These decorations are an easy, relatively inexpensive way to acknowledge the holiday. They require little or no thought beyond which one to buy and where to buy it. The set-up is easy, so is the clean up and off-season storage.

Easy is good.

The unfortunate trade-off is that most inflatables are hollow caricatures of tradition and a lousy representation of the individuals upon whose lawn they are displayed.

I took three classes in college with a professor who made every class read George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

The essay warrants contemplation. The criticisms he makes of modern writing can be made of most modern pursuits. Holiday decorating for example.

He writes:

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. [...] If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious.

When you use ready-made decorations, you don’t have to untangle lights, build scarecrows or hang bats from trees. Just “gum together” a ghost and pumpkin that’s “already set in order by someone else” and you’re good to go. The result is cute, maybe. Mostly it’s uninspired and unremarkable.

The trouble with such thoughtlessness, Orwell writes, is that it feeds on itself:

[...] an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

It is rather the same thing that is happening to all arenas of our life. The more we choose to rely on the convenience of prefabricated expressions (of thought, holidays or anything else), the less effort we put into all aspects of our lives, and the more we become generic caricatures of ourselves.

Look at what passes for political discourse these days. The majority of people are vehemently arguing about which inflatable lawn ornament is better for the country – your goofy-grinned liberal scarecrow or my fat conservative, Disney witch.

The good news is that the condition is reversible – without taking a BB gun to the neighbors yard:

One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase [...] into the dustbin, where it belongs.

I suppose that means I’ll go outside and make a scarecrow.

“BTW, is there a reason Donklephant hasn’t covered the violence at various health care forums? Given that fistfights and shouting people down are the ultimate forms of discourse this site seeks to eliminate I thought we’d have a thread by now. For the record my group has been involved in Dingell’s forum. It was pretty clear the anti-Obama folk were there to make sure the forum was ruined, and maybe provoke a fight. Check out the Youtube videos…” – Nick

I’ll try to provide a selection of views from across the political spectrum, but will broaden the topic to a more general primer on the care and feeding of astroturf. First – I am not sure this is the clip Nick was referencing, but expect it is representative:

UPDATE: Nick provided a link in the comments to the specific clip he was referencing. Added:

From the left:
This Kos diarist attended the Dingell Town Hall as a supporter with a “cut to the front of the line” pass, regrets being outnumbered by opponents and concludes they are all insane.

Matt Yglesias explains that the reason irrational opponents outnumber rational supporters at these meetings, is that the rational supporters are waiting to learn what is actually in the bill. Matt is certain that the supporters will outnumber opponents once the bill is out, even though he does not know what will be in the bill.

Boo Man at Booman Tribune thinks it is perfectly fine for protesters to exercise their first amendment rights, unless, of course, they don’t understand what they are protesting. So I guess protesters need to be given a competence test first… or something.

From the administration:
The administration and Democratic leadership weigh in to explain exactly what the opposition is all about.

Robert Gibbs disses the “Brooks Brother Brigade” and calls the opposition “manufactured anger” all paid for by the official administration designated demon of the day (cue scary music) The Insurance Companies.

Barbara Boxer picks up on the sartorial theme, explaining that you can tell the protesters are fake, because – well- they are too well dressed.

Harry Reid waves a piece of astroturf as a prop to dismiss opposition “as phony as this grass.”

Nancy Pelosi agrees that it is all phony astroturf and throws in a few nazi references to boot.

Finally, the DNC runs an ad to make sure everyone knows that the opposition to the President’s healthcare plan are just an ugly angry mob that storms out on to the streets at the beck and call of the RNC- or something.

Not from the left:
Now, I think this kind of partisan political posturing (like astroturfing) is par for the course, pretty much the same old tried and true game of demonizing opposition to rally your team and get your bill passed. Not exactly “hope and change”, more like “same ol’ stuff”, but it doesn’t bother me. It can create problems though – if you don’t finesse it just right.

One problem is when Democrats start believing their own BS. Then you get situations like this – where a Democratic Representative at a town hall meeting calls out one of the “manufactured”, “astroturf”, “hijacker”, “mob” participants that is disrupting the meeting…

Another possible problem is when union members and other Obama supporters (not astroturf – genuine grassroots) spontaneously begin showing up in numbers at Town Hall meetings and take White House rhetoric from political strategists David Axelrod and Jim Messina to “punch back twice as hard” a little too literally.

Not all Democrats are buying into the Axelrod strategy. Claire McCaskill was quick to distance herself from the White House with this tweet:

“I disagree that the people showing concern over some healthcare proposals are “manufactured” Real folks, strong opinions.”

Not sure what she is thinking. Why wouldn’t she want to get on board insulting and belittling her constituents?

The Audacity of Axelrod
This is where it gets almost surreal. We have the administration and leading Democrats throwing the “astroturf” pejorative at Republicans and (cue scary music)The Insurance Companies and yet – the guy who practically invented the term “astroturfing” …The guy who is known as “The Astroturf King”… is none other than Obama’s right hand man and political adviser – David Axelrod.

Recall that prior to the campaign Axelrod was a founding partner in two firms co-located in the same office. One, the political consulting firm hired by the Obama campaign, and the other ASK Public Strategies – the gold standard in astroturf consulting firms (Axelrod is the A in ASK).

The MSM mostly gave him a pass during the campaign as he claimed he was on leave from ASK (while working in the same office for the co-located political consulting firm) and said he had no intention of being part of the administration. I highlighted this relationship during the campaign, when I though it a little too cozy that ATT was a big client of ASK, and Senator Obama conveniently flip-flopped on Telecom Immunity. But nobody really cared about that, so let’s move on.

How about an update now that the Astroturf King is Obama’s right hand man in the White House and his bio has disappeared from ASK’s website?

Per the Sun-Times, when he accepted the position with the administration in January, he “sold” his stake for $3M to be paid out out over 5 years. It was also disclosed that he received a partnership check of $151,914 from ASK in 2008. That was in 2008, when he was on “leave” from ASK. I guess it was a paid leave. So in 2008, ATT money went to ASK and ASK money went to Axelrod. Nothing to see here. Move on.

Let’s walk through this buyout again. ASK Public strategies is a going concern, and will continue to have funds flow from their corporate “astroturf” clients into their coffers. Then money from the ASK coffers will flow into “Astroturf King” David Axelrod’s pockets to compensate him for the buyout over the next five years, -coincidentally- exactly enough time to get past Obama’s first term and election campaign. Of course, by then, he may get tired of politics, and ASK may want sell his share of the partnership right back to him. Who knows? It could happen.

Audacious.

UPDATED 08/10/09: Added video, fixed typos and links
Cross-posted at “Divided We Stand United We Fall“

The arrest of noted Harvard African-American scholar and The Root co-founder Henry Louis Gates, Jr. spread like wildfire across the blogosphere this week. Today, there are a few additional updates. First, the Smoking Gun obtained and posted the actual arrest report. Second, Slate enlisted the help of the ACLU in explaining away a lot of the charges made against Gates by the Cambridge police. And finally, last night’s prime time press conference on health care saw President Obama delicately wading into the issue in his last press answer, stating:

Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that’s just a fact.

The story is fraught with political and policy significance on so many levels that it’s no surprise that it spread so quickly. Washington is debating the confirmation of the first Latina Supreme Court associate justice — the same woman who has sparked a firestorm of conservative commentary concerning her judicial decision about affirmative action in New Haven and her comments regarding the jurisprudence of a “wise Latina” being better than a white male. Some commentators pointed out that the arrest happened just as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote a piece saying that race-based affirmative action had to be abolished. Finally, the arrest happened the same week that CNN had been scheduled to run a special with Soledad O’Brien entitled Black in American 2. The political irony is almost palpable and seems to beg the question: does being black in America mean being arrested for disorderly conduct on your own front porch after getting a little miffed?

First, it’s pretty clear that the police acted inappropriately — at least if Gates’ version of the story is to be believed in its entirety. As Slate pointed out, it is a requirement that Massachusetts police show ID when asked. Second, a disorderly conduct charge in the state usually refers to conduct that will spark a riot. Blowing your cool on your front porch hardly seems to endanger polite civil society. Finally, as the Slate Explainer pointed out, getting upset and shouting at a police officer about being racially profiled is about as explicitly political as you can be — and thus count as protected speech under the first amendment.

But if it’s true that the Cambridge police acted foolishly and probably illegally, it could be equally true that this arrest says very little about the overall state of race relations in America or the many public policy debates surrounding it. As President Obama pointed out, racial profiling is a problem across America. I see it everyday in my Washington D.C. neighborhood. But at the same time, does the arrest of one prominent scholar in Massachusetts really negate Douthat’s point that perhaps affirmative action has run its course? Is one anecdotal case in one Massachusetts city really emblematic of the struggles of a whole race of people?

Race in America is a touchy subject, still. The latest Internet meme from today refers to a prominent AMA physician accused of forwarding racist photoshopped caricatures of President Obama as a witch doctor. It’s currently the lead story on Talking Points Memo. What these incidents do reveal is an American public hungry for a frank conversation on race and a media class only perfectly willing to oblige with stale, simplistic race-baiting. What they don’t reveal is a racist, bigoted society rotten to the core.

The rise of Americans like Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and others is more than just the tokenism that Martin Luther King Jr. warned Americans to avoid when talking about race. Women comprise a solid majority of college graduates at convocations every spring, and their salaries in major urban areas amongst unmarried, childless women are higher than men in almost all the major urban areas. The President of the United States is an African-American, who garner 66.8 million votes — 8.5 million more than his white, American male rival. Prior to his election, the previous two top foreign policy makers in the Bush Administration were both prominent and well-credential black Americans. There is a large and well-heeled black middle class in this country — one often marginalized in popular culture depictions of urban life media stereotypes and hip-hip rags-to-riches glory stories.

It does us no favors as a society to turn an unfortunate incident at Cambridge into a microcosm for all of American society. There is ample evidence for real and sustained racial progress, and America has mostly moved beyond some of the baser prejudices that haunted her for centuries. There are some barriers to achievement still, just as there are some opportunities for those of any skin color, gender or creed. Just as the election of one African-American hasn’t made racism disappear, the arrest of another hasn’t brought it back in vogue.

The flagging economy has accelerated the decline of the American newspaper industry. Already suffering from waning readership and declining ad sales, several major newspapers are now projected to fold or go exclusively on-line before the end of the year. Those papers include such stalwarts of the news business as the Miami Herald, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Daily News.

If the fall of the newspaper business is inevitable, the question is: what does that mean for society?

The Internet allows for practically infinite discovery, but it invariably fractures us into subgroups of subgroups based around personal interests rather than the historical connections provided by physical community. Newspapers, on the other hand, promote those traditional connections, giving the community a common source of information and providing a base of commentary and knowledge not tied to any specific subgroup.

In a world with only the Internet, we’d all be looking at different content (radically different, at times). What does that do to our sense of unity and our ability to find common ground with our neighbors? Will we cease to be meaningfully connected through physical community and reorganize ourselves in communities based on specific interests? Am I not already more invested in the readers and writers of this blog than I am in the people living ten miles from me? And, what’s the consequence of that?

Nothing foreseeable is going to stop the decline of newspapers. In some ways, this is like the transition from horse-and-buggy to the automobile. At first, cars seemed like just a faster, more convenient version of something that already existed. But, eventually, cars transformed our society, restructuring communities and irrevocably changing how we relate to one another. The Internet is like that. It’s not just replacing newspapers, it’s changing the ways in which we connect, communicate and build relationships.

For me, there’s some angst over the idea of losing my daily paper. I hope there will always be a place for the printed word in our culture. But economic crises have a habit of making clear what is and isn’t essential to a culture. Newspapers seem headed for obsolescence. What that will mean in the long-term remains to be seen.

Did Obama get a mandate?

Well, let’s look at the facts…

• He flipped 9 states from red to blue, including a few that hadn’t gone for the Dem in over 3 decades.
• He beat McCain 2 to 1 in the electoral count.
• The current popular vote difference is 53% to 46% or 7.6 million votes.

And let’s not kid ourselves…Obama talked consistently about taking this country in a “fundamentally new direction” throughout the campaign. So I think it’s safe to say that since America voted so overwhelmingly for the guy, they’re definitely looking for new ideas that have more of a progressive flavor.

In other words, we’re in for some policy changes and if you’re not ready for that, then you’re going to be disappointed.

Yes, the election was definitely a repudiation of the Bush presidency, but it was also a vote for the principles of basic fairness. Obama ran on a center left platform of health care for all, targeted tax cuts, targeted budget cuts and a much less run-and-gun foreign policy. And Iowa, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Nevada New Mexico and Colorado all voted for that change.

Still, Mother Jones points out a hilarious example of the “it’s not a mandate” meme from Robert Novak.

First, this is Novak in 2004, explaining how Bush’s margin was, you guessed it…

“Of course it is. It’s a 3.5 million vote margin.”

And then today…

“…he neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities.”

As I’ve mentioned before, if Obama goes in a radically different direction he didn’t talk about during his campaign, I’ll call him out on it. Because he certainly doesn’t have a mandate to push things like a single payer health care system and far left ideas of the ilk.

But the idea that this election doesn’t represent a mandate for new policies, when Obama ran a 2 year campaign on the theme of “change” and then won by the margins he did, is laughable at best.

The conventions have certainly got the partisan juices flowing. How about a change of pace?

I read David Mayhew’s “Divided we Govern” during a recent sea-faring holiday, a book I had intended to read for some time. It is one of the cornerstone works of scholarship on which I have built the divided government voting heuristic promoted in my blog.

The book can be a tough slog for a casual reader like myself. Working through the extensive footnotes and supporting material that some would consider dry, perhaps arid, maybe even Sahara desert-like, requires some perseverance. But Mayhew has a clean, approachable style, writes with clarity, and if you bring a curiosity of why things really get done (or don’t) in Washington – it is a fascinating read.

There is a pervasive belief – a nugget of “conventional wisdom” – that if you want to “get things done” in Congress, whether legislation, investigations to clean up governmental abuses, or just promote “change“, a single party must control the Presidency and both legislative branches to avoid gridlock. It certainly seems intuitively obvious that the federal government would be more productive if all branches are run by one party. In this book David Mayhew proved the conventional wisdom flat wrong, at least in the modern era. He put the proposition to the test by rigorously quantifying and analyzing all legislation and investigations (the two primary functions of Congress) from 1946-2002. First published in 1991, the book was updated with a second edition in 2005. It is the seminal reference work that debunked the notion that the federal government functions more effectively with unified single party control.

But if unified vs. divided government does not correlate to congressional productivity, what are the factors that prompts congress to “get things done”? Mahew analyzes some of the possibilities in the book. Watching the ubiquitous blue “Change” signs waving at the Democratic convention and listening to McCain’s born-again “Change” message at the Republican convention, I was reminded of one such Mayhew hypothesis. In his data, he documents periods spanning many years, where Congress becomes very productive in what Mayhew calls a legislative and/or investigatory “surge”. Having eliminated any consideration that single party government is correlated with these productive congressional eras, he speculates on other factors that might drive these legislative surges.

This portion of the book is considerably less rigorous statistically, but it is interesting and potentially directly relevant to what we are seeing in this 2008 election season. Specifically, Mayhew explores the notion that a primary pre-requisite for these periodic legislative “surges” is a pervasive “public mood” demanding “change”. He wrote this more than a decade before the Obama candidacy, but his analysis may be the key to unlocking one of the great puzzles of this election. What does “change” really mean to the public in this context?

[WARNING: Long post continues after the fold]

Mayhew:

“… causes of legislative surges can be found in extended expressions of “public purpose” or creedal passion.” To put it another way, they can be located in a certain kind of “public mood” that favors change via government action (Some “moods” have that aim; others, as in the private- oriented 1920s, discourage government action). A “mood” seems to be one of those phenomena that drive political scientists to despair by being at once important and elusive. But perhaps something useful can be said. In principle, a “public mood” probably has the following features. First, much of at least the politically aware public, inside and outside Washington, shares a certain outlook about what can and should be done right now on a wide range of political issues. Second, a large number of people who possess that outlook bring considerable intensity to it; they are not lukewarm. Third, to the extent that the outlook calls for it, an appreciable number of people go on to engage in, to use a term that is probably as serviceable as any, citizen action. They actually do things: They may form organizations, persuade others, go to meetings, give money, write letters, join protests, approach members of Congress, in general make themselves heard and felt. Fourth, the outlook in question is in some sense dominant: Non- sharers of it have a hard time wholly resisting its intellectual or political appeal or mustering intensity or action against it… Fifth, a “public mood” has a beginning and an end. The outlook, the intensity, and the citizen action emerge or balloon at some detectable juncture, and then several years later, at another juncture, they deflate or disappear… An anti-government mood may not call for much citizen action, but a mood favoring change through government action requires -or at least seems to be associated with- a great deal. Levers need to be moved.” – David Mahew – Divided we Govern

Examples offered by Mayhew of documented decade-long legislative surges that were driven by a palpable “public mood favoring change” include: reconstruction in the 1860’s; the “progressive”movement in the 1910’s; Roosevelt’s “New Deal” of the thirties; and the civil rights/ womens’ rights/environmental and social programs of the LBJ/Nixon era (yes, you read that right – Mayhew documents that the generally liberal legislative surge of that era equally bracket both the LBJ and Nixon presidencies.) The question on the table, is whether the much heralded public appetite for “change” that has been promoted by the Obama candidacy and adopted by the McCain candidacy, is in the category of a “public mood favoring change” as described by Mayhew.

If you look at Mayhew’s five criteria for a “palpable public mood”, it is easy to conclude all the conditions have been met. Certainly, if the Obama campaign is used as a proxy for that public mood, we can check off criteria 2 through 5:

• #2 - Observable supporter intensity? – Check.
• #3 - Large numbers engaging, joining and doing things? – Check.
• #4 - Difficult for opposing views to resist? – Well the Clintons will agree, and since McCain adopted rather than fight the mantra – Check.
• #5 - The mood has a beginning and an end? – Certainly the beginning is in evidence. – Check.

But then we have criteria #1: A common outlook about what can and should be done right now on a wide range of political issues.

So exactly WTF is it? What specifically is this public political appetite that Obama and McCain are trying to feed? What are the specific political issues that both Obama and McCain supporters broadly agree must be changed right now? The phenomena is real, but do we know what it is really about?

We can ask the candidates. In their acceptance speeches both candidates endeavored to define and promote the “change” they represent. Obama offered an unremarkable litany of liberal Democratic policy positions. McCain offered an unremarkable litany of conservative Republican policy positions. So each candidate, acutely aware of a “palpable public mood for change“, wrapped themselves in the rhetoric of change, then explicitly pitched the proposition that the same partisan bromides that Republicans and Democrats have been flogging for decades represent the change that the public seeks. Tough sell.

Here is the rub – Mayhew’s criteria specifies that the kind of pervasive public mood for change that results in a real legislative surge, that results in real change, must include broad agreement on what can and should be done across the partisan divide. Where do we have that now? Do we have broad agreement on environmental policy? global warming? education policy? taxing policy? deficits and spending policy? judicial appointments? abortion? religious participation in governmental policy? same sex marriage? right to work? Equal pay? Immigration policy? homeland security? social security? I don’t think so. So they are all off the list. Moreover, both presidential campaigns are useless at articulating what exactly this “change” means. So we are left to our own devices.

Here is my take on what this inchoate public impulse for “change” really means, and by extension, what this election is really about. Your mileage may vary.

THE CONSENSUAL “CHANGE” CHAMPIONS
(In reverse order)

“Change” 2nd Runner Up – Health Care / Energy Policy (tie)
These are both a close call for me, I profess no certitude about either, but I am saying that they both make the cut. Barely. In both cases, there seems to be a hue and cry in the electorate that “something must be done.” For both issues, strong sentiment is generated on both sides of the partisan divide. While there are obvious policy disagreements between Republicans and Democrats on these issues, it is possible to craft a general solution statement with which most Americans will agree. Not an overwhelming majority, but a majority. On health care – most Americans want a solution where people do not fall between the cracks, and are not risking financial ruin to get the care they need. On energy policy, most Americans will agree we need to drill and develop more in America, conserve more, build nukes, and work aggressively to invest in and develop alternative energy sources. Both candidates are missing the boat to some degree on these two issues. McCain and the Republicans are misreading the degree to which Americans are willing to socialize medical care. Obama and the Dems are misreading the degree to which Americans are willing to drill for fossil fuels here and develop nuclear energy as part of the solution.

“Change” First Runner-up – The War in Iraq.
12-24 months ago, this was the number one issue that was driving the “change” mantra and the fuel that propelled the Obama candidacy. The “change” that people wanted was quite explicit and easily articulated. A large majority of Americans wanted us out of the quagmire that Iraq had become. If the status of the war in Iraq was the same now as it was then, there would be no contest. Obama would be 20 points ahead in the polls. But events on the ground have overtaken the campaign rhetoric and morphed the meaning of “change” in the process.

Violence in Iraq is down, and the Iraqi government has effectively removed the issue from the campaign. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki set a time “horizon” for us to be mostly out by 2011, so – that is going to happen regardless of who is elected president. It is not a presidential campaign issue anymore.

Yes, looking back, Obama was right and McCain was wrong about the war in 2002. But McCain was right and Obama was wrong about the surge in 2006. It is a political wash. The war was the “Change” issue, but now it has been rendered effectively moot. Getting out is still part of the “change” people want, but, looking forward, there is simply no practical difference in the rate at which we can and will redeploy out of Iraq regardless of whether McCain or Obama are elected president. It is even reasonable to postulate that we will be able to reduce our military footprint faster with a McCain presidency. The only difference between the candidates on Iraq, is the rhetoric they use to posture for their respective base.

“Change” Champion – Exorcise the Bush administration, and punish incumbent Republicans.
That is it. That is what is left of the “pervasive public mood for change” mandate once the issue of the War in Iraq was rendered moot by Maliki. There is broad agreement among Americans that the occupation of Iraq was a mistake, that the strategic execution of the war was flawed, and the Bush administration was largely incompetent (see – he was a uniter not a divider!) Blame for the war falls squarely on the Bush administration, enabled by a gutless, ethics challenged, majority Republican Congress. Even many (most?) conservatives (neocons excluded) will agree that GWB has been a disaster for the country, the Republican party, and has betrayed conservative principles. The punishment for the Republicans began in 2006 and will be meted out again in the 2008 congressional elections. It is very possible that the Democrats will finish with a 100 seat majority in the House of Representatives, and secure close to a filibuster-proof 60/40 majority in the Senate. The Republican party may well be rendered impotent as an opposition party in Congress. Punishment complete. So that leaves the presidency.

The issue that is now determinative in that contest, is whether the electorate believes that McCain/Palin is an extension of the Bush administration. If the Obama campaign succeeds in painting that picture (hence the oft-repeated “McCain is 90% Bush” canard), Obama wins. If McCain succeeds in separating himself from Bush and painting himself as a maverick, the “pervasive public mood for change” does not hurt him, and may even help his candidacy. Early indications are that his acceptance speech and the Palin pick went a long way to accomplishing exactly that.

Net net – We may still have a change election, but it may be John McCain that wins it.

^{x-posted from “Divided We Stand – United We Fall“}

Mr. Obama rose through the Chicago Democratic machine without a peep of push-back. Alaska’s politics are deeply inbred and backed by energy-industry money. Mr. Obama slid past the kind of forces that Mrs. Palin took head on.

Palin became Alaska’s governor not by cozying up to the established powers in her party but by challenging the corruption of those established powers. She beat former Republican Governor Frank Murkowski in a primary mainly by calling-out Murkowski on a corrupt, sweet-heart pipeline deal he supported.

Obama, meanwhile, won his seat in the Illinois Senate by playing a bit of procedural hardball and forcing all his opponents off the ballot for improper signature gathering. You could claim that’s “fighting corruption” but there’s no evidence in Obama’s career to suggest he’s made any subsequent effort to reform signature gathering. His maneuver was tough Chicago politics, plain-and-simple.

But saying Obama has no reformist past is incorrect. As a young state legislator, he took on the role of ethics reform point man and helped pass key reforms including ones aimed at decreasing the influence of lobbyists. His ethics-focus was not exactly popular with his colleagues and not the kind of role you’d expect a young politician to take if he is simply “moving up through the system.” In the U.S. Senate, Obama has also made ethics reform one of the few focuses of his short tenure.

Palin, for her part, is undoubtedly a politician unafraid of challenging the status quo – probably more so than Obama who strikes me as inclined to compromise (on the Farm Bill, on wire-tapping, on offshore drilling) rather than directly challenge established interests. But we know Obama, just by virtue of being from a different party than the current president, will change things in Washington. Palin and, of course, McCain still have to convince us they will deliver Republican leadership substantially different from what we’ve received from George Bush and his administration.

A reformist past is nice. Plans for future reform are even better.

On “This Week” Joe Lieberman remarked that he didn’t leave the Democrats, the Democrats left him by moving further left. This is substantively accurate as the Democrats since Bill Clinton have definitely moved from interventionalism towards isolationism and from free-trade towards protectionism. There’s little to indicate that Lieberman has changed many of his positions since 2000 but he’s not exactly welcome in the party anymore.

That said, Ross Douthat of The Atlantic makes a solid point about centrists who get “left behind” during times of political change. He says:

[T]he American “center” moves around a lot (and varies wildly on an issue-by-issue basis), and thus a party that moves leftward or rightward on the hot-button issues of the day can sometimes find a new center that nobody realized was there. This tends to leave the inhabitants of the old middle – the Rockefeller Republicans in the ’70s and ’80s, and perhaps the Lieberman Democrats of today – flummoxed and out-of-step, unable to figure out that just because they’ve always considered themselves “centrists” doesn’t mean the American people will always agree with them.

While Lieberman’s independent victory in Connecticut two years ago indicates he’s not outside the mainstream yet, there is definitely far less room for liberal hawks in today’s political center. I’d say a Republican dove would find more room in the middle.

Centrist is a complicated label because the center shifts so often on so many issues. But the principle of centrism is to NOT shift just because the political winds change. Centrism is about making decisions based on facts and real-world situations rather than partisanship and power games. That, I think, is an excellent method of governance and leadership but it makes for piss-poor politics. Sometimes centrists do indeed represent the aggregate positions of the electorate, sometimes they sit well outside the opinions of voters or are only centrists on issues of no great consequence.

This is why I gave up calling myself a centrist awhile back and generally just go with “independent” nowadays. That’s the label Lieberman now uses too but it’s clear he’s still a little miffed at being left behind by the party that nominated him for the vice presidency just eight years ago. He shouldn’t be all that surprised. Sometimes getting left behind is the cost of eschewing partisanship.

I found his point about a potential McCain presidency with a Democratic Congress to explore a similar theme as the question Justin posed “McCain: The Only Viable Green President?“. Jason is a senior at the University of Wisconsin majoring in history and journalism. He has gone a long way to restoring my faith in the younger generation.

It is really not hard to understand why divided government works better. Use any mechanism the way it was designed to be used, it just works better. A car is designed to run on roads, try to use it as a boat, and you won’t get where you intended to go. We have a system of government built on the concept of checks, balances and separation of power. The Constitution was designed with a specific architecture to ensure that (as James Madison said in the Federalist #51) “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Divided Government reinforces the foundation of our Federal Government. It works the way it was designed to work by the founders – messy, slow, and contentious. Single party government undermines constitutional checks and balances, restrains oversight, invariably increases opportunity for corruption and bad decision making, resulting in depressingly consistent disastrous results.

As long as we are on the subject of “CHANGE” I thought you might find this YouTube video amusing, and a useful supplement to my earlier post – “Keep the Change”. I can’t figure out how to embed it, but it is linked here: Ch-ch-ch-changes. Enjoy.

Barack obviously owns the word since he talked about it first. He understood this zeitgeist sooner than everybody else. Huckabee also says it and stands for a real change within the Republican party, definitely moreso than Barack would for the Democratic party.

But now Edwards is talking about it, trying to paint Hillary as the ultimate insider. Romney is saying he’s the change candidate as opposed to McCain.

Welcome American to the change election.