If you've surfed the web at all over the past two weeks, you are probably aware of the hot new rumor about a well-known Democratic politician, his mistress, and their secret love child. The National Enquirer has been riding this horse for several months now, and bottom feeders like Matt Drudge and Mickey Kaus (of Slate.com) have now taken their turns wading into the sewage. Right-wing blogs are indignant about the fact that the traditional media have yet to find the story worthy of their attention. If this had been a Republican, they caterwaul, it would be a Page 1 story on every newspaper in the country and Katie Couric would be doing a victory dance around her teleprompter.
Except, of course, that a similar story (sans baby) actually did involve a GOP presidential nominee a generation or so earlier. There was no internet at the time, of course, but the Enquirer and its competitors took their turns rummaging through the underwear drawer, making accusations and naming names. Finally, in desperation, one high-level Democratic operative blurted out the rumor in a roomfull of reporters and was immediately relieved of her duties. The supposedly liberal media then let the whole thing die.
And that is as it should be. The personal and sexual lives of candidates are generally not newsworthy. Indeed, until 1987 everyone agreed on that. It was then that Gary Hart, Democratic frontrunner for president, stupidly told the working press not only that he was not philandering, but that he had no objection if they followed him around 24/7 to satisfy their curiosity. They did, and the result was that Gary Hart ceased being the Democratic frontrunner shortly thereafter.
From that moment on, we have been forced to weight the "character issue" when judging our presidential candidates. This has been enormously destructive in multiple ways. First, it deprives us of the services of men and women who, but for irrelevant personal weaknesses, might be outstanding presidents. Gary Hart was and is a bright and creative thinker. He almost certainly would have been a better candidate than Michael Dukakis and a better president than George H.W. Bush (with the added advantage that the defeat of the father would likely have ensured that the arrogant, reckless, and incompetent son would never have entered the White House again without a visitor's pass).
But it's not just Hart. Outstanding people, unwilling to endure the full body cavity search of today's presidential politics, simply pass up the opportunity to run. This, in turn, leaves us with only the hyper-ambitious, the sixth-grade class president types who are willing to crawl through broken glass to satisfy their craving for power and affirmation. Surely, out of 300 million people, we ought to be able to do better than John McCain and--sorry--Barack Obama.
The other problem with the character issue is that it causes voters to elevate truly immaterial portions of a candidate's biography and turn them into decisive criteria. Wesley Clark, for example, spoke an undeniable truth when he pointed out that John McCain's POW experience had no bearing on his qualifications for the presidency. There is, in fact, no time during the next four years in which the Commander-in-Chief will be required to languish in prison and be subjected to brutal torture.
Oh, but wait! Doesn't this show what kind of man John McCain is? Well, I suppose it shows what kind of man he was forty years ago, but it's still irrelevant to the task at hand. The job he is currently applying for requires no particular physical courage. Indeed, it is possible to be heroic in one context and hopelessly venal in another. Just as former Top Gun pilot Duke Cunningham.
The same John McCain who refused early release from the Hanoi Hilton also aided and abetted (and won favors from) Charles Keating, one of the nastiest swindlers of the Savings and Loan Era. Doesn't that also speak to the issue of character? Indeed, doesn't it speak quite a bit louder, since it happened more recently and involved the conduct of his public, elected office?
So getting back to the question of extra-marital sexual activity, the rules seem pretty clear. The only time it should be considered newsworthy is when it intersects--or potentially intersects--with a politician's day job or involves violation of the law. Larry Craig fits both categories, having been arrested for conduct that he regularly condemned on the Senate floor. Likewise, if you choose to ambush a sitting president at deposition with questions about his sex life and then impeach him when he lies, you better keep your zipper locked and in the upright position. There was, in that sense, nothing wrong with exposing the hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde back in 1998.
Also, the JFK rule: if you're shtupping the girlfriend of an organized crime boss, that, too, should be made public.
But otherwise, public people ought to be allowed private lives. And we should stop pretending we have any insight as to the "character" of our public officials. First of all, we don't. Second of all, despite our desire to pigeon-hole and summarize, "character" is not some trait that is greater than the some of its parts. Character is the sum of its parts, nothing more, nothing less. We all have people that we know and love who are wonderful in hundreds of ways who nevertheless occasionally make terrible, hurtful choices in their private lives. If we can understand that about our friends, we should be able to understand it about our politicians as well.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
The Latest Fox News Democrat
Susan Estrich, who once managed Michael Dukakis's campaign from a 17-point post-convention lead to a one-sided loss to George H.W. Bush, is now employed by the Fox News Network. Her job, of course, is to play Washington Generals to Brit Hume's and Sean Hannity's Globetrotters. With her grating voice and generally wimpy defense of all things Democratic, she makes Hannity's designated piñata, Alan Colmes, sound like Keith Olbermann.
Anyway, she has an opinion piece up at RealClearPolitics.com entitled, "Arrogance Won't Win the Election." You already know what it's about and you already know which candidate it's directed at. All Fox News house Democrats know how to use Republican talking points when writing supposedly pro-Democratic articles.
But, hey, Suzy, as long as you're dispensing advice to the Obama campaign about how to win elections, I have a great suggestion: Why don't you tell him to strap on an oversized helmet, jump in a tank, and ride around in circles while the media and public laugh incredulously?
Anyway, she has an opinion piece up at RealClearPolitics.com entitled, "Arrogance Won't Win the Election." You already know what it's about and you already know which candidate it's directed at. All Fox News house Democrats know how to use Republican talking points when writing supposedly pro-Democratic articles.
But, hey, Suzy, as long as you're dispensing advice to the Obama campaign about how to win elections, I have a great suggestion: Why don't you tell him to strap on an oversized helmet, jump in a tank, and ride around in circles while the media and public laugh incredulously?
Thursday, July 10, 2008
I'm Back, Sort of...
So here I am again, after a hiatus of a good month or so, during which I lost all ten of my regular readers. For a while, the day job simply demanded too much of my time; after that I just kind of hit the wall. But there was something else, too.
With the death of George Carlin a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of one of his less celebrated comments. I think it came from one of his books. He said (and I'm taking this from memory, so it may not be exactly right), "Whenever I hear someone propose a political solution to a problem, I know I am not dealing with a serious person."
Obviously, I don't entirely agree with Carlin. I teach political science, so it wouldn't make much sense for me to argue that politics is meaningless. Some problems demand political solutions; I suspect that even George understood this.
But I think Carlin was making a deeper point, one with which I do agree: people who expect politicians to rescue us from ourselves are almost certain to be disappointed. I say this not as some sort of libertarian rant, but as a simple statement of truth. It's not that we don't need government, because we do. Indeed, we need more government than we have now. The current economic and social meltdown in health care, environmental degradation, and rapacious capitalism cries out for greater regulation in any number of areas. If the past quarter century has taught us anything, it is the simple fact that unregulated or barely regulated markets will never lead us to peace and prosperity, much less justice and human decency.
Rather, my point is that politics will always be a blunt instrument and politicians will always be unreliable heroes. Take Barack Obama, for example. His recent desperate, amateurish lurch toward the center has been a keen disappointment to those lefty bloggers who honestly thought that he was something other than a hyper-ambitious politician willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy his burning need for power and personal validation. This, of course, is only a dress rehearsal for the disappointments to come should Obama win the presidency in four months. (In this sense, of course, John McCain is not one bit better. He now embraces nearly everything he once rejected, groveling before the same vicious theocrats and scorched-earth reactionaries who were once willing to destroy him and slander his family. It is difficult for those who don't burn with the single-minded ambition of a top-tier presidential candidate to understand that nothing--issues, principles, or even basic personal integrity--matters more than the quest.)
In my lifetime, I have seen politics and politicians do far more harm than good. And that's not just because the Oval Office has been filled mostly with Republicans for the past two generations. The Democrats may have done less harm, but they also accomplished very little of lasting merit. Seriously, what do we have to show for twelve years of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? Camp David, I guess, and maybe a decent economic run during the 1990s.
This is not to say that politics doesn't matter. The past eight years have certainly shown us that politicians, willing to lie, ignore the law, and place lockstep party support over all other principles, can overwhelm and render moot James Madison's brilliant constitutional design. Today, yet another White House alumnus brazenly defied a congressional subpoena, knowing that nothing bad would happen to him as a result. Yesterday, a craven Congress once again gave a power-mad administration still more power to intrude on the lives of innocent Americans and overturn decades of civil liberties. Politics retains the ability to visit enormous harm on people at home and abroad. Perhaps the best we can hope for in any election is to limit the damage that our ballots can wreak.
Sure, there have been some rare shining moments of progress. But even these exceptions prove the general futility of hoping for political solutions. It took the assassination of a president to move Congress, decades too late, to extend basic rights to its African American citizens. It took a complete economic meltdown to give Franklin Roosevelt the tools to trasform American society. And even then, much of his success depended on the onset of a cataclysmic world war.
The most pressing concern of the moment is health care. Our system doesn't work, is ridiculously expensive, makes American industry less competitive, and--worst of all--causes, both directly and indirectly, the untimely deaths of thousands of Americans. Yet, even Hillary Clinton's timid, inadequate work toward a solution in 1993 was shot down by a powerful industry and its political enablers who easily convinced an ignorant nation that they already had the best health care system in the world, even as families were being ruined by the sort of catastrophic illnesses that would never force Canadians or Britons into the poorhouse.
Anyway, all of this makes it a little depressing to blog about the 2008 presidential election. If we choose Door Number 1, we get four more years of dangerous and destructive foreign entanglements, four more years of tax cuts for the wealthy and trickle-down misery for everyone else, and, with the likely forthcoming changes at the Supreme Court, twenty years of backsliding toward unchecked police power and unshackled corporate dominance. If we choose Door Number 2, we get an untested rookie politician, obsessed with re-election from Day 1, who, when not triangulating on a Clintonesque scale, will find himself hamstrung by the take-no-prisoners tactics of a fanatical minority and the cowardly careerism of a majority that has already internalized an unwillingness to stand up to bullies. Oh, and there is no Door Number 3.
I'll choose Door Number 2, of course, but without a lot of enthusiasm.
In the meantime, forgive me if my blogging is sporadic and if I talk less about the election than I have previously.
With the death of George Carlin a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of one of his less celebrated comments. I think it came from one of his books. He said (and I'm taking this from memory, so it may not be exactly right), "Whenever I hear someone propose a political solution to a problem, I know I am not dealing with a serious person."
Obviously, I don't entirely agree with Carlin. I teach political science, so it wouldn't make much sense for me to argue that politics is meaningless. Some problems demand political solutions; I suspect that even George understood this.
But I think Carlin was making a deeper point, one with which I do agree: people who expect politicians to rescue us from ourselves are almost certain to be disappointed. I say this not as some sort of libertarian rant, but as a simple statement of truth. It's not that we don't need government, because we do. Indeed, we need more government than we have now. The current economic and social meltdown in health care, environmental degradation, and rapacious capitalism cries out for greater regulation in any number of areas. If the past quarter century has taught us anything, it is the simple fact that unregulated or barely regulated markets will never lead us to peace and prosperity, much less justice and human decency.
Rather, my point is that politics will always be a blunt instrument and politicians will always be unreliable heroes. Take Barack Obama, for example. His recent desperate, amateurish lurch toward the center has been a keen disappointment to those lefty bloggers who honestly thought that he was something other than a hyper-ambitious politician willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy his burning need for power and personal validation. This, of course, is only a dress rehearsal for the disappointments to come should Obama win the presidency in four months. (In this sense, of course, John McCain is not one bit better. He now embraces nearly everything he once rejected, groveling before the same vicious theocrats and scorched-earth reactionaries who were once willing to destroy him and slander his family. It is difficult for those who don't burn with the single-minded ambition of a top-tier presidential candidate to understand that nothing--issues, principles, or even basic personal integrity--matters more than the quest.)
In my lifetime, I have seen politics and politicians do far more harm than good. And that's not just because the Oval Office has been filled mostly with Republicans for the past two generations. The Democrats may have done less harm, but they also accomplished very little of lasting merit. Seriously, what do we have to show for twelve years of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? Camp David, I guess, and maybe a decent economic run during the 1990s.
This is not to say that politics doesn't matter. The past eight years have certainly shown us that politicians, willing to lie, ignore the law, and place lockstep party support over all other principles, can overwhelm and render moot James Madison's brilliant constitutional design. Today, yet another White House alumnus brazenly defied a congressional subpoena, knowing that nothing bad would happen to him as a result. Yesterday, a craven Congress once again gave a power-mad administration still more power to intrude on the lives of innocent Americans and overturn decades of civil liberties. Politics retains the ability to visit enormous harm on people at home and abroad. Perhaps the best we can hope for in any election is to limit the damage that our ballots can wreak.
Sure, there have been some rare shining moments of progress. But even these exceptions prove the general futility of hoping for political solutions. It took the assassination of a president to move Congress, decades too late, to extend basic rights to its African American citizens. It took a complete economic meltdown to give Franklin Roosevelt the tools to trasform American society. And even then, much of his success depended on the onset of a cataclysmic world war.
The most pressing concern of the moment is health care. Our system doesn't work, is ridiculously expensive, makes American industry less competitive, and--worst of all--causes, both directly and indirectly, the untimely deaths of thousands of Americans. Yet, even Hillary Clinton's timid, inadequate work toward a solution in 1993 was shot down by a powerful industry and its political enablers who easily convinced an ignorant nation that they already had the best health care system in the world, even as families were being ruined by the sort of catastrophic illnesses that would never force Canadians or Britons into the poorhouse.
Anyway, all of this makes it a little depressing to blog about the 2008 presidential election. If we choose Door Number 1, we get four more years of dangerous and destructive foreign entanglements, four more years of tax cuts for the wealthy and trickle-down misery for everyone else, and, with the likely forthcoming changes at the Supreme Court, twenty years of backsliding toward unchecked police power and unshackled corporate dominance. If we choose Door Number 2, we get an untested rookie politician, obsessed with re-election from Day 1, who, when not triangulating on a Clintonesque scale, will find himself hamstrung by the take-no-prisoners tactics of a fanatical minority and the cowardly careerism of a majority that has already internalized an unwillingness to stand up to bullies. Oh, and there is no Door Number 3.
I'll choose Door Number 2, of course, but without a lot of enthusiasm.
In the meantime, forgive me if my blogging is sporadic and if I talk less about the election than I have previously.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Say Goodnight, Dick
The passing of Dick Martin seems as good a time as any to recall a moment from "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in" forty years ago. Dan Rowan, reading the News of the Future, refers to "President Reagan" serving in 1988. It was, of course, a punch line; the very idea that Ronald Reagan would ever be handed the world's most powerful job by any sane country was the stuff of comedy back in 1968.
Today we're living in Ronnie's world, so I guess the joke's on us.
Today we're living in Ronnie's world, so I guess the joke's on us.
Friday, May 16, 2008
In the Year 2013...If Man is Still Alive
I'm still buried by work, but when John McCain dons his psychic's turban, I have no choice other than to put down the grade books and pay attention. It seems that Senator McCain, desperate for any attention these days, decided to look ahead to the year 2013, telling us what we can expect by the end of his first term if he is elected president this November. Most candidates, of course, take an eight-year perspective, so some talking heads wondered aloud if McCain was trying to tell us that he would not seek to break Ronald Reagan's old age record by running for re-election in 2012. But anyone who expects a man this consumed by ambition to be a one-term Johnny is apparently still besotted with the notion that there is something "different" about the presumptive GOP nominee other than the fact that he was born only a year after Babe Ruth retired.
Anyway, McCain has apparently provided the following vision of the world after only four cleansing years of straight talking:
* The Iraq War will be won
* Osama bin Laden will be captured or dead (perhaps of old age?)
* No significant terrorist attacks will occur on U.S. soil
* Health care will be "available to more Americans than at any other time in history" (I guess if he meant "universal", he wouldn't have needed to use nine words)
* "Both parties" will have decided to fix Social Security without a decline in benefits
* Congressional earmarks will be eliminated
* You'll be able to talk to your dog and understand what he's saying to you
* The Tooth Fairy will be forced to find another line of work because teeth will never fall out
How we will get to this Golden Age remains unrevealed at this point. Presumably McCain has some "ideas" and "proposals" that will soon be unveiled, or maybe he'll just summon his straight-talking superpowers and make the whole thing happen overnight while we're sleeping. Maybe he'll do it all with a big loan from Lincoln Savings.
But that's not what I want to talk about. Rather, I am more interested in the media's reaction to what was, to even the most untrained eye, a fairly obvious case of election-year excess. I mean, how exactly will the Great Man persuade Congress simply to cede its institutional perogatives and bend to the new president's will? Has John McCain ever read Federalist 51?
None of this stopped some of the fools on CNN from gushing over McCain's courage in making promises by which he will be judged should he win the 2008 election. One of them marveled at the senator's willingness to stick his neck out in a way that most politicians would not. It was left to Jack Cafferty, ever auditioning for Andy Rooney's curmudgeon job on "60 Minutes", to point out to his starstruck colleagues that "the devil's in the details", a cliche that roughly translates to "McCain didn't tell us anything about how he would actually govern, you blow-dried airheads!"
Just to be clear, Senator McCain has done what politicians have done since the invention of elections. He has made promises that he knows he can't keep in order to win higher office. Like all the others, he figures he can finesse everything else once he's elected. By the time 2012 comes along and most of his pledges remain unfulfilled, he can blame the Democratic Congress or the terrorists or the United Nations or the freemasons.
Seems to me that some callow young Texas governor eight years ago was promising a humble foreign policy and compassionate coservatism. And look how well that turned out...
Anyway, McCain has apparently provided the following vision of the world after only four cleansing years of straight talking:
* The Iraq War will be won
* Osama bin Laden will be captured or dead (perhaps of old age?)
* No significant terrorist attacks will occur on U.S. soil
* Health care will be "available to more Americans than at any other time in history" (I guess if he meant "universal", he wouldn't have needed to use nine words)
* "Both parties" will have decided to fix Social Security without a decline in benefits
* Congressional earmarks will be eliminated
* You'll be able to talk to your dog and understand what he's saying to you
* The Tooth Fairy will be forced to find another line of work because teeth will never fall out
How we will get to this Golden Age remains unrevealed at this point. Presumably McCain has some "ideas" and "proposals" that will soon be unveiled, or maybe he'll just summon his straight-talking superpowers and make the whole thing happen overnight while we're sleeping. Maybe he'll do it all with a big loan from Lincoln Savings.
But that's not what I want to talk about. Rather, I am more interested in the media's reaction to what was, to even the most untrained eye, a fairly obvious case of election-year excess. I mean, how exactly will the Great Man persuade Congress simply to cede its institutional perogatives and bend to the new president's will? Has John McCain ever read Federalist 51?
None of this stopped some of the fools on CNN from gushing over McCain's courage in making promises by which he will be judged should he win the 2008 election. One of them marveled at the senator's willingness to stick his neck out in a way that most politicians would not. It was left to Jack Cafferty, ever auditioning for Andy Rooney's curmudgeon job on "60 Minutes", to point out to his starstruck colleagues that "the devil's in the details", a cliche that roughly translates to "McCain didn't tell us anything about how he would actually govern, you blow-dried airheads!"
Just to be clear, Senator McCain has done what politicians have done since the invention of elections. He has made promises that he knows he can't keep in order to win higher office. Like all the others, he figures he can finesse everything else once he's elected. By the time 2012 comes along and most of his pledges remain unfulfilled, he can blame the Democratic Congress or the terrorists or the United Nations or the freemasons.
Seems to me that some callow young Texas governor eight years ago was promising a humble foreign policy and compassionate coservatism. And look how well that turned out...
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The Day Job...
is a little overwhelming at the moment, so blogging will be sparse for a couple more weeks.
Not much to say about the election right now, anyway, except this:
1. After losing the special congressional election in Mississippi tonight, Republicans must be terrified at the prospect of losing the House for a generation in November.
2. John McCain's "I am not Bush" tour still has to face the problem that on the two issues people really care about--the economy and Iraq--he's pretty indistinguishable from the incumbent.
3. Barack Obama will not win West Virginia in the general election.
Not much to say about the election right now, anyway, except this:
1. After losing the special congressional election in Mississippi tonight, Republicans must be terrified at the prospect of losing the House for a generation in November.
2. John McCain's "I am not Bush" tour still has to face the problem that on the two issues people really care about--the economy and Iraq--he's pretty indistinguishable from the incumbent.
3. Barack Obama will not win West Virginia in the general election.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
It's Over
The window was there for a brief moment. The problems that have plagued Barack Obama over the past month or so provided Hillary Clinton with the chance to do something she had yet to do--mount a comeback in a state that had already been conceded to her opponent. Had she done so, had she somehow squeezed out a victory in North Carolina or even made the race close, it would have been a crippling blow to the Obama campaign.
But it didn't happen. Instead, Barack Obama swept to an easy victory in the Tar Heel State, leaving Indiana, where Clinton needed a strong victory, as the evening's nail biter. Whatever momentum Hillary gathered with her 10-point Pennsylvania triumph is now gone. Only the cold reality of mathematics remains, and it is not her friend.
It is quite possible that the Super Delegate dam will now burst, and Obama will be the presumptive nominee even before the next state votes. But it doesn't matter. The race is over. For better or worse, Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Whether or not he is the strongest candidate (and it says here that he isn't) no longer matters. The sound you hear this evening is Hillary Clinton's window closing.
At this point, there is no need for her to continue seeking the nomination. As my seven or so readers know, this blog has generally argued for Clinton's candidacy on the basis of electability. But the question is now moot. Senator Clinton should withdraw from the race and allow her colleague to begin his general election campaign.
There is no longer any benefit in hanging around.
But it didn't happen. Instead, Barack Obama swept to an easy victory in the Tar Heel State, leaving Indiana, where Clinton needed a strong victory, as the evening's nail biter. Whatever momentum Hillary gathered with her 10-point Pennsylvania triumph is now gone. Only the cold reality of mathematics remains, and it is not her friend.
It is quite possible that the Super Delegate dam will now burst, and Obama will be the presumptive nominee even before the next state votes. But it doesn't matter. The race is over. For better or worse, Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Whether or not he is the strongest candidate (and it says here that he isn't) no longer matters. The sound you hear this evening is Hillary Clinton's window closing.
At this point, there is no need for her to continue seeking the nomination. As my seven or so readers know, this blog has generally argued for Clinton's candidacy on the basis of electability. But the question is now moot. Senator Clinton should withdraw from the race and allow her colleague to begin his general election campaign.
There is no longer any benefit in hanging around.
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