Morning Fog

Sanctum Santorum

Rick Santorum's showing yesterday in three midwestern states is a political shocker.  Pundits still insist that Romney will eventually be the Republican nominee, and they're probably right.

For me, Tuesday's results suggest - as do most of the political developments in the Republican Party over the past couple of years - that Republicans are woefully unrealistic about the extent to which their most regressive beliefs are shared nationally.  It's not Republican voters writ large of whom I speak, but the smaller segment of them who are politically and doctrinally "engaged" - the ones who actually vote in primaries or attend caucuses rather than just stay home and have a beer; the political pros.

I'm not certain if it's delusion or wishful thinking, but it's clear this group is not in the least focused on the practicalities of who can win the coming election.   They are focused far more on what they consider immutable holies of the the conservative movement, e.g., "no taxes," "no abortions," and just plain "no."  Studies now indicate  that "committed" Republicans have moved far more to the right, in our era of extreme partisanship, than  Democrats have moved to the left.   Political scientists are calling this pattern "asymmetrical radicalization."  Others might call it losing touch.

Persistent resort to one "real conservative" after another in the primaries is the symptom.

Unintended Consequences

I was interested to see that Democratic political action groups have jumped into the Florida fray between leading Republican candidates Romney and Gingrich (or is it Gingrich and Romney?)  They are floating negative ads about Romney in the belief that weakening him may help Gingrich, whom they consider weaker, triumph.

Well, politics is politics, but it seems to me this effort bears some risk of backlash.  First, because I am not so sure Gingrich is the weaker candidate; he's done a pretty good job so far of getting people to ignore his past, he's a good debater, and many voters will like his populist Southern stance.  Romney, on the other hand, comes across as just another politician and isn't presenting the best image right now.  That may change, but it's worth considering.

Second, this sort of Democratic involvement in a Republican in-house affair may rankle some Republicans.  It's not unprecedented -- both parties have on occasion encouraged their "base" to go vote in the other party's primary (where this is permitted) to try to steer toward choice of a candidate they deem weaker.  I'm pretty sure this occurred in the last primary for Virginia governor, where an obvious loser came out on top of the Democratic primary.  Still, I think it's politically wiser to let Republicans choose their candidate without outside influence; ultimately the result may be just as favorable to Democrats, or even better.

The common thread is the law of unintended consequences.  He who unleashes them must live with them. 

Gingrich In South Carolina

The media gush today (and even yesterday evening) about Newt Gingrich's big win in the South Carolina primary.  It's just hype.  It's true that frequently, after two or three caucus/primary exercises, a clear front runner has emerged, and that hasn't happened this year.  So a couple more primaries will be needed.  That was only to be expected, considering how many hopefuls were at the starting line just a couple of months ago.

However, I fail to see anything very surprising about Gingrich's coming out on top in South Carolina.   Not if we consider geography.   No one was surprised that Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, won handily in neighboring New Hampshire. The Republicans of South Carolina recognize Newt as one of their own, i.e., a Southerner.  He came out of Georgia to national prominence, and they in turn know, or think they know, him.     

So if there's a surprise in the process, it's perhaps that Bachmann didn't do better in the Iowa caucuses.   

The Republican Media Circus

What a year for political theater!  Let's see:  we have the unusual spectacle of 9 or 10 (who's counting anymore?) would-be Republican Presidential candidates, the endless "debates" amongst them, the overweening shadow of the SuperPACs, the likelihood that the first three contests among remaining candidates will now produce three different winners, the unprecedented efforts to make candidates' wives a part of the process ... and waiting in the wings, the probability of a close race between Obama and the Republican candidate, with poll numbers no doubt changing daily.  What more could we ask?

Well, my belated New Year wishlist might include the following:

We could do with a more professional approach from the media.  The latest flub came from John King's now-famous question to Newt Gingrich about the accusations the latter's former wife had made against him.  Gingrich is incorrect, in my view, to suggest the question shouldn't be asked, because it speaks to his character; but King was professionally foolish to open with it, thereby suggesting it was the most important thing (it isn't).  King's gambit also offered Gingrich a predictable chance to play to the crowd, and to recite the tired old Republican mantra that the "elite" media are anti-Republican.  It was a silly decision on King's part.  Unless he consciously sought to give Gingrich a boost.

Also on my wishlist, a pledge to keep direct assaults on candidates' spouses out of the campaign.  Presidential campaigns too often boil down to personality contests ("Which of these two would you rather drink a beer with?"); it's beyond the pale to extend that to their wives.  Both politicians and preachers should avoid commenting.  No doubt the voters' impressions of spouses do play a part in their consideration of candidates, but I think they mostly figure these things out for themselves.  [Note: As the previous paragraph suggests, the charges leveled by Gingrich's ex-wife are of a different stripe:  She raised them herself, and the issue involved does show us something about Gingrich's character, if only that he's got the right stuff to be a politician.]

Finally, I would wish for fewer debates among the candidates.  Politics junkies may get a bang out of every additional debate, just as die-hard sports fans will welcome the addition of a half-dozen more playoff games to the schedule.  Most of the rest of us will become jaded.  I'm not sure they serve their supposed purpose very well, anyway; to the extent voters pay them any mind at all, it's probably through the filter of sound/video bites selected by the media, rather than the full transcript of what was said.

Postscript: It's interesting to consider the effects that so many debates might have on the contest itself.  Do they give the various Republican candidates/Party a leg up for the actual election?  Certainly, they provide a lot of exposure and publicity, and there are good opportunities for Obama-bashing.  On the other hand, many of these candidates have some rather extreme views, the exposure of which hasn't helped them with moderates and independents; and the charges and criticisms raised by Republicans against Republicans will certainly offer ammunition for the Democrats in the real campaign.  All in all, perhaps it's a wash.

Democracy In Action In Virginia

Like many people, I get a lot of my news from electronic media these days, but the joy of the "real" newspaper is still that you will happen across interesting little bits of information you probably wouldn't have found online.

The latest such is a little article by Laura Vozzella and Anita Kumar in today's Washington Post about Virginia's "Lobby Day," a day set aside specifically for non-professional lobbyists such as ordinary citizens, small organizations without budget for lobbying, or crackpots -- anyone who has an ax to grind or a weapon to conceal -- to get a chance to have a face-to-face exchange with elected representatives in the Commonwealth's Assembly.

I've lived in Virginia for the past 15 years, and at other times in the past, yet I'd never heard of this practice, which apparently is repeated annually.  It's less democratic than it sounds, because I suppose an ordinary person who doesn't represent an organization or cause would have trouble getting anyone to see him.  Yet it seems like a good thing.  Do other states do this?

Consolidating Government

President Obama has proposed consolidation of a number of government agencies that deal with business and trade.   Certainly there is overlap among these agencies in some cases, and gaps where things might fall between stools in other, so melding all the USG's commercial and business functions into one unified agency might have some functional appeal.   Whether it would truly reduce costs or not is a different question; unless existing programs are scrapped, I doubt the costs of operating them would decline much over the long term.

It's pretty clear the proposal for change is motivated more by politics than by concern for efficiency in government.  And in that sense, it's a clever move.   The GOP and a good part of its core constitutency are all about efficiency in government and support for business.  It should be a no-brainer for them to support the Obama idea.  But I suspect they'll kvetch about the details of the reorganization, decry the possible loss of programs, and complain, paradoxically, about downsizing USG support for businesses. 

The likelihood is that this proposal will become another hostage.  The GOP will refuse to consider an idea they would usually applaud, because to approve it might strengthen Obama, rather than contribute to defeating him.  Their dilemma, of course, is that rejection will only reinforce the party's image as the recalcitrant, doctrinaire Party Of No. 

Thoughts After New Hampshire, Part Three

My third observation in the wake of this year's New Hampshire primary is non-partisan (in the standard meaning of that term), and addresses the current politicial division of the country.

To wit:  Why does our primary system so heavily exaggerate the views of a minority of us?

We kick off the process of picking a Presidential candidate from the "out-of-the-White-House" party with caucuses in Iowa.  Normally, and depending on how many candidates are running, one or two candidates drop out after the Iowa caucuses.   Then we have New Hampshire, where usually an even smaller handful of front-runners survives.  Now comes South Carolina, and I submit that the candidate who can't make it there either, won't normally make it anywhere. 

I find these statistics from the U.S. census interesting:

• Percentage of African-Americans in these states' population:  Iowa 3%, New Hampshire 1%, South Carolina 28% (that's the anomaly in all the data here).
• Percentage of Hispanics:  Iowa 5%, New Hampshire 2.8%, South Carolina 5.1%.
• Percentage of U.S. Population in these states:   Iowa 3%, New Hampshire 1.3%, South Carolina 4.6%. (These three states together, only about 3% of the U.S. population.)[Correction: 9%].
• Largest Cities:  Des Moines Iowa, 200,000; Manchester New Hampshire, 110,000; Columbia South Carolina, 129,000.   (I.e,, there are no cities in these states.)

Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina may be wonderful places to live, but they represent only one dynamic of the body politic.  Should they be granted such influence over who grabs the gold ring of his party's nomination, and who does not?  I'd say not.  This isn't a new thought, but we relegate the early winnowing process to a very small minority of voters, who are unrepresentative of the country's diversity or density.   

Of course, the need for media stories drives some of the emphasis these states get.  Rather than treat the results of a poll among a few thousand white party-loyalist farmers in Iowa as meaningful, the outcome should be relegated to a 100-word footnote.  In today's world that isn't going to happen.

For my money, the political divide between us now is as much geographic as political.  It's not just that more rural areas may tend to hold conservative values more dearly.  Beyond that, small towns and rural areas simply don't face the same problems (I don't say they don't have problems of their own!), and therefore they do not, probably cannot, see our economy and society through the same prism as do urban populations.  Yet up to 75% of us are "urban" these days.  This wasn't so much a problem before politicians began to build winning strategies around urban-rural differentiation, and became hard-line, no-compromise dogmatists rather than problem-solving pragmatists.

We need a better primary system.  Perhaps the start of the answer is the move, already under way, to hold a cluster of state primaries on the same day.  And hopefully, they would be states of different political stripe - a tiny rural one, a largely urban one, etc.

Thoughts After New Hampshire, Part Two

To continue a bit with my post-New Hampshire observations:

On the morning after, most analysts of Romney's win suggested that although Republican voters may have felt greater ardor for another candidate, many of them went with Romney because he stood the best chance of "beating Obama." 

Many analysts would agree that's probably true, yet this is an interesting formulation, one I can't remember hearing coming out of any previous primaries, either Democratic or Republican.  Of course it's understood that voters in primaries often have split personalities, with one side of them wanting to vote their heart, the other wanting to vote the logic of choosing the most electable candidate.  Still, I can't recall people in large numbers explaining their choice as simply defeating the incumbent. My impression is that this feeling normally remains in the background, one factor taken into account as they consider more directly which candidate seems better able to (say) improve the economy, or end an unpopular war, or deal with the nation's social concerns.

So it's curious in the extreme that "defeating Obama" seems a major rallying cry.  Coupled with longstanding repetition of that same phrase by such GOP leading lights as Mitch "wake-me-up-if-I-nod-off" McConnell and John "ManTan" Boehner; and further in light of the vitriol with which the phrase is uttered, one has to wonder why the Republicans seem so focused, not on creating programs that would deal with issues, but with the simple concept of "defeat,"  even to the point of resisting cooperation in achieving noncontroversial goals, if they assess that it might help Obama politically.

It's a puzzlement!  Why oh why does this particular President evoke such passionately negative reaction?  I can't figure it out.  Can you?

Thoughts After New Hampshire, Part One

Whatever Romney's win in New Hampshire may mean for determining the future Republican candidate for President, I see some interesting sidelights to the process.

The first is the way Romney's Republican rivals seized on his statement that he "likes firing people" and raced to charge him with ... what?  Being a businessman?  Or being a heartless, noncompassionate conservative?  That seems hypocritical.  If the former, why should they expect anything different from a guy who is running on his record as a hard-nosed businessman?  Yes, businesses do sometimes have to fire people, though it might be said some have to do so more than others.

If they seek to pull him down for being noncompassionate, they show no greater wisdom, for they soil their own nests too.  Noncompassion is a quality they all share, and each of them flaunts it in his/her own way.  No safety net, no protection for the people from corporate flim-flamming in banking, finance, petroleum, energy, or food; no unemployment benefits, no guarantee of equal access to reasonable medical care -- that's essentially the program they stand on.  Also, it's odd that they think the charge of being noncompassionate would cut any ice with the wacky right-wingers they're all trying so hard to impress.

It's an unimpressive field of candidates; their clear desperation at this point, and the foolish way they seek to salvage their own bids, reflects just how unimpressive they are.

 

Big Projects, Tiny Minds

Another "wait-a-minute" moment arose when I read Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak's January 10 screed about a mansion being built to house the University of Maryland's president and to provide a huge fund-raising space.  Dvorak complains that the project should have been canceled rather than initiating it now, in an economic downturn.  No matter that the economic downturn shows signs of nearing its end, nor that the project is funded wholly from private funds -- it "looks bad."

This is knee-jerk political correctness, but it makes little sense.  There is a need; it's privately funded; there will be jobs connected with it.  More important, the project probably took years to arrange - the plans, the funding, the contractor.   These things can all unravel; investors find other uses for their money, contractors find other work to bid on, prices go up as the economy recovers.  So, to cancel it now could effectively derail it, not just for a year, but possibly for another several years, leaving the university at a disadvantage in its fundraising efforts until the ducks were all lined up again.

I'm reminded here of another regional project, the extension of the subway west into Virginia to Tysons Corner and Dulles International Airport.  The airports authority made a sensible decision to put the subway station underground, where it would provide a more convenient direct connection to the terminal without forcing passengers to add yet another time-consuming, inconvenient leg to their trip.  But local jurisdictions complained of the additional cost (an above-ground facility, a few hundred yards away from airport transport, would be cheaper).  The objectors won the day; we'll get the job done on the cheap; the station will be built above ground.  But travelers in the region will live with the unfortunate consequences (another nuisance on the way to the airport; longer travel time; another blight on the landscape) for decades to come.

The subway should have gone underground; the University of Maryland should go ahead with its plans.  Capital improvements should be recognized as the long-term, often permanent, effects they create.  They shouldn't be postponed or vitiated by short-term penny-pinching, much less just because they happen to "look bad."