Category Archives: Random Blogging

Settling Scores and Legislating Badly

To this day, despite my aging memory, I can still vividly recall my law school Income Tax class–and not just because it was taught by the legendary Larry Jegen. The class was my first introduction to the phenomenon of laws like the one Jegen called “the crazy cousin rule.” This otherwise inexplicable provision, written in the appropriately impenetrable language of the tax code, allowed a tax deduction for any support rendered to certain relatives in mental institutions. Presumably, the author of the measure had such a relative, and he was using his elective position to write tax laws that would benefit him personally, by allowing him to recoup some of the costs involved. Public policy had nothing to do with it.

Which brings me to Mike Delph and his attempt to abolish the use of Grand Juries in Indiana.

As faithful readers of this blog (there are some, right?) will recall, I blogged about this odd proposal a while back, expressing my puzzlement. A more savvy observer of the political scene posted a comment, suggesting a motive for this seemingly bizarre effort: Delph, he said, was a friend of Charlie White, the Indiana Secretary of State who had been indicted by a grand jury on charges of theft and vote fraud.

That seemed petty and irrational even for Mike Delph, but an article about Charlie White’s upcoming trial in this morning’s Indianapolis Star has leant support to that explanation. In the lengthy background piece, Delph is quoted at several points about his friendship with White, and his conviction (no pun intended) that the charges were politically motivated. According to Delph, he and Charlie often pray together in Charlie’s office.

Now it all makes sense. A grand jury indicted his friend. Abolish grand juries.

It needn’t stop there. If your friend is mistakenly arrested by the police, abolish the police; if a doctor’s treatment harms your friend, abolish the practice of medicine….

I don’t know the content of those devotions in Charlie’s office, but may I suggest adding a prayer for less grandiosity and more common sense?

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I Couldn’t Have Said It Better

Every so often, someone will come across my first book–“What’s a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing at the ACLU?”–and will express surprise that I was once a Republican. That happened the other day, and I tried to explain how different the party I belonged to for so long–35 years!–was from the party they see today.

Strange as it may seem today, I was considered “too conservative” for a significant number of Republicans in 1980, when I was their local candidate for Congress; many of them actually defected and voted for my more “mainstream” opponent, Andy Jacobs, Jr. My political philosophy hasn’t changed, but the GOP certainly has; the result is that the positions I held–and hold–that were once labeled conservative now are considered left-wing. I stood still; the party careened “right” past me.

I don’t think people with whom I have that conversation really believe me when I explain how dramatic the shift has been over the last 30 years. But a forthcoming book makes the case more eloquently than I have been able to do.

The book is “It’s Even Worse than it Looks,” and it was written by Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute. Back when I was a Republican, Ornstein was an important intellectual force in the party, and was considered a member of the GOP’s right wing. In the book, Mann and Ornstein write

“One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier–ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

A number of my friends have marveled at how weak the field of GOP Presidential contenders is, but when a political party has become an angry, unthinking mob, when the base that candidates must satisfy prefers red meat to reason, potential candidates have a distasteful choice. They can wait for a less fevered, less rabid environment, or they can do what Romney, Gingrich, et al have chosen to do: reject evolution and science, extol fundamentalist religion and “family values,” attack gays and immigrants, and use barely coded “dog whistles” to play the race card. (One of the most dispiriting elements of this campaign season has been watching Dick Lugar–once a reasonable, dignified elder-statesman–grovel for the votes of these rabid know-nothings by trying to become someone other than the Dick Lugar who once commanded bipartisan respect.)

The real tragedy in the transformation of what used to be the Grand Old Party is that America desperately needs two competitive parties controlled by rational political actors. We voters need to hear different perspectives on policy issues, thoughtfully argued–not name-calling and demonization. Worse still, the absence of a worthy adversary encourages similarly juvenile antics by the Democrats. It makes a circus of the whole political process.

I miss my old party–and America is poorer for its absence.

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Another Kind of Polarization?

In a column justt before the South Carolina primary, David Brooks relayed a number of conversations with Republican primary voters. His treatment of them was what one might expect of the always civil Brooks–sympathetic and respectful.

But one line in particular struck me.  After commenting on the nostalgia expressed by several voters, Brooks noted that such sentiments–however understandable–make for “an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.”

As if to underline that observation, yesterday a number of people posted to Facebook an exit poll that broke down the composition of the GOP primary electorate–how many males, how many females, how many who self-identified as Evangelical, etc.

South Carolina is 26% black. The racial composition of South Carolina’s GOP primary voters was 99% white.

Whatever conclusions one might draw from those numbers, one seems pretty safe. In a country that continues to diversify, a political party that cannot appeal to Americans of all races and ethnicities has no future. If and when the demographics of South Carolina’s GOP reflect the demographics of the national Republican party, the party’s over.

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Polarization as Strategy

Matt Yglesias had a very interesting post yesterday about the recent SOPA debate, and the success of opponents to that legislation. He made five points, and it would be hard to argue with any of them: money counts, but once you have enough resources to communicate, having more money doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll win the battle; it is easier to stop change than it is to effectuate it. But I found his final two observations–reproduced below–particularly interesting.

Polarization is an illusion of agenda-control: SOPA/PIPA was a completely bipartisan endeavor, promoted by Republican Lamar Smith in the House and Democrat Pat Leahy in the Senate. The opposition was bipartisan too. Democrat Ron Wyden played the crucial role in delaying PIPA in the Senate, but Tea Partiers led the opposition in the House. Nancy Pelosi became a vocal opponent, and at last night’s debate all the Republican presidential candidates were suddenly in opposition. This is a stark contrast to the narrative of partisan polarization, but it illustrates that the parties are polarized in part because the leadership deliberately promotes a polarizing agenda. Leaders deliberately put issues that unite their caucuses on the agenda. When happenstance causes the agenda to be dominated by something outside the main structure of partisanship, the polarization dynamic breaks down.

Public engagement matters: One key difference between this and, say, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act is that SOPA/PIPA opponents actually got in the arena and did politics instead of complaining about how this showed that politics is corrupt and stupid. It was the whole boring dreary “call your congressman, sign this petition” rigamarole. Yes, often done in creative and innovating and webby ways. But still fundamentally about the idea that citizens need to communicate their views to elected officials. Members of congress, just like regular people, only have deep commitments to a few priorities. When they suddenly learn that they’ve mis-judged how many of their constituents care about something and which side they’re on, they’re happy to change positions.

The reminder that grass-roots political action can work is timely, but we’ve heard it before. The observation about polarization as a deliberate political tactic is new, at least to me, and certainly seems consistent with our contemporary political environment.

In the Indiana Statehouse–at least according to my lobbyist friends–you can find Rs and Ds on both sides of such issues as the public transportation referendum, or the smoking ban. Increasingly, you can even find a few Republicans defecting from the GOPs anti-gay agenda. But  propose measures that involve partisan power and party funding, like “Right to Work,” and fuzzy lines suddenly become sharp. As Yglesias points out, the same phenomenon occurs in Congress. Raising taxes on the wealthy is a good example.

Responsible legislative leaders would try to minimize the issues that create such stark divisions, so that the people’s business could get done in a thoughtful–or at least civil–fashion. (At this point, most citizens would settle for having our  business done at all.) They would try to establish and strengthen lines of communication, and build trust.

Irresponsible leaders who care only about political power, who don’t care about doing the people’s business, promote polarization and the demonization of the folks on the other side of the aisle.  Those tactics may help them solidify their control, but they undermine both democratic processes and public confidence in government.

There’s a reason Congress has an 11% approval rating. It’s probably just as well there’s no polling on approval of the Indiana General Assembly.

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Raining on Indianapolis’ Parade

I don’t care for sports–especially football–and I wasn’t all that thrilled when Indianapolis won the right to host the Super Bowl. But you would have to be even more testosterone-challenged than I am not to recognize the benefits to our City that come with the selection: the local infrastructure improvements, the civic spirit, the amount of money that will flow into the local economy, and most of all, the increased visibility.

One way or another, I’ve worked with civic organizations and/or local government my entire adult life. I still remember being part of a Hudnut Administration focused on creating Indianapolis from “India-no-place” and making it–in his words–“no mean city.”

The Super Bowl is an opportunity to show a billion people that we deserve urban respect. Hundreds of volunteers have been working hard for two years  to make the most of that opportunity.

Do the Governor and General Assembly care? Obviously not. They are willing to use their pissing match over “Right to Work” to give Indianapolis a black eye and diminish the value of hosting a world-class event.

The Republicans picked this fight, but the incredibly inept Democrats aren’t blameless.

Make no mistake: this battle isn’t about workers, or their rights. It’s all about politics and money; unions (even the pathetically weakened variety we have in Indiana) tend to support Democrats, so the Republicans want to weaken them while they have the votes to do so. The Democrats want to protect them for the same reason. And neither side appears to give a rat’s you-know-what about the consequences of raining on our city’s Super Bowl parade. Neither gives any evidence of concern that Indianapolis will once again be viewed as a minor-league city–a place with some nice sports facilities but hayseed politicians unable to see beyond their own narrow self-interest, unable to put Indianapolis’ long-term interests ahead of their own short-term political gratification.

When will we start electing grown-ups to govern us?

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