Month: August 2003

I said something flippant early this week about West Wing setting unreasonable expectations for a Presidency. Stephen Kaye (nice new blog location and layout) noted that some people do ask why President Bartlett couldn’t be president, which actually doesn’t surprise me.

All this in preamble to today’s California recall news: Schwarzenegger asked Rob Lowe to join his campaign. Lowe is in fact a Democrat, and of course was a regular on West Wing. George Schultz and Warren Buffett are already on board the campaign.

This suddenly strikes me as a really well-financed and well-thought out attempt to nail down the middle of the political spectrum and take it away from both the Democrats and the Republicans. Schwarzenegger is running as a Republican, but that’s so pro forma it’s not even funny. Buffett has been criticizing Bush recently.

If Schwarzenegger stays Republican, it’s a good thing. It could help stop the party’s drift to the right. If he goes third party — which I’m starting to think could happen — it’s an interesting thing. The Reform Party is probably too damaged to serve as a useful vehicle, but it’s not as if Buffett couldn’t fund a serious third party effort.

If, of course, he’s putting together a vehicle for personal power, that’s a bad thing. Gonna be an interesting fall.

LiveJournal from the streets of Baghdad. Yeah, no kidding; rebelcoyote is a National Guardsman who’s serving a tour of duty over there. He’s got some interesting stories to tell. (Thanks to rollick for the pointer.)

Of the other LiveJournallers who list their location as Baghdad, slownewsday, notquitejesus, and giantlaser are the only ones who seem to actually be in Baghdad. Or at least are making a good effort to fake it.

The directory of people listing their location as Iraq has 161 people in it, so perhaps I will not sort through them just now. Best guess: “not many of ‘em.”

Oh, OK. solidkz seems bonafide, so there’s one.

When I read about Bush dissing Schwarzenegger, I can’t help but think of Dana Carvey’s voice. And I know that’s wrong of me.

“It is the biggest political story in the country? That’s interesting. That says a lot. That speaks volumes. Oh, I think there’s maybe other political stories. Isn’t there, like a presidential race coming up? Maybe that says something.”

He can’t possibly have said that as snippily as I’m imagining, right?

Either way, it’s more of the right wing separating itself from Schwarzenegger. Interesting trend.

Daily Kos asks how best to protest the 2004 GOP convention. Gee, I dunno — how do you best protest a legitimate, legal gathering that’s part of the normal flow of American politics when you yourself rest firmly within the political mainstream?

It’s not the protesting itself that strikes me as wrong. I’m all for protesting at political events. But Kos is someone who participates quite actively in the two party system; he really doesn’t have any business arguing that the Republican side of the process shouldn’t happen. If he just wants to protest the timing of the convention, he ought to be a touch more explicit in his wording. “What do you guys think would be the best way to protest the timing of the convention,” perhaps.

And yeah, I do kind of think it’s a Freudian slip. The Democrats are rolling along with an underdog mentality at the moment, which tends to encourage protesting as a primary means of political expression, which is not so healthy even from a practical standpoint. Gotta stand for something, not just against it.

A fair number of the commenters pointed out the flaws inherent in the question, and I don’t think all of them were right-wingers, so there’s perhaps hope yet.

Time for a risky comparison.

In the year 2003, we’ve had three high-profile examples of a minority body using their legal ability to either effect or prevent change. The first is the Democratic filibusters used in the Senate to prevent three (out of many) of Bush’s judicial nominees from reaching the federal bench. The second is the Killer Ds — the Texas Democrats who fled the state to block redistricting. The third is the California recall election.

All of these represent a minority taking advantage of an established, legal tactic. If I argue (as I have) that the Texas Democrats are legitimate in their actions because the law allowing them to do so is well-understood and in effect supported by the citizens of Texas, I think I must make a similar argument for the California recall. The law allowing the recall is no surprise; there have been plenty of attempts to recall California elected officials. It’s just that most of them fail. If it’s a bad law, Californians have had every opportunity to repeal it.

Any of the three tactics may be ill-advised, in the way that running Bush for President may have been ill-advised. You can say any particular one of them shouldn’t have happened and was a mistake. But I don’t think you can call any of the processes by which they occurred an abuse of the democratic process unless you’re willing to call all of them an abuse of the democratic process.

In other words: minorities sometimes get to exercise power, even when the majority disagrees.

There are a couple of qualitative differences between the various situations. Most obviously, the California recall is an example of a minority actively effecting change, rather than an example of a minority actively blocking change. I’m not sure there’s a moral difference there, however, particularly in light of the other obvious difference: namely, the California minority voice only created a situation in which a full vote can take place rather than enacting change in its own right.

Now, the California recall voting process itself is pretty questionable. (Wow, what a great opportunity for approval voting…) But I think I want to consider that separately from the process which leads to the recall vote, and I don’t think we’ll really know until closer to October whether or not a very small minority (i.e., under 40%) will actually choose the next governor of California. My bet is on the usual dynamics of winner-take-all voting to come into effect in mid-September as the field narrows down to two “real” choices.