Quick Domestic Politics Post

While the Republican race is a lot more interesting in general, I have been paying less attention to their debates and strategies because apart from not-Giuliani, those candidates will be generally of the same strength and effectiveness as both a candidate and (potentially) a president. Too much is being made out of how weird it is that Romney is a Mormon and while Americans tend not to elect old people, McCain does not look or sound crazy-old.

On the Democrats' front, I am a big supporter of John Edwards because I like that he is staking out different framing/philosophical grounds for the political discussions. Not only is that good because he is approaching it correctly but it is a generally good thing for candidates to disagree on these fundamental issues of how to approach subjects, not just the end policies. This is a good idea because in real life, those are what the disputes amount to. No one wants children to go without health care or for poor people to starve or to waste money on ineffective military ventures, the actual disagreement is about how to decide what is effective and how best to improve people's lives. That is why the whole phenomenon of "scoring political points" strikes most people as stupid.

However, from a purely political stand point, I think that Edwards is dead in the water. He is consistently polling third and with a growing spread between him and Obama/Clinton. The only way to make up that ground effectively is to attack the front runner. With Obama positioned second but close, he stands to gain from staying on a positive message, allowing Edwards to draw blood on Clinton and staying above the "common politics" both of them will engage in. Given the incentives and their likely results, I think that Obama, in spite of his milquetoast rhetoric at present is in a very strong position as the primaries play out. While Hillary Clinton has the advantage right now, she will have to defend against attacks from both her right and her left and there is not a lot of room for her support to grow as there are more people absolutely unwilling to vote for her than there are for any other candidate.

Monkey Sex? It's the Bomb!

October has been a tough month for politicians. Today we highlight the stories of three pols, one in Pakistan, one in India and one in America. Their stories offer us insight into life and death in politics and in the countries in which they worked.

First, in Pakistan, Bhutto did not die but many of her supporters (and maybe a couple of people who REALLY did not like her) were killed. She was fortunate enough to have just gone in to take a rest in her armored transport immediately before the bombs went off. It seems very early for either her, under a false flag operation, or Musharraf to make a move like this that will raise political tensions sharply. Those are not the only two parties with means and motivation to pursue such an attack but if you look at who stands to gain, those two really stand out.

Second, in India, a BJP politician falls to his death during a monkey attack. While they are very real, very scary and a tricky municipal issue in several Indian cities, there is something very basically funny about marauding packs of monkeys. My professor tells a funny story about eating bananas with his cousin on the roof of his house when he was a boy in Benaras. As they sat eating the bananas, they spied a pack of monkeys running across roofs towards them. The two boys had no time to go and hide so they crammed all the remaining bananas in their mouths and stood their ground, hoping the monkeys would leave them alone. When the leader of the monkeys arrived, my professor tried to be as still as he could while this monkey searched around. Finally, the monkey came over to where my professor stood, looked at him and slapped him in the cheek. The young boy spat banana everywhere and the monkeys feasted. The news story is more somber but for Muslims, there is a certain schadenfreude that comes with a BJP politician dieing as a result of the monkeys that cannot be killed because of the sensibilities of the hardcore Hindus that the BJP represents.

Finally, back home. There is not one good news source about this story so I am breaking an unofficial rule of the blog and linking to another blog. Rev. Gary Aldridge wound up dead as a result of suffocation
when he was hogtied, wearing two complete wetsuits and a diving mask. It was only after he failed to show up for church services that he was found. Normally, a minister would not be considered a political operator (ideally) and this would be a tremendous tragedy rather than a politically poignant anecdote. When you work for Jerry Falwell and get behind what his movement is striving for, dieing in this way makes you a metaphor.

Redesign and The Importance of Being Snottily Ironic

It should be clear but some of what I have written is sarcasm, abusing bombast and taking right wing positions I do not believe to highlight their absurdity. Unfortunately, this does not work well for people who do not actually know me or my positions and so I just sound like a confused, puddle-deep jerk. Jerk and confused, I could live with but I do want this writing to be useful for people who are not my close friends and family as well, so I am going to knock it off. Mostly.

The site has changed to reflect that and also because I screwed up the old design somehow. From now on, I will be posting a weekly bit from my national security class with David Cole. He is a good thinker and I like where his values lie.

Right now, I am reading The Terror Presidency by Jack Goldsmith and while there is nothing out-and-out wrong with the book, I cannot really recommend that you read it unless you are in law school, are interested in law school-ish thing, or are a huge geek for insider political structures. It is very interesting to me to hear Goldsmith's political and legal philosophies and how those played out in the decisions he made but a lot of the reasons those fights are interesting are pretty obscure legal arguments. I cannot imagine, say, my brothers who are both very intelligent people pursuing advanced degrees, getting a lot out of this book.

I have at least two issues from the book that merit writing about, though. Expect those in the coming days. They really illustrate a lot of what has been problematic about the Bush administration, at least to my mind. That is, I am sure, the point that Jack Goldsmith is making though I still have about forty pages to get through.