Another Minority President

Right now the polls show a very tight race. That raises the possibility, again, of a President being elected with a minority of votes cast. If that's the outcome, how do you think people will react? How would the Dems react, if they were robbed again? How would the Reps react, if they were in Gore's position in 2000?

David Sirota Sees Us for What We Are

After a week's vacation:

What's amazing to me after coming back from vacation is how obviously insular and silly this supposed "national" conversation really is, when you just step back for one week and look at it. Whether on blogs, email, radio or television, a small group of us is basically screaming at ourselves, the rest of the public be damned. It's quite tragic, really.

Of course, when you look at the picture of where he spent his vacation, you completely understand.

Achenbach on Vice Presidency

I fancy myself to have a good knowledge of American history and government, but I never realized the logic behind the Vice Presidency which Joel Achenbach unveils in today's Post:

"The Framers never for a moment thought the president needed a Mondale-like adviser or a Cheney-like super-deputy. Their main concern was that they wanted electors from the states to be forced to vote for two people, and not from the same state. The reasoning, historians surmise, is that states would habitually throw their support behind a favorite son as the presidential candidate. Virginians would vote for a Virginian, New Yorkers for a New Yorker, etc. But if they had to cast a second ballot, that second choice, under the Constitution, couldn't be another favorite son.

Follow this logic to its conclusion: The Framers were thinking that the No. 2 pick of many of the electors would be a nationally recognized figure who would wind up with more votes, total, than any of the No. 1 picks. It's kind of like they wanted the vice president to be president."

Makes sense--in today's world the idea of a "favorite son" has faded, but that was a real fear in 1787.

Why McCain Can't Do Away with Earmarks

From a good Slate piece summarizing various Palin controversies:

Does she oppose federal earmarks?

Alaska has long been the recipient of astounding amounts of federal funding. While Palin slashed pork requests in half during her tenure, the state still requested $550 million in Palin's first year in office. This year she has requested about $198 million—$295 per person—which is still the highest amount per-capita in the country, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. And when she was the mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired an Anchorage-based firm to secure $27 million in federal earmarks for the town.

Now the McCain camp will defend this by saying she was only acting on behalf of Alaskans, doing just what we'd expect any elected official do to. Which is true. There are very, very few people who can retain elective office without bringing home the pork, I mean bacon.

The problem is similar to the base closing problem--the idea that every federal installation (i.e., military base, USDA office) must be retained because it benefits the local economy. DOD has bypassed the problem by setting up the periodic base closing commission, which makes recommendations which get an up or down vote in Congress. I'm not sure what you can do for earmarks that would work similarly.

Old Codgers and Bad Memories:G. Will and Me

George Will (who's, if I remember correctly, just a tad younger than I) displays a bad memory in his piece on Obama. He ends with this paragraph, after noting that Obama apologized in Munice, IN:

"In 1929 and 1937, Robert and Helen Lynd published two seminal books of American sociology. They were sympathetic studies of a medium-size manufacturing city they called "Middletown," coping -- reasonably successfully, optimistically and harmoniously -- with life's vicissitudes. "Middletown" was in fact Muncie, Ind".

Well, not quite. From Wikipedia:

"The Lynds did not study the African-American population of Middletown. They justified this because this group only composed 5 percent of the total population. However, modern critics argue that this was a racial oversight conditioned by the era in which the study took place. A similar argument applies to the fact that they didn't study Jews who lived in the city.

Although the Lynds attempted to avoid ideology, theory, or political statements, the focus of their initial study can be construed as an endorsement (however faint) of Progressive Era politics. Also, the study is sometimes accused of being elitist and old-fashioned, as it seems to bemoan the rise of "popular culture" such as films and the fall of farm culture.

Because the study took an anthropological/scientific approach to Middletown society, and because at the time it was the first large-scale attempt to describe a modern town in this manner, some critics claimed that it was inherently condescending and degrading to the town's citizens. First, by treating humans as objects of study, they argued that it was immoral and degrading. Seccondly, they argues the study implied that its denizens were no more advanced than a primitive tribe. The study's approach to religion was specially singled out on this count. For example, in the introduction to the first edition of Middletown in Transition, the Lynds recounted an incident where town leaders placed a copy of the first book in the cornerstone of a building. Several pastors from the town's more fundamentalist congregations angrily argued that the book deserved to be burned rather than praised because of how it described (and, from their perspective, insulted) the town's religious activities.

The second study, in contrast to the first, is extremely political in tone and openly critical of American culture in general. Also, the Lynds made predictions (i.e., on the possibility of a future American dictatorship) that never came to pass.

Furthermore, the second study is accused of "begging the question." Despite its title, there really was no real "conflict" within Middletown during the Great Depression. However, in reading the language of the authors, it becomes increasingly clear that they believed that there should have been class conflict. This is expressed in the frustration employed by the authors - they apparently hoped and expected that such a conflict would break out, and began the study with this preconception. However, this preconception was incorrect.

I think the lesson is it's very easy to come across as elitist when you take an analytic approach to someone/something. The Lynds did this, Obama did this, and so does George Will. Why Will? Because the Middletown books depict a city governed by the old WASP elite, all male, all white, all comfortable--all harmonious because the others were on the outside. It's Reagan's America (Will and Reagan both hail from small city Illinois). Mr. Wills has fond and pleasant memories of this America, so he think's the Lynd's description must also have been rosy. Am I being condescending to him? Yes, of course, perhaps somewhat mitigated by our shared age, race, and sex.

Sauce for the Goose

Listening to the discussion on PBS of Rev. Wright last night, I'm tempted to betray my liberal faith--while I understand all the points made in defense and extenuation of his sermons, and while I've listened to/read transcripts of at least a couple, and while I'm reading Sen. Obama's first book, I don't think we (i.e., liberals) are being even-handed. When Revs. Robertson and Falwell uttered some of their more notorious comments, they were also operating in the prophetic tradition, assailing the corruption of the society and the spiritual evils thereof and calling on the populace to repent and return to God.

Bottom line--if we cut Wright some slack, and we should, we also need to cut Falwell/Robertson some slack, which is a grievous penalty for my sins.

I Find the Nation's Ehrenreich To Be Nutty

To undermine my liberal credentials, I find this Nation article by Barbara Ehrenreich to be deeply nutty--to wit, Hillary Clinton is part of a secretive conservative "Family" of religious people, almost a "cult" that has been and continues to be fascinated by Adolf Hitler. Ehrenbach ends:

" Obama has given a beautiful speech on race and his affiliation with the Trinity United Church of Christ. Now it's up to Clinton to explain--or, better yet, renounce--her long-standing connection with the fascist-leaning Family."

I hasten to admit that I've no facts with which to counter the article. It sounds similar to the conspiracy theories woven around Opus Dei. Call me naive, but I believe in no conspiracies, of either right or left.

A Matter of Voice--Finding It, or Identifying It

Supposedly Hillary has found her "voice." And Romney has found his "voice'. But apparently Obama speaks in different voices, if you can trust our media:

Here

In a steady, soothing tenor, Obama tells voters he is the candidate to unite the nation's fractured political divisions and restore America's good reputation abroad.

Here

Obama's baritone voice filled the open field, shaded by an old willow tree by a little pond. He spoke not only with his voice, but with his hands. And though he is an attorney who took his J.D. at Harvard Law and later taught Constitutional law, his gestures were not those of a trial attorney, binding the jury by casting a spell with a closing argument. Rather, his oratorical gestures were more like those of a preacher conducting a revival and call to baptism down by the river side.

Here

A Newsweek cover story out yesterday gushed that Obama, "tall and handsome and blessed with a weighty baritone, knows how to bring along a crowd while seeming to stay slightly above it." The journalistic scrutiny usually visited on instant front-runners has been replaced by something akin to a standing ovation.

I've heard of two-faced politicians, but not two-voiced.

All joking aside, it's probably significant that news reports do pay attention to Obama's voice. It must be pleasing or impressive.