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The Republican Candidates’ Dilemma

I have friends who insist that Mitt Romney is a competent, pragmatic businessman. I have a personal acquaintance who is running for Congress whom I know to be an intelligent, middle-of-the-road problem-solver who would take her responsibilities seriously. I’m sure that–among the hundreds of other Republicans running for office–there are many who, in ordinary times, would be excellent public servants.

These aren’t ordinary times.

I feel sorry for Republican candidates this cycle, and I’m not being snarky. They are in an impossible situation.

One friend who actually knows Mitt Romney says he doesn’t recognize him. My own acquaintance has—in the course of her campaign for Congress– morphed into someone very different from the moderate, measured individual I’ve known for years.

It’s a political truism that Republican and Democratic candidates alike must pander to the partisan extremes during the primaries. But today’s Republican candidates can no longer shake up the Etch-A-Sketch and turn toward the middle in the general election, because the GOP’s rabid base won’t allow it. And in our media-saturated environment, any effort to moderate a campaign position is immediately transmitted to the self-appointed guardians of partisan purity, who respond by smacking down the errant candidate and bringing him (or her) to heel.

Since it is widely believed that the national election, at least, will be a “base” election—an election where turnout will determine the victor—otherwise sane candidates have no choice but to parrot the inanities of the least-knowledgeable, most anti-intellectual elements of their party, in hopes that enthusiasm of the true believers will trump the distaste they are generating with everyone else.

Those of us who follow politics understand what is happening. We recognize the uncomfortable position so many candidates occupy, somewhere between that partisan rock and that electoral hard place. My problem is with an aspect of this dilemma that is less often discussed or acknowledged.

There has been a lot written about the influence of money on campaigns and politics, especially after the decision in Citizens United. Pundits and bloggers have raised the obvious concern: if a plutocrat’s cash means that candidate X wins,  candidate X is going to owe that plutocrat. At the least, he’ll take the plutocrat’s calls; at the worst, he will simply do the plutocrat’s bidding. Fewer have noted the corollary: if the crazy core of the GOP base turns out, and manages to push otherwise losing candidates—Romney, Mourdock—over the edge, they too will be owed. Big time.

A few years ago, I told my husband I’d given up on voting for a candidate. Furthermore, I was no longer going to vote for the lesser of two evils. Instead, I was going to vote for the candidate who was pandering to the people who seemed least dangerous.

Whatever “real” personae are hiding beneath the shellacked exteriors of today’s Republican candidates is ultimately irrelevant. If elected, they will owe the party base, and that base will exact obedience. And make no mistake about it: the denizens of the GOP base pose a very real danger–to science, to reason, to the environment, to social stability, and to the American future.

Reason enough to vote for the other guys.

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But Isn’t It All About Voter Fraud??

Yesterday, a Facebook friend who lives in Pittsburgh posted a story from the Pittsburgh Gazette about Sophie Maslow, the city’s feisty former Mayor. Now in her nineties, Maslow is anxiously awaiting the Pennsylvania court’s ruling on the state’s new voter ID law–turns out that if it is upheld, she will be unable to vote for the first time in her adult life.

As she says, when she could no longer drive, she cut up her driver’s license. Her passport is expired. She plans to go to a license branch to get a photo ID if the law is upheld, but is worried by her neighbor’s reports of long lines and confusion.

In Indiana, shortly after a federal court upheld our version of the voter ID law, a group of elderly nuns in South Bend was turned away from the polls for lack of  suitable identification.

Of course, it’s all for a good cause–the sanctity of the vote. A couple of weeks ago, a letter to the editor chastised critics of the new voter ID laws. They are necessary, the letter-writer insisted. He then recounted a recent example of fraud, a widely reported instance of a woman who had voted in two states. The problem with that example is that the voter ID laws would do nothing to prevent that particular type of behavior. Most simply require a government-issued identification that is current and has a photo. They don’t require proof of residence. A current passport can take you on vacation–or to polling places in more than one state. (The letter writer didn’t explain how the “fraudster” managed to get registered and on the voter rolls in multiple locations, but for argument’s sake, I’ll assume it’s possible.)

A number of credible sources have documented the extremely small number of instances in which there has been actual voting fraud. Furthermore, where it has occurred, it has overwhelmingly been in the process of absentee balloting, not in-person voting, and these laws do nothing about absentee voting.

It is easy to shrug off the burden these measures impose on the elderly and the poor. I have well-meaning friends who shrug off the requirements by pointing out that “everyone” has a photo ID these days. “How can you cash a check or board a plane without one?” They simply cannot picture (no pun intended) people for whom bank accounts and air travel are foreign experiences. They don’t know anyone personally who does not possess a birth certificate–although the lack of that document (necessary in order to obtain a voter ID) is fairly common among elderly and African-American folks who were born in rural areas.

As Sarah Silverman says, in a foul-mouthed but funny  You Tube that is making the rounds on the web, these laws cleverly target four demographics: the elderly, blacks, students and the poor.  I wonder what those demographics have in common….

Oh yeah. Sophie Maslow is a Democrat.

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Excuse Me??

That whole “alternate universe” thing just keeps getting more bizarre.

Sandy Rios, formerly of Concerned Women for America, is now the host of a radio talk show for the American Family Association. Both organizations have a decidedly different slant on reality, but as Ed Brayton notes in a recent post from “Dispatches from the Culture Wars,”  Ms. Rios seems to have forgotten about two entire wars that George W. Bush launched:

“The problem with Islam, and we know this Bill, I would like to say, in fact I was going to write this article and I’ll just spill the beans on the air and that is they keep talking about what George Bush left this president and they’re talking about the horrible economy and what a mess he left and they haven’t been able to even turn it around in four years because it’s horrendous. But I’ll tell you what else he left them; he left them peace, he left them peace for ten years. And now that’s going ragged because we have been operating under Obama’s policies for the last four years and we are reaping the bitter fruits of chaos not only in the Middle East but in the world at large because we have not been dealing with them with strength.”

Until I read this, my favorite “excuse me” moment–not that it was easy to choose just one–was the line from a Mourdock ad that says something to the effect that “Joe Donnelly has been in Washington for eight years, and during that time the deficit rose by trillions of dollars.” I’ve lived in Indianapolis for over fifty years, and during that time the murder rate has increased–that hardly means I’m responsible. There are, of course, plenty of other inane and stupid political spots running–this bit of idiocy had lots of competition.

I can’t decide whether the politicians and pundits saying these things are unbelievably ignorant–or whether they just think we are.

And if it’s the latter…..dear lord, what if they’re right?

I am really, really ready for this election to be over.

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Out of the Mouths of Pundits

Peggy Noonan had a column a day or so ago in the Wall Street Journal in which she methodically detailed the ineptitude of the Romney campaign, and mused about what it might take to get that effort back on track. Much of what she had to say was familiar, conventional campaign wisdom to those of us who’ve spent lots of time in and around political contests, but it was her next-to-last paragraph that really struck me. Noonan wrote:

A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn’t about individual entrepreneurs. It’s people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.

That is demonstrably true–and not just true about political campaigns, but about the country’s political and social life. That said, it is a truth that has become, more or less explicitly, the hotly contested framework of this Presidential race.

Although the GOP took the President’s “you didn’t build that” remark out of context, Romney and the Republicans have made disagreement with what he actually did say the central theme of their message.

The President (and Elizabeth Warren, and others running for office this cycle) insist that “we are all in this together,” that citizens depend upon each other and our common institutions in myriad ways, large and small. The businessperson who succeeds deserves respect and admiration for his diligence and enterprise, but we also need to recognize the enabling role played by government: Mr. Successful ships his goods on roads provided by the taxpayer; he depends for security on police and firefighters supported by our taxes; he hires workers trained in our public schools. Ms. Businessperson sells those goods in markets that would not exist but for a legal and economic infrastructure that creates the rules and stability without  which people do not have the confidence–or often the wherewithal–to consume. (People in third world countries are not inherently less entrepreneurial, but even if they create a better mousetrap, there are few people able to buy it.)

Recognizing the importance of social infrastructure does not diminish the value of success or hard work, as the Romney campaign has charged. To the contrary, it is the refusal to recognize our essential interconnectedness and interdependence that is not only arrogant, but dangerous and short-sighted.

The GOP’s chosen message has been “it’s all about us, the job creators. There are makers and takers, and we are the makers. And we did it all by ourselves.”

The Democratic message this cycle (with apologies to Ms. Noonan) has been “A country is a communal exercise. It isn’t about individual entrepreneurs. It’s people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: a fair shake for everyone.”

As the President said at the Democratic Convention, it’s about citizenship.

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A Different Kind of Economic “Bubble”

In my Media and Public Policy class last week we were discussing the ways in which the Internet has given us the ability to live in “reality bubbles” of our own choosing, when an older student made a perceptive observation. She pointed out that when she grew up in Martinsville, she’d been surrounded by a “bubble” of bigotry–she’d lived in a small community of homogeneous people who all thought alike. In her case, the Internet had provided an escape from the bubble.

We all live in bubbles of one kind or another, and that ability to isolate ourselves from those with whom we do not share geography, religion, common interests and experiences can stunt our human empathy. When our distance from each other becomes too great, civility and self-government suffer.

Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel-winning economist, and he has just written a book called The Price of Inequality, examining the effects of  the currently huge divide between the rich and everyone else on our ability to sustain a democratic government.

He isn’t sanguine.

According to Stiglitz, the vaunted American market is broken. It has been overwhelmed by politically engineered market advantages—special deals that economists call “rent-seeking.” The term refers to politically-achieved “exemptions” from the market that allow certain individuals to reap economic returns above normal market levels– profits derived from favorable political treatment rather than competitive success.

In The Price of Inequality, Stiglitz chronicles these blatant tax and spending giveaways–the special deals and corporate welfare enjoyed by big agriculture, big energy, and many, many others.

Stiglitz also argues that much of the rent-seeking that plagues our economy takes a more subtle form. In many cases, the production of a product produces what economists call “negative externalities.” These are costs that are incurred during the manufacturing or development process that end up being imposed on society rather than paid for by the producer and included in the price of the goods or services involved. The most commonly cited example would be a manufacturer who discharges his waste into a nearby waterway rather than properly disposing of it, shifting the costs of cleanup and disposal to others. Society pays for the pollution, and that cost is not included in the market price of the manufactured goods.

The bottom line is that markets don’t operate properly when some participants are in a position to game the system, and societies don’t operate properly when markets are rigged.

As he points out, one of the consequences to society is that when those at the top–the 1%–enjoy the best health care, education, and other benefits that come with greater wealth, they fail to realize that “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”

They live in a bubble.