August 29, 2010
Reconsidering term limits
By Bill Kraus
My own aversion to term limits comes to some extent from my distaste for procrustean measures generally. This is enhanced by knowing that the Bass family of Texas is known to put big money into the idea, and, to a lesser extent, that this is George Will’s favorite remedy for anything and everything that is wrong with politics.
The better reason is that term limits would have and will truncate some potentially sensational legislative careers. Lyndon Johnson’s, Mel Laird’s and Dave Obey’s come to mind. What would they and others like them have done post term-limited stays in Congress. Good, worthwhile things no doubt.
At a more personal level I can recall the Wisconsin attempt to put limits on sheriffs’ terms. This was easily thwarted. The sheriff was limited to two consecutive terms. When he reached that limit, his wife ran to succeed him, and then he came back for another two terms. A process that could and did go on as long as the marriage partners did.
On the other hand, I have become a better-late-than-never fan of President James Polk. He imposed term limits on his presidency when he announced during his campaign that he would serve only one term when elected in the mid-1800s. He was responsible for getting Oregon and Washington from the powerful English, and California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas from the scattershot Mexicans. So much for the disadvantage of the lame duck status that accompanies term limits.
To get back to the emerging advantages of term limits in this day and age, there are several:
1. The focus of the term limited can shift subtlety or strongly onto the job they were elected to perform instead of on keeping the job.
2. Dispassionate redistricting to increase the number of seats truly in play becomes less threatening. The paralyzing phenomenon of a permanent majority composed of invincible incumbents should gradually disappear.
3. The need for money to hold on to seats which are temporary becomes less desperate. Would politicians with a predetermined life expectancy be less likely to be for sale? One could hope.
4. Most important--particularly at the city council, county board, state legislative levels--these offices would become what the founding fathers envisioned: avocational diversions for citizens who have real jobs and real lives instead of sinecures, lifelong careers for a largely professional (mercenary?) class.
What the specter of term limits promises is more ideas, daring, and long-term thinking for those lower level legislators who are more ambitious for higher office and for the majority who will be more concerned about creating a government that works and that is devoted to improving the human condition instead of providing career jobs for them and their fellow incumbents.
The scales are tipping.
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August 23, 2010
Stupid, stupid us
By Bill Kraus
Several important, talented legislative leaders were indicted in Wisconsin, and their contemporaries elsewhere are going to jails and halls of shame all over the country because they broke one or several laws trying to fill the bottomless campaign coffers for themselves and/or their political dependents.
It’s the money, stupid.
The first question journalists ask potential candidates is, “How much money do you have?”
The only question the hired guns who have taken over the campaign management business from the mostly dormant political parties and the disappearing citizen volunteers who once managed most campaigns is, “How much money do you have?”
The reason the able George Mitchell abandoned his leadership position and the U.S. Senate itself is because he could only assemble a significant part of his caucus three days a week. The rest of the time incumbents were on the phone or back in their states assembling the funds they would need for their next campaign.
Campaigns and campaign spending on media are somewhere between lengthy and endless.
The perception that something is being bought (up to and including representatives themselves) by the people and institutions that make major campaign donations is widespread and increasing. The faster this perception rises the lower the regard of the trade and its participants sinks.
The nastiness of the attack campaigns that these large amounts are buying aside, one of the major barriers to candidate recruitment is funding the campaigns that pay for them. How many talented, worthy people are willing to put up with the abuse just to spend their time dialing for dollars? Fewer and fewer.
The Congress and executive offices everywhere are more and more the stamping grounds for millionaires. It is unlikely that the founders thought they were creating an oligarchy for the wealthy.
It’s the money, stupid.
The list of the corrupting campaign system could go on and on, which is bad. What is worse is that the list of changes that can be adopted to bring the influence of money down and the influence of the people up is a lot shorter.
Campaign spending limits are never popular among the usually well endowed incumbents who would have to enact them.
Excluding or controlling the campaign spending by outsiders who are putting their money where their voluble mouths are into politics is not something the Supreme Court will permit.
The possibility of getting the TV broadcasters who are the main beneficiaries of all this spending to offer free time on what are essentially public airwaves is right up there with getting the sun to rise in the west.
More and more candidates are tired of paying the price of nonstop fundraising, and there is even a minor revulsion of doling out dollars among the heavy breathers who furnish the big bucks. Unilateral disarmament is not an option. An anti-spending detente isn’t anything that is going to happen soon.
There are, however, indications that a tipping point may be approaching. One way to measure its proximity is to ask candidates if they would, if elected, support change. Ask them if they know “it’s the money, stupid” is making their lives difficult and the democracy itself susceptible to corruption.
Ask them.
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August 20, 2010
Nations to build
By Bob Menamin
Watching General Patraeus talking on Meet the Press last weekend about nation building raises an interesting question. Do we really need his skill set to nation build in this country rather than in Afghahistan?
The United States is disintegrating into a fractious abyss with the potential of civil war if we continue on our present path. We are close to being ungovernable due to our inability to coalesce around philosophical and policy issues.
The following is a list of areas and groups needing attention and mediation:
1. Those understanding & wanting to follow the Constitution vs. those who don't and won't
2. Faith-based (Christians, etc.) vs. non-believers
3. Women's choice vs. overturning Roe v. Wade
4. Unfettered, unregulated capitalism vs. capitalism with prudent regulation
5. Reducing deficits in a depression vs. government stimulus and spending in a depression
6. Tax policy that is regressive and favors the wealthy vs. tax policy that is progressive and favors the middle class and poor
7. Those who believe humans have a causal effect in global warming and an obligation to address it vs. those who don't believe and/or don't want government involved
8. Congressional Republicans vs. congressional Democrats
9. Tea party advocates vs. progressives
10. Proponents of military solutions vs. proponents of diplomacy and peaceful solutions
11. Fear-driven people vs. people driven by hope & courage
This is an incomplete list and I'm sure all FightingBob.com readers could add to it. But it is a beginning for General Petraeus to work on. Let's bring him home and get to it.
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August 15, 2010
Honor among gorillas
By Bill Kraus
I have had conversations with three of the 500-pound gorillas in the campaign financing room recently.
All three are appalled at the turn that the campaigns they have been financing have taken toward the politics of demonization.
All three admit to a degree of complicity in this egregious development.
None of the three, however, is suggesting a "not on my dime" strategy where they would withhold their contributions to campaigns and candidates who rely on or over-do the politics of attack.
The voters and activists I talk to feel the way the gorillas do. They are not throwing down their ultimate weapons either. They are not withholding their votes.
In both cases, the funders and the voters may not have a choice. The dilemma may be that all the candidates--like the chairs of the two major parties in Wisconsin--are fully on the attack, pointing out each others' character flaws, questioning motives and the basic honesty of all the participants in this once honorable trade.
What all are beginning to realize is that the demonization trap they are caught in is having a deleterious effect on candidate quality.
How many talented people with the potential to be worthy public servants, even those with the kind of money that these wretched campaigns now cost, are willing to expose themselves and their families to the kind of personal abuse that is part and parcel of too many campaigns in this era?
How many candidates who win these kinds of campaigns are going to be able to resist the pressure of their leaders and their mad dog partisans to bring the campaign fever to the legislative chambers after these electdions?
Not many, it would appear. Those with majority power don't compromise. Those without it adopt tactics that are more about bringing down those with the majority power that they want than with governing, with improving the human conditions, or with trying to deal with the many complicated problems that beset us.
Not many.
The question then is how do we turn campaigning and governing away from mutual destruction? How do we get back to being adversaries who debate instead of enemies who hate?
If I knew, I'd tell you. So would the 500-pound gorillas. So would most voters.
Politics, as has often been said, ain't beanbag. But it doesn't have to be WWIII.
Is it time to follow our mothers' advice and "play nice"? A lot of us think so.
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August 11, 2010
The wrong leak
By Bob Menamin
Whatever else one might say about the Bradley Manning case one thing we know is that it has given us yet another example of how the U.S. has a class system that gives the wealthy and well-connected huge advantages over the rest of us. Manning, a 22-year-old PFC, has discovered that we do not have “equal justice” in the nation he is defending.
The Manning case is no longer leading network newscasts but is still wending its way through the military's "justice" system.
Manning is accused of leaking a classified, six-year history of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Government officials and politicians of both dominant political parties are labeling him a traitor and calling for a 50-year prison sentences.
Much of what Manning allegedly leaked gives information about Bush administration lies and distortions related to the war in Afghanistan. Included is information regarding the killing of innocent civilians by U.S. agents and troops, but the focus of the news coverage is primarily on the fact of the leak and not on the substance of the leaks.
Compare Manning’s treatment to the Bush administration’s outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame in July 2003. Plame work involved the proliferation of nuclear weapons with an emphasis on rogue countries and terrorist networks. Her husband, Joe Wilson, wrote a series of op-ed pieces questioning the Bush administration's facts and rationale for attacking Iraq and getting citizen support for the war.
The Bush administration was unhappy with Wilson's op-eds and retaliated by publicly outing Plame as a CIA agent and thereby ending her career in the CIA. Plame had the misfortune of being married to Wilson. She was used as a vehicle to punish Wilson. Investigations showed that columnist Bob Novak, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s aide Scooter Libby were complicit in outing Plame. Libby was the only one prosecuted and convicted. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison, but he never served a day of his sentence his sentence was commuted by President Bush. It was believed by many sources that Libby would have implicated others in the conspiracy, including, possibly, Bush and Cheney.
The Obama administration did not pursue further investigation against Libby, but seems to want to make an example of Manning. Some people are just more equal than others.
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August 9, 2010
Disadvantages of incumbency
By Bill Kraus
Remember when incumbents had all the advantages? Established sources of large sums of money. Loyal constituents who had already voted for them. Experience in politics and governing and in the jobs they were running for.
From the looks of the campaigns being assembled by this year’s challengers, the strategy seems to be to turn all those advantages on their heads.
What we seem to have here is a 2010 version of catch-22.
There is a lot of unhappiness out there, and the fingers of blame are being pointed at the people who used to routinely win something in excess of 90 percent, almost 100 percent of the elections: the invincible incumbents.
Their responses to this ugly turn of events do not seem to be getting much traction.
“I inherited the problem” was always a little limp. If you inherited the problem from someone you defeated you must have promised to fix it. If you inherited it from a buddy, someone from your own party, you should be more careful when choosing your friends.
“I fixed it” isn’t playing too well either. One of the reasons is that in the great American political tradition, as soon as the solution is proposed the problem is forgotten and the solution becomes the problem.
Even if there is some indication that the fix may be working, it will never be working fast enough or completely enough or at the right price.
This year the problem with the big fix seems to be, according to the challengers’ campaign statements, that the fix created a different problem which is worse than the one the incumbent claims to have fixed (which didn’t work anyway).
Turnabout is said to be fair play. Or not.
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