Cafferty Pistol-whips McCain

For those who don't read CNN.com., I'll point out this vicious--but wholly fair-->critique of John McCain by Jack Cafferty. Here's a sample:

John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.

Ouch, that's gonna leave a mark.

I Hate the President

The next one, that is.

This is the really bad effect of the long campaign season--candidates have to talk too damn much and they keep having to answer questions. Before a candidate becomes president, the media demand that they have a proposal for dealing with every imaginable political issue. Once the person becomes president, however, they deal with a set of issues that is a combination of those personally selected and those that are simply unavoidable, but they don't have to talk about all the others.

And it's inevitable that all that talking is going to cause them to say things that diminish our confidence in them. Nobody is going to agree with them on all issues, nor does any one person have the best answers to all issues. (As a consequence, I am consciously relying on heuristics to determine my vote this time around, as the more I think about the candidates' positions the more confused I get about my preference.)

And of course it's a real pisser for whomever gets elected, because he'll have no honeymoon in office--none at all. We already know him too well to give him the benefit of the doubt for a while.

If we could compress our campaign season, this problem would largely solved. Unfortunately, the front-loading of the primary system is a classic case of individual rationality resulting in collective irrationality. There's a good solution being floated--rotating regional primaries--but no good mechanism for moving the states toward it.

Can John McCain Win?

That's the question I've been pondering lately. I've been ignoring the polls, which I don't think will mean a lot until after the post-convention bounces, if any, have diminished, and thinking about historical factors, and for the most part they're not in John McCain's favor.

1. One historical factor is that we rarely elect sitting senators to the White House, and none since 1968, but since Obama's a sitting senator, too, we have to throw this one out the window. Whoever wins the election will make history on this count.

2. A second factor is the difficulty of a member of the same party replacing a very unpopular president. Only about 1/3 of the populace approves of the job Bush is doing, and McCain, being the candidate of that president's party, is inevitably seen by many as a continuation of the same. It's not fair, and I don't even think it's accurate, but it happens nonetheless, and it makes winning the election an uphill climb for McCain regardless of any other advantages he might have.

3. A third factor is McCain's age, which actually affects the race in two distinct ways. First, Johh McCain would be the oldest elected president ever. Of course we've broken that record before, most recently with Reagan, but it's obviously a rare thing, and it does seem the American public doesn't generally want presidents who are too old. All other things being equal, this might not be too big a hurdled, but other things aren't equal, because, second, we would be going back a generation, which is, if not unprecedented, exceedingly rare. We have now had two baby boomer presidents in a row, and the liklihood of stepping back to a pre-baby boom president is highly unlikely. The U.S. is, in many ways, a country that has traditionally looked forward, rather than backward, and this general disinclination to revisit future generations to select our presidents is but one example of that.

4. A fourth factor is that McCain is seen as an inisder, while Obama is seen as an outsider (and we can't plausibly both criticize him for lack of experience and claim he's an insider). Every president from Jimmy Carter on, excluding the first President Bush who won on the coattails of a very popular predecessor, has been an outsider, and has trumpeted that fact. Obama may be less of an outsider than Carter or Clinton, but McCain can't possibly compete on this angle--he is the establishment, at a time when we don't like establishment figures. (As to the wisdom of electing outsiders, I beg to differ with my fellow citizens.)

5. Fifth, incumbent presidents don't win when the economy is weak, nor does the person from the same party who would succeed them. It matters not if Phil Gramm is right that we are not in a recession--a majority of Americans believe we are, and their votes will be determined by their own beliefs, not Phil Gramm's. (And could Gramm possibly have done a better job of reinforcing the public perception of the Republican Party as out of touch on economic matters, with his claim that we're just a nation of whiners--my neighbor is on a six week layoff because of the slump in truck sales, and I don't think his financial concerns are merely hypothetical.)

6. Sixth, fundraising matters. It's not true that the biggest winner always wins, but there is a strong correlation, because the person who can spend the most is generally able to define the issues and candidate attributes most successfully. The fundraising differential is probably a function of the other factors listed, but it has electoral effects of its own. And while it's more than just a little bit legitimate to critique Obama for reneging on his pledge to accept public financing, I just don't think that issue will have legs--Republicans never successfully critique the Democrats for having too much money because they are, far more than the Democrats, the party of the wealthy. And as things stand, Obama has raised around 280 million to McCain's 111 million, a stunning differential.

7. Finally, the religious right has been essential in the victories of Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan (and, actually, beginning with Jimmy Carter before him). Despite McCain's promises to elect "strict constructionist" judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade, and in spite of being the graduation speaker at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, religious conservatives have not warmed up to McCain. James Dobson, for one, has said he wouldn't vote for McCain, and my religious conservative mother is very unhappy with his candidacy as well. The question is whether religious conservatives' devout belief in voting will overcome their McCain disdain. If not, look for Obama to pick up Virginia or Colorado--states McCain can't win without.

So can McCain overcome all that to win? I wouldn't bet on it. Keep in mind two things, however. First, campaigns do matter. In the equilibirium situation where both candidates run good campaigns, all the other factors determine the outcome, but if one candidate runs a bad campaign (cough, Dukakis!, cough). But so far McCain has shown the tendency to run the weaker campaign, mostly because he can't resist making jokes that are inappropriate in the particular context (but thank God he has a sense of humor). And Obama has seemed to move on relatively unscathed from what would seem devestating blows, particularly the Jeremiah Wright business. Republicans can justifiably wonder why the scandal isn't sticking, but for my part I'm glad it hasn't, as such scandals have never stuck on the Republicans before. (Let's face it, if Wright had suggested nuking the State Department, he would have been crucified by the right wing, unlike Pat Robertson, who actually did say it and suffered almost no fallout--the patriotism stuff has been a one-sided game for far too long.)

Second, it still remains to be seen whether there are enough moderates and liberals who won't vote for a black man to keep Obama from winning. I personally believe not (and, of course, an Obama loss would not be conclusive evidence, as there are other reasons to oppose him), and I expect that an Obama victory this fall will prove it.

In summary, McCain's only chance is a huge Obama misstep, or to find a scandal that will stick. It's not impossible, but at this point it sure doesn't seem likely.

Wesley Clark Goes off the Rails

Retired general, and former presidential candidate, Wesley Clark needs to publicly apologize to John McCain, and then stuff his fist in his mouth so he doesn't put his foot in it again.

Clark, a Democrat, said John McCain is "untested and untried."

"But he hasn't held executive responsibility," said Clark, a former NATO commander...He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, 'I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not,' "

Admittedly, that's accurate. But it's also a wild red herring. Name one presidential candidate who wasn't a general or a former president who has that experience. Surely Clark isn't arguing that only generals are fit to be president?

And the whole thing smacks of criticizing a person's service record, as a smokescreen for criticizing their patriotism. Perhaps that's not what Clark meant, but following the Republicans' attack on the service record and patriotism of Purple Heart winner John Kerry, and of Representative Max Cleland, a man who lost both legs and part of one arm in in Vietnam (reportedly by a grenade dropped by another soldier), his comments have an unmistakeable odor of political bullshit. I've despised Republicans for most of my adult life for playing that dirty, "they ain't real ammuricans" game, and it sickens me to see a Democrat, and a man I once supported for president, treading on the boundaries of the same vile game.

Clark is a supporter of Obama, a man with far less experience than McCain. If military experience matters, Obama has no experience with the hell that war can be, while McCain knows all too well. If political experience is what matters, then McCain has far more experience in the Senate than Obama. If executive experience is what matters--having listened to the diplomats and ordered the bombs to be dropped--then maybe we should cancel the election and just draft General Clark back into the service of his country.

For Whom Should I Vote?

Recently, the Economist had a cover claiming that the primary process had, for the first time in years, given the U.S. two good candidates for the presidency. I agree. I like both McCain and Obama. I think they're both basically decent people whom I'd probably enjoy knowing (in contrast to Bush, Clinton, Kerry, and Gore, none of whom I'm pining to have dinner with).

But, as usual, I'm still uncertain how to vote because each candidate seems to me to have a fatal flaw.

Barack Obama has never really worked in the private sector. His experience is wholly in social service organizations and government, and I fear that he believes those institutions are the true source of most of what makes us better off. He seems to have no conception that the free market is the source of most of our well-being, including the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the computers on which we blog, the clothes we wear, and the food we eat. I worry that in an Obama presidency, the government will continue to assume more and more responsibility for our individual well-being. In addition, he has no experience in foreign affairs, which means Obama will almost certainly focus predominantly on domestic matters until foreign affairs force his attention--this has been the pattern for presidents who couple a dominant interest in domestic matters with a lack of foreign policy experience, from Lyndon Johnson to Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. Why is it so hard for candidates and the public (and the media, but I never expect anything useful from that source) to recognize that the Constitution makes the President almost solely responsible for foreign affairs, and Congress primarily responsible for domestic affairs? If Obama were to face a Republican Congress I would be less concerned, because the partisan opposition would keep him in check domestically. But givent the pent-up frustration of Democrats (from their failure to accomplish social goals under Clinton to the 8 years of regulatory rollback under Bush) and their likely gains in Congress this year, I worry about a return of Johnson's "Great Society" programs, nearly all of which were costly and dismal failures, and a rollback of the Carter/Reagan economic deregulation which helped lead to the strong economic growth of the past three decades.

John McCain has the foreign policy experience I like, and for the most part I don't care too much where he stands on domestic policy matters. For example, I'm pro-choice and he's not. But even though I know I have unrealistically high standards for presidential candidates, I'm willing to trade off those issues for a candidate with good foreign policy credentials, especially since McCain isn't a fanatic about those issues. (The fact that the religious right despises him is good enough for me.) But what I can't accept is wholesale disdain for the Bill of Rights, and McCain doesn't seem to share my (fanatical) support for the ideals embodied therein. I only on occasion find myself in agreement with Justice Scalia, but I fully agreed with his dissent in McConnell v. FEC, in which the Supreme Court upheld McCain's First Amendment gutting campaign finance law:

Who could have imagined that the same Court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restrictions upon such inconsequential forms of expression as virtual child pornography,...tobacco advertising, [etc], would smile with favor upon a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government.

And this week he has attacked the Supreme Court for ruling that the Guantanomo Bay detainees have the right to habeus corpus. The ruling does not mean they get to go free, it simply means that they have the right to demand their day in court--and even then it will be up to the courts to determine if their demand will be fulfilled. The Bush administration has employed the authoritarian tactic of putting people outside the reach of the law, a vicious attack on our Constitution and the ideals embodied in it, and has been repeatedly, and correctly, rebuffed by the Suprme Court. But McCain finds the rule of law distasteful--an odd position for someone who was a prisoner of war--and I have a hard time voting for someone who doesn't stand up for the rule of law as our supreme political ideal.

I would have no problem voting for Obama because he's black. I think breaking the color barrier is a good enough reason to vote, assuming the person is otherwise qualified, and based on the qualifications standard set by some of our recent presidents, it would be wholly disingenous to argue that he's not qualified enough. But our experience with presidents inexperienced in foreign policy makes me shudder at the thought of yet another one. And yet McCain, so qualified in so many other ways, has such a cavalier attitude toward the Bill of Rights--much like our last two presidents--that I'm not sure the country can afford him. Our devotion to the Constitution is hanging by a thread these days, and I'm not sure how many precedents of presidential abuse we can suffer before it simply becomes the accepted norm.

Signs of the Republican Apocalypse

The Republicans lost another traditionally safe congressional seat yesterday. According to news reports, this makes three losses of safe seats in a row. This bodes ill for John McCain this fall. The odds are that Republicans will regain these seats within the next few elections; given how thoroughly most congressional districts have been partisanly gerrymandered, it’s rare for the opposition to hold such a seat for more than two or three terms. But that won’t be any help to McCain, as trends like this do tend to play out as election losses for the incumbent party. Still, campaigns matter, and with Obama appearing to have a safe lead over Clinton, the important question of whether a black candidate can get enough of the middle class white vote remains.

Should I Sell My Vote?

Apparently it's illegal to sell or trade votes for the president, although I've never bothered to look up the relevant statute. Of course, to be precise, that's not a vote for the president, but for an elector for the president. But in a comment on a prior post I jokingly offered to sell my vote to a New Zealander. Unfortunately, he declined, so my bank account is no richer.

Nor is my conscience soothed. As I've pondered this over the last few days, it seems to me that New Zealanders, and Aussies and Brits, French, South Koreans...in short, everyone who lives in the free world, is a constituent of the U.S. President. During the Clinton impeachment, a friend of mine received a call from a former business partner in S. Korea, who asked why the Republicans were messing around with "the leader of my world." It's a good point, and one I've thought about a lot in the past decade.

I get a vote, but I'm a political scientist. I can do the math, and I know my vote simply doesn't matter. Actually, most political scientists can't quite figure that out. I had one almost punch me in the nose once because I dare to teach my students that voting is a collective action problem: we're all better off if everyone participates, since we can't have popular sovereignty otherwise, but the more people participate, the less it matters--to me personally or to the public's interest in popular sovereignty.

And then there are all these folks outside our borders, who in a real way are the President's constituents (like it or not), but who don't get a vote. So, on the off-chance any significant number of people see this blog, let me know what country you're from and who you want me to vote for. I'll count the votes of anyone who is (a) outside the U.S., and (b) in a democratic country. I'll let majority rule, and the non-U.S. constituents will at least get one vote.

A Real For-Sure Race This Time?

In recent election years, so many candidates have dropped out early after poor showings in either Iowa or New Hampshire, that shortly thereafter the nominees were effectively chosen and the remaining primaries were just pro forma events. That, of course, is the reason states have been leapfrogging their primaries. And, of course, no nominee has actually been chosen at the convention since (I think) McGovern in 1972.

But this year, with so many states having primaries both early and on the same day (Feb. 5, when 22 states decide), and with the candidates not having been able to campaign much in many of those, there's a possibility that candidates will split their wins across the states that no-one walks out with a convincing lead for the nomination. There's even a remote chance that no-one will get a majority of delegates, and so the candidate will actually be chosen at the convention.

I wouldn't bet much money on that, but it's far more likely this year than in any year since I've been casting votes (that is, since '84). If so, it would be the only good outcome of this ridiculously early primary season. There's a real danger that we'll know both party's nominees by mid-February, and will have to listen to them campaign for nearly 10 months, in which case everyone in the country will be thoroughly sick of the new president before he/she is even inaugurated. One lesson presidents learn is that they can't give major speeches on TV too often, or the public tunes them out, and a campaign requires them to appear on TV, demanding the public's attention, non-stop. Uncertainty up until late August about which two people we'll be choosing between in November would be ideal, and helpful to the future president.

But, in general, the "tsunami Tuesday" is a terrible thing. Coming so soon after Iowa and New Hampshire, where most candidates have been spending most of their time, and encompassing states from Alabama to Oregon, there is no way the candidates can campaign effectively in more than a few of these states. This is why a national primary, which some people advocate, would be a terrible idea--it would just result in candidates having to stage national campaigns at a time when they don't have the funds to do so, and would make it impossible for them to actually meet people.

I've become convinced by the advocates of rotating regional primaries. A regional primary would allow candidates to focus their money and efforts on a limited area, say 5 or 6 states, rather than trying to cover the whole country. Underfunded candidates would be less likely to be completely shut out of the process so early, and the public would still have some chance to meet the candidates. Unfortunately, most analysts seem to think we're not at crisis point yet--maybe we'll only hit the crisis point in 2012--so we're not likely to fix the problem before the next presidential campaign heats up.

There is, of course, a logical stopping point for how early the states can hold their primaries--the day after the previous midterm election. Given that we came close this time to having the first primaries nearly a full year before the general election, that outrageous outcome no longer seems as unlikely as it should be.