I didn’t really expect Don Rumsfeld to be named White House press secretary, so I’m not disappointed that it was the loudly rumored Tony Snow who will be press secretary. Tony is bucking the trend – usually you work for a politician, then you go to work for the press (Stephanopolis, Mathews, Russert, and Scarborough (OK, he was a politician) come quickly to mind). Of course, Tony has already worked for a politician, and I can think of no more thankless job than working as a press secretary for a President’s last three years whom the press hate. It’s like being put in a cage with starving ferets for three years, and you’re the only food in the cage with them. Will the press go easy on him because 1. he was a colleague and 2. he’s got cancer? My money is on NOT in a big way because he worked for FOX and his illness is nothing next to the fact he’s working for BUSH! Nope, it will 3 years of daily “Get him, kill the heretic!” for Tony.
Archive for category National Politics
It’s Official: Tony Snow
Apr 26
Immigration: Mexico
Apr 3
Immigration has moved to the front burner in this country. Thoughtful people are writing thoughtfully – Jane Galt has a trio (is that a theme today?) of such posts:
Some rambling thoughts on immigration,
Unwanted guests?
More on immigration.
What I haven’t seen is what is driving the issue today – it’s really about Mexican immigrants and the large influx of illegal immigrants over our border with Mexico. Absent that large flow over a large border, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. I guess nobody wants to sound like a racist, but what grabs people’s attention isn’t how many technically savvy people come in on HB-1 visas from Asia and India, but how many poor Mexicans are willing to risk death to live in the United States.
The stakes are high all around on this issue – for both Mexico and the United States. We really want to get the answer right — and that does include all aspects of immigration, including how many HB-1 visas are issued.
And let’s face it, its better to be poor in the United States than it is in Mexico. I can’t say as I blame people who are trying to make a better life for themselves. But we need to balance everybodies interests, and not focus too exclusively on one particular group.
We need to take a dispassionate look at what we want the end state to be, and then figure out how to get there. I’d start with a Mexico that poor people aren’t willing to risk death to leave. So our ultimate goal is a Mexico that has the political and economic institutions that are able to take care of all its citizens. Of course, we have to (1) survive in the meantime, while (2) we help Mexico get there. So that means that while we look at the range of options on how the US deals with immigration, we need to always be looking at the effect that these measures have on Mexico (and really all the countries that have people who want to get out). For instance, building a wall along the entire border – what are the effects on immigration, the effects on the US, the effects on Mexico – all these things need to be considered, not just one.
Gerrymandering
Mar 8
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the gerrymander.
Gerrymandering is universally unpopular with voters and popular with politicians. And Stuart Taylor puts the case against gerrymandering quite well:
“The one-person, one-vote decisions of the early 1960s have had the unintended consequence of enabling politicians to choose their voters rather than the other way around”.
I don’t know which is worse, when one party gerrymanders at the expense of the other, or when incumbents of both parties combine to gerrymander at the expense of challengers of the other party.
One of the complaints is that as we have more and more safe districts, we have highly polarized politics. But what about the other extreme? If we drew districts to maximize competitiveness, would we be happy if a party that had 48% of the electorate managed to win 100% of the seats — which might happen in a smaller state with every district highly competitive. Would politics become focused even more on appearance, on sound bite, on the immediate tactical advantage on election day to the exclusion of good governance? So is the choice between polarized politics or representation that isn’t representative?
The other alternative is to take gerrymandering to the other limit, so that districts would be all equally safe which would mean that the representation in the legislature would most closely reflect the party makeup of the electorate. That would achieve the global result of accurate representation of the electorate, but people would feel even less connected to the political process. Heck, we could avoid all the expense and controversy associated with general elections and just hold primaries.
And if you think that most people vote for the person and not the party (you of course never do that, free thinker that you are), then gerrymandering wouldn’t work. What makes gerrymandering break down isn’t our rugged individualism, but that over time we move around and thus change the relationship between party and location, and that there are slow shifts in the electorate between the parties.
I don’t buy the theory that safer districts have led to more political strife. I think what we are seeing is a return to normal (although unpleasant) levels of political strife and incivility that after an abnormal period of consensus that was due to the experiences and outlook of my fathers generation – the one’s who grew up during the depression, fought WWII, and came home with the ability and desire to get along to get things done — and this change happens to correlate with more effective gerrymandering.
We could just select districts based on compactness and carve them up by computer without regard to their competitiveness, but then who knows what you’ll get — which is why politicians will never agree to such an approach. Would we be happy if such a scheme meant the dilution of minority votes, or inadvertantly made uncompetative districts that didn’t represent the relative strengths of the parties? Would we then have to step in with some sort of neutral commision to adjust the boundaries so that the districts conformed to notions of fairness, as if that isn’t a political judgement in itself?
Is there even a good answer on how to draw legislative districts in a two party system?
And don’t even get me started on the problems with one man, one vote.
Harry, Get Well Soon
Feb 15
Vice President Cheney accidentally shot a friend while quail hunting over the weekend and you’d think something of national import happened. I guess it was a slow weekend in the Natalie Holloway case. The VP’s tardiness in notifying the media — the 22 hour gap — is driving some people bonkers. What difference did the delay make? None has been offered, so I’m left with nothing but Ecclesiastes: Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity.
I realize that the best way for the VP to have handled the situation from a PR standpoint was to have immediately notified the press, made a tearful apology on camera, and in general treat it as more important than Iran getting nukes. But really, should I care that the VP accidentally shot a fellow hunter? And who should the VP apologize to besides Harry Whittington, the man he shot? He didn’t shoot the American people, so why does he owe us an apology? If all we want is to hear Cheney’s apology to Whittington, what do I make of all this outrage over the NSA listening to private conversations?
OK , I do think at least one important question has been raised by this “scandal”. Why is that preening doofus David Gregory on NBC’s payroll? I had no problem with quantum physics, but I’m completely stumped by that one.
Actually, the handling by Cheney may not be so bad as people are saying. For one thing, the press corps has predictably behaved so wretchedly that they are sharing the spotlight with him. And he’s built interest in the interview he’s going to do, so this way he only has to apologize on camera once. And thirdly, all of us who think of ourselves as laconic he-men admire the way he’s taken the laconic he-man approach to this. My inner laconic he-man has been stirred so much by the VP since since he and the President called New York Times reporter Adam Clymer a major league asshole (and of course the left was up in arms over that bit of truth telling) and Cheney alone told Senator Pat Leahy “‘intercourse’ you” when Pat was trying to play nice in private after blasting him in public. Laconic He-men are the same in private as in public, and expect other people to be the same.
I miss the Clinton presidency. Now there were real scandals and issues. Take eavesdropping on international calls. Every President since Alexander Graham Bell has done it, and every President, including Saint Jimmy, since FISA was inacted has said they still had the right to eavesdrop on international calls under the constitution. In other words, old news. But when Clinton was President, we got to see the claim resolved that per executive privelege Presidents should be immune to any non-Presidential lawsuits while President. Illegal wars? Heck, President Bush has congressional authorization. President Clinton had nothing when we pre-emtively attacked Serbia over Kosovo. Secrecy? Have you forgotten Hillary Care so soon? Maybe the VP should explain he grew up hunting with his father and all questions will cease. Hey, it worked when Hillary explained how she was able to make so much money in futures. I pity the Democrats who have so little to work with.
Alito Confirmed
Jan 31
In the category of unsurprising is the collapse of the fillibuster against Judge Alito and his confirmation. Only ardent leftists living inside the media bubble thought it was going to happen any other way.
The only real question is why Alito was confirmed 58-43 and Ginsberg 96-3. She wasn’t the more qualified candidate; Republicans voted on ability, Democrats on politics.
VDS
Jan 25
I have pondered over why the left in this country favors wars that meet two simple criteria: (1) spill little or preferably no American blood and (2) do not involve anything that anyone would consider a vital national interest. So we intervene in Haiti or the Balkans without the anti-war left causing much stir. I’ve always found it odd that the anti-republican-war-left which always has such an exaggerated concern for the welfare of American Soldiers hasn’t the slightest concern for foriegn civilians if the above criteria are met. And I think the reason is that they really do fear a “Vietnam quagmire” in every war, so it’s vitally important to pick wars that don’t cause American casualties (apparently the only benchmark of a quagmire) and wars from which we can just run away and not suffer any repurcussions.
Vietnam sure seems to be a turning point because before then the Democratic party had no trouble with warriors as president – men who weren’t afraid to pay any price, bear any burden in the cause of Truth, Justice, and the American way, guys like Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, Wilson, Polk, and old Andrew Jackson himself. These guys spent blood and treasure in wars they thought vital to the national interest. Scoop Jackson was the last major Democrat politician of that tradition. As the generation that experience Vietnam fades away, I hope the Democratic party can get over the trauma and return to the American mainstream – the best government is the result of the competition between two fundamentally sound parties.
So how do I dislike the Alito hearings? Let me count the ways.
1. Ted Kennedy Any claim that I need to take Ted Kennedy seriously is an offense. The fact that Massachusetts returns the broken down old drunk to the senate every six years is the best indication that the power of incubency is too strong in American politics. Ted, the man’s name is A-li-to, not Al-i-o-to. And for the record , it was Arlen Spector demonstrated who the real the ‘lion in winter’ is.
2. The Hypocrisy I’ll just pick one big example so as not to bore you. The Senate Democrats tell me I need to worry that an organization Judge Alito was a member of 40 years ago, Concerned Alumni of Princeton, was racist and sexist. OK, but how about Robert Byrd? He was not only a member of the Klu Klux Klan, which pretty much set the standard for racist organizations, he was a leader in it. And he still calls people “nigger”. And none of those Democratic senators has the slightest problem with Senator Byrd.
3. The Confirmation Process Confirmation hearings mix grotesque grandstanding with mud throwing by one set of partisans and mud removal by the other set of partisans in equal proportions, which leaves no time for an actual exchange of information with the confirmee. But when senators, who control the confirmation process, complain about the process like it’s something they have no control over, excuse me if I wretch and wretch again.
4. The Intellectual Dishonesty A significant segment of the left is always going on about how the Constitution is a living document that adapts to the needs of the present. How does it adapt? Well, nine people in Washington, AKA the Supreme Court, get to decide. And by golly if they say that the constitution has spoken to them in a new way, or that the American people have changed, well then, the Constitutionality of an issue has changed. So what’s up with this sudden devotion to stare decisis? How can a living document breath if it is put in the straitjacket of stare decisis? But what’s worse, it’s clear that approval/disapproval for someone holding such a position has nothing to do with traditional measures like judicial temperament, philosophy, or ability, but has everything to do with the person’s politics. Because what’s clear is you expect, even demand, that Supreme Court justices follow their own feelings and preferences, because that’s what this whole living document hooha is about. So the whole point of a confirmation hearing isn’t about finding out if a nominee is fit, but flinging so much dirt at a nominee of the other party that enough sticks to derail the confirmation. That and time on TV.
Lynn Swann For Governor
Jan 6
So Lynn Swann is running for Governor of Pennsylvania. Good for him. As a Republican. Hope he’s treated better by the Mediocrats party than JC Watts was.
You Can’t Handle The Truth
Nov 14
So, President Bush has finally decided to go after those Democrats who are smearing him by claming he lied or mislead about the intellegence on Iraq in order to drum up support for the war. It will be an uphill battle because not only will he have to contend with the Democrats, but the news media as well. The Democrats aren’t that formidable a foe, but the news media is much, much smoother at lies and misrepresentations. Good luck Mr. President, you’ll need it.
Law Reform
Nov 1
My biggest complaint with the civil justice system isn’t the system itself, but us. You know, Americans. We’re the ones who have adopted the idea that anything, and I mean anything can be litigated. Everything is open for review by fifteen strangers: twelve people off the street, two paid advocates, and a judge. There is no aspect of human interaction – business, personal, intimate, property – that can’t be hauled into a court at a later date for a do over. You may be thinking great, we need more oversight. But there is a penalty for all this, both in terms of direct costs paid to the practitioners and the opportunity costs in changed behavior. And our civil system doesn’t even protend to be speedly like our criminal system. Cases can drag on for years, which means that not only is everything subject to review, but it can be years before anything is final. That surely has to be a big drag on invention, risk taking, and business in general.
Another facet of the problem is that when you have breakthroughs in technology or science, everyone benefits. When you have breakthroughs in finance, everyone benefits as improved financial helps new ventures get financed. These breakthroughs are driven by the quality and number of people involved in these fields. But when it comes to law, it seems that breakthroughs there only benefit lawyers, which only increases the attraction to a field that is way over represented and talented in America. The explosion in class action lawsuits hasn’t done a thing for the average person — if anything it’s hurt them overall, but it sure has made a bunch of lawyers wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.
It used to be that farsighted rulers would periodically reform the legal code (Hammurabi was the first recorded). I know the legislatures across the land are too busy with far more sexy and immediate stuff, but I think we’re getting to the point that we really need to consider the kind of top to bottom overhaul to rein in the reach of lawsuits and combine it with a wholesale pruning of government regulation. But that won’t happen until we demand it. Just having a “business friendly” Supreme Court Justice doesn’t cut it.
