Jon Stewart is on top of his game this week, skewering media coverage of the Madison Madness, and offering some laugh-out-loud commentary:

For reasons that elude me, this bit was one step over the line for liberal blogger Digby at Hullabaloo who expends almost 800 words to explain why Jon Stewart is not funny and a traitor to the cause:

While Digby was not amused, I found her pompous church-lady finger wagging at “Jon’s church-lady finger wagging” to be vaguely bemusing in its own meta-bizzaro “you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me” kind of way.

From the peanut gallery, Shakesvile, Bob Cesca, and Matt Christie sniff their approval at Digby’s take-down.

James Joyner also took note of Digby’s displeasure:

I suppose I could take a cheap shot by noting the similarity of Digby’s screed to Mao’s dictum that “art must serve the interests of the workers, peasants and soldiers…” but I won’t go there. Let’s just say that if anyone ever needed an example of the stereotypical humorless liberal, I think we found Exhibit “A”.

UPDATE:
The left-leaning side of the political spectrum may find this more amusing. A prank call to Scott Walker is confirmed. That cloud you see over Madison is Governor Walker’s presidential ambitions going up in smoke. H/T Gerry in comments.

X-posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall“

I fully understand that – in the most progressive major city with the most progressive governing body in the country – it is impossible to resist the temptation to occasionally legislate based on their core belief that no citizen can make a decision for themselves or their family without the Supervisors benevolent dictates guiding forcing them to “do the right thing”. But – when even the Daily Show is pointing and laughing – you’d think our Supes might get a clue.

Featured in the clip is SF Supervisor Eric Mar as he is made to look particularly stupid by Daily Show comedian Asaif Mandvi. It’s not like that is a difficult thing to do with our Board of Supes, but Asaif dishes it out with an extra helping of much deserved derision. I can only hope that Mar’s decision to appear on The Daily Show was a career limiting move.

Our local fishwrap transcribes the funniest bit:

“But the most brutal part comes when Mar explains that his 10-year-old daughter, Jade, doesn’t like fast food anymore after watching the documentary “Super Size Me” with him. Those opposed to the to ban maintain it’s up to parents, not McDonalds, to ensure their kids learn healthy habits.

Mandvi: “So she learned from her parents?”
Mar: “That’s a large part of it.”
Mandvi: (staring in wide-eyed disbelief) “Would it be hard to pass a law to force Netflix to send ‘Super Size Me’ to every parent in San Francisco?”
Mar: “We can’t force Netflix, a private company, to do something like that.”
Mandvi: “Are you serious right now?”
Mar:“We have no power to force Netflix or a private company like that to change a business practice.”
Mandvi: “So on one hand, you’re like, ‘We can’t do that’ but on the other hand, you are doing that.”

Mar, looking very tired, shakes his head, stumbles over one of the progressive supervisor’s favorite words, equitability, and mercifully the interview ends. Oy.”

The good news is that four of our Supes have termed out and will be leaving office this week. The bad news is that Eric Mar is not among them.

Reason TV also took note of SF Local Accomplishments in 2010:

Cross posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall.

Source: Resurgent Republic

Buried under the mountain of navel gazing, finger-pointing, self-serving spin, and bitter invective in the left-o-sphere, we can still find a few gems of sparkling analysis, insight and useful advice. We’ll mine two examples of Progressive postmortems. One is a rich vein of solid gold analysis, but to get to it we must first separate and dispose of the slag.

Jonathan Chait of The New Republic cannot hide his bitterness and anger in this devastating dismantling of the straw man he props up for that very purpose:

Split Ends – The myth of divided government
(full text at The Cagle Post)

It apparently makes Chait feel good to monotonously apply the pejorative of a “fetish” to the divided government voting heuristic, but it does exactly nothing to further his argument (as I’ve noted before).

This might be a reasonable argument, if the reason that independents voted for divided government was with the express hope of ushering in an era of bipartisan cooperation, moderation and compromise. It wasn’t. Bipartisan cooperation may or may not happen in the next two years, but it has nothing to do with the reason why many independents voted as they did. They voted to restrain the excesses of this latest edition of One Party Rule (Democratic version). They voted in reflexive horror after witnessing two examples of mind-numbingly bad and jaw-droppingly expensive legislation – ARRA (Stimulus) and PPACA (Obamacare) – that were both made possible and steamrolled by One Party Democratic Rule.

Whether our impending divided government produces bipartisan cooperation or not, it remains a fact that true bipartisan cooperation is impossible when one party holds all the cards. For the last two years the Democrats held all the cards. If the divided government of the next two years does nothing else but prevent or moderate legislation like ARRA and PPACA, then it will meet the objectives of many independents that voted for it.

For an antidote to Chait’s toxic mix of bluster, logical fallacy, and dismissive ad hominem offered up as an explanation of the election, electorate and governance, consider Lee Durham of the Progressive Policy Institute. Durham presents some real data-centric analysis, offers real insight, and comes up with some good suggestions for Democrats and President Obama in:

“How to Understand the Independents (and how to win them Back)“:

I’ll leave it to the reader to compare and contrast these two very different progressive perspectives of the election, electorate, and, most importantly, the way forward. Consider which of the two is informed by common sense, logic and data and which is informed by rhetoric, sophistry and rage. I submit they are representative of two significant and incompatible constituencies within the Democratic Party. The schism has been there all along, but was papered over in 2006 and 2008 by the unifying principle of Bush Hate. Regardless of how skilled Axelrod, Gibbs, and Plouffe may be at “triangulation”, the Obama administration cannot simultaneously turn left and turn toward the center. I hope Democrats choose wisely, as I really don’t want to see us return to one party Republican rule in 2013. If they rely on Palin and Tea Party to hand the 2012 election to the Democrats, they just may be disappointed…

Again.

Portions excerpted and cross posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall

Daily Caller:

History will be made when Boehner becomes first orange-American Speaker of the House

“In January, America will pass another milestone on the road to full equality when Ohio Republican Rep. John Boehner becomes the first orange-American Speaker of the House.Boehner’s unique skin has made him a target of liberal mockery, and talk of his tan has often eclipsed discussion of what he actually says or does. Even President Obama has gotten in on the fun, joking at the 2009 White House Correspondence Dinner that he and Boehner “have a lot in common. He is a person of color—although not a color that appears in the natural world.”

Cartoonists, columnists, bloggers, pundits, and humorists get in on the fun, including Olivia Munn’s election report on the Daily Show (at the 4:00 minute mark):

I don’t want to fall into the trap flagged by the Daily Caller and lose sight of the content while caught up in the novelty of our first Orange Speaker of the House. In terms of the meaning of the election and the role John Boehner will play, I cannot say it any better than Jonathan Rauch on the pages of the New York Times:

Divided We Thrive – Jonathan Rauch

A GRAND victory for Republicans in the 2010 midterm election? Yes, of course. But also no. In all three of the most recent earthshaking midterm elections — 1994, 2006 and now 2010 — the same candidate won: divided government. That is not a coincidence. In the last two decades, a strong and persistent pattern has emerged, one that will dominate our politics for some time to come, because it is rooted in two important political realities. First, the public strongly prefers divided government. Second, it has every reason to…

But divided government, in today’s world of ideologically polarized parties, is the only way of attaining sustainable bipartisanship. And that is likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future. By promising to transcend partisanship in an all-Democratic government, President Obama, in 2008, promised something he had no prayer of delivering. Paradoxically, the three words that will do the most to help him deliver on his broken promise of bipartisanship — and, indeed, that offer him the best hope of governing from the center, broadening his support and stabilizing his presidency — are these: Speaker John Boehner.”

Two Speakers, one coming in, one going out, characterized differently in the press. MSM reporting on one focusing on a reputation for toughness, ideological inflexibility and hardball partisan politics. MSM reporting for the other focusing on appearance and a penchant for emotional outbursts. I cannot help but wonder how the public and media would perceive the two if these reported characteristics were reversed. Would Nancy Pelosi get the same media treatment if she had a reputation for weeping on camera?

It is interesting to speculate how John Boehner will be covered by the media during the midterms four years hence. Perhaps a hint can be seen by recalling how Speaker Pelosi was perceived when she won the gavel four years ago.

First, a tip of the hat to a couple of regular Donk commenters – Cranky Critter for introducing me to a field of study I had heretofore been unaware of – Comparative Political Demonology™ – a phrase coined and defined by Tully some years ago. This subject is bit too broad for me, so I will focus here on a more specialized subset – Applied Relative Demonology as it pertains to the Speaker of the House in 2006, 2010 and 2014 mid-term elections. There may be a PHD thesis in there somewhere.

A great deal of electrons and ink are being spilled over the role Nancy Pelosi played in the 2010 election outcome and the political wisdom of her continuing to lead the Democrats in the House of Representatives as minority leader. She was demonized by Republicans as a San Francisco liberal steamrolling a progressive agenda over the objections of our center-right country. Indeed, as it turns out, being a reliable vote in the House of Representatives for Nancy Pelosi was a career limiting move for many Democratic Representatives. Pundits on the right and left inform conventional wisdom that she is a political poison of such devastating toxicity that her leadership of the minority Democrats would virtually guarantee Republican victories in 2012 and 2014. Color me unconvinced.

It is not like Nancy Pelosi has changed her politics since 2006. She was hardly an unknown quantity after serving 19 years in the House as representative and minority leader, and was not perceived politically any differently in 2006 by the electorate than she is today. She was demonized by Republicans in 2006 as a San Francisco liberal, yet that did not stop voters from sweeping Republicans from the majority and installing her as the first woman Speaker of the House, complete with her “San Francisco Values” baggage:

There were some differences between then and now. There was a Republican President, and the Democrats had a much bigger target to demonize in 2006. A Liberal Speaker of the House steeped in San Francisco Values does not sound so bad when the alternative is a corrupt political hack that “would not meet the moral standards of one of the most corrupt 1906 political participants of the most corrupt political organization in the history of the United States.” Hence “Relative Demonology”. After serving as Speaker of the House for two years, voters increased the Democratic majority in the House in 2008, dealing Pelosi an even stronger hand as Speaker. She didn’t change, but in 2006 and 2008, the Republican demons were worse.

For many Americans, John Boehner is more of an unknown today than Nancy Pelosi was in 2006. They know he is politically conservative, cries on camera, and is orange. That’s about it. What we will learn about him in his role as Speaker, how he will be perceived by the electorate in 2012 and 2014, and who is elected President in 2012 will be bigger factors in those elections than whether or not Nancy Pelosi continues to lead the Democrats in the House. Today, Boehner gets the benefit of the doubt from the electorate. Under the more intense and extended media scrutiny in his new role, the weeping everyman shtick could wear thin and even raise doubts about his fitness to lead.

Pelosi was widely credited with Democrats winning the House in 2006. She was an effective Speaker in 2007-8 when acting to restore some balance with a Republican administration. She was an even more effective speaker in driving the Democratic agenda set by the Obama administration through the House of Representatives in 2008-10.

If Democrats want effective, competent leadership in Congress, they should stick with Pelosi. We won’t see her crying on the floor of the House, and by 2014, an orange hued basket case weeping over tax cuts may very well be perceived as the relatively greater demon.

Cross posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall”

It’s jumped considerably since the 2008 election.

But do people really want the Tea Party to be the third way?

Gallup with more…

My gut tells me that most folks understand that the Tea Partiers are just really angry conservatives who are lashing out at their own for supporting fiscally irresponsible behavior. And yes, there are some independents who identify with that too, but once those folks scratch the surface of the Tea Party, I guarantee 90% of them will not like what they find. And the other 10% were conservatives who just liked to call themselves independents.

And to that point, note how the number of conservatives wanting a third party has shot up more than any other group. Coincidence?

Still, liberals and independents want a third way more and I think there’s appetite for a moderate left/middle progressive-lite alternative to the Tea Party message. One that stresses fiscal responsibility, social justice and basic fairness…all wrapped up in a populist “let’s get back to work” message. It won’t happen in the next election cycle, but don’t be surprised if it pops up in 2016 if Obama wins or Obama loses in 2012.

Either way, it’s on the horizon.

What say you?

… by cleverly adopting a circular firing squad formation.

READY…

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs raises his sights and gets a bead on the target:

AIM….

Glenn Greenwald takes it personally, almost as if Gibbs is aiming directly at him:

FIRE!

Nate Silver takes a shot at understanding the exercise:

“…the White House has had two incredibly cynical moments in the past several weeks — Gibbs’ rant today and the premature firing of Shirly Sherrod three weeks ago. Both reflected politics at its worst, the clumsiest possible efforts at “triangulation”.

I am taking it for granted, of course, that Gibbs’s comments today will prove not to be a cagey political strategy: they were so naked and inartful, such a Velveeta attempt at Sister Souljah moment, that I don’t see how they possibly could be. They will annoy the left but do nothing to placate Obama’s critics on the right or persuade those in the center.”

The full gun battle can be watched here.

From the sidelines, Matt Welch comments on the poor marksmanship:

Well Matt – I’m doing my part.

Although – strictly speaking – I guess I am not a lefty now.

But I was in 2006, and hope to be again in 2012. Does that count?

UPDATE:
Mister Gibbs sheepishly “walked back” his earlier statement, describing it as “inartful”.

My question is not why his liberal base is frustrated, that is pretty obvious. My question is what exactly was Gibbs trying to do? The initial rant was not “off the cuff”. Let’s get real. Gibbs serves up exactly nothing that is not first chewed up, digested and excreted by Axelrod and Rahm.

Then I read this in his artful walk back from the interview:

“In November, America will get to choose between going back to the failed policies that got us into this mess, or moving forward with the policies that are leading us out.”

Now I get it. They want to run against GWB again in 2010 because – you know – it worked last time. I mean – Bush was not running then… Bush is not running now… What’s the difference?

But they really can’t run against Bush if the best and brightest in their base keep saying that Obama is acting just like Bush.

This was all about getting them to stop making that comparison – at least until after the election.

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

Just so we’re clear…

Here’s the original quote that Bloomberg clearly didn’t get right:

“I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system. I do think that the compensation packages that we’ve seen over the last decade at least have not matched up always to performance. I think that shareholders oftentimes have not had any significant say in the pay structures for CEOs.”

And here’s another:

“Listen, $17 million is an extraordinary amount of money. Of course, there are some baseball players who are making more than that who don’t get to the World Series either. So I’m shocked by that as well. I guess the main principle we want to promote is a simple principle of “say on pay,” that shareholders have a chance to actually scrutinize what CEOs are getting paid. And I think that serves as a restraint and helps align performance with pay. The other thing we do think is the more that pay comes in the form of stock that requires proven performance over a certain period of time as opposed to quarterly earnings is a fairer way of measuring CEOs’ success and ultimately will make the performance of American businesses better.”

And yet even folks from the left are crying foul.

Here’s Krugman calling Obama clueless…

Oh. My. God.

First of all, to my knowledge, irresponsible behavior by baseball players hasn’t brought the world economy to the brink of collapse and cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and/or houses.

Did Obama say that? As evidenced by the quotes above, not at all. The Bloomberg reporters clearly cherry picked quotes and mischaracterized his statements. Because Obama clearly DOES begrudge undeserved bonuses.

Paul, please, go back to just being an economist. Because with friends like these…

Moving on…

I don’t want money. I don’t want clothes. I’ll even give up that iPhone I had my eye on. All if this ridiculous crowing from the far left is ignored.

And it’s not just me.

The latest broadside to the “kill the bill/single payer/public option” noise parade comes from Jonathan Chait. Basically, his article reads as such, “Progressives, don’t you realize what just happened? You don’t? Well, wise up dummies.”

From TNR:

The opponents of the bill are full of passionate intensity. The right, of course, is subsumed in rage and paranoia. Conservatives have been joined by fiery liberals like Howard Dean and a slew of left-wing blogs, denouncing the bill as a corporate giveaway and urging its defeat. The attitude closer to the center is more resignation and disappointment. (Frank Rich again: “Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger [Woods]’s public image.”) The endorsements invariably have a defensive tone—the bill “has some imperfections but is worthy of support,” concludes a New York Times editorial.

At some level, it is possible to understand the roots of liberal frustration. The machinery of Congress has ground away at the health care bill, as it does to almost any bill. But at a broader level, the liberal mood is insane. What has emerged from that machinery is not merely “better than nothing” or “a good start.” It is the most significant American legislative triumph in at least four decades. Why can so few people see that?

Why?

Because it’s easier to dream about the public option being passed through reconciliation, even though it’s likely that was never even procedurally possible. It’s satisfying to think about Dems forcing Republicans to filibuster, even though some moderate Dems and Lieberman were likely to have joined them.

Yes, single payer and the public option may seem better since so many other countries have variations on those themes, but these plans also have problems. Progressives ignore these realities or try to explain them away at every turn.

But don’t listen to me. If you want a reason to support what’s about to pass…look no further than the architect of the public option, who endorses the current legislation.

Chait sums it up…

The New Left rejection of “corporate liberalism” came at what we now regard as the historical apex of American liberalism. At the moment of another historical triumph, liberals are retreating from politics into languor, rage, and other incarnations of anti-politics. One day they may look back upon this time with longing.

Progressives™ – Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory so you don’t have to.

Paul Krugman offers “Tidings of Comfort” in the New York Times:

“…Tiny Tim, is sick. And his treatment will cost far more than his parents can pay out of pocket. Fortunately, our story is set in 2014, and the Cratchits have health insurance… reform legislation enacted in 2010 banned insurance discrimination on the basis of medical history and also created a system of subsidies to help families pay for coverage.”

Fortunate indeed that Tiny Tim did not get sick in 2010-13 before the benefits kick in. Also fortunate – Krugman did not choose to use as an example the children of those who will lose their jobs as a consequence of the massive additional tax burden thrown on the back of the economy to pay for this bill. A tax burden that kicks in years before benefits are seen by Tiny Tim or his family.

Paul also joins the chorus for changing the rules in the Senate:

“But given the way the Senate rules work, it takes 60 votes to do almost anything. And that fact, combined with total Republican opposition, has placed sharp limits on what can be enacted. If progressives want more, they’ll have to make changing those Senate rules a priority.”

Like Rachel Maddow and Ezra Klein, Krugman is hell bent on making it much easier for the probable Republican majority in 2013-2016 to undo this bill than it was for the Democratic majority in 2009-10 to pass it. Ho Ho Ho.

While Krugman is brimming with good tidings and bubbling over with holiday cheer, from the other side of the political spectrum Peter Schiff is offering a dour double dose of “Bah Humbug.”:

but…

If you want to be the Senator from Connecticut, you are going to have to come across as something other than a humorless prophet of doom. You need to find a way to temper your message with at least a hint of optimism and – dare I say it? – “Hope”. As an example – Ron Paul’s media friendly phrase – “Freedom is popular.” Just saying…

You can’t get elected if all your supporters are suicidal.

^{Cross posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall”}

Not a whole lot of good has come the way to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) these days. The only organization I can think of that gets more right wing scorn has been ACORN, who I think mostly get picked on because they don’t fight back. Another ally, Health Care for America Now (HCAN), is seeing similar problems getting its legislative priorities passed.

While you could point out any number of mistakes these organizations have made in the last few months, perhaps the most glaring is their belief that they could use the momentum from the 2008 election to push their dream bills through to passage. Their sometimes misplaced tactics haven’t helped their cause either, pulling silly publicity stunts and waging a terribly mismanaged media push. The real meat of it was their misconstrued overall strategy of shoving this legislation through, over the opposition of nearly all republicans and a good chunk of moderate Democrats.

This was just plain foolish. They had to know that they would have a hard time getting moderate Dems to vote their way on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, or card check if you prefer). They couldn’t have been so blind as to think the Blue Dogs would just roll over on their health care plan, with it costing so much… right?

Some polling has shown a bit of a shift, but numbers have been relatively steady on the issue of the secret ballot being favored over card check, and how wary the public is when it comes to expansion of government into health care. With the debt rocketing into the sky at an historic pace, and promised cost savings being debunked by the CBO, rather than work with the swing votes in the Senate to find a compromise these groups, and liberal organizations like them, have chosen perhaps the most ineffective strategy they could take.

Demonize the moderates.

There is a reason why politicians tone down the partisan their rhetoric after winning primaries, and why many are now saying that 2010 might not be so bad for Republicans after all. Attacking representatives who speak for those of us who worry about liberal overreach and a need for fiscal sanity helps nobody but the Republican party. Democrats may have the majority, and 60 votes in the Senate, but liberals do not… and this will not change any time soon.

Realizing this and working with the center, rather than attacking us, will allow these organizations to make progress on their legislative goals, keep their solid majority and stem the tide of independents that are now beginning to peel their support off. The silver lining of all of this, from my more centrist perspective, is this is leading to even more people leaving both parties. With over 40% of the population now identifying as independents, it is just a matter of time before something happens that turns the independent groundswell into a movement.

After less than two months of Barack Obama’s presidency, pundits across the spectrum are competing to “frame” the new administration. There are lots of narratives, but, in my mind, the most potent ones are expressed in two editorials appearing today.

From the negative side, Janet Daley at Britain’s Telegraph argues that Obama is handing the reins over to liberal Democrats in Congress:

[W]hy, when [Obama] went to such pains to assemble a huge and widely experienced team of White House economic advisers (even going to the lengths of parading them at a press conference before he took office) he then handed over the actual drafting of his economic policy to the old Democratic fixers in Congress. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, are now, for all intents and purposes, running the Obama recovery plan.

Needless to say, Daley has a very low opinion of Pelosi’s and Reid’s motives and capabilities.

From the positive side, former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, writes in Salon that Obama is plotting a radically ingenious course likely to remake America and end the economic troubles started under Reagan.

The basic idea of Reaganomics was that the economy grows from the top down. Lower taxes on the wealthy make them work harder and invest more, and the benefits trickle down to everyone else. Rarely in economic history has a theory been more tested in the real world and proven so wrong. In point of fact, nothing trickled down. After the Reagan tax cuts, increases in the median wage slowed, adjusted for inflation. After George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, the median wage actually dropped. Meanwhile, most of the income went to the top. In 1980, just before the Reagan revolution, the richest 1 percent took home 9 percent of total national income. But by 2007, the richest 1 percent was taking home 22 percent.

Obamanomics, by contrast, holds that an economy grows best from the bottom up. Obama’s program increases taxes on the top and uses the proceeds to raise the living standard of average Americans by giving them lower taxes, better schools and more affordable health insurance. That may not seem very radical, but compared with the last quarter century it’s revolutionary.

Reich notes that Obama’s administration is working hard to present his programs as incremental changes, but Reich sees them for the radical change they are.

Here’s why I think these two narratives are likely to compete for public attention for at least the next two years:

First, on the Daley side of things, Reid and particularly Pelosi are certainly harmful to Obama’s hopes for change. They seem far more interested in political payback and rewarding key interest groups than they are in improving government. As long as the current Democratic congressional leadership is in place, Obama will have to either fight the good fight or acquiesce to bad policy. So far, he’s done more acquiescing than some of us would like, thus setting himself up to be labeled a pawn of the liberal/establishmentarian wing of his party.

On the Reich side of things, he’s putting the Obama presidency into the kind of framework from which legacies are born. If the economy turns around, Reich’s narrative would give Obama the kind of big idea, reformer credit which only Roosevelt and Reagan have enjoyed in the last 75 years. A good economy in 2012 would give Obama the opportunity to run not just as a competent manager but has a political savoir, potentially ushering in an era of “trickle up” dominance.

The difference in the positive and negative narratives is that the negative is based on a very real problem (the small mindedness of the Democratic congressional leadership), while the positive is based on the hope/belief the economy will indeed rebound and we’ll be better off afterwards. I would go so far as to say for the “Obama as savoir” narrative to work, the president must first solve the “Congress as stone-around-the-neck” problem first.

Right now, none of us knows what the next few years will bring. But don’t expect that to stop the world’s pundits from trying to define Obama before a single result is in.

One thing that has long baffled me has been the idea on the American Right that Europe is some kind of socialist hell-hole that borders on Communist. The thrust of the argument always seems to be that European government is so large and intrusive, and it public mores so lacking and dare I say nihilistic that it is something akin to Hell on Earth. Mark Steyn, not surprisingly, expresses this attitude fairly succinctly, writing:

Europeanism is like Communism: the less time you’ve spent living it in practice the better disposed you are to it in theory. In the same way, few of those Americans who want to introduce Canadian-style health care to the U.S. have ever had surgery at the Royal Victoria. Indeed, America is full of immigrants whose hostility to Euro-Canadian public policy derives explicitly from their prolonged exposure to it.

Of course, the definition of “Europeanism” is ill-defined. So far as I can tell, it’s a reference to a government with a large social welfare system combined with a secularized social policy. The assumption, which is largely based on a false equivalency that social safety nets = socialism = Road to Serfdom and that United States = World’s Only Bastion of Free Market Capitalism = World’s Only Free Country, is that these “Europeanist” policies make Europe an absolute hell-hole.

Despite my deep love of the free market, I’ve always found this chain of thought to be utterly absurd. For starters, the idea that Europe is some kind of hell-hole at all doesn’t seem to line up with reality, as Alex Massie points out:

Never mind that, according to the most recent World Values Survey, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Luxembourg, Sweden each reported higher levels of happiness and “life satisfaction” than the United States. That isn’t to say that the US is unhappy, merely that there is more than one route to happiness. And that’s the point: europe (however broadly defined) and the United States are each remarkable success stories permitting a greater percentage of the population than at any point in history has the opportunity to make their own choices about how to lead their lives.

But there’s more to it than this. If “Europeanism” really is that much of a restraint on freedom, one would expect that European nations would have exceedingly tightly restricted economies, with comparatively little economic liberty. Thankfully, that lunatic left-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation has long compiled a statistical ranking of economic freedoms around the world.

In the current iteration of this list, based on data from late 2007 to early 2008, shows the good ol’ USA ranked 6th – right behind Ireland and New Zealand, and just barely ahead of Canada, Denmark, Switzerland, and the UK. But things get even more interesting when you look more closely at the data. After all, the argument seems to be that larger and more expensive government leads to less economic freedom (amongst other problems). And yet, when one looks at measures of economic freedom other than the size of government, one quickly finds that the US is outperformed by numerous European countries and Canada. Canada for instance surpasses the US in things like Fiscal Freedom (ie, taxation), freedom from corruption, business freedom, and trade freedom; Denmark in business freedom (where the Heritage Foundation considers Denmark just about perfect!), investment and financial freedom, property rights, and labor freedom; the UK and Netherlands in investments, property rights, and corruption; Iceland in business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, property rights, and corruption; and Austria and Belgium also comparing pretty favorably.

Meanwhile, there are a number of governments that seem to score extraordinarily poorly on these measures despite having relatively small governments. In fact, by the Heritage Foundation’s measurements, the US actually has a larger than average government compared to the rest of the globe, but has a far smaller government than most of Western Europe and Canada, most of which – including Sweden, with the third largest government in the world according to Heritage – score in the top 30 most economically free countries in the world. The sole exceptions are Portugal (#53), France (#64), and Italy (#76).

Meanwhile, countries with relatively small governments seem to largely be ranked pretty poorly in terms of overall economic freedom as I previously discussed here. If you rank the countries by size of government (keeping in mind that higher scores equal smaller government), the “best” governments are, in order: Burma, Liberia, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and the Central African Republic. None of these are exactly bastions of economic freedom in any other respect.

This isn’t to say that smaller government equates with less economic freedom generally – I don’t think it does, and one can’t ignore that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Chile all have rather small governments combined with quite a bit of economic freedom. Instead, it’s simply to say that there is a complete lack of evidence of any sort that “Europeanism” is a first-class ticket to disorder, totalitarianism, or regulatory hell.

Meanwhile, whatever the flaws of secularism (and in the case of so-called Human Rights Commissions, it’s pretty clear that there are quite a few such flaws), it’s worth noting that Europeans seem to have a closer attachment to their culture and history than just about any part of the US outside the Deep South. Indeed, in France, the desire to preserve that culture and history is probably one of the biggest causes of French restrictions on economic liberty, which results in a level of protectionism that is noticeably higher than the rest of Western Europe (except for Italy).

On the other hand, the idea that the solution to American problems lies in adopting European-style policies (whatever that may mean) is pretty foolish as well, for the simple reason that the U.S. isn’t Europe. We are a far more culturally and ethnically heterogenous society than any European country, we are far larger in terms of both population and area than any Western European country, and – as is the case with any two countries – we have completely different established institutions upon which to base our policies, as Ms. McArdle recently noted.

Regardless, can we please stop pretending like Western Europe is the closest thing to Hell on Earth or, in the alternative, some kind of socialist paradise? It’s neither – instead, it’s just a collection of several different governments that in general seem to have each found a balance between government and liberty that works pretty well for the specific people who are subject to that specific government’s jurisdiction.

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

Robert Stacy McCain has a scathing post that seeks to permanently douse the concept of a left-libertarian coalition ever being a real possibility, which includes this little bit:

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It’s a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists — the feminists, the gay militants, the “world peace” utopians — are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

Yikes. Now, of course, McCain is being somewhat hyperbolic in his characterization of the coalition of the political Left. But in many ways there is a fair amount of truth to McCain’s fundamental point, which is that the response of the political Left to the economic crisis has dramatically undermined the basis for any theoretical coalition of “liberaltarians.” To be sure, McCain thinks that the entire concept of such an alliance is a “luxury” that never had any chance at success, but the more pertinent issue is the role of the economic crisis in exploiting the divide between liberalism and libertarianism/classical liberalism. This is a particularly difficult truth for me, as I have repeatedly gone on record predicting that “libertarians,” broadly defined, are likely to continue their recent trend towards the Democratic Party in terms of their voting habits. Heck, I even put my money (and daughter’s toys) on the line by making a bet to this effect with John Schwenkler.

One of the things that has happened in the early days of the Obama Administration has been some fairly good (but by no means great) steps in the direction of restoring civil liberties and reigning in executive power. While this is something libertarians such as me have absolutely cheered, the reality is that these issues were a major part of what was pushing libertarianism to the left in recent years. As victories have been earned on those fronts, the entire basis for that move leftward is getting removed (although history tells us that we’re not about to see a complete restoration of civil liberties and balance of power anytime soon, either).

To be sure, really good bases remain for a left-libertarian coalition on certain specific issues, especially the War on Drugs. And I still fully agree with the great FA Hayek, whose opus Road to Serfdom describes many of those we now call liberals as essentially misled classical liberals (that we now call libertarians). And that says nothing of his essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative” – still relevant nearly half a century later.

So I still think that, at some point in time, progressives and libertarians will be reunited within a political coalition separate and distinct from conservatives. But at a minimum the progressive response to the financial crisis, with its finger-pointing for the crisis almost solely at deregulation and its use of the stimulus bill as a means for implementing all sorts of pet projects that have little to do with stimulus even under a Keynesian analysis, has brought the economic divide between liberals and libertarians to the forefront in a way unseen for decades.

To be sure, I think conservatives – especially conservative politicians – have played a role in the whole situation, both by saddling us with massive debt in the name of the War on Terror and by repeatedly (and falsely) campaigning on the idea of Obama as a socialist (and thereby turning an unwinnable election into a de facto referendum on socialism). But the fact is that the political Left, led by Congress, is now using this opportunity to implement wide-reaching policies that are anathema to libertarianism.

Simply put, it appears that liberals and Progressives, at least the influential ones, have once again taken up the mantle that regulation is always (or almost always) good, and so is just about any form of non-military government spending. As Virginia Postrel notes discussing the refusal of influential progressives to concern themselves with the effects of the abysmal, horrible, no good Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act:

Unfortunately, once you are ideologically committed to the idea of regulation, you can’t say that a given regulation is bad–or, worse, that maybe doing nothing new would have been the best course.

And this is the problem the rebirth of dogmatic support for regulation has created for any liberaltarian coalition. Rather than consider ways of achieving liberal ends (which are usually shared by liberals and libertarians alike) that may have incorporated libertarian thinking or were at the very least highly targeted, progressive politicians have been choosing extraordinarily broad and intrusive means of achieving those ends. This is not to say that those politicians ever really cared what libertarians thought; only that this route of action has undermined any possibility of a significant percentage of libertarians (again broadly defined as fiscally conservative and socially liberal) becoming intermediate-to-long-term members of the Dem coaltion.

All that said, Will Wilkinson is no doubt correct that all this talk of a left-libertarian political coalition misses the entire point of “liberaltarianism,” which is not properly understood as being about coalition-building:

I think Obama and the Democrats are already in the process of screwing it up. The romance of transformative hope is going to wear off pretty quick as all-but-uncontested Democratic policy deepens and lengthens the recession. There’s a lot of culturally and psychologically liberal people out there who are, and are going to be, interested in a liberalism that actually works. I want to use this time of ferment to work on developing the missing option in American politics: an authentically liberal governing philosophy that understands that limited government, free markets, a culture of tolerance, and a sound social safety net are the best means to better lives.

One of the major reasons I continue to support the concept of “liberaltarianism” is that ultimately I think it can only serve to increase the pathetic influence of libertarianism on American politics, turning libertarians into true political free agents that must be pandered to, year in and year out (if you use the broad “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” definition, we’re large enough a group to be worth pandering to). Just as importantly, it promises to improve libertarianism itself by encouraging a purer form of classical liberalism that is not, as Wilkinson says, “pretty well shot through with conservative reflexes bred by the long Cold War alliance between libertarians and the right.” Or as Reihan Salam notes in a sentence that speaks particularly well to me: “The liberaltarian idea, as I understand, is to start rethinking coalitions that appear to be natural because they’ve been in place for so long.”

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

Me, elsewhere:

Over the last few months, there has been much finger-pointing as to which particular sect of the old GOP coalition is to blame for the policy failures of the last 8 years and the electoral failures of the last 2 years…..I think these accusations are deeply misplaced – the problems have not been caused by religious conservatives or adherence to free market beliefs, but instead by a sort of “talk radio” dogmatism in which any given issue becomes a litmus test for whether one is a “true” conservative or Republican.

This dogmatism has become terribly pervasive, dominating the party infrastructure and including many of the most prominent faces of conservatism both online and on the air. It is a dogmatism that is in some ways pushed by a wide variety of conservatives – free market conservatives and libertarians, religious conservatives, and defense conservatives. And yet it is also a dogmatism with which large elements of each of those groups take significant umbrage.

In and of itself, though, a little dogmatism is not necessarily a unique hindrance to a political party or movement’s electability or even its legislative agenda – political dogma has existed for at least as long as political parties have existed, and without some of it political parties cannot distinguish themselves from their competitors.

Instead, the problem with this particular form of dogma is its all-around meanness. Under this dogmatism, dissenters of any stripe are treated as the enemy, regardless of whether the dissenter’s general viewpoint could be described as “conservative,” and regardless of the dissenter’s political affiliation. Wide nets are cast to stereotype anyone who may be adversely affected by implementation of one of the dogma’s tenets. Where a particular tenet relies on a particular fact, and a suggestion is made that the fact is inaccurate, the personal loyalties of the questioner are called into question – even if the fact is demonstrably wrong.

What’s important here isn’t that GOP dogmatism (or political dogmatism more generally) is overly ideological – quite the opposite, actually. Instead, the problem is that it doesn’t recognize its lack of a firm ideological basis, turning the individual policy preferences of whichever strain of conservatism is most passionate about a given issue into a litmus test for some imagined “master conservatism.” Because this dogmatism represents the conclusions of numerous different philosophies, though, it cannot rely on the ideological arguments that gave rise to the policy preference in the first place. For instance, relying on principled libertarian arguments for a particular economic policy is not possible when you take a position on social policy that is inherently at odds with those arguments; similarly it is not possible to rely on principled religious conservative arguments for social policy when you take a position on economic policy that is directly at odds with those arguments. In short, the problem with dogmatism isn’t that it elevates principle over the common good – it’s that it is almost completely devoid of principle in the first place, a fact which Conor Friedersdorf seems to get. The result is that this imagined “master conservatism” is forced to rely on arguments that rely on a sense of fear and an “us against them” mentality.

This is not to say that this type of dogmatism is without value – it’s useful as a means of creating party unity and “getting out the base.” Nor is it particularly the province of conservatives – liberals and Democrats most certainly have their own type of fear-based, “us against them” dogmatism. Instead, the problem here is that the dogmatism has become far too pervasive, both in terms of those who insist on this dogmatism and – as importantly – in terms of the number of issues to which it extends (even extending to issues that have no inherent connection to policy preferences, such as whether Iraq had WMD’s, whether global warming is real or imagined, or whether AirTran was morally correct in its refusal to permit a Muslim family to reboard a flight after they were cleared by the FBI).

For instance, it’s one thing for talk-show hosts to rant and rave about “Defeatocrats,” the “homosexual mafia,” etc., since their purpose is not to persuade but is instead almost exclusively to rally the people who are already predisposed to agree with them. It’s a far different thing, however, when that attitude extends to campaign tactics, and/or a huge percentage of “talking heads,” whose purpose is at least nominally to persuade people to either vote Republican or to support a particular policy position.

Similarly, it’s one thing to rant and rave against a particular group as a means of motivating your “base” and maybe to scare the bejesus out of some fence-sitters into supporting your position. It is a far different thing, though, to do this on virtually every issue. So while Muslims, for instance, may be a tiny minority group whose support on any given issue is not worth being concerned about losing, the combination of Muslims, gays, social safety net beneficiaries, Latino immigrants, war opponents, etc. is a pretty large group.

By relying on rhetorical arguments that demonize so many groups and by making those arguments through so many different mediums, this form of dogma dramatically reduces the “pie” to whom conservatives may appeal – both for voting purposes and for purposes of winning support on policies that have nothing to do with the issue on which that group has been demonized. As Rod Dreher points out: “…if you build your political movement around constantly pointing out that it’s Us vs. Them, pretty soon you’ll find that there aren’t too many of Us left.”

But again – this problem is not one that is uniquely the province of conservatism or the Republican Party. Instead, it is a problem that will inevitably arise as any particular political coalition becomes ever-larger and attains a certain level of political success on issues where there is near-uniform intra-coalition agreement; in order to maintain the successful coalition, the party needs to manufacture loyalty on issues where there is less intra-coalition agreement. This is, however, an unsustainable strategy due to the way in which it “shrinks the pie” by demonizing policy opponents, even if they happen to be in the same political party. Eventually, the pie becomes small enough that the party can again find a coherent set of positive principles around which to build, and the cycle will begin anew.

The extremes of this cycle are just exacerbated today due to the way in which modern technology allows politics to pervade so much of everyday life. Eventually, the Dems will face similar problems as a result of their own successes, even as the GOP rebuilds around some as-yet unknown set of principles with a relatively broad appeal.

(Cross-posted at Publius Endures).

They wanted him to appoint left wingers. He hasn’t.

So what to make of this?

Obama talks…

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama, rejecting liberals’ criticism of his emerging cabinet, today strongly defended his decision to choose more experienced, centrist aides for his inner circle, arguing that the nation needs sure hands in a time of turmoil — and that it’s his job to bring the change he promised voters.

At a press conference to introduce his economic advisory board, Obama said it would send the wrong message to the nation if he stocked his cabinet with newcomers, especially given the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the deepening economic crisis. Veterans, he said, bring the wisdom to help him shape his agenda and the know-how to execute it.

“What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking,” he said in his most detailed comments on the issue. “But I understand where the vision for change comes from. First and foremost, it comes from me. That’s my job — to provide a vision in terms of where we are going, and to make sure then that my team is implementing.”

Honestly, if Obama is angering liberal critics now, this probably bodes well for his administration and the promise of bringing unity to Washington. Because, like he says, he’s leading the call for change, but in order to do that he has to have people who know Washington in order to do that. And if he were to take the first term Clinton model and start appointing people nobody knows, those folks would face institutional barriers that would prove counterproductive. Yes, there’s a risk that these appointees won’t be able to bring about change, but I think it’s much more likely that insiders will be able to user their existing networks to signal to everybody that change is coming.

In other words, you can’t turn this town upside down right off the bat, and if liberals don’t get that then they don’t get how Washington works.

More as it unfolds…

William Greider of The Nation wonders if Barack Obama’s recent appointments indicate he won’t be the progressive savior many of the left hoped he’d be.

Obama’s choices have begun to define him. His victory, it appears, was a triumph for the cautious center-right politics that has described the Democratic party for several decades. Those of us who expected more were duped, not so much by Obama but by our own wishful thinking.

Greider focuses his worry on Obama’s support for the recent financial bailouts and specifically on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s role in the Citigroup bailout. Greider’s complaint?

Wasting more public money on insolvent mastodons is the least of it. The real scandal is it doesn’t work. It can’t work because the black hole is too large even for Washington to fill. Government should take over the failing institutions or force them into bankruptcy, break them up and sell them off or mercifully relieve everyone, including the taxpayers.

I think it’s too soon to judge whether or not the bailouts are working. And Obama’s appointments fill me with a lot more confidence than would a slew of economic ideologues. What we have to remember is that we are in the very, very early stages of this financial crisis. We are not in a depression and we do not need radical maneuvers. We need a smart, coordinated approach. That seems to be the direction Obama is planning to head.

Obviously, just throwing money at the problem without stipulations on how that money is used is not the best solution. There have been some mistakes made in the initial release of funds. But, at this juncture, I still prefer trying to fix the system we have rather than blowing up the whole thing. Capitalism does not work without credit. Getting the markets flowing is more important than ideology.

P. J. O’Rourke takes a rhetorical tire iron to the conservative movement of which he’s been on the libertarian side of since the 1970s. If you know O’Rourke, you know he has about as much love for modern liberals as dogs have for cats. Seems he now finds modern conservatives just as hideous.

You don’t have to agree with O’Rourke to enjoy this article. Some excerpts:

There was no need to piss off the entire black population of America to get Dixie’s electoral votes. And despising cracker trash who have a laundry hamper full of bedsheets with eye-holes cut in them does not make a man a liberal.

…

And “bioenergy” is a fraud of John Edwards-marital-fidelity proportions. Taxpayer money composted to produce a fuel made of alcohol that is more expensive than oil, more polluting than oil, and almost as bad as oil with vermouth and an olive.

…

Is there a moral dimension to foreign policy in our political philosophy? Or do we just exist to help the world’s rich people make and keep their money? (And a fine job we’ve been doing of that lately.)

…

Anyway, it’s no use blaming Wall Street. Blaming Wall Street for being greedy is like scolding defensive linemen for being big and aggressive…

What will destroy our country and us is not the financial crisis but the fact that liberals think the free market is some kind of sect or cult, which conservatives have asked Americans to take on faith. That’s not what the free market is. The free market is just a measurement, a device to tell us what people are willing to pay for any given thing at any given moment. The free market is a bathroom scale. You may hate what you see when you step on the scale. “Jeeze, 230 pounds!” But you can’t pass a law making yourself weigh 185. Liberals think you can. And voters–all the voters, right up to the tippy-top corner office of Goldman Sachs–think so too.

Ahh, it’s like mouthwash for libertarians. Read it.

h/t: Sideways Menken

Here’s what hardcore partisans on both sides often fail to understand: winning an election doesn’t mean most of the country agrees with their ideology. In fact, both the hardcore right and the hardcore left are minority positions whose influence is inflated not by numbers but by passion. They might be the “bases” of our two major parties, but they represent only one segment of American opinion.

Nevertheless, when the Republicans or Democrats win an election, their respective hardcore bases demand that their party govern from the ideological edges. Both sides like to claim that winning elections prove the nation has demanded ideological leadership and that a failure to provide such leadership will end in the party’s defeat.

Wrong.

The opposite is demonstrably true. Governing from the ideological edges guarantees failure.

And that brings us to the second thing hardcore partisans often fail to understand: elections are determined by the mushy middle — that amorphous collection of independents, malcontents, imbeciles and the indolent who swing their vote from side to side based primarily on which party is delivering the goods and which party isn’t.

There must be nothing more annoying for hardcore partisans than to realize that the fate of their governing power rests in the hands of people who flip-flop between the parties and can’t make up their minds until a few weeks before an election. How in the world is it that the direction of our nation is continually decided by those with little to no ideology?

Well, the fact is, many Americans see government as primarily a service provider. It builds roads. Protects us from enemies and catastrophes. Makes sure there is a level playing field by enforcing laws. The bread-and-butter things that parties either do well or do poorly.

The mushy middle is not like hardcore partisan ideologues who see government as primarily a means to change society and the nation itself. For these ideologues, the providing of services is secondary to the achievement of transformative goals, whether those be the establishment of socialism or the enforcing of Christian law or the abolishment of government itself (to give a few extreme examples).

That’s not to say that there is no place for transformative ideas or ideology in government. That’s just to say that ideologues typically make for bad managers. And bad managers lose elections.

If hardcore partisans on either side want to retain power, they need more self awareness. They need to see the negative consequences of their ideas and address those failures rather than wishing them away. That’s one reason why John McCain’s tax argument failed. Supply-side economics, for all its validity, creates some negative consequences. But hardcore Republicans refuse to acknowledge such problems and, as a result, they lost credibility with the mushy middle who care far less about the creep of socialism and far more about how they’re going to pay the bills this month.

Hardcore Democrats hoping for profound change on an ideological level, should take heed of the lessons of the past. They have the power to make some sweeping changes. But if they neglect the basic responsibilities of governing or ignore the negative consequences of their ideas, the new Democratic age will be a short one indeed.

As Barack Obama continues to attract throngs of supporters and polls keep indicating he will win by a more than comfortable margin, I find myself wondering how much of the Obama phenomenon is simply a massive rejection of President Bush and how much is an honest-to-God shift in our political culture.

On one hand, the Obama campaign is as much a successful marketing effort as anything else – with its on-target branding, flawless stagecraft, massive ad buys, media relations and air of inevitability, this is not just one of the finest political campaigns I’ve witnessed, but one of the finest marketing campaigns of the last decade.

That said, I also think something more profound is going on here. When Obama defeated Hillary Clinton, his victory represented the ascendancy of a new generation of Democrats – international in their mores, savvy with technology and organized in a way the left rarely is. Recently, I serendipitously labeled Obama an iDemocrat. That label seems about right for his core supporters too.

In my admittedly nascent theory, iDemocrats are the left’s version of value voters. Except rather than valuing the ideals of America’s heartland and rural areas, they value the ideals of the coasts and big cities where government interventionalism is high and international-style multiculturalism is prevalent. Sure, they care about the concerns of traditional lunch-pail Democrats but, make no mistake, the iDemocrats aren’t your father’s liberals. They’re not an offshoot of a labor movement. They’re an offshoot of globalization and all the integrations of culture, technology and liberal ideas that represents.

That’s what makes Obama’s presidency potentially more than just a return to New Deal/Great Society liberalism. Obama is a step forward for Democrats. The question is: is the step in the right direction?

What do you think? Am I way off base or is there something to this?

Circulating the wires today is a 2001 Barack Obama radio interview clip concerning wealth redistribution. As with all things political, your perspective and your prejudices will determine your interpretation of this clip.

Some see it as no big deal. Others see it as proof that Obama is all but a Marxist.

I understand the right’s desire to turn this clip into the smoking gun proof that Obama is going to seize our wealth and turn us all into comrades. I think many on the right have convinced themselves that such a nefarious goal is “the truth” about Obama and see evidence of that truth in every Obama utterance, much like many on the left tend to see every George W. Bush move as an attempt to enrich his cronies and advance theocracy.

There’s plenty of reasons to be concerned by Obama’s tricky tax plan, but I’m not going to play along with this “Obama’s a socialist/Marxist” nonsense.

First of all, the clip in question is an intellectual discussion not a policy debate. In many instances, Obama is speaking theoretically. When he does directly address his own philosophies, one of the clear points he makes is a major positive: he believes change should come through the democratic means of legislation rather than the manipulation of courts and the misuse of the Constitution.

On the matter of wealth redistribution, he’s clearly in favor of it. But why is this a surprise? Equality is the central tenet of liberalism. Universal health care. Affirmative action. Gay rights. Welfare. Minimum wage. Labor laws. Hate speech laws. Progressive taxation. They’re all attempts to equalize us. When handled responsibly, the drive for equality promotes a necessary level of fairness within our society. When handled with too much fervency, the drive can trample other rights and lead us towards distasteful moral equivalencies and, ultimately, the kind of totalitarianism spawned by communism.

So, the concern isn’t that Obama supports redistribution of wealth (both parties support it to varying degrees). The concern is with how much redistribution he supports. Are his goals within the American mainstream or are they radical? While I’m sure many believe Obama is hiding his true objectives, I’d argue that his platform gives us as clear a picture as we’re likely to get of how much redistribution Obama desires. And, I gotta say, as much as I dislike the messiness of his tax credits, Obama isn’t suggesting any radical moves. Could he support something more onerous once in office? Sure. But, even with a Democratic majority, there’s little likelihood that anything radical will get through the legislative process.

I think it’s important to note that, like all mainstream American liberals, when Obama talks about redistribution, he’s talking about equality of income. He wants what liberals always want: for the government to give a helping hand to the poor and for the government to place various restrictions on the rich to keep them from centralizing too much of our nation’s wealth.

This is not a radical philosophy. If Obama had used words like “income fairness” or even “wealth equality,” the radio clip in question would have remained on whatever shelf it was found. But “redistribution” sounds scary. It’s this election’s bogeyman word and some are going to keep treating the radio clip like the smoking gun that proves Obama’s wicked plans. As for me, I think I’ll assume the more likely scenario: Obama is a liberal.

Shocking. But true.