On the day of the election--and for the weeks and even months preceeding--Governor Romney knew he had the election in the bag, according to reports gleaned from his inner circle. That's why he only wrote a victory speech.
President Obama and his team were also quietly confident--confident not so much in their ad campaign or in the attendance at their rallies as in their rubber-meets-the-road ground game--all the offices they'd set up, all the retail politics they'd put in place where his campaign had the human face of a neighbor asking your for your vote for him.
Apparently Romney and his team were disdainful of this ground game, and, conversely, supremely confident in their first-hand experience of rallies and sense of momentum.
I'm reminded of the confidence of the Japanese Imperial High Command on the eve of Pearl Harbor. They were confident that their country's fighting spirit and unification under their Emperor would defeat the relatively untheological logistics of the Americans.
Whether the analogy is correct or not, Romney's misplaced confidence--midplaced because the most non-ideological pollsters weren't reading it the way he was--makes me confident the right man won.
Apart from politics, I want the President of the United States to base his efforts, his policies on cold, hard, unvarnished reality. I don't want a dreamer in the White House. I don't want someone there who believes his ideas trump facts.
I want an inductive thinker.
Obama isn't my ideal leader. I don't think he'll make his place in the rankings of American historians much above the 15th place he currently holds. But he'll do a lot better than another President who, like George Bush II, placed more value in what his gut told him than in what unemotional, hard-eyed technical people told him.
I did not think Romney was like this. He was presented to us as Mr. Fixit--as a man of facts. As the guy who'd be America's CEO. Someone tightly wedded to reality.
It's not like he's delusional. He made a much vaster fortune than 99% of Americans have made, and despite his advantages, he still earned that money very skillfully, unlike Bush, who got his money through a skeezy baseball deal. So I'm surprised that he turned out to be less realisticin the sphere of politics than he was in the sphere of business.
Perhaps because politics is more tied to moral values and beliefs for him? But he turned his back on so many values he'd once declared fundamental to his political philosophy.
So in the final analysis, perhaps he just wanted the gig too much, and let that desire swamp his common sense. He has a powerful mind. But a powerful mind can be steered into dark waters full of icebergs.
And in the last analysis, whatever a candidate's political philosophy, Mitt Romney proved in the way he lost that he shouldn't have won.
Showing posts with label election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label election. Show all posts
Friday, November 9, 2012
Thursday, November 8, 2012
What did the American people say Tuesday?
The people re-elected a President who said he'd veto any budget plan that didn't include raising taxes on the rich--specifically, those getting more than $250,000 a year.
The people re-elected a House whose Republican majority had all signed a written pledge to their boss Grover Norquist not to raise any taxes on anyone for any reason whatsoever.
Both liberals and conservatives had advocated waiting on major legislation until this election was over, in hopes that the other side would be swept out of power and the winners would not have to compromise.
Well, the other side wasn't. [side note: if the rest of the world had had a say, the Republicans would have been swept out of office at every level; Democrats and Republicans draw very different conclusions from this factoid, however]
However, the exit polls showed 60% of the public agreeing with the President about hiking taxes on the rich and only 35% agreeing with the Republican House that serves Grover Norquist.
So the public's voting to preserve the previous balance of power was not a vote for gridlock. No poll said that, though that is what diehard Movement Republicans want. But most people were saying with their votes and in the polls that they wanted Washington to compromise.
Compromise.
That means raising taxes--not just eliminating loopholes. Raising taxes.
But not as much as Democrats want.
And it also means cutting back the social safety net.
But not as much as Republicans want.
And they expect President Re-Elect Obama to drive this compromise--not congressional leaders.
The public holds everyone in Washington responsible for the mess and responsible for cleaning it up.
I'll be happy if I'm unhappy with the result.
The people re-elected a House whose Republican majority had all signed a written pledge to their boss Grover Norquist not to raise any taxes on anyone for any reason whatsoever.
Both liberals and conservatives had advocated waiting on major legislation until this election was over, in hopes that the other side would be swept out of power and the winners would not have to compromise.
Well, the other side wasn't. [side note: if the rest of the world had had a say, the Republicans would have been swept out of office at every level; Democrats and Republicans draw very different conclusions from this factoid, however]
However, the exit polls showed 60% of the public agreeing with the President about hiking taxes on the rich and only 35% agreeing with the Republican House that serves Grover Norquist.
So the public's voting to preserve the previous balance of power was not a vote for gridlock. No poll said that, though that is what diehard Movement Republicans want. But most people were saying with their votes and in the polls that they wanted Washington to compromise.
Compromise.
That means raising taxes--not just eliminating loopholes. Raising taxes.
But not as much as Democrats want.
And it also means cutting back the social safety net.
But not as much as Republicans want.
And they expect President Re-Elect Obama to drive this compromise--not congressional leaders.
The public holds everyone in Washington responsible for the mess and responsible for cleaning it up.
I'll be happy if I'm unhappy with the result.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Lessons from the election
For Liberals:
You didn't win. President Obama is not a liberal--he's a moderate (except by the standards of right wing ideologues). The House remains firmly in extremely conservative hands. The Senate only retains a slim Democratic majority--not enough to overcome the filibusters the Republicans have shown themselves willing to use at the drop of a hat. And our Constitution gives conservatives more electoral power overall than liberals, due to the nature of the Senate and the Electoral College.
So you can't get what you want nationally. You can get part of what you want, but only by compromising with a powerful faction of angry, embattled, aging white voters who literally hate our President, who believe that compromise is immoral, and who get nearly all their political information from the various organs of the GOP Ministry of Propaganda.
Meaning that many of the things that you accept as facts--they don't. So you don't even have a common basis for discussion with them, much less agreement. And the President has proven himself to be remarkably poor at communicating about his policies with America.
This problem was compounded by the fact that according to nonpartisan factchecking organizations, the President and his allies lied and dissembled a lot during the campaign. The other side did more, but that doesn't justify the lying the Democrats did.
The President's victory last night didn't change any of this. So America's Other Half that Romney so disdained have their work cut out for them. Doing the Victory Dance right now would be a mistake.
For Conservatives:
You should be grateful that you lost the run for the presidency, and lost it outside any margin for error. As conservatives, you want stability. A disputed election full of recounts and lawsuits and, worse yet, the Supreme Court picking a winner do not lead to stability.
You lost the election in part because your leaders lied even more than the Democrats did, and your leaders did it so blatantly and outrageously that it backfired. People you lie to who discover you've been lying to them realize that you've been treating them like idiots. Surprise--people don't appreciate that. It betrays a lack of faith in conservative principles. Not to mention the fact that conservative principles include being honest. When you abandon that you abandon conservatism.
And you lost the election in part because your leaders convinced a majority of Americans that the Republican Party is the party of Aging White Men and their Wives. The constant use of racial dogwhistle attacks on the President fooled no one. If you continue this circle-the-wagons Voertrekker mindset, America's demographics will progressively marginalize you. It is not conservative to be racist. Right now you say you're not racist but you walk like racists and talk like racists who are denying their racism nudge nudge wink wink.
Dismissing General Powell's endorsement of Obama as race-based while calling Condoleeza Rice's endorsement of Romney principled was only the latest of these manifestations.
And this hysterical talk about hating government makes you sound like a bunch of anarchists. It's fine to seek more efficient government, and to oppose government employees making more than their private sector counterparts. It's not fine to just keep saying Big Government Bad. America's federal government is nothing like what ran the Soviet Uniion, and equating the two makes you look stupid. Or that you think the people you're trying to persuade are stupid.
But if you look across all the elections that were held yesterday, you didn't lose, even though you didn't win either. 30 of the nation's governors are Republican. The House is solidly controlled by Republicans. The Senate didn't get a filibuster-proof Democratic majority.
This means that you can get most of what you want at the state level in the majority of states. And in Washington it means that the Democrats can't walk over you--and you can't walk over them.
Your choice is stalemate or compromise. Compromise is not immoral by actual conservative standards. It's only immoral by radical ideologues' standards. Moreover, the message America as a whole sent to Washington was a clear mandate to seek compromise.
For Moderates:
One of yours won re-election to the Presidency, though he'll have to work with the embattled right wingers and left wingers in Congress to get anything done.
And moderates tend to have a fuzzy vision in contrast to the clear, hard, bright visions of the extremists of both sides. We have to work extra-hard, consequently, to articulate a centrist vision for the country. We don't just want a compromise between Left and Right. We want a centrist vision from the President, and it can't stop with inspiring stem-winding speeches. He has to be equally eloquent about the nuts and bolts of implementing that vision.
You didn't win. President Obama is not a liberal--he's a moderate (except by the standards of right wing ideologues). The House remains firmly in extremely conservative hands. The Senate only retains a slim Democratic majority--not enough to overcome the filibusters the Republicans have shown themselves willing to use at the drop of a hat. And our Constitution gives conservatives more electoral power overall than liberals, due to the nature of the Senate and the Electoral College.
So you can't get what you want nationally. You can get part of what you want, but only by compromising with a powerful faction of angry, embattled, aging white voters who literally hate our President, who believe that compromise is immoral, and who get nearly all their political information from the various organs of the GOP Ministry of Propaganda.
Meaning that many of the things that you accept as facts--they don't. So you don't even have a common basis for discussion with them, much less agreement. And the President has proven himself to be remarkably poor at communicating about his policies with America.
This problem was compounded by the fact that according to nonpartisan factchecking organizations, the President and his allies lied and dissembled a lot during the campaign. The other side did more, but that doesn't justify the lying the Democrats did.
The President's victory last night didn't change any of this. So America's Other Half that Romney so disdained have their work cut out for them. Doing the Victory Dance right now would be a mistake.
For Conservatives:
You should be grateful that you lost the run for the presidency, and lost it outside any margin for error. As conservatives, you want stability. A disputed election full of recounts and lawsuits and, worse yet, the Supreme Court picking a winner do not lead to stability.
You lost the election in part because your leaders lied even more than the Democrats did, and your leaders did it so blatantly and outrageously that it backfired. People you lie to who discover you've been lying to them realize that you've been treating them like idiots. Surprise--people don't appreciate that. It betrays a lack of faith in conservative principles. Not to mention the fact that conservative principles include being honest. When you abandon that you abandon conservatism.
And you lost the election in part because your leaders convinced a majority of Americans that the Republican Party is the party of Aging White Men and their Wives. The constant use of racial dogwhistle attacks on the President fooled no one. If you continue this circle-the-wagons Voertrekker mindset, America's demographics will progressively marginalize you. It is not conservative to be racist. Right now you say you're not racist but you walk like racists and talk like racists who are denying their racism nudge nudge wink wink.
Dismissing General Powell's endorsement of Obama as race-based while calling Condoleeza Rice's endorsement of Romney principled was only the latest of these manifestations.
And this hysterical talk about hating government makes you sound like a bunch of anarchists. It's fine to seek more efficient government, and to oppose government employees making more than their private sector counterparts. It's not fine to just keep saying Big Government Bad. America's federal government is nothing like what ran the Soviet Uniion, and equating the two makes you look stupid. Or that you think the people you're trying to persuade are stupid.
But if you look across all the elections that were held yesterday, you didn't lose, even though you didn't win either. 30 of the nation's governors are Republican. The House is solidly controlled by Republicans. The Senate didn't get a filibuster-proof Democratic majority.
This means that you can get most of what you want at the state level in the majority of states. And in Washington it means that the Democrats can't walk over you--and you can't walk over them.
Your choice is stalemate or compromise. Compromise is not immoral by actual conservative standards. It's only immoral by radical ideologues' standards. Moreover, the message America as a whole sent to Washington was a clear mandate to seek compromise.
For Moderates:
One of yours won re-election to the Presidency, though he'll have to work with the embattled right wingers and left wingers in Congress to get anything done.
And moderates tend to have a fuzzy vision in contrast to the clear, hard, bright visions of the extremists of both sides. We have to work extra-hard, consequently, to articulate a centrist vision for the country. We don't just want a compromise between Left and Right. We want a centrist vision from the President, and it can't stop with inspiring stem-winding speeches. He has to be equally eloquent about the nuts and bolts of implementing that vision.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
One sliver of possible Democratic benefit from Obama's loss
Before President Obama's loss of the first presidential debate--a loss purely the product of his underestimating his opposition and the importance of the debate (he should have taken it as a given that Mitt Romney would be aggressive and lie prodigiously)--Romney's billionaire backers were about to pull their money from his campaign and direct it towards Senate races across the country. Now they're not--big money is sticking with Romney. So whether Romney's current advantage maintains through the election, Democrats may have a better chance of hanging on to the Senate--which is crucial, from the viewpoints of both parties.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Public opinion polls tell you what the public thinks? Yes but...
The people who live in the most naive fantasy universe are, paradoxically, drawn from the population of people who consider themselves the most realistic.
The fantasy is that public opinion is formed in freedom, and that, armed with this public opinion, a majority has the power to get the legislators--and, hence, the legislation that the majority wants.
This has not been true from the moment the United States was organized to this moment, now.
One example: Al Gore received the majority of the popular vote in 2000. Last time I checked, he didn't become President. Nor have fifteen other candidates through our history who like Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Pervasive gerrymandering--in both Republican and Democratic-dominated states--has led to incumbent politicians being able to pick their voters, instead of vice versa.
The electoral college system--unique among nations--means that one Wyoming voter has over three times the "voting power" of one California or Texas voter.
A nationwide vote suppression campaign by the Republican Party (under the transparent lie of "voter fraud") means that in many areas Democratic voters will find it harder if not impossible to vote--particularly if they're black or college students or old and/or rural, or have jobs they can't afford to take time off from to vote. And many Republican-dominated states now disenfranchise people convicted of a felony for life, on the assumption that all felonies merit a lifetime of not being a full citizen any more. By pure coincidence most of such people are black, courtesy of a system that penalizes blacks more for comparable crimes than whites, among other things.
And even if the voting franchise dice weren't loaded, the free will of American voters is hugely compromised by the vast and largely unaccountable sums of money being poured into a no holds barred, broad-spectrum propaganda campaign aimed at Democrats and particularly at a Democratic president.
I'm continually flabbergasted at how this pervasive campaign goes unnoticed by the media--mainstream and otherwise--in accounting for public opinion.
I remember a news story years about about how the villagers in a central American country got together and murdered an American aid worker because some local demagogue had spread the rumor that she was buying children to be trafficked to America.
And in Africa polio was about to wiped out when some Nigerian Muslim leaders spread the rumor that the vaccine was actually a White Western plot to sterilize African women. No one knows whether it will be possible to kill off polio in Africa now.
This isn't some "foreign problem." Here in America an amazing number of people--many with educations--believe, counter to all medical fact--that vaccinating their children endangers them, and that not vaccinating them is good for them.
People everywhere and everywhen are amazingly gullible when it comes to rumomongering when it panders to fears and antipathies they already have.
Thus in the coming election, it is not true that Americans--2/3 of whom have already made up their minds BTW--are basing their voting choices on diligent personal research focused on relatively unbiased information sources such as Factcheck.org and Politifact.com. Their ideas in a majority of cases reflect potent emotional narratives that were fed to them in many times a day doses.
And that, my friends, is how you can get people to vote against their own financial and other best interests.
Most other democracies recognize this and have worked mightily to keep money--whatever the source--out of electoral campaigns. People are highly susceptible to propaganda. I know this from my training in sociology in college, and I can feel its pull on me every day, and only my training in recognizing and dealing with propaganda protects me from being herded by it.
Lastly, one irony of this whole thing is that part of the propaganda missile aimed especially at less-educated white men is the term "sheeple" that they're invited to apply to Lib-er-uls. Well, Lib-er-uls can be herded, to be honest, but the very people who bandy this term of contempt around the most are the biggest "sheeple" of all.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Bush II who?
And yet Romney, Gingrich and Santorum all endorse Bush II's overall tax and economic policies, along with his Ready! Fire! Aim! foreign policy, firm belief in big government intrusion into our bedrooms with no respect for states' rights (contrary to GOP mantras about same), and contempt for science and economics when their findings don't support GOP Billionairian theology. They should give credit where its due--and so should their followers.
Especially since the overall policy similarities give us a horror movie-quality foreshadowing of what a Republican-dominated Congress, Presidency, and Judiciary would have in store for America.
Of course my non-Republican conclusion is that Republicans don't want to talk about Bush II precisely because a Romney presidency would be Bush II Redux. Right down to both of them claiming to be "outsiders." Now there's unintentional humor for ya.
Romney would kill medical care reform, just like Bush II would; he'd hang onto the tax cuts for the rich that Bush II got--and which, instead of trickling down, has cost America at least 3/4 of a trillion dollars so far and counting; he'd endorse the government rape of women trying to get abortions (or should there be a different word for inserting a foreign object into a woman's privates against her will at the behest of male-dominated legislatures and male governors?). And he'd enrich himself personally and substantially through implementing his policies--just like Bush II did. And Bush II and Romney both worked hard to mimic what regular people who weren't born rich were like--Bush II with his fake ranch, Romney through his, um, family anecdotes (they're regular Motor City folks because his wife has two Cadillacs--and she doesn't "feel" rich!).
Bush II is one of your own. He's not just your past--he is, if the GOP has its way with us, our future. And he still actually rules one of the three branches of government, through his radical corporatist appointees, who are likely to rule that roost for decades to come, regardless of who wins in November.
So come on, guys, give credit where it's due. You aren't the party of Reagan--who raised taxes repeatedly and avoided foreign entanglements. You're the party of Bush II. Own it.
Monday, October 25, 2010
It's actually not all about the economy, stupid--even now
My response to Paul Krugman's current editorial in the NYTimes, blaming the coming Democratic Party bloodbath on inadequate economic policy:
To an economist, everything is economics. But it ain't. I agree with Krugman's economic analysis, but he's missing the sociology of this election. The Democratic Party has morphed from the party of the working stiff to the party of the minority and public employee unions, which themselves employ disproportionate numbers of minorities.
What follows from that is support for a social agenda a majority of Americans oppose: support for illegal immigration--despite an actually good record of enforcement--support for the Mexicaniztion of the American Southwest--support for polylingual ballots--opposition to the English language (I'm describing the emotional reality of these things, mind you)--support for secular people like me who have no use for religion--support for homosexuals, including in the military.
I'm not saying all these supports are bad or good. I'm saying they add up to a zeitgeist that Joe Lunchbook sees as being against HIM.
And the Democratic leadership hasn't done much to counter this impression.
And the many millions being spent by secretive agents of the Billionaire's Club pushes putatively economic message, but if you look at the atmospherics of their ad blitz it's about tribe: if you're a white American who isn't a liberal, they want you to think the Republican tribe--it ceased being a political party in the 1970s--is your tribe, and the Democratic Party is the enemy tribe, to be opposed across the board.
That's what's really going on. I believe Professor Krugman is suffering from a corollary of confirmation bias--in this case, the belief that your academic speciality is at the heart of the politics that's going on.
It's not. People talk about it because they can't or wont' speak the tribality they're feeling. But that's like asking a guy why he bought a ticket me yellow Beemer convertible and he talks about resale value and reliability, not that he got it because he thinks it's a chick magnet.
As Gregory House said, "People always lie." Including to themselves.
So if the Democratic Party wants America back, it's going to have to make some terrifically hard decisions about what it wants to accomplish, and whether adopting a race/ethnic/culturally blind platform isn't the best choice today, even if its political correctness was correct back in the 1960s when blacks were murdered for voting across the South. It's not sunshine and flowers today...but the Democratic Party won't be able to do squat for minorities if it's out of office, will it?
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Of oil spills and elections
The supertanker Exxon Valdez spilled its oily guts into Prince William Sound in Alaska on March 24, 1989. The damage to the Sound and to the livelihoods of the locals who lived there was immediate and catastrophic.
After the usual foot-dragging and denial, Exxon Corporation belatedly spent a lot of money on cleanup there. When things looked normal again it stopped.
But even today, in many inlets around the Sound, if you pick up a rock or dig up a shovelful of beach sand, you'll still see the abundant black guck of Exxon Valdez crude.
Environmental scientists went back there in 2009 and concluded that it would take another 30 years for the environment to really recover.
I was thinking about this because a Chinese coal freighter just ran aground near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and will probably break up. Of course in a space of weeks the sea will look as it did before. The reef this ship crashed into will not. Reefs can take centuries to recover fully from reef groundings by big ships.
This has a bearing on elections.
Here in America, every two years the voters call their elected representatives to account. In this year's elections, the Democratic Party's legislature and executive branch will be held to account for current high levels of unemployment, housing foreclosures, healthcare costs, government efficiency (or lack thereof), general recovery from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the size of the deficit, doing something about the estimated 12 million citizens of other nations residing here illegally, and the progress of the wars/occupations/recovery of Iraq and Afghanistan.
I believe in holding legislators to account, as do we all. But the current situation bears comparison with the Exxon Valdez disaster. The damage was done in a space of hours. The recovery will have spanned 50 years before it's done.
Publicly held corporations often have a similar problem, with management being forced to work towards each quarterly report even if the issues can't be solved in that timeframe. This distorts businesses, just as elections with shorter timeframes than proper solutions distort government.
This is an advantage dictatorships like China have over us. They can match plans to problems, while we have to match plans to elections--often at the expense of the problems.
This is true of so many things. You can get shot in a second and take months or years to recover...or never recover. Car accidents, ditto. Bank robberies, ditto. Earthquakes, wars. A nasty kid kicking over a building block structure another kid spent half an hour to build.
Hence the saying "sin in haste, repent at leisure."
It took the Republican Party eight long years to do the damage the Democrats are now being given two years to fix--and that's not even taking into account the fact that the Republican minorities in Congress are routinely filibustering over two thirds of legislation and appointments. The Republican belief in swiftly putting things to an "up or down vote" vanished when the Democrats took power.
Republicans say "wait a minute. The recession was caused by Barney Frank!" i.e. forcing banks to make all those subprime mortgages. This has an element of truth, but it's a red herring, because it's Republican deregulation that enabled banks to export the risk of those subprime loans to the general economy, aided and abetted by risk-evaluation organizations in the pay of the financiers making the risks.
It's deregulation that turned the banks into gambling casinos. If banks had had to take full responsibility for bank loans, they wouldn't have made such risky loans. Also--doesn't anyone remember Bush II prattling on endlessly about "the ownership society" ? Now we've become the "foreclosure society."
But however the situation was created, at the moment the Democrats took over in 2008, no democratic (as opposed to dictatorial) solution to these myriad problems could show significant results in two years. Just as, even if Exxon hadn't slow-footed the Prince William Sound cleanup, it would still have taken decades to achieve.
Plus there's an underlying problem that I think is equally the fault of Democrats and Republicans: failure to maintain our nation' s infrastructure--water pipes, bridges, the electrical grid, roadways etc.
This was something that could have been deferred without the problem surfacing in the time between one election and the next, and so the money was stolen at every level, from city to nation, and diverted into expenditures with showy, immediate results.
The problem being that deferred maintenance costs more--much more--than regular maintenance. For example, I had a bicycle once whose chain I didn't lubricate and clean regularly. As a result I had to replace most of the drivetrain prematurely, for over $300. The same holds for roads and bridges and tracks, oh my...
So in addition to Republican major sins and Democratic lesser sins we have bridges falling down and killing people from decades of bipartisan deferred maintenance...and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
And in addition to that we have a very well-financed campaign to make people believe government is always corrupt and ineffective and that virtually all government functions can be done better by for-profit private enterprise. This campaign is financed by for-profit private enterprises. What a surprise.
And right now this campaign is telling people to kick out the people trying to fix the henhouse, and put the foxes back in charge. After all, who knows more about henhouses than foxes?
After the usual foot-dragging and denial, Exxon Corporation belatedly spent a lot of money on cleanup there. When things looked normal again it stopped.
But even today, in many inlets around the Sound, if you pick up a rock or dig up a shovelful of beach sand, you'll still see the abundant black guck of Exxon Valdez crude.
Environmental scientists went back there in 2009 and concluded that it would take another 30 years for the environment to really recover.
I was thinking about this because a Chinese coal freighter just ran aground near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and will probably break up. Of course in a space of weeks the sea will look as it did before. The reef this ship crashed into will not. Reefs can take centuries to recover fully from reef groundings by big ships.
This has a bearing on elections.
Here in America, every two years the voters call their elected representatives to account. In this year's elections, the Democratic Party's legislature and executive branch will be held to account for current high levels of unemployment, housing foreclosures, healthcare costs, government efficiency (or lack thereof), general recovery from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the size of the deficit, doing something about the estimated 12 million citizens of other nations residing here illegally, and the progress of the wars/occupations/recovery of Iraq and Afghanistan.
I believe in holding legislators to account, as do we all. But the current situation bears comparison with the Exxon Valdez disaster. The damage was done in a space of hours. The recovery will have spanned 50 years before it's done.
Publicly held corporations often have a similar problem, with management being forced to work towards each quarterly report even if the issues can't be solved in that timeframe. This distorts businesses, just as elections with shorter timeframes than proper solutions distort government.
This is an advantage dictatorships like China have over us. They can match plans to problems, while we have to match plans to elections--often at the expense of the problems.
This is true of so many things. You can get shot in a second and take months or years to recover...or never recover. Car accidents, ditto. Bank robberies, ditto. Earthquakes, wars. A nasty kid kicking over a building block structure another kid spent half an hour to build.
Hence the saying "sin in haste, repent at leisure."
It took the Republican Party eight long years to do the damage the Democrats are now being given two years to fix--and that's not even taking into account the fact that the Republican minorities in Congress are routinely filibustering over two thirds of legislation and appointments. The Republican belief in swiftly putting things to an "up or down vote" vanished when the Democrats took power.
Republicans say "wait a minute. The recession was caused by Barney Frank!" i.e. forcing banks to make all those subprime mortgages. This has an element of truth, but it's a red herring, because it's Republican deregulation that enabled banks to export the risk of those subprime loans to the general economy, aided and abetted by risk-evaluation organizations in the pay of the financiers making the risks.
It's deregulation that turned the banks into gambling casinos. If banks had had to take full responsibility for bank loans, they wouldn't have made such risky loans. Also--doesn't anyone remember Bush II prattling on endlessly about "the ownership society" ? Now we've become the "foreclosure society."
But however the situation was created, at the moment the Democrats took over in 2008, no democratic (as opposed to dictatorial) solution to these myriad problems could show significant results in two years. Just as, even if Exxon hadn't slow-footed the Prince William Sound cleanup, it would still have taken decades to achieve.
Plus there's an underlying problem that I think is equally the fault of Democrats and Republicans: failure to maintain our nation' s infrastructure--water pipes, bridges, the electrical grid, roadways etc.
This was something that could have been deferred without the problem surfacing in the time between one election and the next, and so the money was stolen at every level, from city to nation, and diverted into expenditures with showy, immediate results.
The problem being that deferred maintenance costs more--much more--than regular maintenance. For example, I had a bicycle once whose chain I didn't lubricate and clean regularly. As a result I had to replace most of the drivetrain prematurely, for over $300. The same holds for roads and bridges and tracks, oh my...
So in addition to Republican major sins and Democratic lesser sins we have bridges falling down and killing people from decades of bipartisan deferred maintenance...and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
And in addition to that we have a very well-financed campaign to make people believe government is always corrupt and ineffective and that virtually all government functions can be done better by for-profit private enterprise. This campaign is financed by for-profit private enterprises. What a surprise.
And right now this campaign is telling people to kick out the people trying to fix the henhouse, and put the foxes back in charge. After all, who knows more about henhouses than foxes?
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Wife-beaters and the GOP
The sad spectacle of roughly half the country continuing to support today's Republican Party reminds me of the woman who continues to make excuses for her wife-beater husband, continues to bail him out of jail, refuses to press charges, believes her abusive husbands' promises that he's changed--that this time it'll be different.You betcha.
Honestly, I'm not a big fan of today's Democratic Party either. But it's hard to imagine how they could do worse.
And yet I was just listening to Rush Limbaugh this morning, and his followers calling in believed totally. Repub=God; Demo=Satan. And no, I'm not exaggerating. They're absolutely certain that this time it'll be different.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The conservative choice for President
I've heard a lot of Republican commentators tie themselves in knots trying to describe Palin as ready to become the President of the United States if McCain were incapacitated.
She is not. The Couric interviews were a truer measure of her readiness than the Biden debate, since it precluded responding with memorized talking points.
I'm not saying this because I think Obama's a cynosure. He isn't either, but he obviously has the intellectual capacity and general knowledge required, as well as what I'd call the "presidential temperament."
This is really important. My Republican friends--including my spouse--should not vote for the McCain ticket even if McCain and Palin espouse the same values.
So would many bright 15 year old conservatives.
A values match matters IF and only if the person in question is qualified to do the job.
I may have the right attitude for a fighter pilot, but it doesn't matter because I'm old, myopic, and lack the God-given physical coordination required of a fighter pilot. So my attitude/character/values are irrelevant.
Let me stipulate that you may well think poorly of Obama's political positions; ditto Biden. But they obviously meet the basic standard of competency. Heck, the way Obama's run his race--from zero to hero--proves it in spades.
But even if you think Obama is a liberal who will appoint the wrong Supreme Court justices and sign every pork-laden spending bill his party's Congress sends him (like Bush did)--he can run the country. Palin can't. You know she can't. And whether McCain can or not, his age and medical history mean that if Palin can't you can't vote for McCain--even if his values match yours perfectly.
This is a bitter pill to swallow. I realize that. And I don't feel exactly happy about voting for Obama. After all, Obama believes that the ruling elite of Mexico should get to export Mexico's home-grown overpopulation crisis to America, at the expense of working-class American jobs and wages. And his defense of this stance is completely specious. He's simply pandering to Latino voters. Too bad McCain isn't much better.
But I can't vote for a ticket that could put someone as unready as Palin in the most important job not just in America but on Earth.
And our votes must communicate to both parties that we won't let political positions trump incompetence.
If you don't believe me about Palin's unreadiness, go back and look at her long interviews with legitimate journalists. She didn't just flub the answers--she didn't understand the questions. Her performance went beyond nervousness. She. Is. Not. Up. To. The. Task.
I was honestly tempted by McCain until he picked Palin. But besides Palin's falling so far short of the mark, it reveals McCain as someone who's willing to roll the dice. I want someone more cautious for my president this time around. And I'd bet dollars to donuts that the thing Obama is probably keeping under his hat is that he's actually more small-c conservative--that is, cautious and willing to listen to knowledgeable others--than his most rabid supporters think he is.
Vote--however reluctantly--for Obama/Biden. It's the conservative choice.
She is not. The Couric interviews were a truer measure of her readiness than the Biden debate, since it precluded responding with memorized talking points.
I'm not saying this because I think Obama's a cynosure. He isn't either, but he obviously has the intellectual capacity and general knowledge required, as well as what I'd call the "presidential temperament."
This is really important. My Republican friends--including my spouse--should not vote for the McCain ticket even if McCain and Palin espouse the same values.
So would many bright 15 year old conservatives.
A values match matters IF and only if the person in question is qualified to do the job.
I may have the right attitude for a fighter pilot, but it doesn't matter because I'm old, myopic, and lack the God-given physical coordination required of a fighter pilot. So my attitude/character/values are irrelevant.
Let me stipulate that you may well think poorly of Obama's political positions; ditto Biden. But they obviously meet the basic standard of competency. Heck, the way Obama's run his race--from zero to hero--proves it in spades.
But even if you think Obama is a liberal who will appoint the wrong Supreme Court justices and sign every pork-laden spending bill his party's Congress sends him (like Bush did)--he can run the country. Palin can't. You know she can't. And whether McCain can or not, his age and medical history mean that if Palin can't you can't vote for McCain--even if his values match yours perfectly.
This is a bitter pill to swallow. I realize that. And I don't feel exactly happy about voting for Obama. After all, Obama believes that the ruling elite of Mexico should get to export Mexico's home-grown overpopulation crisis to America, at the expense of working-class American jobs and wages. And his defense of this stance is completely specious. He's simply pandering to Latino voters. Too bad McCain isn't much better.
But I can't vote for a ticket that could put someone as unready as Palin in the most important job not just in America but on Earth.
And our votes must communicate to both parties that we won't let political positions trump incompetence.
If you don't believe me about Palin's unreadiness, go back and look at her long interviews with legitimate journalists. She didn't just flub the answers--she didn't understand the questions. Her performance went beyond nervousness. She. Is. Not. Up. To. The. Task.
I was honestly tempted by McCain until he picked Palin. But besides Palin's falling so far short of the mark, it reveals McCain as someone who's willing to roll the dice. I want someone more cautious for my president this time around. And I'd bet dollars to donuts that the thing Obama is probably keeping under his hat is that he's actually more small-c conservative--that is, cautious and willing to listen to knowledgeable others--than his most rabid supporters think he is.
Vote--however reluctantly--for Obama/Biden. It's the conservative choice.
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