McCain: maybe he is a maverick after all

One of the reason Republican conservatives never really warmed to John McCain was his opposition to the influence of money in politics and his insistence on money's corrupting potential if not its proven corruption of politicians. For the base Republicans to limit or even regulate campaign donations is simply to surrender to incumbents, one of whom McCain, of course, long has been. On this issue the Arizonan has taken his cues from Teddy Roosevelt, whom he invoked yesterday in remarks certain to embarrass the candidate he has endorsed for the Presidency, Mitt Romney. McCain specifically criticized Sheldon Adelson, who has also endorsed Romney, albeit indirectly by donating to a SuperPAC, after playing sugar-daddy for Newt Gingrich during the spring. Because Adelson owns casinos abroad, McCain suggested that Adelson could serve as a conduit for foreign money. The Senator also took advantage of the opportunity to renew his criticism of the Citizens United decision and to contradict Romney's famous affirmation from last year that corporations were people. Whatever his faults, McCain can't bring himself to swallow that particular article of current Republican faith. So McCain's way of supporting Romney was to insinuate that foreign money was subsidizing ads in his interest. We knew from 2008 that he's never been a fan of Romney; "contempt" probably summed up his attitude well enough. Now he's become the sort of ally the candidate would probably rather do without, like Cory Booker for President Obama. McCain certainly deserves credit for sticking to his principled heresy on the subject of campaign finance, but you do have to wonder how badly he hates Democrats in order to line up behind Romney. Maybe it's just the old military instinct, but the Republican party is no army. He wouldn't get shot for deserting -- though given the way some Republicans think, I might want to take that back.  

What is extremism?

Cal Thomas takes issue in his latest column with Jeb Bush's recent criticisms of the current Republican party. Quoting Bush's description of "an unorthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement," Thomas infers that the Floridian has called the Republican base "extremist," though Bush never used the word during his interview. Republican conservatives have a conflicted relationship with the concept of "extremism." Barry Goldwater, a founding father of the modern movement, famously said at the 1964 Republican national convention that "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,"  adding that "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Goldwater embraced the label liberals applied to him, but nearly fifty years later, Thomas rejects the label and attempts to apply it to others. It seems that Goldwater and Thomas mean different things when they use the word, but "extremism" is still more flexible for rhetorical purposes. Consider three possible definitions for the term.

1. The holding of extreme opinions, "extreme" being understood as synonymous with "radical" in either the progressive or reactionary sense.

2. The resort to extreme means to realize an end, i.e. "extreme measures." In this case, one might say that vice in defense of liberty is extremism.

3. A refusal to compromise.

The third definition is the one Thomas infers from Jeb Bush's remarks, while Goldwater's use of the word comes closest to the second definition in the context of his purported belligerence toward international communism and his presumed preference for "brinksmanship" and "rollback" in waging the Cold War. Thomas himself comes closest to the first definition in his attempt to label people other than Republicans and Tea Partiers as "extremists." But when he asks why Democrats are rarely labeled "extremists" when they refuse to compromise or take a supposedly "moderate" position on certain issues, -- he defines a moderate as someone "who is pro-life or who favors less spending, smaller government and lower taxes," -- Thomas implies that the term is always subjective, selective and pejorative. He wants to define extremism objectively as a deviation from founding values, e.g. "Why aren’t liberals who are attacking the economic and moral foundations of the country the real extremists?" He also wants to reject "refusal to compromise" as an indicator of extremism, since he insists on the right and rightfulness of Republicans to refuse compromise with liberals simply for the sake of "getting things done." Obstructionism is not extremism for Thomas, and that raises the question of the relationship between extremism and compromise.

Compromise was once a virtue, and possibly the supreme virtue, in American politics, but it got a bad name after the Civil War. The Framers expected Congress to function through compromise, but the compromise they expected and depended upon was a compromise of interests -- economic interests specifically. Farmers compromised with merchants, merchants with industrialists. Such compromises could be quantified, usually in monetary terms. But as sectional conflict intensified, issues pertaining to slavery and the rights of slaveholders became more explicit and emotional conflicts of principle as well as conflicts of interest. It's more difficult to quantify a compromise of principles, and many principled people think such compromises are impossible. From the older perspective, the anti-slavery faction were the extremists because they insisted that moral principles trumped the imperative to reconcile all interests. That's where we're at today, though not for as good a reason. Conflicts over taxes and spending should be amenable to quantitative compromise. Instead, ideology insists that taxation beyond a bare minimum is always wrong on principle, or else that moral imperatives require the state to keep spending beyond its means. Centrist advocates of a "grand bargain" hope for a quantitative compromise on every front and see resistance on any front, from those unwilling to give in on taxes as well as those unwilling to give in on cuts, as "extremist." Ideology blinds many people to their own interests, though any ideologue will insist on their concrete interest in any dispute, since they see the very fate of the nation at stake in every debate. But if there is an objective ground from which we can indict extremism, it must be the one the Framers provided in their expectation that interests would be compromised. Here a better case can be made against Republican conservatives if you accept the liberal premise that Republicans put ideology ahead of the interests of needy and vulnerable Americans. Against that assertion of interest Republicans seem only to offer a moralistic insistence that each person accept the consequences of his life choices without making unconstitutional demands upon the state or fellow citizens. In a conflict between interests and ideology the ideologue should be presumed the extremist, however you judge him otherwise, unless the interest group resorts to extreme measures, e.g. the secession of slaveholding states. 

So was Goldwater wrong? In the domestic sphere, he was wrong if he saw every legislative conflict of interests as a threat to liberty. Globally, "liberty" however defined is not worth exterminating the human race to spite a tyrant. In general, the extremist's vice is his neglect of the material interests of others, down to their interest in life itself, in his exaltation of principle. But a person's free to think otherwise, and you have to respect Goldwater for making the label his own instead of hiding from it or trying to throw it on others, as Cal Thomas does. Unless you accept the dogmatically liberal premise that no end can justify any means, you can imagine situations when extreme measures may be justified. Such situations are more likely to put material survival than ideological integrity at stake. I have a hard time envisioning such situations in the halls of Congress, at least when legislators are debating budgets and tax rates.   When ideology prevents you from compromising, you're an extremist, and someone like Cal Thomas should neither fear admitting it nor bitch when someone even seems to call him one.  

Idiot of the week nominee: Karl Rove

To be fair to Karl Rove, he, unlike many of the people tapped for Idiot of the Week, did not say or do something self-evidently stupid this time. Instead, Rove, in his capacity as a Fox News talking head, is a victim of circumstance, but it's a circumstance that throws his credibility as a master of measuring or manipulating public opinion into question. It may just have been bad timing, too. Last night, on the Greta Van Sustern show, he dared the President to keep blaming his predecessor, Rove's former boss, for the state of the economy. " I want him to keep doing this," Rove said, because "First of all, it shows the contempt of the President of the United States for the intelligence of the average American." Later, he added: " Let him keep doing that because the American people see that as a weak leader. That's not somebody who's in charge. That's somebody who's making excuses. And we do not like to elect people President of the United States who are excuse makers."

Today, the Gallup polling organization reports that "Americans continue to place more blame for the nation's economic problems on George W. Bush than on Barack Obama, even though Bush left office more than three years ago. The relative economic blame given to Bush versus Obama today is virtually the same as it was last September." According to Gallup's non-zero-sum poll -- respondents didn't have to choose who was more to blame -- 68% of Americans still hold Bush to blame either a "great deal" or a "moderate amount" for the current state of the economy, while 52% blame Obama to a similar extent. The percentage blaming Obama has understandably risen since he took office, from 32% in July 2009 to the present number, while the percentage blaming Bush has slid from an understandable 80% in 2009 to a still-damning 68% today. Even among Republican respondents, who are predictably most likely to assign Obama the most blame for current conditions, 49% still say that Bush deserves a great deal or moderate amount of blame. The ever-mysterious "Independents" are more likely to blame Bush, 67% of such people assigning him major or moderate shares of blame compared to 51% who blame Obama in like proportions. In the name of objectivity, however, the most unrealistic respondents are the Democrats, only 19% of whom are willing to blame Obama to any significant extent. But if you believe that forceful leadership and an unflinching commitment to creating public jobs if necessary would have made a difference, then you either have to blame Obama for obvious failures or admit that Republican obstructionism, which Democrats would like to blame for everything, depends on presidential weakness to succeed.

Unfortunately for the President, he isn't running against George W. Bush this fall and the poll doesn't allow respondents to assign Mitt Romney any share of blame for the state of the economy.  I'm sure Democrats would blame him if they could, but the rest of the public may prove more willing to try someone else if more than half blame Obama for our present plight. Polls like this one help our party system survive. They invite people to blame George W. Bush as a person, but not the Republican party or Bush's (disputed) conservative ideology. Reducing blame to a personal level allows people to see Romney as a fresh hand, untainted by any association with Bush. That's how it should be in an ideal polity, but in a party-state like ours it's not unreasonable to predict Romney's performance by reference to Bush's. If there is a "Republican" mode of stewarding the economy, it can be presumed that Bush practiced it and Romney will. Our whole political culture assumes that there is a "Republican" and "Democratic" mode of stewardship, but at election time partisans will insist that Romney resembles Bush not in the least, despite their common Republicanism, and in 2016, whether Obama wins or loses this year, Democrats will say if necessary that their new candidate has nothing to do with Obama's policies. In any event, the Gallup poll isn't necessarily good news for Obama, since his numbers aren't that impressive, but it's bad news for Karl Rove insofar as it proves him wrong. Whatever they think of Obama, most Americans will agree with him when he blames Bush for their troubles. That's not what Rove was saying last night, and the truth makes him look like an idiot. The real proof, however, is yet to come.

Gingrich resents wealth -- or does he?

One reason why Americans often look to billionaires for political salvation, from Ross Perot to Michael Bloomberg, is the assumption that their ability to fund their own campaigns would leave them unbeholden to campaign donors. While the billionaire will still need to make promises to citizens to get their votes, he should not have to make promises to wealthy people or corporations to get their donations. Look at it from another perspective, however, -- from the vantage of the billionaire's rival, or even from the vantage of Newt Gingrich during his race against Mitt Romney. From Gingrich's perspective, as he explained to Al Sharpton yesterday -- and how did I miss that momentous meeting of minds? -- the ability of a super-rich candidate to finance his own campaign gives him an unfair advantage. This is because election laws restrict the amount that anyone can donate to a candidate, but not the amount a candidate can spend on himself. The fact that an individual can donate no more than $2,500 to a campaign, Gingrich argues, effectively rigs elections in favor of the super rich. As is well known, millions were spent in support of Gingrich, but much of that money went to Super PACs to make attack ads against Romney, not toward subsidizing Gingrich's campaign operations. The actual Gingrich campaign ended up deep in the red. Things might have turned out differently, he believes, were there no upper limit on the amount individuals could donate to candidates themselves. Things may have turned out differently had Rick Santorum never been born, too, but election law is something Gingrich can theoretically do something about. So to review: his solution to an election law skewed to favor the wealthy is to allow unlimited campaign donations by individuals. That, he argues, would level the playing field to the advantage of the middle class -- the middle class candidates, that is, in which category Gingrich includes himself. Since limiting how much anyone can spend on his own campaign is not an option Gingrich is willing to contemplate, I guess this is the best he can offer. But if he has a problem with money in politics, apart from his inability to raise adequate amounts of it, solving that problem by allowing more money in is like throwing gasoline on a fire. And if he's not burnt, how will Gingrich repay -- what will he owe the people who gave him the gas? That question brings us back to where we started, but looking to billionaires for salvation is no solution to the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that the system itself, not just the candidates, depends on money. Until we can have elections with less money rather than more, the problem remains.

First Ladyism: the dynastic tendency of egalitarian politics

Michelle Obama sent me a begging letter the other day. It didn't read much differently from the ones her husband sends -- they may well come from the same ghostwriter -- except that partisanship is minimized almost to the point of absence in the First Lady's missive. While the President alternates between denouncing the Republicans by name and not mentioning them, Mrs. Obama might leave you believing that no one actually opposes her husband's policies. She poses the same stark choices the President does between "you're on your own" and "I am my brother's keeper," but can't quite bring herself to admit that anyone actually endorses the first option. This is perhaps a politically calculated reticence, guided by a belief that the First Lady shouldn't stoop to personalities in a political campaign. Why, then, is the First Lady sending me a begging letter for campaign donations? Does Ann Romney send similar stuff to National Review or Weekly Standard readers? I suspect not, and the suspicion got me wondering.

The Democratic party has cultivated First Lady cults since the days of Eleanor Roosevelt. Even the apolitical Jackie Kennedy had a cult, though that was inspired more by the fact that, by First Lady standards, Mrs. Kennedy was a goddess of glamor. More typical, however, is the assumption that the President's wife is an important partner in his political work who also shares some of his authority. Even the Republicans have come around to this view somewhat, but the Democrats still surpass them in their presumption that the First Lady is entitled to some kind of political power. There is, of course, no constitutional basis for such a belief, and even John Adams, for whom his wife was an informal political adviser, would never have imagined nor desired a public role for  Abigail as a spokesperson or advocate. Yet as liberal culture has taken a more egalitarian view of marriage, it has seemed to endorse a sense of entitlement on the part of political wives that really has no place in a representative democracy. The idea seems to be that it would be unfair for the husband to exclude the wife from his sphere of work and relegate her to the domestic sphere, even if it happens that voters elected the husband only, and not the wife, to that sphere of work. The Clintons made the modern understanding overt with their 1992 pitch that voters would get two for the price of one. Now we have Mrs. Obama asking for donations, while the news reports that the Obama campaign is depending on her strong personal popularity to help keep voters loyal to her husband. Should the President win a second term -- and possibly even if he doesn't -- we might expect to see Michelle Obama seek political office in her own right, as did the wife of the last Democratic President. Meanwhile, I don't expect to see Laura Bush run for any office, ever.

Is there a paradox at work when the more egalitarian of the two major political parties seems to practice a more dynastic form of politics? Republicans aren't immune from dynasticism of course, with two ex-President Bushes among us and a former Gov. Bush waiting his turn with apparently growing impatience, and a Gov. Romney, son of Gov. Romney, now contending for the White House. But there seems to be a qualitative difference between a son following a father into power -- that idea goes back to John Adams and his son -- and the Democratic party tendency to elevate the First Lady into a kind of queen with inherent powers. Feminism rather than plain egalitarianism may make the difference, since the ostensibly egalitarian Communist party of the Soviet Union gave no such prominence to leaders' wives until Raisa Gorbachev's emergence arguably signaled a terminal decadence. It may be, too, that Democrats are guilty of the charge Republicans make (hypocritically?) against them, that they regard the President as ideally a benevolent, energetic monarch and his household as a royal family who have shares of his power. In simpler terms, Democrats may just long for a wise leader (rather than a strictly constitutional one) whose ideal characteristics include treating his wife as an equal partner and full-time adviser, while that isn't part of the Republican ideal.

Interesting in this regard is the way Mitt Romney's father used Mitt's mother politically. George Romney had been shunted to a minor post in the Nixon cabinet after the 1968 election and wanted to reassert his control of Michigan politics. He tried to do this by getting his wife to run for a U.S. Senate seat in 1970. The elder Romney seems to have bullied Republicans into supporting her, while everyone understood that Senator Romney would have been a plain puppet of her husband. As it happened, she was humiliated by a landslide loss to an incumbent Democrat, despite young Mitt's efforts on the campaign trail. The entire episode reflects badly on George Romney, but is that because he attempted dynastic politics or because it was clear that Mrs. Romney would not have been her own woman in the Senate?  But is the Democratic attitude that First Ladyship entitles a woman to a political career, or even to campaign for political donations, much better? In both cases, politicians are playing the sort of brand-name politics on which Bipolarchy itself depends. Call me old fashioned, but my understanding remains that I don't elect the President's spouse, or any political spouse, to any political responsibility whatsoever, and that any delegation of responsibility to the spouse only increases dynastic tendencies in American politics. Getting that otherwise harmless letter from Mrs. Obama just rubbed me the wrong way -- though readers may rest assured that it makes me no more likely to vote Republican in November.

David Brooks's Follower Problem: Where are we going, anyway?

David Brooks raises interesting questions in his latest New York Times column, which begins unpromisingly with grumpy comments about the uninspiring monuments the country erects these days. Brooks thinks these unheroic monuments testify to the country's increasingly conflicted attitude toward authority, and the people's apparent inability to imagine or idealize what Brooks calls "just authority." He sees many reasons for this problem, and they cut across ideological lines. Americans have become too egalitarian and too individualistic, he claims. Worse, they've become indiscriminately cynical.

These days many Americans seem incapable of thinking about these paradoxes. Those “Question Authority” bumper stickers no longer symbolize an attempt to distinguish just and unjust authority. They symbolize an attitude of opposing authority.

The old adversary culture of the intellectuals has turned into a mass adversarial cynicism. The common assumption is that elites are always hiding something. Public servants are in it for themselves. Those people at the top are nowhere near as smart or as wonderful as pure and all-knowing Me.

You end up with movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Parties that try to dispense with authority altogether. They reject hierarchies and leaders because they don’t believe in the concepts. The whole world should be like the Internet — a disbursed [sic?]  semianarchy in which authority is suspect and each individual is king. 

Brooks's equation of the Occupiers and the Tea Partiers will doubtless offend both groups, each assuming that it challenges only wrongful or abused authority, and only for indisputably good reasons. At the same time, each group probably seems authoritarian to the other, the Occupiers demanding more power for the state in the minds of the TPs, the TPs demanding more for corporate patriarchy, depending on what Occupier you talk to. But Brooks is probably onto something when he includes that both groups, if not the society as a whole, have what he calls a "follower problem." What are they missing? 

Democratic followership is also built on a series of paradoxes: that we are all created equal but that we also elevate those who are extraordinary; that we choose our leaders but also have to defer to them and trust their discretion; that we’re proud individuals but only really thrive as a group, organized and led by just authority. 

Brooks may complicate the issue more than he needs to, because what he's really talking about is representative government. Democratic republics depend on people trusting the people they elect, with the election itself the fundamental act of trust. But too many people, Brooks claims, take the too-democratic attitude that you're no better than I am, so who are you to tell me what to do? The problem isn't just cynicism, he writes; it's vanity. This brings him back to the monument problem. We can't create inspiring monuments, he thinks, because we're reluctant to acknowledge a hero's superiority or present him (or her) as someone who should be emulated by others. This seems more like a description of the Tea Party or larger libertarian attitude, but a shift of perspective might make widespread distrust of business leaders look very similar.

But if Brooks perceives a "follower problem," he fails to ask the most obvious next question. He may be right that "to have good leaders you have to have good followers," but before you can have good followers you have to have a general agreement about the direction we're all going in. That has to happen before anyone decides who leads and who follows, unless you presume that only a leader can decide the direction, while everyone else should trust him. I'd like to think that in a democratic republic the people decide the direction and the leaders steer us there. But we live in the American Bipolarchy, where the people do not choose the direction. Instead, we decide where we don't want to go, or who we don't want to steer us, by voting for one party as a veto on the other. Republicans may hope that Mitt Romney will get a mandate in November, but if President Obama loses it won't be because voters have positively chosen Romney's direction, but because they'll have repudiated Obama's. Romney will find, as have his recent predecessors, that such a verdict comes with no automatic deference to his will, no matter what he might assume. But if we mistrust leaders, we mistrust each other as well -- our fellow followers whether we think of ourselves or others that way or not. We may be more cynical than we were in Eisenhower's time, to choose an example Brooks offers, but is that crippling cynicism a cause or a consequence of our real trouble? Brooks gives us an interesting preliminary diagnosis, but further research is necessary.  

Bipolarchy and the Bush League

Jeb Bush talks lately like a man history has passed by. That is, he's trying to get history's attention. The former Florida governor, once thought likely to be the second member of his family to become President before his erratic older brother jumped ahead of him, believes that he could beat Barack Obama this year, but he also seems to believe that he could not have gotten the Republican presidential nomination he no doubt considers necessary to topple the incumbent. He's done his duty to the party by endorsing Mitt Romney, but he told Bloomberg News that there was something wrong with the political climate, something that would have made it difficult for his father to have gotten a Republican nod today -- not that it was easy for the old man in reality. Unintentionally echoing a popular Democratic talking point, Bush said that even Ronald Reagan would have trouble in the GOP primaries because of his willingness to seek bipartisan support for his measures. Or at least that's what Bush seemed to say. He told the Bloomberg people that Reagan and his father "would have a hard time if you define the Republican party -- and I don't -- as having an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement." You could almost mistake this for a denial of the false charge that Republicans don't tolerate disagreement. But Bush appears actually to be contesting the definition of the Republican party. He would not define it as an intolerant orthodoxy, but the implication of his remarks is that many Republicans do define it that way, even though they shouldn't.

In the Bloomberg interview Bush sounds more like a centrist than an "orthodox" Republican. Despite endorsing Romney, he criticizes the nominee-apparent for taking positions on immigration during the primary campaign that put him in "somewhat of a box" when it comes to appealing to Hispanic voters in the general campaign. The Bushes pride themselves on their outreach to Hispanics, at least on the rhetorical level, and Jeb is probably well aware that this, as much as his occasional appeals to bipartisanship, makes him persona non grata with the GOP base -- the people who probably think I just wrote something in Spanish to insult them and who scold Bush in the comments section of the Bloomberg page. Bush acts as if he were auditioning for Thomas Friedman in his endorsement of Friedman's holy grail, the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan. He echoes Friedman's criticism of Obama for failing to support Simpson-Bowles for nebulous "political reasons." Such statements are likely to confirm many Democrats' belief that if Simpson-Bowles sets the standard for centrism, then centrism be damned. But Bush may be reading Friedman too much for his own good, to the point where he believes in a constituency for the sort of "radical centrism" that Friedman espouses, the advocates of  a "wise austerity" who deplores Republican base intractability and its whiff of hatred while hoping that their own more sensitive attitude and their lip service to "shared sacrifice" will soften the blow of austerity wherever it falls. Maybe Jeb Bush is the candidate Friedman's been looking for all along, the would-be wise man who doesn't see himself having a shot within his party, but with a pedigree that would make him instantly plausible, it's sad to say, as a third-party candidate. Why not build a movement to persuade Jeb to reassert his family's noblesse oblige and reclaim their birthright -- the White House. I've even thought of a name for such a movement -- but I gave it away in the headline.

Patriot Voices: Rick Santorum and his enemies

Rick Santorum made news twice over today with the launch of his new "Patriot Voices" pressure group and the report that he would not release the delegates committed to him for the Republican National Convention, despite the suspension of his candidacy and his endorsement of Mitt Romney. "Patriot Voices" is offered as a non-partisan Christian Right vehicle serving those "left behind by both parties" in the interest of "faith, family, freedom and opportunity." He missed a chance to brand his cause as the "Four Fs," but that's probably just dumb luck on his part. He told FoxNews that the group would stress "importance of understanding where our rights come from and who we are as a people and a culture." I'd like to think that we don't need Rick Santorum to tell us who we are, but it's obvious enough that he means to tell us who we should be. Well, it's a free country.

More interesting is Santorum's motivation for keeping control of his delegates. While they may vote for him on the first ballot, it seems more likely, now that he's endorsed Romney, that he'll instruct them to vote for the Man From Bain. But there's more to a convention than nominating a candidate, and that's where Santorum still wants to play a major role. The Pennsylvanian is still spoiling for a fight, it seems, but before he goes after the President on Romney's behalf he's going to have it out with Ron Paul. As readers may know, Paul's people have been quietly accumulating delegates at state party conventions above and beyond their primary earnings. They've been so successful that they can claim retroactively to have won certain states. Paul's people plan to push for libertarian planks on Romney's platform, but Santorum's delegates intend to push back, it seems, in the interest of social conservatism. Santorum told his supporters that he wants his delegates to have a chance to "represent the values that I did" in the face of "candidates who have delegates coming who, let's put it this way, may have a different approach." ABC doesn't speculate on specific planks Paul and Santorum might fight over, but the report points to a personal angle, recalling that Paul had called Santorum a "fake" during one of the primary debates. It looks like Paul may learn how "for real" Santorum is this summer. This could be very interesting, both as a test of Romney's ability to manage the conflicting ideological factions that form his coalition and for the possibility of a Paul-Santorum feud causing a wider rift in the Republican party. However you vote in November, the Republicans are guaranteed to have the more interesting and entertaining convention this year.

The "Constitution" Party in name only

The new American Conservative has an article by W. James Antle III about an independent presidential candidate already in the field. Virgil Goode of Virginia is a former Democrat, erstwhile Independent, and renegade Republican who is now the nominee of the Constitution Party. Goode will appear on the ballot in at least 17 states as of this week, though he's still working on meeting his home state's stringent requirements for ballot access. Like Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, Goode has credibility as an elected official that previous Constitution candidates, including the 2008 nominee, Chuck Baldwin. The party had its best showing ever with Baldwin heading the ticket, but has yet to win even 200,000 popular votes in a presidential election.

The Constitution Party probably comes closest among established parties to the "paleocon" philosophy. That means they have a less warmongering platform than the Republicans, but in Goode they've nominated a candidate who votes to authorize the invasion of Iraq. He now wants to bring the troops home, telling Antle that "we can't stay in Afghanistan and the Middle East forever," but he remains somewhat unrepentant about his past support for war, reaffirming a suspicion that Saddam Hussein did possess weapons of mass destruction. He has repented, however, his votes for the Patriot Act. Goode is an outright Islamophobe who freaked out when the first Muslim congressman swore his oath on a Qur'an. He believes that Islam is out to conquer the U.S., but now seems more suspicious of subversion from within by Muslim immigrants than of any military threat by a Muslim nation. This is most likely the true belief of the Constitution Party as a whole, based on their Christian Right biases. I suppose it's reasonable of them not to fear Muslim countries, but fearing the religion of Islam is just as bad when the fear is based on nothing but religious chauvinism.

If we can infer Goode's priorities from his website, it looks like he intends to run on a platform of homophobia, xenophobia and all-around populism. His plan to stop issuing green cards to anyone, however, is motivated less by fear of foreigners than by a desire to stop them from taking American jobs. Economically speaking his positions are predictably right-wing, with the populist exception of opposition to international "free trade" agreements. He also promises to "preserve and protect" Social Security and seems disinclined, unlike most Republicans, to privatize the system to any extent. His position is actually at odds with the Constitution party platform. Like any right-winger, Goode has to deal with the persistence of Birtherism. He told the Independent Political Report that he reserves further comment on the question of the President's nativity until he can inspect the original birth certificate. That generated a free-for-all of commentary from birthers, conservatives, libertarians, etc. The most telling comment came from one "RedPhillips," who wrote that "Had [Goode] declared himself a convinced anti-birther or brushed off the question he would have alienated a huge portion of the kind of people who might vote for a conservative third party candidate. Had he declared himself a convinced birther he would have created a big distraction. His answer expresses just the right amount of skepticism." That's a matter of perspective, since many people see no middle ground on the subject. For most, there's no good reason to question Obama's birthplace and there's no room for reserving judgment -- but how many of those people will vote against Obama this November? The sad part of it all is the implication that some people might make birtherism a litmus test for their support -- that it's not enough to think that Obama is wrong, not evil. Even sadder is the thought that someone might actually want their votes.

Goode's concern for American jobs is admirable, but unless it comes with a commitment to create jobs by any means, instead of merely waiting for our wonderful entrepreneurs to create them, it does the country little good. His newest party affiliation seems to have had a positive influence on Goode's foreign policy, though the rank and file might well keep an eye on him based on past performance. In any event, the deal breaker that makes the Constitution Party as a whole unacceptable is a Christian ideology that makes the party's very name a lie. When the party can include "Family" as one of its Seven Principles while invoking a "divinely instituted" family structure, and when it acknowledges Jesus Christ as Creator in its Preamble, they have nothing to do with the Constitution of the United States. You would think that, had the Founders meant the U.S. to be as Christian a nation as the Constitution Party believes it to be, they would have included such language in the actual Constitution. They did not, however, and that forces a choice on Goode's party. It can be the Constitution Party, or it can be the Christian Party. It cannot be both.

On Wisconsin

For Republicans, Governor Scott Walker's victory in yesterday's recall election in Wisconsin is a vindication of his policy of standing up to public-employee unions. For Democrats, it will most likely be taken as proof of the malignant power of money, given the spending advantage enjoyed by the governor and his supporters. In short, Republicans will gloat and Democrats will gripe, but what seems to have happened is that a movement to recall Walker fueled by organized labor was co-opted, inevitably, by the Democratic party and turned into a do-over of the 2010 gubernatorial election. My gut feeling was that the recall was doomed as soon as the Democrats nominated Mayor Barrett of Milwaukee, the man Walker had beaten in 2010, as their candidate to replace Walker in 2012. Whether or not Badger State voters still wanted Walker, they'd already decided that they didn't want Barrett in the statehouse. Democrats should have learned from that, but they were apparently too concerned about turning the recall into a reversal of 2010.

Nominating Barrett made the recall just another Bipolarchy squabble; from what I've read, the Barrett campaign actually downplayed in their advertising the labor issues that led to the recall in the first place. That makes it easier now for the Republicans to see Walker's victory as a positive omen for the presidential election. It is somewhat ominous, no matter how you look at it. There remains a disconnect between the obvious and widespread animosity toward Republicans and the support that Democrats expect as their due and demand as a national necessity. That disconnect will persist so long as people assume that partisan interest, not the people's interest, determines the intensity of Democratic opposition to Republican schemes.

While the recall certainly scared Republicans, in retrospect they should realize that they picked a pretty easy fight. From the time Walker targeted public-employee unions last year, it was easy for him and his advocates to portray those unions as a privileged class that had exploited political connections to get a better deal for themselves than ordinary working people could manage. People in Wisconsin, who reportedly approved of Walker's measures by a narrow margin before yesterday's vote, did not see the public-employee unions as success stories worth emulating but as allies of the ruling political class who enjoyed their perceived privileges unfairly, and on the taxpayer dime. It's easy for working class people to envy other workers' job security, especially when everyone assumes that there are always more state workers than they really need. If there's actually a popular constituency for austerity in this country, it consists of people who assume that only the likes of state workers will suffer from it.

People are funny about their perceptions of parasitism. Sometimes a parasite can get so big and strong from feeding off other people that those people begin to feel that they depend on the parasite rather than the other way around. So things are seen in the private sector, but perceived parasites in the public sector are always assumed to be disposable. This nation appears divided politically between those who expect to solve our problems by purging some class of parasites and those who honestly think that there aren't any parasites anywhere. If that doesn't seem to cover all possible answers or options you see the problem with our two-party regime. Under Bipolarchy conditions there could never be a pure referendum on Gov. Walker, as a recall vote should have been, so long as Democrats get involved. As long as any struggle between Republicans and the working class can be turned into a referendum on Democrats, the workers will labor under a handicap. Bear that in mind as the year rolls on.

Markets or Democracy First?

In the new American Conservative Martin Sieff relates how Russia's experience with post-Soviet democracy proves the Russian think-tanker Andranik Migranian's theory of of democratic evolution. When the Soviet Union fell, Migranian opposed rapid democratization on the not-novel basis that democracy could not flourish in the absence of free markets. The important corollary of his theory, Sieff says, is that free markets can't be created from nothing by a democratic regime. As Sieff explains:

First, you cannot create a successful democracy if a successful free market and a large middle class enjoying basic property rights and the rule of law do not already exist. Second, the system of checks and balances in any democratic society allows existing interest groups to prevent a free market from emerging. So there is no free market to generate the overall rising levels of prosperity and optimism across society that any democracy needs to survive and flourish. Third, it takes a tough, centralized authoritarian government or a strong, self-confident oligarchy to create the conditions for a free market to emerge. Only a strong central government can impose a free market and prevent the less efficient members of society from blocking it.

While Boris Yeltsin's democracy lapsed into oligarchy and evolved into Putin's authoritarianism without developing either free markets or real democracy, the Weimar Republic also seems to prove Migranian/Sieff's point, if you accept that post-WW1 Germany had no free-market preparation for proper middle-class democracy. But it could just as easily be argued that all Weimar proves is that new democracies will fail in conditions of economic privation. Sieff doesn't claim that Weimar democracy caused or exacerbated Germany's pre-Hitler economic crises; he argues only that Weimar's ineffective answers to these crises discredited democracy among Germans. He goes further, however, to say that pre-democratic Germans wouldn't have given Hitler the time of day, while adding that Hohenzollern Germany under the Kaisers was "largely democratic." What does democracy mean to Sieff, exactly? We know this much: to him, democracy isn't worth a damn if there aren't free markets, and if democracy gets in the way of free markets, a country is better off without it until it has a middle class that knows how to use democracy right, as opposed to the "less efficient" elements that might otherwise exploit the system to save themselves from markets. Sieff estimates that it might take "one or two generations -- from about 20 to 100 years" for proper middle-class, free-market democracy to take root in new soil, citing South Korea and Poland as successful examples. He recommends patience to democratizing nations and is probably unmoved by any argument for democracy as a moral imperative -- he is, after all, a big critic of the neocons. But all this theorizing makes me wonder. If democracy is only worthwhile under free-market conditions, and only authoritarian regimes can create free markets where they don't already exist, what are your options if you're convinced that your democracy has undermined free markets by pandering to entrenched interest groups or empowering the inefficient? What if you believe that free markets need to be re-established where they've been uprooted by democracy? Do you go about it democratically, or do you decide that democracy has to be set aside for a generation or three? If free markets matter more to you than anything else, even if for the heartfelt reason that prosperity is possible only with those markets, do you decide that under certain circumstances you have to roll back or end democracy where it already exists? If Sieff hasn't considered this possibility, I wonder if others have.... 

Polarization of the People?

It's time again for the annual Pew Research Center survey of American Values, and this year's survey reveals an electorate more polarized than at any point in the 25 years since Pew began this tradition. Polarization on partisan lines accelerated after the election of George W. Bush and has not slowed down under Barack Obama. Pew claims that party identification is now a stronger determinant of polarized attitudes than any other demographic category -- more so than class, race, religion, etc. The last time polarization decreased was between 1994 and 1997, a short-lived trend probably traceable to some soul-searching and cooling of heads after the Oklahoma City bombing. Polarization accelerated most dramatically during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq but has climbed steadily to its new peak since Obama's election. Polarization is ideologically driven, the differences between partisans being most stark on questions touching on the role of government and the need for a social safety net. In simplest terms, fewer Republicans are willing to see government spend money on poor people, while Democrats explicitly disregard questions of deficits and debts when insisting on government aid to the needy. Self-styled independents predictably fall in the middle. They're more likely to agree with Democrats that government should "take care of people who can't take care of themselves," though an independent may define that category more narrowly than a Democrat, while they draw closer to Republicans when the survey raises the specter of national debt. Possibly explanatory are the findings of an "Efficacy vs. Fatalism" question. While all groups agree that "the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer," the major parties draw different conclusions from that observation. A majority of all people surveyed reject the "fatalist" premises that "success in life is pretty much determined by forces outside our control" and that "hard work offers little guarantee of success," but Democrats as a group tend towards "fatalism," while Republicans presumably assume that hard work can overcome all obstacles, and independents occupy the middle ground. Republicans are also the group most likely to blame poverty on "lack of effort" rather than "circumstances."  Going back to the question of government's responsibility to the needy, we can infer that Republicans assume either that anyone currently incapable of taking care of himself can just work harder and take control over his life, or that such people may as well vanish from the face of the earth. Perhaps tellingly, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to complain that government isn't responsive to them and their concerns, though independents are even more likely to make that complaint.    

Pew makes no attempt to explain why polarization has accelerated so dramatically since the 1980s, and theirs is an insufficient sample to back any claim that today is the most polarized moment in American history. I imagine the Civil War period will always hold that position, but polarization has been a persistent feature of political life under a Bipolarchy. The intellectual bases and emotional intensity of polarization differ across time. A century or more ago, it was often a matter of raw "team" identification or ethnocultural identity politics, Democrats being the party of immigrants, Catholics, working class city folk, etc. while Republicans were the WASP and country party. Partisan propaganda was as ubiquitous in the past as it seems now, though it obviously took different forms. Take all of this as a warning against automatically blaming talk radio, Fox News, MSNBC, etc., for today's climate. They clearly play a role, but we can question whether they instigate polarization or only exacerbate it. To some extent public opinion must come straight from the public, not from the spinmeisters of the party propaganda offices. Despite the survey finding that Americans mostly deny the premise of national decline, it looks fairly obvious that millions of people, for any number of reasons, have decided that millions of other Americans need to be kicked to the curb and made to fend for themselves, whether because we can't afford to carry them anymore or because we never should have carried them. These millions may believe sincerely that those other millions can and will fend for themselves, or they may feel that it's none of their business -- unless they choose to be charitable -- if anyone can't. People with such opinions may not be "declinists," but they certainly represent a nation in decline. Decline itself may be the ultimate or fundamental cause of today's polarization, since it does seem to force an eventual either-or choice on us: "no one left behind" or "every man for himself." Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans perfectly represent these choices, but Americans may pick between the parties based on their own choice of options. We could get rid of Bipolarchy tomorrow and Americans may well feel the same way they do today. Who do we blame then?

Reichle v. Howards: Don't touch the Veep!

Steven Howards probably blew whatever chance he had with the Supreme Court the day he lied about laying hands on Vice President Cheney at a Colorado shopping mall. Howards sued the Secret Service officers who subsequently arrested him for violating his First Amendment rights. He claimed that the arrest was retaliation for his comments on Cheney's metaphoric kid-killing role in the Iraq War. The officers appealed for immunity, and today a unanimous Court (minus Justice Kagan, who had dealt with the case while Solicitor General) granted it. In the official opinion Justice Thomas ruled that Secret Service agents should not be subject to suit for "retaliatory" arrests made on "probable cause." Probable cause kicked in once it became apparent that Howards had lied about what he's since described as a laying on of hands, and what others have called an attempted shove. The key quote from Thomas's opinion is "This Court has never recognized a First Amendment right to be free from a retaliatory arrest that is supported by probable cause." Since the charges against Howards were eventually dropped, the arrest is all he could have sued over, though that's not an option now. Clarifying the real meaning of the ruling, two of the liberal justices, Ginzburg and Breyer made clear that Reichle, et al were entitled to special consideration in their appeal because they were Secret Service agents and were obliged and empowered to make snap decisions for the security of their charges. One gets the feeling that the ruling would have gone the same way had Howards never touched Cheney, since the real issue, as far as the justices were concerned, was the rights of the agents, not Howards's rights. Thomas hints that "probable cause" might be found for a retaliatory arrest, and to immunize the arresting officer, even if someone had only spoken and not confronted an official hands-on. "[T]he connection between alleged animus [the basis of Howards's suit] and injury may be weakened in the arrest context by a police officer's wholly legitimate consideration of speech," he writes. Of course, an actual assassin trying to get close to a politician is unlikely to give "probable cause" by declaring his hatred for all to hear. On that understanding, it seems that all the Court has done is give the Secret Service free reign to bully anyone who dares tell off a politician at close range. In our current political environment disagreement is equated with hate; speaking truth (or anything else) to power inevitably looks like a threat. Let my opinion seem partisan because of Cheney's involvement, I can just as easily see some crank carted off for confronting the current President and demanding that he prove his place of birth on the spot. When the safety of power comes before the right to confront power verbally, something has gone wrong in this country.

We need independents, not centrists

Writing in The New York Review of Books (the article is available to subscribers only online), Michael Tomasky reviews Linda Killian's new book on "The Untapped Power of Independents" but seems more interested in taking down a straw man. Tomasky wants to refute the supposed contention of self-styled centrists that "'both sides,' liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, are more or less equally to blame for our problems." He cites some roll-call research proving, to no one's actual surprise, that Republicans have moved further to the right than Democrats have to the left. But he can't cite any writer who's actually written or said that both parties are equally to blame for gridlock. It's one thing to say that they share blame, another to say that they deserve equal shares. Nor does it follow from the proof of greater Republican blameworthiness that the correct response is for everyone to rally behind the Democratic party. Not even Tomasky himself recommends that explicitly. He proposes "one far-reaching solution to our problems," -- electing more moderate Republicans "who would be willing to legislate and compromise as in the old days," -- but admits that "there is no sign that it will be done." The one thing he won't recommend, of course, is forming another independent party. The failure of Americans Elect has convinced Tomasky that there is no constituency for the sort of moderate or centrist that AE seemed designed to promote. For all practical purposes, he offers his readers no choice but to support the Democrats for the following reason.

In our current climate, about 40 percent of the electorate is very conservative and would vote for Sarah Palin. All Bloomberg, or anyone [who  runs as an independent] would do is split the remaining 60 percent. So [any moderate independent candidacy] is a plan that would reward the very people who are the main cause of the problem.

While Tomasky doesn't want to reward the party that's the main cause of the problem, he leaves us no choice but to reward the party that is a cause of the problem. He can disprove that Democrats are as guilty as the GOP, but he didn't prove that they are not guilty. Merely restating the terms of the polemic between liberals and centrists underscores the real problem with the Democratic party. Liberals complain that party leaders compromise too much and strive too much to be centrist, while centrists complain that the party base doesn't compromise or strive enough to be centrist. Arguing over which is right is folly. The problem is that the Democratic party compromises or refuses to compromise, tacks to the center or the left, when it serves the electoral and fundraising interests of the party. Instead of fighting to overturn a situation where 40 percent of the electorate skews every political question, the Democrats exploit it. They take advantage of the plight Tomasky acknowledges, in which they're the nation's only defense against Republicans, and compel their constituents to settle for whatever they decide is practical or pragmatic. Then they tell us that to protest is to "make the perfect the enemy of the good" and guarantee the victory of evil. It is their position as the only practical option for liberals that allows them to get away with centrism, and their need to cater to a liberal base during primary/fundraising season that frustrates centrists. Neither group gets what it really wants from the Democrats, but fear of Republicans forces them to settle time after time. Democratic pundits resented Americans Elect and centrists in general because they felt that the Democratic party was already quite centrist, thank you -- while resenting that very fact. Despite their protests, there's still a place in this campaign season, at every level of elected office, for independent candidates. But if Americans Elect proved anything, it was that there's no place in these campaigns for people who promise to do what the Democrats are already doing, only more so. What we need are parties and candidates who'll end the political culture of dependency and fear in which Democrats flourish -- which isn't the one Republicans are always ranting about. What that requires from us is the courage not to care if Republicans win another election. After all, if more people are "very conservative" than are liberal, moderate, leftist, etc., then I suppose they deserve another chance to get the government they want. And if that 40 percent statistic scares you, there's probably no better way to reduce it than to let Republican conservatism fail again. But if you honestly believe that the stakes are too high this time, your problem isn't necessarily with the Democratic party, but with democracy itself, at least as practiced in the U.S.A.

Private-Equity Democrats

The Democratic party appears to be split between people who believe the private-equity business to be above criticism and those who disagree. Mayor Booker of Newark had been the most prominent private-equity Democrat until ex-President Clinton spoke up in defense of Mitt Romney's business record yesterday. Clinton made sure to say that Romney's economic plans for the nation are inferior to President Obama's, but those remarks were buried under headlines reporting that another prominent Democrat had criticized the Obama campaign for criticizing Bain Capital. Like Booker, Clinton has personal reasons for his stance. In Clinton's case, he admits to having "friends" in private equity. He objects in particular to the implicit portrayal of private equity as "bad work." On this issue, then, Clinton (and Booker) stand to the right of Newt Gingrich, who notoriously described Bain as a "vulture capitalist" firm during his campaign against Romney, insofar as "left" and "right" positions are determined by your stance on capitalism.

The real issue isn't whether Booker or Clinton is criticizing the President, but whether they're faithful to the heritage of their party. Going back to its Jeffersonian antecedents, the Democratic party has often if not always taken a critical if not adversarial stance toward finance. Jefferson himself had a physiocratic bias in favor of agriculture as the true basis of national wealth, while classic "Jacksonian Democracy" in the 19th century idealized physical labor at the expense of speculation and banking. Before Karl Marx, Democrats harbored suspicions that capitalists, owners, bosses, or the "money power" in general weren't giving working people their due. This stance often took extreme or irrational form, from Jefferson's anti-modern physiocracy to the antebellum argument that wage slavery was worse than literal human slavery. But the consistent point remained that there was always something to criticize, from the perspective or ordinary working people, in the workings of capital itself, not just the practices of specific companies or executives. Apologists like Booker and Clinton seem to be saying that there is nothing inherent to criticize in private equity or, by implicit extension, other forms of finance capital. But regardless of what Democrats see as the relative virtues and flaws of Bain Capital, there is always an argument to be made against the exploitation of labor by capital, or else there's no reason for a "left" to exist in this country, by anyone's definition. Democrats who miss this point can't be ranked with the left unless you really believe, as they may themselves, that the real issue between "left" and "right" is the power of the state. But if you still believe that "left" has something to do with the interests of the working class, then you should question again whether a Democratic party represented by Bill Clinton and Cory Booker is really on your side.

The national interest and the common good: Dionne and Brooks debate American history

Republican columnist David Brooks and Democratic columnist E. J. Dionne get together to chat one a week on National Public Radio. This week they've expanded their conversation into the pages of their respective columns, both of which are inspired by Dionne's new book, Our Divided Political Heart. In an argument Brooks generously calls "engrossing," Dionne describes a degeneration of the American conservative tradition from communitarianism to dogmatic individualism. Dionne condenses his thesis for a Washington Post column, noting a Whig-Republican tradition of government action for the "common good" that seems to have been repudiated by the Tea Party era GOP.  That tradition encompasses everything from protective tariffs to veterans' pensions, but seems incompatible with a modern ideology that presumes a fundamental antagonism between government and liberty. Writing in the New York Times, Brooks agrees with Dionne that anti-government ideology has grown excessive, but argues that the phenomenon is a reaction to excesses on the part of government. While conceding that the modern attitude is to some extent an overreaction, he criticizes a century of liberal-progressive "overreach" that provoked the overreaction. In doing so, Brooks attempts to clarify Dionne's picture of the country's "communitarian" past. To the extent that Alexander Hamilton was a forefather of American conservatism -- conservatives and liberals alike often claim the legacies of both Hamilton and his great antagonists, Jefferson and Madison -- Brooks echoes Dionne by emphasizing Hamilton's "economic nationalism." As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton sought to enrich the nation, not just certain individuals (as Jefferson's faction charged), but Brooks contends that Hamilton's idea of the "common good" differed from the ideal of 21st century liberals.

[Hamilton's] primary goal was to enhance national power and eminence, not to make individuals rich or equal. This version of economic nationalism meant that he and the people who followed in his path — the Whigs, the early Republicans and the early progressives — focused on long-term structural development, not on providing jobs right now. They had their sights on the horizon, building the infrastructure, education and research facilities required for future greatness. This nationalism also led generations of leaders to assume that there is a rough harmony of interests between capital and labor. People in this tradition reject efforts to divide the country between haves and have-nots. Finally, this nationalism meant that policy emphasized dynamism, and opportunity more than security, equality and comfort.

Some of the distinctions Brooks makes are probably anachronistic. Hamilton most likely never had to make a choice for or against "jobs right now," for instance. But the distinction tells us a lot about Brooks's own position.  "Jobs right now" apparently belongs alongside "security, equality and comfort" in a category of misjudged priorities. They all seem to strike Brooks as short-term thinking, if not as pandering. In his account, old-fashioned American economic nationalism wasn't the same sort of communitarianism Dionne apparently advocates. It was not about taking care of every single person's security or comfort, much less their equality. Brooks can imagine the national interest being compromised by too much attention to the short-term needs of individual workers. That's his main objection to the New Deal legacy. FDR was right to "energetically respond" to the Great Depression, Brooks writes, but "the New Deal’s dictum — that people don’t eat in the long run; they eat every day — was eventually corrosive."

What can Brooks mean by this provocative, almost sinister-sounding statement? Is he opposed to people eating every day? Perhaps not, but he appears to think that national economic policy -- and as a moderate conservative he does believe in such a thing -- should have a higher, more long-term priority than making sure people eat every day.  The problem with that thought is the implicit assumption of a contradiction between people eating every day -- in economic terms we might translate this as "full employment" -- and long-term economic development. Why should these goals contradict each other? Brooks envisions contradiction because he advocates a capitalism whose most important characteristic, as he explained in his recent defense of Bain Capital, is "creative destruction." Creative destruction will always meet resistance from those whose immediate interests are threatened by it, but Brooks can't imagine an economy evolving any other way. As a result, he can sincerely affirm a national interest and defend what he hopes will be short-term adversity for the casualties of creative destruction on the communitarian ground that the nation's interest outweighs the interests of those individuals whose jobs have been destroyed in the name of progress.

All of this proves that, as ever, and despite what Dionne might argue, liberals remain the ultimate individualists. How did I reach that conclusion? In this way: while liberals are supposedly collectivists compared to conservatives, their collectivism is grounded in a belief that everybody counts. Capitalists are more collectivist by that standard because they can stand the individual suffering caused by capitalist creative destruction and justify it by appealing to some higher good. Individualism isn't the problem with today's Republicans, but the worst of them aren't capitalist collectivists in the manner of David Brooks, either. The problem with 21st century Republicanism is egoism. A moderate Republican like Brooks can rationalize individual misery through his faith that the collective will benefit in the long run. Too many other Republicans don't seem to care whether anyone suffers from economic upheaval, or whether the national interest justifies adversity or austerity, because their notion of individual liberty means that only they count -- for each one, only he counts. When you call that egoism rather than individualism, it loses a lot of its moral glamor. That's my rhetorical hint for the day; please make the most of it.

Is Birtherism a matter of opinion?

Pressured to repudiate Donald Trump's latest attempt to revive the question of the President's birthplace, Republican nominee-presumptive Romney reportedly told the news media that Trump is "entitled to his opinion." While those are a reporter's words, they presumably represent with some accuracy whatever Romney actually said. The candidate also resisted pressure to distance himself from Trump, telling reporters, this time in his own words, "I don't agree with all the people who support me. And my guess is they don't all agree with everything I believe in. But I need to get 50.1 percent or more. And I'm appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people." Trump implicitly makes the list of "good people," or of those "good" enough to get Romney to 50.1% As for Romney, this may be the most self-damning thing he's said to date on the campaign trail, worse than any of the gaffes that supposedly expose his insensitivity or rich-man's arrogance. What has he said, after all? He'll stoop to collaborating or currying favor with crypto-racist conspiracy mongers in order to get the barest majority of the popular vote. He anticipates the closest possible race and can't afford to repudiate anyone's support. He has to get every hater on his side in order to win. Sad but inevitable -- but let's challenge his initial point. Is Birtherism an "opinion?" My impression was that Birtherism is an assertion of fact, a claim that the President's Hawaiian birth certificate is a fraudulent document concealing Obama's ineligibility for the office he holds. That is no more an "opinion" than the assertion that 2+2 = 5. It's typically postmodern to deny any distinction between fact and opinion, since it's the belief of some postmodernists, usually people on the cultural "left," that "fact" is never anything more than opinion backed by power. Postmodernity empowers the paranoiac bad faith that's simultaneously the analogue and opposite of faith-based politics. For some people, "freedom" now extends to their right not to believe anything particular people, groups or institutions tell them -- or to look at it another way, their right to believe in vast conspiracies of lies motivated by evil intentions. For if this is a free country, don't we have the right to believe that our freedom is constantly threatened by all kinds of people and powers? Aren't we obliged to be jealous of our liberties, after all? Isn't that freedom of opinion? Apparently Mitt Romney thinks so.

Campaign for Primary Accountability's split decision in Texas

The anti-incumbent "Super-PAC" known as the Campaign for Primary Accountability is claiming another scalp this primary season. The group ran an ad campaign against Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat from the El Paso area seeking his ninth term in Congress. Reyes was defeated by Beto O'Rourke, who won a bare majority in a five-way race. The incumbent reportedly tried to portray O'Rourke as a stealth Republican, but from early outside reports one of the big issues of the campaign, as opposed to whatever issues the CPA raised in its ads, was the drug war. O'Rourke has advocated the legalization of marijuana while Reyes has been portrayed as a profligate drug-warrior. On his website, O'Rourke champions term limits and decries the "taxpayer-funded campaign advantages" incumbents enjoy, but I don't know if anti-incumbency and advocacy of term limits makes you a Republican in Democratic clothing. More likely it was O'Rourke's passive enjoyment of CPA support -- though I don't know if CPA explicitly endorsed him in their anti-Reyes ads -- that damned him for some Democrats, many of whom selectively see Super-PACS as conspiracies of the rich when it suits them. In any event, anti-incumbent sentiment has been insufficient to secure victory in every campaign CPA jumps in on. Elsewhere in Texas, their ad buys failed to topple an octogenarian Republican incumbent.

The unsavory thing about CPA is its status as an outsider interfering with any given constituency's choice of its representative, but they're not the only ones playing that game. By now it seems to be taken for granted that every local campaign is everyone's business, but that's arguably only a logical extension of the idea of national partisanship, for good or ill. If we take a stand that each congressional district is nobody else's business, we have to take that stand across the board, not selectively according to class or ideological bias. If it isn't rich outsiders' business then it isn't unions' business or any other lobby's business unless they have an authentic, live tie to the district. The problem with the debate over Super-PACs, Citizens United and political advertising in general is the tendency to see it in bipolar either-or terms. For right-wing defenders of unlimited spending on political ads, to limit or regulate spending can only serve to benefit incumbents. Justice Scalia said as much during his visit to Troy; allowing regulation was to let (implicitly self-interested) incumbents set the rules. From the other side, unregulated spending is the shortcut to plutocracy even though labor unions and other entities opposed to the reign of the rich enjoy the same "corporate" rights under Citizens United rules. But there are never just two sides to the scenario. There are people who question unconstrained spending by the wealthy who are neither incumbents nor sympathetic to incumbents. The rich are not the only "corporate" threat to the integrity of political campaigns. It just won't do to say that either "the rich" or "the incumbents" have too many unfair advantages, or that either group is somehow a stigmatized class with no right to publicize its cause.  The only fair position, in local elections, is to say to the outsider, whether it's a rich individual or a collective of poor people, that the election is none of its business. It shouldn't be the Campaign for Primary Accountability's business if a district in Texas wants to keep sending the same person to Congress. The CPA can argue that entrenched incumbency is a problem for everyone, but it can only be solved district by district, and rightfully only by the people of each district. It may be a harder argument to make that only those people have a right even to discuss the matter, thus leaving CPA and other entities out, but if anyone actually believes that political campaigns have an integrity that's compromised by outsider spending of any kind, that may be the stand that has to be taken.

Scalia in Troy

Justice Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court was in Troy this past weekend to receive an honorary degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an award inevitably protested by some students and faculty, and to participate in an annual colloquy with other honorees. This year's topic was "Honoring Tradition, Responding to a Changing World." As an "originalist" among jurists, Scalia is an interesting person to invite to such a discussion, and I imagine he did not disappoint expectations. RPI's website put up this excerpt from his remarks.



On this occasion, Scalia's understanding of the Constitution is less "originalist" than "strict constructionist." The opposite of strict construction is just as much an "originalist" position as Scalia's, since it was the position of Alexander Hamilton, who was more or less the co-author of the Constitution with the strict-constructionist James Madison. As David J. Bodenhamer writes in his new book The Revolutionary Constitution, Hamilton understood the Constitution as a "grant of power" while Jefferson, reflecting Madison's viewpoint and anticipating Scalia's, saw it as a "restraint on power." Obviously the Constitution is both; it grants power and limits it, the limits being most obvious in the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments. The common-sense position on Constitutional questions should recognize that legislation is unconstitutional if it violates rights defined in the Constitution itself. Strict constructionism goes further, deeming laws unconstitutional not only if they violate defined rights, but also if the powers assumed in the legislation are not explicitly spelled out in the founding charter. The opposite position, from Hamilton to the present day, is more inferential, more inclined to give legislators the benefit of the doubt so long as they don't violate enshrined rights. That position may seem less intellectually rigorous than strict constructionism but the real difference is in the fundamental presumption about government. Strict constructionists from Madison to Scalia interpret the Constitution to mean "this much and no more" until it's amended, while the other side doesn't take the "no more" part for granted. The strict constructionists never say that the other side can't have its way, but insist that under certain circumstances they can't have their way until they amend the Constitution. Because of the amendment process, Scalia is wrong when he says that the people can dictate that some things may never change. But it's also wrong to say that he intends that some things should never change. The real issue between the rival constructions is when it should be necessary to go to the by-definition radical step of amending the Constitution. The opponents of strict construction don't recognize the necessity as often as their rivals. For whatever reason, the "loose" or "liberal" constructionists assume government to have more inherent power than strict constructionists do. Is that assumption based on the Constitution itself or on more fundamental assumptions about government and its obligations? The same question can be asked of strict constructionists, and especially of those, like Scalia, who sometimes fall back on pre-constitutional notions of natural rights. Ideally we would draw our conclusions depending only on the Constitution itself, but if we disagree on the very meaning of government our readings of the Constitution itself will inevitably differ. If the Constitution itself was meant as a vehicle for reconciling conflicting attitudes toward government in the abstract, it's possible to argue that in that sense, at least, it has failed.

Cal Thomas's pagan ethics: ants, grasshoppers and ravens

It wasn't my plan to go after Cal Thomas again so soon, but it's a slow news day and yet a busy one in my office, and I haven't read much comment-worthy today. Thomas has a fresh column in one of the local papers in which he compares the modern welfare state to the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ants. You know the story, and it's been part of American right-wing folklore ever since Walt Disney made a Silly Symphony of it to the tune of "The World Owes Me a Living." Cleverly, Thomas doesn't identify the feckless Grasshopper with the beneficiaries of the welfare state, but with the government itself -- even though it's hard to envision the energetic, busybody government of Thomas's night-terrors "singing and hopping and having an all-around good time." In any event, the columnist warns that the Ants, i.e. the taxpayers, may deny aid to the Grasshopper government, as they did in Thomas's version (though not Disney's) of the fable, at least on the state level by moving from high-tax to low-tax states. In Thomas's view this would be a just rebuke to liberal governments for "'spreading the wealth around' rather than teaching and encouraging individuals to build wealth for themselves." None of this is new from Thomas or his ilk, but I detected a false note somewhere. It actually came right at the start of the column when Thomas credited the grasshopper story, correctly, to Aesop. But I thought Thomas was a Christian. Aesop, or whoever contributed this tale to the collection we attribute to Aesop, was not. Now I know that Thomas has said that Christians shouldn't try to change people's hearts through political action, but I didn't realize all the implications of that disavowal. Apparently it entitled Thomas to become an ethical pagan in the socio-political sphere by invoking the authority of an idolater whose moral, one might argue, is contrary to the values of Jesus of Nazareth. Consider this evidence from a book widely believed to tell a faithful version of Jesus's life, the Gospel of Luke. Following tradition, we print Jesus's words from chapter 12, verse 24 in red.

Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?

Of course, a Republican believer can remind us that it's God, not the government, feeding those ravens. But wouldn't God feed grasshoppers, too? It seems that God does not punish the improvident the way Aesop imagines, so why should a Christian want the grasshoppers to suffer. To borrow from Jesus, how much better are they than the grasshoppers? I don't offer Jesus's remarks as an allegory of the welfare state, but to point out that those folkloric, commonsense sentiments Thomas cites are, on the evidence, un-Christian. But were you surprised?