What Clinton Fights For

Hilzoy offers some lessons from the Great Gas Tax Pander:

Clinton is presently making a big deal about the fact that she is "a fighter". After this primary season, I don't think there can be any doubt about her willingness to fight. What Clinton's gas tax proposal tells me is what she's willing to fight for. She is not willing to fight for what she thinks is right in the face of public pressure. She's not even willing to restrict her compromises to cases in which public pressure to do something stupid already exists. She will sacrifice principle and the public good when it's expedient for her to do so.

Which is to say: she's a fighter, all right, but what she fights for is her own interest, not what she thinks is right...

If there's anything we should have learned from George W. Bush, it's that generalized combativeness is not a good thing in a President. We need not just someone who's willing to fight in general, but someone who's willing to fight for the right things. If you think that the right things just are the things that advance Hillary Clinton's political interests, then there's no problem. But if you want someone who is willing to fight for good policies that are in our national interest, that actually address serious problems, then it's worth recognizing that while she is more than willing to fight, she is not willing to fight for that.

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Shifting the Center

Matthew Yglesias translates Clinton's apparent support for McCain's proposed "summer gas tax holiday":

Clinton doesn't agree with McCain's idea. She'll do it only "if we could make up the lost revenues from the Highway Trust Fund." But we can't make up the lost revenues from the Highway Trust Fund, so she won't do it. And that's the right answer, but she's successfully confused most of the audience into thinking she does favor the holiday.

Matt thinks this duplicity is "pretty neat". But does it really help the Democrats to pretend to support stupid Republican ideas? [Once again: Bad Means Have Consequences.] I would have thought a better long-term political strategy would be to try to convince the public that those are actually bad ideas. But it's kind of hard to do that when you're too spineless to publicly admit that you disagree with them.

Imagine if Clinton were instead to vigorously denounce McCain as "economically illiterate" for proposing such a stupid policy, and thus "incompetent to be president". Such strong words might lead to further probing and investigation as to whether the charges were justified; economic experts would be called in to offer their opinion, and to explain in plain terms precisely why subsidizing gas is an idiotic policy (and perhaps propose more efficient forms of financial aid instead).

It's not impossible to change public opinion, especially when you have the truth on your side. I mean, to an uneducated layperson, the idea of printing money and making everyone a millionaire overnight probably sounds even more tempting than cheap gas. But I assume if a politician tried pandering to this ignorance, they would pretty soon be called on it, and ridiculed mercilessly. Why doesn't the same happen here?

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Obama's Race Speech

Wow. Has any politician ever given such a serious, thoughtful, and thoroughly good speech on race relations in America? I don't know whether it will play well politically -- it's too nuanced to reduce to a 7-second soundbite. But, reading and listening to the speech in its entirety, I found it deeply impressive. Some highlights...



On his church and relationship to Rev. Wright:

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Pinpointing his fundamental disagreement with Wright:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

The core of the speech, though, takes a much broader view. Obama explicitly acknowledges the grievances that can lead to racial resentment and anger, for blacks and whites alike, while insisting on the need to overcome such divisions:

We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow...

For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding...

Finally, Obama highlights the shallowness of the current media/political culture, and guides us back to the real issues:

[W]e have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together...

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.

Amen.

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Reasonable Meta-Disagreement?

Can people reasonably disagree about what people can reasonably disagree about? Put another way: can we expect to achieve a reasonable consensus as to where the boundary lies between what we might reasonably dispute vs. what is completely beyond the pale? Or could there even be reasonable disagreement ("meta-disagreement") as to where the boundary lies?

That would be strange. Stepping beyond the pale disqualifies one from reasoned discourse; it means that one can no longer be regarded as a reasonable, respectable interlocutor. If we're unsure about this -- if we think there might be grounds for reasonable dispute there after all -- then it's no longer an automatic disqualifier ("beyond the pale"). But if another could reasonably dispute that some move really was beyond the pale, then it seems they could reasonably go there themselves. So the fact of reasonable meta-disagreement would immediately resolve itself: it entails that the first-order issue may indeed be reasonably disputed. By contraposition: if something really is beyond the pale, then it must be unreasonable to think otherwise. No?

I wonder about this because I recently came across a post from old blog friend Jim Ryan, accusing Obama of being a 'racist degenerate', which struck me as completely beyond the pale. As I explained in the comments, I can see some room for a reasonable conservative to judge Rev. Wright's sermons to be objectionable (personally, I think the fuss is overblown), and - supposing they're objectionable - there's room for reasonable dispute as to whether parishioners (incl. Obama) should have left the Church (again, I'm not convinced). So, there are some reasonable (if misguided) criticisms in this vicinity that could be leveled at Obama's private morality. But Obama has been perfectly clear in distinguishing his pastor's views from his own. Obama's own stance on racial issues is obviously less confrontational, more conciliatory. (Hell, he's written a whole book on the topic.) This is not in question, so it's simply dishonest to ignore these facts and assert that he is 'racist' nonetheless.

More generally, I don't see that the Wright "scandal" is of any genuine public interest. Delving into a candidate's church/community background might provide some weak indication of their views if we didn't have anything else to go on. But nobody seriously contends that Obama is an angry black nationalist (much though his slimier opponents might like to insinuate it). These "revelations" about his church are not enlightening. (It's well known that he joined the church for essentially pragmatic reasons, as a community organizer, to get closer to the community he hoped to serve.) So the only motivation for kicking up a fuss in this case is sheer partisan scandal-mongering: the subjective fact that it may serve to whip up outrage and opposition. There's simply nothing there that's of rational relevance to Obama's candidacy, even if the critics are right on every single point of reasonable dispute.

Everyone should be able to see this dialectical point, it seems to me, even if they disagree on some of the first-order questions. So I don't see how to avoid the conclusion that anyone who continues to charge Obama with 'racist degeneracy' (even after having the above pointed out to them) has simply lost touch with reality.

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Civic Virtue and Negative Campaigning

David Brooks speaks of "negativity and cheap-shot campaigning". But it's worth noting that these are two very different things. Cheap shots obviously detract from the quality of our politics, as does gratuitous negativity and demonization. But, just as obviously, not all negativity is unwarranted. Sometimes -- no, often -- other politicians are up to no good, and it's important and worthwhile to draw attention to this. (How else are we to hold them to account?) Negativity is entirely appropriate in response to substantive flaws or wrong-doing.

How is it that people so often fail to appreciate such a perfectly obvious point? Perhaps it is a side-effect of popular subjectivism. Since all perspectives are "equally valid", there's no distinction to be made between legitimate and illegitimate criticism. There's "no truth of the matter," so whenever people disagree they must simply be trying to impose their own will by means of verbal force. It's a game that involves only emotions, not reasons. Criticism is mean and nasty, something only bad people engage in. Nice people are always happy and co-operative, appealing to our positive emotions rather than negative ones. So the story goes.

Once we reject subjectivism, however, a better alternative presents itself: not 'be positive', but be reasonable -- do what the situation calls for. If there is good reason to criticise the opposition, then do so. Otherwise, don't. Simple.

The upshot: you can't just complain that the other team is engaging in 'negative campaigning'. There's nothing wrong with negativity per se. The real question is whether their negativity is justified: i.e. whether their claims are important and true.

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Election Notes

(1) I'm fascinated by the Washington state GOP caucus debacle. There appears to be some possibility that the local GOP officials stole the election for McCain. That is, they waited until he edged ahead, and then -- with 13% still to go -- stopped counting the votes and simply declared him the winner. Bizarre. (See Talking Points Memo for more, e.g. here.) Huckabee's sending in lawyers; it could get messy. A story to keep an eye on, anyway.

(2) What's all this 'superdelegates should follow the will of the people' nonsense? I'm with Clinton on this one: it would defeat the whole purpose if they did not exercise their own judgment. (Why else have superdelegates at all?) Of course, they have most reason to favour Obama in any case...

(3) Stanley Fish bizarrely claims that the fact that Hillary Clinton would more likely lose the general election is somehow not a legitimate reason for thinking that she would not make the best Democratic nominee:

Electability (a concept invoked often) is a code word that masks the fact that the result of such reasoning is to cede the political power to the ranters.

Um, no. The political power of the right-wing ranters comes from their ability to vote (and advocate) in the general election. Given the fact that they have this power, we are faced with the question how best to deal with it. Burying one's head in the sand doesn't seem advisable. Assuming that it is of great importance that the Democrats win the general election, it is important that we do what we can to raise the probability of this vital outcome. That means: select a nominee who is more likely to win the general election. (That means: Obama.)

A surprising number of people declaim such reasoning on the grounds that it amounts to "blaming the victim". This assumes a strangely narcissistic conception of an election. The question is not who of Clinton or Obama we want to reward or 'deprive' of our votes. If you want to do something nice for Clinton, send her some chocolate. But the election is not for her. It's for the country. And electing Clinton as the Democratic nominee is not (ex hypothesi) what can be expected to do the most good for the country. End of story.

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Nuclear Leaks: Did Obama Lie?

At a campaign stop in Newton, Iowa, on Dec 30, Obama reportedly claimed:

I am not a nuclear energy proponent... the only nuclear legislation that I've passed has been to make sure that the nuclear industry has to disclose [radioactive leaks] and share that with local and state communities. I just did that last year.

But the NY Times claims that (i) the legislation was eventually watered down to merely encourage rather than require public disclosure; and (ii) it didn't pass anyway.

Asked why Mr. Obama had cited it as an accomplishment while campaigning for president, the campaign noted that after the senator introduced his bill, nuclear plants started making such reports on a voluntary basis. The campaign did not directly address the question of why Mr. Obama had told Iowa voters that the legislation had passed.

Obama's website disputes the first claim, at least:

NYT never mentions that the revised bill, like the original, required notification of public leaks and that the only change was that requirements would be made through the regulatory process.

Piecing things together, the best I can work out is that the original bill mandated disclosure of even small leaks - any exceeding “allowable limits for normal operation”, whereas the revised bill only mandated disclosure of leaks "exceeding the levels set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the EPA". The NRC would have up to 2 years to decide these limits, and even after that it would remain merely voluntary to disclose smaller leaks. The following section from the NYT article is also relevant:

[Some] say that turning the whole matter over to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as Mr. Obama’s revised bill would have done, played into the hands of the nuclear power industry, which they say has little to fear from the regulators. Mr. Obama seemed to share those concerns when he told a New Hampshire newspaper last year that the commission “is a moribund agency that needs to be revamped and has become a captive of the industry it regulates.”

Conclusions: (i) It's technically true that even the revised bill would mandate disclosure of some leaks. But it's misleading spin for the Obama "fact-checkers" to deny the Times' claims that the revised bill was watered down. They would do better to acknowledge the fact that legislative compromise is sometimes necessary in politics. That's nothing to be ashamed of -- unlike, say, misleading your supporters.

(ii) Nobody disputes that Obama asserted a simple falsehood when he said the legislation "passed". It didn't. But given that this is a one-off mistake made in conversation (in contrast to the Clintons' lies), I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. He probably just misspoke: you can see from the context that he was trying to convey his cautious stance on nuclear issues, and this point would have been made just as well had he said "the only nuclear legislation that I've supported", or "introduced", or something along those lines.

N.B. I'd like to get to the bottom of this (if I haven't already), so please correct me if you find any evidence that the above analysis is mistaken.

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The Role of Rhetoric

I know some intellectuals are put off by Obama's rhetoric, complaining that his campaign represents the victory of "style over substance". But I think this is mistaken. The complaint would only be legitimate if his rhetoric were serving to mask a genuine lack of substance, but closer examination reveals that in fact there is no such lack. Instead, we have a substantial candidate who, when campaigning, plays up style for the sake of motivating and winning over the electorate. Isn't this just good politics?

In an ideal world, of course, the electorate would not be swayed by non-rational influences. Wonkish talk about increasing transparency by RSS-ifying government data should suffice to "uplift" and motivate support. But this is not an ideal world, populated by ideally rational citizens. People are influenced by a nice suit and haircut, personal charisma, and eloquent rhetoric. So an effective politician will play to these biases in order to shore up support. Would it be better if they didn't? I don't see how. They should want to reform the system to make it more responsive to reason, of course. But for as long as the flaws still exist, it would seem imprudent not to take advantage of them. (Their opponents certainly will.)

N.B. This only holds within moral limits. I certainly don't want to excuse deception, for example. But there is a clear and principled distinction here. Rhetoric and such are rationally neutral, making us neither more nor less likely (in general) to reach the truth. Deception, on the other hand, is anti-rational, a positive obstruction to informed decision-making.

So I don't see any grounds for objecting to politicians using all morally permissible (even if non-rational) means to garner support. Granted, this just shifts the question to which methods are morally impermissible. But I doubt that anyone could seriously contend that rhetoric belongs on the blacklist.

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The Clintons' Lies

Hilzoy describes how "Hillary Clinton, and her husband, have told a series of lies about Barack Obama", and why this matters:*

The Clinton campaign apparently thought that presenting Hillary Clinton herself, and saying true things about Obama, might not be enough to convince people to vote for her. There are ways of responding to this thought that demonstrate respect for people's right to make up their own mind whom to vote for: trying to become a more compelling candidate, for instance, or accepting the possibility of defeat. But lying is not one of them.

Lying in an election is basically a way of saying: we know how you ought to vote, and if we can't get you to vote that way by presenting you with facts and arguments, or even with truthful but emotionally shaded appeals, then we will get you to vote our way by telling you things that are not true. It's hard to see what could be more profoundly disrespectful of people's right to decide for themselves whom to vote for.

This is simply intolerable, and I'm increasingly hopeful that informed and responsible citizens will not, in fact, tolerate it any longer. Here, for example, is the former president of Chicago NOW, explaining how Clinton's blatant lies drove her to become an Obama supporter:


I don't think it's sufficiently widely appreciated just how important this issue is. I mean, we're constantly complaining about the wretched state of public discourse and the dishonesty of politicians, and yet it is accepted as necessary and inevitable. (Some cynics even consider sleazy viciousness a virtue in politicians. Again, all I have to say to such people is: read Hilzoy.)

But it is not inevitable. In Obama, we finally have a candidate who promises to turn things around, to change the way that politics is done. He offers a clear alternative: we need not join the race to the slimy bottom. And if we embrace this alternative, and state clearly and publicly that our reason for doing so is that we will not tolerate dishonesty in our representatives, then maybe - just maybe - things will begin to change. If we can ensure that dishonesty is a losing strategy, an instant disqualifier the same way that racism is, even the most unprincipled politicians will begin to respond to these incentives. But it's up to us:

It's not the lies; it's people in the Democratic party who realize they're lies being indifferent to them, and Democratic voters rewarding them. Of all the major groups in politics--the press, GOP politicians, Democratic politicians, Democratic voters, GOP voters--the only ones I trust at all are Democratic voters. And the presidential primary is our best shot to try to change things for the better. And we always blow it.

It's not too late. Every voice helps: please do your bit.


* See also Bruce Baugh's comment:

I'm certainly not the first to point this out, but it really reflects badly on her qualifications for office at this particular time. We've got a president who takes all disagreement as attacks to be crushed by any means possible, who rejects diplomacy as a thing losers do, and so on. A big part of the new president's job will be repairing the damage from all that - giving potential allies and partners reasons to think we're trustworthy again. It seems really unlikely to me that someone who campaigns this way can go on to govern effectively in the diametrically opposite style, and I don't want to gamble on it.

Update: Obama's hard-hitting response to the smears is spot-on: "Hillary Clinton. She'll say anything, and change nothing."

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Reasons for Obama

1. Meta-politics
I think our top priority should be to strengthen democracy: improving the political system to make it more responsive to reason. That means increased transparency in government, ethics reforms to reduce the influence of lobbyists, and modelling intellectual honesty and civic virtue in political debate. On each of these grounds, Obama is the better candidate by far.

2. No More Torture
Here I defer to Katherine's expert judgment:

Neither [Clinton] nor Obama is good enough about accountability for past abuses; I think he probably is good enough going forward, but she isn't.

Update: see also Habeas Lawyers for Obama:

Some politicians are all talk and no action. But we know from first-hand experience that Senator Obama has demonstrated extraordinary leadership on this critical and controversial issue...

3. Iraq
Obviously. Here's what Obama said in 2002:

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

Here's why it matters:

[T]his isn't just about the past, it's about the future. I don't talk about my opposition to the war to say "I told you so." I wish the war had gone differently. But the reason I talk about it is because I truly believe that the judgment, and the conviction, and the accountability that each of us showed on the most important foreign policy decision of our lives is the best indicator you have of how each of us will make those decisions going forward.

How we made that decision, and how we talk about it, is critical to understanding what we would do as President. Will we carefully evaluate the evidence and the consequences of action, or will we skip over the intelligence and scare people with the consequences of inaction? Will we make these decisions based on polls, or based on our principles? Will we have the courage to make the tough choice, or will we just choose the course that makes us look tough?

4. Effective Diplomacy and Consensus-building
From international to local politics, Obama is willing to bring to the table those he disagrees with. And you know what: it works. Over to Mark Schmitt:

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict. It's how you deal with people with intractable demands -- put ‘em on a committee. Then define the committee's mission your way.

This point also comes out vividly in Obama's in-depth Chronicle interview (highly recommended, especially if you want a better understanding of how Obama would go about things as president).

5. Competence
Many people complain that Obama doesn't have Hillary's "experience" in Washington. But anyone who doubts his wonkish credentials should simply take a look at his record:

[W]hile Obama has not proposed his Cosmic Plan for World Peace, he has proposed a lot of interesting legislation on important but undercovered topics. I can't remember another freshman Senator who so routinely pops up when I'm doing research on some non-sexy but important topic, and pops up because he has proposed something genuinely good. Since I think that American politics doesn't do nearly enough to reward people who take a patient, craftsmanlike attitude towards legislation, caring as much about fixing the parts that no one will notice until they go wrong as about the flashy parts, I wanted to say this.

Follow the link for the details. (Then follow all the previous links in this post!)

Overall: Compared to Hillary, Obama is more electable, more likely to be able to effect change once elected, and the changes he proposes are the right ones. Why in the world wouldn't you support him?

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Must Read: Lessig on Politics

Stanford Law Prof. Lawrence Lessig makes the case for Obama over Clinton.

First, view his lecture on corruption, or read the posted summary [by Aaron Swartz]:

(American) politics is filled with easy cases that we get wrong. The scientific consensus on global warming is overwhelming, but we abandon the Kyoto Protocol. Nutritionists are clear that sugar is unhealthy, but the sugar lobby gets it into dietary recommendations. Retroactive copyright extensions do nothing for society, but Congress passes them over and over.

Similar errors are made in other fields that have the public trust. Studies of new drugs are biased towards the drug companies. Law professors and other scholars write papers biased towards the clients they consult for.

Why? Because the trusted people in each case are acting as _dependents_. The politicians are dependent on fundraising money. They are good people, but they need to spend a quarter of their time making fundraising calls. So most of the people they speak to are lobbyists and they never even hear from the other side. If they were freed from this dependence they would gladly do the right thing.

Then read his post On Clinton and Lobbyists:

The problem is not, as Clinton seemed to suggest, that anyone believes that lobbyists are evil.... But just because a system is populated with good people does mean the system itself is not corrupt. And the problem with this system is the way it obviously queers good judgment when so much effort by politicians must be devoted to raising money in order to keep your job.

Put differently, if there were a way to fund campaigns that wouldn't create the stain of corruption, we would still need (and want) lobbyists. Their job would be simply to make policymakers aware of the interests they represent. But just because your job is to educate politicians, it doesn't mean you have to be able to give politicians money.

Thirdly, his declaration of support for Barack Obama:

First, and again, I know him, which means I know something of his character. "He is the real deal" has become my favorite new phrase. Everything about him, personally, is what you would dream a candidate should be. Integrity, brilliance, warmth, humor and most importantly, commitment. They all say they're all this. But for me, this part is easy, because about this one at least, I know.

Second, I believe in the policies. Clearly on the big issues -- the war and corruption. Obama has made his career fighting both. But also on the issues closest to me. As the technology document released today reveals, to anyone who reads it closely, Obama has committed himself to important and importantly balanced positions.... As you'll read, Obama has committed himself to a technology policy for government that could radically change how government works. The small part of that is simple efficiency -- the appointment with broad power of a CTO for the government, making the insanely backwards technology systems of government actually work.

But the big part of this is a commitment to making data about the government (as well as government data) publicly available in standard machine readable formats. The promise isn't just the naive promise that government websites will work better and reveal more. It is the really powerful promise to feed the data necessary for the Sunlights and the Maplights of the world to make government work better. Atomize (or RSS-ify) government data (votes, contributions, Members of Congress's calendars) and you enable the rest of us to make clear the economy of influence that is Washington.

These may not be hot-button issues, but one cannot exaggerate how important it is to improve our democratic institutions -- to strengthen them against corruption and irrationality -- and the sort of transparency Obama promises is a vital first step.

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Pick your candidate

Here's a fun quiz (HT: Parableman). My results:

Kucinich 38
Gravel 35
Richardson 27
Clinton 26
Edwards 26
Dodd 24
Obama 23
Biden 22
Paul 8
McCain 6
Giuliani -8
Thompson -14
Cox -14
Brownback -22
Huckabee -25
Tancredo -33
Hunter -34
Romney -36

Aside from civil liberties, most of the quizzed issues weren't ones that I really care about all that much. (All things considered, I would rank Obama much higher, and Clinton perhaps slightly lower. I don't know much about the minor candidates though.)

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NZ Electoral Fraud?

This is shocking:

* Labour were told 17 days before the election that the [Chief Electoral Officer] considered the pledge cards electoral advertisements.

* Labour offered, prior to the election, to include the pledge cards in their election return.

* That offer, was withdrawn after the election. The large cost of the pledge cards makes it difficult to reach any conclusion other than the offer was made with bad faith to stop the CEO referring them pre-election to the Police. In other words they lied to the CEO. ...

The unfortunate effect of all this, is that the authority of the Chief Electoral Officer and the Electoral Commission have been massively undermined, perhaps fatally. If a party can ignore warnings from the CEO 19 days before the election, lie to the CEO, make offers and retract them and all without any sanction at all - then you have the wild west. ...

It may not be a stolen election, but it does make it a very dodgy "win". If the Police had done their job then there would be the benefit of a Court Judgement to resolve the matter.

All else being equal, I would rather have Labour in power than National. But cheating to win an election is absolutely unacceptable. I only hope that voters care enough about the integrity of our electoral system to punish Labour at the polls next time around, and in the meantime, pressure politicians to take steps to ensure this doesn't happen again.

Categories:

• NewZealand
• democracy
• politics

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Gender and Green Co-Leadership

Frogblog has a post attempting to justify the Greens' archaic (so 1990s!) requirement that their co-leaders be of different genders. I tried to post a comment there, but it got eaten by their spam filters. (You'll see why.) So I'll reproduce it here instead:
~~~~~~~~~~

Frog,

So why not choose the two best people for the job? Your only relevant comments are that "each gender brings a particular world view and life experience to the role", and "gender is the most fundamental *difference* between people and a key physical identifier that everybody shares."

But that's silly.

Gender is not the most fundamental difference between people. I share a lot more in common with a well-educated female philosophy student than I do a senile fundimentalist male.

Physical differences don't matter. Character matters. Ideas matter. But chromosomes and genitalia? Not so much.

Any two individuals will bring "a particular world view and life experience to the role." If you want diversity of worldviews and experience, why not select for that directly, rather than falling back on a sexist and unreliable proxy? It would make far more sense to encourage complementary idealist/pragmatist co-leaders, like - I take it - Jeanette and Rod were.

With the loss of Rod, you need another pragmatist, not another penis.

~~~~~~~~~

P.S. I'd also add that Frog's opening up a can of worms by suggesting that gender is a "fundamental difference" between people -- a group affiliation so significant as to justify prejudging individuals solely on its basis. Such stereotype-based reasoning was precisely how conservatives of old rationalized keeping women out of politics. And, as I've said before, discrimination doesn't suddenly become okay when pure-hearted liberals engage in it.

Categories:

• politics
• NewZealand
• sex
• discrimination

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Voting Green

With the elections tomorrow, I thought I'd outline my reasons for voting Green. But to break the one-eyed partisan patterns one sees on most NZ blogs these days, I'm going to balance this with some criticism too.

Why the Greens suck:

My main problem with the Greens is their tendency to let ideology trump reality. Our aim should be to enable humanity, and we should do whatever the evidence suggests is the best way to achieve this. That means we must promote science and rational inquiry rather than hiding behind romantic appeals to "nature", hyperbolic fears of "playing God" through biotechnology, emotional opposition to all things nuclear, and so forth. That's not necessarily to say we should be building nuclear plants or employing genetic engineering. But these issues should be open to rational debate. The Green movement is far too prone to dogmatic romanticism, and this can only harm its chances of actually doing good in the world.

The Greens would do better to become hard-headed empiricists: remaining committed to their goal of enabling humanity (including future generations), but remaining open minded as to the question of how best to achieve it. If the evidence suggests that private prisons are better run than public ones, then take note! Don't keep pretending that the public sector must always be best. Such dogmatism simply shows that the Greens care more about their statist ideology than achieving what's really best for our country. It's despicable. (See also David Farrar's Ideology vs. Common Sense, condemning Labour for the same vice.)

I also strongly disagree with the Greens on minority issues relating to "positive discrimination", as explained in my recent posts: Why Discrimination is Wrong, and The Human Race. The latter post grants that, in the short term, National would be even worse for our race relations and national unity. But still, the Left needs to give up its racial separatism and recognize the goal of a colourblind future (even if they think it's too early to dispense with our concept of race quite yet).

Another general problem with the Greens is their paternalism. They are far too quick to impose coercive measures and regulations without adequate justification. As a general rule, we should trust individuals to make their own decisions about what's best for them. If smoking bans in bars are to be justified, proponents first need to explain: where, exactly, is the market failure? Are bar owners mistaken about what would best satisfy their customers? Have the workers been misinformed about the health risks, or not adequately compensated for them? Some explanation is required, at least, to justify such blatant paternalism. Many Leftists, in their arrogance, seem not to recognize this requirement.

My final complaint against the Greens is more specific, concerning the S59 "anti-smacking" bill. In what can only be described as an act of rank idiocy, the Greens want to shift discretionary powers from jurors to the police. (As always, click the link for details.) This really does seem transparently stupid. I just don't know what the Greens are thinking -- or, indeed, whether they're thinking at all. Bloody idiots.

Interlude:

Okay, so that's why the Greens suck. Most of those criticisms apply to Labour too, and indeed leftists generally. A bunch of unthinking, reflexive statists, the lot of them. (Hell, me too most of the time.) It's most unfortunate. So why am I voting for them? Simply enough, it's because the alternatives are so much worse.

Why the Greens rule:

As far as I'm aware, they're the only party to explicitly take well-being and quality of life (rather than GDP) as a primary goal. They may not be perfect utilitarians, but they're the closest thing on offer.

They have the best tax policy, which shows signs of putting market mechanisms to good use after all. (So, in fairness, they aren't always blinded by ideology.) They are serious about protecting the environment, promoting renewable energy sources, improving public transport, etc. The unprincipled right-wing parties will pollute and pillage for a quick buck. We need the Greens to keep New Zealand clean, and protect our future. This point alone is sufficiently important to outweigh all the criticisms noted above. The other parties are irredeemably irresponsible.

Further, the Greens are the only party with a remotely sensible drug policy. They recognize that the alcohol problem lies in our national culture, and is not liable to any 'quick fix' in the form of raising the drinking age. And Nandor's suggestion to make personal cannabis possession subject only to a minor fine, on a par with speeding and similarly trivial offenses, is eminently sensible.

The Greens were the only party to suggest that we modernize our sexist rape laws. I respect them a lot for that. All the other parties were too cowardly to talk about this uncomfortable issue.

While all the other parties are competing to see who can appear most "tough on crime", only the Greens can be relied upon to focus on the real issues, e.g. how to reduce crime in the first place. They recognize that prisons are inefficient and should be a last resort. They want to bring the victim back into the justice process, and promote restorative justice in appropriate circumstances.

Finally, the Greens have real family values. They support paid parental leave, greater flexibility in working hours for parents, and other such policies that will help enable parents to raise their children. They're supportive of all families, even those that don't fit the Church's restrictive mould, e.g. de facto couples, gay couples, etc. They're more interested in protecting prostitutes than condemning them. Unlike conservatives, they recognize that ethics and sexual prudishness are not the same thing.

Conclusion:

There's a lot I don't like about the Greens. I wish they were more rational and less romantic. Nevertheless, on many of the most important issues, they show themselves to be the most rational party of them all. When conservatives discount the future, refuse to discuss uncomfortable issues, or care more about condemning people than helping them, the Greens can be relied upon to speak up for what really matters. And for that, they have my vote.

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