Month: November 2006

Partisan Playground

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Three days after the elections I get an email calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. It sounded a lot like playground politics. "You impeached our president so now that we are in control of congress we will impeach yours." I thought it was typical of staunch partisans that they would exaggerate their position from the outset. The email started with:

"On Election Day, the American people voted overwhelmingly for change." (emphasis mine)

I wonder about the threshold they use for "overwhelming." The fact is that if every race that remains undecided were to fall to the Democrats there would be 42 seats that changed hands in the House and the Senate combined. That is only 8% of the 535 seats in Congress. Only 6% of the Senate changed and 10% of the House. That sounds like a vote for change, but not an overwhelming vote for change. In fact, 25% of the seats that changed were still in doubt after 24 hours. (All the numbers I am using assume that every seat still in doubt goes blue.) To make this vote less overwhelming, the talk now is how the incoming Democrat representative are pragmatic and populist more than liberal. We really don’t know what to expect from this new Democrat controlled congress. See Update

I visited the forum where the email originated and found more level-headed thought being expressed. Things along the lines of, "President Bush deserves to be impeached, but it won’t accomplish anything positive in the country, so don’t bother."

Nancy Pelosi, likely the next Speaker of the House, has indicated that she will not pursue impeachment. Level-headed people from across the political spectrum will agree with her that impeachment is not a good course of action for the country at this time. The partisan impeachment proceedings against President Clinton should serve as proof of why we should not go down that road right now. At least when the Republican congress impeached Clinton they could be forgiven for having no memory of the last time we had an impeachment. This Democratic congress has no such excuse.

I looked around the forum site and they had a poll for people to vote on what they would like to see happen in the first 100 days of the new congress. They categorized the various suggestions. I discovered an interesting trend as I read the options. I found that I agreed or disagreed with them on a category by category basis.

Constitution & Courts
- I disagree heartily with almost every option
- I especially disagree with the constitutional amendments they propose
Economy, Business, Labor
- I agree with some of the options
- I am undecided on some of the options
- I disagree with a couple of the options
Elections
- I agree with almost all the options
- I disagree with one option and think a couple of options are redundant
Energy & Environment
- I am undecided on the majority of the options
Foreign & Military Policy
- Many of the options sound like vague ideals rather than solid plans
- I agree with their positions on torture
Government & Congress
- I agree with most of the options
Investigations
- Lots of redundancy related to the Iraq war
- Many of the options sound like they are living in the past
Media
- Sounds like a bunch of ways to expand government
Social Policy
- Sounds exactly like the Democratic party line

This got me wondering what kind of people were running the forum. The answer came in a different poll they had. This one asked who they would vote for in 2008 for president. The answer was overwhelmingly Al Gore. He got more than 1/3 of the votes with 13 candidates in the poll. Hilary Clinton (supposedly the front runner) was not even in second place on this poll, she got less than 1/8 of the votes. So these are Gore Democrats. This is nothing against Al Gore, he merely represents one faction of the Democratic party. The question is, what do the Pelosi Democrats think, or what do the Dean Democrats (the official party leadership) think? Lest anyone see this as bias, Republican factions include the McCain Republicans, Frist Republicans, and Mehlman Republicans.

UPDATE 11/14: I just found confirmation of what I had said about how overwhelming this vote for change was.

The scale of this loss was on par with the post-war average for such elections: close to 30 House seats versus the average of 32, and likely six Senate seats compared to the average of eight.

In elections during which the president’s popularity was low because of war, scandal or recession, however, the average is 47 House seats and eight Senate seats.

This "overwhelming vote for change" was about average, if not a little below average for the current situation.

Tags parties, reactions

General

Getting Answers to Old Questions

Post author By David
Post date November 10, 2006
No Comments on Getting Answers to Old Questions

I just remembered something I wrote back in September. Tuesday made it possible to answer some questions I asked clear back then. I had said that “between the presidency and the two houses of congress each of the major parties should be in control of at least one of the bodies – thus forcing the various governmental bodies to compromise in order to make things happen.” We now have Republicans in control of the White House and Democrats in control of the House and the Senate.

I had asked, “would this administration be better if their party did not control both houses of congress?” An early analysis of that question came in the New York Times today. From the article:

‘You’re seeing the George Bush who has always been adept at playing the hand he is dealt,’ said Charlie Black, a Republican strategist with close ties to the White House.

Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman and lobbyist, put it this way: ‘I’ve never thought that George Bush was a rigid ideologue; I’ve never thought that he was a hardened partisan. He is a businessman first, and in business you don’t spend a lot of time crying about changed circumstances. You figure out quickly how to adapt, and that’s what he’s doing.’

Certainly this does not answer whether this “M.B.A. president” can make things work with a Democratic congress, but we’ll find out.

I also said that “those in the House have some incentive to do something because they will face re-election in another two years.” The New York Times article adds another incentive for Democrats to work with Bush:

‘Their whole theme has been the do-nothing Congress,’ Mr. Black, the Republican strategist, said. ‘Now, if they get in there and make themselves vulnerable to that charge, it hurts them in ’08. He knows that they have an incentive to get things done, and he’s going to take advantage of that.’

If anything is to happen, the president must move toward the center. I still hope, as I said in September, that this will force the Republican Party to come back toward the center. Having lost the House and the Senate, I hope they will have the motivation to do so. They can hardly pretend that this was just some small setback.

Tags parties, reactions, thoughts

meta technology

Code for Old Blog Tools

I thought I would add the html code from some blog elements that I am putting away but which I may want to use again.

Here is the html code for the election projections:

<a href=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/”><img alt=”Click for www.electoral-vote.com” src=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Icons/ev-small.png” border=”0″ height=”72″ width=”72″ /> <img alt=”Click for www.electoral-vote.com” src=”http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Icons/ev-small-house.png” border=”0″ height=”72″ width=”72″ /></a>

Tags code, tools

General

Non-Sequiter

I stumbled on to another example of blind loyalty by our senior senator. In character for the man who said that the alternative to attacking Iraq was, “we could have attacked North Korea, Iran, or Syria instead,” Senator Hatch said that, “you’d have to tarnish every young American who served over there,” for Donald Rumsfeld’s legacy to be marred by mistakes in Iraq. This suggests that there is no difference of position between the soldiers on the ground and the men that give them their orders.

Just as it is possible for commanders to give good orders which are poorly executed by the men on the ground, so in this case we have had a series of mistakes from those at the top which have generally been well executed by the soldiers on the ground. Thus there is distinctly a difference between the soldiers on the ground and those that give them orders.

If Senator Hatch meant to suggest that making mistakes in Iraq does not prove that Donald Rumsfeld is evil, then I have to agree with him. What he does not acknowledge is that even a good leader may be tarnished by mistakes without becoming a bad leader. For example, the legacy of Robert E. Lee was tarnished by the actions at Gettysburg. Pickett’s charge was well executed by George Pickett and his men, but it was a colossal mistake by General Lee. None of this makes General Lee a poor general. Similarly, the mistakes made in Iraq will surely tarnish the legacy of Donald Rumsfeld without reflecting poorly on the soldiers who served there (not including Abu Ghraib participants). While this tarnish is in fresh view, it should be remembered that the perspective of history will determine whether Donald Rumsfeld was good or not. Either way, we can safely say that Secretary Rumsfeld is no General Lee.

Tags candidates, Orrin Hatch, reactions, State, thoughts

General

Ideal Politics

Now that election day is over – here are some things I would like to see (ideally) in politics:

Two candidates running against each other who canvas together, advertise together, and publicly seek to achieve 100% voting in the area covered by the office they are seeking.
- I could just imagine two candidates who have different views coming before the voters and saying “Vote for me, or vote for him, just vote.”
- I could imagine mailings and flyers where one side presented the views of one candidate and the other side presented the views of the other candidate. The bottom would read “Paid for by the committee to elect the next representative of State House District #21”
No negative campaigning – that would be necessary for #1 to work

If those things were to happen I think we could have real political dialog happening, and we could hardly fail to get good people elected – I can imagine that only good people would engage in such a campaign.

I know this is extremely idealistic. I would be very surprised to ever see such a thing.

Now for some results of yesterdays elections.

Nationally, NPR has a story on how the base of the GOP failed on election day. I think they got the story backwards. It would be more accurate to say that the GOP failed the voters before election day. Thus the results at the polls.

I also saw that Donald Rumsfeld is resigning as Secretary of Defense. This is good news, but a few years later than it should have been.

Voters chose not to retain Judge Leslie Lewis. This means that voters were getting the information being presented about her. To put this result in context – 54% of voters voted not to retain her. All other judges were retained, receiving between 88.32% and 76.55% support for retention. In other words Judge Lewis received 30 percentage points less support from voters than any other judge in this election. Now the question is – does it require the kind of negative publicity that Judge Lewis received to make voters drop a sitting judge? While I believe that the majority of judges do a good job, I still believe that voters suffer from a dearth of information on their judges so it is difficult to make meaningful choices with our ballots where judges are concerned.

The opinion question that I felt was under-publicized passed with over 66% support. I don’t think that indicates a good campaign for the issue since every ballot issue on my local ballot passed with similarly high margins. Some of them probably should not have passed – at least not that easily.

Tags ideal, reactions, thoughts

technology

Reactions to Voting

First, an issue I have long thought about. I think that the option to cast a straight party ballot should be removed. Voters should be voting for candidates, not parties. I have no objections to a voter going down the ballot and voting only for the candidates from a single party, but they should be required to go down the ballot, not just cast a straight party ticket.

On to my reactions.

I have never used the electronic voting machines before and I was pleasantly surprised by one feature – I got to read the printout of my ballot before it was officially cast. I thought that was great. Assuming that the very paper I read (but could not touch since it was behind a window in the voting machine) is the same paper that would be read in the event of a manual recount, or an audit of the votes (which I believe/hope is mandatory) then I am confident that there is no way, short of collusion, to manipulate actual votes cast.

This means that the machines cannot be responsible for any problems related to the results of an election where they are used. Admittedly this only applies to this model of voting machine. I can’t speak for any other model. This also says nothing about efforts which discourage voters from casting votes or efforts which seek to disenfranchise specific portions of the electorate. Those are separate problems.

As for the ballot itself – I was disappointed with the number of offices in which there was no Democratic candidate. It is a sad statement when one of the major parties fails to even field a candidate. The worst section of the ballot was where I got to “vote” for county officials. Almost without exception, at the county level there was a Republican candidate running unopposed. I don’t mean no to say there was no Democratic challenger, I mean no challenger at all. If it were not for the fact that we could put challengers on the ballot it would be like voting for Saddam Hussein when he was in power in Iraq – no challenger means that he won between 95% and 100% of the vote – it’s not an election.

Tags parties, reactions, thoughts, voting machines

culture

Choose Your Words Carefully

Post author By David
Post date November 6, 2006
2 Comments on Choose Your Words Carefully

As I was driving around today between the hospital and various other places I noticed a number of news articles about the verdict in the Saddam Hussein trial. Their titles got me thinking about the power of words.

One paper titled their article “Dictator gets Death.” Another talked about the “deposed Iraqi leader.” A story on NPR referred to the “former Iraqi leader.” Other news outlets talked about “Saddam Hussein,” “Saddam,” or “Hussein.” The thing that I began pondering was how those different references to the same event and the same person can elicit different reactions from the audience.

“Dictator gets Death” was probably chose for it’s use of alliteration (it would have been better for that purpose as “Deposed Dictator gets Death”) but it has the potential to make the reader think less of the defendant than a story about the “former leader.” The author may have intended to illicit that reaction or may not have intended any special reaction. Using words such as dictator and tyrant, which have subjective definitions and vivid connotations, can sway the audience to a particular side of the debate even when the facts are weak.

I have learned to be aware of the use of manipulative verbiage – even when I agree with the position – in order that I might avoid being swayed by an emotional reaction to the particular words rather than a logical reaction to the facts of a debate. I also try to avoid using terminology which will manipulate an audience when I am discussing an issue. I believe it is counter-productive to be clever with our words unless we are very careful that our cleverness does not interfere with our meaning.

This is not a complaint against any title. It is a reminder to me that there may be a million ways to say what appears to be the same thing but if we dig deeper we can discern that each of those million ways can throw is into a different mindset through which we filter the information we are receiving.

Tags NPR, reactions, thoughts

culture

Judging Judges

Last week someone pointed me to www.firejudgelewis.com and asked me what I knew about the court she serves in. I think the name of the site makes their position obvious. I went back to my voters guide to see if it had anything about the judge. It appears that Judge Lewis has the lowest ratings of any judge in the voters guide – based on surveys from attorneys who have argued in her court.

I have long thought that our system of voting to retain judges was flawed based on voters not having sufficient information on the judges in question. I have been thinking about this ever since I wrote about ballot measures. When I opened this story today I found myself sadly unsurprised that the judge in the story was none other than Leslie Lewis.

This has me thinking that I have an opportunity this week to find out if I was right about the system lacking information. It seems that we have lots of information on Judge Lewis and on Tuesday we will discover if that information is getting through to the voting public.

Update 11/8/2006: The results of the elections are in. The results on retaining judges are telling.

Tags judges, reactions, thoughts

General

Good News on Frontrunner

I was excited to read this news. Now if only we could get to the point where they ran the same story with one little tweak. I would like it to read that “Frontrunner Commuter rail line in Utah County is 50% complete.” That will take a while.

Voters in the areas covered by the Frontrunner line in the report approved money for Frontrunner 6 years ago. They expect to be up and running in less than 2 more years. In Utah county we have the chance next week to approve money for the southern portion of Frontrunner which will run through our county. If it is developed at the same pace we could have commuter rail by 2014. First things first, the voters in Utah County need to approve the Opinion Question on the ballot next week which would provide money for Frontrunner. That is why I was lamenting that there seemed to be so little publicity about the issue.

Tags reactions, State, transit

culture

Good News From Iraq

The report that the Iraqi Prime Minister called for the removal of American military checkpoints in Baghdad was the best news I have heard from Iraq in a long time. The reason it was good news is because we removed the checkpoints. I’m sure some would argue that the fact that violence escalated in Baghdad afterwards means it was a bad move. I disagree.

One message that needs to be sent loud and clear to the Iraqi government, the insurgents, Iraqi citizens in general, American citizens, and the world is that Iraq is a sovereign nation. That means that the duly elected Iraqi government is in charge of that country If they ask something of the American military in Iraq, we should do as they request. This is a clear case where that happened. Too many people think that we can make Iraq stable. The fact is, we can’t. We can help them, but they are the ones who make it stable or not. The citizens of Iraq are the ones who determine is this experiment in democracy works.

Americans need to recognize that no amount of military might will enable us to dictate the way things will work in another country. We can disrupt the existing system, but when it comes to setting up a new system we can only suggest – we cannot force. We have Americans saying that women should have the right to vote, and that the majority cannot trample the rights of the a minority. The fact is that Iraqis can reverse those decisions the minute we leave the country – no matter how long we stay. They are the only ones who can make lasting decisions.

We should also recognize that there is no way to forcibly end the insurgency so long as the perception remains that the government in Baghdad is under American control. If jihadists view the government of Iraq as autonomous from America they will not support the insurgency unless their goal is to fight Iraq. Until then, they will come make trouble in Iraq as a fight against America. Our goal is not to stop the fight against Iraq, only the Iraqis can do that. Our goal is to help the Iraqis and stop the fight against America.

The only way to stop people from fighting against America is to treat people with respect. We need to treat them with respect when we visit their countries and we need to treat them with respect when they visit our country. That responsibility does not rest solely with the government. That responsibility also lies with the military, it lies with each corporation, and it lies with all Americans.

If we respect Iraq and Iraqis we must be there to support and help, not to dictate. If we do not respect Iraq and Iraqis we will never be able to help and we should cut our losses because we cannot change them. We must respect them for who they are or else we have no business there.

Tags Iraq, reactions, thoughts