Some folks on the right are apparently having trouble keeping their hyperbole straight. I’ll let Ed Brayton, of Dispatches from the Culture Wars carry it on from there with OMG! Obama is a Fascist!, referencing a post on STACLU and his next post No, Wait: Obama is a Communist!, referencing a post on WorldNetDaily. Ed, those two sources give you way too much fun! And some of those folks on the right need to learn to keep their hyperbole straight.
Category: 2008 U. S. Presidential Election
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Gov. Bobby Jindal Interview
I enjoyed Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (transcript). Here’s a rising star in the Republican party. He also knows some of the importance of not only having a message but communicating it.
I was interested in his comments on Barack Obama:
But I will say this about the other two major candidates. Senator Obama, I agree with those that find him inspiring. I think he does bring a genuineness and enthusiasm. I think he’s an inspirational speaker.
I don’t agree with him on a lot of the issues. I do think he is more liberal than I am. But I think there is something that explains the large turnouts and enthusiasm he’s generating.
…. [skip several paragraphs]
And what I think people find so inspirational in the senator’s rhetoric — and I certainly think what resonated with voters when they voted for me — was that they are tired of all the ideological fighting, they are tired of the partisan fighting.
In a democracy, we should disagree. We should have debates. We should stand up for our principles. But it isn’t about winning or losing, it’s about finding common ground and enacting common sense (inaudible)…
I could say a very similar thing about Jindal that I say about Obama. I disagree with both of them on some policy points, but I think they both have a very positive impact on the political process from everything I’ve seen thus far. I will never be able to vote for a candidate with whom I agree on everything. But I’m seeing some leaders here with whom I disagree, but who are nonetheless people I can respect.
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Romney Suspending Campaign
The Washington Post is reporting that Mitt Romney will suspend his campaign, and announce it this afternoon in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee.
I do love the detail of these “leaks.” According to the story, Romney will say:
“This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters… many of you right here in this room… have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America.”
At least he still has his illusions.
Update: I note that by the time I posted this, the speech had been given, so probably it was an advance copy rather than a detailed leak.
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Freedom Not to Invite
I think the Nevada Supreme Court got this one right. Freedom of the press must include full freedom to invite or not to invite. I often support candidates with very low ratings at the polls, but there is no legal basis to force their inclusion in any televised debate.
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Politician Images Don’t Interest Me
Politicians want to reach independents? OK:
This and this are a waste of time. You won’t attract my vote with image ads or arguing about inadvertent statements.
This is a bit better. Puncture the image. It also led me to factcheck.org, which I will be visiting frequently.
Analyzing policy statements and proposals would be better. Though I must admit the economic policy statements are pretty discouraging thus far.
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Emotions and Candidates
I think there’s something wrong with us when one candidate’s show of emotion can get this much press time. I’m hoping that the public are much less excited about this than the press, but political commentators seem to be trying to make it a pivotal point in her campaign, part of that every shifting momentum that they loudly proclaim has changed with every new piece of un-news.
Hillary Clinton is not my favorite candidate for president, but she is not a bad candidate, and how much emotion she shows would likely not be a major issue if she were not a woman. I find this frenzy about a few moments of emotion, one way or another disgusting. I think it’s a major display of sexism, all the more dangerous because nobody wants to acknowledge it.
Let’s do a little bit more analysis of her policies, comparing programs, experience, and vision. The media needs to spend more time on substantive issues. They need to spend less time talking about themselves. So much of the coverage has to do with “what I (the journalist) did when I was with candidate x.” Little information is passed on.
Agree or disagree with Hillary Clinton, she has given us enough specifics in her record and in campaign position papers to occupy a good deal of discussion time. She may not be your favorite candidate or mine, but she deserves to be judged on that record, not on whether she displays precisely the right amount of emotion. I’ve found that one cannot display the right amount of emotion for everyone. I suspect that will be the case here. (My wife comments on this in her book on grief. People will actually criticize others for how they express grief at the loss of a loved one or in some other hardship situation. That is such arrogance!)
I’m going to contribute to this by writing blog posts on candidate’s positions, starting with health care proposals. I’m working on the research for that now.
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The Momentum has Shifted – Not!
You’ll notice that I don’t make predictions about who is going to win elections around here. That’s not because I’m really modest and don’t want to let you know how right I am; it’s because I generally don’t have a clue. I do remembering saying to my wife during the 2000 election that I didn’t think they had Florida projected correctly after I looked at a precinct map, but that was because of the obvious (and constant) problem that people project Florida before the panhandle votes get counted, and the panhandle votes heavily Republican.
So after Iowa and New Hampshire, who is listening to the pundits any more? Those guys don’t know any more than I do, and I can testify to you that on the matter of who’s going to win, that means they know, um, some tiny amount indistinguishable from nothing.
No, this is not a post with high intellectual content. It’s just that their words annoyed me leading up to both events, I think they have been proven sufficiently wrong, and I think their faces should be rubbed in it, just so they won’t proclaim what they don’t know with such confidence.
It reminds me of the lousy sports reporters who sense a shift in momentum every team a different team scores. In football I’ve heard reporters speak about shifts of momentum after a team made a first down. “No,” I want to yell at them, “they just made a first down.”
On February 5, we have New York and New Jersey, amongst many others. I can’t imagine Hillary Clinton is going to give up before that, and I suspect Rudy isn’t going to either. I might like them to, but wishes aren’t predictions.
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What I Want for Election Day: A Health Care Plan
I haven’t seen any results from New Hampshire yet, so this is probably a good thing to write about politics. I’m going to try really, really hard to keep this short. I am very much encouraged by the increased voter turnout thus far, both in Iowa and New Hampshire. I hope it is a trend that continues. More involvement and less apathy will be good for all of us.
What do I want to see in a health care plan? I’d like to see health care:
- Universal
- Free Market
- Limited Regulation and Bureaucracy
Of course, anyone with any knowledge of politics and economics can tell me I’m not going to get all three of those, as there are contradictions in them. So what do I think I can get?
It’s something like the little Marilyn Monroe song (later by Madonna as well, I believe) in which we find the lines:
a yacht
that’s not
a lotThe yacht is a lot, but we’d like to think otherwise. It’s the function of a candidate to convince us we can have the yacht without paying for it; once elected, he’ll make us pay for it, but never provide the yacht. This occurred to me as I was reading the few health care plans that the candidates have put forward. For what it’s worth, I congratulate those campaigns that have gotten specific on this issue.
First, I think it’s time for us to have some kind of universal coverage, or at least to head that way in this country. At the moment we have too many people using emergency rooms for primary care, and guess who pays for that. You and I do, sometimes in taxes, sometimes in our medical bills. Further, emergency room care is excessively expensive. But I’m not here to get into the details of emergency room care.
What emergency rooms tell me is something simple. When we are confronted with someone in dire need of medical care, we are not willing to just let that person die. That’s why emergency rooms have to take people in who can’t pay and provide them with a minimum of care. Unfortunately, the same moral compass that leads us to expect care for these people doesn’t seem to lead us to pay for it.
Second, however, and conflicting with the first, medical care is an economic good. It’s not in unlimited supply, it doesn’t just happen. Somebody has to produce it. When we declare that someone has a right to medical care, we’re also by nature implying a duty by someone else to produce that care. When the issue is someone dying of fatal injuries, however, we want to ignore the issue of precisely how the thing to which that person has a right is produced.
This leads me to suggest that we build a system that is as private as possible and use a minimum of government intervention. There are certainly some ways to reduce costs. These include moving more primary care to providers such as nurse practitioners. I don’t have statistics on it (I’m going to do more research) but I believe it will also be valuable to put some kind of restraints on malpractice lawsuits to alleviate fear of using people with less than a medical degree plus a specialty to actually see patients. Personally I think we will be better off, on average with the nurse practitioners providing primary care.
Those items, however, are going to be minor. One thing I noticed in the health care plans I read was a great deal of optimism about saving money. It is very rare that government regulations can be set up to enter an industry and reduce overall costs. Again, it’s a topic for more research, but I am extremely suspicious of the savings numbers given by any of the candidates. It seems to me that the promise of large monetary savings and no new bureaucracy is a bit like “the yacht is not a lot” but yet the time will come when folks have to pay.
Further, there is a good reason why savings don’t ever seem to accomplish what is promised for them. Even wasted money goes into the economy somewhere. If it is used more productively there will be an improvement, but fired government workers, for example, were buying groceries whether their work was productive or not. Overpaid executives put their money in banks where it can be used for investment. In general, when we state either losses from fraud and waste, or savings from eliminating it, we get the idea that more will be accomplished than will actually happen.
So where do I end up? With a compromise. I’d be pretty happy with a private system that nonetheless mandated some level of health care coverage with a safety net program for those who are unable to pay for it. I know that safety net programs tend to become entitlements, but I do not want to see anyone left without basic (that needs to be defined, but not today) coverage, or anyone forced to provide free service. I think this one needs to be taken care of nationally.
PS: To find out why I’m almost certain to be disappointed, read Bureaucracy, by Ludwig von Mises. If you’ve read (or tried to read) Human Action, don’t worry. Bureaucracy is an easy read.