Tag: New York Times

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National politics

A Little Prophecy

In one of his last columns William Safire makes an interesting prophecy about the political future of our nation. He says, “If I were starting out in politics or its commentary today, I’d become a Democrat.” Coming from one of the most staunchly Republican pundits I have ever read, that is an interesting statement.

His reasons offer a ray of hope to the democratic party today and a voice of warning to the Republicans who currently hold power. To the republicans he says, “The G.O.P. personality will split in a couple of years, as all huge majorities do in America. Idealistic neocons will be challenged by plodding, pragmatic paleocons, who, by fuzzing the party’s present character, will someday lead it down the road to defeat.” and to the Democrats he suggests that they can begin to win again if they will “take advantage of its bantamweight agility and ‘stand for something.'”

In some ways I am starting out in politics in that I figure that I still have at least 30 years worth of political participation ahead of me. I could not agree more with Mr. Safire that joining the Republicans represents jumping onto an old champion racehorse – lots of victories behind it, but not many left in front of it. Siding with the Democrats gives the newcomer an opportunity to help shape an up-and-coming champion which will start to produce greater and greater victories so long as discipline and principles are vigilantly maintained.

Categories
life

Scary

Perhaps I am losing my optimistic outlook that people are basically good, generally smart and usually engage their minds in life, but I get a little disappointed the more I am on the web and notice that there are so many basic errors. I find it ironic that the mainstream media talk about bloggers being fundamentally unreliable and unprofessional in their reporting and then the New York times offers this which was a decent article but it included this “‘Were not terrorists, were not subversives, were just decent dads'” as a quote from Batman’s accomplice. I am fairly certain that what he said was “We are not terrorists” rather than “{We} were not terrorists, but today we decided to be terrorists.” I know I’m nit-picking but they have editors and reviewer who are supposed to do that, yet it got published the wrong way. Why would I expect them to get their facts just right when they cannot even catch the most basic spelling and grammer before publication – and this is the New York Times, not some small town paper running short on staff.

9/14 P.S. – Not surprisingly the article has been corrected now, but it still got to publication before it made it to the spelling and grammar department.

Categories
National politics

Right Data – Wrong Conclusion

When the New York Times publishes an editorial I always read carefully. I do not agree with some of their columnists, but I have never disagreed outright with the columns of their editorial board – until they said that we should Abolish the Electoral College. I fully agree that “the Electoral College makes Republicans in New York, and Democrats in Utah, superfluous. It also makes members of the majority party in those states feel less than crucial.” But I cannot agree that “The small states are already significantly overrepresented in the Senate.”

The apparent disparity built into the electoral college by the founding fathers was not an accident based on a desire to not have to count each individual vote nationally back when it was more difficult to count each vote. The fact is that even back then every state had to get a tally of each vote within the state to choose the electors and even today it would only take a couple of minutes with a paper and pencil to add the numbers certified by each of the fifty states.

Let’s think about the effect that abolishing the Electoral College would have on national campaigns to remind ourselves why it was invented in the first place. We have seventeen states in play during this election. Without the Electoral College a solid majority in the ten largest states would allow a person to get elected so long as they did not lose by large margins in the other forty states. Not only that but since the concerns of voters break more along regional lines than strictly along state lines the campaigning would actually take place in two or three regions that comprise a solid majority of voters. That is not any better than the current situation. It actually sounds like the situation with the South when Lincoln was elected in 1860. It would mean that we would always know which ten or fifteen states all the campaigning would take place in well ahead of time. If you live in one of those largest of states it makes perfect sense to call for the abolishment of the Electoral College where the politicians will pander to your wishes perpetually.

As for the smaller states being over-represented in the Senate, that fact is balanced by their underrepresentation in the house where agreement of the ten largest states can override the interests of the other forty states and all the other representatives in the House. These “smaller” states tend to be among the largest states with regard to land and resources for the nation. In these under-populated states the federal government often controls huge amounts of the land which means that they must have adequate representation lest their rights be trampled by states with higher populations and far different concerns.

It is presumptuous to say “it’s a ridiculous setup” without allowing the system to function as it was designed – which it does not do currently. We must eliminate block voting by all the states which, unlike the Electoral College, is not established by the US Constitution if we are to see how the Electoral College was meant to work. Until we have tried the more representative version of the Electoral College that the founding fathers envisioned we cannot accurately say that it is fundamentally flawed.

It would probably be useful for me to note here that Maine and Nebraska do not practice block voting. In Colorado the Democrats are trying to put a referrendum on the November ballot to stop block voting there as well. I know that in these states the votes corresponding to their representatives are divided proportional to the vote and the votes corresponding to their senators are blocked for whoever carries the state. That is one example of how to not vote as a block. I am sure that there are more options than how these two states do it or straight block voting.

It is possible that we could still find that the Electoral College does not work and that we need to change the system but we should try to fix the problem without altering the constitution before we jump into yet another ill-conceived constitutional amendment debate.

Categories
National politics

Running mates

While reading Maureen Dowd’s column (The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Are They Losing It? ) I began to think some old thoughts that I believed I had forsaken. When things started getting worse for the Bush administration I briefly flirted with the idea that the president would be best served by getting rid of the vice president and a few of his other hawkish advisors. Eventually I decided that it would be enough to get rid of the others and that the VP could stay. I’m rethinking that position. I would not blame Cheney for all the administrations problems as easily as Ms. Dowd does, but the only benefits that Mr. Cheney brought to the ticket in 2000 no longer apply. He was a face of experience in a rather novice administration. He brought a familiar face for the world, but that was a world at peace where America was fairly well respected. No matter how experienced any memeber of this administration is or isn’t now they will be judged based on the last four years. The world is no longer at peace and America is not nearly so well respected in the world as it was before. Neither of those things is strictly the fault of this administration (circumstances beyond anybody’s control played a part) but the fact is that the problem is worse than it could have been because of some poor advice from Mr. Cheney, among others. I think the best thing for the Bush re-election campaign would be to unload the baggage and start with a fresh VP.

For all the talk of a cross-party Kerry/McCain ticket, I think a Bush/McCain ticket would be a formidable sight next to a Kerry/Anyone Else ticket. John McCain is closer to the center than the president while Dick Cheney is closer to the right than the president. McCain is a known uniter and nobody doubts that he means what he says even if it is not popular. McCain could be a very trustworthy face next to Bush which would be a great step up from the controversy laden Cheney.