The Passenger

Winning's The Easy Part....

While discussing politics the other day, a family friend joked with me and said "I want you to know: I'm writing your name in for governor when we head to the polls in November!"  He said it partially out of sympathy for my continued job hunt, and partially due to his unhappiness with the choices available to him.  I responded by saying that Governor Patrick could keep the job - I certainly wouldn't want to have to make all the tough choices he's facing (that, and I happen to like Governor Patrick). 

Although it was a just a light, off-hand moment between us, it did set me thinking.  We're now a few weeks past Labor Day, and political conversations are making their way to peoples' kitchen tables again.  People are tuning in, paying more attention, and starting to focus on the choices ahead.  Some people are working to educate themselves on the issues and the candidates; others are putting signs that say "Vote Out Incumbents in Nov." on their front lawns.  There is, unquestionably, a great deal of frustration out there. 

Yet I roll my eyes every time I drive by one of the "throw all the bums out" signs.  Having worked in municipal government, I've been privileged to work alongside some very decent folks who have devoted themselves to public service, and who have given it their best effort.  Nevertheless, if they're part of the government, they're often painted as lazy, corrupt, uncaring, or incompetent by many of the people they represent.  This charactarization is sometimes born out of political disagreements or unhappiness over the status quo - both of which can be legitimate - or over an ignorance of how the system truly works.  There were certainly days when those of us at city hall might privately gripe (amongst ourselves) that it's so much easier to criticize from the outside, as opposed to trying to govern from the inside.  "Just wait until you walk a mile in my shoes," as the old saying goes....

From that perspective, I find the whole Tea Party phenomenon interesting.  This isn't just people getting together to moan and complain about the state of affairs - they are also actively working to promote candidates that they think will do a better job of it.  I don't happen to agree with the politics behind the Tea Partiers at all, but enough people do that several Tea Party candidates appear to have a shot at winning office this fall.  Should these candidates - who hail from the extreme right-wing fringes of the political spectrum - actually win, though, I wonder how they will behave once they are in office.  Ezra Klein, over at the Washington Post, touched upon this in a recent column, and he summed up the situation/dilemma facing the Tea Party candidates very nicely: "Amid the poetry of campaigning, you can have everything. Faced with the prose of governing, you have to make choices."  So will these ideologically extreme candidates be able to "purify" government and revamp their offices to the satisfaction of their base?  Or will the realistic, everyday demands of governing force them to compromise, once they realize that it's a whole different ballgame from the inside....?

A Question About Polling and Political Coverage

Like any good political news junkie, I've been devouring the coverage in the lead-up to the November midterms, checking as many sources as are willing to update: the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, LA Times, Talking Points Memo, Time, Newsweek...et cetera, et cetera. The message conveyed in the aggregate coverage is that the American public is either turned off to, or confused by, the Democratic policies, and the Republicans could possibly take both chambers of congress. 

And how do we know all this?  Because the polls tell us so. 

Of course, there are plenty of personal stories cropping up in the coverage: the Independent voter who tells a reporter that she's disappointed in President Obama's performance and is voting Republican, or the unemployed father who is so frustrated by the bleak job market and wants to give Congress a wake-up call, or the Tea Party rallies.  These stories are all valid indicators of the political climate, and they certainly could be used to support the notion that things look bad for the Democrats.

Yet, I can't help but wonder what impact weeks and months of "Democratic support collapses, Republicans poised for historic November wave" stories have on the psyche of the voters.  If the majority of the coverage in news reports and articles include the latest polling that says the Republicans are leading by X points in a generic ballot, or point out that the public is rushing away from the Democrats and towards the Republicans, does that potentially influence how people will vote come election day?  [To be equal opportunity here, I'll add that I wondered the same thing in 2008, when the coverage in the closing weeks suggested that McCain had an exceptionally steep hill to climb if he was going to squeak out a win].

Pollsters and journalists alike are often quick to add a caveat that polls are only a snapshot in time, and are not infallible in their predictive power.  Fair enough, but if the majority of the coverage of a particular race or election cycle essentially sends the message that a candidate is way ahead/struggling in the polls, does the coverage itself unduly influence how people perceive that candidate?

I started thinking about this after coming across an old Boston Globe article from January 10, nine days before the special election to fill Ted Kennedy's senate seat. The article centered on Martha Coakley's strong 15 point lead in the latest polling, her strong support across the state, and then went on to suggest that, while a Scott Brown victory wasn't impossible, it would be very surprising at that point.  Yet in the final week of the campaign, as her lead unquestionably began to shrink, the tone of the coverage changed from "Coakley appears headed to victory" to "Coakley's support is collapsing, Brown is surging." 

I wonder: did the fact that people were almost exclusively reading "Coakley's lead collapsing" articles in that final week help create a self-fulfilling prophecy?  And as we head into the closing weeks of the national midterms, with constant reminders of the likely Republican "wave," could this be happening again?

It's something to ponder, and I don't know what the alternatives would be.  I certainly wouldn't suggest that journalists ignore polls, but I do wonder how we can report/digest the news, without being subtly influenced in our decision-making....?

Thoughts On The Democrats, Conventional Wisdom, and the Midterms

Joe Klein published an interesting piece over at Time yesterday (Dems Depressed and Disheartened) in which he points out all the positive things Obama has done since taking office, how many campaign promises he's either fulfilled or is on track towards fulfilling, and how he is doing many things that Democrats have long dreamed off - and how in spite of that, there's a hardening public perception that the bloom is off the rose.  Given that Obama has helped overhaul healthcare, has responsibly wound down the war in Iraq, and has named two Supreme Court justices, Klein wants to know: why the heck do Dems have the blues??

It's definitely a question worth asking.  Ultimately, I think it boils down to sky-high, unrealistic expectations about what Obama and the Democrats could accomplish in their first two years.  And I don't believe that Obama necessarily brought this on himself, either.  The Bush years, after all, were dispiriting for the Democrats.  The national strategy, from the Democrats' standpoint, became less about doing the most good for the most people, and more about trying to minimize harm to as many as possible.  It was the necessary defensive strategy of a minority party (and, I'd argue, it was not the scorched-earth approach that the Republicans have adopted these past two years). 

From Obama's very first appearance on the national stage, during the 2004 Democratic Convention, he sounded all the right notes.  He spoke of unity, of common purpose, of pragmatic politics and principled compromise for the greater good.  And like many others, I thought that once he was elected president, there was a chance that maybe we actually would turn the page and the two parties would try to work together to tackle the significant problems the country was facing. 

In retrospect, I can see that I was naive in thinking the Republicans would work with President Obama.  Why would they give him bipartisan support and hand him victory after victory?  If a health care overhaul successfully covered millions more Americans and brought costs under control, who would ultimately get the credit?  If unemployment dropped and Wall Street was reigned in, who would be able to trumpet that to the nation?  From the Republican point of view, it has made more sense to block as much of Obama's agenda as possible, and then run against him and the Democrats as all sizzle, no steak. Politically, that may well be a winning formula, but it certainly makes for unconscionable governance.

Klein argues that, in spite of Republican opposition, Obama has still accomplished a great deal. But one thing he hasn't been able to accomplish was to change the tone in Washington. I believe that Democrats across the country have been disappointed that his election didn't herald a new way of doing business, and a more civilized national conversation.  Maybe the two-party, adversarial system of government that we have makes that an impossibility.  All the same, the American voters would do well to think about Obama's accomplishments so far, and to contemplate how much better off the country would be if the Republicans were truly willing to work in a cooperative, bipartisan fashion. 

WTF

Can someone PLEASE explain how this guy won a primary....?

The Alvin Greene saga has got to be one of the strangest political stories this country has seen in a long, long time.  Period. 

It's The Distraction, Stupid...

We are currently just under three months from the mid-term elections.  The unemployment level (which I am painfully aware of) hovers around 9.5 percent.  States across the nation are dealing with budget crises and a lack of adequate funding for such necessities as emergency rooms, teachers, police officers, youth centers, elderly services, mental health services, etc.  In short: there is a plethora of very serious issues to discuss and debate in this election season. 

Instead of the debates we need, however, we once again find ourselves in a time where folks are getting, as President Obama once put it, "wee wee'd up."  Rather than focusing on plans for economic survival and revival, rather than discussing whether the Democrats should be allowed another two years to turn this ship around, rather than debating over whether it was Republican policies that have led us to this low point in the first place, we are arguing about an Islamic mosque in New York.  

Or, as I see it, we are arguing about this year's gay marriage. 

It seems to me that whenever the Republican forces are short on ideas for policy, there is always some hot-button cultural issue that they can create a buzz around and exploit for electoral gain.  Yes, there are plenty of decent, non-xenophobic New Yorkers who still have pause at the thought of a mosque being built near Ground Zero; I do not agree with their sentiment, bu I was not living in New York in 2001, and I mercifully did not lose anyone.  I will recognize that those who were there, who did lose loved ones, may have a very different, more visceral response to this issue. 

Yet, when politicians like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee - all potential candidates for the GOP presidential ticket in 2012 - start stoking the fires by proclaiming that building a mosque near Ground Zero is tantamount to the victorious terrorists planting their flag at the heart of their American carnage, it seems that we're losing the plot.  Even though we're nearly a decade removed from the 9/11 attacks, the memories are still fresh, and anything that brings those memories back to the surface is certainly going to dominate the conversation.

Which is exactly what the Republicans want.  Beyond platitudes of restoring the economy or wanting to repeal the health care legislation of earlier this year, the GOP has not given any specific prescriptions of how they would govern more effectively than the Democrats.  The GOP has not conceded that their legislation during the Bush Administration may have contributed to the economic meltdown we've been dealing with, and they certainly are not suggesting that they would do anything different to prevent that sort of calamity from repeating itself.   

Of course, that doesn't really matter.  What matters is that the GOP whips up enough of its base, and enough independent voters, into thinking that the Democrats are weak on national defense, and that President Obama will roll over and let terrorist sympathizers march in and own a piece of lower Manhattan. This is what will drive voters to the polls.  And by working the hot-button, emotional issue, the Republican party once again distracts from the substantive issues, and the nation is once again deprived of the debates we could truly benefit from having.    

CORI Reform Comes To Massachusetts - But The Jury's Still Out

Last week, Governor Deval Patrick signed the long-sought CORI [Criminal Offender Record Information] reform legislation into law. Supporters of CORI reform have been pushing for this overhaul for years, arguing that the law as it stood was untenable for those seeking to re-integrate into society upon their release from prison.  Governor Patrick himself summed it up succinctly by stating: “Sentencing in the commonwealth has become about warehousing people. Once released, the misuse of the CORI system makes it nearly impossible for some people to get work, a place to live and back on their feet.”

During my years as a mayoral aide in the Greater Boston area, I saw the negative impact of the flawed CORI laws up close and personal.  I had a number of grown men coming into the office, breaking down in tears due to their inability to get work, to put food on their table, to provide for their families, and to make something of themselves. These were people who had run into trouble earlier in their lives, had done their time, and now simply wanted a shot to get on the straight and narrow.  Yet the economy was already sluggish and inhospitable towards job hunters without a criminal record;  for those with a criminal background, the challenge became that much more daunting. For the vast majority of the folks that came to us literally begging for assistance, there was very little we could do, and it was heartbreaking. 

It was also frustrating. I saw the pain, the frustration - in some cases, the humiliation - in the faces of these people, and I wondered what they might resort to if they couldn't eventually find work. Would they fall back into old, bad habits? Would they take work that wasn't entirely legal?  Would they start looking for something to dull the pain?  Would they eventually lash out at a society that seemed to place them in an un-winnable situation? And did this really mean that someone should essentially face a lifetime of punishment, no matter the size or severity of the crime?

The hope is that the CORI reform will address at least some of this.  I haven't had the opportunity to read the fine print yet, but I've noticed that one key component of the reform is that job applications will no longer ask applicants whether they have been convicted of a felony. One imagines that answering "yes" to that question would immediately disqualify an individual from further consideration, whereas now an applicant will at least have an opportunity to explain any past legal issues in the context of a face-to-face interview.  The information will still be available to prospective employers, and serious crimes such as murder will be a permanent, prominent fixture on a person's record.  This all seems like a step in the right direction, though.  Once the economy starts coming back to life and the hiring process perks up, we shall see....

"Institutional Breakdown" v. "Nah, It Was Just Designed That Way." You Be The Judge!

Over at the New Yorker, George Packer has written a lengthy think-piece on everyone's favorite dysfunctional deliberative body, the United States Senate.  Entitled "The Empty Chamber (Just How Broken Is The Senate?)" Packer's article seeks to address precisely how this prestigious congressional body has gone from world-wide renown to being the equivalent of legislative quicksand. 

While the ghost of Senator Charles Sumner might take issue with Packer's argument that the Senate has steadily declined in function and civility since its peak in the 1800s, Packer does make a compelling argument that there has been an erosion in the upper chamber over the past several decades.  Among the many points he makes:

• The rules governing the Senate are arcane remnants from a time when the life of a United States Senator was much slower and more deliberative. The same rules and procedures that served to accommodate legislators 200-plus years ago are now being misused (and abused) to stifle debate in the new millennium.  
• The slower pace of the Senate was originally envisioned as an antidote to the faster-paced, more partisan atmosphere of the House of Representatives; it was hoped that the hot-button issues would be given a chance to be properly deliberated and considered in this environment. However, Republicans like Lamar Alexander have contorted this to suggest that the Senate "....was created to be inefficient.”
• The hyper-partisanship in the upper chamber has gained alarming momentum in the past three decades, and has made it all-but-impossible for senators to reach across the aisle and find common ground.
• The need to fundraise has - surprise! - robbed senators of the time needed to educate themselves on the bills they're voting on, to forge social and working relationships with each other, and to engage in meaningful exchanges with each other.  Furthermore, senators are encouraged to engage in hyper-partisanship in order to appeal to potential donors.

Some of the points Packer raises in his article aren't surprising; it stands to reason that a senator who has to spend ever-greater amounts of time chasing re-election money will therefore have less time to engage in the business of being a senator.  It stands to reason that the less time senators and their families spend in DC with one another, and the less they socialize with one another, the less likely they are to find common ground and be willing to work together. It stands to reason that the more senators are forced to play to the extremes of their parties bases, the more difficult it becomes for compromise to be forged.  

Some of the points are less obvious, though.  For example, Packer notes that the Founders designed it so that each new session of Congress is allowed to set its own rules.  The arcane rules and parliamentary procedures that made sense in 1800, but that are now used to grind all legislative business to a halt?  They could be revamped and revised to allow for greater productivity and real debate - if only a majority of the senators would actively support such revisions.  

The public accountability afforded by the C-Span cameras, which first arrived in 1979, has allowed people across the country to view the World's Greatest Deliberative Body in action - but televising the Senate has also increased heated partisan rhetoric and playing to the cameras, and has helped undermine meaningful give-and-take on the floor. 

The Republicans have abused many of those old parliamentary rules and procedures to gum up the system in order to shut down debate on (or kill) legislation they disapprove of - but many long-serving Democrats are hesitant to support doing away with these parliamentary rules, lest the Democrats one day be in the minority again (and in need of those same tools). 

Taken in all, Packer paints a frustrating portrait of a chamber that is being held hostage by its own members and a sense of institutional inertia, and there truly seems to be no easy fixes.  The losers in all this, of course, are those idealistic lawmakers and their aides who have come to Washington to do the People's Work. And the biggest losers are the People, themselves....

On Newsweeks, McCains, and Mavericks

I like Newsweek, I honestly do.  The writing is often insightful, the magazine gives ample space for serious topics to be covered intelligently, and the writers often strive to find a fresh perspective to approach their stories from.  You go, Newsweek. 

Of course, even Newsweek is prone to having a dud article now and again, and that's the case with this week's "McCain’s Awkward Gamble Could Pay Off in Next Month's Primary" by Daniel Stone.  In this brief sketch, Stone discusses Sen. McCain's re-election strategy of transparently swinging to the right to stave off a challenge by J. D. Hayworth.  McCain has been earning downright scornful press from the likes of the New York Times , Politico, and the Washington Post in recent weeks, and for good reason; sensing vulnerability from his right, and desperate not to lose a presidential election and a senate re-election inside of two years, McCain The Survivor has thrown McCain The Scrupulous overboard.  Gone, the storyline goes, is the amiable, freewheelin' McCain that seemed like the perfect anti-politician in 2000, replaced by an angry, cut throat, Tea Party lovin' clone, out to win re-election at all costs.  Why, this new McCain even denies ever having embraced the maverick label!

McCain has been earning criticism for seemingly jettisoning those qualities that made him stand out to begin with, yet Stone notes that his sharp right-ward turn appears to be salvaging his candidacy, and may even lead to a lopsided victory against Hayworth.  That assessment seems fair enough, yet Stone carries it a bit too far by arguing that by making his naked pitch to the Republican base and fashioning himself as the kind of fire-breathing partisan he used to rally against, McCain is simply being his own man - just as he's always done.  By taking a zig where we all thought he'd zag - by being "....a lone thinker, someone who keeps everyone guessing" writes Stone - McCain the Maverick lives!

I'll buy the argument that being a maverick means one marches to the beat of his own drummer.  But the John McCain who is working overtime to remain in the senate is a far, far different creature than the John McCain who challenged the Republican status quo earlier in the decade.  He may be able to salvage his career, but this once-honorable politician seems to have done so at the expense of his good name.  Nice try, Newsweek.       

Give Me A Break (Please)

One of the main problems with the national Democratic Party is that many of its leaders act as if the electorate is overrun with children.  Granted, voters often make poor choices and can behave like children, but we seem to be caught in a vicious cycle where politicians pander to the lowest common denominator, and the voters respond by refusing to fully engage themselves in the political process (why bother?  The politicians only speak in platitudes and generalities anyway. 

Case in point: the reaction of party strategists to recent comments by Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, and John Kerry regarding the war in Iraq.  In reference to Bush’s handling of the Iraqi War, Dean likened the conflict to Vietnam, and he said "(The) idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong." This has predictably drawn the fire of the Republicans, who call the remarks unpatriotic, disrespectful to the troops, cowardly, and so on and so forth.  More alarming is the reaction of some Democratic leaders, notably Joe Lieberman, who have distanced themselves from Dean’s criticisms by saying they’re not productive. 

Likewise, John Kerry’s recent remarks on “Face The Nation” have been taken out of context and twisted by the Republicans.  Answering questions by Bob Schieffer, Kerry said:

“...there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the–of–the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not…Iraqis should be doing that. And after all of these two and a half years, with all of the talk of 210,000 people trained, there just is no excuse for not transferring more of that authority.”

The Rush Limbaughs and Bill O’Reillys have jumped on the remarks, contorting them to claim that Kerry said our soldiers are nothing more than terrorists.  Anyone who saw the appearance or reads the interview (or has half a brain) realizes that Kerry was not likening U.S. troops to Osama Bin Laden or Yasser Arafat.  But even some Democrats are nervously wondering aloud whether Kerry, Dean, and Pelosi are blowing opportunities for the Democrats to make gains right now.

The situation is maddening, because Dean and Kerry are merely voicing their opinions, speaking out on a botched war that the President seems unwilling and unable to correct.  It’s not being defeatist to recognize incompetence in the war planning and execution, and it’s not unpatriotic to call the administration in it.  And it’s really dangerous that talk show hosts (like the despicable Mike Barnicle in Boston) are making unfounded comments about Democrats being weak on defense, being defeatists, etc, repeating them over and over like a mantra, and shaping people’s opinions in almost subliminal ways. 

The Democrats have to realize that it’s not only ok to stand up and criticize how the war is going, but it’s a show of strength and patriotism to do so.  If the party at large had Dean and Kerry’s backs rather than getting all wishy-washy whenever they state “this war ain’t going well,” maybe we could get past the ridiculous notion that Democrats have no authority on national security issues.  Republicans own national security--right up to the point where they get us stuck in a war with no exit, no plan, and nothing more than recycled strategies that didn't even work in Vietnam.  It's time for the Dems to step it up....

Inexcusable

The government's efforts to help foreign nations cut off the supply of money to terrorists, a critical goal for the Bush administration, have been stymied by infighting among American agencies, leadership problems and insufficient financing, a new Congressional report says.

More than four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, "the U.S. government lacks an integrated strategy" to train foreign countries and provide them with technical assistance to shore up their financial and law enforcement systems against terrorist financing, according to the report prepared by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress.

Read the rest of the article here.

This is at once astounding and, sadly, unsurprising in the least. How can we make so much noise about the war on terror but achieve so little? It seems that increasingly, by shunning alliances, the administration has missed the opportunity to deal with the systemic causes of terror. We haven't done nearly enough to get at the root of the problem. Of course, we also haven't done nearly enough to finish prosecuting the specific crime of the September 11th attacks, with the chief perpetrator still at large. It seems unlikely that without strong alliances we will be able to do much to help or force nations to "shore up their financial and law enforcement systems against terrorist financing."