The Unprincipled Nature of American Consumerism and its Effect on Politics

My friend Andy and I have been talking a lot lately about consumerism and its pernicious place in American culture. Every trip to the West Village in Dallas makes me think of Solomon's words in the book of Ecclesiastes

All the labor of man is for his mouth,
And yet the soul is not satisfied.
For what more has the wise man than the fool?
What does the poor man have,
Who knows how to walk before the living?
Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire.
This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.
Whatever one is, he has been named already,
For it is known that he is man;
And he cannot contend with Him who is mightier than he.
Since there are many things that increase vanity,
How is man the better?

For who knows what is good for man in life, all the days of his vain life which he passes like a shadow? Who can tell a man what will happen after him under the sun?

But, I may have read the most disgusting reminder of American consumerism today in the online journal Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/6892.html

Indeed, the need to consume, and to possess material goods is so strong that an iPod touch or some college tuition would buy a college student's vote. For a million dollars, most of them would even permanently forfeit their right to vote. Although these hypothetical scenarios are somewhat disconcerting, they are a reminder of the broader reality: that most Americans will give their votes in exchange for a portion of the government largess in the form of entitlement spending and pork. The rest of the country doesn't care, and doesn't vote.

I have a thought on this particular problem, one that came to me as I was walking to Starbucks (ironic, eh?) this morning. There is much talk about decadent nations meeting their doom. Individually, we are told in the Proverbs that "pride goeth before the fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction." I would assume the same is true of nations, but why?

Well let's go back to our example of college students exchanging their votes for an iPod Touch (which, by the way, is the most ridiculous product ever sold by Apple--why in the world would I want to buy an iPhone without the phone?). Things are pretty good in America. Left and Right seem to forget it, but the vast majority of Americans don't care about politics primarily because nothing is wrong enough (yet) to make them care. Consequently, they'd rather have an iPod Touch (even if it doesn't have phone capabilities) than a vote. Decadent societies, therefore, it would seem, decline precisely because when people have something to eat and drink, it makes it easier for them to "eat drink and be merry." Culturally, we have a nation of trust fund children, in the socio-economic and political sense. Trust fund children do not have to work, and usually turn out to be pretty miserable human beings. Our trust fund culture doesn't have to be diligent when it comes to the art of government and politics and so they aren't.

John Adams once famously said "I must study politics and war so that my children might have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." Unfortunately the generation of mathematics and philosophy students gave way to a generation of business students, who produced a generation of people who now have little incentive to do much of anything where government & civics are concerned. The few people who are interested in politics are right-wing and left-wing ideological zealots seeking to impose some form of greater order on their fellow man.

More or less, we have taken the easy road and "outsourced" our government to a handful of incompetent yokels (i.e. Congress), an Emperor without Clothes (i.e. President Bush), and a massive, inert bureaucracy that could not possibly be more disconnected from society. With the power of the Internet, and especially the re-birth of the Internet in Web 2.0, we have the unprecedented ability to impact national policy and indeed the future and fate of our country.

We will not use these tools for their highest possible calling, however, until we see a change in culture. That is going to be the toughest sell of all. We need our college students to be willing to trade in their iPods for a bit of their attention to important matters of national policy, and not just concerning the things that make the headlines, but the millions of devilish details imposed on Americans every day. I'm not saying they are all bad--I'm just saying we should think about them, and give them our assent or dissent.

In our legal system there exists the concept of a "fiduciary." A fiduciary is a person to whom property or power is entrusted for the benefit of another." Every generation, in a sense, is the fiduciary for the next generation. We are all entrusted both property and power that we will one day hand over to a new generation. We have an ethical duty to preserve and improve both before our reign comes to an end. In business, the Director of a Corporation has a "fiduciary duty" to protect the interests of the Corporation, and the business laws that govern all of our states make it a crime for a Director to be negligent in his duties--"sins of omission" are punished, just as "sins of commission" are.

I hope Generation Y will wake up from its decadence and take the responsibility we have seriously. It isn't too late to do that in 2008.

Handicapping the Presidential Race at this Point

The Early-Mover advantage may be a thing of the past. Partly because of the general political fatigue and malaise, and partly because of the lengthy election cycle (something really must be done about this...), I do not think the early front runners have an advantage in this race, regardless of what the polls show currently. In fact, it is beginning to seem that they may be at a disadvantage. Thanks to the Internet, surges from obscurity can occur without large war chests, though nobody (except Ron Paul) really gets this. The Romney and Giuliani Camps on the GOP side, and the Clinton and Obama Camps on the Democrat side need to wake and realize that "two weeks is an eternity in politics" is obsolete. It is now "two minutes is an eternity in politics," and things can change overnight. Just as military strategy has changed in the post-Cold War Era to prefer light, nimble rapid fighting forces over large massive heavy forces, so in political strategy the Internet has changed the game entirely.

Iowa is developing into an extremely fascinating scenario on the Republican Side. In the latest Zogby Poll, Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee showed support amongst 15% of primary voters, second to Mitt Romney's 31%. This is a 7 point gain for Huckabee since August, and a 2 point decline for Romney. Huckabee displaced Giuliani in the #2 spot, with Giuliani's support dropping to 11%. Thompson was 4th with 10%, and John McCain came in 5th at 8%. Because of some of Huckabee's populist stances on certain economic issues and his conservative (but not extremist) views on social issues, it seems that he has the most to gain by siphoning votes away from all of the other major candidates, and especially from Giuliani and Thompson. Thompson's poor performance nationally, and especially in the key early states has not been a great surprise to most national political commentators, as he was never known as a great campaigner. Huckabee, on the other hand, is an incredible campaigner, and is not only convincing, but has the potential to be convincing that he has a chance in the general election nation-wide. This same trend could occur in South Carolina. If he can raise some much-needed cash (double what his site says he needs by the end of November) and make a few strategic changes, Huckabee will enter the top three nationally (and in the rest of the early states), displacing Thompson.

Prediction: By the end of 2007, Thompson, McCain, Tancredo, and Hunter will be out of the race. Thompson's support will likely coalesce around Huckabee in the South, and be more evenly distributed amongst the other candidates nationally. McCain's support will likely bolster Giuliani, and the Tancredo and Hunter votes will most likely go to Huckabee as well, assuming the last sentence of the last paragraph proves true.

On the Democrat side in Iowa, things are less tumultuous and unpredictable, but no less interesting. Obama has made incremental gains since August, and Hillary's losses have been within the margin of error. Edwards and Richardson's numbers have also remained relatively steady. The key on the Democrat side is that Hillary's numbers have been stable within 5 points of where they were as far back as March, proving that as the most "known quantity" in the race on either side, her support is unlikely to increase measurably. Interestingly enough, though, Obama's support has been equally as stable in the same period of time. None of the minor candidates appear to be making a Huckabee-like surge into the top tier, and that presents a problem for the Democrats. If they get tired of Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, they have nowhere to turn. Bill Richardson, although attractive on paper, is ineloquent and chubby. At the risk of being labeled a sexist, I think these two traits make it impossible for Richardson to escape the 2nd Tier, as he will never be able to break into the female voting bloc, which traditionally supports articulate, good-looking candidates.

The Democrats need an out. The problems presented by Hillary (50% of all men, and 55% of married men say they absolutely will not vote for her, for example) may be impossible to overcome in the Electoral College. A Giuliani candidacy puts her lock on New York in doubt. A Huckabee candidacy would almost assure a GOP shut out of the South (which was Al Gore and John Kerry's death knell).

Although I believe America could elect a female president, I am (sadly) less optimistic about its ability to elect a black president. Obama would lose the South against any Republican candidate, including Giuliani. It is no secret that there is substantive animosity between the African-American contingent of the Democratic Party and the other major identity groups: Unions, Hispanics, the Jewish community, and the GLBT community. In all of these cases, save the Hispanics, I believe the Democrats would rally behind whoever was nominated, though I firmly believe that all of the identity groups would be happier with a Hillary candidacy than an Obama candidacy. But, the Hispanic vote is fickle, and the Democrats do not have the lock on it that they have on the other major groups. I think it extremely possible that in the event of, say a Giuliani or Huckabee nomination (both candidates have reasonable and moderate views on immigration), Obama could face a split in the Hispanic vote, enough to turn the tables in key states like California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Florida, all of which the Democrats need to win, and save Florida, HAVE to win, in order to take the White House back in 2008.

Given all of this, I have a couple of predictions to make about the Democratic primary:

1) With Hillary's poor debate performance, Obama and Edwards smell blood in the water and will be taking off the gloves even more, trying to bloody her up.
2) The Democratic primary will be sharply divided all the way to the end, with a possible need for a convention vote.
3) No matter what, Hillary still gets the nomination. In this rare instance, the Democrats will nominate the front-runner, and "stick to the devil they know." If it goes to a convention, Hillary has it in a walk, because hard-core Democrats and the mass of Democrat insiders will support Hillary (if for no other reason than they view it as a second coming of their Savior Bill Clinton, who "rescued" them from the legacy of Reaganism).
4) The Democrats will leave the primary broken, battered, and divided, and we will have another dead-heat, down-to-the-wire general election.

4 more years of gridlock...let's get excited!

Peter Pan Update: Colbert Receives More Support Amongst Young Than GOP

According to aRasmussen Poll, Comedy Central talk show host Stephen Colbert's satirical campaign for the White House has more support among young voters than does either GOP candidate (Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani) in a hypothetical match up against Hillary Clinton.

It is a sad day when a full 13% of American likely voters would select a comedic television character over sitting and former United States Senators and the Mayor of the largest U.S. city in an election for the presidency of the United States. This, I think, is more of a reflection on the candidates, however, than it is on the American people. These poll respondents were probably just being honest with themselves. If I'm going to vote for a non-adult candidate, then I might as well support the one who is out front and honest about his non-adultness.

Is it going to take electing Stephen Colbert or Bugs Bunny to the White House before we decide it is time for some real statesmen to run for public office?

373 Days until the election. Will we have an adult candidate?

Modernizing Elections in the Age of Information, Part I

My apologies for a week's break from my series on the Two Party system and an emergent Third Party movement. Today, however, I will resume my discussions of this subject, focusing on electoral reform as an essential part of making government more representative and responsive. There are two aspects of substantive electoral reform that I will address: Methods and Means. By "methods," I specifically refer to issues of "form," by which our political value system is imposed into the election process. For example, we elect the President of the United States using "method" of the Electoral College. By "means," I am referring to issues of mechanics, that is, we use punch cards or optical scan ballots and we vote on Tuesdays in November.

One of the reasons that the state of American politics is in such disarray is that we are utilizing an electoral system that is not congruent with the society and technology of today. People frequently talk about the timelessness of the Constitution or even more scarily, of its Divine Inspiration (I wonder if they think that includes the parts concerning slavery...), but we ought to never forget that the U.S. Constitution was borne out of particular political crisis that ensued from the looseness of the Articles of Confederation, and was forged in Philadelphia as a political compromise over issues that are now at least a century out of date. This hardly diminishes what the men who founded what we now know as "America" accomplished in 1787, but at the same time, let us not forget that the framers of the Constitution were pragmatists, not idealists (as many people popularly believe, especially in the so-called "Christian Right").

First, the Constitution was written in a day when communication and travel were lengthy and laborious processes, sometimes taking several weeks of a journey to travel to the New York, which at the time was the U.S. capital. The country had just emerged from a confederate form of government, and retained many of the aspects of a confederacy with extraordinarily decentralized power until World War I. It was not until the advent of Radio, and especially Television, that the "dialects" of American English began to disappear and the country started to become more culturally homogeneous. The lack of integration near the turn of the end of the 18th Century presented a number of political problems that were addressed in the Constitution of 1787. The Electoral College, the election of U.S. Senators by the state legislatures, and the direct election of the House of Representatives (with the number of Representatives being set by the population, with no cap) were the features implemented to achieve some level of populist influence over government without giving the uninformed and disjointed masses too much power.

In 1787, few people traveled outside of their home town, much less out of the state, and their only exposure to current events in other states was likely a weekly newspaper and letters from family members who lived in other states. This kind of disconnectedness is quite divergent from today's instant information and global connections. I was text messaging with somebody in Argentina yesterday and received a call from my friend who was traveling in Paris. My blackberry now has Google Talk installed on it, and I can instant message, not even using the SMS network, with anybody who has a Gmail account and an internet connection. I receive news alerts instantly through email that pushes to my blackberry, or I can pull up the Drudge Report at any hour of the day to hear about the Earthquakes in Japan or read an editorial about the disintegration of the McCain campaign.

In the past three weeks I have flown from my home base here in Dallas to Little Rock, Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Salt Lake City and am flying to Las Vegas this week for a conference, only to come back to Dallas and hop a flight back to Salt Lake City. All of this would have been unfathomable to James Madison or Benjamin Franklin.

Furthermore, the digital revolution and the Interstate highway system have radically altered the way the economy works, from the way we get our milk to the way we trade stocks and do our personal banking. I can make a stock trade, and use the profits to bet against the Dollar by buying Euros in the forex markets in as much time as it takes for me to click through a half dozen screens on my web browser while sitting in Starbucks sipping a latte and Instant Messaging on my Macbook Pro. Considering that our electoral systems, both methods and means, have remained relatively unchanged for more than two centuries in the wake of massive changes in every other aspect of society, is somewhat mysterious. Is there really something sacred about "going to the polls" on a Tuesday in November? Surely people who worry about the corruption of online voting don't actually believe that the current voting system lacks massive corruption.

Tomorrow I will continue this discussion with Part II of "Modernizing Elections in the Age of Information," examining how our methods can be improved, and how that fits into the advocacy of an emergent Third Party.

Making Political Power More Fluid

On this national holiday, I know that thousands of conservative bloggers will be extolling the virtues of the Declaration of Independence, and Independence Day itself, waxing cliche about Red, White, and Blue, Apple Pie, Mother, and the American Dream. They will talk about America's status as the greatest nation in the world, and oh, if only the Founders were here to tell today's government to follow the Constitution. On the other side of the aisle, the Left wing of the blogosphere will be abuzz with re-written Declarations of Independence, calling President Bush "King George" and talking about his "repeated injuries and usurpations," and labeling him a brutal tyrant.

For most Americans, I do not think this hollow, partisan rhetorical propaganda will ring terribly true. Most Americans are just glad to have the day off, and to celebrate their freedom with little fanfare: BBQ with friends and family, drinking some beer, watching fireworks, maybe doing a little work on the lawn or finish painting the guest bedroom. Most Americans are quite content with their lives; they aren't particularly concerned with world affairs. That is because, for most Americans, life is pretty good. It has its hardships and difficulties, but things aren't bad enough for people to care about politics, or else they have just given up.

As I continue my series on the potential for an Emergent Third Party in American politics, I would like for the reader to consider why voter turnout is so low in the United States. As I just alluded to, I think that there are two primary reasons people do not vote: things aren't *that* bad, and they have given up on being able to make any sort of difference by voting. Now, give us 10% unemployment or 15% inflation and I think people will be showing up to the polls en masse, most likely to elect somebody whose economic policy will even further devastate the country. I pray things don't get that bad.

Our new Third Party can help remedy Americans' belief that voting doesn't matter and that nothing will change. I am reminded of two animal characters in literature who perhaps represent most Americans' attitudes toward the political process: Eeyore, the pessimistic stuffed donkey from Winnie the Pooh who eats thistles, and Benjamin, the cynical donkey from George Orwell's Animal Farm, who was skeptical of the revolution and believed from the beginning that the pigs would be no different than the human masters. Thus are Americans similarly oriented toward the Democrats and the Republicans, with most people seeing little difference between the two parties, and certainly not expecting change in the event of a transfer of power. If anybody needed confirmation of this, 2006 should have been just that. The Left-wing base of the Democratic Party expected Nancy Pelosi & Co. to get the United States out of the Iraq War. Think again.

One of the reasons for our seeming inability to extract ourselves from the status quo is that the dominance of the Two Party System has created, especially in Congress, a Fox-Watching-the-Hen-House sort of scenario. Sure, the Democrats and Republicans hate each other. But that doesn't mean they don't scratch each other's backs when it comes to doling out the pork barrel spending, or voting for Cost of Living Adjustments for themselves, etc. Indeed, one of the essential elements of an Emergent Third Party movement is a system by which power is much more fluid, and where incumbents do not have so much authority and control over the process simply because of the power of incumbency.

Here are some ways this can be accomplished.

1. General party membership at-large should be empowered to elect the leadership in Congress, including the floor leaders, committee leaders, etc. The same would be true going down to the state legislatures as well. This would eliminate the seniority system in Congress, and would allow the public to be much more heavily involved in selecting the people with the most power in government. Party membership would also be able, at any time, to recall members of the leadership with a No-Confidence vote.

2. Candidates themselves, in order to run on this new Third Party's ticket, would have to bind themselves to recall as well, meaning that they will commit themselves to resigning and running in a special election if the party membership in their district goes through the process of a No Confidence vote in them.

These two conditions alone would require officeholders to pay particular attention to their constituencies, and to making good policy. Failing to do so will result in immediate action, unlike in the current system where politicians benefit from the very brief memory of the voting public.

3. Candidates for office would be nominated by the party's general membership, and the party (not the government) would enforce a strict spending cap for primary elections. Candidates would be encouraged and virtually required to court the party's membership through electronic means, meaning name recognition cannot be bought in the primary.

4. The New Party would utilize the Condorcet Method in order to give all candidates an equal and fair shot at getting elected, without the arbitrary nature of run-off elections or first-past-the-post elections.

Democratizing the candidate nomination and selection systems, and by instituting policies that help combat incumbency and entrenchment are essential elements to a successful Third Party movement. They are also essential to the advancement and preservation of our Republic.

Next time we will look at the importance of electoral reform on a broader scale and its place in the future of an emergent Third Party, and the success of our democratic system.

Realpolitik and a Return to Global Pragmatism: The Foreign Policy of an Emergent Third Party

Yesterday got away from me, and I didn't get to blog. I actually had my blogger window open and the title already written, and then all of my time was snatched from me somehow. But I hope to make up for lost time.

After we have already looked at what a Third Party's domestic policy and economic platform would contain, it only makes sense that we now examine the type of foreign policy that would best serve the country and reach out to the niche in the political system that would be most amenable to a Third Party movement. I am, and have always been, of the firm belief that Foreign Policy is always a direct function of domestic politics, especially in democratic nations like the United States. One of the reasons for this is that most people do not cast their votes based upon foreign policy-related matters, and if they do, it is based on ideology (problem #1), and when they are casting their vote based on domestic ideology, they tend to vote for politicians who are unsophisticated in the complexities of foreign policy, and so the elected officials tend to possess ideological views toward foreign matters (problem #2).

Ideological foreign policy has been one of the most disastrous components of the George W. Bush administration in the last 7 years, and was equally disastrous on the Left-hand side of the political spectrum during the Carter administration. There were certain elements of ideological foreign policy during the Clinton administration, though I think there was mostly just a lack of foreign policy. Foreign relations were good, but foreign policy was non-existent.

I do not believe a responsible steward of America's interests can approach the world negligently (Clinton) or recklessly (Bush II).

The United States cannot maintain its global hegemony without careful, meticulous attention to foreign policy and geopolitics from both a strategic and tactical standpoint. Foreign policymakers, starting with the President himself, must have a long-term view (in both directions...historic and future) of America's place in the world. This cannot be accomplished by a dogmatic adherence to some arbitrary view of foreign affairs. The following should be hallmarks of a Neo-Realpolitik foreign policy.

1. America must utilize and harness one of its historically most powerful foreign policy influences: soft power & cultural influence. American culture has been the aspiration of much of the world since World War II, and this cannot be discounted as one of the reasons we have been able to achieve so much. When the man on the street in Brazil wants to wear American clothes and watch American film, we have a powerful hold on global affairs. As soon as we lose that, our decline is imminent. The pervasiveness of "Americanism" itself must be shepherded, guided, and prospered, and most certainly not countered by formal national policy. During the Bush II administration, national policy has gone to great lengths to erode America's soft power in the world, and it is imperative that this immediately cease, and that the government instead promote our soft power interests.

2. The United States must immediately end all support of Israel. There is absolutely nothing useful, practical, or even ideologically sound about supporting a bully state in a region where its practices inflame 1.3 Billion Muslims worldwide against it, and whoever supports it. Both George Bush and Bill Clinton further made the mistake of trying to make the Middle East peace process part of their "legacy." This has proven not only be ineffective, but potentially hurtful. American intervention in the peace process has been a failure. We should stop trying. It only draws attention to our prominent influence in the region (and military presence), and that does not help us with the so-called "Muslim street." I am not at all advocating a policy of appeasing the Muslim world, but we can at least stop actively and purposefully antagonizing it. Additionally, the U.S. cannot afford to be aligned with Israel when it finally decides that it is going to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear facilities.

3. American hegemony exists, and ought to exist, to promote its prosperity, as well as global prosperity. This cannot happen without global free markets, and in fact, without global free markets, American hegemony will a) be irrelevant and b) automatically cease to exist. The best kind of "Dollar Diplomacy" is not in foreign aid, but rather in Trade. When nations can prosper with each other, they will not fight each other. Wars are unpopular, expensive, and inhumane. Few people will disagree with that. Military personnel will agree most with it. This doesn't mean that we should not fight wars when they are necessary.

I am in fact reminded of what John Stuart Mill once said about men with nothing left to fight for (and I think the same applies to Nations): "A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

This is not a license to warmongering, but it is also a reminder of the irresponsibility of dogmatic Dovishness. Yet, if war can be avoided through Economic prosperity, I can think of few more mutually beneficial diplomatic methods. The practical implications of this are unpopular, domestically in many cases. The United States must make unilateral strides towards the elimination of all import tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, and a total elimination of corporate welfare and subsidies, particularly in Agriculture and Aviation. This will lead to a re-alignment of American economic interests, greater domestic efficiency, global efficiency, macroeconomic prosperity, and simultaneously achieve foreign policy goals that can hardly be accomplished any other way.

4. The United States must make substantial efforts toward rethinking its approach to Military affairs and their relation to geopolitics and geopolitical diplomacy. The economic rise of China means that the age of technological superiority in military affairs for the United States is at an end. Where our comparative advantage was always in technology (and never in numbers), we would at least be equal with a new superpower if they achieved only technological equality (like the Cold War with the Soviet Union), but since China already possesses a comparative advantage in sheer numbers, the United States must recognize that it cannot be alone in the world from a military standpoint. It would be prudent for America to take a page out of the British Empire's play book: make up for ground strength with alliances. For Britain, it was India. India isn't a bad choice for America, either. India is the only other single country in the world with a population that rivals (and will soon exceed) that of China. Unfortunately, China is wooing India very effectively right now, potentially neutralizing our ability to form a strong military and diplomatic alliance. It does not mean we shouldn't try, however. I will not go into more hypotheticals or details here on this subject, but will attempt to do so in future discussions.

5. America must radically revamp its Space Policy. Space is the new ocean and the new sky. While Naval and Air superiority is essential to maintaining global hegemony, it is something that given China's rise, can be rivaled. Therefore, we must turn our eyes up towards the heavens (pardon my tongue-in-cheek religious reference). Militarizing space is not the answer, though. If we militarize space, then we will give license to China to do the same. We will find ourselves in a nasty Cold War in the stars. China is already beginning the process of militarizing space. The United States should take diplomatic leadership and garner support in Europe, Japan, South Korea to actively undermine any attempts by China to flex military might against global interests in space. The United States should invest increasing amounts of money (preferably through the private sector) to pursue economic interests in space, and make space a trade route, rather than a battleground. This will help diffuse Chinese attempts at extraterrestrial hegemony.

6. Peacekeeping Missions and Diplomatic Intervention. The Chinese government has become very adept at taking the "undefended hill." They are now the major diplomatic influence in a number of "lesser countries," though many of them, like the countries of Central Asia, are incredibly important from a geopolitical standpoint. The United States desperately needs to changes its approach in this respect. Whether it is by aiding the people of the Sudan in their existing humanitarian crisis, or building lasting diplomatic and national friendships with Kazakhstan to ensure overland trade routes and oil pipelines along the Old Silk Road remain open to American interests, the United States needs to take a more proactive role in courting Emerging Nations and developed countries alike.

7. Good Neighbor Policy. No place in the world is more important for the United States to develop friendships and economic ties than its own back yard: Central and South America. The increasing friendship between Iran and Venezuela is an unacceptable development, and Hugo Chavez's growing influence over his neighbors in Latin America is even more unacceptable. The U.S. has so much more to offer to Central and South America than the bankrupt socialist ideology of Mr. Chavez does.

Ultimately all of the items I have discussed are elements of a realistic, strong defense, strong diplomacy foreign policy that is rational, non-ideological, and would distinctly separate an Emergent Third Party from the ideological disaster of both the Conservative and Liberal wings of the two major parties.

Tomorrow we will pick back up our discussion of political process, and look at some of the more pragmatic concerns of breaking through the two party system.

Ideological Balance: Third Parties and the New Third Way

This morning I am going to resume my series on the potential for a Third Party to successfully make its way into American politics. Today's post is going to be about the ideology of a successful Third Party, and depending on how long-winded I get, this topic might bleed into a future post. My apologies in advance if that happens. One other prefatory note: today will only be about domestic policy. Foreign policy warrants its own post.

The hallmarks of a successful Third Party domestic policy platform would be a dedication to social progress with responsible, pro-growth free market economics. It is my contention that most people in the United States believe in equal rights and equal protection. I would simultaneously contend that most people believe that free markets and reasonably low taxes are good for the economy, and that the country benefits when the economy succeeds. Now having said all of this, I also think that on specific issues, people buy into hideous lies, especially on economic policy. Some people, otherwise rational, are vehemently opposed to global free trade. Still others, again otherwise rational, think that taxing corporations with almost punitive rates is good for the "average person. Despite these and other myths, I still think a Third Party, through education, can enter the fray and advocate sound economic policy and fair social policy. The following would be a summation of this concept.

Economic Policy

1. Rigorous Adherence to Balanced Budgets.

2. Tax Reduction and Tax Code Simplification.

3. Tort Reform and Judicial Reform.

4. Regulatory Reduction and Streamlined Government.

5. Unification of Business Regulation, Eliminating State Involvement.

6. Reform of Federal Labor Law.

Social Policy

1. Conservationist Environmental Policy (but rejecting economically devastating proposals like Kyoto).

2. Equal Rights & Equal Protection.

3. An Individualist Stance on Abortion (Something not as radical or venomous as National Right to Life OR NARAL, but a more reasonable and centrist stance, perhaps favoring states rights in many respects).

4. Belief in a 100% Overhaul of America's Primary and Secondary Educational Systems.

5. Moderate, realistic view on Immigration (something in between Amnesty and "Shoot 'em when they cross the border.")

Hybrid Issues

1. Health Care. The emergent Third Party must take a radical stand on health care reform, that wholly rejects the status quo, but that has some better solution than low-quality and horrendously expensive socialized medicine. More on the details of this to come.

2. Reform of the American entitlement system. With the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds holding future liabilities in excess of $60 Trillion, a Third Party serious about helping America remain the world's superpower and stave off imminent decline will tackle this issue with bravery and boldness, and I believe the American electorate will reward the effort.

In a future series, I will go into more extensive detail about what all of these policies would actually look like, but I wanted to lay out a framework for that discussion here. I look forward to reading people's comments about what I have written today, and I hope everybody will check back soon for a discussion of what an Emergent Third Party's foreign policy platform would look like.

Real Dialogue, Less Fundraising

For those readers who are just now joining us, I would encourage you to read the posts from the last several days, as today's blog is a continuation of a series I am writing about how an emergent Third Party can be successful in America's two party-dominant system. We have already looked at how technology must be harnessed to help level the playing field for the new Third Party, and how the new Third Party can only truly succeed if it is fully transparent in all of its finances, operations, and elections. Today, building on the understanding we have already achieved, I want to look at how a Third Party can (paradoxically) de-emphasize fund raising, focus purely on substantive dialogue, and end up with sufficient financial resources and even more exposure.

Having spent quite a bit of time on the campaign trail, I continue to be amazed at how much time candidates spend raising money. I would say that successful candidates end up spending about half of their time doing it. Let's really break this down, though, into what that means to the system.

The purpose of having campaign funds, in our current context, is essentially to run very expensive television and radio advertising campaigns. In fact, races are often handicapped by political observers based upon the amount of cash-on-hand a candidate has leading up to the election, since that has a direct relationship upon the candidate's ability to have a pervasive "air campaign," as they are called. Candidates will be seen at $5,000 a plate dinners, where everybody is dressed in black ties or evening gowns, and the candidate speaks about whatever pet issues appeal to the group of wealthy individuals sitting in the room. And, whatever the candidate actually says creates a social contract with his audience that he will do those things when he once he gets in to office.

One might say that candidates have plenty of room to successfully appease their donors while spending most of their time and energy representing the mass of their constituents. This might be true if candidates had only a couple of donors, or a couple of groups of donors of similar ideological bent or policy preferences, but because the astronomical cost of campaigns requires candidates to raise money from whomever will write them a check, they quickly become beholden to far too many people.

Borrowing from my post a few days ago, a candidate who harnesses technology can achieve the "real dialogue" goal. For example, if a candidate posts a video blog every day, and the content of that video blog is picked up by the mainstream press, then the candidate can still get air time on television, without massive expenditures to purchase slickly produced advertisements. The policy proposals or ideological positions expressed in the video blog will then require a legitimate response from the candidate's opponent(s), meaning that an actual debate will occur on the campaign trail, one of substance even.

An emergent Third Party movement that takes on the political discourse in this manner and on a wide-scale will quickly differentiate itself from the two existing major parties. It is imperative that our hypothetical party be as contrasting as possible, since that will make it clear to the voters that they truly have a rational choice to change the state of politics by voting for a new party. It will also help to allay the traditional fear that I think prohibits most people from voting for Third Parties (or is at least a contributory factor) that is characterized by the saying "stick to the devil you know."

Because there are hundreds of political consultants, political hacks, and others who have spent their lives in politics, there will be tremendous pressure on the people in the emergent Third Party to revert back to the "conventional wisdom" of traditional American politics. The Third Party's leadership must have a consistent dedication to the disciplines I have described above, and rigorously enforce these principles on their candidates, or else they will quickly get sucked into the old way of doing things, and will be choked off because of their inability to raise enough money to compete on that hackneyed old battleground of the 30 second TV commercial.

Now that we have looked a lot of tactics, I would like everybody to keep these things in mind and think about them as we lead into a lengthy, potentially multi-day discussion of how a Third Party's ideological and policy platform should be crafted in order to be successful in today's political environment, and to begin displacing the dominance of the two party system.

Transparency of Process: Why Honesty Makes the Best Policy

As a continuation of my series on the characteristics of a successful emergent party in American politics, I would like to dedicate today on the notion of transparency. As I touched on yesterday with a discussion of applying technology to the political process in a post-modern cultural context, I noted that authenticity was an essential element in achieving that end. I am going to explore that concept in more depth today, since transparency is a necessary precondition to authenticity. It is impossible to be authentic if there is anything that is manifestly hidden. Hidden things breed hypocrisy, almost necessarily. Consequently, a transparent third party would possess the following characteristics: 1) Openness of process; 2) (little "D") democratic election procedures for party officials and the selection of candidates; 3) Public and fully audited books and records; 4) Plain-spoken policy platform without "political rhetoric."

Openness of Process: Eliminating Smoke-Filled Rooms
Party politics have traditionally been associated with Party Bosses and back room deals. Whether it is those shady alliances between the Democrats and Big Labor or between Republicans and the "Christian" Right, the unholy bargaining that binds the two major parties is what ultimately makes the process tainted and closed. The average voter really has nothing of value to the two major parties; rather they are loyal pawns to be used and abused every election cycle and convinced that a particular candidate will best serve their interests once elected. The special interest groups who elected officials actually serve spend millions of dollars every year to persuade the electorate to vote for their guy, usually without much disclosure, and generally by campaigning against "the other guy."

Similarly, most party operations are conducted behind closed doors, or at least doors that are only slightly open. Far from believing that the government should regulate parties, it is my firm opinion that the people of this country should vote with their feet, by consummating a mass exodus from the two major parties for their improprieties in this area. James Dobson and Jesse Jackson are not truly representative members of the Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively, and as a result, they should not be allowed to dictate the direction of the major parties. Of course I use them as merely metaphors for all of the other nefarious power brokers that help shape and control the partisan process, far apart from the will of the majority of Americans, and most of the time, even without their knowledge.

Building on yesterday's comments, it would be important to note that a successful, and truly representative third party movement would harness Internet technology to achieve genuinely open processes by publishing all relevant information concerning the party online, conduct online feedback gathering, as well as potentially even conducting much of party business online. The Internet is the most easily and universally accessible medium in the country. Unlike television or radio, one does not have to be present at the time of broadcast to receive the information, and unlike newspapers and other physical publications, there is a ready archive of all past information that can be filtered and searched by even the less sophisticated user. Anybody with access to a public library (which is far and away most people in the United States) can therefore access and process information provided by our third party via the Internet.

Little "D" Democracy and Party Elections
Having previously served on the State Committee of the Arkansas Republican Party, I have seen the kind of dealings that occur to elect State Party Chairmen, National Committeemen/women, etc. A couple hundred party hacks from across the state gather twice a year to make decisions that ultimately affect the lives of millions. These party hacks are not elected by the public; they are not accountable to the public; they are not even really accountable to the rank-and-file members of their own parties, but rather to the County Committees (read: Local Party hacks) that elect them. These party organizations go on to set the platforms of the parties, disperse the millions of dollars collected from the average party member's hard earned funds, and decide which candidates are worthy of their support in general elections. In such a way, they create a system where good candidates who might disagree with a particular area of policy are financially blacklisted by the party in a general election. For example, there were a couple of Republican candidates in Arkansas who didn't receive any help in the general election because they backed the wrong candidate for State Party Chairman, or because they didn't have an extreme enough of a view on abortion. Putting such power in the hands of these sorts of people is irresponsible, and is part of the reason the two party system no longer serves the mainstream of America, regardless of ideology.

Registered party members ought to be able to vote, by mail or electronic ballot, not just on the leadership of the party, but also on the adoption of the platform (after providing all of the input on its content first), the nomination of candidates (there are much better systems for choosing candidates than currently exist. I will write more about these issues in a later series), and in other important party matters. Because of the real-time nature of 21st Century technology, parties can interact on an almost hourly basis with their members, so that "party" and "party member" are no longer distinctions, but rather the organization functions organically as a representation of its constituent members.

No Financial Chicanery
This section won't take much time. An emergent third party will open its finances up to the world. Genuine transparency necessitates it. All contributions and expenditures must be disclosed to the public on a quarterly basis, just like a public company. Such a party will have no trouble raising money, and will be respected by all for its honesty. (Open books also REQUIRE honesty. That's the beauty of it.)

Dumping the Rhetoric from Party Platforms
Our hypothetical third party movement should develop platforms that are straightforward and not political in nature. Such platforms should also be remarkably fluid, and change in a real-time fashion along with the will and opinions of the party as a whole. This is one of the best ways to ensure that the third party truly represents the interests and concerns of its constituents and members. Such platforms will tackle actual policy, rather than ideology. Rather than talking about a theory of government and taxation, it will talk about what we do about our phone book-length tax code and oppressively enormous Internal Revenue Bureaucracy. Rather than discussing the ethics of the death penalty, it will talk about how we actually intend to reduce crime in our communities. Rather than extolling the virtues of public education, it would discuss what to do with our corrupt educational bureaucracies and failing schools. I could continue...

Tomorrow we'll look at how a third party can, and should, shift to genuine dialogue on policy and away from "sound bites," in order to effect meaningful change in our political system.

Politics and Technology: Leveling the Playing Field and Making Democracy (Little "D") democratic

I'd first like to thank those who have begun commenting on my posts concerning the need for an emergent Third Party movement. I think JD's perspective from Argentina is extremely useful to the debate. The reality is that the multi-party system, as he described, opens up opportunities for many people who would otherwise be disenfranchised. When there are only two parties, there emerges a "check and balance" system that turns a blind eye to some of the more egregious practices in government, such as pork barrel spending ("earmarking"). While the parties will call each other out on the issues that are necessary to motivate their respective political bases, they will not do so on much of the substantive policy that passes without much dissent every day in Congress.

The primary subject of today's post is to examine in greater depth the first point of yesterday's post, which was concerning the pragmatics of a Third Party movement, what it would do in order to break through the Two Party Juggernaut, etc. I will start with my first point from yesterday. A successful Third Party will possess an understanding of technology and how to use it in a post-modern political context.

Before I delve too deeply into the specific political applications of technology, I'd like to make a couple of introductory remarks about where the world is with respect to technology. The world is a vastly different place than it was even 10 years ago. Today, unlike any other period in human history, the masses in the industrialized world (and increasingly in emerging nations) have access, at nominal cost, to the tools of publication. Any high school or college student with access to $800 bucks can get an Apple MacBook with his student discount and immediately have the capability of publishing to the world their thoughts and opinions in the form of a Blog, or on YouTube as a Video Blog while sitting at a local coffee shop with free WiFi. He can syndicate his blog to his Facebook "Notes" or copy it to his MySpace profile, and through all of these mechanisms reach most of his personal social network. The power of this is truly incalculable, and this brings me to a logical segue into the meat of today's post.

Political parties are organized in order to bring together people of similar ideas to act in concert with one another to achieve certain political ends. Prior to the digital revolution, the traditional two party system was essentially the only way for people to collectively pursue common political goals. They joined up with whichever party most closely fit their political philosophy and then started "paying dues" to move up the ranks and eventually run for political office. This is a terribly inefficient way of figuring out who is best qualified to hold public office. The kinds of lackeys, sycophants, and otherwise smarmy individuals who occupy "party politics" would make used car salesmen feel like clean, upstanding individuals (I wanted to use "insurance salesmen" as my example, but considering that one of my best friends sells insurance as part of his "financial planning" practice, I figured I ought to refrain).

The two party system prior to the advent of technology also required that one be able to raise a lot of money in order to run effective media campaigns. Candidates can win without television advertising (I've worked on some of those campaigns), but few candidates are capable of raising up the kind of volunteer support needed to run an effective ground campaign. Technology is changing all of that. Grassroots politics no longer requires door-to-door campaigning, but can now harness and leverage the openness and vastness of the web to achieve the same sort of results. It also costs virtually nothing, and doesn't require nearly as many "foot soldiers."

An emergent Third Party (or, preferably, SEVERAL "third" parties) would harness this nascent technology to communicate its message to people in their online communities and social networks. Blogging and video blogging are essential strategies to making this work. Creating a presence in online communities like Facebook and MySpace would help to drive traffic to such blogs, create a relationship with citizens who identify with the message of the party, and so on. They would use online communities to help them get the signatures they need to gain ballot access, they would use online communities to push direct democracy legislation (initiative and referenda) consistent with their platforms in order to advance such agendas without needing governing majorities in legislatures. This will help increase their credibility with the voters, and lend a level of trust that presently causes risk averse citizens from casting their vote for "fringe" third party candidates.

A successful Third Party candidate would understand that people's disenfranchisement with the political process in post-modern culture stems from the lack of authenticity from the politicians themselves. Consequently, in their use of blogs and video blogs, social networking presences, etc., they will have a distinctive motivation to just be themselves and to build genuine relationships with voters and constituents. They will not have polished speechwriters prepping their video blogs; they will not have ghost writers penning their blog content. That is the part of my original statement that the technology must be applied in a post-modern cultural context.

It is insufficient to merely take the tools of the Web and become successful. That must be accompanied by an adoption of the cultureand philosophy of the Web as well. This means reaching people where they are in an authentic and, if possible, slightly entertaining way.

Candidates who embrace technology fully will be the only ones who are able to maintain their authenticity, since their fund raising requirements will be substantially less, and their "Beholden" quotient will be so much lower.

The country is waiting for people who are willing to make this leap and to lead the way into a new democracy. The Web is the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to make this happen, if done properly (read: authentically).

Tomorrow: The necessity of COMPLETE transparency in a successful Third Party movement.

Breaking Through the Two Party System

The Republican and Democratic Parties are vestiges of an older Era of American culture, of back-room negotiations, quid pro quo agreements, and a business-as-usual mentality. The two major parties have, in fact, become so entrenched that it is now almost impossible to tell which one is in power, when looking purely at how Congress operates, the legislation it passes, etc. This is hardly representative of the nation at-large. The people of America deserve to have more choices. Here are some of the characteristics that a successful Third Party movement might have in this country:

1. An understanding of technology and how to use it in a post-modern political context.

2. Complete and radical transparency.

3. A focus on genuine dialogue, not on fund raising and media campaigns.

4. Socially Progressive & Fiscally Conservative ideology, with a dedication to markets and economic growth, balanced with personal responsibility to ensure environmental protection and social justice.

5. Pragmatic foreign policy based on diplomacy and cooperation, liberalizing international trading markets, and peacekeeping rather than on dogmatic hawkishness or naive dovishness.

6. There would be a much more Little "D" democratic approach to recruiting and nominating candidates for public office, and power would be much more fluid, rejecting entrenched incumbents for fresh and new ideas.

7. Commitment to substantive electoral reform at both the national and state levels to ensure that government is both representative and responsive.

8. Commitment to substantive reform of both federal and state bureaucracies and regulatory regimes, including: reform of the IRS and the tax code, massive reform of the educational system, and meaningful health care reform that does not wreak havoc on the nation's macro-economy.

9. Self-imposed checks to ensure that the party never becomes just like everybody else inside the beltway.

10. A preference for town halls over TV cameras.

Over the next several days, I intend to detail each of these points. The first step to causing upheaval in the political process is to define what it should look like, and that is what I will be doing in subsequent posts.

Reclaiming "The People's House"

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress." -Mark Twain

With Congress's approval rating at now an all time low (since the beginning of polling on such a question), it is obvious to me, and I would hope it would be equally obvious to the vast majority of American that something has to be done about it, and that the "it" is throwing out virtually all of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And that is what I would call a good start.

The trouble is that doing such a thing would not be effective if we just traded all of the Democrats for new Democrats and all of the Republican for new Republicans, or just flipped all of the Democrat seats into Republican seats and vice versa. No, that would most likely just take a bunch of people who have wanted to be in the current system and put them there, rather than electing people who have no use for the current system, or the current values of our national political scene.

As I have commented, the current Two Party system is broken. One of the most substantial (and ever-growing) ideological groups, the Fiscally Conservative & Socially Liberal/Moderate, is without a unified political movement in the United States. Now, many people discount the viability of Third Party movements, primarily because they have, in the lifetimes of everybody alive today, been the province if racist groups (George Wallace), or other extremist groups (the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Constitution Party), and has not focused on carving out a particular niche in the mainstream, but that is heavily underrepresented in the current system.

Another reason people often discount the viability of third party and independent candidates is the believe that they have to win a majority of the votes in order to get elected. Except in Louisiana, this is not true. The United States House is elected by Single Member District Pluralities, meaning that it is a "first past the post" system wherein the person who gets the most votes wins. Let's look at what that means in practical terms.

In 2004, in the 32nd Congressional District of Texas, two incumbents faced off after the Texas re-districting plan took effect. Pete Sessions and Martin Frost engaged in one of the most heated House races in the '04 cycle, and with high turnout, in a Presidential election year, just over 202,000 votes were cast in that election. Considering that each Congressman represents about 750,000 constituents, 202,000 votes is not a terribly high threshold. Now let's imagine a viable, strong third party candidate is in the race. Assuming that the race is roughly even, a third party candidate could win with as few as 67,334 votes. More people watch some of the most obscure and ridiculous videos on YouTube every day than that. Assuming four candidates in a race, that number decreases to just 50,501 votes.

Americans are a strange bunch, and they hate voting for losers, which is why front-runners generally end up winning, and polling ends up having an impact on the outcomes of races. Slight leads often develop into larger leads simply because the lead existed at all. If American voters would develop just a slight sense of discipline when it comes to not supporting front runners and incumbents, and would be willing to throw their votes away from time to time, the status quo can in fact be changed.

In theory, assuming a minimum threshold scenario applied across the board, it would take only about 14.7 Million votes to create a Congressional Majority for a Third Party. That's fewer people than live in the New York City-Newark Metropolitan Area.

It is possible, and it's about time.

Socially Moderate/Liberal, Fiscally Conservative

Any reader of this blog will know of my general fondness for political subjects, and it should consequently come as no surprise that I frequently engage in conversation on such topics in my everyday interactions. And it seems that barely a day passes that I don't run into somebody who, when asked what their political affiliation is, will respond with something along the lines of "Well, I'm a social liberal (or moderate) and a fiscal conservative, but I generally vote [It's 50-50 Republican & Democrat]." Or I will have people tell me, "I'm really a libertarian, but I could never vote for the Libertarian Party."

These people describe to me their frustration with the political process (and with political officeholders), noting that they really do not have anybody to vote "for" and that they generally end up voting against somebody. The lesser of two evils, as the saying goes. My question is: why are we limited to only two evils? Couldn't we have two or three more? It would at least allow us to walk away feeling both good about our vote and our ability to be grammatically correct when saying "This year, I voted for the least evil of the candidates."

There are so many shades of ideology, almost as many as there are people, and the current two-party dichotomy is just not working out, especially since, as a matter of practical policy, life is little different under a Democratic Congress than it was under a Republican Congress. They all want to spend us into oblivion; they all want to demagogue the issues that rouse their base, and they rarely seem interested in good policy or good government. Oh, and did I mention that they are mostly crooks? Whether it is Dan Rostenkowski, the corrupt Democrat who epitomized the abject criminality of the Democrats' 40 year reign, or Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, who showed that like in George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, the pigs quickly learned how to walk on two legs, There is something about being in the majority that brings about a total degradation of ethical standards for elected officeholders.

If there were multiple parties in Congress, say Democrats, Republicans, Greens, [Some replacement for the Libertarians], and then some minor, potentially single issue parties, and it were difficult (perhaps even impossible) for a single party to gain an outright majority, and as a result Congress had to operate on the basis of coalitions, then the plurality party would always have to be keeping its own accountable, and practicing the art of diplomacy in order to maintain the integrity of their coalitions.

There needs to be Constitutional reform to fully realize this sort of potential, but it is possible, in fact, to accomplish these ends under our present system. More on that later this afternoon.

Global Cooling and the Return of All Those Pretty Glaciers...

I have to pass these gems along when I find them. For all the squawking the far Left does about Global Warming, I'm not so sure they realize how much the Ice Age likely sucked. For everybody's reading pleasure, here is a nice little article about the danger of the decline in sunspot activity from the perspective of a Canadian scientist. To whet your appetite, here is the best quote from the article:

"Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us."

Who isn't for more parties?

This has been an interesting week in politics. Everything points to massive discord in the American public with respect to the direction of the country. People are (rightly) upset.

Bloomberg Switches Parties, Again

Yesterday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg filed paperwork with the Board of Elections changing his party affiliation from Republican to no affiliation, saying "The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralysed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy." This is very old rhetoric; I do wish he could come up with a more inventive line.

(Remember he switched from being a Democrat to being a Republican when he ran for Mayor initially). The media is now abuzz with speculation that this means he is running for President. As much as I would like to see a Bloomberg candidacy, I think the odds are that he will not be in the race. Here's why: All of the reports are saying that according to his intimates, he will only run if he thinks he could actually win. What billionaire wants to be a spoiler, after all?

But it gets worse. Bloomberg apparently thinks he can win only if the Republicans nominate a Right-winger and the Democrats nominate a Left-winger. The latter is almost assured to happen(though the Left wing of the Democrat party is, as I will discuss momentarily, a bit disgusted with Mrs. Clinton), but none of the top four GOP candidates could come close to being classified as far Right (Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Thompson). Thompson, the most conservative of the bunch (and the increasingly likely GOP nominee), was considered a moderate when he was in the Senate, and has as little in common with the Tom DeLays of the world as Mahmoud Abbas has with Benjamin Netanyahu. If the Democrats nominate Hillary, and the Republicans nominate Thompson, is there really enough room in the middle for a Bloomberg candidacy? I suppose some of his billions will be spent trying to figure out the answer to that very question.

Hillary Gets Booed
Apparently the Left-Wing of the Democratic Party, or to use Howard Dean's phrase, the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, is not so happy with Hillary, especially when it comes to the War in Iraq. At the Take Back (Read: Hijack) America Conference, her initially warm reception switched into a fever pitch of anger when she began talking about Iraq, likely because of her initial support of the War, and continued moderate stance (until she formally announced for the Presidency. Talk about win at all costs.). The issue of the War is why Barrack Obama has not already been completely annihilated by the Hillary juggernaut. We'll see how the campaign develops, but it appears that Hillary's coming to Buddha on the War is easing her poll distresses as of this week.

America is Unhappy
Two Gallup polls this week indicate that the mass majority of America is unhappy about the state of affairs in this country. The first poll, released yesterday, found that only 23% of Americans think the U.S. economy is getting better, down from 28% just a month ago. 7 in 10 say it is actually getting worse. Health care costs and high fuel prices comprised more than a quarter of the respondents' reasons for their discontent, proving that in politics, perception (even when wrong) is still reality.

The second poll, numerically a carbon copy of the first, shows that 71% of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, with only 24% approving. Gallup observes that Congress's approval rating has only been this low at three times since they started this poll four decades ago: during the energy crisis (1979), the period leading up to the Republican takeover of Congress (1994), and last year. This is not good news for the Democrats who swept into office thinking they had another 40 years ahead of them. But I'm not so sure it's good news for Congressional Republicans, either.

What this poll proves is that the American people, massively dissatisfied with the Republican majority in 2006, is no more happy with the Democratic majority in 2007. This leads me to the crux of today's comments.

People are Pissed Off--So Let's Clean House, Literally

Independent candidates can get elected; but there is no such thing as an "Independent movement." It is simply impracticable. People naturally divide themselves into groups, and in politics, that usually means groups who identify with them ideologically, or at least on pertinent points of policy. The United States has had a relatively stable two party system since Abraham Lincoln's election in the 1860s. It made some sense, especially in the wake of reconstruction, that the North would cleave along certain ideological lines, and the South along others. The system was, until Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy (and excepting FDR's tenure) a Northern Party vs. a Southern Party. After Nixon, the dynamic was upturned. Ronald Reagan then came along and we became familiar with the term "Reagan Democrats" who, by 1994, were calling themselves Republicans and sweeping Newt Gingrich into power in the second Republican Revolution.

In 2000, the South was once again Solid, but for a Republican, not for a Democrat, and that phenomenon was repeated in 2004. But it's just not working. Air conditioning enabled millions of Northerners to migrate to the warmer states, and modern transportation and communication has made this country more homogeneous than it ever has been before, with respect to the kinds of lifestyles most people lead. There is a greater dichotomy between urban and rural life than there is between East coast and West coast, or between North and South. It seems like we can finally stop fighting the Civil War.

This opens the door to the prospect of a more multi-party system, and what better time for it to start than today, at the Congressional level, cleaning out most of the 435 pork barreling politicos that call themselves "The People's House." More to come on the subject in the coming days.

Speaking of Inside-the-Beltway...

Barely 5 minutes after I posted to my blog this morning about Fred Thompson, I received an email from the DNC Executive Director with the subject line "The inside-outsider." I am not sure how I got on the DNC's emailing list, but I am glad that I am. It is interesting to see what is being sent to the activists in both political parties. My take on this particular email is that the Democrats are clearly scared of Thompson, and they wan to do everything they can to detract from his current perception as not one of the tired old hacks like the rest of the GOP top contenders.

For everybody's convenience, here is the email, as I received it, from the DNC. I'll let you make your own judgments.

Some Old Fashion Law and Order

Fred Thompson edged out Rudy in today's Rasmussen poll, 28%-27%, with McCain and Romney each garnering 10% in a national poll of likely Republican primary voters. There is a lot of speculation about why Thompson has risen so quickly in the polls with relatively little name recognition going into this race. Many people say he is garnering the support of conservatives disaffected with the perceived "moderate" candidates at the front of the GOP pack, Giuliani, McCain, and Romney. That might account for part of it, if Thompson were even that conservative; but he isn't. If being a hardcore conservative were the primary motivating factor, then Newt Gingrich's 9 months of trial ballooning would have landed him at the top of the polls in spite of not having announced his candidacy.

Clearly it is something else. My thinking, and I tend to like Fred Thompson actually, is that Thompson is just a sigh of relief from the last four years. Even though he is a former Senator and has been in politics, we just aren't tired of him (yet). That is why Barrack Obama is doing as well as he is, too. John McCain has been running for President since 1999. Giuliani has been in the public spotlight, for better and for worse since 1993 when he first ran for Mayor of New York. He is now on his third marriage, after a rather public divorce this last time around, and unfortunately for him, the magic that surrounded him in the aftermath of September 11th has faded into a distant memory. Mitt Romney, a fresh face on the national scene, has other baggage, namely his Mormonism and his classic John Kerry-esque ability to flip flop on an almost hourly basis depending on the direction of the political winds. The other "outsider" candidates in the race are plagued by having been in it so long already that they have been confined to the single digits, which is a death knell for fundraising.

Thompson, on the other hand, has a bit of star power, some mildly accurate comparisons to the Gipper, and was out of the spotlight enough not to already be a tired figure on the national scene. The trick for Thompson will be to prevent the voters of fatiguing of him too. If he can manage to do that over the next 7 months, then he has a fighting chance of grabbing the nomination. If he can manage to accomplish the feat of remaining a fresh face through November of 2008, he could defeat Hillary's bid to recapture the White House for the Clinton Clan. Absent a Bloomberg candidacy materializing at some point (and he vowed in a speech yesterday at Google that he had "done the government thing" and would be going back to philanthropy, intimating that he would not in fact be a candidate for the White House), then my bets are on Thompson, at least for the time being.

[As an aside...rumor has it in Republican circles that Thompson's campaign staff is a predominantly outside of the beltway crowd of young technorati who understand the Web and its importance to the future of campaigns and politics.]

The Immigration Madness

I have been a bit busy lately and my blogging frequency has suffered. It is my hope to remedy that posthaste. I have yet to publicly write about the immigration issue, and so that is what today's post will be about.

Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) complained this week that "Talk Radio is running America," in reference to the public uproar against the immigration reform bill that was proceeding through Congress. I'm not sure that Lott helped himself by bashing the people who control the hearts and minds of the so-called "conservative base," but he has something of a point. Last week when accused of being in favor of amnesty,

John McCain quipped something to the effect of "if by amnesty you mean anything short of departing 20 Million people from this country, then yes I am for amnesty." Therein lies the trouble with the more hardcore conservative position on the subject of immigration: it's simply impracticable. The racist xenophobes that are fomenting hatred of immigrants are now the driving political force in this country. It seems that even the venom that engulfed the Left over the Iraq War has been eclipsed by the anti-immigrant feelings of the Right.

This issue has been simmering for the better part of the Post-9/11 Era, but has reached a boiling point. It is a virtual impossibility that the Right's fever will be alleviated. There is almost no conceivable way that this country could deport 10-20 Million people who are here illegally. The pure logistics of actually deporting tens of millions of people ignores whether this is even a desirable method for handling the problem. The shock to the U.S. Economy, which has already assimilated these immigrants, is almost incalculable. There are certain statistics, that if I had more time I could source, that estimate that deportation would result in a doubling of labor costs in U.S. Agriculture, pushing the already heavily subsidized industry over the brink, massively increasing Americans' cost for food, and worse, increasing our reliance on foreign agriculture, which exacerbates our thirst for already-expensive oil to transport such goods to the North American continent.

The inflationary impact alone is staggering, not to mention that there will likely be an outright shortage of labor in the service industries. For two hundred years, immigrants have dutifully filled the entry level jobs in order to begin the process of building a new life for their descendants. Irish immigrants filled the factories of the Northeast, helping fuel the Second Industrial Revolution. German immigrants filled the fields of the Great Plains, keeping our supermarkets full of victuals throughout two World Wars. Chinese immigrants built the railroads that connected the Atlantic to the Pacific, making possible the economic wonder that is the state of California. The Hispanic population that comprises most of today's immigrants ensures that the economy can continue to thrive by occupying the service industry and the agricultural labor pool.

With America's birthrate hovering around 2.1 children per couple, which is precisely the "rate of replacement" or "break even point" with respect to population growth, and with the growing imbalance between working and retired persons in this country (a problem that is on the verge of becoming crisis in 2011 when the baby boomers begin to retire), immigrants, if properly assimilated into the formal economy, will at least buy the country a little more time to deal with the impending balance of payments crisis that lurks amongst the shadows of the mammoth Medicare and Social Security accounts. This is why legalizing the immigrant population, and making them pay the same taxes all other Americans pay is an essential part of immigration reform.

All of these realities do not necessitate that we have a "free immigration" policy moving forward. Instead, we should actively work to enforce certain regulations that constrain people intending to relocate to America. One way of doing this is to grant automatic citizenship to anybody who serves in the uniformed services of the U.S. military for five years. If one of the major complaints from the Right about immigration is that they do not assimilate into American culture, and do not speak English, few things could substitute for engendering patriotic affection and a knowledge of the language than service in the U.S. military.

There should obviously be other avenues available for immigration into the United States, and we should harness technology to match employers who would be willing to hire immigrants with those people in other countries who are looking to move to the U.S. Ultimately, by assimilating those who are already here, and creating a more efficient mechanism for people to come here legally, we can solve the current immigration crisis as we did all of the ones that have come before. What we cannot do is revert to isolationist and xenophobic tendencies that further degrade America's credibility as the global hegemon, and damage our image abroad. Moreover, we cannot afford to decimate the U.S. economy by depriving it of an important source of human capital that is necessary to sustain longterm economic growth. While the bill currently before Congress is not a final answer to the problem, it is at least a first step toward reconciling the circumstances that are so unpalatable to millions of Americans, and millions of immigrants.

A Bloomberg Candidacy

Just when I was losing all interest (and hope) in the 2008 election, The Drudge Report hit me with a surprise the other day. Michael Bloomberg, the socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and wildly popular Mayor of New York is considering an independent candidacy for the White House, and is reportedly ready to drop an unprecedented $1 Billion of his personal fortune to wage the campaign. If all of this talk materializes into something real and meaningful, the lackluster prospects of 2008 will suddenly at least become interesting. With 3 of New York's most powerful pols on the ballot, and a true choice for the vast swath of fiscally conservative people in the electorate who couldn't care less about government intervening in social issues, the race could finally be about issues rather than about the star power of the candidates and the media fanfare surrounding them all.

People will argue that we haven't elected a third party candidate since Abraham Lincoln, and that is true. But never underestimate the power of a billion dollars. I, for one, am excited...

The End of the Blair Era

Throughout the 1990s, Tony Blair was frequently compared to Bill Clinton--a distinct mistake for those whose shallow ideological comparisons defined the administrations of each of these men. The end of the Blair government more closely resembles the fall from power of Lady Thatcher than it does any other modern political figure. In fact, the parallels between the Thatcher government and the Blair government, (in all but ideology), are rather numerous.

* Both were elected subsequent to a major economic crisis or under very poor economic conditions.

* Both were responsible for reviving their respective parties out of the doldrums after years of political defeat.

* Both were involved in major military operations (though in Lady Thatcher's case, the Falklands War was quite popular, and in Mr. Blair's case, the Iraq war has not been)

* Both were wildly popular at the peak of their political power, and won astounding re-elections.

* Both have been among the longest serving British Prime Minister of the last century.

* Both ultimately met their political end because of internal division and strife in their own parties.

* (Forward Looking Prediction) Both had successors who served under them as Chancellor of the Exchequer and who were promptly met with horrendous defeats in subsequent general elections (Though Major won the initial General Election in 1992, it was by a narrow margin. He then went on famously to lead the Tories to a loss in 1997 to Blair). Indeed, it seems that Gordon Brown has his work cut out for him.

Tony Blair also shares something in common with another world leader, George W. Bush, in that both of these men have, through the War in Iraq, decimated their political parties' previously unparalleled strength and dynamic majorities and prepared them both for defeat. The Labour Party at least has the benefit of Blair resigning to allow for a more graceful transition.

If only we had a Parliamentary System....