believed, and Steinbrenner's money, unless some fancy internal accounting is involved.

Update2: Jerome Armstrong has some top-notch analysis of 527 committees, which were used to fund the attack ads.

Can we all agree on this?

Calpundit and other bloggers were discussing gerrymandering:

So here's an interesting thing. Our little group spanned the gamut from pretty conservative to pretty liberal, and while we disagreed about almost everything, there was one thing we all agreed on pretty enthusiastically: gerrymandering is bad. And it's gotten a lot worse.

Gerrymandering has been with us for a long time, of course, but in the past it had some natural limits due to its inherent complexity. Here in California, for example, Phil Burton was an acknowledged master of the art, but legislators of his peculiar genius do not come along in every state or every generation. For mere mortals, even pretty savvy ones, there was always a natural limit to just how unfairly you could draw the lines and still stay within the bounds of the law.

Today that's all changed. Specially designed software allows even the most thickheaded legislative leader to instantly create a districting plan that meets all the requirements of the law but still maximizes the party's share of the vote to within microns of its theoretical limit. And in states like Colorado and Texas they've added the extra little fillip of proposing new redistricting plans whenever they want, instead of waiting every ten years as we've always done in the past.

I'm in favor of a bi-partisan redistricting like Iowa's. The redistricting panel has an even number from each party. The legislature can't change what they propose, only accept or reject. Thus Iowa has some swing districts.

The thing we must recognize is that partisan redistricting results in SAFE districts -- and that results in the most partisan demogogue (right or left) winning and keeping the seat.

All in favor, say 'Aye'!

Nader working for Bush now

So, did you guys hear that Nader's working for Bush?

On NPR, he claimed that his campaign would attract more annoyed Republicans than Democrats, noting that some Republicans had voted for him in 2000. That seems like a pretty amazing denial of reality. When I visit conservative blogs that talk about Bush, they talk about staying home on Election Day, not voting Democratic. And Nader only gets talked about derisively.

So, what effect do y'all think Mr. Prima Donna will have on this race?

Why Did Steinbrenner Fund Anti-Dean Ads?

When I posted yesterday about who was behind the shadowy group which ran anti-Dean TV spots, including the notorious Osama ad, I buried my lead--that a Yankees affiliate controlled by George Steinbrenner contributed 1 of every 7 dollars expended in this effort. I doubted whether I, a mere blogger, could really have an item that the major media had overlooked. So I soft-pedaled it.

But a day later, they story has only solidified. (View image of contribution)

I exchanged emails with Glen Justice of the New York Times, author of meaty article which ran Thursday entitled Advocacy Groups Permitted To Use Unlimited Funds, who wrote:

Another organization, called Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values ran television advertisements attacking Howard Dean's presidential bid, showing a close-up of Osama bin Laden and questioning Dr. Dean's ability to compete with President Bush on foreign policy. Robert G. Torricelli, the former Democratic senator from New Jersey and a fund-raiser for Senator John Kerry, helped finance that organization with $50,000.

I scolded him for not mentioned the $100K donation from the Yankees affiliate, arguing that while George Steinbrenner is not a major political player, his involvement crystalizes how outrageous this system still is, post McCain-Feingold.

Mr. Justice responded, "I think Torricelli has been noted in stories because he has raised funds for Mr. Kerry, but your point is well made."

From his response, I gather two important pieces of information:

1) I got the facts right.
2) I reported the facts first.

There's a follow-up story to this: Why did George Steinbrenner fund anti-Dean ads? I haven't a clue.

A commenter yesterday suggested that the prime mover behind the donations may not have been Steinbrenner but Leo Hindery Jr., the CEO of Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network LLC. That may well be. But with George Steinbrenner controlling 60% of the YES Network, it is difficult to believe that he had no knowledge of a $100,000 campaign contribution made by the network. Steinbrenner has a reputation as a hands-on franchise owner, and a knowlegeable source indicates that he is indeed hands-on with regard to the YES Network. Considering that Steinbrenner was convicted of giving illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon, one would expect him to be particularly alert to any new contributions made by firms he controls.

Veteran readers of this blog will know that I was a supporter of Wesley Clark. I would have no problem with ads attacking Howard Dean that were funded by small contributions from a large number of citizens. I am, however, appalled that a few wealthy individuals can still have such a disproportionate influence over our democracy, even after the passage of McCain-Feingold.

The way the Yankees picked up A-Rod is not the way we should pick a President. Let's not let George Steinbrenner do to America what he's done to baseball.

Political Hit Man

If you want to learn about politics at its hardest core, read this article in the Chicago Sun-Times How Democrat fund-raiser scored Dean knockout.

The author of the article, Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet, is currently in residence at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. I attended a seminar yesterday in which she introduced David W. Jones, the fund-raiser who produced the attack ads.

Using a "527 committee" which is allowed under the McCain-Feingold law, Jones raised $663,000 from only 26 donors, including $100,000 from a single donor. He used the money to fund a poll to assess Dean's vulnerabilities, and 3 attack ads that went after Dean: Top Grades, Facts, and the notorious Osama ad.

Despite reports that the attack ads were produced by a Kerry fundraiser, Jones only admitted to having worked for Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, and Tom Harkin in the past. He stated that these ads were his own idea, inspired by his fear that Dean would lead the Democrats into a McGovern-like disaster. He stated that while he tapped donors who supported various Democratic candidates, his initiative was not coordinated with any campaign, which would have been illegal under McCain-Feingold. Indeed, he retained the law firm of Skadden, Arps as counsel to in order to reassure donors that their contributions would not be illegal.

Tray.com has a list of the donors (pdf), which includes, among others, a company controlled by Yankees owner George Steinbrenner:

The Americans for Jobs & Healthcare 527 year-end report indicated they raised $663,000 and spent $626,840 in 2003. Major donors included:

S. Daniel Abraham (FL)(Healthy Foods of America) $100,000;
J. MacDonald Williams, retired (TX);
Duffy Duffy Burdo (NY) $50,000;
Yankees Entertainment & Sports (YES) Network LLC $100,000;
Torricelli for Senate $50,000;
Laborers Int’l Union $50,000;
Int’l Longshoremen Assn $50,000;
Int’l Assn of Machinists $50,000;
Int’l Assn of Ironworkers $25,000;
Swanne Hunt (Hunt Alternatives)(MA) $25,000;
Transport Workers Union Political Contributions Cmte $20,000;
Bernard Schwartz (Loral Corp) $15,000;
Joel Tompkins (Saga Investments) (VA) $15,000;
Anthony Kurtz (NJ) $10,000;
William Harte (Harte Law)(IL) $10,000;
Ken Ziffren (Ziffren Brittenham et al)(CA) $5,000;
Clive Cummis (Sills Cummis) (NJ) $5,000;
Joel Jankowsky (Akin Gump)(DC) $5,000;
John Menks (Menks & Assoc.)(CA) $5,000;
Richard Quible, retired (VA) $5,000;
Richard Ravitch (Ravitch Rice) (NY) $5,000;
Alan Patricof (Patricof & Co)$1,000.

Some of you may recall that George Steinbrenner was convicted of giving illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon. This time, it's legal.

When I asked Jones if he had earned fees by placing these ads, he quoted a figure that was between 5% and 10% of the ad budget. He insisted, however, that money was not the motive in placing the ads. By attacking the potential nominee of his party, he risked becoming a persona non grata in his party and losing business.

Of the three ads, the first two, which attacked Dean from the left, made little impression. One highlighted Dean's support from the National Rifle Association when governor of Vermont. The other criticized Dean's past support for reining in the costs of Medicare. With most of the money raised having gone for the first two ads, Jones only spent $15,000 to run the Osama ad a total of 14 times. The ad only achieved prominence when Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi sent a letter to other Democratic candidates asking them to disavow the ad. This become a news peg which gave the ad and its message far more prominence than it otherwise would have, and clips from the ad have been replayed ever since.

In this case, the "old politics" of special interests defeated the "new politics" of Internet and grassroots support. One lesson to be learned from this experience is that fighting back is not always the right strategy for dealing with attack ads. One of the Dean campaigns arguments for Dean's electability is that Dean was a tough campaigner, and would respond to attacks, unlike "weak" campaigners like Michael Dukakis or Walter Mondale. But in this case, Jones claims that he baited the Dean campaign with a small media buy, and that the Dean campaign's overreaction is what made it work.

It's a tough business, and it is important to respond to persistent attacks, especially if they are based on distorted information. But sometimes even in politics it is better to turn the other cheek.

Bush to Support Constitutional Amendment

Joe at The Moderate Voice has a really interesting basic point to make about the impending move by the Bush administration to back a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I think it's something that doesn't get considered often enough. It's a basic dynamic that happens with a lot of issues.

The "bigger" issues are usually collections of more specific issues or circumstances. For example, with abortion, you have the question of late-term abortions at one end of the scale, and at the other end the recent question of whether the FDA should approve the morning after pill for over-the-counter sales. One involves fetuses at the stage where they're almost a baby, while the other deals with a few cells too small to even see. Pro-life groups generally view the two as essentially the same -- the killing of a person -- but most of the rest of us don't.

So where do they focus their attention? It's no accident that pro-life groups hammer on the late-term abortion issue, introducing it in Congress year-after-year. They play the political game on their home turf, drawing our attention to the aspect of their issue most favorable to them.

Notice, too, that public opinion has been gradually sliding more in favor of a pro-life position over the years. Playing politics on your home turf is effective.

When Bill Clinton took office, a similar dynamic occured on the issue of gay rights. He tried to follow through with his pledge to end the ban on gays in the military "with the stroke of a pen". He didn't think too clearly, though, about the overall issue of gay rights. It would have been more significant in the lives of most gays to push for protections against employment and housing discrimination -- laws that have been proposed many times, but never passed on a federal level. It's also much easier to argue for those laws as a basic matter of fairness.

The military, on the other hand, is a highly specialized institution. It has a lot of unique characteristics that allow people to make special arguments against extending gay rights into that arena.

Clinton was the first openly pro-gay rights president, but he failed to make progress because he didn't think about the issue strategically.

I sense that the issue of gay marriage is actually more unsettling, in people's minds, than gays in the military. However, I also don't believe this will be a big winner for the president.

The notion of amending the constitution will strike most people as radical and disproportionate. Many Americans will view it as fair for each state to be able to make their own decisions on gay marriage. Furthermore, the Democratic nominee will not be someone who favors gay marriage. Kerry and Edwards favor civil unions, but not marriage.

The nominee -- whoever he ends up being -- will argue against putting a heterosexual definition of marriage into the constitution, and in favor of letting each state decide.

Finally, I think it's strategically risky for the president to go after a big wedge issue at this time. I honestly think the public is tired of the ever-more divisive politics of the last few years. It's more natural for us to come together, in a post-9/11 environment, than it is for us to split into two bitterly opposed camps. A national tragedy is a unifying event.

That's one reason the president's State of the Union address went so poorly -- it was pretty strident and divisive ... and people are just sick of that stuff.

This is also why I think an Edwards candidacy would be so potent right now. He has the right basic idea -- invite all of us to join together again ... project a sense of inclusion and optimism. Simple and trite as that may sound, it's an extremely powerful idea right now.

Eisenhower on preventive war -- and more

The last general to serve as president was Dwight D. Eisenhower, of course. Here are some very timely quotes:

• “We have arrived at that point, my friends, when war does not present the possibility of victory or defeat. War would present to us only the alternative in degrees of destruction.”-- 1954

• “There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone.”

• “A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don’t believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.”-- Press conference in 1954

• “May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”

We also have this interesting history:

In 1955 Eisenhower had his opportunity to wage preemptive war against Communist China after China invaded some islands near Taiwan (Formosa). Congress gave Eisenhower approval to attack China at the time and place of his choosing. Instead of attacking, Eisenhower sent his ambassador, John Foster Dulles, to Europe to gain support for a war; but Churchill refused, and so did NATO. If we went it alone, Pentagon officials assured Eisenhower that we could destroy China’s military capability within three weeks.

So, what did Eisenhower do? Did he bribe together a “coalition of the willing”, start handing out no-bid contracts, and mobilize the military? No, Eisenhower called together his top advisors and told them to find a diplomatic solution—which they did. There was no war.

I wonder what this general and president would say about the current administration's actions. It is said that 9-11 changed everything, but...???

(Also posted to CivicDialogues.org)

A Fair Fight

It was seeming ever more likely that this campaign would be decided before any candidate besides Dean and Kerry got a substantial amount of national media attention.

John Edwards got a lot of attention the week before Iowa -- when he and Kerry were rising rapidly in the polls. But post-Iowa, after that astonishing 32% showing that way exceeded his numbers, the media focused almost entirely on two stories -- Kerry's rise, and the fall of the Dean campaign.

He beat expectations by a wide margin again on Feb. 3 -- rising rapidly in Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Missouri. But the media focus turned to Kerry's "inevitability", and more importantly, to the notion that Kerry is the "electable" one who is likely to beat Bush.

Tonight, however, the story is unmistakable. Kerry soaked up the bulk of the national media this week. Story after story presented him as the really strong Democratic candidate. And somehow, some way, Edwards managed to close a huge gap -- rising somewhere in the neighborhood of 17 points in the final two days.

Now we have a contest. Kerry may very well still win, but he'll have to do it on a much more even playing field than the one he's had thus far.

UPDATE: I ran accross yet another centrist weblog -- The Moderate Voice -- and they've got a pretty exhaustive rundown of last night's results and the reactions from various quarters. Check it out.

UPDATE #2: William Saletan of Slate did another breakdown of the numbers from the primaries. The New Republic has some more articles on the same theme. And Kevin Drum over at CalPundit has an extended discussion.

The latter is really interesting, to me, because Kevin was one of several top bloggers who supported Wesley Clark, and while we've seen some interest in Edwards from moderate Republican bloggers like Drezner and Tacitus, I wasn't aware of renewed interest from the former Clark crowd.

Here's a quote from the New Republic piece:

"Of the primaries so far, Wisconsin's was the closest to an approximation of the general election. The number of voters who participated--more than 800,000--is far more than any of the previous 16 contests. Since it was an open primary, any registered voter could participate, and Edwards won the voters a Democrat will most need in November. Almost 40 percent of the voters were Republicans or independents, and Edwards won both groups by wide margins. But most importantly, in Wisconsin, Edwards won the demographic most important to the future of Democrats: white men. He beat Kerry 37 to 35 in this group. Edwards won all the demographics that will provide the margin of victory for a successful Democrat in November."

A Big Lie?

This piece by Stuart Taylor Jr. in the Atlantic Online pretty nearly encapulates my views.

Aside from the mounting evidence that Saddam Hussein had few, if any, weapons of mass destruction, the "Bush lied" boomlet has been fueled both by the president's own obstinate refusal to acknowledge the massive intelligence failure that now sits in plain view and by his obtuse, at times outlandish, answers to legitimate questions. When Diane Sawyer of ABC News asked him on December 16 to justify prewar claims stating "as a hard fact that there were weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to the possibility that [Saddam] could move to acquire those weapons," for example, Bush shot back: "So what's the difference?" Fatuous arrogance: not a good way to regain lost trust.

Or take Bush's assertion that he had invaded to remove Saddam because "we gave him a chance to allow inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." That was egregiously false when he said it on July 14 of last year. It was still false when he said it again on January 27, declaring that Saddam "chose defiance [and] did not let us in." A devious strategy to bamboozle clueless voters? Random chatter from a clueless president? Or what? Beats me.

Still, the charges that Bush, Cheney, and Secretary of State Colin Powell lied us into war are, at best, recklessly irresponsible hyperbole. While most of their WMD claims now appear way off base, none of the claims were without support in the intelligence agencies' prewar assessments. And there is no evidence that Bush, Cheney, or Powell did not believe their own prewar assertions.

Why does it matter to me whether "Bush lied" or not? I certainly think that the President is capable of lying in small ways. But the charge is really one of the Big Lie, that this Iraq threat was made up out of whole cloth, and that the Administration could could on the media to back up its propaganda.

This is far too conspiratorial to be credible. It requires one to believe that the Republican charges of liberal media bias are another big lie--that they don't even believe it themselves.

The Administration's obstinate refusal to admit error creates a suspension of belief which allows all sorts of wild speculation to prosper. But the most parsimonious explanation is not that the President lied, but that he allowed himself to be fooled, and doesn't want to admit it.

The war on terrorism - one centrist perspective

(Originally posted to CivicDialogues.org)

Last week I was following the comments on a post at Centerfield. One thing that was raised as an issue was whether a President John Kerry would have an effective approach to the war on terrorism. For example, 'bk' commented (excerpted, emphasis added):

My main worry with Kerry is that he has thus far been uncommitted to staying the course in Iraq. I expect he'll sail rightward after he sews things up, but there's really no reason to trust his resolve. I REALLY don't want the next President to go to Old Europe and APOLOGIZE for Bush, and go hat in hand to the UN and get very wishy-washy. I think it would be a mistake to go back to the old business as usual sabre-rattling without any follow-up.

That Kerry has suggested that terrorism should be approached as a "law enforcement" issue signals to me that he has no resolve. He's ready to let our enemies go back to hiding in the shadows while he gives forceful speeches at the UN that in the end come to nothing achieved. Kerry is the sort of guy that all his life has thought he was actually getting something done whenever he gave a talk to a room full of suits and got people to clap and nod their heads and say "here, here!"

Hearing the moral-system-of-the-right in those words, I expressed an opposing view (excerpted, emphasis added):

Having read some of the comments about Kerry and other Dems being 'soft' on terrorism, I gotta ask: Other than overthrowing the Taliban (where we let OBL get away -- probably because we trusted the locals too much instead of risking our own troops), how has the USE OF OUR MILITARY decreased the liklihood that hijackers will take over a plane tomorrow and fly it into a nuclear power plant?

I guess I keep seeing this gigantic disconnect between lashing out at governments with our military and actually preventing another 9-11 type of incident !!!

I'm not minimizing other forms that terrorism may take, but we need to (keep) and leverage our relationships with the world community to plug lots of little holes that are simply not visible on a military radar.

'Mark' responded this way (excerpted, emphasis added):

As for being quote "soft" unquote, it's clear to me that John Kerry perceives 9/11 as a really big and very violent criminal conspiracy. The emphasis will be on law enforcement; military force (it would seem) would rarely if ever be necessary for President Kerry. (And if I were cynical, I'd mention President Kerry seeking tacit blessings for any military strikes from Paris.)

I tend to see the GWOT as something that's going to take a really long time and it's going to have a lot of "hot" phases and cold phases. By implicitly (or at worst explicitly) taking the U.S. military off the table it seems to me, at least, that we're essentially tying an arm behind our back in a pretty dangerous world. That doesn't strike me as especially rational.

I'm not attempting to argue for or against the Iraq invasion (however one might define being 'for' or 'against'). But there is a larger issue here that most assuredly deserves close scrutiny by the electorate: What is the proper balance between the two approaches that those from the left and those from the right tend to embrace -- as if by instinct.

I put this on the back burner until I had the time to compose a dialogue that illustrate the conflicting assumptions of worldviews as they apply to this issue. I completed that task earlier today -- here.

The above is all a prelude to considering:

1) Why those on the left and right mistrust each other's instincts,

2) What contribution can a centrist perspective make on this topic, and

3) How George W. Bush and John Kerry reflect these worldviews.

Why the distrust?

The dialogue linked above illustrates the essential conflict between the moral-system-of-the-left (MSL) and the moral-system-of-the-right (MSR):

- The MSR assumes an us-versus-them division of the world. Indeed, the United States finds itself with the responsibility for waging this chapter of the ongoing battle between good and evil because we find ourselves on the top rung of the world's economic and power ladder, a position that the MSR assumes is deserved. There can be no compromise with evil in an always-dangerous, competitive world. Hit them before they hit us. You may be mistaken, but you'll be alive.

- The MSL assumes an increasingly interdependent world that challenges all nations to work together to solve economic and other conflicts that, if ignored, will diminish the well-being of all. Wealthy nations -- especially one as powerful as the United States -- must lead by example, making sure that our actions promote a better world for everyone. The world will respect us if we act in everyone's interest rather than in self-serving ways. This takes time, patience and cooperative effort, but in the long run we and future generations will be safer and lead more prosperous lives.

Each side sees the other through the lense of its own worldview:

- The right believes that the left is unwilling to defend the nation's own interests, always seeking further dialogue and seeking the approval of others, including those who are evil.

- The left believes that the right will act precipitously, ignoring solutions that may be more effective than force, and confirming the worst suspicions of other nations that we act selfishly.

What is a centrist perspective?

A centrist knows that both values are needed to achieve present and future well-being -- balancing force with persuasion. In today's world this is a seemingly impossible task, given the nature of potential weapons and how quickly events can move beyond our control.

But there is, I believe, one thing that is necessary for success: the person making the policy decisions must have a minimal comfort level with both worldviews. He or she must possess the wisdom to know when coercion is needed as well as when persuasion will yield acceptable or better results. A lack of confidence in either of these 'techniques' could be quite expensive for ourselves and the world as a whole -- for the present and future generations.

How do Bush and Kerry measure up?

Because of the events of the past few years, I suspect we're all much more acquainted with George Bush's leadership style than with John Kerry's. Given that virtually everyone agrees that the use of military force was a wise and appropriate response to the 9-11 attacks -- at least in Afghanistan -- and that George Bush was the person who initiated that response, maybe we're tempted to see him as capable of making the right call again.

Although I believe the president acted wisely in the overthrow of the Taliban, I have no confidence in his ability to know when to refrain from using the military if he sees a definite short term gain. Whether you want to believe Paul O'Neill or Wesley Clark's statements about what was being planned or when it was planned, one thing is for certain: Bush's first instinct was to use the military unilaterally in Iraq. It took the strong persuasion of Secretary Powell to convince him to even consult the world community. But by the time we went to the UN, the message was out: we'll topple Saddam alone or with others, but remove him we will.

Add to that the constant rhetoric of good versus evil-doers and it's quite obvious that George Bush sees the world through a single lense: the moral-system-of-the-right. He will use it whenever he can, because he sees any other option as a failure to take a strong stand against evil -- and that would be immorall. That's why he promotes the war on terrorism as the urgent mission of the United States. He's being quite sincere. But he cannot be trusted to skillfully use the weapons of negotiation and persuasion.

Perhaps this would not be such a big deal if we knew that his advisors were presenting him with a balanced approach. I think Colin Powell does present this balance, but others, including the vice-president and the pentagon's civilian leaders, do not.

Instead, the operative worldview is that of the right, specifically as expressed by those known as 'neo-cons'. Let me quote briefly from Fareed Zacharia's review of An End To Evil: How to Win the War on Terror by neo-cons David Frum and Richard Perle (emphasis added):

Frum and Perle criticize France (of course) as well as most of Europe, South Korea, China and Russia, and are predictably contemptuous of the United Nations. The world, they declare, is ''full of hypocrites and scofflaws.''...The authors advocate a muscular idealism that seeks to change the world, not accept it as is. But these sections also highlight why, with all its strengths, neoconservatism is ultimately not a serious guide to foreign policy.

Frum and Perle wish to revolutionize whole cultures, change regimes, deter potential threats, ''end evil'' itself. But they cannot abide the means to achieve it, which inevitably involves contact with other countries, negotiations, compromise, empathy. (This helps explain why there is not one foreign policy bureaucracy they speak kindly of.) To transform the world, you do actually need to engage in it. Many who think about American foreign policy share the goal of ''ending'' evil -- or at the very least diminishing its power and scope. They believe, however, that the most durable path to this goal lies in sustained measures, not one-shot deals, implemented not just by the United States but across the globe. And to take root, changes must be sensitive to the societies in which they are being imposed. Ending evil is a long, hard slog.

For neoconservatives such thinking amounts to appeasement...

The issues of American foreign policy today are often not simply of doing good but of doing it intelligently. Heroic talk is easy, but how do we promote democracy in Muslim countries without producing a reversal for women's rights (as is now happening in Iraq)? How do we push Saudi Arabia toward free elections without speeding it toward a radical Islamist regime? How do we get the South Koreans to support a tougher policy toward the North when they fear that such a policy would mean a North Korean collapse -- which they would have to spend decades absorbing? It is by intelligently balancing such interests that we will make lasting progress.

One can easily see the world-views in conflict and see that with the neo-cons holding sway, the foreign policy of the United States is in the hands of those who will take a hammer and pound on any problem that resembles a nail!

How about John Kerry? Given the fact of his service in Viet Nam, I think it's quite a stretch to turn him into the reverse image of George W. Bush. His entire record should certainly be scrtinized, including his service record, his statements as a war-protesting veteran and his service in the United States Senate.

As centrists, let's be sure that we're looking at the issues from a balanced perspective. That's our contribution to this discussion. That's how the nation will choose a leader who is both strong and wise!

My Stance as a Centrist

In a comment to my last post, Brian Keegan invited me to "expound some more" on what it means to ME to be a fiscal conservative. I went away and thought a lot about not just about my fiscal stance but what it means to me to be a centrist in general. An interesting exercise that led to my most recent post on my own blog. I would like to reply to Brian's request by repeating a portion of that post here. If you are really interested, you are welcome to click through and read the rest of my post.

We are all products of our upbringing and environment; and, in the beginning, our beliefs are broadly based on what our parents and other significant authority figures believe in. As we grow older and interact more independently with our social and political environment, those initial beliefs are often subject to change. So it was with me. My parents were staunchly conservative, evangelical Christians who related most comfortably with the Religious Right. Maybe it is because I have interacted with my world on a more secular level, but over the years I have found myself drifting further and further towards the center without quite crossing the line to the more liberal side. If I do tend towards the liberal side on a particular issue, I will still be so close to center I would never be considered anything more than moderate.

I find I can't discuss economical issues separate from social issues because they are so dependent on each other. Your stance on the one to a great degree will determine your stance on the other. I'm not sure I can accurately describe myself, as many centrists do, as "an economical conservative and a social liberal." I think I would have to describe myself as squarely moderate on both. I am a firm believer in balanced budgets and "pay as you go." This is the main reason why I can't separate economics from social services. If we feel that we truly need a government program to address a particular social issue, we had better be prepared to pay for it! I do realize that there are always exceptions to any given rule. During economic downturns like our recent recession or during times of war, by necessity the government will run with a deficit. But there should always be a clear plan for how that deficit will eventually be eliminated -- sooner rather than later. Bottom line: government spending should always be tied to revenues. Exceptions should always provide as clear a plan as possible for the elimination of any deficits caused by that exception. (Can you visualize Congress not being able to dip so liberally into the proverbial pork barrel?)

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life. And once he's learned how to fish, you don't take his fish away from him. I am clearly not a socialist, but I do believe in being socially responsible. Obviously, I also believe education is important and perhaps the one area where the government should not stint in its spending. All other programs... The biggest problem with government sponsored social programs is that in order to run the program you need a bureaucracy to run it. Unfortunately, bureaucracies, once created, tend to be self-perpetuating. For that reason alone, I truly believe that all government programs should have some kind of sunset provisions built into them. In some cases, the programs will need to continue, perhaps indefinitely, but at the very least, they will come up for review. This is especially true for programs that involve subsidies. I suspect that there are a number of subsidies still available today that haven't been needed in a long time and that isn't wise use of our tax dollars. Bottom line: the best social programs, in my opinion, would be designed in such a way that they would actually solve a problem and then end. Too many programs tend to only treat the symptoms of the problem, leading to their self-perpetuation.

I am being rather deliberately general with these concepts. I find that I am more inclined to consider specific issues and determine how I feel about them on their individual merits. Perhaps that is what most defines me as a centrist -- my unwillingness to adhere to any particular platform.

A Strong Finish?

The final Zogyby poll pre-Wisconsin was out today, and not particularly good news for John Edwards:

Kerry 47%
Dean 23%
Edwards 20%
Kucinich 2%

And yet, I sense something is going on that will give Edwards a major boost tomorrow. We have, of course, the usual enthusiasm in the Edwards camp in the final days. But we also have the endorsement today from Wisconsin's largest newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and another endorsement from the Capital Times in Madison.

We have his excellent debate performance last night. And we also have some real oddities from the Dean camp, with Dean's campaign chairman leaving today and several of his advisors talking like the campaign will soon end.

Something tells me the air is coming out of the Dean balloon, and that Edwards is primed to dramatically exceed expectations. My guess -- he gets at least 30% tomorrow. Whether this is enough to put him "in the ring" with Kerry, in the eyes of the media, is another question.

To Push or Be Patient?

Soon after the Ma SJC decision declaring gays should be allowed to marry, Eugene Volokh touched on the issue of timing.The gist of his take was to ask whether getting too far in front of public opinion by seeking judicial remedy might be counter-productive to expanding civil rights in the intermediate and long term. I agreed at that time, but this viewpoint seemed to be overlooked in the pro-expanded liberties camp amid the celebratory "this is the right thing to do" atmosphere.

Here in Massachusetts the latest "victory" of the gay rights movement has been to forestall a legislative response by fillibustering the closing moments of the constitutional convention, ensuring that nothing got done. The recent MA constitutional convention was characterized by angry sides disinclined to compromise. Both sides are mad, and self-righteous, and have no interest in getting 3/4 of a loaf.

I'm only one among many centrists and social libertarians who feel that the current opposition to expanded gay rights comes from a WANING majority. A passage of a decade or two might have easily brought marriage rights to gays with less controversy. Cultural acceptance of such alternative lifestyles has been increasingly modeled and accepted in popular culture over the past two decades. The latest generation becoming adults does not seem especially troubled by the same things that have so upset much of the generation of 40 and 50 somethings currently running things(our selectmen, school committees, state reps, senators, governors, CEOs, chambers of commerce, etc).

But now, for better OR for worse, the MA SJC has forced the issue at a time when the waning majority may still indeed be a majority capable of enforcing its will. Many states overtly ban gay marriage, and those that haven't are now moving quickly to make sure that their state's courts don't try to set public policy.

Even here in liberal Massachsetts, the latest victory may well turn out to be pyhrric. Note that the narrow 100-98 defeat of an amendment that would have left gays utterly SOL could be reversed by replacing only two liberals. And as a MA resident, it strikes me as VERY likely that a handful or two of liberal state reps elected on support for blue-collar economic policies will get pushed aside by candidates supporting the same economics coupled with strong support for "family values" characterized at least in part by exclusion of gays from marriage. Conversely, the likelihood that many fiscally conservative family values politicians will get swept away by a mass outpouring of people whose first issue is expanded civil rights does NOT seem high. Just my opinion as a resident.

Massachusetts is viewed from afar as the shining star of liberalism, but we haven't had a democratic governor for two decades, and our current governor, Mitt Romney, is a mormon. The current speaker of the house calls himself a democrat, but policywise he's fiscally conservative and pro family values in addition to being an iron-fisted leader who can be 100% relied upon to carry water for the anti-gay marriage side. Politics in our state house is dominated by the city of Boston and the near suburbs with "urban progressive" viewpoints. Over time, this dominance of the urban liberal progressive viewpoint has been sustained at least in part by gross gerrymandering of districts that radiate like spokes from Boston, minimizing the political power of suburbs with a more conservative take on things.

There is a simmering resentment in the suburbs over a generation of policies that obsesses over what's good for Boston and treats much of the rest of the state as rubes to be condescended to, and this resentment is very ready to find an outlet for expression. Suburbanites have sat still and taken it while the state house told us how we had to build more housing for the poor, how individual homeowners had to spend tens of thousands on cleaner septic systems, and how we had to let our roads and bridges crumble while a gazillion dollars was spent on the Big Dig. Not happy stuff.

So I sure hope that the gay rights movement doesn't come to regret its unwillingness to take 3/4 of a loaf by supporting the imperfect solution of providing all the trappings of marriage except the name itself. There's a very decent chance that an amendment excluding gays frommarriage will pass the legislature, if not in this session's April constitutional convention, then in the next. This will be the harder fight. If it is then put on the statewide ballot, using wording likely to be dictated by iron-fisted speaker Tom Finneran, it has a great chance of passing, especially if conservatives looking down the road target Att'y General Tom Reilly for ouster. O'Reilly would be the heavy lifter for liberal efforts to obstruct the amendment process and control the ballot wording.

Notwithstanding the fact that identifying a viewpoint as libertarian can lead to summary dismissal by the general public, I'd like to reiterate at the blog post level my previous suggestion: the libertarian take on the state's proper role in determining marriage policy is flawless and sensible. Please take the time to read Jacob Sullum's essay on how to protect the sanctity of marriage, over at Reason. Perhaps this is the solution that can prevent a mean-spirited turn away from relegating gays to 3rd-class status for another two generations.

No Sister Act

Bad news for Republicans. John Kerry may not even need to resort to a Sister Souljah moment. Leaders of the African-American community are soft-peddling their sometimes divisive issues in the name of "Beat Bush"

For a politician brave enough to take them on, there's no shortage of dilemmas facing African Americans, no shortage of social ills that beg for new and innovative policy. Debates about criminal justice, affirmative action, rewarding marriage, and reforming welfare have all erupted during Bush's tenure, and black America's stake in each of these issues is large.

But with Bush-hatred running rampant among Democrats, the preeminent feeling among the party's base seems to be that this is not the year to make a statement. With very little pressure being applied by African American leadership, Democratic candidates have been happy to avoid thorny debates on race and leave innovative approaches for another year.

Smear Or Substance?

A piece by Ben Johnson in the conservative FrontPage Magazine charges that Teresa Heinz Kerry is a sugar momma for the radical left.

Teresa Heinz Kerry has financed the secretive Tides Foundation to the tune of more than $4 million over the years. The Tides Foundation, a “charity” established in 1976 by antiwar leftist activist Drummond Pike, distributes millions of dollars in grants every year to political organizations advocating far-Left causes. The Tides Foundation and its closely allied Tides Center, which was spun off from the Foundation in 1996 but run by Drummond Pike, distributed nearly $66 million in grants in 2002 alone. In all, Tides has distributed more than $300 million for the Left. These funds went to rabid antiwar demonstrators, anti-trade demonstrators, domestic Islamist organizations, pro-terrorists legal groups, environmentalists, abortion partisans, extremist homosexual activists and open borders advocates.

According to the article

Indymedia received $376,000 from the Tides Foundation.
...
The Institute for Global Communications is another leftist communications facilitator that received Tides grant money.
...
The Tides Foundation has funded a number of the pillars of the radical legal establishment. Chief among these is the National Lawyers Guild

I'm pretty good at political taxonomy. These are not liberal organizations. They're seriously left. Further left than Howard Dean. Further left than Dennis Kucinich. I don't, however, know anything about the Tides Foundation. I don't know if these grants were a small portion of the foundation's portfolio. I don't know if a major donor to the foundation would know of these particular grants. And I don't know if Teresa Heinz Kerry's political opinions hold much weight with her husband.

No doubt some will dismiss this article as part of the ramping up to a campaign to smear Kerry, But if it were substantiated, it would certainly raise real doubts in my mind about the Senator. I certainly hope that the Kerrys are not fans of Indymedia, which mirrors the right's Free Republic as a source of scurrilous information and attacks. I hope this link to the radical left is tenuous, for if it were solid, it would raise questions of real substance more important than whether Sen. Kerry has resorted to Botox or plastic surgery or dallied with women other than his wife.

Gay Marriage - A Future Centrist Position

My fellow Clarkie, Dave Billings, works as an aide in the Massachusetts legislature. He's blogging the gay marriage debate.

While gay marriage may seem radical or leftist, I feel that it is a "future centrist" position. Unlike radical queer culture , marriage will have the effect of making gays more bourgeois, more like other Americans. It takes some getting used to, but there is every reason to think that future generations will consider it common sense.

Into the sunset?

Whatever else I am or may become politically, I am and always will be a fiscal conservative. So I was rather pleased today by some of Alan Greenspan's comments during his testimony before the Senate Finance Committee.

Greenspan, testifying for a second straight day on the Fed's semiannual monetary policy report, twinned his tax-cut support with a fresh call on lawmakers to reinstate caps on much government spending and so-called pay-go rules requiring tax or spending plans be paid for elsewhere in the budget.

"One of the first orders of business of Congress would be to restore discretionary caps, and especially pay-go," he said, noting that if such rules were in place spending cuts would need to be found to make up for any revenues lost from extending tax cuts.

The other item that really caught my attention, but doesn't appear to have been reported, was that he had long advocated that federal programs should have built into them some kind of sunset provision. While it may be that the programs would renew, at the very least they would be able to come under review to see if they were still in alignment with long-term national goals. It was also his opinion that many of them would be allowed to expire.

Imagine what the Social Security program might look like today if such a provision had been built into it when it first passed. Would we even have a Social Security program? Until today, I was unaware that the "paygo" rules had expired in 2002. These are fiscal policies that I think Centrists should definitely push for. Perhaps if the spending rules were still in place, Bush might have been more restrained in his recent bout of spending our tax dollars.

Here we go again...

Drudge is headlining a potential major Kerry bimbo eruption, possibly involving an intern....

Gore Is Outraged

We have criticized the President quite a bit on this blog in what I believe is a temperate and reasonable manner. There is certainly room among reasonable people for harsher critiques than ours. But the language which Al Gore recently used to attack the President is far over the line.

In a withering critique of the Bush administration, former Vice President Al Gore on Sunday accused the president of betraying the country by using the Sept. 11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq.

"He betrayed this country!" Mr. Gore shouted into the microphone at a rally of Tennessee Democrats here in a stuffy hotel ballroom. "He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place."

Opponents of the Iraq War have bristled at being called unpatriotic, and some on the right even accused them of being a fifth column. But I can't think of any Republican of stature who charged Democrats with betraying their country as explicitly as Gore has with regard to President Bush.

I've seen the clip, and the words on the page do not do justice to the emotional and thunderous tones with which Gore condemned the President. The former Vice President is evolving from a leader of stature into a demagogue. Al Gore is outraged, but he's also outrageous.

Wes Clark and the Democratic nomination

As a member of the Draft-Clark movement and a financial and weblogging backer of Clark's candidacy, I am naturally disapointed that his campaign was not more successful. Fortunately, as his remarks today indicate, he's not intending to go home and be quiet. I welcome his continuing participation in our nation's public life.

This campaign was a long-shot from the beginning. Few of us had any illusions about that. Having to rely on the judgments of others with experience in the political arena, raising significant money, learning to deal with the press and how not to utter the wrong sound-bite -- that's a lot even for a Rhodes scholar.

With many others, I have to point to the decision to skip the Iowa caucuses as a real mistake, although I'm not sure that this is really obvious without the benefit of hindsight. The way it eventually played out, it fell to Iowa Democrats to fill the vacuum created by Howard Dean's plunging popularity. With Clark in play, I'd say there would have been an excellent chance that Clark would have been one of the top two coming out of Iowa. But I speculate.

On a positive note, I am convinced that Clark's focus on patriotic dissent and his discussion of Bush's responsibility to protect American citizens -- both before 9-11 and since -- has allowed other candidates to speak out on a whole set of issues without being painted as un-American or disloyal. Thank you, Wes Clark!

Whom do I support for the nominatiion now? Anybody-but-Bush? That's actally not far from the truth. I simply believe that George W. Bush is leading us in the wrong direction -- in both domestic and international affairs. I think the man is sincere, but I've concluded that his blind faith in ideology makes him singularly unfit to serve another term.

My vote will be one of no-confidence in President George W. Bush.

Given our political system, that means I will support the Democratic nominee. If this country's politics are ever to move back to the middle -- seeking solutions that balance competition with cooperation -- the first thing we must do is defeat the right wing of the GOP -- dominated as it is by the strange alliance of southern whites and religious fundamentalists fueled by corporate interests who have found willing partners in blatantly stacking the deck to favor themselves -- rather than seeking the common good.

I can't help feeling a bit sorry for the fiscal conservatives in the GOP. (This excludes ideologues like Grover Norquist, et al.) They must really feel orphaned!

More Centrists

I'm seeing a growing number of centrist blogs. Here are two more:

Centrist America

Staunch Moderate

found via beastofsound, which I gather is itself on the moderate left.

Rally Caps?

I saw footage last night of the game where the Phillies got 8 runs in the ninth inning to beat the Dodgers 12-11. This is the sort of hope left to centrists who had hoped that a presidential candidate would emerge who would be a hawk on foreign policy, promote fiscal responsibility, and care a little bit about civil liberties.

But hey, it aint over 'til it's over. We've never needed Yogi Berra more. Now that Clark has dropped out, maybe the tearing down of Kerry can begin in earnest, and Edwards can make a run. Let's look at what happened. Dean choked, or Iowa choked on him. Kerry got the "electable" mantle. Three weeks later it was declared over.

And not one democratic opponent of Kerry was willing to go negative, to show Kerry for the creature of expedience that he is, bereft of core values, and willing to co-opt the rhetoric of Dean and Edwards whenever it suited him.

Because make no mistake, Kerry could coast to the nomination, and even poll ahead of Bush in July. But after a month of the GOP going negative on Kerry, he'll be D-U-N done. He has no support whatsoever among centrists that I can see. He's going to get hammered! He's the epitome of lackluster. He's the rebound candidate, like the solid sensible uninspiring date that you just couldn't talk yourself into liking. It's time for him to go.

OK, now we need baserunners. Baserunners!

The Electable Democrat

William Saletan of Slate offers a detailed and most intriguing analysis of the primary results.

Is Kerry the "electable" Democrat, as all the folks going to the polls think?

Who is strongest among the independents, moderates, and Republicans often referred to as "swing voters"?

As I say, his analysis is remarkably detailed. But here's the nub of it:

It's a hard question to answer, because most of the evidence is circular. If people support Kerry because they think he's electable, he goes up in the polls, which makes him look more electable. The best way to filter out this distortion is to focus on the voters least likely to make their decisions in November based on electability. These happen to be the same voters who hold the balance of power in most elections: independents, conservative Democrats, and moderate Republicans. They aren't principally trying to figure out which Democratic candidate can beat Bush, because they don't necessarily want the Democratic nominee to beat Bush. They're trying to decide which Democratic candidate, if any, would be a better president than Bush.

How well has Kerry done among these voters? In absolute terms, well enough. But in relative terms, the numbers show a disconcerting pattern. By and large, the closer you move to the center and center-right of the electorate, where the presidential race will probably be decided, the worse Kerry does. The opposite is true of Edwards.

Another Centrist Blog

Meet Tim Oren at Due Diligence who blogged from the Digital Democracy conference
(via Buzz Machine)

As a centrist (by averages) I've found political bloggers who are strongly on one side or the other to be profoundly unpersuasive, whether it's Kos or the Corner. Give me an honest, open, conflicted voice, whether it be Sullivan, Totten or Roger Simon. Someone who has had their world rocked, is looking for a home, and is therefore forced to tease out the issues with a voice that does not come from one of the echo chambers. These I find (at least) engaging and capable provoking new thinking, while those waging a full frontal assault based on premises I do not share are at best irrelevant and at worst repellant.

Right on!

Bush Fan Throws down Gauntlet on Centerfield

We've had a recent visitor on the site, Matthew Pruitt, who thinks we're liberals in centrist clothing, and has thrown down the gauntlet. This strikes me as an especially worthwhile conversation to have, even if everyone sticks to their guns in the end. So I'm pulling the post up as a blockquote, and adding some numbers to Pru's assertions so that we can refer to them in shorthand. And I'm going to let like challenge stand as composed, instead of breaking it up with periodic responses/rebuttals. (In other words, I'm eschewing the "fisking style.") Someone else may want to do that, or I may do it later on...let's just all remember that this doesn't have to be a food fight.

[1]Are there any concrete examples of why Bush's domestic policy is horrible (besides the deficit) from a centrist perspective? I understand that most of you think that the idea of the Bush foreign policy works (except for the whole WMD thing), but on the domestic front, quite frankly I think that [2]some of you are letting your dislike for the President cloud your judgment.

[3]The thought that John Kerry is anywhere near center, seriously makes me giggle. He has been nothing but a flag bearer for the extreme liberal wing of his party his entire career. Voting for Kerry over Bush because of the President’s ties too special interests is a borderline joke. [4]Kerry has taken more money from special interests over his career, and acted on their behalf, more or just as much as any politician in the history of this country.

[5]Yes, the Patriot Act should be reviewed, but [6]Bush violating civil liberties? [7]It seems to me that most moderate minded politicos (Diane Feinstein, John McCain, etc.) support the administration's homeland security policies. Being one who is concerned with civil liberties [8]I would like to understand what from an actual policy standpoint the administration is doing wrong other than the typical rhetorical bashing of an Attorney General [9]who in my opinion is being unfairly treated mostly because he is an outspoken evangelical Christian and an easy target for the Democrats, post-Newt Gingrich.

[10]Judges? The few judges whose hearings get reported on are very conservative.... no doubt. But as Democrats readily admit the other hundred or so are unanimously approved by the United States Senate, and from what I understand, are endorsed by the American Bar Association as well qualified judicial nominees. The current White House Counsel, Albert Gonzalez, who is thought to be prospectively the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice in the nation, is by everyone's account, a moderate. Right wing groups are currently heavily lobbying the President and threatening retaliation if Gonzalez is nominated.

[11]This is the same President who threw Gary Bauer out of the Republican National Convention, and demanded that the platform not include the abolishment of the Department of Education.

[12]And what about Education? W spent more on it than Clinton ever did, and made it his first legislative priority as President.

[13]Campaign Finance Reform? W signed a bill that Clinton refused to support.

[14]Medicare? Although he signed a faulty bill that was approved by a pork barrel Congress, he delivered on his promise to provide a prescription drug benefit to seniors and effectively increased the size of the program more than it ever had been since its inception.

[15]Abortion? He says over and over again that he is not going to support laws ending abortion because it is not the right time, the country is not ready, and we need to change hearts on a personal level instead of laws on a legislative one.

[16]Energy? Again, a very pork ridden piece of legislation, but it also will spend more money on providing tax incentives to companies who create and implement energy alternatives than any other Act of Congress in history. A proposal that the President has time and time again claimed support for.

Other issues? [17]Reforming the prison system and giving released convicts a second chance, [18]relaxing immigration laws,[19] allowing charitable organization to play more of a roll in providing social services,[20] increasing funding to fight Aids, [21]providing free market alternatives to social security and health care entitlements, the list goes on and on and on of issues that this President has supported or enacted that I THOUGHT where the same issues that many Centrist organizations where proposing.

I am not a 100% defender of the President. His arguments on gay marriage, the death penalty, the deficit, drugs, etc. I definitely take issue with. I would not describe him as ideal, but John Kerry?

John Kerry? Lieberman I get, Edwards is much better than many of the others, but John Kerry?

[22]I guess what I am doing is laying down a challenge. I think centrists should be making sound policy arguments and taking ideas from both the left and the right. What I have read on this site is not much more than what I hear from Dennis Kucinich.

If you don't like the President, and can't vote for him, I understand. [23]All I am saying is I have heard no good reason to not vote for him other than the same rhetorical arguments I hear from the Democratic presidential candidates, and other than Lieberman who is now out of the race, I don't see what else the rest of them have to offer other than the extreme hard line of the base of their party.

Way too much to respond to all at once. As I've told Matt in response to previous posts of his, I think he seldom fails to cast the Bush admin's actions in a very favorable light. My general feeling is that Bush has a questionable penchant for cutting whatever deal he can and then calling it a solution. Very often, a quick bad solution just makes it harder to get a well-thought out carefully crafted good solution done. And I'm not saying Bush is always wrong, I'm only saying that there's a definite pattern here, and it's worth questioning. Anyway. Gauntlet thrown. Let's mix it up!

Quantum Theory + Politics

This is what happens when physics grad students become political junkies. It's not pretty.

Bush' TX Air Nat'l Guard Service and discipline

I want to chime in on the Bush Nat'l Guard thing, because it makes me mad. Look, if we want Democrats to do well in 2004, we have to show some discipline about the Bush Nat'l Guard service, and only talk about what there's actually evidence for.

The overdoing of the comments on Bush' TX Air Nat'l Guard service. is exactly like the Whitewater/Lewinsky scandals - by making comments far beyond what any evidence supports, and obviously hoping that he will be caught out and hurt on a legal technicality, we are just helping him, just like the GOP was helping Clinton.

Remember how silly and opportunistic the GOP looked when they were going after Whitewater? Well, guess what. Fantasized conspiracy theory doesn't wear well on us, either. Nor will it help in elections any more than Whitewater and Lewinsky helped the Republicans.

It looks even worse because we've already been through an election cycle in which this was an issue, with exactly the same amount of evidence available, and the American people have already judged on this issue. Also, at a time when we want to show leadership to the American people, we're instead showing small viciousness. Remember innocent until proven guilty?

What does the evidence actually support? That he got good treatment. End of story.

Eenie, Meenie Mindless Morons?

The version of eenie-meenie I learned as a child goes as follows:

Eeny, meenie, minie, moe
catch a tiger by the toe.
If he hollers, let him go.
Out goes Y-O-U.

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy I just read this eenie-meenie nightmare story that has me despairing of Americans ever entirely or even substantially healing our country's racial rifts. Unbelievable.

While you are there, check out the estimable Tyler Cowen's decent ideas on moving towards legal immigration.

Partisan vs. Sensible

Predictably, the attempts to shred Kerry are starting to gain steam as his anointing comes neigh. Not to mention the attempts to shred Bush. What we've got now is the resumption of hostilities over a matter that I never thought was quite conclusively settled, namely the whole "Did Bush Do his National Guard Time" flap.

Bush supporters are right to point out that critics are placing a whole lot of emphasis on the fragmented memory of an old man regarding something he likely wasn't paying much attention to when it was or wasn't happening over 30 years ago. Then they go on to play the "Kerry is an unprincipled opportunist" card, even though Kerry has thus far steered clear of making direct comments.

Instapundit provides links that work as a mostly pro-Bush wrap-up of responses to the resurrection of this story.

What I find interesting is the difference in some of these links. Many are what I'd call "weak-sense" critical thinking responses, in other words, those that are assuming Bush didn't do anything wrong and focusing only on items that discredit the claims that Bush might have skipped out on some service, with a dash of insulting Kerry. Like this one by Bill Hobbs that rightfully calls out the least accurate and most partisan lefty smears, but then re-hashes the incomplete defense bush has given thus far instead of addressing what still seem to be unanswered questions.

Contrast that with the account you can find at Intel Dump, which takes the approach of pointing out what kinds of records would be the best evidence of what might have happened, one way or the other. And cheerfully admits that they may or may not exist.

So if I were a reporter sitting in the White House press room, asking questions of Scott McClellan, I'd start asking about his pay records, retirement records, and tax records from 1972. Even if the attendance records are gone -- there are still plenty of ways to document the President's service. It's entirely possible that these records exist, and that they will document the President's honorable service in the National Guard. But only the records can show that conclusively.

Ya know, my take is that I don't really care all that much if Bush might have gamed the system a little when he was in college, just like Clinton did. It makes him look a little bad compared to Kerry fighting and getting a few scratches, but whatever. The thing that steams me as a critical thinker is how few people are willing to take an approach like the one Carter does at Intel Dump, of trying to find the best evidence and then living with whatever uncertainty is left after you hunted it down.

Goldberg Calls Independence a "Shtick"

Michael Totten is slapping Jonah Goldberg for saying that independent voters are just practicing a shtick.

As MT points out, Goldberg is relying on a straw man. Not a shining moment for Goldberg. "Let's describe a nitwit, call him a good example of an independent, and make all the insecure partisan right wingers feel better about mindlessly toeing the party line."

Is that all you got, Jonah? Boy I used to thing Goldberg could bring it, but that's some weak cheese, meat!

Go ahead and read the whole thing, and the good links over there.

A Dumbbell Distribution

Check out this amazing map of political book-buying. It shows correlations between book-buying along the lines of Amazon's "people who purchased this book also bought..."

I would call this a dumbbell distribution, with two big weights on each end and only a small connective bar. There are only a few books in the center that both liberals and conservatives read. This is the 2003 map.

Dean Esmay has his own theories of what it means.

Brainstorm or Brainfart?

...so I'm pretty steamed about Billy Tauzin. And I get this wild-arsed idea. I thought it might be fun to have others chip as to the genius and/or idiocy of it.

Suppose every time you buy prescription medication, you can voluntarily choose to have $0.05 or $0.25 or $1.00 go to purchase a fraction of a share in a mutual fund or similar type organization that buys stock that specializes in pharmaceutical companies. Over time consumers would come to have an increasing stake in these companies.

What would happen? What else could you do with this?

I'm imagining some sort of holding company representing consumers would be able to wield some power over how these companies behave, and that the organization stake would slowly grow, even though you could sell your shares, and people would. Thoughts?

The Jerk Store Just Called...

...and they're running out of Billy Tauzin. Hat tip to Instapundit for the pointer.

Quick Post-mortem

It's hard for me to see last night's result any other way than as solidifying Kerry's hold on frontrunner status. Another 5 of 7 on the upcoming super tuesday pretty much ends things.

Too bad Lieberman dropped out, I would have liked to vote for him in MA, just on principle.

I don't see Clark's narrow win in Oklahoma as doing him much good. His staying in only makes it easier for Kerry, IMO.

Dean is without a W at this point, why is he still hanging around?

Edwards is showing strength, and I think he's the only viable alternative, but winning in his birth state and narrrowly losing in OK just doesn't get it done, does it?

If Dean and Clark were dropping out now, Edwards would have a good shot, but with those 2 hanging on, I just don't see it.

From sampling the blogosphere, it seems to me that the "Kerry is an opportunistic insincere waffler" (in other words, a politician) meme is going to bubble up to the surface real hard over the next week or two. It's not undeserved, as my sense of Kerry (a local pol to me in MA) is that he's always been quite shameless about trying to have it both ways. But in the end this doesn't really make him substantially different from any of the other candidates. It's a difference perhaps of degree, but certainly not of kind.

I am wondering if it will bubble up to the surface that he promised (in a local tv interview I saw) that if elected american troops would be reduced to insubstantial levels within 6 months of taking office. Which I found to be grotesquely simplistic pandering at the time. And you can talk about how the Bush admin has also discussed troop reductions, but they have also repeatedly stressed staying the course in Irag and doing whatever it takes.

As I face the probability of a Kerry nomination, I find myself wondering whether Kerry could be the guy who would make me vote for a republican. Thankfully, my vote doesn't matter in Massachusetts.

Reasons to dislike Bush include his status as pork-king, his overly pro-business give-aways, his presiding over further erosions of civil rights, his willingness to pander to the religious right and stick the gov't's big nose into social matters it should steer clear of, and the likelihood that he'd continue this trend with the judges he'd appoint in a 2nd term. And I think Bush looks relatively weak.

Yet I have a hard time seeing Kerry as anything other than cannon fodder. The democrats are poised to serve up a condescending, pedantic, uncharismatic, upper class northeastern egghead liberal. Will the centrists he needs to win over in order to have a shot at winning buy a post-nomination conversion act on the Iraq war and national security? I seriously doubt it. Can he win without doing it? I don't think so.

Does the media fear White House reprisals?

From Arthur Spiegelman via Reuters, Wesley Clark, Jr., son the presidential candidate, commented today about media coverage of the Democrats, especially the Clark campaign:

Clark Jr. said the media had not been fair to his father or any of the other candidates and was giving President Bush a free run. "It's all about access. You know you would be denied access if you all covered this fairly," he said.

You mean [gasp!] they'd do to the networks what they've done to uncooperative members of the White House press corps -- like Helen Thomas!

Ok. I'm beginning to see how this all fits together.

The Armchair Tuesday Morning Quarterback....

What can I say? Ever since I gave up serious betting on anything but good poker hands, I've enjoyed speculating on political races. (I've got seven whole quarters riding today with my state rep--that's $1.75! We had to flip a coin to see who'd get Kerry in four of the races.) So here's the Armchair Quarterback picks for today's primaries.

Arizona: Kerry, Clark. Clark could make it tight, but Kerry's Big Mo is working here and he'll pull it out.
Delaware: Kerry, Leiberman. Either Dean or Edwards could possibly edge out Leiberman for second, or they could both bury Joe at fourth, but Kerry will win.
Missouri: Kerry by a lot, Edwards, Dean. Dean could really use a second place finish here.
New Mexico: Kerry, Dean. Clark could very well edge Dean here for second, next door to Oklahoma.
North Dakota: Kerry in a walk, Clark an honorable second.
Oklahoma: Clark, Kerry. A tough race to pick, as Clark, Edwards, and Kerry are all running close here.
South Carolina: Edwards, Kerry.

The Big Mo is working well for Kerry, and while I don't think he'll sweep he'll get most of the blue ribbons. Clark has shown some surprising resilience and will hang tough, likely pulling a first and two seconds, leaving him in pretty good position. Edwards MUST take South Carolina, or it'll be over for him in any practical sense except maybe collecting delegates for convention bargaining. Dean hopes to rack up enough close seconds and thirds to keep the donations and delegates coming to give him a fighting chance going into Super Tuesday next month. He needs a second in Missouri and either Delaware or New Mexico. If he gets no seconds at all, he's gonna fade quickly. If he pulls off any firsts (unlikely) he'll get a good boost.

Places to watch for surprises for first are Arizona, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.

Missing tomorrow morning will be Joe Leiberman, and the entire trailing pack of wannabes with any sense (which means Sharpton will hang around). Leiberman needs Delaware and a second place or two to stay alive, and he won't get 'em.

Finally, just to throw some kindling on the discussion fire, there's this article by Dick Morris in the New York Post. I find the scenario quite plausible. Can anyone say "Kerry/Clinton"?

David Kay and My Opinion on War

In the past few days, I've been mulling how David Kay's (no relation) findings affect my thinking about the war (for those of you not keeping score, I'm a prowar Democrat). I've decided that I still think that the war was a good thing. My support of the war was always based around future threats.

I had doubts that Iraqi WMDs were a *current* threat - after all, if the terrorists had powerful WMD, they would have used it on 9/11. But I've feared the future nuclear threat since 1998, when Saddam threw out the inspectors; the fact that he dared trample on the ceasefire (including regularly firing at Coalition aircraft) at once suggested a certain foolishness and that he felt himself to be at war with the Coalition and especially the US.

A nuclear-equipped Iraq feeling itself to be at war with us would be, by definition, a nuclear state at war with us. That was enough to bring fear to my heart, albeit for 5-10 years down the road.

News that Saddam was working with Al'Qaeda sharpened the threat, as it made it clear that Saddam had real interest and access to a delivery system that he might hope to be untraceable. Note that it is Saddam's judgement on untraceability that would govern a decision to use it, and that he also judged the revenge killing attempt on GHW Bush to be a good idea (did he think that would be untraceable?).

It's entirely clear that Saddam wanted bulk-produced WMDs and was spending plenty of dinars to get them. He wanted them so badly that he and many Iraqi generals were convinced they existed! He wanted them so badly that he didn't watch over the program too closely. He wanted them so badly and was so convinced that they existed that he risked invasion for these fictional devices.

Even with this situation, there was a future threat. What would've happened if Saddam found out about the reality? Some analysts are saying that this happened because Saddam's rule was increasingly errant, but this kind of thing regularly happens in the unfree world. And these things are often exposed by the throwing-up from the deadly patronage battles. Heads would literally have fallen, and progress would have resumed.

And, of course, WMD has little to do with my support of the war to make the world safe for globalization / neo-imperialism. That aspect of the war is coming along nicely *so far*. Iraqis are increasingly free of fear, and more prosperous every day. Islamist moderates are politically stronger, and Islamist extremists politically weaker all over the Middle East.

Mind you, I am so far disappointed in Bush' response to David Kay's findings. The WND nonexistence was exactly the sort of thing that is very hard for an intelligence agency to find out and verify, since many senior sources, up to Saddam, all agreed they existed. Although that gives some cover to the CIA, Bush is using that difficulty as an excuse to stay in denial on proper handling of this situation. Now I understand why Kay had to resign, and applaud him for doing so.

Bush needs to come out and explain what effect this has on the Administration view of the War on Terrorism and Gulf War II. He needs to explain either he is or isn't changing policies in response, and 'why,' no matter what. Some kind of investigation of CIA is needed to restore confidence in it, even if only a look to see if there was a barrage of ignored evidence on the Potemkin WMDs.

What do we want in a President?

Bill Broz has an excellent (IMHO) op/ed piece in the Seattle Times about what he, as an independent and "radical centrist," wants to see in a Presidential candidate. Anyone else want to throw in their two cents worth?

For myself, I tend to follow Andrew Sullivan's line of being a "fiscal conservative, social/cultural liberal, and foreign policy hawk." Couple that with a sincere desire to keep the government out of both my wallet and my bedroom....

There's also a good op/ed by Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune (requires registration) on the desirability of divided government. Being a much bigger fan of King Log than of King Stork, it resonated with me.