Month: January 2008

Categories
National politics

Vote Totals in Iowa

I had written before that the Iowa Democrats should publish their vote totals rather than just “delegate equivalents.” Today I discovered that USA Today is reporting the votes in the Iowa caucus results. Thanks to this more detailed information I finally see how Hillary Clinton managed to get one more delegate than John Edwards even though she got a lower vote total. (In one district she got enough higher to get one more delegate than Edwards and everywhere else she was close enough that her lower totals did not lead to fewer delegates.)

It appears that they will report the same amount of information on all the states as the primaries progress (they had Wyoming Republicans from today).

Categories
culture politics

Candidate Questions vs President Questions

Thanks to Scott’s post on Presidential Qualifications I really got thinking about the difference between what we should look for in a president and what we often do look for in a candidate. Scott quoted three questions that Dr. Lawrence Lindsey suggested we should be asking to choose a good president:

    • “Has the candidate faced a crisis or overcome a major setback in his or her life?”
    • “Has has the candidate had a variety of life experiences?”
    • “Can the candidate tell the difference between a foreign enemy and a political opponent?”

To those questions, Scott then listed the three questions that we seem to ask about the candidates that we choose to support:

    • Is this candidate most likely to win?
    • How closely do I agree with this candidate?
    • Do I like this candidate’s personality?

Now Scott leaves me asking myself, are these two sets of questions complimentary to each other, contradictory to each other, or independent of each other?

I tend to think that the two sets of questions are complimentary. The first set (for selecting a president) should be asked first because there is nothing to gain by choosing a candidate who can win if they can’t pass the test of whether they are likely to be a good president. I think that set of questions is what I was crudely trying to answer through my candidate endorsement series earlier last year. If we could ask those questions generally we might be better at retaining the good candidates who sometimes drop out early when they can’t capture our attention with the second set of questions. On the other hand, there is a lot of value to be had by applying the second set of questions to the available candidates after they have been passed through the sieve of the first question set.

Once the primaries are over, if your favored candidates are no longer in the race it can be useful to return to the first set of questions and see which of the remaining candidates (if any) qualify. (The only time the second set of questions should apply is when there are multiple candidates available that pass that first critical standard.)

Now I ask myself if my positions on the candidates would have been any different if I had followed this process more exactly for the 2008 field.

Categories
life politics

Iowa Caucuses

No, I’m not liveblogging nor am I going to analyze the results. I do wonder why I find it so fascinating to watch the results come in. That’s the same question I asked myself in November 2006 as I watched the results between Orrin Hatch and Pete Ashdown. The difference is in 2006 I was happy early on when Ashdown was slightly ahead (the more democratic areas seemed to report first) and I sat and watched as all the lemming votes floated in for Hatch to win.

Thankfully this time there was no such turn of fortune. Obama won among the Democrats by a very respectable margin and I am left to wonder how Hillary will spin her third place finish, especially as the later votes show her falling further behind Edwards rather than keeping right up with him. Huckabee won quickly among the Republicans so that I could turn my attention to wondering which candidates would drop out. My only disappointment is that Ron Paul could not stay closer to McCain and Thompson.

Categories
politics

Magna Carta

I don’t intend to review these historical documents each day, but I do want  to get started and I decided to go basically in historical order. Ever since I wrote yesterday I have been intrigued by the first of these documents – the Magna Carta or Great Charter. Prior to today I had never given more than a cursory look at the actual text of the Magna Carta, mostly for me it has just been an ancient document that helped establish the foundation of freedom upon which the Constitution was built. It appears that there were two versions, one given in 1215 and then a revised version – omitting some sections – in 1225.

The Magna Carta establishes the independence of the church from the control of the king although I would have to study my history to see what that meant in practical terms. It also addresses the laws pertaining to inheritance and the payment of debts protecting heirs (especially heirs under the legal age) and debtors from having their property taken unduly. It also established the rights of widows to own common property upon the deaths of their husbands.

Based on the 13th section (the original document had no such breaks) it appears that the people of the city of London had gained some freedoms that were unusual for the time. The Magna Carta dictated that all cities should enjoy the same privileges as London had obtained.

I find what appear to be precursors to a judicial system that allowed for standardized punishment, juries (four local knights were the prescribed jury here) and possibly a system for appeals. Free men were given the right of a trial by a jury of their peers before they could be imprisoned or stripped of their rights. Also included was a provision that fines should be “only in proportion to the degree of his offence[sic], and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood.”

Government officers are prevented from taking goods for the government without the consent of the owner and appropriate compensation. They were also required to produce witnesses besides themselves in order to put a person on trial.

Standards of measurement and value were to be established throughout the kingdom.

Except in time of war, merchants were to be allowed free passage into and out of the country – so long as they did not swear allegiance to another country.

A congress of 25 barons was to be established (perhaps a precursor to the House of Lords) which had the authority to seek redress if the king should break any of the provisions of the Magna Carta. They also had the authority to seize anything save the members of the royal family if redress was not given within 40 days after they notified the king of any offense against this charter. I particularly like this portion:

Any man who so desires may take an oath to obey the commands of the twenty-five barons for the achievement of these ends, and to join with them in assailing us to the utmost of his power. We give public and free permission to take this oath to any man who so desires, and at no time will we prohibit any man from taking it. Indeed, we will compel any of our subjects who are unwilling to take it to swear it at our command. (emphasis mine)

More historical information – such as the fact that it was renounced soon afterwards by the king and that many parts of it were repealed in the 18th and 19th centuries (no wonder the American colonies broke away in the late 18th century) – can be found in Wikipedia under Magna Carta and 1215. Another interesting fact was that it was (closely) based on the Charter of Liberties given by Henry I.

Categories
culture politics

A New Birth of Freedom

How do we rekindle the flame of liberty in the heart of all American citizens?

I have been thinking about that question. It continues to disturb me that high turnout in an election approaches 50% participation. That is evidence of the disengagement that indicates a passive (or absent) desire for freedom unlike the active desires of Americans at the founding of our nation. I have said before that I would be happy with the outcome of any election where turnout topped 70%.

As this has been churning through my mind trying to come to some approach to the question, I started doing some searching through the things I have written before. Most powerfully I found my Independence Day post from last year quoting American by Choice that “true American citizens are made and not born” and that “Americans, both natural and naturalized, must be trained–they must be made.”

I went on to talk about how to transmit this “made” American culture through the way we celebrate our national holidays. Naturally my focus then was on the 4th of July. The more I think about it though, we should be celebrating our American culture by participation in the rituals that made America what it is – that would be exercising our rights to vote and participate in the various levels of government.

A week later I revisited the topic after I had found a list of what could be considered the founding documents of our nation. To that list I would add the Federalist Papers which I found among my searching today. That gives me 103 documents to study and react to as I continue my search for how we make Americans so that we may experience an end to our Uncivil War and find – as Lincoln sought during our Civil War:

“. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (Gettysburg Address)