It’s the Thought that Counts

I’ve been mulling over the proposal, from our friend Progressive Conservative, that we all take and publicize the Wendell Wilkie Pledge. He’s named it for the Republican presidential candidate who lost to Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. Wilkie’s “Loyal Opposition Speech” is a reminder that politics is about choosing the best policies rather than about personality clashes, and that one can continue to oppose a party’s or politician’s ideas while respecting the rule of law and authority of the office held. In his explanation of the pledge, he writes:

When we vote we are making a promise. A promise to honor the results. A promise to honor the office. A promise to claim the president as our own, even when we disagree with him most. That is the oath I ask you all to take. I urge you to accept the results of this election. Regardless of who you vote for in November, our country can only go forward if we give our new president our loyal support, though I am not asking anyone to blindly follow this President.

I like this idea very much, and I wish that I was writing this post to affirm my support for the pledge and call on others to join me. However, I think the circumstances of this election make that impossible for me to do. I personally support the Obama-Biden ticket, and I would of course honor the results even if the McCain-Palin ticket were to win instead, but I don’t think I could wholeheartedly refer to McCain as “my president” when he and his campaign have gone so far out of their way to specify that they are absolutely no such thing.

I confess: I’ve finished college, and I’m a graduate student. In physics. I don’t live in a tiny town in a landlocked state; I live in a big city, near a coast. (Horror of horrors — the one on the east!) I’m not a Christian. I don’t even believe in a god. Because I’m an educated, metropolitan, “East-coast liberal” atheist, John McCain and Sarah Palin are willing to demonize me and others like me in an attempt to win the votes of everyone else. Why should I pledge my loyal support to a ticket that charges me with the problems of our time?

This hateful rhetoric is not new to Palin, though she did recently refer explicitly to “real America” and “the pro-America parts” of the country. Her speech at the RNC was all about how small-town people are good people (and not-so-subtle implications that if you don’t meet the Mayberry R.F.D. stereotype, you don’t really love your country). I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the irony meter-breaking RNC speech delivered by Mitt Romney, who ripped on “Eastern elites” despite being one himself. Just recently, McCain campaign adviser Nancy Pfotenauer dismissed northern Virginia as not “real Virginia,” but merely infiltrated and contaminated by “Democrats [who] have just come in from the District of Columbia.” North Carolina representative Robin Hayes told a McCain rally that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.” Today, McCain explained to NBC’s Brian Williams that the “elitists” live “in our nation’s capital and New York City.” (In the same interview, Palin pointed out that an elitist is anyone “who [thinks] that they’re better than anyone else,” which puts an interesting new twist on the concept of a political campaign.)

Can you imagine what would happen if Obama and Biden were campaigning in the same way? What if they repeatedly warned of what “conservatives from fly-over states” would do to the government? What if they promised to rid Washington of “Texas bigotry,” or “backwater Mississippi racism,” or “evangelical Christian ignorance?” What if when Republicans derisively referred to Obama’s Ivy League education, Democrats countered by pointing out that McCain graduated 894th of 899 in his college class, and that the best of the four colleges Palin transferred around between was the University of Idaho? I’d love to see each use of the adjective “latte-drinking” as an insult followed by a reminder that the McCain-Palin ticket is instead targeting the alcoholic demographic. Imagine if they argued, as Adam Cadre did not too long ago, that “Republican political ads spew insults — or at least epithets that Republicans think are insults — while Democrats hold out their hands and coo that ‘There is no them — there is only us.’ There’s a reason the guy who said that moved to New York after his presidency instead of back to Arkansas: New York is better than Arkansas.”

Of course, this would be outrageous. The media wouldn’t let the Democrats get away with a presidential campaign with that kind of language in it, and neither would the voters. Even though many of us do believe, deep down, that there’s something seriously wrong with states where creationism is taught in science classes, or where racial segregation is still the norm, or where everything from terrorism to hurricanes gets blamed on “the gays,” we believe that it would be both rude and unproductive to accuse everyone in an entire region of being blindingly ignorant or racist or bigoted as part of a campaign. A candidate willing to make such sweeping and divisive generalizations would be difficult to vote for, even if there were some truth behind them.

It feels like many eons ago now, but there was this time back in April when Obama, at a closed fundraiser event in California, commented that some Pennsylvanians were “bitter” about the government and the economy and as a result “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” It’s a reasonable characterization of what’s going on, and while it’s not something anyone would be happy to hear said about themselves, it doesn’t seem particularly vicious. I could even see it as sympathetic. But when his comments got out, the only words anyone remembered were “cling to guns and religion” which was interpreted to mean that Obama wants to repeal the Second Amendment and ban God. Obama backtracked, calling his statement “boneheaded.”

So then, why is it acceptable, even encouraged, for Republicans to make much worse comments in the opposite direction? I’ll set aside the obvious fallacy of assuming that everyone in New England is a liberal or that everyone in the Deep South is conservative. While that is insulting to our intelligence, it’s at least statistically likely to be true. My bigger problem here is with the divide between the supposedly good Americans and supposedly bad Americans. Republicans seem to think that the good Americans live in the small towns, with limited education, limited exposure to other countries or cultures or ways of life, and limited sobriety. They all work in manufacturing or construction or farming, and this is good, honest work. They all live in “real America,” the states or districts that are colored red on electoral maps. On the other hand, there are the bad Americans, who live in cities big enough to have more traffic lights than you can count on your fingers, tend to go to college and occasionally travel abroad, and have a wide variety of ethnic background and religious traditions. As a result of their college education, they have bad jobs in fields like law, journalism, or scientific research, which means they live in an elite Ivory Tower where they scheme about ways to ruin the lives of good Americans. Naturally, they do not live in “real America,” because their states or districts get colored in blue.

I wish I was making all this up. I wish I could honestly say that we can all get along, but I didn’t make this divide — I usually speak out against it. But when the demonization has gone so far that we appear to have a new Joe McCarthy in Congress, I think it’s gone beyond what I can handle in personal conversations. Republicans need to stop talking about who’s “pro-America” or “anti-America,” who lives in “real America” and who doesn’t. We all love our country; we just have different ideas on how to keep it great and make it better. If Republicans continue to characterize any and all opposing viewpoints as “anti-American,” I don’t see why anyone should be willing to be their “loyal opposition” providing respectful and reasoned debate. Unless John McCain and Sarah Palin suddenly decide to vehemently denounce this kind of rhetoric and seriously apologize for the tone of their campaign and the direction in which they’ve led their party, I just can’t see being able to call McCain “my president.”

Tags: barack obama, intelligence, joe biden, john mccain, patriotism, politics, sarah palin

The presidential debate this evening was interesting, but dense. A lot of important points were raised, but I’m unsure about how much the average viewer could take away from it, especially if they haven’t been following the details of the campaign in depth for as long as I have.

Of course, the big question after all debates is who won. I don’t think there was a clear winner (especially if you emphasize clarity in addition to simply having better arguments). Both candidates gave many answers in which they seemed to be listing handfuls of different ideas they wanted to cram in somewhere, rather than directly and succinctly answering the questions posed. Obama definitely came out ahead in terms of appearance and mannerisms, using the format of the debate to directly challenge McCain, while McCain looked down or away from Obama more often and seemed less comfortable. (Also, that tie… stripes were maybe not the best for TV?) It was nice to see the whole event stay civil and focused on issues (even if maybe not on one specific issue at a time).

In the end, I doubt this debate will change many people’s minds. However, both candidates have shown themselves to be skillful at speaking extemporaneously and with expertise on their policies, so I’m definitely looking forward to the next one.

Tags: barack obama, debate, foreign policy, john mccain, politics

Electoral projection website FiveThirtyEight is showing McCain at 289.1 electoral votes to Obama’s 248.9. They have him at 56% odds to win the presidency. This is a big change from a couple weeks ago. Before both conventions, Obama had about 60% odds of winning, and at the height of his post-convention bounce was at 75% (though no one expected that to last). Now that a bit of time has passed since both conventions and the transient effects are starting to decay, McCain is ahead. It may still be effects from the Republican convention, or it may be that he’s gaining a solid toehold.

What changed? Two major things. Sarah Palin has been announced as the GOP VP candidate, and the McCain campaign has been airing many negative ads. I can see how both of those things would change a few marginal minds, but I’m surprised that they would have this large of an effect. Then again, all the people who voted to reelect Bush in 2004 are still around and registered, so I shouldn’t write off voter stupidity as a possible factor.

And it is about stupidity. Sarah Palin has repeated so many lies about herself so many times and so blatantly, even after it’s been reported everywhere that they are false, that it’s hard to imagine she’s successfully winning over “values voters.” (It just underscores exactly which values matter, and exactly which ones don’t matter the slightest bit.) The smear ads also contain blatant lies and misrepresentations which, as Paul Krugman points out, “anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute.” The message that’s really sent by all this, as David Ignatius and Steve Chapman both argue, is that McCain will stop at nothing to win even if it means sacrificing the ideals he once stood for. Thomas Friedman believes that this trend of misrepresenting and oversimplifying the facts in order to turn everything partisan is ultimately making America stupid, and I’m inclined to agree.

As someone who prefers rational decisions to purely emotional ones, it’s hard for me to figure out how to argue with people swayed by these clearly false appeals. It seems to me that seeing the facts should make anyone’s decision clear. However, FiveThirtyEight has some great suggestions for the Obama campaign regarding Palin enthusiasts: acknowledge that she’s likable, and then point out that not every likable person would make a good vice president. Maybe a similar approach can be followed for the smear ads — explicitly agreeing that it would be bad for someone to do or believe the things Obama is accused of doing or believing, then explaining the truth. The concern, of course, is that this gives too much air time to the rumors, and denying something often just helps people to remember the something instead of the denial. However, doing nothing doesn’t appear to be working.

Tags: barack obama, john mccain, politics, sarah palin

There are plenty of interesting things to note about the speeches at the Republican National Convention so far. I could write several essays full of reactions and responses to Thompson, Lieberman, Romney, Huckabee, and of course Palin. But I don’t really want to go speech-by-speech with this post. I’d rather take the time to discuss the framing techniques being employed by the Republican party via the convention. They’re carefully telling a story that adjusts and refines reality to fit their agenda.

Let me first say that I don’t think Republicans are the only people doing this. I bristled every time during the Democratic convention that I heard populist rhetoric about keeping jobs from going overseas or needing to buy American-made goods. Even though most of the speakers, or at least the speech writers and strategists, probably understand that free trade is essential for long-term economic success, the general public can’t tolerate hearing that, and rather than explain to them the difficult truth they chose to tell the easier story. Rhetorical flourish steps in for intellectual honesty. At the RNC, though, this sort of occurrence is much more frequent. (Mitt Romney called China “Adam Smith on steroids” — so, what, it’s now a problem that they’re adopting capitalism? What was he talking about? It sure made China seem scary, though, huh.)

One notable frame depicts John McCain as the women’s candidate. It looked like this was about disaffected Clinton supporters at first, but it appears to be a broader message. Tonight’s program, ultimately leading up to Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, opened with Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. Setting aside the unresolved issues about exactly how chummy McCain wants to appear to be with CEOs of huge businesses, I found it very interesting to note how Whitman and Fiorina kept talking about how McCain recognizes the contributions women have made to the economy. Was… was that really something controversial? Is that supposed to imply that Obama does not think women have any effect on the economy? Over and over they used phrases like, “As a woman, I support John McCain because….” This, juxtaposed with the choice of a female VP, does a good job of making an inattentive viewer feel like a vote for McCain is a vote for women’s lib. Maybe this is an attempt to mitigate the history-making factor working for Obama, or it could just be a really over-the-top attempt at the Hillary voters, but either way, it’s a misrepresentation.

First of all, I’m insulted by the idea that there are “women’s issues” as distinct from issues that are generally important to society. I acknowledge abortion as a women’s issue only insofar as women are the ones with the wombs, but I think that whether abortions are legal should be and is a concern to men as well. Ditto for the availability of contraception, or maternity/parental leave, or sex education in school. Nevertheless, this is what people mean when they talk about “women’s issues” and this is what we’re pretending McCain will excel at when someone claims to support him “as a woman.” Listen carefully, though — you’ll never hear him actually take the women-friendly stances on these issues. McCain isn’t even in favor of equal pay for female employees. How’s that for recognizing their contributions to the economy?

Also, I’m floored by the contradictory framing of government assistance programs. Many speakers have admonished those who depend on the government for financial support. Mitt Romney blurred the truth about Obama’s tax plan when he said that it would “raise taxes to put more people on Medicaid” and “grow the ranks of those who pay no taxes at all.” It sounds like everyone’s going to pay higher taxes — oh no! — unless you’re listening and realize that some taxes would be raised in order to allow people who can’t afford to pay taxes to pay less or none. Most of you booing in the convention hall would actually pay less in taxes as a result of Obama’s plan. Nevertheless, Romney spun it so that lower taxes for the not-super-wealthy meant barnacle-like dependency on federal programs. Thus the Republicans, advocates of tax cuts, managed to pull off “Higher taxes: bad! Lower taxes: also bad!” That’s odd enough on its own, but then we heard Palin promise parents of children with special needs that they would have an advocate in the White House to make sure they get the assistance they deserve. I’m confused. When are government handouts something to cheer for, and when do they spell “death to initiative, risk-taking and opportunity” exactly?

The other major area of storytelling has to do with “small towns” versus “eastern elites.” Never mind that the latter term was tossed out by a multi-millionaire, former governor of Massachusetts. This is the biggest, weirdest frame of all, and it’s one that’s crept into nearly all the campaign coverage. People from small towns are regular folks, just like you, even though about 80% of the US population lives in an urban area. Then, the story goes, regular folks just like you, or like a guy you’d want to have a beer with, are best equipped to run the country. Now, let’s play a game. Think about the person sitting next to you the last time you were in a bar. Would you trust that person with the US nuclear arsenal, or even with a legislative veto? Come to think of it, would you trust yourself? The reality is, a president needs to have a rock-solid legal and political education and needs to have some experience with government. These are not qualities possessed by the average American, so don’t use your averageness to prove that you’ll make a good politician. I want to vote for the above-average candidate (as far above average as possible!), and I don’t think that makes me elitist — it just makes me rational.

That’s really the bottom line of all of this. Politicians tell these dodgy stories to make their policies more palatable to the American public, and at the end of the day we’re left with little more than lies and distortions. There are plenty of perfectly rational reasons to side with either party, or to land somewhere in between (or off in some entirely different direction), but we don’t seem to be hearing those reasons. In all fairness, I’m sure both McCain and Obama understand these reasons and would love to talk about them. However, those of us who think of politics as an intellectual rather than emotional exercise are far in the minority, and appealing to us isn’t the way to win an election. Until intellectual discourse becomes cool, I guess we’ll have to supply the rationality ourselves.

Tags: convention, john mccain, mitt romney, politics, sarah palin

I’m not going to do a full post on the Obama speech because I largely agree with the conventional wisdom that everyone started spouting the minute it was done.  It was a very good speech, and it was excellent political theater.  I was particularly excited to see the counterattacks on McCain.  I say counterattacks rather than “attacks” or “defense,” and I think the distinction is important.  He defended himself against McCain, but he did so by attacking McCain for even making the attacks in the first place.  (Perfect example: attacking McCain for suggesting that Obama didn’t put his country first.)  Attacking the partisan attacks is a very good way to go on the offensive without totally ruining the bipartisan, new politics feel of the campaign.

Now, for the news of the day: McCain picks Sarah Palin for VP.  This is, as far as I’m concerned, a huge gamble in more ways than one.  There are some obvious upsides, though most of them are political/tactical rather than about good governance.  She has very good anti-corruption credentials.  That should definitely help get the McCain as reformer image back.  She’s also young, which helps, though it also might highlight McCain’s age.  Most importantly, of course, she’s female.  This is obviously an attempt to win over Hillary voters, and it’s one that has a meaningful chance of working.  It obviously won’t get nearly a majority (I mean, she’s vehemently pro-life, for starters) but getting a sizable minority would be plenty to do massive damage.  She also has a nice, conservative-friendly biography.

The downsides, though, are blatantly obvious.  The first one is her utter lack of any experience whatsoever.  She has two years as governor of Alaska, a state with fewer people living in it than most major cities.  She hasn’t touched a foreign policy decision in her life.  This is particularly noteworthy because of McCain’s attacks on Obama.  It’s not insane to claim Obama is short on experience.  At the very least, he has far less than McCain, but you can’t claim Obama is too inexperienced and then claim Palin is ready to jump into the presidency at a moment’s notice.  Being a prominent senator is clearly more experience than Palin has, even if it’s still your first term.  Moreover, Obama has all sorts of other resume items — community activism, a distinguished academic career, time in the state legislature.  Palin was mayor of a town of under 10,000 people.  That puts her somewhere in between high school principals and university chancellors in level of responsibility.  She definitely doesn’t have a distinguished early life either (second-place Miss Alaska followed by University of Idaho and no post-grad degree) or any other non-political credentials.  She doesn’t have anything like Obama’s early Iraq speech to show that despite not being in office she was making good policy decisions.  Choosing someone like Lieberman would have allowed McCain to continue the experience-based criticism.  Picking someone like Jindal or Pawlenty would have made it hard to criticize Obama.  You have to go pretty far into the land of the neophytes before Obama would feel comfortable going on the offensive on experience, but McCain has managed to do it.

Palin’s issue profile is also about as far the right as you could possibly fine.  She’s very fiscally conservative, which is something that, while I disagree with it, I can respect — there’s a legitimate argument to be made for it.  She is also, however, conservative in some ways that make no sense.  Reason has a good post about this.  There’s this great gem on global warming, for example:

Q. What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?

A. A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.

You’d think that the governor of Alaska of all places would be clear on this one by now.  My favorite, though, is this one, where she comes out in favor of teaching creationism in public schools.  Now, as much as we like to point out that intelligent design and creationism are in fact the same thing, it’s a little comforting to me that most proponents of teaching creationism at least feel the need to pretend they’re not advocating teaching a religious belief in a public school, or at least have enough deference to the Supreme Court to try to work around it.  Here, though, she goes against decades of established law and practice and actually calls what she’s supporting creationism.  It’s nice that she’s honest, but I really thought that phase of the debate was over by now.

“Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information….Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And you know, I say this too as the daughter of a science teacher. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject — creationism and evolution. It’s been a healthy foundation for me. But don’t be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides.”

She’s also, of course, massively pro-oil.  Anyone from Alaska has to be.  Lots of states have their own self-interested idiotic policies.  In Iowa it’s ethanol, and in Alaska it’s oil.  I’m not particularly extreme on environmental issues.  I can definitely see the argument for drilling offshore or in ANWR, though I still come down on the other side.  What I can’t stand, though, is the implication that those decisions, which are pretty low-impact, could possibly take the place of strong efforts on alternative energy sources and other kids of research (electric cars, actually clean coal, etc.).  Nevertheless, here she goes right off the deep end:

I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem…

The outcome of this choice is going to be a wonderful experiment in the intelligence of the average voter.  If voters are rational, she should be loved by the Republican base, but hated by independents.  She should win over very few Hillary voters.  She’s massively opposite Clinton on the issues.  If people though Obama was too inexperienced (the only rational reason I’ve seen for voting for Clinton but then choosing McCain over Obama), then Palin should seem much worse, and should hurt.  The only reason left for the Clinton-to-McCain switch is to literally say you are such a feminist that you will vote for a female regardless of the issues.  That’s a bizarre form of feminism, choosing the affirmative-action type voting motivation over things like abortion rights and equal pay.  I would have respect for someone who was honest about that motivation, but I think it’s so obviously idiotic that no one consciously believes that it’s the reason for their vote.  In general, Palin should hurt McCain’s appeal to anyone other than the far right wing.

If, however, voters are irrational (and they probably are), the outcome of this decision is unclear.  The youth and vitality and reform will help the brand.  She might make McCain look old, and the inexperience will definitely get some traction.  She’ll get some female support, and in a way being female might make it harder to get the far-right policy stuff to really stick.  It’ll be interesting.  There’s definitely no way anyone can criticize McCain for making a boring choice, at least.

Tags: barack obama, john mccain, politics, sarah palin, vice president

I wish the political discourse accessible to the majority of the population came in chunks longer than 30 seconds. You can’t make or refute an argument in that short a span of time, and the result is that no one wins. We’ve stopped expecting political dialogue to involve arguments and answers in the first place - it’s all about the quick sell. I could point you to a dozen videos of campaign ads as proof of this, but if you know how to search on YouTube or really even turn on a television, I trust you can find plenty of examples for yourself.

There are lots of times when politicians should naturally want to explain themselves. Many of the sound bites and other tidbits easily turned into attack ads started out as decently reasonable things but were taken out of context. Not all started out as genuinely good things, but they’re usually not as bad as they’re made out to sound. You can tell because the voiceovers in the ads sound like they’re in a trailer for some dystopian sci-fi movie. In a world where nothing is quite like it seems… If they really had a thoroughly compelling case to make, they wouldn’t need to explain it in an ominous voice with scary sound effects. Surely there’s another side to the story… why aren’t politicians eager to refute these weak attacks?

The biggest example of this lately is all the hubbub about who said what about whom before the US Presidential nominations were secured. The Clintons and Joe Biden said Obama didn’t have enough experience, particularly in foreign policy. Romney criticized McCain on a million different things. McCain’s using clips of Hillary Clinton and Biden in ads now. How could McCain even consider Romney, commentators are saying, since he said such nasty things about McCain during the campaign?

This baffles me, especially after having watched both the Clintons’ and Biden’s speeches at the Democratic National Convention, in which they gave full support to Obama and his ability to lead the country. There’s such an easy response! Why isn’t it being made explicitly? It would work equally well for Romney, should the need arise. It goes like this: “Last year I thought [fill in name] had [fill in shortcoming]. but over the past months, as I’ve watched him campaign and heard his opinions on [cite a few key issues or events], I’ve come to realize the depth of his [strength in area of supposed shortcoming] and I’m now entirely sure that he is a well-qualified candidate.” There, was that so hard? We can admit that we changed our minds because we had actual reason to do so.

I could imagine acceptable explanations of lots of other seeming grounds for attack. Voted before some legislation before you voted against it? Explain how bills are usually hundreds and hundreds of pages long, and get amended at different times in complicated ways, so it’s possible to have the “same” bill with very different policy outcomes at two different times. Told a bunch of evangelical Christians that deciding when life begins is “above your pay grade”? Point out that the nature of life is a complex philosophical, theological, and scientific question, and that while any group of people might think it has the answer, it’s not the place of the president to decree that there’s one right perspective when there’s so much debate still going on. Unable to remember how many houses you own? Explain that they’re in your wife’s name, and she buys and sells them without really involving you at all. And maybe confess to the fact that almost all nationally well-known politicians are very wealthy, and seriously, we all knew that, it’s not a crime.

The thing about McCain’s houses really interests me. I just searched on JohnMcCain.com for anything about that mini-scandal, and couldn’t find anything except for a bunch of old articles about the subprime mortgage crisis. I can understand not making a big shiny featured link on your front page to your refutation of Obama’s attacks, but I can’t understand not taking the time to clear them up at all.

On the other hand, Barack Obama has a section of his web site called Fight the Smears. That’s a good start, but it doesn’t cover the more nuanced stuff, and even for what it does cover a lot of people aren’t looking there or don’t even realize the site exists.

I’d like to see the mainstream media stop reporting on what misconceptions the public might hold about incendiary campaign ads, and start reporting on the truth behind the accusations. I’d like to see politicians unafraid to admit they’ve changed their mind and happy to explain the reasons why. When they just let oversimplified, out-of-context attacks go unresponded to, they’re tacitly admitting that the attacks have merit. We should be trying to raise public discourse to a higher level by expecting that politicians explain their actions, and demanding that they criticize each other only when they have more evidence than a sound bite.

Tags: barack obama, john mccain, politics

Well, McCain has had a bad week (though it wouldn’t be obvious to you if you were just watching the polls).  There was of course Obama’s trip overseas, which gave him all the presidential photo-ops he could ask for.  Obama got supported on Iraq by the Iraqi prime minister.  McCain made more in a series of misstatements that would make most candidates look like they don’t understand key issues — except McCain, at least on foreign policy, is immune from that interpretation, so they just make him look old and generally out of it.  No one can fault the McCain campaign for feeling a little bit desperate at the moment.  I’m even willing to let them slide a bit for pulling stupid tricks like pretending they’re about to announce their VP pick in order to get attention.

I am not, however, willing to forgive the suddenly harshly personal tone that the campaign has taken.  I have no problem with negative ads when they attack policy differences.  I have no problem with negative ads on personal qualities that are relevant for governance (leadership experience, or intelligence, or whatever).  I have no problem with negative ads that assault someone’s character when there are actual grounds for doing so.  McCain’s most recent ad (below) is negative, personal, and has no basis in reality.

The main attack point of the ad is that Obama canceled scheduled visits to military bases in Germany.  That’s true, but the reason the Obama campaign gave was that they were worried it was inappropriate to visit troops in the campaign-funded part of the trip.  McCain’s ad says that Obama “made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.”  It then adds that “John McCain is always there for our troops.”  Did the Obama campaign cancel the visit because of a lack of allowed cameras?  Maybe.  Anything is possible.  But as far as I can tell, there is is no evidence to support it.  (It’s the one statement about Obama in the ad that doesn’t have a citation appear on the screen for it.)  Really, though, the thing about this ad that goes beyond mean into sheer idiotic is the picture in the background.  It’s criticizing Obama for going to the gym instead of visiting troops, and it has a clip of him playing basketball.  The only problem is, the clip is from his visit with US troops in Kuwait a couple days earlier!  The people in the background are US soldiers.  I really am at a loss for words here. I can’t do anything other than marvel at the amazing level of shameless, meaningless attack that is going on here.

This comes after McCain has started using the line that “It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” implying that Obama is choosing a popular position he knows is harmful to US security.  I have said before that I think too much has been made of Obama’s early opposition to the war as a measure of good judgment, but at the very least it shows that this is clearly a positions he’s had since well before the presidency was remotely on the table, and that it’s not just political opportunism.

I don’t know why the campaign is taking such a personal tone all of a sudden.  There has been a lot made of McCain’s supposed personal dislike of Obama, so it might just be that showing through.  It might also be a calculated (and not unreasonable) political decision that in a year where a generic Democrat would clearly defeate a generic Republican, the only way for McCain to win is to make it personal.  Nevertheless, it’s the kind of thing where you would expect better of McCain.  The message here is supposed to be that Obama would do anything to win, but I think McCain is being much more successful in proving such a thing about himself than about his opponent.  Those of us who value intelligent debate shouldn’t be surprised, but we should be sad.

Tags: barack obama, john mccain, politics

Until recently I have been torn about what to do in Iraq.  That makes me a bit of an exception, since most people who are well-informed and care about the issue have very strong opinions.  Still, while I have leaned towards the anti-war view, I’ve always been very conflicted about it.

I believe that, in retrospect, the war was clearly a mistake, but I don’t blame most of the people who supported it at the time.  At that time, the argument hinged largely on the existence of WMDs, or at least substantial WMD programs, and that existence was vouched for in very strong terms by the nation’s intelligence agencies.  Given a belief in the WMD accusations, the decision to go to war, while still somewhat dubious, was at least understandable.  I don’t think there was any real reason to doubt the WMD accusations at the time, either.  Even most people who opposed the war believed there was some truth to those accusations.  Saddam was definitely acting as though he had something to hide.  The real blame for the error in going to war lies in my mind with the intelligence agencies who got the facts wrong, and (most importantly) with the Bush administration, which from all accounts created an atmosphere where dissenting opinions were ignored, and delivering evidence and/or analysis to support preconceived goals was rewarded.

Once in, of course, there are lots of reasons to try to succeed in Iraq despite the fact that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.  A stable, friendly democracy in the Middle East would be a huge improvement, and an unstable, fractured, and dysfunctional Iraq would be a huge disaster.  The real problem for me in determining the right course of action was the great degree of uncertainty connected to either course of action.  Withdrawal could put pressure on the Iraqi government to step up, make some tough decisions, make the political compromises it needed to, and really take control.  However, it could also lead to total failure.  Similarly, staying in could eventually produce an acceptable outcome, but could also be hopeless, leading to the same disaster but with more lives and money wasted in the meantime.  Given that all four of these outcomes seemed possible to me, there was not much of a way to decide on a clearly correct course of action.

One thing that was clear to me was that if we were going to stay in, the surge was the right way to do it.  It was at least a clear improvement over what had been the status quo up to that point.  (On a related point, another reason I don’t blame those who supported the choice to go to war is that much of the cost of the war has been more the result of mismanagement than a necessary cost of such an endeavor.  Yes, the danger of mismanagement is always something you should take into account when making a decision like that, but the level of idiocy in the conduct of the war seems like something that someone should be forgiven for not foreseeing.)

All of my indecision has gone away recently, though, as the Iraqi government has begun to push for the kind of timeline that Democrats have been asking for all along.  The most extreme example came today when al-Maliki said that Obama’s 16-month time frame was correct.  As far as I’m concerned, whether a timeline was a good idea before or not, this request from Iraq makes it the obviously correct course of action now.  Iraq is a sovereign nation with its own democratically elected government.  Because Iraq depends on the US for its security, the US has incredible leverage over the Iraqi government, but that should not be mistaken for a lack of Iraqi sovereignty.  In the end, if Iraq asks the US troops to leave, they have to go.

McCain has said this himself in the past, but now seems to refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the request.  The reason he gives, that al-Maliki is just doing this for domestic political reasons, is idiotic.  That’s what’s supposed to happen in a democracy.  If the vast majority of voters within a country believe something to be good policy, their leaders should be forced to fall in line with that belief.  If anything, the fact that this is the will of the Iraqi populace rather than of al-Maliki personally should make it a more important request.  Is it best for Iraq if the US leaves?  Probably.  It’s definitely not certain, but it’s the future of Iraq that is at stake, and when there’s a tough call to make, it’s the Iraqi people who should get to make it.

Tags: barack obama, foreign policy, george w bush, iraq, john mccain

So, as anyone who is remotely aware of the news knows, Obama and McCain are currently in the midst of the VP vetting and choosing process.  There is no shortage of speculation about various potential choices, rumors, and so forth.  There are of course numerous points I could make about various particular candidates, but there is one common line of thinking that I just really disagree with.  The standard version says something to the effect of, “Obama needs to pick someone with lots of foreign policy credentials, to make up for his lack of experience.”  There are also versions about McCain needing to pick someone who’s strong on the economy because he is weak there.  I think choices like this won’t help.

The vice president just doesn’t have that much power.  Cheney obviously did, but more because of influence than actual direct authority, and that I think was largely the result of a president who didn’t have the experience, intellectual ability, or confidence to really have strong independent opinions.  I think the trend towards more powerful VPs is real and will continue, but I think it will look more like the Clinton-Gore relationship (where Gore had much more of a role than had been true through most of history) than the Bush-Cheney situation.  More importantly, the public votes for a president.  That’s who they see as running the country.  It’s good if they have good people working for them, but it’s the president that the public has to have confidence in.

I don’t think anyone is going to say “I know Obama isn’t really qualified to handle national security, but he has Sam Nunn as VP, so it’ll be fine.”  Anyone who agrees with the first half of that sentence won’t be voting for Obama.  Now, you could argue that having Nunn or Biden or whoever as VP shows that people who really know what they’re doing trust Obama, but I don’t think any single person has that kind of sway over the public in general.  Maybe it would work in elite foreign policy circles who really know these people, but not with the general public.  All it would do is generate headlines like “Obama compensates for national security weakness” and reinforce that perception in the public’s mind.  It also has the potential to make the ticket look bottom-heavy.

The long primary has probably done a bit to prevent that last danger from happening.  Obama might be new on the scene, but he’s been in the news a lot, defeated Clinton, raised so much money, become so respected as a speaker, etc.  The public sees him as one of the big, powerful figures in Washington now.  I also think that it makes the people he beat in the primary safe in this way.  No one’s going to feel like Bill Richardson should be at the top, because when they were up against each other it wasn’t even close.  People were very sure Obama would be better.  (Plus, with Richardson, it’s not clear what the narrative in the media is — going for New Mexico? Hispanics? National security credentials? Executive experience?  Probably the conflicting narratives will prevent one from dominating.)

This goes just as much for McCain as for Obama.  Despite claims to the contrary, no one is going to say “Oh, he has Romney as VP, so the economy will be fine.”  They’re going to say “He’s trying to address his weakness on the economy.”  The religious right isn’t going to like him all of a sudden because he picks Jindal.  Jindal won’t add youth and eloquence in any way that matters.  All Jindal would do is remind the religious right that McCain is trying to compensate for thinking they’re all hateful nuts, and remind the rest of the country that McCain is old and managed to get through decades in public life without ever learning how to give a decent speech.

I think both candidates would do themselves a favor by picking people who reinforce their image.  What McCain needs is a another somewhat old (though not as old as him) true maverick with tons of foreign policy experience.  That way it reinforces his image and allows him to criticize Obama as unqualified without people saying “But what about your VP?”  (That’s a tough order.  I’d say Chuck Hagel, except you also need someone where the maverick-ness has been kept strictly separate from the foreign policy…)  Obama needs to stick with the idea that you don’t need 30 years of experience in national security — you just need good judgment.  No one votes for the VP.  People vote for the president, and it’s how the VP choice makes the person at the top look that matters.

Tags: barack obama, john mccain, politics, vice president

Several of John McCain’s energy initiative ideas have been in the news lately. Aside from the totally preposterous gas tax holiday, he’s talking about lifting the federal ban on offshore drilling and awarding a huge prize for better battery technology. He also wants to build 45 new nuclear reactors within the next 22 years. (You can hear his June 17 energy policy speech here, thanks to NPR.)

Meanwhile, Barack Obama remains deeply connected to ethanol, a fuel additive made from cellulose. In the US, this generally means corn, and currying favor with the ethanol lobby correlates strongly with winning big in corn-growing Midwest states. As a senator from Illinois it’s unsurprising that Obama is involved with the ethanol industry. However, it’s scientifically ambiguous whether corn ethanol actually yields more energy than it takes to produce it — but either way it’s many times less efficient than ethanol made from sugar cane, which is a major export of Brazil, and on which there is currently a substantial tariff that Obama just happens to support. Also, the demand for ethanol corn drives up food prices. (Fuel corn and edible corn are different varieties, brags the American Coalition for Ethanol, seemingly ignoring the fact that that’s exactly the problem. Fuel corn is displacing edible corn being grown, making the edible kind more scarce.) Support for ethanol is little more than pandering to Big Agriculture, and that isn’t exactly bringing the change.

That’s not to say Obama’s position on energy policy is bad overall — far from it. His campaign website outlines his plans. He wants to spend $150 billion in clean energy technology and infrastructure over the next 10 years. He’s generally supportive of nuclear power, but has specifically proposed the goal of making 25% of US electricity consumption derived from renewable resources by 2025 (about double the current percentage). Obama is also in favor of a cap-and-trade system for regulating carbon emissions by auctioning off credits to the highest bidders.

And while I’m thrilled to hear McCain talking about big initiatives for technological developments and a serious effort to bring our nuclear power generation capabilities up to where they ought to be (I’m not so sure about the offshore drilling — it might be a reasonable thing to do, though it won’t have any effect on our oil supply for decades) his energy position does leave a bit to be desired. First of all, I don’t really feel confident endorsing the policies of anyone who thought the gas tax holiday was a good idea. (He’s still not letting it go!) Is he just throwing everything out there to see what sticks? McCain is also a proponent of cap-and-trade carbon regulation, but unlike Obama would give away most of the credits to firms that currently pollute the most — meaning less government revenue, and a reward for past pollution. He supports subsidies for nuclear power plants but not for solar or wind power, despite some misleading imagery in his ads.

A lot of good ideas have been proposed, but so have a lot of bad ones. Unfortunately, each candidate has a few from each category, so neither looks clearly in the right. The thing is, science isn’t naturally a political thing. It’s not about ideologies, and it doesn’t care about opinion polls. Wouldn’t it be nice if Obama, McCain, and their campaign staffs could sit down and brainstorm together, then pick and choose the best ideas from each? Lots more nuclear plants, auctioning off carbon credits, ending ethanol subsidies to corn farmers, supporting solar, wind, and geothermal generation… good policies are out there. Here’s hoping politics will get out of the way.

Tags: barack obama, energy, john mccain, oil, politics, science