Politikos Haverford

Politikos 9

Harvey Glickman

May 3, 2012

We Have the Best Politics Money Can Buy-I

The news on May 2, 2012 that $4 million will be spent by the Romney “SuperPAC” to buy ads in eight swing states once again reminds us of the staggering amounts of money that lubricate American politics today.  As of April 20, Obama has raised $197 million; but the combined total of donations to all the Republican presidential candidates is $220 million. It is still a half-year away from election day.

Most of the money goes into TV advertising and it debases political debate.  Most TV advertising in politics is negative: first, by “defining” the opposition as unfit, and second, by broadcasting half- and quarter-truths about one’s opponent.  Of course, it is not enough to criticize an opponent’s policies or ideas; it seems necessary to define an opponent as a rogue, a knave or borderline subversive.  It seems the more money that goes into political campaigning, the less informative is the result.

Cascades of money make this possible.  As far as freedom to spend is concerned, we are now back to the days of William McKinley’s 1896 presidential campaign.  His campaign manager was Mark Hanna.  I am reminded (by J.J. Goldberg, Forward [Weekly], May 4, 2012) that Hanna said, “There are two things that are important in politics.  The first is money and I can’t remember what the second is.”

This is the first of two articles in Politikos on money in politics in the USA.  It describes a situation of practically unlimited spending to influence outcomes.

Official spending, in national and sub-national politics, is subject to certain controls…but they are increasingly growing meaningless.  There are federal laws limiting individually donated amounts to official campaign committees.  We all know about the little box on our federal income tax return that would permit $3 to go into a Presidential election expenditure fund, shared by the candidates if they agree to certain campaign expenditure limits.  The number of people checking that box is going down –-now only 8 % of individual tax returns–  in parallel to the candidates increasingly no longer accepting federal limits on campaign expenses, because they need to raise more than permitted…and because they can.

Public financing of presidential campaigns still exists.  Its origin is in the idea in the 1970s of giving the less well-endowed candidates a chance: to try to reduce the impact of unrestricted spending on elections.  At the federal level, public funding is limited to subsidies for presidential campaigns. This includes a “matching” program for the first $250 of each individual contribution during the primary campaign; financing the major parties’ national nominating conventions, and funding the major party nominees’ general election campaigns.

To receive federal subsidies in the primary, candidates must privately raise $5000 each in at least 20 states. During the primaries, in exchange for agreeing to limit spending, eligible candidates receive matching payments for the first $250 of each individual contribution (up to half of the spending limit). By refusing matching funds, candidates are free to spend as much money as they can raise privately.  That is where we are today: the era of “the sky’s the limit in spending on presidential elections.”

From 1976 through 1992, almost all candidates who could qualify, accepted matching funds in the primaries. By 1996 private wealth became more important, as Republican candidate Steve Forbes opted out of the program. In 2000, Forbes and George W. Bush opted out. In 2004 Bush and Democrats John Kerry and Howard Dean did not take matching funds in the primary.  In 2008, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and Republicans John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul decided not to take primary matching funds.

In addition to primary matching funds, public funding also assists with financing the major parties’ (and eligible minor parties’) presidential nominating conventions and funding the major party (and eligible minor party) nominees’ general election campaigns. The grants for the major parties’ conventions and general election nominees are adjusted each Presidential election year to account for increases in the cost of living. In 2012, each major party is entitled to $18.2 million in public funds for their conventions, and the parties’ general election nominees are eligible to receive $91.2 million in public funds. If candidates accept public funds, they agree not to raise or spend private funds or to spend more than $50,000 of their personal resources.

No major party nominee turned down government funds for the general election from 1976, when the program was launched, until Barack Obama in 2008.  Obama again declined government funds for the 2012 campaign, as did Mitt Romney. So the 2012 election  will be the first since 1976 in which neither major party nominee accepts federal funding.  It will break all records on spending.

The biggest opening today for campaign spending bloat is permitting the “superPACS” – political action committees – to spend what they like (and not report it) as long as such PACS are not officially connected to a candidate’s campaign.  So we have multi-millionaires, or fronts for such people, creating vehicles for spending millions—in addition to what candidates raise, and in addition to what parties raise.  (Newt Gingrich’s campaign was virtually single-handedly financed by one person’s superPAC—that of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.)

Campaign finance law in the United States changed drastically in the wake of two 2010 judicial opinions: the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in SpeechNow.org v. FEC. According to a Congressional Research Service report (2011), these two decisions constitute “the most fundamental changes to campaign finance law in decades.”

Citizens United struck down, on free speech grounds, the limits on the ability of organizations that accepted corporate or union money in running electioneering communications.

Two months later, a unanimous nine-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided SpeechNow, which relied on Citizens United, to hold that Congress could not limit donations to organizations that only made independent expenditures, that is, expenditures that were “uncoordinated” with a candidate’s campaign. These decisions led to the rise of “independent-expenditure only” PACs, commonly known as “Super PACs,” which can raise unlimited funds from individual and corporate donors and use those funds for electioneering advertisements, provided that the Super PAC does not “coordinate” with a candidate.  Do you believe that Karl Rove’s “SuperPAC” will be independent of Romney’s campaign?

In 2008—the last presidential election year—candidates for office, political parties, and independent groups spent a total of $5.3 billion on federal elections. The amount spent on the presidential race alone was $2.4 billion, and over $1 billion of that was spent by the campaigns of the two major candidates: Barack Obama spent $730 million in his election campaign, and John McCain spent $333 million.  In the 2010 midterm election cycle, candidates for office, political parties, and independent groups spent a total of $3.6 billion on federal elections. The average winner of a seat in the House of Representatives spent $1.4 million on his or her campaign. The average winner of a Senate seat spent $9.8 million. (In the news not long ago was the item that Senator Orrin Hatch, seeking the Republican re-nomination in the Utah pre-primary convention, spent $5 million influencing delegates.  He was unsuccessful in preventing a primary.)

The money for campaigns for federal office comes from four broad categories of sources: (1) small individual contributors (individuals who contribute $200 or less), (2) large individual contributors (individuals who contribute more than $200), (3) political action committees, and (4) self-financing (the candidate’s own money).

One result of the limit on personal contributions from any one individual is that campaigns seek “bundlers”—people who can gather contributions from many individuals in an organization or community and present the sum to the campaign.

Although bundling existed in various forms since the enactment of the FECA, bundling became organized in a more structured way in the 2000s, spearheaded by the “Bush Pioneers” for George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. During the 2008 campaign the six leading primary candidates (three Democratic, three Republican) had listed a total of nearly two thousand bundlers.

Corporations and labor unions organizations may sponsor a “separate segregated fund” (SSF), known as a “connected PAC.” These PACs may receive and raise money only from a “restricted class,” generally consisting of managers and shareholders of a corporation, and members in the case of a union, or another interest group. The sponsor of the PAC may absorb all the administrative costs of operating the PAC and soliciting contributions. By January 2009, there were 1,598 registered corporate PACs, 272 related to labor unions and 995 to trade (business) organizations

Elected officials and political parties cannot give more than the federal limit directly to candidates. However, they can set up a “Leadership PAC” that makes independent expenditures. Once again, provided the expenditure is not coordinated with the candidate, this type of spending is unlimited. Under the FEC rules, leadership PACs are non-connected PACs, and can accept donations from individuals and other PACs. Since current officeholders have an easier time attracting contributions, Leadership PACs are a way parties keep their own seats or attempt to capture seats held by other parties. A leadership PAC sponsored by an elected official cannot use funds to support that official’s own campaign, but, it may fund travel, administrative expenses, consultants, polling, and other non-campaign expenses.  Between 2008 and 2009, leadership PACs raised and spent more than $47 million.

But the “big dogs” in this arena are the “Super PACs.”  The 2010 election marked the rise of this new political committee. They are officially known as “independent-expenditure only committees,” because they may not make contributions to candidate campaigns or parties, but rather must spend independently of the campaigns. They can raise funds from corporations, unions and other groups, and from individuals, without legal limits.

Finally, we have 501(c)(4) organizations: civic leagues and other corporations operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, or local associations of employees with membership limited to a designated company or people in a particular municipality or neighborhood, and with net earnings devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes. Unlike 501(c)(3) charitable organizations – the charities we all know about — they may also participate in political campaigns and elections, as long as the organization’s “primary purpose” is the promotion of social welfare and not political advocacy. 501(c)(4) organizations are not required to disclose their donors publicly. This has led to rising use of 501(c)(4) organizations in raising and donating money for political activity without disclosure of donors, from 1.3% of outside spending in 2006 to 44% of outside spending in 2010.

Think of the alternative useful purposes all this election expenditure might go toward!  Other civilized, constitutionally democratic countries spend much less in holding elections.  Why can’t we?

Politikos 8
Harvey Glickman
May 2, 2012

Why Are They So Angry?

I was at my polling place most of the day on Primary Day, April 24, 2012, in my capacity as Democratic Committeeperson in Bala (PA). Since the primaries in Pennsylvania are “closed,” the Committeepersons, or greeters, rarely get to talk to the other side’s voters. So this is about the Democratic voters, the 20 % of Democratic registered voters who turned out. What struck me was the level of anger among some people disappointed with Obama.

First, it should be said, that my encounters ran the gamut, ranging from a few enthusiasts about Obama, to a few downright opposed. Most of the opinions I detected were in –between, but most were unenthusiastic. And, these were Democrats. In the few actual conversations I could manage, I detected a sense of disappointment—not doing enough to reverse the recession, producing a complicated and confusing healthcare reform, not doing enough to rein in Wall Street excesses, and so on. But among these disappointed Democrats, a few really angry persons vented their feelings, including two who claimed they were going to write in another name at the top of the ballot, instead of Obama. (At the end of the day, in the tally, I discovered we had two write-ins for President: Hilary Clinton and Mickey Mouse.)

Not long ago I read parts of a new book by two Harvard political scientists, Theda Skocpol and Vannessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. While they focus on Republicans, the authors suggest a few points I regard as illuminating our present condition.
The Tea Party people are largely older, white, economically comfortable and reasonably well-educated—not really different in that respect from the bulk of the Democratic constituency in my ward and precinct. And “my” constituents are conservative in a generic sense. They favor and value the major existing government programs: social security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits. These are programs whose benefits they feel they earned. But apparent to me, among my constituents, there remains a suspicion that the poor, the immigrant minorities and today’s youth are freeloading. This plays into a fear of a great cultural shift in the America they know, symbolized by Obama’s origins—white mother, black African father, early education in exotic Indonesia.

My feeling is that the Tea Party Republicans are at the extreme end of a generational divide, which in part accounts for Obama’s difficulties with his own people. (Let’s face it, yes, there are some people who still cannot accept a black person as President of the USA…and while I believe most of them support Republicans these days, there are probably some in the Democratic fold as well. Just contemplate the farce over Obama’s birth certificate.) I think that my Democratic neighbors are not only disappointed that Obama has been stymied on so many fronts, but they have been influenced by the steady drumbeat of Republican criticism: “socialist” policies, “government take-over” of health insurance, “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. (Republican slogans are so much more evocative than the Democratic ones: witness “death panels.”)

So what accounts for the anger of a few previous supporters? Their world is slipping away. They worry that their benefits will become more costly, will become more complicated to draw upon, and that unfamiliar types of people are taking charge of things. So the major question becomes: how can we get the point where we debate policies clearly and simply instead of parrying slogans? Has our electoral process become totally unmoored from rational debate?

Politikos 7

April 20, 2012

Harvey Glickman

Lonely—in our crowd?

This is adapted from a communication from my college classmate, Charlie Schaefer, with edits by me and additions by me.  This is printed with his permission. Charlie is not responsible for the implications I draw or the musings and the policy “conclusions” I suggest.

Nine Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime:

1. The Post Office

Imagine a world without the post office. Its financial troubles probably mean that there is no way to sustain it in its present form.   Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

2. The Cheque

Britain is laying the groundwork to eliminate the paper cheque by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process cheques. Plastic cards and online transactions are leading to its demise. This dovetails with the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would go out of business.

3. The Newspaper

The younger generation does not read newspapers except pieces of it online. They certainly don’t subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. Papers on your doorstep may go the way of the milkman and the diaper service.  As for reading the paper online, we are already paying for it. The rise in mobile internet devices and e-readers has caused newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. The Printed Book

Perhaps you believe you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the paper pages.  Some people  said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. They wanted a hard copy CD.  But people  change their minds when they discover that they can get albums for half the price without ever leaving home.  The same thing will probably happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price of a book on Kindle or Nook is less than half that of a paper book. Contemplate the convenience!  Once you  flick your fingers on the screen, instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, you can’t wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you’re holding a gadget instead of a book.

5. The Land Line Telephone

Unless you have a large family and make many local calls, you don’t need it any more . Most people keep it, simply because they’ve always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.  Most of your kids live without land lines.

6. Music

For many of us, this may be the saddest part of this story. The music industry is dying.  Not just because of illegal downloading. It’s the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it.  The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today are “catalogue items,” meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with: older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit.  Both classical and popular music concerts increasingly rely on special events and gimmicks to bring people into concert halls.

7. Television

Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they’re playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Probably good riddance to most of it.  Maybe it’s time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix, and connected to their TV screen.

8. The “Things” That You Own

Many of the possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in “the cloud.” Today your computer has a hard drive where you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are completing their latest “cloud service.” That means that when you turn on a computer, the internet will be built into the operating system.  So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the “internet cloud.” If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That’s the good news. But, will you actually own any of this “stuff” or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big “Poof?” Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes me want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, or grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

9. Privacy

If there ever was a concept, on which we can nostalgically look back, it would be privacy. That’s already gone. It’s been gone for a long time. There are cameras on the street, and in most of the office buildings…even in my elevator in my condo residence. Cameras are built into your computer and cell phone.  24/7, probably, someone can find out who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads on your computer screen change to reflect those habits. Companies will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

Thank you Charlie.  This is amusing…and scary.  For anyone, like Politikos, interested in creating and maintaining communities, not just crowds, in which dialogue continues over time, in order to develop issues, agreements and commitments, we need to figure out ways to restore human interaction.   Because some of these developments are simply more isolating:

1.    Putting things in the mail often means a trip to the post office, a destination in every community, where you met neighbors and got to know the long-term post office clerks.  Even in apartment houses, people get to know their mailman.

2.    Keeping a checking account means occasional trips to the bank.  People used to have a personal branch, where they opened the account, and had occasional conversations with a bank branch executive.

3.    When everyone depended on print newspapers, you could be sure that conversations began on the same platform—what the papers printed that day. (Newspapers and magazines in Philadelphia used to print an advertisement showing every passenger but one on a bus or train reading a newspaper: “Nearly everyone in Philadelphia reads the Bulletin.”)

4.    The individuation of music listening deprives people of the testing experience of programs prepared by musical groups in a concert hall…and of the thrill of discovering a new piece.  Not to speak of the thrill of a communal appreciation in a standing ovation or mass applause.

5.    Television undermined the group experience of movie houses…of course, at one time it brought the family together on certain evenings to watch hugely popular TV shows. Sports on TV now preserves something like that effect.  But streaming movies and TV shows on laptops would seem to push toward radical individuation and pull toward the familiar…How many times have you seen a group of people at the same table in a restaurant, each one peering intently at their I-phones?

6.    The “cloud” as the repository of our stuff—photos, documents, CDs—plunges us into a great unknown.  People still preserve stuff: look at “Antiques Roadshow” on public television!  What would our homes look like without most of their books, filing cabinets and CDs?  Already people seem glued to their hand-held devices even in the midst of meetings, in their autos, on trains and planes…and in auditoriums unless asked to turn them off.

7.    The issue of privacy is tricky.  We probably feel safer in public places knowing that a camera is recording our activities, although probably annoyed when we are detected traveling over the speed limit on a highway (!)  Cameras in phones are fun when they enable instant records of our children’s parties and newborn babies.  But what is the limit of those ads on computer screens?  Shopping on the internet also means more e-mail advertising in your in-box.  And if much of our time is spent deleting e-mails, when do we ever get to do something?

Politikos. 6

March 27, 2012

Centralizing Power

In his column in the New York Times on March 26, David Brooks (Philadelphia Main Line born and bred), in his usual way, managed to split the difference between liberals and conservatives. Ascribing to himself a Hamiltonian view of government, he allowed for the constitutionality of the mandate for purchasing health care, but felt that the administration of the provision of health care dangerously centralized governmental power. That may sound “moderate,” nevertheless it furthers the current conservative agenda, which is to sow distrust in government.

Brooks makes four arguments: [My reactions are in brackets]
a) “Obamacare” forces people into economic activity in order to regulate them. As a result the government takes on new powers. [ It is not clear why this is so different than Social Security, where everyone is forced to pay into a trust fund, which can be drawn upon after age 65. Everybody who is employed is forced to allow a percentage reduction from his/her paycheck. Sure it expands government, but it beats starving in your old age.]
b) “Obamacare” centralizes cost control Medicare decisions in an Independent Payment Advisory Board. [Brooks notes they are “unelected.” One wonders which advisory-regulatory boards Brooks would have elected. The Federal Reserve Board? The National Transportation Safety Board?]
c) “Obamacare” continues the centralization of the nation’s resources. [Not so different than Bush, who added to centralization of healthcare with the addition of prescription drug coverage to health insurance. Republicans always worry over costs of government, except when they do it. They worry about centralization of government but never about mega-centralization of global business, which undermines governments.]
d) And, finally, “it would effectively make health care a political responsibility.” [Well, now we get to the nub of the matter. That’s the whole point. The expansion of “coverage” has already occurred, with all the people who cannot afford, or simply do not buy, health insurance using hospital emergency rooms when they get sick. Hospitals are “mandated” to treat everyone who turns up in an emergency room. So health care is already a “political responsibility;” we have just shunted occasional basic care to hospitals.]

Brooks agrees with the final point. So, the individual mandate is acceptable. But Brooks feels it is an error to centralize the cost control elements. “…the decentralized premium support model is a better way to control costs: government insists everybody has coverage but then encourages companies, families and Medicare beneficiaries to engage in a regulated process of discovery to find the best care at the lowest cost.” Well, perhaps companies have the resources to engage in a process of discovery. Does anybody know of any family or any Medicare beneficiary who actually went through a satisfying “process of discovery” that left them satisfied that they found the best medical care at the lowest cost? Most people encounter medical care with their first jobs. The choice is pre-packaged. Most people stick with modifications of their early medical care insurance. Job losses, job changes, family growth, divorces, and the like fashion the “market” for health care, not an open process of discovery by individuals who happen to be shopping for a service.
Hamilton is not the best guide. Here, Obama is.

Politikos. 5

March 9, 2012

Suppressing the Vote

In one sense the history of elections in the USA has recorded a march to an expansion of the electorate.  In the nineteenth century we abolished property qualifications for the right to vote, we eliminated indirect elections to the US Senate, and we granted (male) African Americans the franchise –only to have it virtually eliminated in the post-Civil War southern states for almost a century.  The twentieth century saw a long struggle to expand the franchise to all African Americans and to women.  The Presidential electoral “college” was reduced to a rubber stamp of the popular vote in the states.  Voting age was reduced to eighteen years old.

Nevertheless two elements of voting have resisted this march toward greater inclusiveness: the shape of the districts in which we cast our ballots for our national and state representatives, and the obstacles we place in the way of physically getting to the polls on election day.

Every decade we conduct our national census.  And every ten years we adjust the election districts to take account of shifts in population.  So in the past twenty years states that have gained population have acquired more national representation in the lower House of Congress.  (We still live with two Senators from every state, no matter what the population, thus granting sparsely populated Western states equal representation in this respect with heavily populated states like California and New York.)  Inside the states, the state legislatures re-draw the boundaries of the state election districts for the state legislature.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that such boundary drawing is the prerogative of the states—within certain rules to reduce biases against racial minorities.  Within the past two decades the Supreme Court has also ruled that state legislatures can, if they want, re-district in between the decennial census, ostensibly to take account of rapid population shifts.  Texas has managed to sharply reduce the number of Democrats they send to the US Congress and their own state legislature by such a maneuver.  So the party in power at the state level usually tries to cut down the chances of the opposition party in the next election.  All this is constitutional, since the matter of elections is a power reserved to the states…by previous Supreme Court rulings, but within the twentieth century understandings of civil rights.

All this brings me to the Pennsylvania State Legislature.  In the past few months a joint committee of the legislature has been working out a plan for the new boundaries of the mandated revision of election district boundaries.  Since the Republicans control both Houses, nobody expected them to violate their self-interest.  So, of course, they came up with a plan designed to make it easier for Republicans to get themselves elected to the national House of Representatives and both branches of the State Legislature.

There are some provisions of past court rulings that require such districts to respect, where possible, local jurisdictions, like townships and natural boundaries, like rivers.  But, of course, that is in the eye of the beholder, and in the eyes of the State Supreme Court judges.  Judges are elected in Pennsylvania, on party lines, although they can be “retained” after their first contested election.

It takes a lot to overturn an incumbent in a retention election.  Many judges are retained without opposition from an opposing party.  The Republicans hold a majority of the judges at the state level.

Imagine the surprise of the Republican leaders at the state level when the State Supreme Court turned back the legislature’s plan for the re-districting for the state legislature…although not their plan for the national level.  It was a Republican Chief Justice who cast the deciding vote.  Although both re-districting plans reflected the expected gerrymandering for party advantage, apparently the plans at the state level were particularly egregious.

In particular, they did not sufficiently respect the integrity of municipalities.  This was especially blatant in the case of Narberth and Lower Merion , which would have been divided into four separate legislative districts.  As it is, a few of Pennsylvania’s electoral districts put the classic 19^th Century “gerrymander” in Massachusetts to shame.

On top of this, at the end of February it was revealed that a self-employed, young woman piano teacher, Amanda Holt, of Allentown, on her own, produced an electoral map that that was fairer and split fewer counties, wards and municipalities.  It turned out that her map work was partly the basis of Chief Justice Castille’s ruling.  A case like this demonstrates clearly that a rational, non-partisan approach to electoral re-districting makes objective sense.  Partisan commissions produce partisan results.  (It also shows that we do not need expensive “commissions” to re-district.  Amanda Holt used maps, demographic data and an Excel spread sheet.  She spent about $30.)

It is time to make re-districting non-partisan, not a decennial game to secure political advantage.  In other countries, re-districting is the job of a non-partisan, non-political commission composed of academics, civil servants, retired business people and the like, whose recommendations are just about automatically accepted.

Aside from treating electoral districts as central to partisan politics, we Americans seem to be engaged in a nation-wide campaign to make voting harder, not easier.  After making it easier to register, with “motor voter” laws, that permitted voters to register along with auto registration, now we seem to reversing that process.  Mandating picture I.D.’s for voters, another bill in the Pennsylvania legislature right now, amounts to putting obstacles in the way of older, disabled, and non-driving persons.  In addition, it seems a “solution” without a problem, since the number of cases of voter fraud are miniscule, in Pennsylvania, as elsewhere.  (In Alabama, they have had four cases of voter fraud in nine years, yet they are engaged in passing a new voter I.D. law.)

Finally, why is not Election Day a holiday, as it is in other countries? Failing that, why do we not vote on Sundays, when most people are not due at work?  Why do we make it to so hard for basic, electoral democracy to work?

Have you ever driven westward in the past few years and tried to listen to your car radio?  What do we hear?—mostly country western music, religious sermonizing and talk radio.  I have often wondered if this is driven by ad agencies, deciding that the lowest common denominator, the best chance of a sale, all lead toward the sort of audience that seems angry at the state of the world and is on the brink of downing a whiskey with a beer chaser.

Perhaps the quintessential talk radio host is Rush Limbaugh and his soundalikes.  What characterizes these types?  Anger first; they are mad, mostly at government, which they believe is at the bottom of our –their—problems.  Government picks our pockets via taxes; government restricts our freedom of action (“you will have to pry my gun out of my cold, dead hand”); government gives hand-outs to the undeserving poor; government has created protections for the deviants (homosexuals), for the victims of prejudice (non-white people), and above all has undermined the traditional family of working father, stay-at-home mother and deferential kids.  The culmination of these trends –ascribed to the march of liberalism—is the election of Barack Obama.

A sizable percentage of Americans still believe that Obama is a Muslim, that he was not born in the USA, and that he is intent on creating “a European-type” welfare state here.  It is hard to believe that Obama’s opponents are really concerned about the expansion of health care coverage, after they accepted President Bush’s enormous expansion of that coverage with his attachment of prescription drugs to previous health plans.  It is hard to believe they really worry about the expansion of the role of government when they unquestioningly support the expansion of defense spending.

So what do they want?  I think they want the return of the world of “Father Knows Best,” and Andy Hardy, when a man could come home to his pipe and slippers, when his wife had dinner on the table, and the only problem with the kids is whether they have finished their homework.

That brings us to Rush Limbaugh and the latest skirmish in his war on women.  He represents the state of the art radio attack jock, who, more than anybody, is responsible for the decline of political discussion in this country.  He has been on the air for maybe twenty years.   Since Obama’s election, he has likened him to Hitler, questioned his citizenship, his religion and all of his policies.  Most of us are now familiar with Limbaugh’s off-the- wall attacks on Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown Law School student, who had the temerity to support President Obama’s plan to mandate coverage for contraception in all employers’ health plans, including those administered by religious orders, such as Catholic hospitals.   Over a three day rant, Rush called her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”

So, now (finally?) thirty-some advertisers have withdrawn or threatened to withdraw their radio sponsorships, despite Limbaugh’s statement that his “choice of words was not the best.”

As Limbaugh once said, he is really an entertainer.  Well, it ain’t funny, and it will be sweet irony if this Limbaugh lurch begins to drain the swamp of talk radio.

This is about the medieval turn in US politics today…largely spurred by Rick Santorum’s extraordinary remarks about the role of religion and of education.

First, our presidential candidate running for Ayatollah rather than President, said that he almost threw up when he heard President (then candidate) Kennedy’s speech in 1960 about the role of religion in American politics. Kennedy, a Catholic, had to refute the idea that an American Catholic President would be taking orders from the Pope. That idea has been bruited about since Al Smith, Governor of New York State, won the Democratic nomination for President in 1928, and was the first American Catholic to run for that office. Santorum distorts Kennedy’s position by stating that JFK ruled out the idea that a person of faith could be President. What Kennedy did was re-state the idea that a candidate’s faith should not dictate his policies. Santorum seems to believe that faith directs politics. Goodbye contraception. Hello vouchers.

Santorum also called President Obama a “snob” for touting the government’s support for opportunity for higher education for all. I suppose I can understand that. University faculties in the US do harbor more liberals than conservatives in their professoriate. Santorum is famous for home schooling his kids. Are you betting he will advise them to be “regular folks” and not snobs, by avoiding college?

It also appears that Santorum would like all families to home school their kids; wives would not seek careers, they would supervise their children’s education. “Kinder, kuchen, kirche,” as the Germans used to say. Papa would help with homework after he came home from the shop or the coal mine, and help the kids get a job at seventeen or eighteen, close to home. On Sunday, the family goes to church and listens to the life advice of the priest or minister. That’s the America Santorum wants to restore.

So is this a campaign for President, or is it an invitation to elect our own Ayatollah?

But something more seems to be involved. I want to quote from Bonnie Squires fine column of February 27 in Main Line Media News: “When ministers and elected officials are still, three years after President Obama’s inauguration, challenging his citizenship and his Christianity, it just seems to me there must be another reason why their hatred of our president is almost palpable. And the only thing I come up with each time is: he is an African-American, and they can’t stand it.”

http://mainlinemedianews.com/articles/2012/02/27/main_line_times/opinion/doc4f4c607a2f2b8671925614.txt?viewmode=2

Yes, something else is going on out there. A minority of angry, prejudiced Republicans are acting out, and these Republican Party primaries offer a national platform to trash tolerance, communitarian concern for the disadvantaged, and indeed the social progress we have made since the 1950s.

Debate over public policy these days has been stretched over such a wide spectrum that a Presidential candidate finds he has to defend the whole idea of government. Rick Santorum explained to a group of Texans about a week ago that he is against people who say we need no government (Llano Texas News, February 15, 2012). He supports the Tea Party people who are for limited government…I guess some people might get confused, since he questioned the value of public education; later clarified to stating that he is opposed to the national or state governments running the schools ( Philadelphia Inquirer, February 20, 2012).

In Llano, Texas, Santorum also offered a bit of constitutional interpretation, as well, observing that “the Second Amendment is there to protect the First Amendment.” So if people are permitted to pack guns to protect e.g., peaceable assembly; is he in favor of the “Occupy” folks shooting back at the police who have been dispersing them? That might be interesting.

“The less government the better…” Emerson said that. “Self-reliance” is one of his signature essays. Sounds great, very American, until the economy falters, and even the Santorums of the world might need help. The Santorums did not refuse Pennsylvania funds for home schooling (even though they lived in the Washington, DC area). Yes, we can defend our homes with our firearms, but suppose it burns down or is attacked by anarchists. That’s when public support is necessary; how many of us would insist on only volunteer help?

I am inaugurating this politics blog, symbolically in time for Presidents’ Day weekend 2012. Washington and Lincoln are two statesmen-politicians to emulate.

Politikos means politics in Greek. But for the Ancient Greeks politics meant the life of the polis, which, in turn, was an interdependent community, not a collection of individuals. For Aristotle, who essentially invented the empirical study of political life, the discussion of public affairs meant what we owe one another to keep a healthy community going, not what we can keep for ourselves. That part of political discussion has been disappearing these days, as our public debate in America has drifted toward finding how to dissolve the bonds of community – how to attack how community obligations…attacking the expansion of health care is the most prominent example.

I have taught politics –political science in its academic label- – since 1956, first at Harvard, then at Princeton, but mostly at Haverford, starting in 1960. My major interests have been comparative government and international relations, concentrating on Africa. Along the way, I have been involved in the local politics of Lower Merion Township, and therefore the state and local politics of Pennsylvania, for two extended periods, 1972-1978, and 2004 to the present. I am now a Democratic party Committeemen in Ward 9-3. I will be at the Democratic Party National Convention in 2012 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I intend to continue this blog from the Convention.

So what will I talk about? Several days a week I expect to comment on – and invite comments on – trends in contemporary politics, here and abroad. Do we need more opinions? Yes, if it is informed opinion. Immodestly, I feel a bit more informed than the average comment I run into on other blogs. I am particularly disappointed in the rhetoric that passes for campaigning in the current contests that make up the Republican Presidential primaries.

Today (February 17), for example, candidate Romney called government loans to Chrysler and General Motors (which have mostly been repaid) as “crony capitalism on a grand scale” [Financial Times, February 16, 2012, p. 6]. Presumably tax breaks for hedge fund earnings and company strippers like Romney’s Bain Capital are simply the rewards for public service. Then, there is the Pennsylvania legislature passing a “noncontroversial resolution” declaring 2012 as the “year of the Bible”[Philadelphia Inquirer, February 16, 2012, p. 1]. Two legislators already declared their votes a mistake. But why is the state legislature spending any time on this stuff? Does the Bible tell us how to deal with “fees” for natural gas drilling (something that has been agitating the legislature for about a year)? Do we love our neighbor that much more when we cut funds from our state universities?