Feeding The Fish

Let’s take a little issue with this snippit of Daniel Henniniger’s article in the WSJ on how democracies are better able to manage crisis:

Among the Western intellectual classes in the U.S. and Europe, there is no idea more routinely mocked than George Bush’s proposition that what the world needs today is more democracies. Much of this has to do with the Iraq war and the apparently bottomless, neurotic antipathy to Mr. Bush. But make no mistake: The steady stream of pushback against “exporting democracy” as quixotic or inappropriate has gone far toward throwing out the democratic baby with the Bush bathwater.

I don’t think anyone really disagrees that more democracies is better (with the possible exception of a century of US and British foreign policy) and the argument that they respond better to natural disasters isn’t a new one, I just think it’s hard to imagine anyone who invade a country and dismantle it’s government without any plans on what to replace it with (or even how to go about doing that) is really taking their aim of ‘exporting democracy’ that seriously.

Bush gives up golf to share the pain of the families of dead soldiers.

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”

If you made this guy up you’d be accused of being unrealistic.

The Barefoot Bum has a nice bit on why the US conservative movement is so successful:

The Republican strategy is very simple, and very powerful: When they win an election, move the government to the right. When they lose an election, prevent the government from moving to the left. Sure, they’d like to win every election, but they know they won’t, and they have a plan in place for when they lose, and thus they can afford to lose on principle.

The Democratic “strategy” is precisely the opposite. When they win an election, they try (with diminishing success) to prevent the government from moving to the right. When they lose an election, they themselves move to the right to win the next one.

This is one of those things that immediately obvious about US politics from the outside, the Democrats are eternally on defense and willing to compromise over anything they perceive will help them win elections. The driving force being the idea that once they sit in the Oval Office and a majority of Congress, everything will be right with the world again and they can push the conservative movement back….except they can’t because they’ve laid no groundwork for moving a liberal direction because they got into office by compromising on essential policies. Case in point: Obama has before even reaching the general election compromised on the idea of universal health care (and attacked Clinton’s universal plan using exactly the same ads Republicans once used) by doing this and accepting the conservative view on the issue as legitimate he hands them a victory because even when they lose they still get to set the boundaries of the issue.

The conservative movement’s reaction to compromise isn’t “well they’re meeting us halfway, let’s be reasonable about this”, it’s “let’s talk even further right so the point of compromise moves ever further our way”. In this way even losing isn’t bad for Republicans because with the current Democratic mindset even in losing they have shifted the mainstream in their direction. Republicans constantly talk about their extremes and simply by talking about ultra-conservative ideas makes them seem more reasonable, Democrats on the other hand are constantly in a rush to paint themselves as more reasonable versions of those nice electable Republicans.

The process which an idea journeys from the unthinkable to popular policy was neatly summed up by a right-wing think tank as the following:

–Unthinkable
–Radical
–Acceptable
–Sensible
–Popular
–Policy

And that’s a process every outfit claiming to be progressive should have pinned to their walls. There is no sense censoring yourself to seem more electable if the other side is constantly priming the electorate with an ever more conservative worldview - you have to be out there talking about the unthinkable ideas until they become an accepted view on the issue or you’re letting them win even when they lose.

Before we start calling the nominations today, it’s always worth remembering that Iowa only significance is its effect on the New Hampshire primary (an effect either amplified or diminished with the far shorter period in between this year, depending on how you argue it). After all, Bill Clinton received only 3% and went on to win the nomination. That said, the actual results are hugely significant in what they set up for the future.

A Clinton victory in Iowa would have likely meant a Clinton nomination as it would have restored the ‘inevitability’ narrative that unsurprisingly fell apart when the campaign really kicked off in the last month. Despite the endless commentary of pundits last summer was really only a pre-game, which Clinton hoped she could use to cement herself as the nominee in the public conciousness and let that carry her through the contest. Unfortunately at some point the campaign started believing it’s own myth and wasn’t nearly fast enough responding to Obama, who was only a non-entity last year because he was saving his money for when it really counted. It’d be interesting to see breakdowns of how significant second-preferences were in Obama’s win, I suspect they were significant because third-parties wanting to keep their candidate viable can’t give Clinton a victory as that would make her the indisputable front-runner, whereas Obama in first place potentially keeps the race open to other candidates, however unlikely.  [Update: Nope, I was wrong on that. If entrance polls are to be believed Obama only gained as much as Clinton from second preferences, most second preferences went to Edwards].

I’m personally a sceptical about an Obama presidency. He proclaims himself as The Change, yet also says that his would be a ‘reaching out’, bipartisan administration. Now this sounds fantastic…until you actually think about it. Compromise is a noble skill, but not one that lends itself to remaking the country. “We will change the Status Quo by asking the Status Quo nicely” doesn’t have a great ring to it.

It’s all very well to say partisanship is tearing the country apart but crying partisanship does imply that both sides are fighting, whereas the current ‘post-partisan’ Democrats running Congress seem to interpret bipartisan as ‘doing whatever they ask us to do without getting anything in return’. Aside a notable reduction in pork money (which was cut in half in the last year) and similar fiscal benefits (fiscal conservatives tend to be quite happy about divided government), this Congress has failed to implement any of the six points they campaigned on at election. They can on some level be forgiven for this, divided government makes the normally difficult process of passing federal law near impossible, but it does show how ineffectual trying to find ‘compromise’ is. Their continuous scale down of the pull-out of Iraq was impressive: “Bring them home! Ok, you can have the money if you promise bring them home sometime! Okay, you can have the money, but you be nice next time we want something eh? Oh I guess you’re right, we are fiscally irresponsible to try to give health care to children, we’d better stop that! What, more war money? Okay…but I want you to know, we feel very, very bad about this.” They’ve been as bipartisan as possible and have nothing to show for it but a disillusioned base. So I don’t think we can blame partisanship for all of America’s problems, in this instance, it’s more apt to blame Republicans.

So I’m disappointed that Edwards didn’t win Iowa, because whilst he isn’t dead yet, his strategy depends on a strong early rally that could carry him through the early states. He might still be in with a chance if he comes second to Obama again in New Hampshire and a few more primaries after, if Clinton status as front-runner becomes discredited we could end up with a new two horse race between Obama and Edwards, but with less than a month before most of the states have voted, but I’m just not sure there’s time for that dramatic a shift in the race.

Some however are already declaring him out of it:

He’s [Obama] made Hillary Clinton, with her wonkish, pragmatic approach to politics, seem uninspired. He’s made John Edwards, with his angry cries that “corporate greed is killing your children’s future,” seem old-fashioned. Edwards’s political career is probably over.

I don’t think ‘corporate greed is killing your children’s future’ sounds old-fashioned, I think it sounds…well, truthful. Yes Edwards sounds angry, but if these abuses of power don’t make you angry, they really should. I don’t think you get powerful corporations to hand back their power by sitting them around a table and asking them nicely. Obama really seems to believe that through nothing greater than sheer force of personality and being relentlessly reasonable he can persuade people to give up power and do something to their direct disadvantage. The ability to persuade is an excellent quality to have in a President and there’s no doubt that Obama can be formidable in that area, but if people are not willing to be persuaded then just being ‘The Persuader’ isn’t what’s needed.

I’m sure Obama has it in him to be a good president (even ignoring the incredibly low standard the current incumbent has set). He could probably can run a decent government and restore America’s reputation around the world, but I think there are better agents for changes running in this race and his would be a presidency that in retrospect will be far less than promised. I would be happy to be proven wrong.

New article on the beeb about the how the US presidential race remains very open on both sides. Of course, after making this point the only people talked about are the traditional frontrunners…. Clinton and Giuliani. Sure Edwards and Huckabee are mentioned too, but only as the worst case scenario situation that would draw Bloomberg into the race. Fantastically informative guys!

Having missed out giving any the New Year predictions, I present my incredibly vague predictions for the US Presidential Campaigns.

1. At least one of the nominees will not be Clinton, Obama, Giuliani or Romney.
2. There will be at least one independent candidate on the Ballot in November.
3. There will be no back-stabbing or filthy campaign tricks and the next President of the United States will walk into the Oval Office scandal-free and nothing bad will happen ever again.
4. Ever.

US government does something scary, counter-productive and down-right creepy. World shocked.

First we have the US claiming in a UK court to have the right to kidnap citizens wanted for crimes in the US. As it turns out, if they can get them home and call ‘base!’ it’s totally legit. If this is how the Bush administration sees fit to treat one of it’s closest allies, how can they possible expect to win a war for hearts and minds where people hate them? To be fair, this must be confusing the hell out of them “Those brits are mad when we create a vastly uneven extradition process and then refuse to sign our end into law, right ok, but they’re also mad when we ignore the whole thing? WHAT IS IT YOU PEOPLE WANT??”

Also, it turns out they’ve been using fire-fighters (who as it turns out have the right to enter property without a warrant) to watch out for people “who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States” and “to identify material or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities”. Wow, DISCONTENT! That’s like a kind of treason! Now, some may see this as an obvious corruption of the fire-fighters role (and impressively violating both the first and fourth amendments) but I choose to see it as a gift to bloggers. We’re all tired of being reduced to overused Orwell references, but we can’t help ourselves because they always seem startlingly relevant. Thankfully, with fire-fighters going around looking for suspect books, we can turn out attentions to the more obscure Fahrenheit 451 for our blogging inspiration! Thank you America!
*A-hem*

“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.”

There, not a hint of newspeak or Big Brother in sight! Don’t we all feel so much better?

This is something interesting from Real Clear Politics; apparently the Florida Democrats have agreed to make their primary non-binding in order to restore their delegates to the national convention. This must have meant they saw the DNC as willing to follow through on the rules making their delegates non-binding for holding a primary earlier than they were supposed to. Some people were sceptical the DNC would hold out all the way as avoiding Florida for the primaries could cost the Democrats support they’d need to win the general but it seems the Florida democrats didn’t want to risk of being made redundant. It’s yet to be worked out what the Florida Democrats will do instead of the primary, either a state convention or vote by mail seem to be the current choices, neither are perfect but this is definitely the best way out of a sticky situation for both state and national parties.

This is a great example of the DNC actually exerting power over a state party and should hopefully set a prescient; this might be the last we see of the front-loading trend for a while.

E-Vote Rigging in Ohio.

If true, quite scary. E-voting may be more advanced, but it’s far less checkable.

Are there computer programs that can be used to secretly fix elections?

Yes.

How do you know that to be the case?

Because in October of 2000, I wrote a prototype for Congressman Tom Feeney [R-FL]…

It would rig an election?

It would flip the vote, 51-49. Whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win.

And would that program that you designed, be something that elections officials… could detect?

They’d never see it.