According to this story on MSNBC.com democratic presidential contenders are snubbing the DLC meeting in Tennessee this weekend. It’s a trend that I find annoying, though I do expect candidates to talk to the base of their parties during the campaign.
I’m wondering this: Is the base of the democratic party so partisan that it would actually harm a candidate to attend a moderate event?
I have long argued against the war in Iraq on strategic grounds. I don’t object to war when war is absolutely necessary, but I believe that when war is waged for the wrong reasons, conducted improperly, or for unattainable goals, however good those goals sound, that war is a tragedy and is immoral. Killing is such a terrible thing that one must weigh very carefully one’s decision to take that route.
Now we have a situation of political strategy, and I think the various factions are taking just as little consideration for strategy in the political conflict as others have in the planning for war. Recent polls show a substantial amount of support for impeaching President Bush and even more for impeaching Vice-President Cheney. It would be nice if one could believe that most of those who favor impeachment actually knew what impeachment is, and for example which house impeaches and which tries impeachments. That is probably too much to hope. I suspect the answers in favor of impeachment include a large number of folks who simply want Bush and Cheney gone, and the sooner the better. One should also recall that this is the same electorate who once produced an approval rating for Bush in the 80s.
I don’t really like either man. I didn’t vote for them, and I abhor their war policy. I think very often their domestic strategies in terms of home security have been crude and ineffective while unnecessarily threatening civil rights. I think Bush’s use of signing statements to ignore portions of the law is wrong. I think his efforts to continue the war right now are misguided. He’s missing an opportunity to at least control the mode of exit. One aspect of the strategy of war is the political support one has for the action. Ignore that portion, and you ask for trouble.
Now I’m no legal expert. I’m not going to argue what congress can and cannot use as the grounds for impeachment. I’m pretty sure, however, that the final answer is going to be that they can use pretty much anything they can get a 2/3 majority of the Senate agree on for conviction. Violating the constitution is a form of violating the law, but it doesn’t have fixed penalties. “Abuse of power” is a rather hazy sort of concept. I actually think it’s quite reasonable to have 2/3 of the Senate agree on what it might be.
But the question is just how valuable is this particular means of getting rid of a president? We’re already into the election campaign for the next presidential election. In a little more than a year we’ll be voting on who we want to succeed Bush and Cheney. Is it a good idea to go through the contentious process of impeachment right now? One question, of course, is whether 2/3 of the Senate would agree to convict on any particular charge. I suspect the answer is no.
The impeachment talk is, I think, directed to the hardliners in the Democratic party and those who are to its left. It shores up the base, and provides a means to keep from losing those supporters to third party candidates. At the same time there are quite a number–a growing number–of people who are like me in one respect. We don’t have party loyalty. We believe both the Democratic and Republican parties have forfeited any right to our support as parties. When all the partisan bickering has played out (on this topic; there will be another by then), some one of you is going to need our vote, and we’d like to see you show some good strategic sense, an ability to see all aspects of a problem and to find the best strategy to get where you’re going.
Cindy Sheehan has told Speaker Nancy Pelosi she’s going to run against her if she doesn’t work to impeach President Bush. I think this is a good opportunity for Pelosi to demonstrate some good strategic sense. Not statesmanship; that would probably be too much to ask–just good strategy. She can say, “No, that’s a bad idea. I’m interested in keeping and building a Democratic majority. I’m more interested in withdrawing from Iraq successfully than I am in scoring revenge points on the current President.”
She’s played this one right so far; hopefully she’ll continue.
Over the last couple of decades we have had two major movements designed to make our election process more responsive to the public and to try to make the American people less cynical. The first is campaign finance reform, and the second is term limits. It’s interesting that in both cases we propose to make the system freer by restricting it. Sometimes paradoxical approaches like that work. Neither of these is one of those cases.
Robert Samuelson has an excellent column on campaign finance reform on MSNBC. He points out that there is no evidence that campaign finance reform has actually improved anything. This could have been predicted without all the cost of doing studies.
From the time of the founding fathers we have realized that free speech was the best way to give ideas a hearing. Speech has always had its costs. I have to pay for the server on which this blog is hosted. Others who use free services only have to pay a cost in the time they take to produce the information. One of the major premises underlying campaign finance reform is that speech, particularly political speech, should not only be free, it should be paid for. In some countries, this is accomplished by providing time on publicly owned media, or by requiring the media to give certain amounts of time to certain candidates. Here, we have simply tried to keep down the spending–with essentially no success.
This lack of success is a good thing. It means that Americans don’t take well to being told they have to shut up. Why should I not be permitted to express my views on the election in the public media by buying ad space if I want to. What possible public interest is served by this?
The complaint is that major corporations buy elections. But with the multiple sources of information available today suggest to me that the only thing that would allow anyone to buy an election is the laziness and apathy of the voters. Surprise folks! Politicians will keep on doing the things you reward them for. If you re-elect them after they have done unethical things, they will believe you don’t care, for no better reason than that you have shown them you don’t care. If you re-elect them based on negative ads about their opponents, they will believe that negative ads work, again for no better reason than that they do work.
We can make law after law, but none of those laws will fix the basic problem if the American people don’t pay attention to the election, don’t use the sources of information available to them, and don’t get out and vote. It’s amazingly ironic that probably the most empowered people in the history of the world–potentially–sit around at home and whine about not being able to change things.
Heightened regulation of the flow of information is no way to fix and election, or rather, it will tend to provide a way to fix it (pun intended). What all these regulations do is reduce the power of the people and increase the power of lawyers and regulators. Let’s cast a vote for voter responsibility and empowerment. Limit terms–vote the guys out. Manage campaign money–give to the candidate of your choice. Manage campaign advertising–reward and punish the folks who lie in campaign ads.
It’s up to us.
