Why is the Election Up in the Air?

The presidential election is up in the air, a week before Iowa, because "Iowa" is much too soon. We cannot one year choose the person whom we will support for president a year later. It's too long a time span; tipping point is reached. We need a rotating primary, four groups of states chosen by lottery, states in the last group last time are in the first group this time. Once a week during May, convention around 4th of July. Something like that.

Hillary's Achievement

Paul Krugman in today's NYT continues his refinement of a political argument (as distinct from an economic one) in a very perspicuous column; whether one accepts all of his premises or not, the point is very clear. Real change will require leaders who are willing to confront the vested interests in the status quo. Krugman goes on to say that Edwards looks better than Obama when viewed in this light. That may be so (I guess I do agree with Krugman on both the general and the specific point in fact), but it got me thinking about Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton has no visible advocates in the "chattering classes" media. The liberal media (Chris Matthews/MSNBC, The Nation, NPR, the cybersphere) disdain her at best, and do their best to test her weaknesses at every opportunity. No self-respecting bohemian sort or bourgeois intellectual would openly back her. There are "pundits" who allow of their support of Giuliani, or Obama, or Huckabee or Edwards, but not a Hillary-advocate is to be heard. Meanwhile on the right it is as it has ever been: Hillary Clinton is Stalin, a blood-sucking vagina dentata or whatever they call it, a liar, a thief, the Mafia. But that of course is exactly the political climate in which the Clintons have always lived. And they have led and through the 90s the Clintons accomplished the third Democratic regime of the second half of the 20th century (after JFK/LBJ, and Jimmy Carter). And today Hillary Clinton, after weeks of late-campaign tightening-up erosion at the polls, is still, folks, in the lead. She leads without the backing of the media, just like the Clintons always have done.
And that's what was striking me reading Krugman's column. Obama, Krugman's argument goes, is too naive in his advocacy of conciliation (a la Woodrow Wilson and Carter?), while Edwards recognizes that progress will require some political contest to determine whose interests will prevail over whom. This dovetails with a theme of this blog, that a Clinton victory is important because, among other things, that would be a symbolic defeat for the movement conservatives, and they are the ones who need to be defeated for liberal government to move forward. But I think that Clinton is the best alternative here. The Clintons use the system to fight the battle, the way the Republicans do. The resolve is there at the bottom of things.
And there's a "silent majority" effect here too. We're not hearing from Clinton supporters in the media, but they are the largest plurality of voters among likely Democratic voters than any other candidate has of voters in their party. But then there's another item of old news: people always underestimate the Clintons.

Huckabee's Sting, Pt. II

Today we hear that Mike Huckabee, currently dusting it up with Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, asked the question, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus Christ and the Devil are brothers?" The answer, for the record, is no, they don't. Apparently it's an old anti-Mormon canard. Asked about it on MSNBC this morning Romney showed a good ability, and not for the first time, to take the high road. I expected him to pounce on this, and the other shoe hasn't dropped yet in terms of the response from the Mormon community. Remember them? They have some millions (between four and five million? I'll check) of members in this country, who vote overwhelmingly Republican in case you didn't know. Imagine if a leading candidate said something like that about a Jewish candidate, or a Catholic one. This glimpse inside Mr. Huckabee's mind ought to get the message across that apparently failed to register when he talked about gays, and guns, and science: he's not ready for prime time. Maybe I shouldn't be pointing this out. After all, I want the Democrats to win.

Sting Like a Huckabee

Mike Huckabee is now a serious contender for the Republican nomination. Of course, so are maybe four other people, and the lurch to Huckabee may be just that: another symptom of disarray and desperation in the GOP. Be that as it may, here's a suggestion: nominate Huckabee, and the Republicans lose the election. I don't think, at this point, that the Republicans can't win the election under any circumstances. The Democrats' true virtuosity seems to lie in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and it could very well be that in 2008 they'll swing their third strike in a row. But to nominate a candidate whose national political profile is anti-gun control, statements very close to advocating internment camps for gay people (check that out for yourself, I'm not exaggerating), Southern Baptist preacher, that has got to be political suicide.
On the other hand, the party bosses were worried about a too right-wing candidate in 2000, so they looked around for someone "electable" who wouldn't frighten the children, and the rest is history. I think that it's important this time around not only that the Democrats win, but that the conservatives lose (not the same thing), which is why I'm for Clinton, so maybe Mr. Nice Guy bass player right wing nutjob isn't such a bad idea. How many points does one lose in the general election for being a homophobic bigot in America in 2008?

Will Chavez Be Strong or Weak?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez does not get entirely fair press in the US. His work to really benefit the poorer classes of Venezuela is discounted, his narcissism and obstreperousness are distracting, and his Fidelismo and anti-Americanism that once seemed clownish is now at least a little bit threatening. His own ability to alienate people is the main thing holding him back on the international scene, not the opposition of Washington (He has closely studied Castro's art of using the US as a Great Satan, and like Castro he relies on hostility from Washington for political fuel).
There is a basic question, though, that we might ask of any charismatic leader: is he committed to the rule of law and democracy in a constitutional republic, or is he committed to the rule of himself? People on the right and people on the left all tell themselves that their project of social transformation, and the power of their evil enemies, justifies suborning the democratic process. Castro, Pinochet, Guzman (Sendero Guzman I mean), Franco. I fail to see the difference. And anyway, if Fidel Castro is not smart enough to be the executive of The Just State, then Hugo Chavez sure as hell isn't. So will Chavez go down in history as a democrat or a despot?
This is the question on the occasion of the narrow (51% vs. 49%) defeat of his measure to centralize power more tightly on himself, and eliminate any limit to his time in "office" (dictators don't really have offices, in the formal sense. They just have buildings). He acquiesced, saying in effect, "We didn't make it this time, we'll do it eventually." So he respected the democratic process, and that's good, and that shows the rest of the world that Venezuela is not too far gone down the fascist path that they could not recover themselves politically (and neither is Iran, by the way). But Mr. Chavez doesn't help much with his manner that he respects the democratic process but just barely. The final verdict on what kind of political leader he really is lies in the future.

Middle East Linkage

"Linkage" was a favorite concept of Henry Kissinger's during his "shuttle diplomacy" days in the 1970s. It conveyed both the idea that Middle Eastern regional affairs were (are) in fact intricately interconnected, and the idea that if somebody wanted something from the US they needed to make progress on their relations with Israel. True to form, the US has in the years since failed utterly to live by this diplomatic maxim. As long as the Palestinian problem remains an open wound for the Arab world, prospects for progress on other regional problems will remain gloomy. But linkage works both ways. Equally obtuse are the Iranians, who routinely pledge that they are committed to the destruction of Israel and then express outrage that the West opposes their nuclear program, almost as if they were daring anyone to draw the all-too-obvious connection. In fact the parallels between the US and Iran at this point are striking. Both countries claim (with some justification) that their hard-line regimes are products of the other's past meddling. Both countries' hard-line regimes use the other to demagogue their people and stay in power. But it is also true of both the US and Iran that they are big, heterogenous, multifaceted nations, with many more political possibilities than the troglodyte leaderships that they currently have, and that people around the world are quick to say that they despise the governments, not the people, of these nations. Here's to coevolution.

How is the Court Political?

"How is the Supreme Court political?' is a different question than "How political is the Supreme Court?" Throughout the history of the Court it has been a quintessentially political institution, contrary to popular mythology (if anything Supreme Court politics was even rougher and more partisan during the nineteenth century than during the twentieth). There is a dark side to this (Court appointments shamelessly subordinated to political considerations of the executive), but also a more positive side, as Court rulings do measurably shift with popular sentiment (again, contrary to popular perceptions). So, how political is it? Very.
But how is it political? Politics in a constitutional democracy has to do with the tension between abstract ideology and personal prejudice. The same voter who will affirm his commitment to universal civil rights may not be comfortable with an African-American or a woman in a position of authority. It also has to do with the tension between ideology and practicalities. Those of us who don't have to make the tough votes can indulge ourselves in scorn for the routinely compromised elected officials who do. And so on. It's important to understand that the individual citizens who happen to sit on the Supreme Court are in the same position as everybody else. It's just not true that judges follow some sort of formula to produce dispassionate, impersonal rulings, nor would it be a good thing if that were true (mandatory sentencing guidelines, for example, bureaucratize and dehumanize the justice system).
In an earlier post on this blog I speculated that our heavily Catholic Supreme Court, with a Chief Justice whose wife has headed anti-abortion organizations, just might outlaw the death penalty; a surprising expression of the varieties of "conservatism." Right-to-life conservatism is not consistent with support for the death penalty, a point that the Catholic Church has been pressing for years, mostly on deaf ears in American Republican circles. Yesterday we learned that the Court will consider whether the Constitution upholds the right of an individual to have guns in his house. This puts the Court in an interesting position. According to the conservative tradition of "strict constructivism," the Constitution does not uphold some open-ended set of "rights" (such as the right to privacy). On this view, judges should not create "rights" that are not explicitly stated in the Constitution. There is no doubt that Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and the gang would deny a right to contraceptives, say, or the right to drink alcohol.
So here is the interesting tension: the Second Amendment refers to "well-regulated militias." Constructionists affirm the right of legislatures to make public policy, and oppose "judicial activism," as in courts interfering with state and local legislative warrant. In this case, the District of Columbia is appealing a Federal Court ruling that the right to keep handguns at home is an individual right: the Roberts Court has chosen to review that pro-gun decision. Will the Roberts Court take a course that will inflame pro-gun conservatives? And what an irony if it does.

Cold War Hangover in Pakistan

The "Cold War" standoff between the West and the Soviet Union effectively ended with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but the foreign policy establishment and military infrastructure that grew up over a half-century are proving to be slow to change. This means that we still have the same dangers to our own government and economy that General Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address (the "military-industrial complex") and a new set of dangers as our atrophied system continues to apply Cold War formulas to new and different challenges. This is strikingly apparent today with the political crisis in Pakistan.
During the Cold War period, foreign policy seemed to be easy, a by-the-numbers affair. The greatest threat was Soviet communism, so every other foreign policy or security problem, large or small, could be subjected to the same reductionist program: who's on our side, who's on their side? The roughest sort of dictators were not only tolerated but supported, installed, fought for by US troops. Anti-Americanism today in South Korea and the rest of the Pacific Rim, in Iran and the Middle East, in Chile and many other South American countries, in South Africa and beyond is a dividend from this dark, Machiavellian period, the high point of the American "empire" (empire is a bad thing, and a self-consciously imperial power is a power in decline). A post-Cold War world, with a multipolar geostrategic framework replacing the bipolar Cold War world, requires a far-reaching adaptation and transformation of the way the US conducts diplomacy and security. Among other things it represents an opportunity for the US to stand down from the dangerous and undesirable position of world policeman.
But old habits are hard to break, particularly when large sectors of the economy and the bureaucracy are dependent creatures of the old way of doing things. The Bush administration has avoided the hard work of transformation by simply finding a new bugaboo to plug in to the old Soviet role: Islamic nationalism. Dictators can still be coddled, the US can stay at the center of the global arms trade (which is worse for a community, being economically dependent on a vast prison system or on being the arms merchant to the world's violence?). The alternative is doom at the hands of the "terrorists" ("communists"). The political temptation to abuse this is too strong to resist. Any populist, any independent nationalist, any moderate socialist was a "communist." Today they are "Islamofascists."
And so we see our troglodyte, Cold War-mentality administration (the Secretary of State a Sovietologist by training) failing to smell the coffee on Pakistan. I wonder how many Americans are aware that Mrs. Bhutto is the daughter of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hung in 1979 by General Zia-ul-Haq, another pro-US general who seized power in a military coup in 1977? Or that her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, was the head of the Pakistani People's Party? All-important historical context is lost under the weight of a too programmatic foreign policy. Pakistan is unlikely to slide into fundamentalist revolution under the more or less Westernized Bhutto faction (just as secular, just as Westernized as Musharraf). But say there was a major Islamic opening in Pakistan (or Turkey, where this is actually happening right now). It's just as likely that this movement would be a vehicle for much-needed reform as it is that it could result in an Iranian-style menace. If you want another Iran, keep on trampling the democratic process in Pakistan. Even Iran would start evolving away from Islamic dictatorship more easily without the reactionary pressures of conflict with the US (the same dynamic holds today in Cuba). People won't embrace retro religious fundamentalism for long, if they are just given their liberty. Algeria might have even worked through this if the democratic process was respected when that country elected an Islamic government, only to have the will of the people thwarted. We cannot be motivated by fear forever. The positive path is faith in human nature.

Paddycake with Rudy and Pat

On the occasion of Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani for president, we have a window of opportunity here of about 24 hours when we can reasonably ask Rudy what he has to say about, for instance, Robertson's suggestion that the United States should assassinate Hugo Chavez? Robertson later apologized, as he has done for a long series of equally outrageous suggestions over the years, but it's fair to say that this is connected to why Rudy likes Pat and is surely why Pat likes Rudy. Rudy sells national security hawkishness. For someone like Robertson this policy satisfies all of his apocalyptic sensibilities as well as gives the government something to do other than domestic policy. Under a liberal government, Rudy is telling him, Christian conservatives shouldn't want a government that was activist on social policy. To weather the liberal storm, get the government out of social policy, and concentrate on national security. What he really is, Rudy goes on to say, is a guy who's running one of the most important security consulting firms in the world, with contracts with governments all over Asia (whether this is accurate, and if so whether that is good or bad, is a topic for another discussion). Probably Robertson made an impetuous mistake to throw over the Right's domestic agenda with this endorsement. Or perhaps this is part of some larger struggle between Robertson and James Dobson and the rest of the Council for National Policy, the Christian conservative leaders who made their "over our dead bodies" resolution about Giuliani a couple of weeks ago. In any event this schism on Rudy, along with the (to me, surprising) antagonism towards Mormons on the Christian right, makes it look like that movement is degenerating into sectarian conflict. Certainly both Robertson and Giuliani are using the prospect of external enemies as a unifying idea. One can only hope that all of this will be a dead end in the general election.

Giving Hillary the Treatment

I was struck by the prominence in the NYT today of a quotation from Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a major-party ticket as Walter Mondale's choice for VP in 1984. The larger discussion is about the spectacle of all those men beating up on Clinton in the debate the other night, and the question of how women are treated in the upper echelons of politics. "It's OK in this country to be sexist," she said. "It's certainly not OK to be racist...I don't think Barack Obama would have been attacked for two hours." Like all places in the world, so far as I know, there is an age-old problem with sexism here that a modern secular society, at least, ought to be able to address. As to that, let me salute Hillary Clinton for her achievement in getting to the point where all the men (simply by virtue of the fact that every other player is a man) feel called upon to gang up on her. It's called winning, and it comes with its own burdens, as politicians, boxers and beauty queens will attest. As to the accepted standards of comportment of the males, formally speaking that's unclear, since Hillary Clinton is now sailing through uncharted waters where no woman has gone before. Historically speaking if they had rocks they'd stone her.
As to Ferraro's remarks, they were made in the immediate aftermath of the debate and so I'm sympathetic that some of that is the anger talking. Also remember the generous slice of bitter truth. Of course she's way the hell off about how black people are better off in politics than women. With those caveats, I would point out to her (you know, I was going to call her "Geraldine," because back in the day that's what we called her, there was that fight song, remember? But then I was worried that that would be patronizing so I went with "Ferraro." Just an observation, I don't know what that means) two things: First, the beauty of it is that they're all ganging up on her because she's ahead with maybe 45-50 points of the total, leaving the rest of them in the dust. If they don't kill her she surely kills them. It's called winning and it's sweet and you should rejoice. The second rejoinder is that, notwithstanding the fact of women leaders in many other countries now and in the past, the USA is arguably the most feminist country on Earth, the birthplace and locomotive of global secular feminism. Rejoice and a la lucha.
All sorts of old issues bubble up with the renaissance of liberal politics. This tension between the politically active women, who tend to be richer, more educated, white, higher social status, and the black activists goes back to the days when English women were radicalized through their anti-slavery activities, for example. As to this issue of Hillary's treatment: To say that she should be treated as "one of the guys" misses the point that one of the benefits of women in politics ought to be some deeper transformation of political practice. On the other hand I'm of the opinion that wisdom is seeing the sameness among people. We also will be forced to confront some of these deeply internalized assumptions about men, women and sex roles in a new light throughout the campaign. All of this seems a bit awkward and fraught, maybe, but all to the good.

The Theravadan Buddhism of Burma

In the classical Buddhist tradition that has its roots in the Vedic traditions of India, there are two principal streams. The Theravadan school is the older one, the "Way of the Elders" that claims the most direct lineage from the original Buddha Dharma and emphasizes the need for a lifetime of study (indeed for eons of lifetimes) for enlightenment, and also, therefore, the spiritual authority of the monks. Later the Mahayana ("Great Vehicle") movement, revolting against some of the social consequences of this essentially Hindu doctrine of the immortality of the soul, stresses the idea that the Boddhi path is open to ordinary people and that spiritual progress can be made during an ordinary lifetime. The Tantric Buddhism of the Tibetan Renaissance and (for somewhat independent reasons) the Zen Buddhism of the east are basically Mahayanic in their attitude towards spiritual authority (and this no doubt helps to explain the popularity of these doctrines in North America). But a rich Theravadic tradition lives on as well, in Southeast Asia. Around 250AD King Tissa of Sri Lanka was converted to Buddhism. (The Tamil nationalists are Hindus originally from Tamil Nadu in India.) From Sri Lanka this older, more conservative school of Buddhism colonized what are now Burma and Thailand. The monks are a very important part of the cultural infrastructure among the Buddhist people there. It may be that the pressures of global culture have made the monastaries vulnerable to attack from secular forces. It may be that like great rainforests, great repositories of culture and language are doomed to be wiped off the map. Or perhaps the monks and the people will together draw the strength to assert themselves once more.

Guaranteed Sacrifice-Free

The lack of movement in getting more visas for Iraqis to relocate to the United States is disturbing. While millions have fled both internally and into neighboring countries, visas for Iraqis to the US number in the scant five figures and even lower. It seems intuitive to me that if we destabilized the security situation in their country through our own unilateral action, whatever else might be said about that, we incur some obligation to offer a haven to people whose protection we removed. This is particularly compelling to me when I consider that many of these people are in danger in Iraq because they worked with the Americans, showing faith in our competence and integrity to protect them and help them to improve their lives. Vietnamese political refugees in the United States have developed into an important and prosperous part of the community; Iraqis would be coming into a country that already has one of the largest and most prosperous Arab communities in the world. Why doesn't the administration do the right thing and expedite visas in numbers commensurate with the needs of Iraqi political refugees?
There are several reasons, all bad. The administration is sensitive to conservative sentiment about immigration, an issue with which the administration has to its credit dealt more or less responsibly. The administration has campaigned by waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 so long that they can't now propose to let in some hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as they should. To start a relatively large relocation program would be seen as acknowledgement of failure in Iraq. But most disturbingly of all, this is an administration that tries to tell the American people that wars can be fought with no sacrifice to Americans in general. The ideology seems to be that the Americans should never be called upon to make some collective sacrifices for a greater good. And that is the real measure of the administration.

How to Help Cuba's Transition

On the occasion of President Bush's bellicose remarks about Cuba today, let me add my voice to the chorus: the United States economic blockade of Cuba is today the single most significant factor in keeping the Cuban Communist Party in power. The Argentines, Canadians, Spanish, Japanese etc. are funding and profiting from development projects in Cuba that would be business for the US if not for the self-defeating blockade. The restrictions have been in place for over forty years and have accomplished nothing except to keep 11 million Cubans in worse economic shape than they have to be, while shielding the miserably ineffective Communist economic regime from becoming discredited, as it would have been years ago if not for the short-sighted US policy. Cuba poses no threat to the United States, militarily, politically, economically, or by any other index. If the United States normalized relations with Cuba, which it could do unilaterally without so much as a meeting with Cuban officials, the Cuban government would very likely be gone within twelve months, maybe sooner. The Cubans know this and deliberately sabotage thaws in the relationship by executing dissidents, cracking down on political organizing and so forth whenever it looks like the US might soften its line. As soon as one of the political parties in this country succeeds in getting Florida's electoral votes without pandering to the aging revanchistes in Miami, the American agriculture and business community will have our Cuban policy dismantled in weeks, not months, because we're bleeding business. I can respect political differences, but if you believe that the economic blockade of Cuba is good American policy at this late date, you cannot be thinking straight. It is an absolute no-brainer.

What Can Romney Buy?

This week's poll summaries on Pollster.com show a striking state of affairs in the Republican primaries: whereas nationally Mitt Romney is an anemic-looking fourth (behind John McCain), he's solidly ahead in Iowa, and in the number one spot, ahead of Giuliani by a couple of points, in New Hampshire. After that, he barely manages to rise to the top three in any other primary state. In fact the only state where he manages to place second in the polls is in Michigan, where his father was governor and a favorite son candidate for president in 1968. So the question is, what happens when a nationally unpopular candidate wins in Iowa and New Hampshire? The strategy is to convince enough voters to jump on the bandwagon that Romney goes from zero to hero both nationally and in important primary states like California, Florida, and South Carolina. This week's polls suggest that this time around that strategy is not a sure thing. But say the strategy works. Will that be a good thing for Republicans? There are problems on two levels: for the Party, the rank and file will have been sold a candidate who wouldn't have been their first choice without the artificiality of the "bounce" out of Iowa and New Hampshire; more reason to adopt a rotating first-primary schedule, in the name of small "d" democracy. This is acute in this situation because a larger than usual percentage of the candidate's money comes from his own fortune. We should all be wary of the plutocratization of politics, already too far along for the country's good. But second, what happens in the general election when the Party nominates someone who wasn't even popular with the faithful in the first place?

Obama Helping Hillary, Again

It has long been my contention on this blog that the candidacy of Barack Obama actually has helped Hillary Clinton. Through the long months of the summer, Obama fever kept everyone from seeing Hillary as the front-runner, and thus as the target, as well as providing her campaign with a useful sparring partner in preparation for the next twelve months. Now Obama is helping Clinton again, this time on the question of Iraq War policy. Clinton's early votes in support of the invasion are widely seen as her biggest liability with liberal and left voters who are overwhelmingly and passionately against the war. Obama, responding to criticism that he wasn't taking the fight to the Clintons, naturally chose war policy as the issue on which to attack her. His formulation is clear: Hillary differs from Bush on the conduct of the operation, Obama says, while he opposes the war altogether. This makes a good soundbite, but I predict that it will turn out to be another mistake ("another" because Clinton has already goaded Obama into making mistakes with foreign policy pronouncements, such as his suggestion that he might send troops into Pakistan, or that he would consider using nuclear weapons, or that he would be willing to talk to any dictator). What Clinton is doing now is demonstrating that she will be a responsible executive. Given the tragic fact that we are in Iraq, the endgame will be complicated and difficult to maneuver. Iraqi leaders and American generals will be briefing the next President on the possible outcomes of various scenarios: might a too precipitous withdrawal lead to genocidal ethnic cleansing? Might a complete withdrawal open the way for an Iranian, or Turkish, or Saudi invasion? And so on. So when Obama says that, unlike Clinton, he's just plain anti-war, what's the next question? Does that mean, Senator, that your proposal is to simply withdraw immediately, come what may? And if not, how are you different from Clinton? He's painted into a corner: basic mistake. And who comes out looking good? I won't say, but she's one of the other candidates.

Voting for a Woman

Voting for a woman is what I hope to be doing next year. Yesterday I heard this question raised: isn't it arbitrary to vote for someone just because she's a woman? This question arises when we see poll numbers, like we did this week, that suggest (well, the one said) that over 90 percent of women under 35 say that they are more likely to vote if one of the presidential candidates is a woman. The gender gap, thus far, has been a partisan phenomenon, and it has worked both ways: the Republican Party can rely on receiving a greater share of male votes just as the Democrats get a greater share of female votes. With a woman candidate, the thinking goes, the gender gap will suddenly widen, with the advantage to Hillary (although it remains to be seen how many men will turn out to vote against a woman). It may be that we will have the first presidential election where the outcome is unambiguously a result of women voters voting for one of their own.
Which brings us back to the question: is this a superficial reason to vote? The answer is no, it's not. The reason it's not superficial is that women diverge from men, statistically, on a whole range of issues. Women's views on gun control, abortion rights, even the conduct of foreign policy are measurably distinct from men's. That's why women are more likely to support Democratic candidates, after all. It's true that many women would turn out to vote for a woman who was a Republican, just as many (not all) black voters would enthusiastically vote for a black Republican presidential candidate, even if they had never voted Republican before. But that still would not be a superficial vote. A woman President can be expected to have a different style, tone, and substantial differences on a wide range of issues. And don't let conservatives get away with claiming that they're "gender-blind" now at long last, when it finally suits their purposes. At this point the conservatives have become a very right-wing bunch. Does anyone doubt that our contemporary right wing (unlike that of, say, thirty years ago) would have voted against women's suffrage?
This discussion itself is a taste of things to come over the next year. Now that Hillary is closing in on the nomination, the historical significance of the moment is starting to dawn on everyone and make itself felt in the popular discussion. That will snowball into enthusiasm about the prospect of a woman President. The question is, how big of a snowball?

Some Notes on Gore

Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. I remember the Democratic primaries of 1988, when Gore was test-piloting the Southern, centrist, Democratic Leadership Council strategy that Bill Clinton rode to victory four years later. I was a Dukakis supporter in '88, backing the Democratic front-runner as usual, although in hindsight I feel I ought to have supported Jesse Jackson and helped shake things up for once. I didn't care much for Gore that time around: he was pro-death penalty, anti-gun control, centrist enough to not be much of an alternative to the Republicans, I thought. How much has changed since then!
Today, though, so far as Presidential politics is concerned, Gore is Cincinnatus. In the early primary season of 2004 the Democrats turned their collective back on Al Gore. He was wooden, they said, unattractive, too scripted, and it was true by then that he had become palpably self-conscious. It was a political fate akin to John McCain's this time around, a well-credentialed candidate definitively rejected by the voters (although McCain's story has not yet been fully written). But since that time, Al Gore cannot run for president. As soon as he starts doing that, he immediately will be transformed into the same old Al Gore of yesteryear. That doesn't mean he can't be president. It means that in order to be nominated, he has to be equally definitively drafted by his party. Not a staged "drafting," it has to be that the rank and file is unquestionably begging him to do it. If that came to pass, he'd do it. He'd still like to be President. The problem for this scenario is named Hillary Clinton. She increasingly looks like the choice of the party (and there is talent on the bench behind her). Only an unexpected and catastrophic collapse of Hillary's campaign could create the conditions for a Gore nomination. He's still in the top two choices of this Clinton supporter. I'm unable to decide whether I'd prefer Clinton or Gore given the choice, maybe the Clintons are more president material (not exactly a compliment, but reason for voting). But it's not going to happen.
Meanwhile one argument came up on TV tonight that needs addressing. The idea was that since very little can actually be done about global warming, it doesn't make sense to invest lots of treasure in trying to do something about it. The first level of argument here is about the empirical accuracy of this, but I'll leave that to everybody else. Logical point: risk assessment involves calculating both probabilities and utilities. There is a difference between a one in a hundred chance of losing ten dollars and a one in a hundred chance of losing your life. If anything near the negative utilities of, say, sea-level rise due to global warming, or shortages of fresh water, is even possibly true, we have every reason to do everything we can. Parting shot: a certain glib conservative on MSNBC chided Democrats for "not being honest about the sacrifices involved." At least Democrats don't tell the people that they should never have to sacrifice anything, like the Bush Republicans. It's the vision thing.

Turkeycoddling

Turkey is preparing for "military incursions" (otherwise known as an invasion) of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Bush administration apparently has no plans to oppose this, probably because there is very little that they could do about it in any event (I don't know if they feel any obligation to protect the Kurds, I'd guess not). The spin is that the Turks will be doing "hot pursuit" incursions in battling domestic Kurdish insurgents from the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), but this is also transparent spin: there are a number of Kurdish nationalist groups and widespread Kurdish nationalist sentiment in southeastern Turkey. Turkey wants to quash a nationalist movement that is resurgent because of the new autonomy (and surprising success) of Iraqi Kurdistan. Today the NYT reports that the administration is opposing a UN resolution condemning the Armenian genocide of 90 years ago so as not to antagonize Turkey, a rather less muscular approach than warning the Turks to stay out of Iraq would be. Part of the administration's thinking is driven by Turkey's historic role in NATO, which the United States would like to preserve and strengthen as a response to the rise of the European Union. That's a bad motivation for two reasons: first, NATO is on the way out: the Europeans don't want it anymore and in fact it would be a good thing for the US to get out of the European security business (I'm surprised that the Pentagon is so unsophisticated on this one, usually they're out ahead of the Bushies with this stuff). The second is that Turkey, in case you haven't noticed, is arguably a contender for most anti-American place on Earth. The reason for this, I think, is Turkey's identity as a borderland between Europe and Asia. The Turks have both the Middle Eastern and the European versions of anti-Americanism. Turkey is today a lot like Pakistan: not necessarily our enemies, not necessarily our friends. We shouldn't be dealing with them by just buying them off, and we shouldn't let the Kurds ever again suffer like they suffered at the end of the first Gulf War.

Thompson's Schtick

Fred Thompson is developing a schtick. The idea is that being a monomaniac who can only think of his/her obsessive ambition to be President is a bad thing. What you want, Thompson's theory goes, is someone who cuts the whole thing down to size, a real person who can do it, right enough, but who isn't so intense that we'll be constantly distracted from our own lives by the ongoing catastrophe that the government is always stirring up. The genius of it is the subtle criticism of President Bush and the not-so-subtle criticism of the Clintons that this pose implies. It's an outsider's pose that works under the radar (the pundocracy is acluck about his "lack of interest," just the quality he's selling). Southern voters who don't like Romney's slickness or Giuliani's ego will find this persona appealing, and that might play in the Midwest too. But maybe not. Maybe you just can't act laconic and get elected President. Meanwhile Giuliani has high national polls but much tighter numbers in Iowa. One argument then goes that it would be better to skip Iowa on the grounds that there is too much to lose. But skipping Iowa is probably too risky itself for Giuliani to do that. No one knows the consequences of coming in fourth, losing to, say, Huckabee in Iowa, but that's obviously too much risk. These are the problems of the front runner.

OK, more on Larry Craig, if everybody insists

I didn't really know about these guys before. A sociology professor on TV ran through the (apparently well-documented) scenario. There's this elaborate sort of bowerbird bathroom dance involving sustained eye contact through the crack of the door, the notorious foot-tapping movement (that I have experienced first hand), the vague hand-swiping thing and apparently several more behaviors to insure that the agreement to consensual sex is clear. And interestingly this behavior is characteristic of straight-identified men, not "gays." Is there a name for this sexual identity? I thought Larry Craig's saddest moment was when he stood at the microphones and said, "I'm not gay," as if his being gay or not established his guilt, and not whether he had solicited a vice cop in the men's room. Talk about out of it!
I can think of two fairly clear implications of all this, if the facts of the subculture are more or less as described. One is that if the vice cop says, "Yeah, he's one of those guys all right," he's most likely one of those guys. The other is that he was definitely entrapped by the vice cop. The cop had to sustain the eye contact and maintain the posture and so forth, by his own account, for some minutes, and if that's not entrapment I don't know what is. I appreciate that airports and municipalities and so on have to maintain order in the public restrooms, and basically all one can do is prohibit the behavior with penalties. But should the vice cops be sort of trolling around in your sex life, like they do in Iran? How about an attractive young woman vice cop, sent to lure the old goat to his demise? Don't answer that, dear!
As to the political matter of the senator,what, as Comrade Lenin once asked, is to be done? The way the system works is this: the sovereign citizen voter elects their executive and legislature. Those electees then serve terms fixed by the Constitution. At the end of those terms the electors have to decide anew. It's more rigid than a parliamentary system where enough votes can force a new round of elections for prime minister, who is thus always exposed. The President, for example, will serve until January 2009, regardless of shifting political opinion. So will Larry Craig, if he so chooses. And there are good reasons for resisting the idea that party bosses in Washington can oust a "sitting Senator." The clearest message the public was sending during President Clinton's impeachment trial, when the polls were giving him 90 percent approval ratings, was that the national consensus was that only the voters should decide who is President. The Senators invoking impeachment seemed like members of the high school student council, for whom rewriting constitutions and forming new governments is the very thing. Senator Craig has an election next year. Let his constituents decide. There have been Congressmen who have served from their jail cells, for that matter.
Not to imply by any of this that I think Larry Craig should stay on for another year in the Senate. Obviously the Idaho Republican Party will nominate someone else for the Senate race next year. So he could stay on as a faithful Republican, voting as he always has. That's most likely, that way people will deal with him sooner or later. But if he a) truly believes that his constituents don't want him and b) is being asked by his party to resign in the name of the party's political prospects, those are pretty hard arguments to resist. Alternatively he could go indy, come out about his true sexuality (whatever that is), and start really speaking his mind at last. Even if that were to happen, this will be my last word on the topic.