FunctionalAmbivalent

This Is Not Parody

For those of you who think the left is alone in overestimating the divinity of their favored candidate.

Like There Was Ever Any Doubt

Political pastor Charles Dobson, who vowed that he would never support john McCain, is apparently supporting John McCain. Those of you who thought Dobson would do otherwise -- who, in effect, thought his misnamed organization Focus on the Family was anything but a Republican partisan group -- should be ashamed of yourselves.

Next up: All those feminists who were going Republican rather than support Obama are going to discover McCain's anti-abortion voting record and decide that maybe Obama isn't all that bad after all.

The Mondale Syndrome

The Republican Party used to be the party of ideas. Say what you want about Newt Gingrich -- and I do -- but the man generated ideas. Good ideas and bad ideas, random and focused: the Newtster was an out-of-the-box thinking machine at a time when all the Democrats could muster was dogged adherence to convention.

The Democratic overreaction to that was to develop programs and positions for everything that anyone might mention on the campaign trail. "We have ideas, too!" they shouted, confusing position papers with actual thought.

This notion of the Republicans as the Party of ideas seems to have died off recently -- I suspect after the primary debates, when it became clear that anything unconventional would be heartily scorned by all the party's candidates for President. But still: a year ago the "party of ideas" thing counted as conventional wisdom in any discussion of the two parties.

I bring all of this up because Hilzoy has analyzed the two candidates websites and found that Barack Obama's is way more detailed on policy that John McCain's. Hilzoy presents this fact almost without conclusion, but it serves as another example to me of unnecessary wonkishness. Getting elected and governing as President isn't necessarily about assembling an exhaustive file of position papers. It is instead about putting forth a grand vision.

It makes me wonder if Sanator Obama might be falling prey to the Democratic "wisdom" that people vote for President based on extensive policy considerations rather than emotional attachments. If that's the case, the results won't be good.

See What Sticks

John McCain's campaign, which was several days ago complaining that Barack Obama had changed his Iraq policy to be the same as John McCain's, is today complaining that Obama is unsuited to be President because he doesn't change enough.

"I think the American people have had enough of inflexibility and stubbornness in national security policy," (McCain foreign policy adviser Randy) Scheunemann said. When asked later by The Huffington Post's Sam Stein whether the campaign was disparaging President Bush, Scheunemann dug in: "We cannot afford to replace one administration that refused for too long to acknowledge failure in Iraq with a candidate that refuses to acknowledge success in Iraq."

This kind of makes me wonder if people from different parts of McCain's campaign have ever met.

Laugh, and the World Laughs With You. Bitch, and You Bitch Alone.

I've been trying to avoid the whole New Yorker cover thing. I, personally, think the cover's funny, a pointed indictment of the right's tendency to see people who aren't just like them as caricatures.

That said, I think Obama missed an opportunity.

I understand the need for any candidate to be on guard against partisan slanders, but every now and then it would be nice if Obama's campaign would show a sense of humor about itself. That witty jujitsu was one of Ronald Reagan's great gifts. His ability to make fun of himself disarmed any number of difficult issues, notably his age. His refusal to make his opponent's "youth and inexperience" and issue is one of the great political quips of all time.

One of the dangers Obama faces is turning into someone so self-serious that people don't like him anymore. Remember: Americans elect as President the candidate they'd most like to party with. John McCain is old, but he's got a streak of crotchety good fun. If Obama becomes Michael Dukakis, he's toast. If he's so prickly that any joke made slightly at his expense, not one's going to like him enough to vote for him.

In Which I Lament That the Phrase "Mighty White of You" Has Left the Lexicon

John McCain's campaign makes a big concession about Obama:

"We concede that he's a patriot and person of good character."

Gee, thanks.

If It Were Me, I'd Take His Commitee Chair, Move Him Into a Tiny Office and Assign Him a New Parking Spot In Anacostia

Joe Lieberman this weekend:

In describing the reasons he believes the Republicans' presumptive nominee for president would be better prepared than the Democrats' to lead the nation next January, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that history shows the United States would likely face a terrorist attack in 2009.

"Our enemies will test the new president early," Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. "Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."

So, to recap, Lieberman is actively campaigning for the Republican Presidential candidate using the scare tactics that are most offensive to Democrats.

Lieberman can, of course, say and do whatever he wants. It's a free country. That said, I'm absolutely mystified as to why the Democratic leadership, such as it is, hasn't stripped him of his committee chairmanship and every perk they can think of.

I understand that the Democrats only enjoy their 51-49 majority because Lieberman -- elected as an independent -- caucuses with them. That said, if the Democratic Party would like to be something other than a laughingstock they need to tell old Joe to go pound sand, and they should do it even if it means he switches parties. Seriously: what would it cost them? The majority can't get anything done anyway, since the Republicans filibuster everything they don't like. And with the election just a few months off and little chance Republicans will pick up seats, it seems like knocking Lieberman down a peg or two in the name of party discipline would be just the thing to do.

Will the Democrats do that? Apparently not. Which explains a lot about why Congress's approval rating is lower even than the President's. President Bush at least has a few Republicans who are still with him; the Democrats in Congress, unwilling to stand up for anything, have lost their own base.

If There Were One Thing I Could Change About Our Political System

Gerrymandering is the practice of arranging Congressional districts for the political convenience of Congressional Representatives. It's the practice of drawing crooked lines to create heavily Democratic or Republican "safe" districts. Nowhere does gerrymandering have a more pernicious effect than in California, where Democratic and Republican politicians have long conspired to protect each other from serious challenge.

Democrats have led the way, often under the guise of creating "minority" districts likely to elect black or Latino politicians. This was, perhaps, an understandable urge, 30 or 40 years ago when there was no minority representation in Congress and white people were, in general, unlikely to vote for black or Latino politicians. Times have, however, changed. The result, today, of segregating minority populations into specific districts is the creation of pure white districts where where politicians don't even have to consider the needs of minorities. The result is likely less minority influence on political processes, even if it does mean more black and brown faces in Congress.

The result of gerrymandering nationwide is just as negative. Gerrymandering polarizes our political culture. In a contested district, politicians seeking election must moderate their positions, gravitating toward the pragmatic middle. Radicals in either direction might make it through the primary, but have trouble attracting moderates in the general election.

In secure, gerrymandered districts, the gravitational pull is exactly the opposite. The key election is not the general but the primary, and the way to success in primaries is to appeal to shift to the outer reaches, appealing to the True Believers rather than the moderate middle. Once the nomination is secured, there's no reason to even try to appeal to the other side, because there's exactly no chance that the other party is going to win. The politicians who survive in gerrymandered districts thus tend to be relatively radical compared to those in contested districts.

Here's an interesting article about California's gerrymandering, and reading it, it's easy to see why California has both the most liberal and most conservative representatives. The state has been broken into secure political districts where politicians only need worry about appealing to voters in their own parties. In the last three Congressional election cycles, 495 seats have been contested but only 4 have changed parties. The average margin of victory in the last Congressional election was 46%.

Those don't seem, to me, to be statistics that argue the health of our political system.

California, where populist revolts against entrenched power often take root, has qualified an anti-gerrymandering ballot initiative for this November's election. It's opposed, naturally, by entrenched political interests, including the Democratic Party and lots of minority advocacy organizations. It's supported by, among other, the moderate Democratic Leadership Council, the ACLU, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the AARP...the list goes on. A similar proposition failed in 2005 by nearly 20 points,

Here's to hoping it does better this time.

Always the Bridesmaid

James Carville thinks Barack Obama should make Al Gore his running mate.

Crazy Nutty Whacky

David Weigel over at Reason runs down the latest Barack Obama rumors among those on the right with, basically, no life to lead. This week, the rumor mill is churning out speculation on why Obama hasn't released his birth certificate -- something that I don't think any politician in history has been asked to do. Rising up out of the conservative id is all kinds of baseless speculation the certificate would show that he's not actually an American citizen, or that his middle name is Mohamed, or that it shows he was born Muslim, or something.

Anyway, down toward the end of Weigel's piece, there's this:

Why do I keep following this stuff? One, I think conspiracies are fun. Two, it's a depressing sign of how sluggish and defeated the GOP base is this year that it feels compelled to engage in magical thinking. That's what this is: the stubborn hope that something, anything, will fall from the sky and make the Democratic candidate unelectable.

That about says it. Republicans get creamed on the issues; people regret the war, the economy is scary, gas prices are up, most people don't want Roe vs. Wade overturned, etc. So the party of ideas has become the party of wild hallucinations.