North Dakota and South Dakota are, in the eyes of most Americans, largely indistinguishable. One has a mountain covered with presidential faces, the other a Peace Garden that exists so far off the beaten path that few people south of Bismarck have ever seen it (but the license plates continue to insist it's there). But to most U.S. citizens, both Dakotas conjure images of cold, underpopulated farmland, inhabited by hardy souls of Scandinavian extraction who are, by turn, grimly stoic and warmly welcoming. Politically, they are predictably Republican at the presidential level, but their conservatism is not doctrinaire. Each periodically elects moderate and even liberal Democrats to federal office. George McGovern and Tom Daschle were South Dakotans; both of North Dakota's U.S. Senators are currently mainstream Democrats.
In truth, of course, most Americans know almost nothing about North and South Dakota. They are not at all identical, but their names sound alike, and so people assume they are differentiated only by their individual flags and unique state flowers and birds. In fact, South Dakota—McGovern notwithstanding—is a significantly more conservative place, often on the front lines of the abortion wars, and may actually have more in common with its southern neighbor, Nebraska, than with its namesake twin. The two states aren't very similar geographically, either.
By contrast, ask any reasonably informed American about the two Carolinas and you will receive a very different sort of analysis. North Carolina, to those in the know, is the state of the Research Triangle; distinguished universities with storied basketball teams; one of the great underrated southern cities (Charlotte); and artists and post-modern hippies out west in Asheville, a town labeled as both a "New Age Mecca" and "New Freak Capital of the U.S."
South Carolina, on the other hand, retains a reputation as a backwater still mired in the politics of the past. Not only were the first shots of the Civil War fired there—at Fort Sumter—but the battle over the war's legacy continues with debates over where on public property to place the Confederate flag (formerly atop the capitol building, now on the state house lawn). The Palmetto State's most significant contributions to American political history were secessionist John C. Calhoun and segregationist J. Strom Thurmond.
There is, obviously, some unfairness here, as well. South Carolina has its own fine public and private colleges, not all of its citizens are obsessed with either the 1860s or 1960s, and its current congressional delegation is not particularly more reactionary than that of its larger neighbor. And North Carolina, for all its bragging about progressive leadership, did saddle the rest of us with Jesse Helms for three decades.
Nevertheless, as adjacent states go, the two Carolinas remain stunningly different. How, then, did South—rather than North—Carolina find itself gifted with one of the first and most important presidential primary elections? The answer goes back to the machinations of another son of the Palmetto State, a mean piece of work named Lee Atwater, a vicious campaigner who was the 1980s' answer to Karl Rove. (The race-baiting Willie Horton advertisements of 1988? Pure Atwater.) Working for Ronald Reagan in 1980, Atwater helped arrange his state's early placement on the primary schedule to help the right-wing Californian put down the "moderate" challenge of George H.W. Bush. Since then, no Republican has won the White House without first scoring a victory in the South Carolina primary.
Think of South Carolina as the anti-Iowa. Every four years, pundits and strategists remind us that going negative in Iowa is a campaign-killer. Iowans, whatever the faults of their caucuses, evidently possess a strong aversion to name-calling and mudslinging. Interstate 80, from Davenport to Council Bluffs, represents the high road of American politics, a place where candidates succeed by speaking openly about their hopes and ideals.
The low road, then, is I-26, the highway that binds South Carolina's three regions, running from Spartanburg to Charleston, via Columbia. Eight years ago, John McCain's candidacy suffered what turned out to be a fatal blow in the Palmetto State after supporters of George W. Bush fanned false rumors that McCain had fathered an interracial child out of wedlock. Whether that smear actually determined the Arizona senator's loss cannot be known, but we do know that it went unpunished by the GOP electorate in South Carolina. This time around McCain's opponents have taken to accusing the former Vietnam-era POW of having collaborated with the enemy during his time in captivity, a ludicrous claim that would almost certainly laughed out of any other state in the union. For good measure, someone has also been providing Christian conservatives in South Carolina with cards, supposedly from Mitt Romney, that emphasize his Mormonism.
The Democratic race in South Carolina has not featured the same type of slime. Instead, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been busy causing their own problems by allowing the media to bait them into a debate about race. Nevertheless, one wonders exactly why the party permitted South Carolina to play such an important early role in the process, while punishing Michigan and Florida for trying to cut ahead in line. Outside of Utah and Idaho, there is probably no other state less likely to support the Democratic ticket in November. What brilliant strategic mind determined that placating the land of Calhoun and Thurmond was so important that it demanded possibly alienating the voters of two swing states, one of which effectively decided the last two freaking presidential elections? And if a first-in-the-nation southern state had to be located, how about one where the Democrats had a least a slight prayer of victory, say Virginia or Kentucky? Or Florida!
The South Carolina primary has done little to make us proud in recent years. Even if we ignore the sleaze-merchants who may or may not be operating with the tacit approval of one of McCain's opponents, there are still plenty of reasons to force South Carolina to jump into the Super Tuesday pool with everyone else. First, the country derives no benefit from a quadrennial debate about the role of the Confederate flag; other southern states have moved past that point and would be far more suitable early bellwethers. In addition, the GOP struggle for the Palmetto State's fundamentalist base causes politicians to say and promise things far more damaging to the country than any of the unfortunate pledges made every four years to Iowa corn farmers. Mike Huckabee, a supposedly legitimate presidential candidate, has just suggested amending the Constitution to make it consistent with the (Protestant) Bible. Maybe he really believes this, or maybe he is simply pandering to theocratic South Carolinians whose votes he needs to stay viable, but this potentially explosive and destructive debate is one that simply must be kept in Pandora's lockbox.
The Republicans will do whatever they want, of course, but it is long past time for the Democratic Party to knock South Carolina off its undeserved early primary pedestal. If the party wants to elevate a longshot southern state to the top of the list, surely they can find a better candidate. Heck, they can even use one with the name "Carolina". Just make it the other one.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Another One Bites the Dust
Another election night, another frontrunner on the floor. This time it was John McCain's turn, following up his big win in New Hampshire with a defeat at the hands of Mitt Romney, who is—and someone ought to acknowledge this—the only candidate to finish either first or second in every Republican primary and caucus held to date. That record will likely end this Saturday in South Carolina, but Romney's success could still propel him to a strong finish in Nevada, which holds its caucus on the same day (and which is, despite its libertine reputation, a state with a substantial Mormon population).
The McCain camp is, as expected, pulling out all the rhetorical stops, particularly emphasizing Romney's status as a native son, born in Detroit, whose father served three terms as Michigan's governor. The last of these terms, however, expired some forty years ago, and nobody under the age of 62 has ever encountered a ballot with George Romney's name on it. Further, nothing forced McCain to contest the Michigan primary; the fact that he did belies the notion that he considered the race Romney's to lose. Simply put, John McCain took precious time out of his schedule to travel to the Wolverine State and deliver the knockout blow to Mitt Romney's candidacy. And he failed.
At this point, only a fool or Chris Matthews (but I repeat myself) would dare to claim knowledge of what will happen next. One could certainly make the argument that McCain, despite his setback in Michigan, remains the GOP frontrunner. But three things happened this week, none of which bode well for the Arizona senator's final opportunity to win the presidency.
First, as all the post-primary commentators have pointed out, McCain does not poll especially well among Republicans. His victory in New Hampshire relied on independent and even some Democratic voters choosing GOP ballots. In Michigan, turnout among Democrats and independents was down, putting the decision squarely in the hands of the Republican base, which again rejected John McCain. (One of the silliest explanations that I heard on television was that independents may have been discouraged from voting by six inches of snow on the ground. In Michigan. In January. Is there no end to the media's willingness to shill for McCain?)
Second, the conductor of the Straight Talk Express owed much of his defeat last night to…his straight talk. In a state reeling from years of layoffs in the all-important automotive industry, Senator McCain eschewed the opportunity to engage in the usual political happy talk about how Ford and GM will rise again under his leadership. Instead, he told Michiganders an unpleasant truth: the age of U.S. dominance among automakers was likely over and that the people of Detroit and environs will need to retool. McCain was rewarded for this honesty by a crushing loss to a man who broke out the pompoms early and often, promising that his administration would bring Michigan all the way back. That Romney didn't explain how this would occur seemed not to matter to a state still unwilling to accept that their best days may already have passed.
Finally, behind the scenes and out of view of most Americans, the titans of right-wing talk radio have redoubled their campaign against John McCain. Once in a while, I will tune in to whichever reactionary blabbermouth happens to be polluting the skies at the moment. This past week, I caught small segments of both Glenn Beck's and Rush Limbaugh's noxious programs. As though reading from an identical script, the two mossback gasbags assailed the notion that the Arizona lawmaker was any kind of true conservative. While granting reluctant credit to McCain for his position in favor of the Iraq Surge, the hosts each spoke at length about the senator's occasional alliances with Democrats on key bills. McCain-Feingold (campaign finance reform) stifles free speech! McCain-Kennedy (immigration reform) gives amnesty to illegal "aliens"! McCain-Satan outlaws all churches and synagogues! I suppose I made the last one up, but even a few minutes with Limbaugh and Beck tend to drive one's mind into paranoid hyperdrive.
Where does this leave our fallen frontrunner? He apparently still cannot close the deal with members of his own party, his straight talk (such as it is) clashes with the usual expectations that politicians will feed voters pleasant pablum, and the radio rabble rousers continue to undermine his candidacy on a regular basis. And now the campaign goes south where McCain must face millions of Christian conservatives who have never particularly warmed to him.
In any kind of halfway decent GOP presidential field, John McCain would have been dismissed by the electorate weeks ago. His closest Democratic analog, Joe Biden, barely made a dent in his own party's clash of superstars. But in this crop of weaklings, fanatics, and knaves, anything remains possible. When all else fails, McCain can always return to his appealing back story, a luxury none of the other candidates (except, perhaps, Rudy Giuliani) has.
So where do we go from here? At some point, the Republicans will have to settle on a nominee. Ronald Reagan is not coming back. Newt Gingrich would love to, of course, but he can see Hillary Clinton's negatives and raise her ten points. Bringing divorce papers to your cancer-stricken wife's bedside pretty much leaves you on the losing side of any debate over character. There is simply no white knight on the horizon who would bring anything additional to the table. (Sorry, Jeb, but your older brother has put the Bush name out of play for at least a generation.) Dan Quayle, anyone?
As for the remaining GOP candidates, Mike Huckabee probably emerged as the biggest loser yesterday. Not only did he finish third in Michigan, he also appeared on tape telling an audience that he supports changing the Constitution to bring it into line with the Bible. This may provide him with a split decision in South Carolina, but it effectively ends his bid to be a nationally viable candidate. Theocrats have their place in American politics, but that place is not the Oval Office.
Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani are currently nursing one-state strategies. Should Fred finish out of the money in South Carolina, his slumbering campaign will at last be put out of its misery. Without a Giuliani win in Florida, Rudy will be reduced to think tank Hell or some post as Adjunct Professor of Authoritarianism at NYU. But even if either candidate wins his prize, there is no reason to believe that his path to nomination will be much clearer. The reason that Thompson and Giuliani have retreated to the South in the first place is because they were unable to generate a bit of traction in the states that came before. Between Rudy's sleaze and Fred's somnolence, neither seems an especially appealing Republican standard bearer against either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
If I had to bet, I'd say it's going to be either McCain or Romney at the finish line. But I don't have to bet, and I am fully prepared to be wrong. Once in a while, a party goes off the deep end of temporary self-destruction (Goldwater, McGovern). Maybe this will be the Republicans' year.
The McCain camp is, as expected, pulling out all the rhetorical stops, particularly emphasizing Romney's status as a native son, born in Detroit, whose father served three terms as Michigan's governor. The last of these terms, however, expired some forty years ago, and nobody under the age of 62 has ever encountered a ballot with George Romney's name on it. Further, nothing forced McCain to contest the Michigan primary; the fact that he did belies the notion that he considered the race Romney's to lose. Simply put, John McCain took precious time out of his schedule to travel to the Wolverine State and deliver the knockout blow to Mitt Romney's candidacy. And he failed.
At this point, only a fool or Chris Matthews (but I repeat myself) would dare to claim knowledge of what will happen next. One could certainly make the argument that McCain, despite his setback in Michigan, remains the GOP frontrunner. But three things happened this week, none of which bode well for the Arizona senator's final opportunity to win the presidency.
First, as all the post-primary commentators have pointed out, McCain does not poll especially well among Republicans. His victory in New Hampshire relied on independent and even some Democratic voters choosing GOP ballots. In Michigan, turnout among Democrats and independents was down, putting the decision squarely in the hands of the Republican base, which again rejected John McCain. (One of the silliest explanations that I heard on television was that independents may have been discouraged from voting by six inches of snow on the ground. In Michigan. In January. Is there no end to the media's willingness to shill for McCain?)
Second, the conductor of the Straight Talk Express owed much of his defeat last night to…his straight talk. In a state reeling from years of layoffs in the all-important automotive industry, Senator McCain eschewed the opportunity to engage in the usual political happy talk about how Ford and GM will rise again under his leadership. Instead, he told Michiganders an unpleasant truth: the age of U.S. dominance among automakers was likely over and that the people of Detroit and environs will need to retool. McCain was rewarded for this honesty by a crushing loss to a man who broke out the pompoms early and often, promising that his administration would bring Michigan all the way back. That Romney didn't explain how this would occur seemed not to matter to a state still unwilling to accept that their best days may already have passed.
Finally, behind the scenes and out of view of most Americans, the titans of right-wing talk radio have redoubled their campaign against John McCain. Once in a while, I will tune in to whichever reactionary blabbermouth happens to be polluting the skies at the moment. This past week, I caught small segments of both Glenn Beck's and Rush Limbaugh's noxious programs. As though reading from an identical script, the two mossback gasbags assailed the notion that the Arizona lawmaker was any kind of true conservative. While granting reluctant credit to McCain for his position in favor of the Iraq Surge, the hosts each spoke at length about the senator's occasional alliances with Democrats on key bills. McCain-Feingold (campaign finance reform) stifles free speech! McCain-Kennedy (immigration reform) gives amnesty to illegal "aliens"! McCain-Satan outlaws all churches and synagogues! I suppose I made the last one up, but even a few minutes with Limbaugh and Beck tend to drive one's mind into paranoid hyperdrive.
Where does this leave our fallen frontrunner? He apparently still cannot close the deal with members of his own party, his straight talk (such as it is) clashes with the usual expectations that politicians will feed voters pleasant pablum, and the radio rabble rousers continue to undermine his candidacy on a regular basis. And now the campaign goes south where McCain must face millions of Christian conservatives who have never particularly warmed to him.
In any kind of halfway decent GOP presidential field, John McCain would have been dismissed by the electorate weeks ago. His closest Democratic analog, Joe Biden, barely made a dent in his own party's clash of superstars. But in this crop of weaklings, fanatics, and knaves, anything remains possible. When all else fails, McCain can always return to his appealing back story, a luxury none of the other candidates (except, perhaps, Rudy Giuliani) has.
So where do we go from here? At some point, the Republicans will have to settle on a nominee. Ronald Reagan is not coming back. Newt Gingrich would love to, of course, but he can see Hillary Clinton's negatives and raise her ten points. Bringing divorce papers to your cancer-stricken wife's bedside pretty much leaves you on the losing side of any debate over character. There is simply no white knight on the horizon who would bring anything additional to the table. (Sorry, Jeb, but your older brother has put the Bush name out of play for at least a generation.) Dan Quayle, anyone?
As for the remaining GOP candidates, Mike Huckabee probably emerged as the biggest loser yesterday. Not only did he finish third in Michigan, he also appeared on tape telling an audience that he supports changing the Constitution to bring it into line with the Bible. This may provide him with a split decision in South Carolina, but it effectively ends his bid to be a nationally viable candidate. Theocrats have their place in American politics, but that place is not the Oval Office.
Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani are currently nursing one-state strategies. Should Fred finish out of the money in South Carolina, his slumbering campaign will at last be put out of its misery. Without a Giuliani win in Florida, Rudy will be reduced to think tank Hell or some post as Adjunct Professor of Authoritarianism at NYU. But even if either candidate wins his prize, there is no reason to believe that his path to nomination will be much clearer. The reason that Thompson and Giuliani have retreated to the South in the first place is because they were unable to generate a bit of traction in the states that came before. Between Rudy's sleaze and Fred's somnolence, neither seems an especially appealing Republican standard bearer against either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
If I had to bet, I'd say it's going to be either McCain or Romney at the finish line. But I don't have to bet, and I am fully prepared to be wrong. Once in a while, a party goes off the deep end of temporary self-destruction (Goldwater, McGovern). Maybe this will be the Republicans' year.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Playing With Matches
Finally, we're going to hear from a real state. I mean no offense to my friends in Iowa and New Hampshire, but if you went out of your way to find the two most unrepresentative states in our union, you might well end up with these two. Disproportionately rural and overwhelmingly white, Iowa and New Hampshire lack both ethnic and economic diversity. The largest city in either state, Des Moines, boasts a population that ranks below such obscure suburbs as San Bernardino, California, Yonkers, New York, and North Las Vegas Nevada.
Michigan, on the other hand, looks like America. It has rural and farming interests in the north and west, large college towns (Ann Arbor) and small metropolises (Grand Rapids and Flint), and significant mining and tourist industries in the Upper Peninsula. And of course, there's also that huge urban center on the Canadian border known as Detroit, an economically devastated city with a significant African American population. You want to talk about diversity: the state is home to both Michael Moore and Ted Nugent.
In a perfect world, Michigan would provide us with our first glimpse of how a diverse, multi-ethnic state feels about the current crop of presidential candidates. Of course, if this were a perfect world, George W. Bush would be mismanaging a McDonald's in Midland and testing his unitary executive theories on drive-thru cashiers and fry cooks. As it turns out, the Democrats have decided to punish the state for jumping ahead of South Carolina and Nevada (two more paragons of unrepresentativeness) by refusing to honor its selection of delegates. As a result, none of the Big Three Democratic candidates will be appearing in the home of the Big Three automakers. The Republicans, on the other hand, will feature a genuine election today, though it will not be contested by either Right Dead Fred or the phantom Mayor of 9/11.
So today's Michigan GOP primary has become a showdown between John McCain, who won there in 2000, Mitt Romney, whose father once governed the state, and Mike Huckabee, who hopes to score with fundamentalists in the west and survivalists in the north. The polls suggest a very tight race, with Huckabee in third place. A loss by Romney, after blowing tens of millions of dollars in futile combat in Iowa and New Hampshire, would likely conclude the meaningful portion of his candidacy. Victory by McCain would cement his position as frontrunner and put the campaigns of Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani in serious jeopardy.
As long as there have been states that allow crossover voting, there have been fears that one party's supporters might choose to cast ballots in the other party's primary in order to do harm to their opponents. There is little indication that this sort of thing ever happens, at least to any meaningful extent, but if there could ever be a perfect situation for such an occurrence, it would exist today in Michigan. The Democratic race has been boycotted by the national party and its candidates; the GOP contest is heated, publicized, and significant. Since nobody registers by party in Michigan, there is no way to stop committed Democrats from voting in the only meaningful election in town: the Republican primary.
Enter Markos Moulitsas, proprietor of the highly influential pro-Democratic blog, Daily Kos. Moulitsas, or Kos as he is known to his fans, has organized a little movement he calls "Democrats for Mitt". Very simply, he is urging his allies in the Wolverine State not only to participate in the GOP primary, but to cast their ballots for Mitt Romney. He has been joined in this call by a number of likeminded bloggers.
The argument behind Democrats for Mitt is compelling. If Romney wins in Michigan, it is possible that we could reach February 5, Super Duper Tuesday, with five Republican candidates each having won a least one competitive primary election or caucus. This assumes a Thompson upset in South Carolina and a Giuliani victory in Florida, but it is not all that far fetched of a scenario. Even without Thompson, a four-man race would be unprecedented. Kos and the gang reason that every dollar spent by the Republicans attacking one another is a buck that they won't have on hand to take on Hillary or Barack in November. Further, such a logjam would guarantee at least another few weeks of back and forth bickering between the contenders, providing more negative material for the Democrats in the general election. A McCain win in Michigan, on the other hand, might give the GOP an unstoppable frontrunner and bring things to a quick conclusion; a Romney victory would assure a contentious and inconclusive race into the foreseeable future, and perhaps even—one can dream—a bitterly divided convention this summer.
The British have a saying about people being too clever by half, and I worry that it applies here. It takes big crystal balls to think you know what outcome will be most damaging the other side ten months into the future. Four years ago, the Democratic electorate—though notably not Kos—decided that John Kerry was the party's most electable candidate. Perhaps he was, but he certainly didn't win. In 1976, I remember pulling for Ronald Reagan to wrestle the nomination from Gerald Ford, convinced that an extremist like the ol' Gipper would be far easier to defeat in November. The first rule of politics, as in life, is simple: you never know.
This, of course, means that I don't know, either. But I have my concerns. I think a good argument can be made that the Mittster would be the strongest Republican nominee to come out of the GOP convention. First, governors have certain advantages going up against senators, namely proven executive experience. Just as important, unlike members of Congress, a former governor has not cast dozens of floor votes that can be dissected and exploited. Romney can say whatever he wants about the Iraq War because he never had to vote on the authorization to use force nor on any of the subsequent funding resolutions.
Second, there should be little doubt that the moderate Mitt will make a comeback on Labor Day should he be the GOP standard bearer. Gone will be the firebreathing Romney of the primaries, and in his place will be the successful blue state Republican governor, the man who worked effectively with Democrats, flourished in business, and saved the Salt Lake City Olympics. He'll still be a Mormon, of course, but the Christian conservative base will likely hold their noses and flock to him if the alternative is either Barack Obama or, especially, Hillary Clinton.
Most importantly, Mitt Romney is, in fact, the only serious candidate for president today who has successfully negotiated a comprehensive health care program for his constituents. You might not consider it ideal, and neither do I, but the fact is that it drew the support of an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature and the approval of Ted the Kennedy. The contrast to Barack Obama would highlight the experience issue as never before. The contrast to Hillary Clinton would, of course, be devastating.
Yeah, I know Romney has his negatives, and they are considerable. He remains the reigning gold medalist in the free style ideological flip flop. His speeches sound as though they were written by committee. His look is synthetic and his speaking style is, to be kind, uncharismatic. His foreign policy experience consists of finding housing for the Russian hockey team in Utah.
Still, I would not be unhappy to see Mitt Romney extinguished as a threat to advance to the White House. Of all the serious GOP candidates, only Mike Huckabee has a stronger claim on being an outsider untarnished by Bushism. The prospect of Romney rising from the floor in Michigan should chill any Democrat who has thought this through. The possibility that this rise might be aided by the liberal blogosphere could end up redefining the word irony, and not in a happy way.
Michigan, on the other hand, looks like America. It has rural and farming interests in the north and west, large college towns (Ann Arbor) and small metropolises (Grand Rapids and Flint), and significant mining and tourist industries in the Upper Peninsula. And of course, there's also that huge urban center on the Canadian border known as Detroit, an economically devastated city with a significant African American population. You want to talk about diversity: the state is home to both Michael Moore and Ted Nugent.
In a perfect world, Michigan would provide us with our first glimpse of how a diverse, multi-ethnic state feels about the current crop of presidential candidates. Of course, if this were a perfect world, George W. Bush would be mismanaging a McDonald's in Midland and testing his unitary executive theories on drive-thru cashiers and fry cooks. As it turns out, the Democrats have decided to punish the state for jumping ahead of South Carolina and Nevada (two more paragons of unrepresentativeness) by refusing to honor its selection of delegates. As a result, none of the Big Three Democratic candidates will be appearing in the home of the Big Three automakers. The Republicans, on the other hand, will feature a genuine election today, though it will not be contested by either Right Dead Fred or the phantom Mayor of 9/11.
So today's Michigan GOP primary has become a showdown between John McCain, who won there in 2000, Mitt Romney, whose father once governed the state, and Mike Huckabee, who hopes to score with fundamentalists in the west and survivalists in the north. The polls suggest a very tight race, with Huckabee in third place. A loss by Romney, after blowing tens of millions of dollars in futile combat in Iowa and New Hampshire, would likely conclude the meaningful portion of his candidacy. Victory by McCain would cement his position as frontrunner and put the campaigns of Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani in serious jeopardy.
As long as there have been states that allow crossover voting, there have been fears that one party's supporters might choose to cast ballots in the other party's primary in order to do harm to their opponents. There is little indication that this sort of thing ever happens, at least to any meaningful extent, but if there could ever be a perfect situation for such an occurrence, it would exist today in Michigan. The Democratic race has been boycotted by the national party and its candidates; the GOP contest is heated, publicized, and significant. Since nobody registers by party in Michigan, there is no way to stop committed Democrats from voting in the only meaningful election in town: the Republican primary.
Enter Markos Moulitsas, proprietor of the highly influential pro-Democratic blog, Daily Kos. Moulitsas, or Kos as he is known to his fans, has organized a little movement he calls "Democrats for Mitt". Very simply, he is urging his allies in the Wolverine State not only to participate in the GOP primary, but to cast their ballots for Mitt Romney. He has been joined in this call by a number of likeminded bloggers.
The argument behind Democrats for Mitt is compelling. If Romney wins in Michigan, it is possible that we could reach February 5, Super Duper Tuesday, with five Republican candidates each having won a least one competitive primary election or caucus. This assumes a Thompson upset in South Carolina and a Giuliani victory in Florida, but it is not all that far fetched of a scenario. Even without Thompson, a four-man race would be unprecedented. Kos and the gang reason that every dollar spent by the Republicans attacking one another is a buck that they won't have on hand to take on Hillary or Barack in November. Further, such a logjam would guarantee at least another few weeks of back and forth bickering between the contenders, providing more negative material for the Democrats in the general election. A McCain win in Michigan, on the other hand, might give the GOP an unstoppable frontrunner and bring things to a quick conclusion; a Romney victory would assure a contentious and inconclusive race into the foreseeable future, and perhaps even—one can dream—a bitterly divided convention this summer.
The British have a saying about people being too clever by half, and I worry that it applies here. It takes big crystal balls to think you know what outcome will be most damaging the other side ten months into the future. Four years ago, the Democratic electorate—though notably not Kos—decided that John Kerry was the party's most electable candidate. Perhaps he was, but he certainly didn't win. In 1976, I remember pulling for Ronald Reagan to wrestle the nomination from Gerald Ford, convinced that an extremist like the ol' Gipper would be far easier to defeat in November. The first rule of politics, as in life, is simple: you never know.
This, of course, means that I don't know, either. But I have my concerns. I think a good argument can be made that the Mittster would be the strongest Republican nominee to come out of the GOP convention. First, governors have certain advantages going up against senators, namely proven executive experience. Just as important, unlike members of Congress, a former governor has not cast dozens of floor votes that can be dissected and exploited. Romney can say whatever he wants about the Iraq War because he never had to vote on the authorization to use force nor on any of the subsequent funding resolutions.
Second, there should be little doubt that the moderate Mitt will make a comeback on Labor Day should he be the GOP standard bearer. Gone will be the firebreathing Romney of the primaries, and in his place will be the successful blue state Republican governor, the man who worked effectively with Democrats, flourished in business, and saved the Salt Lake City Olympics. He'll still be a Mormon, of course, but the Christian conservative base will likely hold their noses and flock to him if the alternative is either Barack Obama or, especially, Hillary Clinton.
Most importantly, Mitt Romney is, in fact, the only serious candidate for president today who has successfully negotiated a comprehensive health care program for his constituents. You might not consider it ideal, and neither do I, but the fact is that it drew the support of an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature and the approval of Ted the Kennedy. The contrast to Barack Obama would highlight the experience issue as never before. The contrast to Hillary Clinton would, of course, be devastating.
Yeah, I know Romney has his negatives, and they are considerable. He remains the reigning gold medalist in the free style ideological flip flop. His speeches sound as though they were written by committee. His look is synthetic and his speaking style is, to be kind, uncharismatic. His foreign policy experience consists of finding housing for the Russian hockey team in Utah.
Still, I would not be unhappy to see Mitt Romney extinguished as a threat to advance to the White House. Of all the serious GOP candidates, only Mike Huckabee has a stronger claim on being an outsider untarnished by Bushism. The prospect of Romney rising from the floor in Michigan should chill any Democrat who has thought this through. The possibility that this rise might be aided by the liberal blogosphere could end up redefining the word irony, and not in a happy way.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Fairy Tales and Reality
Well, the Winter of Love didn't last very long. Was it only a week ago that everybody on television was busy pronouncing the end to racial discrimination in the United States? The results of the Iowa caucuses turned some rather formidable brains into a mush of Hallmark Channel tearjerkers and ABC After School Specials. This was not simply one man's triumph against the political odds, we were told, but rather one of those transcendent American moments that tell us who we are and how far we have come: Neil Armstrong, meet Barack Obama. One reporter, in the full throes of premature exultation, pointed out that Obama "won in an overwhelmingly white state, suggesting that the country might be moving to a new era in which race no longer defines identity as it has throughout U.S. history".
What a difference a loss makes!
The first murmurs began almost immediately after Hillary Clinton took to the podium in New Hampshire, claiming her upset victory in the nation's first presidential primary. Talk of the "Bradley Effect" started in the blogs and quickly spread to the traditional media. It was a term unfamiliar to most Americans, who perhaps assumed it meant that any candidate recently endorsed by former Senator Bill Bradley must necessarily be doomed to defeat and obscurity.
But in fact the reference was to the 1982 California gubernatorial election, in which African American Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles was stunningly upset by his little-known GOP opponent despite holding a healthy lead in the polls throughout the campaign. Many white voters, the pundits concluded after Bradley's loss, had been unwilling to tell pollsters that they intended to vote against a black candidate. Is this what happened to Obama in New Hampshire?
Suddenly, a campaign that had supposedly transcended race found itself mired not just in the politics of 1982 California, but also the tribulations of 1962 Alabama. Senator Clinton, stressing the importance of experienced leadership—i.e., hers—mentioned that, despite the soaring words of the Civil Rights era, it took a seasoned and skillful president, Lyndon Johnson, to push the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts through Congress. This was interpreted, in some quarters, as an attack on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., suggesting that perhaps, in terms of legalizing racial equality in America, LBJ was more important than MLK. Unhelpfully, pundits pulled Clinton's words out of a context in which it appeared at least possible that the senator's comparison was not between Johnson and King, but rather between LBJ and his relatively less experienced predecessor, John F. Kennedy.
In such an overheated atmosphere, even relatively innocuous comments by Bill Clinton contributed to the racially charged conditions that followed his wife's unexpected New Hampshire victory. The former president labeled Obama's campaign "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen". While it would be difficult to conjure up a racial context to this petulant outburst, Clinton nevertheless felt the need to appear on Al Sharpton's radio program to explain that he was referring to the kid glove treatment Obama was receiving from the national media.
So there we are. A nation that was, just a week ago, pointedly ushering in a new era of racial harmony is now faced with a Democratic campaign in which race, at least for the moment, has become an issue of division. It will, evidently, take more than a few thousand white Iowans to bring America's most vexing dilemma to a happy conclusion.
All of this represents a rare bit of good news for the Republicans, who are currently going through a frontrunner a week, and enduring their own six-way mudslinging contest between candidates that have all, at some point in the proceedings, been judged inadequate. One suspects, in fact, that the GOP spinmeisters and their Fox News collaborators have had a hand in stoking the fires. As hard as the Republican Party has worked over the past decade to suppress the African American vote, it seems obvious that they would welcome a racially charged battle on the Democratic side that might result in black voters refusing to turn out for Hillary Clinton in November. It will, after all, take more than just John McCain to get John McCain elected president (or whoever the Republicans select).
In one respect, of course, there is something quite healthy about the current debate. The country is rarely at its best when adopting a self-congratulatory stance on the matter of race. Despite what Ward Connerly may think, the equality agenda in the United States remains active and unfulfilled, and that will not change regardless of which man or woman steps into the Oval Office next year. If nothing else, the events of the past week, and those that will no doubt follow, will likely give pundits pause should Seantor Obama be elected president. Milestones are just that; they mark the progress made along the way, but they do not signal the end of the journey.
Meanwhile, Democrats must find a way to manage the current controversy. It is, as always, the burden of the party that cares most about civil rights to keep temporary political conflicts from undermining the bigger project. The agenda of Barack Obama and John Edwards, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest will not be served by a divisive, racially coded primary season that delivers the White House to the Republican Party for another four years of benign—and malign—neglect.
But, as the cliché mongers point out, one can neither return the toothpaste to the tube nor unring the bell. So some way must be found to deal with these matters without destroying the best chance the Democrats have had of winning the presidency since Antonin Scalia declared the 2000 election over. The stakes are much higher than the ambitions of any one candidate.
At this point, the healthiest result of all this would be to bring race back into the campaign. Let the candidates talk freely about the party's commitment to African Americans on issues of affirmative action and poverty and racial justice. Speak out loud about inequality, racial profiling, and state of education in the inner city. No other party in history has been so reluctant to address the needs and issues of one of its core constituencies. At least the Republicans give lip service to the Christian fundamentalist platform.
Not everything that is said in such a dialogue will go down well with many white Americans. But as Mitt Romney found out about Mormonism, issues and concerns that remain unspoken do not go away. Now—not Labor Day—is the time for the country's first viable African American candidate to lay out publicly his views on race in the United States. Now—not October—is the time for the Democrats to work for the votes of both black and white Americans by addressing issues that matter deeply to them and will almost certainly influence turnout later this year.
This is not a question of "playing the race card". It is a question of playing with the full deck.
What a difference a loss makes!
The first murmurs began almost immediately after Hillary Clinton took to the podium in New Hampshire, claiming her upset victory in the nation's first presidential primary. Talk of the "Bradley Effect" started in the blogs and quickly spread to the traditional media. It was a term unfamiliar to most Americans, who perhaps assumed it meant that any candidate recently endorsed by former Senator Bill Bradley must necessarily be doomed to defeat and obscurity.
But in fact the reference was to the 1982 California gubernatorial election, in which African American Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles was stunningly upset by his little-known GOP opponent despite holding a healthy lead in the polls throughout the campaign. Many white voters, the pundits concluded after Bradley's loss, had been unwilling to tell pollsters that they intended to vote against a black candidate. Is this what happened to Obama in New Hampshire?
Suddenly, a campaign that had supposedly transcended race found itself mired not just in the politics of 1982 California, but also the tribulations of 1962 Alabama. Senator Clinton, stressing the importance of experienced leadership—i.e., hers—mentioned that, despite the soaring words of the Civil Rights era, it took a seasoned and skillful president, Lyndon Johnson, to push the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts through Congress. This was interpreted, in some quarters, as an attack on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., suggesting that perhaps, in terms of legalizing racial equality in America, LBJ was more important than MLK. Unhelpfully, pundits pulled Clinton's words out of a context in which it appeared at least possible that the senator's comparison was not between Johnson and King, but rather between LBJ and his relatively less experienced predecessor, John F. Kennedy.
In such an overheated atmosphere, even relatively innocuous comments by Bill Clinton contributed to the racially charged conditions that followed his wife's unexpected New Hampshire victory. The former president labeled Obama's campaign "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen". While it would be difficult to conjure up a racial context to this petulant outburst, Clinton nevertheless felt the need to appear on Al Sharpton's radio program to explain that he was referring to the kid glove treatment Obama was receiving from the national media.
So there we are. A nation that was, just a week ago, pointedly ushering in a new era of racial harmony is now faced with a Democratic campaign in which race, at least for the moment, has become an issue of division. It will, evidently, take more than a few thousand white Iowans to bring America's most vexing dilemma to a happy conclusion.
All of this represents a rare bit of good news for the Republicans, who are currently going through a frontrunner a week, and enduring their own six-way mudslinging contest between candidates that have all, at some point in the proceedings, been judged inadequate. One suspects, in fact, that the GOP spinmeisters and their Fox News collaborators have had a hand in stoking the fires. As hard as the Republican Party has worked over the past decade to suppress the African American vote, it seems obvious that they would welcome a racially charged battle on the Democratic side that might result in black voters refusing to turn out for Hillary Clinton in November. It will, after all, take more than just John McCain to get John McCain elected president (or whoever the Republicans select).
In one respect, of course, there is something quite healthy about the current debate. The country is rarely at its best when adopting a self-congratulatory stance on the matter of race. Despite what Ward Connerly may think, the equality agenda in the United States remains active and unfulfilled, and that will not change regardless of which man or woman steps into the Oval Office next year. If nothing else, the events of the past week, and those that will no doubt follow, will likely give pundits pause should Seantor Obama be elected president. Milestones are just that; they mark the progress made along the way, but they do not signal the end of the journey.
Meanwhile, Democrats must find a way to manage the current controversy. It is, as always, the burden of the party that cares most about civil rights to keep temporary political conflicts from undermining the bigger project. The agenda of Barack Obama and John Edwards, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest will not be served by a divisive, racially coded primary season that delivers the White House to the Republican Party for another four years of benign—and malign—neglect.
But, as the cliché mongers point out, one can neither return the toothpaste to the tube nor unring the bell. So some way must be found to deal with these matters without destroying the best chance the Democrats have had of winning the presidency since Antonin Scalia declared the 2000 election over. The stakes are much higher than the ambitions of any one candidate.
At this point, the healthiest result of all this would be to bring race back into the campaign. Let the candidates talk freely about the party's commitment to African Americans on issues of affirmative action and poverty and racial justice. Speak out loud about inequality, racial profiling, and state of education in the inner city. No other party in history has been so reluctant to address the needs and issues of one of its core constituencies. At least the Republicans give lip service to the Christian fundamentalist platform.
Not everything that is said in such a dialogue will go down well with many white Americans. But as Mitt Romney found out about Mormonism, issues and concerns that remain unspoken do not go away. Now—not Labor Day—is the time for the country's first viable African American candidate to lay out publicly his views on race in the United States. Now—not October—is the time for the Democrats to work for the votes of both black and white Americans by addressing issues that matter deeply to them and will almost certainly influence turnout later this year.
This is not a question of "playing the race card". It is a question of playing with the full deck.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
War! (Good God, Y'all)
For those of you who wish to crow about America's impending victory in Iraq, the New York Times has a feature story in today's edition that you might want to avoid. Actually, if you have somehow managed to define victory down to the current bloody (but less bloody!) situation, then you probably don't read the Times anyway, preferring to get your news on Fox from former journalist Brit Hume. It is, of course, a wonderful thing that fewer U.S. soldiers and Marines are dying in Mesopotamia, but if a zero death count were the only goal of the mission, it seems like an immediate pullout would have done the trick far more effectively. Had we been told at the outset that the Iraq War would last into 2008, with troops still dying, bombs still exploding, and political stalemate in Baghdad seemingly unbreakable, the entire country would have taken to the streets. Instead, here we are nearly five years later listening to people like John McCain incessantly talk up the success of The Surge, as though losing less quickly were the same thing as winning.
Anyhow, according to the Times, there are "121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war." If my math skills haven't failed me, that works out to two deaths in the Homeland for each month that the war has persisted. Actually, in some of these instances, multiple lives were lost, so the true body count is even higher. Assuming, say, 150-200 killings in all, we have lost, at the hands of our own returning soldiers, the equivalent of the entire passenger and crew list for a fully loaded commercial aircraft. Of course, had such a jetliner succumbed to terrorism, the Bill of Rights would by now have been cancelled by our legally rapacious president and our predictably supine Democratic majority in Congress.
I grew up near a large military base and many of my childhood friends were the children of officers and enlisted personnel. On weekends, we shared the local malls and theaters with clean-shaven teenagers from rural Arkansas and urban Cincinnati, most of them away from home for the first time. They walked with an awkward swagger, pressed into adulthood at 17 or 18, and yet still insecure around local kids who were nearly their age. Mostly, they were just very, very young.
Military service has always been associated with odd disconnects from the rest of society. Many universities today require their freshmen to live on campus, believing that they are too inexperienced to deal with the temptations that await beyond the loving arms of alma mater. At the same time, we send their high school classmates halfway around the world to face a daily ritual of killing and carnage. Yesterday, they were all kids posing for graduation pictures; today, some are still kids, while others are warriors. If you are in my business, you look at and listen to your freshmen and you wonder how young men and women just like them can handle the burdens and responsibilities of life and death.
This is, of course, not the first generation of young Americans to be sent to war, nor will it be the last. For every post-adolescent veteran who comes home mentally damaged, hundreds return to lead productive, successful lives. War is, at its heart, a demanding physical activity, and it makes sense to leave it to those whose vigor is greatest and whose reflexes are sharpest. Still, I think of my freshmen, some so mesmerized by the sights and sounds of a medium-sized, somewhat urban college town, and I remember that many of these people we insist on calling heroes are really just kids. To be sure, quite a few of them act heroically in the course of battle, but the impact of war on a post-adolescent psyche must be tremendous.
As others have already noted, the other salient feature of the current war is the extent to which it separates participants and spectators. The fighting that is so deeply personal to the 18-year olds who patrol Baghdad remains almost entirely irrelevant to the lives of my students. Veterans of World War II knew that national involvement in their conflict was total, and that sacrifices—lesser sacrifices, to be sure, but sacrifices still—were being made on the homefront as well. The Iraq War, by contrast is little more than an unending reality show for those who have no family members at risk. This, too, must be painfully disconcerting for the troops returning home, particularly knowing that they will likely be asked to go back to the Middle East for yet another tour of duty.
And the fighting itself, as the Times points out, maximizes stress and terror. There are no front lines in the current conflict. Death can come at any time from any source. Even soldiers in Vietnam knew that they could generally walk the streets of Saigon in relative safety. Surge or not, American forces know that danger still lurks on every Baghdad street corner.
Meanwhile, men who know of combat only that they avoided it make obscene noises about victory and perseverance. (John McCain, obviously one of the few wartime cheerleaders who is a combat veteran, simply ought to know better.) Joe Lieberman, who has killed nothing more than a judicial nomination, struts like Patton, howling his approval of this five-year conflict that has cost so much and accomplished so little. The Surge has evidently worked because we have gone from two mourning American families per day to one, never mind that the lofty goal of Iraqi liberty has been downsized into hopes for some form of peaceful coexistence between factions. A couple of days ago, in another tacit admission of failure, Saddam Hussein's political party was again legalized. Democracy marches forward.
It is easy, in all this talk of warriors and heroes, to forget that the people we are sending to this perpetual conflict are not supermen and superwomen. They are young Americans, as brave and gallant and flawed as the rest of us. And at least some of them are coming home terribly damaged.
This, more than anything else, is the reason that you don't fight wars of choice. The fantasies of men in think tanks and the ambitions of power hungry politicians are not good enough. The stakes are too high and the damage is too great. Almost nobody would have agreed to exchange over three thousand (mostly) young American lives for Iraqi democracy. The fact that we did the first without achieving the second should haunt this administration until history renders its final, scathing judgment.
Meanwhile, a 61 year old draft dodger is on the move again, warning us that Iran is the latest threat to…something.
Anyhow, according to the Times, there are "121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war." If my math skills haven't failed me, that works out to two deaths in the Homeland for each month that the war has persisted. Actually, in some of these instances, multiple lives were lost, so the true body count is even higher. Assuming, say, 150-200 killings in all, we have lost, at the hands of our own returning soldiers, the equivalent of the entire passenger and crew list for a fully loaded commercial aircraft. Of course, had such a jetliner succumbed to terrorism, the Bill of Rights would by now have been cancelled by our legally rapacious president and our predictably supine Democratic majority in Congress.
I grew up near a large military base and many of my childhood friends were the children of officers and enlisted personnel. On weekends, we shared the local malls and theaters with clean-shaven teenagers from rural Arkansas and urban Cincinnati, most of them away from home for the first time. They walked with an awkward swagger, pressed into adulthood at 17 or 18, and yet still insecure around local kids who were nearly their age. Mostly, they were just very, very young.
Military service has always been associated with odd disconnects from the rest of society. Many universities today require their freshmen to live on campus, believing that they are too inexperienced to deal with the temptations that await beyond the loving arms of alma mater. At the same time, we send their high school classmates halfway around the world to face a daily ritual of killing and carnage. Yesterday, they were all kids posing for graduation pictures; today, some are still kids, while others are warriors. If you are in my business, you look at and listen to your freshmen and you wonder how young men and women just like them can handle the burdens and responsibilities of life and death.
This is, of course, not the first generation of young Americans to be sent to war, nor will it be the last. For every post-adolescent veteran who comes home mentally damaged, hundreds return to lead productive, successful lives. War is, at its heart, a demanding physical activity, and it makes sense to leave it to those whose vigor is greatest and whose reflexes are sharpest. Still, I think of my freshmen, some so mesmerized by the sights and sounds of a medium-sized, somewhat urban college town, and I remember that many of these people we insist on calling heroes are really just kids. To be sure, quite a few of them act heroically in the course of battle, but the impact of war on a post-adolescent psyche must be tremendous.
As others have already noted, the other salient feature of the current war is the extent to which it separates participants and spectators. The fighting that is so deeply personal to the 18-year olds who patrol Baghdad remains almost entirely irrelevant to the lives of my students. Veterans of World War II knew that national involvement in their conflict was total, and that sacrifices—lesser sacrifices, to be sure, but sacrifices still—were being made on the homefront as well. The Iraq War, by contrast is little more than an unending reality show for those who have no family members at risk. This, too, must be painfully disconcerting for the troops returning home, particularly knowing that they will likely be asked to go back to the Middle East for yet another tour of duty.
And the fighting itself, as the Times points out, maximizes stress and terror. There are no front lines in the current conflict. Death can come at any time from any source. Even soldiers in Vietnam knew that they could generally walk the streets of Saigon in relative safety. Surge or not, American forces know that danger still lurks on every Baghdad street corner.
Meanwhile, men who know of combat only that they avoided it make obscene noises about victory and perseverance. (John McCain, obviously one of the few wartime cheerleaders who is a combat veteran, simply ought to know better.) Joe Lieberman, who has killed nothing more than a judicial nomination, struts like Patton, howling his approval of this five-year conflict that has cost so much and accomplished so little. The Surge has evidently worked because we have gone from two mourning American families per day to one, never mind that the lofty goal of Iraqi liberty has been downsized into hopes for some form of peaceful coexistence between factions. A couple of days ago, in another tacit admission of failure, Saddam Hussein's political party was again legalized. Democracy marches forward.
It is easy, in all this talk of warriors and heroes, to forget that the people we are sending to this perpetual conflict are not supermen and superwomen. They are young Americans, as brave and gallant and flawed as the rest of us. And at least some of them are coming home terribly damaged.
This, more than anything else, is the reason that you don't fight wars of choice. The fantasies of men in think tanks and the ambitions of power hungry politicians are not good enough. The stakes are too high and the damage is too great. Almost nobody would have agreed to exchange over three thousand (mostly) young American lives for Iraqi democracy. The fact that we did the first without achieving the second should haunt this administration until history renders its final, scathing judgment.
Meanwhile, a 61 year old draft dodger is on the move again, warning us that Iran is the latest threat to…something.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Separated at Birth
I was awake much too early Friday morning watching the ABC news show that fills the hours between what used to be sign-off and what used to be the farm report. So let's call it about 3:30 a.m., though I could be off by an hour or so. Anyway, the program—I think they call it "Insomniac World News"—featured a segment on the latest Republican debate, held in either the state that permits legal prostitution or the one that flies the Confederate flag on the capitol grounds. I forget which is which.
I've allowed myself a brief hiatus from debate-watching, particularly on the Republican side. It's not that I don’t sometimes enjoy watching grown men debase themselves, it's just that it has all become so familiar. First McCain tells us that he won't rest until every acre of real estate between Damascus and Karachi is occupied by the U.S. Army. Then Rudy ups the ante by suggesting that we waterboard every tenth person going through airport security, just in case. About that time, Fred Thompson chimes in, mumbling something about hunting dogs and Goody's Headache Powder. Mike Huckabee next informs us that the Earth is not only flat, but it's also just slightly older than Wayne Newton. But then he cracks some joke about Chuck Norris, and everyone laughs sympathetically. If Mitt Romney's circuits are firing properly, he reminds everyone for the thousandth time that he's still fiercely opposed to everything he used to believe in and that, by the way, it would be a splendid idea to erect an electrified, barbed-wire force field on the Mexican border. Finally, Ron Paul, assuming he's permitted to attend, mutters his opposition to the Iraq War, allowing the others to commence another round of attacks on the Islamofascisterroristicexpialidocians.
So where was I? Oh yeah, ABC was showing the highlights of the latest installment of the GOP's traveling exhibition of lucha libre (that would be "wrestling match" to all you one-time Tancredo supporters) and I was sitting on the couch unable to sleep. For some reason, almost every clip that was broadcast included some worshipful reference to Ronald Reagan or his presidency. It was as though the country was in need of rescue from twenty uninterrupted years of Democratic leadership and only a return to the bedrock values of our last Republican president could save us. If any man named Bush had ever served in the White House, you sure couldn't tell it from these post-debate excerpts. You would only know that Bill Clinton's five terms as Commander in Chief had evidently transformed our once-powerful republic into an overtaxing, atheistic, sexually confused paper tiger that responded to terrorism with folk songs.
(To be fair, the Democrats went through this, as well, erasing Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter from their collective memories for at least a generation, continually harkening back to Kennedy, Truman, and FDR long after what would have been JFK's seventieth birthday.)
I've already done my takedown of the Reagan years, so there's no need to repeat myself. The Ronald Reagan spoken of today should be unrecognizable to anyone who actually endured the 1980s. He was, to be sure, a popular, grandfatherly figure, but nobody alive in 1989 thought that we were witnessing the retirement of America's Churchill. The Ronnie we knew was a divisive president, brutally partisan, and given to serving up laughable gaffes about trees causing pollution and crypto-racist fairy tales about Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs. Even a lot of his supporters were, frankly, relieved to see his eight years in office conclude.
But here's the thing: if there is any president that most closely resembles Ronald Reagan in the entire annals of American history, it is George W. Bush. Both were big state governors accustomed to working relatively short hours and overly reliant on their handlers and advisers. Neither was especially popular upon taking office, but each saw his approval rating skyrocket in the wake of an unexpected crisis (9/11 for Bush, the Hinckley assassination attempt for Reagan). Both possessed a political cunning that compensated for an occasionally embarrassing intellectual laziness.
In terms of economic policy, Reagan and Bush are parallel lines. Each cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans (Reagan a bit more generously) and each engaged in profligate deficit spending. They both dumped millions into the military-industrial complex without requiring accountability, and stood on the losing end of multi-billion dollar trade deficits with Asian nations (Japan then, China now). Reagan's second term concluded with economic unrest, just as it appears Bush's will.
The Gipper and W both prided themselves on an intuitive, gut-check approach to sizing up Russian leaders. Reagan saw promise in Mikhail Gorbachev even as his advisors were warning him against trusting any Commie. Bush famously looked into Vladimir Putin's soul and saw goodness where others saw only the remnants of a career with the vicious KGB. Perhaps Ronald Reagan was simply a better judge of character than Bush (I have, indeed, argued that previously). Perhaps he was just lucky. Had Gorby been Putin, I suspect we would all remember the late 1980s much differently and nobody would be speaking about victory in the Cold War.
On immigration, Saint Ronnie of Hollywood joined with the Democrats on an amnesty plan in 1986 that was so generous that it turned Lou Dobbs from financial wizard into populist carnival barker. The link to W in this case is too obvious to mention. Somehow, in all their genuflecting before their plastic Gipper icons, the Republican debaters invariably forget to mention that it was Reagan who opened the floodgates, or created the stampede, or fathered the reconquista, or whatever trite language they're using these days.
Finally, many of the seeds of George W. Bush's crackdown on civil liberties were planted in the Reagan White House. According to Washington Congressman Jim McDermott:
"From 1982 to 1984, Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil defense preparations. Details of those plans emerged during the 1987 Iran-Contra scandal. They included executive orders providing for suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the President and FEMA."
There were, of course, also distinctions between Reagan and Bush, other than the fact that the former was a better actor. One of the biggest differences was the Democratic House of Representatives that the Gipper faced during his eight years in the White House. Not only did Bush enjoy Republican majorities in both the House and Senate for most of his presidency, he also benefited from the peculiar post-9/11 cowardice that has afflicted the Democratic Party's congressional leadership. Many of Ronald Reagan's more elaborate and Bush-like goals were thwarted through the offices of Tip O'Neill and Jim Wright, two House Speakers who took seriously Madison's musings about checks and balances in Federalist 51.
I'm not sure if irony is quite the proper word, but there remains an amusing inconsistency between the Republican candidates' devotion to Reagan's memory and their careful avoidance of even speaking the word "Bush". Because, really, by predilections, policies, and, in many cases, results, it would be difficult to name two presidents in history with such a lengthy catalog of similarities. Bush, lacking adult supervision, may have failed more spectacularly than his predecessor, but he did so only after carefully studying and following the Reagan playbook.
I've allowed myself a brief hiatus from debate-watching, particularly on the Republican side. It's not that I don’t sometimes enjoy watching grown men debase themselves, it's just that it has all become so familiar. First McCain tells us that he won't rest until every acre of real estate between Damascus and Karachi is occupied by the U.S. Army. Then Rudy ups the ante by suggesting that we waterboard every tenth person going through airport security, just in case. About that time, Fred Thompson chimes in, mumbling something about hunting dogs and Goody's Headache Powder. Mike Huckabee next informs us that the Earth is not only flat, but it's also just slightly older than Wayne Newton. But then he cracks some joke about Chuck Norris, and everyone laughs sympathetically. If Mitt Romney's circuits are firing properly, he reminds everyone for the thousandth time that he's still fiercely opposed to everything he used to believe in and that, by the way, it would be a splendid idea to erect an electrified, barbed-wire force field on the Mexican border. Finally, Ron Paul, assuming he's permitted to attend, mutters his opposition to the Iraq War, allowing the others to commence another round of attacks on the Islamofascisterroristicexpialidocians.
So where was I? Oh yeah, ABC was showing the highlights of the latest installment of the GOP's traveling exhibition of lucha libre (that would be "wrestling match" to all you one-time Tancredo supporters) and I was sitting on the couch unable to sleep. For some reason, almost every clip that was broadcast included some worshipful reference to Ronald Reagan or his presidency. It was as though the country was in need of rescue from twenty uninterrupted years of Democratic leadership and only a return to the bedrock values of our last Republican president could save us. If any man named Bush had ever served in the White House, you sure couldn't tell it from these post-debate excerpts. You would only know that Bill Clinton's five terms as Commander in Chief had evidently transformed our once-powerful republic into an overtaxing, atheistic, sexually confused paper tiger that responded to terrorism with folk songs.
(To be fair, the Democrats went through this, as well, erasing Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter from their collective memories for at least a generation, continually harkening back to Kennedy, Truman, and FDR long after what would have been JFK's seventieth birthday.)
I've already done my takedown of the Reagan years, so there's no need to repeat myself. The Ronald Reagan spoken of today should be unrecognizable to anyone who actually endured the 1980s. He was, to be sure, a popular, grandfatherly figure, but nobody alive in 1989 thought that we were witnessing the retirement of America's Churchill. The Ronnie we knew was a divisive president, brutally partisan, and given to serving up laughable gaffes about trees causing pollution and crypto-racist fairy tales about Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs. Even a lot of his supporters were, frankly, relieved to see his eight years in office conclude.
But here's the thing: if there is any president that most closely resembles Ronald Reagan in the entire annals of American history, it is George W. Bush. Both were big state governors accustomed to working relatively short hours and overly reliant on their handlers and advisers. Neither was especially popular upon taking office, but each saw his approval rating skyrocket in the wake of an unexpected crisis (9/11 for Bush, the Hinckley assassination attempt for Reagan). Both possessed a political cunning that compensated for an occasionally embarrassing intellectual laziness.
In terms of economic policy, Reagan and Bush are parallel lines. Each cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans (Reagan a bit more generously) and each engaged in profligate deficit spending. They both dumped millions into the military-industrial complex without requiring accountability, and stood on the losing end of multi-billion dollar trade deficits with Asian nations (Japan then, China now). Reagan's second term concluded with economic unrest, just as it appears Bush's will.
The Gipper and W both prided themselves on an intuitive, gut-check approach to sizing up Russian leaders. Reagan saw promise in Mikhail Gorbachev even as his advisors were warning him against trusting any Commie. Bush famously looked into Vladimir Putin's soul and saw goodness where others saw only the remnants of a career with the vicious KGB. Perhaps Ronald Reagan was simply a better judge of character than Bush (I have, indeed, argued that previously). Perhaps he was just lucky. Had Gorby been Putin, I suspect we would all remember the late 1980s much differently and nobody would be speaking about victory in the Cold War.
On immigration, Saint Ronnie of Hollywood joined with the Democrats on an amnesty plan in 1986 that was so generous that it turned Lou Dobbs from financial wizard into populist carnival barker. The link to W in this case is too obvious to mention. Somehow, in all their genuflecting before their plastic Gipper icons, the Republican debaters invariably forget to mention that it was Reagan who opened the floodgates, or created the stampede, or fathered the reconquista, or whatever trite language they're using these days.
Finally, many of the seeds of George W. Bush's crackdown on civil liberties were planted in the Reagan White House. According to Washington Congressman Jim McDermott:
"From 1982 to 1984, Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil defense preparations. Details of those plans emerged during the 1987 Iran-Contra scandal. They included executive orders providing for suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the President and FEMA."
There were, of course, also distinctions between Reagan and Bush, other than the fact that the former was a better actor. One of the biggest differences was the Democratic House of Representatives that the Gipper faced during his eight years in the White House. Not only did Bush enjoy Republican majorities in both the House and Senate for most of his presidency, he also benefited from the peculiar post-9/11 cowardice that has afflicted the Democratic Party's congressional leadership. Many of Ronald Reagan's more elaborate and Bush-like goals were thwarted through the offices of Tip O'Neill and Jim Wright, two House Speakers who took seriously Madison's musings about checks and balances in Federalist 51.
I'm not sure if irony is quite the proper word, but there remains an amusing inconsistency between the Republican candidates' devotion to Reagan's memory and their careful avoidance of even speaking the word "Bush". Because, really, by predilections, policies, and, in many cases, results, it would be difficult to name two presidents in history with such a lengthy catalog of similarities. Bush, lacking adult supervision, may have failed more spectacularly than his predecessor, but he did so only after carefully studying and following the Reagan playbook.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Common Sense and Paranoia on Campus
From Inside Higher Ed comes the bizarre story of a young man who was expelled from Valdosta State University in Georgia for opposing the construction of two parking garages on campus. He was evidently quite the nuisance, sending out mass e-mailings, posting flyers, and penning letters to the school paper. I don't pretend to understand all the motivations behind college activism, but I can think of an injustice or two more pressing than a university's desire to spend student fees erecting a parking structure. Nevertheless, this was the cause that apparently galvanized one T. Hayden Barnes into action, and I suppose not every protest has to be about peace and freedom.
This is, of course, the sort of thing that happens on every campus every now and then, but rarely matters even if it reaches the stage of a student government resolution or a faculty senate hissy fit. But Valdosta State officials didn't wait for Mr. Barnes to generate meaningful support for his initiative. Instead, they declared him a threat to campus security and directed him to leave the university pending psychological evaluation.
The evidence of danger in this case proved particularly flimsy; Mr. Barnes had not even drawn one of those stick-figure hangmen that cause the modern university to go into penitentiary-style lockdown. As one indicator of the student's supposedly warped psyche, administrators cited a Facebook entry in which the young man stated that he was “cleaning out and rearranging his room and thus, his mind, or so he hopes”. And of course they made reference to last April's massacre at Virginia Tech.
I am not the free speech absolutist I once was, particularly when it comes to colleges and universities. Institutions of higher education exist for a specific purpose—or really, several specific purposes—and they are not the equivalent of the town square. There is no reason, in my view, why even a public university shouldn't have the right, within clear limits, to circumscribe expression contrary to its mission. Racists, for example, who are otherwise free to clutter the landscape, should not necessarily enjoy the same privileges on a campus that is dedicated to fostering a culture of mutual respect and diversity. The Nazi Party's right to march in Grant Park should not, for example, necessarily apply to nearby Chicago State University.
Still, there is no need to create a slippery slope here. Students who run around in blackface should be punished; students who peacefully and without ridicule hand out literature opposing affirmative action should not. And special scrutiny should be given to any case in which an individual or organization is sanctioned for opposing the plans or policies of university administrators. That doesn't mean that lines cannot be crossed, but the burden should rest heavily on any institution that chooses to, say, expel a young man who has decided that his life's mission is to keep parking in Valdosta, Georgia, from going vertical.
But the scariest aspect to this whole situation is the invocation of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Just as Columbine has become an excuse for primary and secondary school administrators to overreact, VaTech is now having a similar impact on higher ed. Safety, of course, is only part of the equation. Increasingly, colleges and universities dance to the tune of campus attorneys for whom liability matters above all else. Make a joke about firebombing the administration building and you might as well be in the security line at the airport. If you are lucky, your weak attempt at humor will only result in police interrogation and mandatory counseling. If you are unlucky, you will find yourself banished from campus entirely.
The lawyers, of course, are supported in their efforts by professors and administrators who, like grade school parents, see the occasional televised shooting and assume that clear and present danger lurks behind dormitory walls. This attitude, in turn, breeds paranoia, the same sort that threatens high school kids with a criminal record for carrying a Swiss Army Knife to class. Or, in this case, the kind that makes officials at Valdosta State see potential carnage in a student's on-line link to an advertisement for a video contest that reads, "Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous." Calmer heads would have understood that this was a call for the new Quentin Tarantino, not the next Lee Harvey Oswald. But we live in a society today in which hyper-vigilance, not calm reflection, has become the industry standard.
Being in the professor business myself, it's not as though I am unaware of the potential perils of the unhinged student. Years ago, one of my undergraduates made threatening noises on my telephone answering machine—long before Called ID—and I brought in the university police. I really didn't want them to investigate; I just wanted to make a report in case things turned nastier. I was confident that even if the cops located the late-night caller, they would simply question him, scare him a little, and move on. Under the same circumstances today, knowing that I could be ruining some drunken kid's life, I might well keep it to myself. Don’t get me wrong: I'm no fool. If the threat seemed angry enough, or personal enough, or detailed enough, I wouldn't hesitate to get in touch with the authorities. But, within certain boundaries, I trust that my common sense and experience allow me to distinguish between the idiot and the terrorist.
Every time one of these shooting incidents occurs, the news media show up and begin to ask why nobody saw the clues beforehand. And working the maze backwards, there are always clues. Teachers and classmates and counselors are interviewed and each one can usually conjure up something that, with the power of hindsight, now appears an obvious cry for help.
This is, however, an enormously stupid and damaging approach. A lot of kids think dark thoughts and even put them to paper; almost none of these kids is dangerous. Now, the young man at Virginia Tech did seem to have been more overtly troubled and threatening than most, and some sort of prior intervention may well have been justified. Still, we must resist the temptation to become amateur profilers, scrutinizing every odd, dorky, or unhappy undergraduate for any traits that he or she may seemingly share with one of more of the notorious campus killers.
We live in a time when people demand perfect safety from a world in which 100% of living participants ultimately die. Since September 11, 2001, Americans have been disturbingly eager to endure nearly any diminution of their rights and liberties so long as the government can justify it in terms of national security. Thus, we now have warrantless wiretapping, suspension of habeas corpus, and other personal intrusions that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.
On college campuses, of all places, we cannot yield to our fears at the expense of our students. Of course we can be smart and careful and vigilant. But we must use both our judgment and our compassion in dealing with people who are, in most cases, just emerging from the tribulations of adolescence. More than anything else, we cannot allow ourselves, either through paranoia or self-interest, to see threats where students are merely expressing opposition.
This is, of course, the sort of thing that happens on every campus every now and then, but rarely matters even if it reaches the stage of a student government resolution or a faculty senate hissy fit. But Valdosta State officials didn't wait for Mr. Barnes to generate meaningful support for his initiative. Instead, they declared him a threat to campus security and directed him to leave the university pending psychological evaluation.
The evidence of danger in this case proved particularly flimsy; Mr. Barnes had not even drawn one of those stick-figure hangmen that cause the modern university to go into penitentiary-style lockdown. As one indicator of the student's supposedly warped psyche, administrators cited a Facebook entry in which the young man stated that he was “cleaning out and rearranging his room and thus, his mind, or so he hopes”. And of course they made reference to last April's massacre at Virginia Tech.
I am not the free speech absolutist I once was, particularly when it comes to colleges and universities. Institutions of higher education exist for a specific purpose—or really, several specific purposes—and they are not the equivalent of the town square. There is no reason, in my view, why even a public university shouldn't have the right, within clear limits, to circumscribe expression contrary to its mission. Racists, for example, who are otherwise free to clutter the landscape, should not necessarily enjoy the same privileges on a campus that is dedicated to fostering a culture of mutual respect and diversity. The Nazi Party's right to march in Grant Park should not, for example, necessarily apply to nearby Chicago State University.
Still, there is no need to create a slippery slope here. Students who run around in blackface should be punished; students who peacefully and without ridicule hand out literature opposing affirmative action should not. And special scrutiny should be given to any case in which an individual or organization is sanctioned for opposing the plans or policies of university administrators. That doesn't mean that lines cannot be crossed, but the burden should rest heavily on any institution that chooses to, say, expel a young man who has decided that his life's mission is to keep parking in Valdosta, Georgia, from going vertical.
But the scariest aspect to this whole situation is the invocation of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Just as Columbine has become an excuse for primary and secondary school administrators to overreact, VaTech is now having a similar impact on higher ed. Safety, of course, is only part of the equation. Increasingly, colleges and universities dance to the tune of campus attorneys for whom liability matters above all else. Make a joke about firebombing the administration building and you might as well be in the security line at the airport. If you are lucky, your weak attempt at humor will only result in police interrogation and mandatory counseling. If you are unlucky, you will find yourself banished from campus entirely.
The lawyers, of course, are supported in their efforts by professors and administrators who, like grade school parents, see the occasional televised shooting and assume that clear and present danger lurks behind dormitory walls. This attitude, in turn, breeds paranoia, the same sort that threatens high school kids with a criminal record for carrying a Swiss Army Knife to class. Or, in this case, the kind that makes officials at Valdosta State see potential carnage in a student's on-line link to an advertisement for a video contest that reads, "Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous." Calmer heads would have understood that this was a call for the new Quentin Tarantino, not the next Lee Harvey Oswald. But we live in a society today in which hyper-vigilance, not calm reflection, has become the industry standard.
Being in the professor business myself, it's not as though I am unaware of the potential perils of the unhinged student. Years ago, one of my undergraduates made threatening noises on my telephone answering machine—long before Called ID—and I brought in the university police. I really didn't want them to investigate; I just wanted to make a report in case things turned nastier. I was confident that even if the cops located the late-night caller, they would simply question him, scare him a little, and move on. Under the same circumstances today, knowing that I could be ruining some drunken kid's life, I might well keep it to myself. Don’t get me wrong: I'm no fool. If the threat seemed angry enough, or personal enough, or detailed enough, I wouldn't hesitate to get in touch with the authorities. But, within certain boundaries, I trust that my common sense and experience allow me to distinguish between the idiot and the terrorist.
Every time one of these shooting incidents occurs, the news media show up and begin to ask why nobody saw the clues beforehand. And working the maze backwards, there are always clues. Teachers and classmates and counselors are interviewed and each one can usually conjure up something that, with the power of hindsight, now appears an obvious cry for help.
This is, however, an enormously stupid and damaging approach. A lot of kids think dark thoughts and even put them to paper; almost none of these kids is dangerous. Now, the young man at Virginia Tech did seem to have been more overtly troubled and threatening than most, and some sort of prior intervention may well have been justified. Still, we must resist the temptation to become amateur profilers, scrutinizing every odd, dorky, or unhappy undergraduate for any traits that he or she may seemingly share with one of more of the notorious campus killers.
We live in a time when people demand perfect safety from a world in which 100% of living participants ultimately die. Since September 11, 2001, Americans have been disturbingly eager to endure nearly any diminution of their rights and liberties so long as the government can justify it in terms of national security. Thus, we now have warrantless wiretapping, suspension of habeas corpus, and other personal intrusions that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.
On college campuses, of all places, we cannot yield to our fears at the expense of our students. Of course we can be smart and careful and vigilant. But we must use both our judgment and our compassion in dealing with people who are, in most cases, just emerging from the tribulations of adolescence. More than anything else, we cannot allow ourselves, either through paranoia or self-interest, to see threats where students are merely expressing opposition.
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