Michigan's Legislature vs. That Democracy Thing

One of Gov. Snyder's comments that caught my attention was, in essence, "I supported cramming a 'right to work' law through the legislature to punish unions for trying to put collective bargaining rights into the state constitution."

When asked about right to work, Snyder said he was never working on the legislation and it was not a top priority of his. He said he asked proponents of Proposition 2 not to continue their efforts and warned them right to work could be an issue if their ballot initiative failed.

“But when it comes down to it, if it’s controversial, you hired me to make decisions, and I’m not going to walk away from an issue that’s on the table,” he said.

“It was my view that it was clear, that this was the right thing. It’s about workers rights, it’s about standing up for workers… but we’ve made that decision so let’s put the issue behind us and move on to the next issues we have to work on.”

Obvious reactions include the obvious: Reducing the rights of workers is pretty close to the opposite of "standing up for workers" and, if you're going to tout the notion of running government like a business, making dramatic policy changes that you would not otherwise support in order to punish an outside group is about as far from what you would want a business (or a government) to do as you can get. But the greatest concern is the means by which Snyder helped cram the law through the legislature:

As virtually everyone knows, a bill making Michigan a Right-to-Work state was rammed through the legislature in a single day during a so-called lame-duck session last December.

Not only were there were no committee hearings and no real debate: The Capitol Building in Lansing was closed to the public for what were said to be “safety reasons.”

The way in which this bill was passed has sparked a great deal of outrage, not all of it from groups automatically opposed to right to work legislation. The law, by the way, outlaws the so-called union shop, and means no worker can be forced to join or pay a fee to be represented by a union, in any public or private industry....

The aim of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act is simple: To protect our right to know what government is doing by opening to full public view the processes by which both elected and non-elected officials make decisions for the people.

After all, we elected them, and they work for us. Korobkin says that didn’t happen here. He told me, as other people have, that the public galleries were deliberately packed that day with assistants to Republican officeholders to squeeze out the general public. The ACLU also says closing the Capitol building was outrageous.

Indeed, nobody can ever remember this happening on any other piece of legislation.

If you like democracy, you have to dislike the process that the legislature and governor followed.

Americans Elect and the Disconnect Between Policy and Politics

A few weeks ago when I read Thomas Friedman's editorial, "Down With Everything", there was a lot to like. There was an overt recognition that our nation's political problems arise in large part from structural problems, particularly with the U.S. Senate, and (although omitting discussion of the problems that would result from trying to diminish the input and influence of special interests) how powerful special interests have an undue influence on policy. Friedman also acknowledges the role of government and regulation in creating the nation's economic success.

The editorial, though, reflects Friedman's (dare I say) anti-democratic tendencies. He loves magic men - individuals he perceives as able to transform governments, institutions and popular movements - and there's virtually nothing that he doesn't seem to believe could be improved by finding a Steve Jobs or a Nelson Mandela to bring about reforms that Friedman himself cannot articulate - but which we are to assume would fix (or perhaps, more modestly, significantly improve) whatever is wrong. He has shied away from proposing a "magic man" solution to the problems of the United States, perhaps because in his heart he realizes that such an approach is inherently anti-democratic, or perhaps because he recognizes that "magic man" arguments work best when people don't know much about either the proposed leader or the organization or movement he would supposedly transform. But he does love his super committees:

If we are to get out of our present paralysis, we need not only strong leadership, but changes in institutional rules,” argues Fukuyama. These would include eliminating senatorial holds and the filibuster for routine legislation and having budgets drawn up by a much smaller supercommittee of legislators — like those that handle military base closings — with “heavy technocratic input from a nonpartisan agency like the Congressional Budget Office,” insulated from interest-group pressures and put before Congress in a single, unamendable, up-or-down vote.

Filibuster reform has never been high on Friedman's list of priorities. But supercommittees and "up or down votes"? He loves them. Even if it means pretending that a committee has succeeded when it failed... that is, if a report that comes from the committee's leaders accords with Friedman's own notions of good policy.

On one hand, you might think that Friedman is suggesting that the problem is institutional, and that what we really need to do is to find a way to get our government to focus less on politics and more on policy. The problem with that argument, it would seem, is that Friedman's own policy goals (which are most commonly articulated in the form of massive cuts of Medicare and Social Security) are impeded less by factionalism and more by democracy. George W. Bush's (terribly misguided) proposal to partially privatize Social Security failed not because he couldn't have mustered enough votes, but because too many Senators recognized that they would not be reelected if they supported the changes.

Simply put, an era of supercommittees would do little to insulate Congress from wealthy and powerful special interests. Those interests would help define the scope and power of the supercommittees and limit the scope of their authority. What they would do is allow Members of Congress to tell their constituents, "It's not my fault that these cuts went through - I didn't vote for them." Such an approach does nothing to remedy the institutional problems that, in Friedman's view, necessitate the foisting off of every difficult issue to such a committee, nor do they do anything to educate the public as to why reforms - even reforms that are unpopular or that will detrimentally affect the voter - represent good or even necessary policy. It does little, perhaps nothing, to reduce the power of the special interests that so heavily influence government, instead creating a context in which special interests will battle to influence the supercommittee process. And to the extent that it allows the government to move forward even when a majority of legislators are not willing to act responsibly, it effectively divorces their decision-making from the goals, priorities and interests of their constituents. Also, as with the committees that currently exist in Congress, powerful voices on supercommittees will themselves become targets for lobbying.

Friedman also makes the assumption that supercommittees will always work for good - by which I mean that they will always advance the policies that Friedman personally supports. Although some, at times most, Members of Congress may demagogue about the importance of issues that Friedman regards as inconsequential, or advocate policy reforms that Friedman regards as misguided, Friedman seems to believe that they will never be able to either control the creation of a supercommittee on one of those issues or that a majority of a supercommittee's members will focus on irrelevancies or advance bad policy.

To some degree, Friedman's wishful thinking is borne of a history in which supercommittees have been created to address a specific, genuine problem, with members selected in a manner that makes it pretty clear whether the committee will succeed and what its conclusions will be. But the less consensus there is for any given policy solution, and the more supercommittees you create to bypass the normal legislative process, the more examples of incompetence, outside influence, and even corruption you will find. It's a simple truth of bureaucracy - open, democratic processes are apt to seem messy and disorganized, whereas closed, non-democratic processes are apt to be more efficient but less responsive. As we move in the direction of "every important decision shall be decided by supercommittee", we move toward a closes, non-responsive, non-democratic form of government.

Friedman seems to recognize the importance of having a government that can form good policy, although he shares the natural human tendency to define "good policy" as "policies I, personally, think are good." But to the extent that his proposed solutions to political gridlock aren't anti-democratic, they tend to focus on introducing more politics into the equation. I'm sure Friedman believes that by introducing third parties with additional ideas - ideas he once again assumes will correspond with his own - their ideas will resonate with the public, cause the other political parties to see the light, and cause powerful special interests who have kept those policies from being implemented to fade into the woodwork. Having lived in a couple of nations with multiple political parties, and having seen the political processes of many others, I think that concept of how a third party would work is naive.

Here is how [Americans Elect] will work.... First, anyone interested in becoming a delegate goes to the Americans Elect Web site and registers. As part of that process, you will be asked to fill in a questionnaire about your political priorities: education, foreign policy, the economy, etc. This enables Americans Elect to put you in contact with others who share your views so you can discuss them and organize together. Then you will be invited to draft a candidate or support one who has already been drafted and to contribute to the list of questions that anyone running on the Americans Elect platform will have to answer on the site.

“The questions, the priorities, the nominations and the rules will all come from the community, not from two entrenched parties,” said Ackerman.

Any presidential nominee must conform to all the Constitutional requirements, as well as be considered someone of similar stature to our previous presidents. That means no Lady Gaga allowed. Every candidate will have to post in words or video his or her answers to the platform questions produced by the Americans Elect delegates. In April 2012, the candidate pool will be reduced to six through three rounds of voting. The six, assuming they all want to run, will then have to name their running mates. The only rule is that a Democrat must run with a Republican or independent, and a Republican with a Democrat or independent.

“Each presidential candidate has to pick a running mate outside of their party and reaching across the divide of politics,” said Ackerman.

So the idea was not truly to open up the nomination process to non-traditional candidates - somebody you might want to run the nation but who had eschewed politics - for fear of a "Lady Gaga"-type nomination. And bipartisanship was fetishized to the point that a Presidential candidate would have to pick somebody from the other political party - presumably again somebody with a sufficient political résumé to be firmly associated with the other of the two major political parties - a policy that demonstrates no apparent understanding of the history of the Presidency and why we moved away from having a separately elected Vice President. And these Republican-Democratic teams would stand as something unique and apart from the Republican and Democratic teams they would be running against because... bipartisanship!

Commenting on the failure of Americans Elect, Daniel Larison observes,

Americans Elect failed because it stood for almost nothing, and what it did stand for (bipartisanship, mindless “centrism”) are things that the people who vote for third party candidates dislike or don’t value as something desirable in itself. Americans Elect is a financially opaque, unaccountable organization that pretends to be a vehicle of transparency and political accountability. It has no program or agenda, and it cannot identify substantively where the government has gone wrong under the current two-party system. All that it is capable of doing is complaining that members of the two parties are insufficiently chummy and collaborative, and it has presented this message at a time when there is not much confidence in either major party.

Successful third party candidacies have to tap into discontent with something specific about the incumbent, or they have to represent a more radical challenge to both parties. To the extent that it has a political position, it is the opposite of radical, and it has floundered because its backers don’t really disagree with Obama about very much in terms of policy. It an organization of Tom Friedmans with ballot access.

I think Larison is on to something about the circumstances under which third parties can emerge, particularly in the context of our system which is structured toward two dominant parties. But I think it's also fair to note that it's naive to posit that adding a third political party to an election is going to reduce the level of politics in government, any more than the panoply of Republican candidates in the recent nomination contest helped that party focus on key policy issues. The idea that a Presidential ticket split between two political parties is going to be the least politically contentious of the three (presumably) leading partnerships is interesting. I personally can't see how you could have two candidates who were more than nominally aligned with the two major political parties who would not be doing more explaining away of policy differences than elucidation of shared policy goals throughout the campaign and in the debates.

Fundamentally, adding another pairing of candidates to the presidential race (even if you assume that they will resonate to a greater extent than any of the other third party candidates who already appear on the ballot) does not seem to me to be an opportunity to shift the focus of the race from politics to policy. I don't share Friedman's certitude that the best policy decisions are reached by compromise between the two parties - that reflects, to me, Friedman's mistaken bifurcation of political views into two dominant camps, never mind how fractured those camps often are, and a mistaken belief that the two major parties are so completely correlated with and representative of conservative and liberal ideology that any compromise they fashion will be acceptable to both groups. Frankly, if it were that easy we wouldn't need supercommittees to protect elected politicians from being responsible for the actions of Congress. To me, Friedman seems to be among those who focus on the political horse race, assume that the campaigning and demagoguery are about policy formation not political victory, and thus believe that adding more politics to the fray will somehow lend itself to better policy formation. I would expect that, at best, the third party Friedman envisions might not make things worse, but better? I see no reason to expect that.

Paul Krugman has a criticism of Americans Elect that isn't entirely fair to its proponents:

So why Americans Elect? Because there exists in America a small class of professional centrists, whose stock in trade is denouncing the extremists in both parties and calling for a middle ground. And this class cannot, as a professional matter, admit that there already is a centrist party in America, the Democrats — that the extremism they decry is all coming from one side of the political fence. Because if they admitted that, they’d just be moderate Democrats, with no holier-than-thou pedestal to stand on.

Although perhaps Obama's proposed "grand bargain" on the deficit, rejected by the Republicans, should have established his crediblity with this particular group, the reason why "professional centrists" don't see themselves as Democrats, and see the Democratic Party as a part of the propblem, is that they tend to advocate both balancing the budget (now!) and the position that it's impossible to do so without massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Although for entitlement reform, when push comes to shove the Republican Party is more words than action, the Democratic Party is the primary defender of both Social Security and Medicare. (Never mind that, just as last time, you could get the Democratic Party to sign on to the modest reforms necessary to stabilize Social Security for the indefinite future, and that only the Democrats have introduced serious cost-cutting measures to Medicare as opposed to the Paul Ryan "unlikely to ever happen" privatization plan.)

When President Obama took office, the Democratic Party had a golden opportunity to demonstrate that it was a mature, capable and responsible political party, able to implement sound solutions to serious problems. Instead, just as it did during Clinton's early years, it proved fractious, unwilling to boldly tackle the big issues, and susceptible to extortionate demands from a handful of legislators who held deciding votes. When you hear prominent Democrats talk about healthcare reform you do not hear explanations of how they might have achieved a better bill - you hear complaints that the issue should have been deferred or abandoned. Extremism may not be the problem among Democrats, but opportunism, avarice and politics remain.

Still, that's not problems you're going to resolve by introducing a third "bipartisan" party.

Krugman optimistically expresses,

Americans Elect was created to appeal to this class of professional centrists — which meant that it was doomed to go nowhere. Because outside that class, the large number of people who believe in all the good stuff the centrists claim to favor are, you know, going to vote for Obama. The large number of people who don’t believe in any of that are going to vote for Romney.

The problem here is that a lot of centrists don't believe that President Obama is going to advance the policy goals they favor. They may not have any more confidence in Romney, perhaps less, but if they believe that entitlements are out of control they have seen three years of Democratic inaction on Social Security and cost-saving measures for Medicare that, at present, remain theoretical. As much as they may believe that President Obama would implement some sound policy reforms if presented with a blank slate, they recognize that he is at heart very conservative in his approach to reform. His most dramatic reform, the Affordable Care Act, is a modest echo of ideas of the Heritage Foundation and of his Republican opponent in the coming election. I think there would be appeal to voters who want to see the formation and implementation of good policy, to have a third party candidate who they believed could deliver what they want - what the country needs.

The problem for Americans Elect is that there is no reason to believe that they would deliver. That serious candidates would sign on, that the forced pseudo-bipartisanship of the ticket would be either genuine or helpful. That the contribution to an election would be anything more than adding more politics, more sound and fury, instead of bringing more attention to the most serious policy issues and the most credible responses to those issues. Were the focus on issues, not politics, Americans Elect could do something very different - attempt to articulate the issues, propose solutions, and ask candidates from across the nation to endorse those solutions. It could then articulate which candidates it most supported in any given race based upon the candidates' response. But alas, that would be a lot more work, a lot less fun, and may serve to highlight how it's less a matter of partisanship between the parties that's impeding progress, and more a matter of voters wanting to derive significant benefits from government without having anybody be asked to pay the bill.

It sounds like much more fun to create a website through which we'll supposedly find ourselves a magic man and call that a solution.

Voting on Civil Rights

On a recent episode of Real Time, Reihan Salam argued that it would be a positive thing to hold direct votes on certain civil rights issues, such as gay marriage, rather than achieving equality through the courts. Rev. Al Sharpton took issue with Salam, pointing out that if people had voted on civil rights he would still be riding at the back of the bus, and with a "bad eyed driver" so would Salam. In large part, Sharpton is correct - had civil rights been expected to pass on a state-by-state basis some states would have acted promptly but others would have been slow to act, and we would likely still be waiting on a number of states.

I'm not sure what the concept is behind popular voting for civil rights. If there's popular support for a civil rights movement but for some reason the nation's legislatures are slow to act, court action addressing the situation is not likely to be unpopular. If there's a lack of popular support, direct voting won't bring about change, and it would thus fall on legislatures and the courts to implement any change against the will of the people.

The theory appears to be that if you have a few successful votes around the nation, you will start to shift the balance and eventually create a tipping point at which people will back away from their prejudices and accept that they, also, should support the civil rights movement. Reihan focused on Roe v. Wade as opposed to segregation and Jim Crow, and Sharpton was correct to bring the issue back into focus.

Reihan can protest that had reproductive rights been allowed to progress on a state-by-state basis we would not have abortion (and contraception) rights as a front-and-center issue in every federal election. But if the objection people have to Roe v. Wade is that stripped states of their rights, and imposed on certain states a policy that the majority of their residents found objectionable, why isn't the same true of the civil rights movement in general? Even in states that saw violent opposition to the civil rights movement, there is now a general acceptance that segregation is neither "equal" nor consistent with our nation's values.

Another objection to the notion that important civil rights issues should be resolved by plebiscite is that we live in a representative democracy. As a matter of routine, important decisions are made by our elected representatives in part under the theory that they're better informed than the people at large, and are better positioned to avoid the passions and prejudices of the day. Why would we want to add an asterisk to our system of government, such that we would revert to a direct democracy on those issues over which the people are most passionate or prejudiced? That doesn't sound to me like a recipe for a state-by-state transformation of the nation, with gradual realization that other groups of people deserve additional civil rights. It sounds to me like a formula to preserve the status quo in much or all of the country.

The plebiscite approach also raises a question of finality: If people can vote to grant civil rights, why can't they also vote to take them away? If we are supposed to get some sort of finality and social acceptance of the grant of civil rights by proceeding state-by-state, how is that achieved when every election cycle has a new initiative to repeal those rights on the ballot. When the Supreme Court has rolled back the protections of cases like Roe v. Wade, or policies such as affirmative action, the tendency has not been for legislatures and ballot initiatives to move to protect the status quo. Quite the opposite - we see immediate activity to roll back rights that had previously been accepted or assumed, and some legislatures immediately setting up legislation for the next "test case" to push through the courts in the hope of achieving a further rollback of rights.

In the context of gay marriage, when the issue has been placed on the ballot in states like California we have already seen well-funded "anti-" campaigns run by outside groups that oppose gay marriage. If repeal is permitted, that would happen in most or all election cycles. If repeal were not permitted, the argument for resolving civil rights issues by plebiscite becomes incoherent.

Those who favor the "state's rights" or plebiscite approach often also express a certain contemptuousness for the Surpeme Court, speaking of it as an unelected body, a small number of elites who get to decide very important issues, and that the public has little recourse even when the decision is against the overwhelming will of the people. So I look at my copy of the Constitution (1780), I review the case in which the Supreme Court established itself as the final arbiter of constitutionality (Marbury v Madison, 1803), and I say to myself, "Wow - how is it that nobody has noticed this until now?"

No, what I actually do is again note that our system of government was designed to have an independent judiciary, a Supreme Court that would render opinions on matters of constitutionality, and that for all of its flaws the approach has held up for more than two centuries. I note also the contextual nature of the argument - those who criticize the elitist, non-democratic nature of the Supreme Court when it is expanding civil rights do not express similar sentiments when the Supreme Court rolls them back, nor do they express similar sentiments when the Supreme Court expands other rights that they support.

Nobody is suggesting anything more than a gut check for which issues should be taken out of the Supreme Court's hands and (supposedly) resolved gradually, over time, by plebiscite or state legislative action. If you shake your fist angrily that Roe v. Wade deprives state and local governments, and the people they represent, of their right to fashion laws and outcomes that fit their circumstances, why are you celebrating D.C. v. Heller for depriving local governments of a tool they view as important to suppressing crime and keeping their streets safe?

When I look back on the civil rights movement and cases like Brown v. Board, and compare present level of controversy to Roe v. Wade, I don't see that public acceptance of civil rights is tied to how those rights are implemented. I see that there are people with strong religious and moral objections to abortion rights, and even to contraception, who don't care about policy arguments, they want a "no ifs, ands or buts" ban, or something very close to it. I can respect strongly held moral beliefs, I can respect adherence to the teachings of your church, but I don't believe that either should trump either constitutional process or efforts to form sound public policy.

Mitt Romney's Love of Democracy

If you can't win an election, fair and square, what else can you do but rig the game?

Supporting Democracy Everywhere (Else) in the Middle East

Back in the 1980's, before he developed his "suck on this" attitude toward the Muslim world (an attitude I hope he now recognizes as misguided), I recall conversations in which Thomas Friedman's tepid endorsements of Palestinian rights caused people on the opposite side of the debate to speak his name with contempt, even to the point of labeling him a self-hating Jew. That reaction seemed, and seems, pretty much insane. Friedman is an ardent and consistent supporter of Israel, and his occasional criticism is about strengthening that state, not weakening it. A more fair criticism would be that, when confronted by those who will never agree to peace, he offers what amounts to a, "Just kidding" rather than standing behind his prior sentiments.

Friedman's most recent two columns remind me of why his writings on the Middle East are so frustrating. When Friedman writes,

I am awed by the bravery of the Syrian and Egyptian youths trying to throw off the tyranny of the Assad family and the Egyptian military. The fact that they go into the streets — knowing they face security forces who will not hesitate to gun them down — speaks of the deep longing of young Arabs to be free of the regimes that have so long choked their voices and prevented them from realizing their full potential.

is it not fair to note that he never voiced similar "awe" at the bravery of Palestinian teenagers who took to the streets to protest occupation, even at the risk of being injured or killed? It's not difficult to find even strong Israeli partisans who question the tactics of Israel during the first Intifada, and question whether the harsh treatment of teenagers during that period caused serious blowback, contributing to increased militancy and the much more violent tactics of the second Intifada. Like most in the media, Friedman can't seem to find space in his columns to cover non-violent protest in the occupied territories, unless it's against Palestinian authorities.

My position has long been that the best thing for the Palestinian people and the region would have been for Israel to change its tactics, supporting the development of real democracy during the period when the Palestinians had secular, western-focused leaders. That is, after all, what Israel did with great success within its borders - about 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab. There is no reason to believe that such an effort would not have succeeded in the occupied territories and, given Friedman's long-stated desire for the creation of a model democracy within the Middle East, it would seem to have been a natural argument for him to make. Yet even as he presently writes,

Outsiders often underestimate just how much these Arab youths are determined to limit the powers of their militaries as a necessary step for achieving true democracy. What you see in Egypt today are young people from across the political spectrum and classes who are willing to join forces, break ranks with their own parties and return to Tahrir Square to press for real freedom. This is a generational rupture. It is the old versus the young. It is the insiders (the adults) versus the outsiders (the youth). It is the privileged old guard versus the disadvantaged young guard.

He can't bring himself to include Palestinians youth in his editorial or to speak of (or distinguish) what they want. His only point of consistency is his resort to the need of a "magic man" to solve the problems of any given group, nation, or industry:

Can they each make it without one? Only if they develop their own Nelson Mandelas — unique civic leaders or coalitions who can honor the past, and contain its volcanic urges, but not let it bury the future.

Mandela spent a quarter-century in prison for refusing to renounce violent resistance to the Apartheid regime. Had he been released from prison before Apartheid was on the wane, he likely would have continued to support violent resistance as opposed to engaging in the political process associated with the end of Apartheid and the enfranchisement of all South Africans. But Friedman has never been one to bog himself down with mundane details - as I've previously pointed out, the Mandela he is talking about is the one played by Morgan Friedman in Invictus. His Gandhi is likely the one played by Ben Kingsley.

In his latest column, Friedman hints at a commonality:

Israel’s fear of Islamists taking power all around it cannot be dismissed. But it is such a live possibility precisely because of the last 50 years of Arab dictatorship, in which only Islamists were allowed to organize in mosques while no independent, secular, democratic parties were allowed to develop in the political arena. This has given Muslim parties an early leg up. Arab dictators were convenient for Israel and the Islamists — but deadly for Arab development and education. Now that the lid has come off, the transition will be rocky. But, it was inevitable, and the new politics is just beginning: Islamists will now have to compete with legitimate secular parties.

Both Egypt and Israel made a similar mistake when they saw the growth of secular opposition to their tactics. Egypt fostered the fundamentalist groups that turned into the Muslim Brotherhood and Israel exiled the PLO while funding and supporting Hamas. In a sense these tactics worked - they did weaken secular movements and move the affected regions away from democracy. But by the time it was apparent that the fundamentalist movements were a far greater danger than their secular predecessors, it was too late to turn back the tide. Even in bringing back the PLO as an armed governing body, between Hamas's foothold, the PLO's corruption and the continued occupation, it was too late to turn back the clock on Hamas. As much as Friedman hopes for secular democracy to prevail, without mentioning elections he notes "The two weakest states on its border — Gaza and Lebanon — are controlled by Hamas and Hezbollah."

Friedman offers a great deal of seemingly willful self-deception and half-truth in relation to Benjamin Netanyahu, noting that Netanyahu favors stonewalling on the peace process in the wake of the "Arab Spring", but failing to note that Netanyahu has been a staunch opponent of the peace process throughout his political career, and is in fact far better known for his efforts to impede the peace process or roll back progress.

Friedman expresses, "I understand Israel not ceding territory in this uncertain period", but fails to acknowledge that there has never been a period in which Netanyahu has been willing to strike a deal that would return occupied lands to the Palestinian people, and as always he is presently expanding the size, scope and population of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Friedman also fails to clarify that when he speaks of "ceding territory" he in fact is speaking of annexing territory - the 1967 Green Line border is well documented. The present dispute is not over whether Israel would cede so much as an inch of its own land - nobody has argued that it would do so except in the context of a voluntary land swap - but is instead how much Palestinian land Israel will demand be ceded to it as part of any peace deal.

Friedman pretends he doesn't understand what is happening,

What I can’t understand is doing nothing. Israel has an Arab awakening in its own backyard in the person of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of the Palestinian Authority. He’s been the most radical Arab leader of all. He is the first Palestinian leader to say: judge me on my performance in improving my peoples’ lives, not on my rhetoric. His focus has been on building institutions — including what Israelis admit is a security force that has helped to keep Israel peaceful — so Palestinians will be ready for a two-state solution. Instead of rewarding him, Israel has been withholding $100 million in Palestinian tax revenues that Fayyad needs — in punishment for the Palestinians pressing for a state at the U.N. — to pay the security forces that help to protect Israel. That is crazy.

Friedman knows very well what is going on. Netanyahu, and those in government who are further to his right, are hoping that Fayyad fails in his efforts and that they can use the failure as their next excuse for why it's not possible to work toward a final resolution that they do not want. They want peace, if we define that as a Palestinian population that is kept out of sight and out of mind, controlled such that it can inflict a minimum of damage outside of its confines. But a final agreement that formalizes a boarder and creates a Palestinian state? There has never been a whit of evidence that Netanyahu wants such an outcome, and surely Friedman is aware of the far more radical views of Avigdor Lieberman and his followers.

Israel’s best defense is to strengthen Fayyadism — including giving Palestinian security services more areas of responsibility to increase their legitimacy and make clear that they are not the permanent custodians of Israel’s occupation. This would not only help stabilize Israel’s own backyard — and prevent another uprising that would spread like wildfire to the Arab world without the old dictators to hold it back — but would lay the foundation for a two-state solution and for better relations with the Arab peoples.

I agree completely. But unlike Friedman, I won't be making excuses for Netanyahu when it doesn't happen.

The Bush-Blair "Freedom Agenda"

Charles Krauthammer bloviates,

Today, everyone and his cousin supports the "freedom agenda." Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a band of neocons with unusual hypnotic powers who dared challenge the received wisdom of Arab exceptionalism - the notion that Arabs, as opposed to East Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans and Africans, were uniquely allergic to democracy.

To the extent that Krauthammer is arguing that Tony Blair personifies the G.W. Bush "freedom agenda", and how it relates to Egypt, I agree completely.

Tony Blair has described Hosni Mubarak, the beleaguered Egyptian leader, as "immensely courageous and a force for good" and warned against a rush to elections that could bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

The former prime minister, now an envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, praised Mubarak over his role in the negotiations and said the west was right to back him despite his authoritarian regime because he had maintained peace with Israel.

Yes, when G.W., Tony Blair and their merry "band of neocons" stood for freedom they stood squarely behind people like Mubarak. And they stood in the way of Arab democracy not because they didn't believe it would be embraced, but because those pesky Arabs might have elected the wrong people.

And that pretty much sums up the rest of Krauthammer's column - the Arab world needs democracy, so for now we should prop up dictators and hope that they start creating the necessary institutions and opportunities such that elections can take place once the Arab world is no longer Islamic.

Fred Hiatt on Democracy Promotion

Apparently the U.S. has a great interest in advancing democracy, except when that would interfere with U.S. interests or bring the wrong party into power. In other words, it would seem, business as usual but the Obama Administration should abandon its foreign policy goals and assessments in favor of Hiatt's.

We Should Shed Tears for Corrupt Dictators?

Pat Buchanan appears to believe so:

But what must Mubarak think of us?

He stood by us through the final Reagan decade of the Cold War. At George H.W. Bush’s request, he sent his soldiers to fight alongside ours against fellow Arabs in Desert Storm. He stayed faithful to a peace with Israel his people detested. He cooperated with George Bush II in some of the nastier business of the War on Terror.

A dictator, yes, but also our man in the Arab world. Yet a few hundred thousand demonstrators in Cairo’s streets caused us to abandon him.

In the last half-century, how many others who cast their lot with us have we abandoned as “corrupt and dictatorial” when they started to lose their grip? Ngo Dinh Diem, Gen. Thieu and Marshal Ky, Lon Nol, Chiang Kai-shek, Marcos, the Shah, Somoza, Pinochet — the list goes on.

When we needed them, they were hailed as America’s great friends. When they needed us, we abandoned them in the name of our rediscovered democratic values.

Buchanan was in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Administrations, so he's in a position to tell us whether any of the dictators for whom he weeps ever came to the President with a question such as, "I want to create a legacy of bringing my people into enlightenment, creating an educated, free democratic society - can I count on your help?" My guess is that the answer is none. On the other hand, were we to count the times they might have approached a President with a question like, "I need help training my secret police to squelch dissent - can I count on your help?"...

As for Mubarak's cooperation with the U.S. and its principal goals in the region, yes, he did cooperate. But would Buchanan have us believe that no quid pro quo was involved? That even if Egypt were not receiving close to $2 billion per year in aid and participating in U.S. military training exercises, Mubarak would have been as cooperative - or would have cooperated with us at all?

Buchanan sees Mubarak as wanting a better legacy than fleeing his country in the face of popular protest. No doubt. But if that happens it won't be because of anything the United States did. As with the other dictators and tyrants on Buchanan's list, it will be because of the way he ran his country. What are Mubarak's accomplishments as leader of Egypt? If he's looking for a place in the history books, being deposed may in fact be the best way to keep himself from being a footnote between the Presidency of Anwar Sadat and that of his successor.

Mubarak could redeem himself and maintain power until a transition date of his own choosing, if he embraced the democratic process and started speaking about creating a safe context for elections in the fall. He could transform the tail end of his presidency into an interim government, bridging Egypt's undemocratic, dictatorial past with its (possible) more democratic and open future.

Also, if he has to turn tail and flee in the next few days it won't be because the U.S. hasn't tried to support him and to facilitate an orderly transition of government. It will be because, in lieu of making any substantive promise of or timetable for reform, he decided to try to put down the protests with violence. How is that anybody's fault but his own.

No, I don't want to say that U.S. policies don't play a role in this. As part of his quid pro quo with the United States, Mubarak helped sustain policies that were very unpopular with some, most, and perhaps at times all of his population. The U.S. government appreciated that type of loyalty to U.S. interests - but at the same time the government, most notably the administrations of Buchanan's past employers, were quick to withdraw support or attempt to oust allies of this stripe who weren't willing or able to demonstrate the required degree of loyalty. Mubarak might have had difficulty in a more open, democratic society, maintaining his nation's blockade of the Gaza Strip. But nobody said democracy was easy.

As for the rhetorical question, "what must Mubarak think of us," I guess it depends upon whether he knows his history. But in the greater scheme of things it doesn't matter. That's the part that's gotta hurt, right? That (albeit in large part due to his own choice and action) we see him as largely dispensable. That one of his biggest U.S. defenders categorizes him alongside Lon Nol and, implicitly, Manuel Noriega. (Should Saddam Hussein be on Buchanan's list?)

Democracy Building According to Jackson Diehl

First, you replace the non-democratic government of the targeted nation with a... dictatorship. Ah, but not just any dictator. A benign dictator. A philosopher king, if you will. And then you charge him with keeping the peace while he assembles the nation's various political factions and they collectively write a constitution. And then they work together to engage the middle class such that, when the election occurs, it's the nation's wealthier members, manufacturers and merchants who choose the next government, not the unwashed masses. Seriously folks, this is the real Deihl:

"This administration has been at best lukewarm towards our cause of democracy," Saad Eddin Ibrahim, one of the most respected Egyptian opposition leaders, told me Thursday.

"Clinton's statement on Tuesday reflected what the policy has been for two years," Ibrahim said. "The second statement was a bit more balanced. But it is still not balanced enough for our taste. What we hope for is explicit support for the demands that are being put forward by the people in the streets."

Those demands are coherent and eminently reasonable: Mubarak should step down and be replaced by a transitional government, headed by ElBaradei and including representatives of all pro-democracy forces. That government could then spend six months to a year rewriting the constitution, allowing political parties to freely organize and preparing for genuinely democratic elections. Given time to establish themselves, secular forces backed by Egypt's growing middle class are likely to rise to the top in those elections - not the Islamists that Mubarak portrays as the only alternative.

I recognize that it takes valuable seconds to find demographic information on nations like Egypt, and that people like Diehl probably have better things to do with their time than to see if the facts support their arguments, but it seems worth asking: In what sort of democratic election will Egypt's middle class be able to define the outcome? Egypt has 9.7% unemployment (a long-term problem, with the official figure likely understating the reality), 20% of the population lives in poverty, and the population is 90% Muslim. Close to 30% of the adult population is illiterate - a 17% male illiteracy rate and a 40.6% female illiteracy rate. One third of the population is under the age of 14. The median age is 24. This may strike Diehl as odd, but those demographics do not suggest to me that a secular middle class will be able to control the reform process.

Diehl criticizes the Obama Administration for standing behind Mubarak instead of... I'm not sure what. I guess, telling him to resign and appoint a philosopher king as his successor.

Thus began what may be remembered as one of the most shortsighted and wrongheaded policies the United States has ever pursued in the Middle East. Admittedly, the bar is high. But the Obama administration's embrace of Mubarak, even as the octogenarian strongman refused to allow the emergence of a moderate, middle-class-based, pro-democracy opposition, has helped bring the United States' most important Arab ally to the brink of revolution.

There are two ways of looking at this, of course. Diehl's way, that within days Mubarak's regime will fall and a forward-looking, secular, democratic regime will take over, reform the nation of Egypt and uplift its people, and leave its people angry that the U.S. wasn't more supportive at the onset of their revolution. Or that the Mubarak regime will prove sufficiently stable to withstand the protests. But since Diehl is suggesting that Egyptians resent President Obama's supposed abandonment of the Bush-era "freedom agenda", it's worth stepping back a few years to see how Bush treated Egypt and Mubarak. And who better to give us that history than Jackson Diehl?

So Democrats have to start by "reclaiming our own ground," [Will] Marshall says. His book proposes two important ways to do that. First, Democrats can clean up the crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the CIA's secret prisons, and restore America's reputation as the world's foremost defender of human rights. They can also end Bush's cynical policy of demanding democracy from enemy regimes such as Iran and Syria while tolerating the continued autocracy of such friends as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Were Diehl attempting to be fair, he would also acknowledge how the Bush Administration insisted upon elections for the Palestinian Authority then reacted in horror when the wrong party won. Diehl appears to share that sense of "democracy" - he doesn't want elections in Egypt now, implicitly acknowledging that Islamic factions would win an election. He wants the nation ruled by the benign dictator until secular parties "establish themselves" and we can be pretty sure that "secular forces backed by Egypt's growing middle class are likely to rise to the top in those elections". Should Diehl get his wish, one wonders... will Diehl call for elections if, six months or a year from now, it still looks like Islamic parties would prevail in an election? No, actually one doesn't. It looks like Diehl's "freedom agenda" is that of Bush: it only counts as freedom if the correct person or party comes out on top.

We can also play the game of "Which Secretary of State is Diehl attacking"?

But her aims are utterly different from those with which Bush began his second term - such as the "freedom agenda" he restated in Prague. Democracy promotion in the Middle East is out, replaced by a belated but intense effort to broker a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. Even more strikingly, the "regime change" strategy that once marked Bush administration policy toward North Korea has been dropped in favor of an all-out effort to negotiate a rapprochement with dictator Kim Jong Il.

vs.

Bland, carefully balanced statements were issued by second- and third-level spokesmen, while [she and the President] - who regularly ripped Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - remained silent.

Condi vs. Hillary. Yes, that first comment was directed at Condoleezza Rice. Except when Rice walked away from the "freedom agenda" and embraced tyrants Diehl saw her moves as "bold new strategies" - "No wonder, perhaps, that the secretary hasn't bothered with directives about dissidents."

Diehl's primary mistake lies in his hallucinatory belief that the U.S. can control events in Egypt - or is it that he believes he can control the events through some form of extremely powerful wishful thinking: That the U.S. could do something that would inspire Mubarak to resign and appoint Mohamed ElBaradei to be his temporary successor. That the masses would accept Mohamed ElBaradei as the leader, and would accept his initiative to draft a constitution establishing Egypt as a secular democracy. That the various political factions involved would cooperate in creating such a constitution, and the factions Diehl wants to see marginalized or excluded from that process would acquiesce. That secular political parties would flourish - but perhaps just two or three of them, such that they could reasonably form a government. That the middle class would overwhelmingly and successfully elect a secular, democratic government. And that all of this could be achieved within six months. As Daniel Larison has observed,

The administration could tell Mubarak that. Instead of the increased criticism it has already promised, the administration could threaten Mubarak with its “wrath.” Would this entail merely the suspension of aid, or would it involve more serious penalties? In other words, what exactly should the administration be threatening to do to Mubarak and his allies if they do not comply? It’s all very well to bluster and make threats, but Mubarak knows that our government is not going to risk seriously undermining the current government. He will assume that the administration is bluffing and playing to its domestic audience, and he will probably be right. If the administration is not bluffing, it genuinely risks making the same mistake that Carter made in his handling of the Shah and domestic opposition to his regime.

Larison continues with an explanation of why it's unrealistic to expect the Muslim Brotherhood to remain on the sidelines. Larison predicts, quite reasonably,

By the end of the week, it looks as if the Brotherhood will have officially joined the protests as well. The protesters cannot be neatly separated into the “good” secular democrats here and the unacceptable Islamists over there. For that matter, there is as yet no evidence that any of the protesters object to the Brotherhood’s participation.

Larison relates the observation of Jonathan Wright that one of the reasons the Islamic Brotherhood has remained in the background is likely because its involvement "would frighten off some of the other groups" and that with its open involvement "the government will feel free to use much more brutal methods to disperse protesters". If Mubarak falls and a new government is to be peacefully formed, the Islamic Brotherhood will demand a seat at the table.

Are the Democrats Trying to Lose?

From what they're doing, it would certainly appear so. Michael Tomasky comments on the party's idiotic decision not to vote on a middle class tax cut in advance of the election. He quotes a "senior Senate Democratic Aide" as arguing that it's a winning argument for the Democrats, "why muddy it up with a failed vote" based upon an expected Republican filibuster?

I suppose that aide could be right. But what he or she doesn't understand is that not having a vote just looks like surrender. It's not fighting for anything. Because everyone watching this debate understands that a vote after the elections is guaranteed to extend all the cuts and really embarrass Obama, because he's going to be put in a position of vetoing cuts for the middle class or signing a bill including all cuts, and he's obviously going to have to do the latter. It's short-sighted. It's selfish. It's weak. It's pathetic. And it's all too typical. Shall I go on?

All of that applies - selfish, weak, pathetic, typical. But I'm more cynical about this than Mr. Tomasky. I suspect that the real reason the Senate doesn't want the vote is because they fear that they actually might get one or two Republicans to vote for tax relief - and that they will be countered by having Senators like Joe Lieberman join the remaining Republicans in a filibuster. Yes, I know that when put on the spot Joe backed off of his prior suggestion that he would join a filibuster, but I can see him helping Republicans block or delay the vote, and I can see him breaking his word. And he's not the only unfaithful member of the Senate Democratic Caucus.

It sounds a lot better to offer excuses that make you seem selfish, weak, and pathetic, than to have to explain on the eve of an election why members of your own caucus blocked a tax bill that would otherwise have passed.

Seriously, Bill Clinton had to remind the Democratic Party that it should offer some ideas - a plan for what it might do in the upcoming term that will benefit the voting public. What are the party's ideas for improving the economy? Generating jobs? Anything? It's not enough to respond, "But the Republicans have no ideas". When people aren't happy with the status quo you don't need ideas as the opposition, because you'll naturally get the protest vote.

But there's not one single idea the Democrats can advance in anything but the cloudiest of terms without at least one of its Senators declaring, "No, I can't support that." This is more than a "big tent" problem - it's a problem of being beholden to special interests. The same thing is true in the House, but there it matters less because bills pass on a majority vote. In the Senate, a promised agenda can by stymied by a single Senator. Maybe the dissenters can be convinced to keep their mouths shut until after the election, although I doubt it. But what happens in the next election if every single item on the offered plan has been stymied with the active complicity of Democrats?

Tomasky appropriately comments,

It's just so incredibly lame. I'm close to thinking let 'em lose, serves 'em right. Then I see the Bedlam inmates running on the other side and I remember the stakes. But honestly.

Frankly, for the past two years we've seen the Democrats act like a party that wants to lose. (The problem extends beyond two years, but it's been manifest since President Obama took office and various Democrats have engaged in the systematic undermining of his agenda.) They're not acting like a party that's fit to govern. Tomasky motivates himself by contemplating what the Republicans might do with a legislative majority, but the enthusiasm gap can be explained in no small part by the fact that most voters are neither as attuned to the issues or as partisan as Tomasky. They see an ineffective Congress that is not willing to commit to anything, and... who wants to vote for that?

Update: Can I find a voice anywhere, excluding Democratic politicians and their employees, who believes this is a good idea for the Democratic Party? The operative word among the party's supporters seems to be "idiocy".

Update II: All this and the continued taxpayer financing of worthless degrees from crappy for-profit colleges?

Thomas Friedman on Competition with China

Sometimes you have to wonder where Thomas Friedman's head is....

To visit China today as an American is to compare and to be compared. And from the very opening session of this year’s World Economic Forum here in Tianjin, our Chinese hosts did not hesitate to do some comparing. China’s CCTV aired a skit showing four children — one wearing the Chinese flag, another the American, another the Indian, and another the Brazilian — getting ready to run a race. Before they take off, the American child, “Anthony,” boasts that he will win “because I always win,” and he jumps out to a big lead. But soon Anthony doubles over with cramps. “Now is our chance to overtake him for the first time!” shouts the Chinese child. “What’s wrong with Anthony?” asks another. “He is overweight and flabby,” says another child. “He ate too many hamburgers.”

That is how they see us.

Here's the thing, Tom: When a state-run organizaton presents a state-approved, state-sponsored caricature of how its own citizens compare to those of other nations, even before you take notice that it's a communist, totalitarian state, the idea is not to convey "Here's what you already think." It's to convey, "Here's what you should think." In the context of the film at issue, if a chubby American whose idea of exercise appears to be putting on his Rolex in the morning or getting in and out of his Lexus SUV happens to be in the audience, nodding in vigorous agreement, all's the better.

You know what else? You don't have to go to China to hear that story. More than two thousand years ago Aesop wrote a version, the Tortoise and the Hare, which (believe it or not) was not intended as a wake-up call to us. (Granted, Ancient Greece did fall.) In terms of "Wow, look at those really big buildings," China's not the first totalitarian state to want to show off its prowess through massive building projects and it won't be the last.

That's not to discount China's role as a global economic competitor, or the problems we face at home. Friedman highlights problems faced by both nations,

The Chinese system is autocratic, rife with corruption and at odds with a knowledge economy, which requires liberty.

and

There is absolutely no reason our democracy should not be able to generate the kind of focus, legitimacy, unity and stick-to-it-iveness to do big things — democratically — that China does autocratically. We’ve done it before. But we’re not doing it now because too many of our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class are more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country.

Friedman brings out his inner G.W. Bush ("If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator"), suggesting that China's system of government has resulted in the "average senior official [being] quite competent". His thesis, however, is internally inconsistent - in his own words there is a reason we can't "do it now" - our flawed and corrupted political system.

Friedman also quotes an Indian entrepreneur. Although it's not clear, I believe he's referring to an entrepreneur who is developing businesses in India, as opposed to the United States. And that entrepreneur sees democracy as part of the problem,

For democracy to be effective and deliver the policies and infrastructure our societies need requires the political center to be focused, united and energized. That means electing candidates who will do what is right for the country not just for their ideological wing or whoever comes with the biggest bag of money. For democracies to address big problems — and that’s all we have these days — requires a lot of people pulling in the same direction, and that is precisely what we’re lacking.

But that's not really, true, is it. India had a business boom based neither on those aspects of democracy nor upon a broad sharing of its new wealth with the public at large. As compared to the United States it has a serious problem with corruption and success in business can mean bribing a lot of people. Not so long ago, Friedman was lecturing us that we needed to prepare for our flat-Earth race against India, now it's apparently the U.S. and India against China. When you're in a race to the bottom for who can hand out the best business environment for sweatshops - no worries about labor laws, western-style environmental regulation, or paying taxes sufficient to help support a fully developed city or state - democracies will always lose to totalitarian states.

There are a couple of points worth making about what Friedman sees as our corrupt political culture. First, as bad as things are right now, they've been worse at various points in our nation's history. Second, if everybody pulled together and decided, "The government must have sufficient revenue to build quality infrastructure that will carry us through to the 22nd century, must reinvent higher education, must make large, bold investments in research and innovation," we would be left with a big question: How do we pay for all of that? It's easy if you're China - as long as the money keeps rolling in, the government can skim what it wants right off the top. Here it would require tax increases - and let's be blunt, the hyper-wealthy elites of our nation, people like Thomas Friedman, simply won't get on board with that.¹

Sure, Tom's willing to pay an extra 50 cents per gallon to fuel up his hybrid SUV, but only if everybody in the nation also has to pay the new tax. He's not shown any inclination to offer up any of his extended family's wealth, or to scale back his own lavish lifestyle. Not that Friedman's hypocrisy makes him any less correct than, say, carbon-burning, mansion-dwelling Al Gore; but I would be more enthusiastic when he made this type of argument if it didn't smack of, "Now everybody pull together - pick me up and carry me across the finish line before the burgers get cold."

I would suggest that for his next column Friedman approach this issue from a different angle. Rather than telling us what we need to do - things that, frankly, would likely get massive voter approval if funded, he should do us the favor of telling us exactly where the money will come from.

Update: Harold Meyerson makes some observations about China, and the role of large U.S. companies in both its growth and its status as a competitor, that Friedman appears to consistently overlook:

Consider the debate in Congress about whether to impose tariffs on Chinese imports if China continues to depress the value of its currency. Roughly 150 House members, including 45 Republicans, have authored a bill to do just that, and the Ways and Means Committee will take up the bill on Friday. Unions and some domestic manufacturers support the bill. But a large number of American businesses, in a campaign coordinated by the U.S.-China Business Council, oppose it.

Now, there's nothing un-American in opposing the legislation as such -- far from it. Support for and opposition to tariffs are both as American as apple pie. The question here is whether the 220 corporations that belong to the council -- household names such as Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Ford, GM, Wal-Mart, Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, J.P. Morgan Chase, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Boeing -- are already so deeply invested in China as manufacturers, marketers or retailers that buy goods there to sell them here that their interests are more closely aligned with China's than with America's. Revaluing China's currency would be helpful to domestic U.S. manufacturers, their employees and the communities where those employees live and work, but America's largest companies have long since ceased to be domestic.

Given the explosive growth of the Chinese economy, it's a safe bet that every major U.S. corporation will devote greater resources to building, buying and selling there. But China, unlike the Obama administration, truly is guided by an ideology alien to most Americans -- Leninism -- and wields far greater control over what U.S. corporations can and can't do there than the U.S. government does over what corporations can and can't do here. Our leading companies' economic interests, and those of their Chinese hosts, whom they cross at their peril, are increasing likely to pit them against proposals that diminish China's edge, however obtained, in global competition.

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1. As a member of the Pulitzer Committee, did Friedman vote in favor of Kathleen Parker's award? Because, it should be noted, she's presently endorsing propaganda of a different sort, applauding the notion that we can have "smaller, more caring government, one that remembers us". Why am I instead reminded of the television edit, "Forget you."

Crybabies Everywhere

Thomas Sowell sheds some crocodile tears over the healthcare reform bill:

The corrupt manner in which this massive legislation was rammed through Congress, without any of the committee hearings or extended debates that most landmark legislation has had, has provided a roadmap for pushing through more such sweeping legislation in utter defiance of what the public wants....

The ruthless and corrupt way this bill was forced through Congress on a party-line vote, and in defiance of public opinion, provides a road map for how other "historic" changes can be imposed by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

Legislation passing with sixty votes in the Senate - a bona fide supermajority - and a majority vote in the House? With the majority party repeatedly trying to get the minority to join in the debate? With the President coordinating a meeting with the minority party to try to bring them on board? I'm sure all of the Founding Fathers would agree that this is the absolute death of democracy. Wow. If passing bills with sixty votes in the Senate and a majority in the House takes off as a precedent, we'll pretty soon have, um, laws?

Ah, yes, I recall all of Sowell's columns lamenting the passage of Bush's tax cuts through reconciliation (i.e., a mere majority vote in the Senate) and that he would advocate for the privatization of Social Security but, alas, the will of the people prevented any such action. Or... not.

To think, as recently as 2007 Sowell was bragging about the economic boon brought about by Bush's tax cuts. The man truly is the philosopher of our time - the best thing short of a second coming.

So, What's Bipartisanship Again?

It has become a cliché that, to the mainstream media, when the Democrats are out of power "bipartisanship" means that some of them break ranks with their party and vote with Republicans, but when the Democrats have a majority "bipartisanship" means that they literally do whatever it takes to get Republicans to sign onto a bill. Even if the Republicans strong-arm their moderates into adhering to the party line while declaring, "No part of that bill is satisfactory, you must scrap the entire bill and start over."

It's no surprise the Republican operatives like Mark Thiessen enjoy the resulting atmosphere. Kicking the "former Bush speechwriters contest" back into full gear, Thiessen complains,

Democrats are in a tight spot on health-care reform. The only way they got the legislation though the Senate was with a series of sweetheart deals -- including the now infamous "Louisiana Purchase," "Gator-aid," and "Cornhusker kickback." Those deals won the support of recalcitrant senators. But now they're now the biggest obstacle President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi face as they make their final health-care push.

You know what it would take to get rid of all of those deals? Three or four Republican Senators who had the maturity to say, "We recognize that this bill is going to pass, and that it's childish to demand that you start from scratch, but if you cut those special deals out of the bill we'll promise to vote for cloture and to support the final bill."

From day one it has been Republican obstructionism that enabled individual Senators to demand the special favors of which Thiessen complains. When any Senator can be "vote number 60" of the sixty needed to effect cloture, any Senator can demand concessions. Add a few Republicans to the mix, that power vanishes and so do the deals.

You know what else the Republicans could do, right now? They could put their money (or maybe I should say "our money") where Thiessen's mouth is, proposing legislation that would strip those deals out of the reform package. Or by agreeing not to filibuster a Senate bill that includes the fixes required by the House, on the condition that the special deals be stripped out. But even if we assume that Thiessen's professed convictions are genuine, that his sudden concern for pork is inspired by true concerns about such dealing as opposed to his party's fall from power, it does not appear that any sitting Republican Senator shares his convictions - or is it enough courage in his convictions to do what's right for the country instead of toeing the party line.

In a much- and deservedly ridiculed editorial, David Brooks whines that if the Democrats pass a Senate bill carefully tailored to the rules of reconciliation to supplement the bill already passed by the Senate, it will somehow mean the end of the comity that he admits no longer exists in the Senate, resulting in "rule by simple majority... for everything, now and forever." Accepting for the moment the absurdity of the argument, if in fact the Senate's future hangs in the balance, all the more reason for one single, solitary Republican to stand up and say, "The future of this institution is more important than trying to harm the Democratic Party and President - I'll vote for cloture." I know, I know.... Way too much to ask.

It's Too Hard To Ignore Constituents?

Robert Wright reads more into President Obama's woes than an opposition party united in its desire to defeat his initiatives, and the general polarization of the electorate (something that may be more a matter of perception than reality). The people are using technology to peaceably unite, and to petition the government for redress of grievances. The horror! Wright writes,

Had technological change stopped in 1950, President Obama would be basking in the glow of victory. Insurance and pharmaceutical companies and labor unions posed challenges to health care reform, but their challenges were manageable, and as of a few weeks ago Obama had found a sausage recipe that these groups could stomach.

No, seriously, a single seat changes hands in the Senate bringing in a 41'st vote for The Party of "No", and it's the fault of the Internet? Months of wrangling over a healthcare bill, largely opposed by individual citizens based upon its handouts to those same special interest groups we had during Wright's "good old days", potentially defeated by the fact that the Senate can't reach a supermajority by one vote, and the problem is with the electorate at large? Seriously?

The special interests Wright seems to favor are presumably Special Interest 1.0, as Wright identifies "Special Interest 2.0" as the current "generation of political technology" - such as mass mail. He sees Tea Partiers as part of Special Interest 2.0, as they were supported by traditional special interest groups and corporations; but speaks of an emerging "Special Interest 3.0"

The Web’s many “cocoons” — ideologically homogenous blogs and Web sites — are in a sense interest groups; they’re clusters of people who share a political perspective and can convene only because of the nearly frictionless organizing technology that is the Internet. Some aren’t themselves activist, but most provide a kind of sustenance to activists who carry their banner.

All of this — a balkanized media landscape and the activist groups that spring from it — is Special Interest 3.0.

Big, scary bloggers? And political websites? Seriously?

I think Wright pretty much misses the boat here. First, sure, there are weblogs that cater to particular ideologies. But there are also print publications that do the same thing. Some of those ideological blogs are even owned by the companies that produce the print publications. Perhaps Wright is concerned that, as blogs can (generally) be read for free, more people read them? But that wouldn't of itself mean that there are more factions; just that some of the factions appear to have more members.

Frankly, even if you include blogs that have come from people outside of the traditional sphere of influence, or people inside the sphere who started blogging, you're really only talking about a small number of weblogs that have any significant influence. Most political blogs - just like most blogs on other subjects - don't get many readers and don't have anything that could be considered to be a politically influential set of followers, let alone a group of followers ready to mobilize at the author's command.

Within that context, it's perhaps no surprise that Wright fails to identify any of the problematic websites or weblogs, instead speaking in broad generalities.

The new information technology doesn’t just create generation-3.0 special interests; it arms them with precision-guided munitions. The division of readers and viewers into demographically and ideologically discrete micro-audiences makes it easy for interest groups to get scare stories (e.g. “death panels”) to the people most likely to be terrified by them. Then pollsters barrage legislators with the views of constituents who, having been barraged by these stories, have little idea what’s actually in the bills that outrage them.

The "death panel" lie was started by a known individual, Betsy McCaughey. She passed her lie along to Sarah Palin, who fed it to the masses. That's not "Special Interest 3.0" or even "2.0", and isn't something you can blame on the Internet. Perhaps Fox News and a mainstream media that is more interested in creating controversy than in educating the public, but those are factions Wright has told us are part of Special Interest 1.0. Some blogs and websites may have been happy to serve as an echo chamber for the McCaughey-Palin lies, but the mainstream media and numerous elected officials also happily repeated the lies. And we can again see how much of the fault for the possible demise of healthcare reform lies in the Senate.

Moreover, targeting small groups of people likely to be affected by a political message is far from a new phenomenon, and is far from web-based. I would argue that, contrary to Wright's thesis, most targeting still occurs under the "Special Interest 2.0" mass mailing (and mass phone call) model (at times backed up by good, old-fashioned pressing of the flesh). I am not aware of any broad effort on the part of special interest groups to contact and coopt bloggers and webmasters to serve as Svengalis to a mass of mindless followers, and I doubt that such an effort would succeed - first because it underestimates the resistance you're likely to encounter from the bloggers themselves, and second because it overestimates the bloggers' influence over their readers.

To the extent that a blogger picks something up from an echo chamber, repeats it, and inspires outrage among her readers, it's a product of self-selection - the bloggers readers are more likely to be outraged by the things that outrage the blogger, and are there because they share interests. When the outrage arises from misinformation or a lie, such as "death panels", that's a shame. But I suspect that politicians (and perhaps Wright) are more concerned when the outrage is based upon fact. People getting upset, for example, that during the opening moves of healthcare reform some very large concessions were made to "Special Interest 1.0" factions, and that as a result we were certain to have a less effective, more expensive bill. But you know what? Those "Special Interest 1.0" factions still won - they got what they wanted and, if a bill does pass, the concessions they obtained will be preserved in the final bill.

Wright is concerned about "the din of narrow interests and widespread but ephemeral passions", and fears that if politicians are exposed to what their constituents want they will become weak in the knees and our government will effectively be transformed to a direct democracy. Hardly. I do believe that we're seeing politicians cut their milk teeth in dealing with online mass communication - and that a lot of the current problems perceived by Wright have less to do with the so-called "Special Interest 3.0" than they do with politicians' contemptuousness for the voices of the people, individual and collective, as expressed through "new media". No doubt, websites and weblogs help even small groups unite and attempt to advance their goals, but there's absolutely no evidence that politicians care what they have to say any more than they have in the past. The problem, as I see it, is that many politicians (and pundits, and news personalities) are contemptuous of the notion that the people should be able to openly and visibly criticize the and "call them out" - unfairly or, perhaps especially, fairly. And they thus speak contemptuously and dismissively of "bloggers" - an ill-conceived response that can perpetuate or expand the sphere of unwanted criticism.

But it requires far more than a handful of people on an obscure website or weblog to catch anybody's eye, or even be deemed worthy of a dismissive comment. When a theme takes off online, you can be pretty confident that it would have taken off under "Special Interest 2.0" or even "1.0" days - but it's a lot harder to ignore. If we're talking death panels, then we're talking about a failure first on the part of the mainstream media to bluntly call a lie a "lie", and perhaps moreso their unwillingness to turn away a controversial speaker they know to be lying if they think it will generate readers or ratings. It's also a failure of our political leadership in both parties - the Democrats for being unable to get in front of the lie, and make the public aware of the facts; the Republicans for in many cases actively perpetuating the lie, and in most other cases for turning a blind eye to anything that they believed would hurt the Democratic Party and President. None of that can be blamed on "Special Interest 3.0" or some nascent form of "direct democracy".

Wright's first reaction to the problem of the people peacefully assembling via online means to petition the government for redress of grievances is that "It would be hard to restore much of the insulation [between constituents and their elected representatives] without tampering with the First Amendment." Well, yeah, but doesn't that undermine his notion that this is somehow incompatible with what the Founding Fathers wanted? Oh, sure, "information technology has stripped away the insulation that physical distance provided back when information couldn’t travel faster than a horse", but didn't that start with the electric telegraph in 1831?

As an alternative to repealing part or all of the First Amendment, Wright suggests that we could lengthen legislative terms so that

more people in Congress could spend more time worrying about something other than getting re-elected next year, and this could leave them productively indifferent to the most recently manufactured views of their constituents.

Well, we could expand the terms for Members of Congress to six years, because with six year terms surely an elected representative wouldn't be too concerned about... oh, yeah, the problem with healthcare reform lies in the Senate, which already has six year terms. Wright also suggests term limits, something that has had what I see as a pretty catastrophic effect on state legislatures - a lot more newbies in the state houses, politicians just getting up to speed when they're term limited out, politicians on their way out the door happy to pass the buck to the next group, politicians more concerned with positioning themselves for their next job than with doing a good job in their elected positions.... Wright thinks a Member of Congress, term limited out and hoping to grab the seat of a term limited Senator, is going to be deaf to the wishes of his constituents? Or maybe it's that he anticipates most of them going to work for the lobbying firms that serve "Special Interest 1.0", which would appear to be just fine with him.

Wright adds,

Absent such reform, it seems that the only time you can get big things done is amid a sense of national peril. Then you can pass stimulus bills and invade countries (the big résumé items of Obama and his predecessor). In more normal times, getting big things done means walking through a very large and dense minefield.

So... how does this differ from the rest of the nation's history? It took a civil war to end slavery. It took another century and a serious movement of civil disobedience to bring about the Civil Rights Era. It took a war and a depression to bring about the New Deal. Just when did we enjoy the glory days during which big things got done without a sense of national peril? I do agree that our government should be able to operate more responsibly, and that waiting for a crisis before acting can lead to suboptimal outcomes... such as a civil war... but that seems to be a structural problem not so much of our system of government as of the human psyche.

Healthcare reform failed under the Clinton Administration, something Wright can't reasonably attempt to pin on "Special Interest 3.0". But gosh - since he brought up Betsy McCaughey's death panels, perhaps it's worth remembering who was there, spreading lies that helped bring down the reform bill, much to the pleasure of Newt Gingrich? "Special Interest 3.0", nothing. This is déjà vu all over again.

Meanwhile, I think that if politicians would refrain from speaking dismissively of "bloggers" (or other means by which constituents make their wishes known), would focus on the issues and the formation of sound policy, and would have the backbone to call out people who are lying about major policy initiatives - even of those people are in their own party - Wright would quickly discover that many of the problems he perceives don't even exist. And seriously, does Wright think it's better that monied interests have unimpeded access to cut back room deals with politicians than it is for constituents at large to challenge that status quo? (What about Robert Reich's proposal to clean up "Special Interest 1.0", a major culprit in our nation's problems for generations?)

Another Round of "Stupid vs. Mendacious"

Way back in 2004, speaking of Lieberman's insipid attack on a video game, I commented,

... I've never cared for Lieberman. When he speaks about an issue, his comments usually betray a surprising lack of acumen - he doesn't seem to know the facts, nor does he seem to understand the issues. The alternative explanation is that he does know what he is talking about, but rather than advancing a sensible approach based on fact, logic, and law, he instead panders to the "family values" crowd, railing against immorality in a manner that, for somebody sworn to uphold the Constitution, is reckless and irresponsible.

Today we read,

In an interview with The Connecticut Post, he said he had been refining his views on health care for many years and was “very focused on a group post-50, or maybe more like post-55” whose members should be able to buy Medicare if they lacked insurance.

This week, when there actually seemed to be a compromise on health care that did not focus on Mr. Lieberman, he announced that he would block the package if the Democrats included a terrible idea — allowing people between 55 and 65 to buy Medicare.

He presented this as a principled effort to keep down federal debt, but when a Times reporter asked about his 180-degree turn, he said he had forgotten taking his earlier position until the Democratic leadership reminded him about it over the weekend.

Possible explanations:

1. Lack of acumen: Lieberman isn't capable of understanding the facts or issues, and his flip-flopping betrays a very weak mind.

2. Stupid: Despite truly believing he has spent years studying and learning about healthcare reform, with a particular focus on those who would most benefit from a Medicare buy-in, Lieberman can't keep track of the most basic of his own thoughts on the subject.

3. Mendacious: Lieberman 'forgot' his earlier stance the moment a health industry lobbyist contacted him and said "oppose it".

I recognize that there's a fine line between the first two possible explanations. Sadly, none of the explanations disqualify him from service as a U.S. Senator, and the third would arguably be "business as usual".

The Perils of Democracy

When I watch the Obama Administration forming its policy on Afghanistan, I'm reminded of the Bush Administration (and, well, every administration I've seen in my lifetime) - Push back the date for decisions that may cause blowback such that any negative consequence, that is anything that might hurt the incumbent President in the polls, occurs after reelection (or after his successor takes office).

I suspect that Obama will order an approach that he believes will improve the situation in Afghanistan, but with the idea of wrapping up major military operations by mid-2011. At that time he can begin withdrawing troops without fear of a Najibullah-type collapse of the Karzai government before the election. His Republican opponent will have to decide if he wants to run on a platform of re-escalating and perpetuating the war, or effectively endorsing Obama's policies - and I suspect that in a national election there's a lot more danger to a politician who does the former.

This is hardly unique to the U.S. - there are issues around the globe that could be resolved if elected leaders spent less time worrying about getting reelected and more time worrying about what's truly in the best interest of their country and countrymen. And no, I'm not calling for the abolition of democracy - a cure far worse than the disease. And I would probably be arguing against human nature if I were to ask politicians to treat the public as if it has the knowledge, respect and maturity to accept that it can take years to see the benefits of good policy choices, and that a significant short-term price tag (figurative or literal) can be a small price to pay for those benefits.

Alas, I'm dreaming of a world without lobbyists, and in which people would treat the notion of "Sarah Palin, 2012" as a joke, and where it would be laughable to conceive of people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as thought or opinion leaders. I don't mean to single out the political right, but it's difficult to think of a current "thought leader" or "political leader" on the left who offers so little substance yet is taken seriously by the media and the majority of the members of a major political party. People are people, and history tells us that the political left is far from immune from the dubious charms of similar "leaders".

In the Washington Post's tepid "America's Next Great Pundit" contest, a Nobel Prize winning scientist asked why our nation doesn't make an effort to separate science from partisanship, recreating the Office of Technology Assessment to try to "help Congress arrive at a common starting point for complicated legislation". Why not? Because the facts, or scientific consensus, frequently aren't politically convenient. Consider, for example, the British Government's decision to appoint a genuine scientist to advise it on drug issues, only to be embarrassed when he pointed out that much of the hysteria surrounding ecstasy and marijuana were exactly that. So he was fired.

Armed conflicts pose a similar problem, with proponents of war eagerly declaring any action with which they disagree to be a sign of weakness, empowering the enemy. We of course see that in pretty much every pro-war analysis of the War in Afghanistan. And, as Roger Cohen's column on Israel-Palestine implies, it's an argument that can lead to self-destructive behaviors that drag out a problem to the point that the best and easiest solutions may no longer be viable. When things are going well, the politicians respond to the popular sentiment that "Things are going well so why do we need to make any sacrifice," and when things aren't going well they respond to the sentiment, "Why do they deserve anything?" And the problem drags on for years, decades, potentially even for centuries.

As the experience of Britain in the Republic of Ireland indicates, the form of government can change dramatically without any significant impact on how the government responds to a serious issue, problem or conflict. Perhaps it's true that we get the government that we deserve - small-minded, foolish, vengeful, irrational, selfish, short-sighted... just like all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time.