What "I Voted" Stickers Actually Do

On Bill Maher's latest show, while lamenting that more people in our society don't vote, he lampooned the idea of the "I voted" sticker as bragging about performing a relatively minor civic duty. I see it differently. When you wear an "I voted" sticker in a culture with low voter turnout, the sticker serves as a reminder to others that it's election day. The stickers also have some potential to create social or peer pressure to vote.

Jennifer Rubin Finds a Mirror

Jennifer Rubin, who people say is smart but who nonetheless rattles off a predictable set of talking points and often makes hare-brained assertions, comments on Ted Cruz,

Smarts don’t always equate to common sense. In the case of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), there is an inverse relationship between the two. I’m told by smart lawyers that he has a sharp legal mind, can think on his feet and has remarkable recall for facts, cases and even page numbers of the briefs. But his political judgment has become distorted by ambition.

Hm...

Her illustration of Cruz's 'smarts' reminds me of an anecdote about a lawyer who was similarly famed for his ability to provide pinpoint citations, on his feet, in court. Somebody asked him, eventually, how he managed to recall cases and even page numbers with such specificity. "I make them up. Nobody ever checks." But with a bit less cynicism, having a good memory - even an eidetic memory - is proof of good memory, not intelligence. Cruz may well be as smart as some people say, or he may be smart in the same sense that Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan are touted as intellectual giants among their Republican peers. When the pond is that shallow, you don't need to be a particularly big fish to stand out - and sometimes all it takes is for you to be the one people see because it's sticking its head out of the pond with its mouth constantly open. I'm also reminded of a certain trial lawyer who once ran for President, who strikes me as having been deemed a great trial lawyer by virtue of having a well-rehearsed presentation of a particular type of big money case, and who retired into politics when that particular line of litigation dried up. Or a certain TV host who brags about her conviction rate for homicide prosecutions, never mind that homicide cases are often open-and-shut with defendants going to trial only because they have nothing to lose. You have to look beyond the surface to find out if somebody truly is as brilliant as he and his friends claim him to be.

Rubin notes that Cruz was spouting nonsense about how Mitt Romney was the greatest guy in the world before he lost, at which point she contradicted her prior claims about him and denounced his deep flaws without appearing to notice the contradiction. No, wait, that was Rubin. She notes that Cruz is pretending that the President might sign a bill defunding the PPACA/Obamacare, and purporting that the public won't blame the Republicans if they shut down the government.

Well, maybe he understands something else. Perhaps he is as smart as his admirers claim and he is wildly ambitious, hoping to draw attention and fundraising dollars for his windmill-tilting scam. Later in the CNN interview he made it clear he was playing to the base on this one... And who better to pull the tsunami to shore than Cruz, right? Send money! Come to his events! Become outraged when the “unprincipled” Republicans won’t support him!

Read his blog! Oh, wait...

Cruz is emblematic of a group of conservative hucksters peddling outrage and paranoia who contend that the strength of the political resistance they generate is equivalent to their own importance, and that one dramatic, losing standoff after another is the pinnacle of political success. Alas, they confuse their own fame with achievement and divisiveness with progress.

And if that doesn't work out for him in politics, maybe Fred Hiatt can give him a job?

Rubin suggests that Cruz would be better off following the lead of Speaker Boehner, and "trying to put the monkey on the Democrats’ backs (as the speaker of the House is doing) in the Obamacare fight". Nobody has ever accused Boehner of being a genius, but perhaps Rubin should take note of the fact that pretty much every aspect of Obamacare is popular, save for the mandate which is a necessary part of the popular provision that requires insurance companies to provide coverage without respect to preexisting conditions. Pushing a fantasy about defunding Obamacare is probably more sensible than crossing your fingers and hoping that the mandate proves so unpopular that people are willing to throw the baby out with a few inches of bathwater.

A political loner and man of rhetoric, not of action or achievement, he bears a striking resemblance to the current Oval Office resident. Each considers himself the smartest man in any room (inducing annoyance and resentment among his party members) and each fails to understand rhetoric is not effective governance.

Projection, much? Seriously, how many people other than Rubin look at Cruz and say, "Wow, he's just like President Obama"? This would be one of those "predictable talking points and hare-brained assertions" to which I previously alluded.

If I read more of Rubin's pontifications, I might know who she is pushing as the next Republican presidential nominee. Perhaps somebody who, unlike Mitt Romney, doesn't see himself as God's gift to the country and the smartest man in the room, who scurries away from his own record whenever it becomes politically inconvenient? Because Rubin doesn't seem to like those characteristics in candidates she doesn't support....

Who Will Run for President in 2016

Assuming that Romney loses the 2012 election, the question becomes "Who will run in 2016", at which time both parties will be looking for a winning candidate.

On one hand, it's impossible to predict what is going to happen in four years. In 2003, President Obama was a state senator. In 1989 there was no buzz about Bill Clinton as the next president. By the same token a candidate who looks appealing today may, four years from now, look like yesterday's news. An up-and-coming candidate, a fresh face and voice, may start to look older, stale, unaccomplished. The dangers of what can happen over four years seem to be particularly pronounced for Republicans, given that there's now a significant part of the Republican base that is offended by political compromise. The Republican Party as a whole has reaped significant reward for being "the Party of 'No'", but that approach is not particularly helpful to a candidate who wants to build a record of accomplishment, or to somebody who has to appeal to a national audience as opposed to the voters of a particular state or district.

The "dream" candidates on the Republican side, the candidates that sat out the present race but are depicted as possible contenders in 2016, include Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Tim Pawlenty, Rob Portman, Jeb Bush, Nikki Haley, and Bob McDonnell. I think some of those candidates are lightweights whose inclusion in the list serves to highlight only how the media and party can sometimes elevate mediocre people to undeserved heights (no offense, Paul Ryan), but there is something you can draw from that list: Unlike the majority of candidates in the present primary, most of those potential candidates are viewed as having some level of genuine substance, and moderate to strong understanding of the issues facing their states or our nation.

If you are of the opinion that the Republican Party's strongest candidate looked at the 2012 campaign as one the Republicans were destined to lose, it makes sense that the "better" candidates would sit out the race. The problem with that theory is that after the 2010 midterm elections and with the nation's sluggish recovery from recession and the housing bubble, this should have been a great time for a strong Republican candidate to run for the presidency.

The Republicans need to consider the factors that kept what many believe to be their best candidates for winning the White House from joining the 2012 campaign. If it turns out to be that their various litmus and purity tests allow Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann to be taken seriously but exclude Bobby Jindal or Rob Portman, that's something they need to consider. There was room in the 2012 primary season for serious policy discussions between the candidates. It would have been interesting to hear a serious debate between Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, but neither Huntsman nor Paul were deemed sufficiently serious as candidates by their own party. A Romney victory could reinforce that effect in 2020. A Romney loss might bring about a different approach to the primary in 2016, but I'm not holding my breath.

Again assuming President Obama is reelected, the Democratic race for the nomination promises to be an exercise in contrasts with the Republican contest. Possible nominees include Andrew Cuomo, Martin O'Malley, Hillary Clinton, Mark Warner, Kay Hagan... some of whom are anything but household names. And again, let's not forget the "Bill Clinton" effect - the strongest candidate for either party may not be on our present radar - and that some candidates who presently look reasonably strong will no longer look like serious contenders when the primary season begins. But one thing seems clear, the Democratic race will be between candidates who will be addressing actual policy issues. You may recall from four years ago that addressing the issues sometimes brings more heat than light, and is not always done well, but I don't expect that you'll see anything approximating the "bubble candidate of the weak week" show we saw in this year's Republican contest before the party finally, sort of settled on Mitt Romney.

David Broder [Hearts] Rob Portman

David Broder concludes his hagiography of Rob Portman, a man he sees as conceivably "the Republican presidential nominee in 2016", with the statement,

[Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee] Fisher has tried repeatedly in this [U.S. Senate] campaign to portray Portman as the embodiment of everything wrong with the Republican Party -- a budgeter who created deficits and a trade czar who gave away jobs. Portman, thanks to his planning and his funding, appears to have won the argument with the public.

Is Broder still a journalist? Because if he is, I would have expected at least a nodding mention of the facts.

Also, given that this is Broder, where's the description of how Portman will bridge the ideological divide, reach across the aisle and usher in a new era of bipartisanship? Or is he quietly affirming that in his mind, bipartisanship actually means "Democrats making concessions."