Politics: Elections Have Consequences, Eh?

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I stayed out of the "one year evaluations" of United States President Barack Obama that ran on the anniversary of his inauguration earlier this week because everybody seemed to be doing various takes on the theme and the concept is entirely arbitrary. However, I was amazed to find in the media that I normally peruse that nobody did the obvious--tracing the consequences of the election in terms of what was different in the country as a result of the election of Barack Obama instead of John McCain. Perhaps they were too astounded at what they found--near as I can tell, the election had little consequence to the average person. John McCain would have accomplished very similar things in his first year in office as Barack Obama has accomplished.

It's true that John McCain's first act in the White House would not have been to announce the closing of the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In fact, he was rather public about the measures he would have taken with respect to the detainees there, which would have focused on completing prosecutions and figuring out where detainees could go before making a closure announcement. John McCain, as a torture victim, had spoken out vociferously against the torture practices under the Bush administration and would have taken actions to change policies that, in the end, would likely have resembled what Obama has actually done. He even called Obama's closure decision "wise," implying that he would have done it, just not as quickly. Obama's promise to close the facility by the end of the year did not come true thanks to a variety of factors. So, it's hard to find profound differences in outcome between the Obama administration and a hypothetical McCain administration on Guantanamo.

The biggest problem facing the country when Obama took office was the economy. Considering that the Obama administration has largely acted to stabilize the financial system and increase investor confidence along the lines of what the late Bush administration had already done, it's hard to imagine that McCain would have done much differently. The first major legislation to come out of Congress in 2009 was the stimulus package. Considering John McCain's anti-pork, balanced-budget stance over the years, it is clear that negotiations between congressional leaders and the president would have been different under McCain. However, the final stimulus package actually passed contained quite a number of temporary tax incentives as well as what many considered special-interest spending. It's unlikely that McCain would have opposed a stimulus package in concept, and it's unlikely that Congress--assuming the same Democratic-controlled chambers--would have accepted a substantially smaller package, so while the exact contents of the package may have been different and likely more focused on traditional infrastructure projects, I don't think the average citizen would have noted much difference. Like Obama, McCain would not have broken up big banks and would have re-nominated Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman.

The war in Iraq? John McCain would have put a different spin on it, but it seems likely that he also would have drawn down troops there so they could be used elsewhere, including Afghanistan, as circumstances permitted. The war in Afghanistan? John McCain was a major advocate of the surge in Iraq, so it seems likely that he would have supported a similar policy in Afghanistan. Again, the spin would have been different, and he probably would have found a different way to put pressure on the Afghans to take more responsibility than to set a withdrawal deadline, but it's hard to see much difference there.

McCain's domestic priorities would clearly have been different than Obama's, but as of this juncture, no major legislation from the Obama agenda has been passed, and the landmark health care bill is in serious jeopardy. With a Democrat-controlled Congress, it would probably have been hard for McCain to advance a domestic agenda as well, so again, it's probably a wash--no major domestic legislation.

That leaves the symbolic weight of having the first African-American president. No matter how much he spoke against torture and about returning to "true American principles" on the world stage, John McCain could not have possibly changed perceptions of the United States in the rest of the world the way Obama has done. I think it's safe to say that John McCain would not have received the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, foreign perceptions have little practical consequence to the average US citizen, and Al-Qaeda continued its campaigns against the United States anyway.

There's a lot of time left in the Obama presidency, at least three years. But, six months ago, I questioned whether there would be an Obama legacy. At the one year mark, I could have published virtually that same blog entry again. By 2012, it may be very obvious how the 2008 election was consequential by electing Barack Obama instead of John McCain. Right now, though, I'm having trouble seeing that the consequences were the least bit profound to the average person.

Politics: Evangelicals Defeat McCain--Twice?

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - A lesser-known fact about me is that the first politician I ever gave money to was John McCain. In the early 1990's, McCain was the foremost advocate of campaign finance reform in the US Senate, and those efforts made him a RossPAC recipient. Seattle talk show host Dave Ross of KIRO would find recipients that he felt were worthy and then request that his listeners each send the designee $1. If enough people sent in $1, the politician would notice as much as if a major donor had made a contribution. I didn't normally participate in the RossPAC, but at the time I felt strongly enough about campaign finance reform that I did send McCain $1. In the ensuing years, McCain easily spent ten times that sending me Christmas cards and campaign literature.

In 2000 (well, 1999 and 2000), when McCain first ran for president, I seriously considered supporting him. Besides his history of leadership on campaign finance reform, he had a general record of being willing to stand up to his own Republican party on issues where he disagreed, and I felt that matters on which I clearly disagreed with him, mostly so-called "social" issues like abortion and gay marriage, were not important to him and hence things he was unlikely to do much about if he became president. I actually found the Keating Five scandal from McCain's past to be a net positive, as he had clearly learned from the incident.

Of course, McCain would not become the Republican nominee in 2000. The turning point came in the North Carolina primary, in which McCain was soundly defeated after a variety of questionable tactics by the George W. Bush campaign, from push polling to old-fashioned rumor spreading that McCain's adopted daughter from Bangladesh was actually his own love child and that McCain had been mentally damaged by his prisoner of war experience in Vietnam. These tactics worked largely because the wing of the Republican party consisting of evangelical Christians didn't trust McCain in the first place, and this gave them additional excuses not to vote for him. In a very real sense, it was the evangelicals who prevented McCain from riding a wave of support from independent-leaning voters to the Republican nomination and quite likely the presidency.

John McCain may have managed to gain the Republican nomination in 2008, but evangelicals seem to have again placed him on a path to defeat in the general election. In an atmosphere in which voters appear to be still believe in conservative economic principles, yet do not believe that the Republican party is credible, McCain should have been the perfect antidote. Thanks to his history of taking on other Republicans on everything from tax policy to the conduct of a war, McCain had considerable credibility as someone different than the normal Republican. With the "Republican brand" so damaged by the George W. Bush administration, this would seem like the perfect recipe--all McCain had to do was run against the Bush administration, just like the Democratic nominee would do, and take advantage of his broad appeal with independents to ride to a clear victory.

However, McCain hadn't run against Bush particularly aggressively until just recently. His responses to the constant refrain from the Barack Obama campaign that McCain voted with Bush's position 90% of the time were tepid, and accusation started to stick. While the concept of being a "maverick" was emphasized by McCain, voters somehow didn't find these ideas mutually exclusive. McCain seems to be regarded as a "maverick" associated with the Republican Bush administration.

Why hadn't McCain more forcefully responded to those charges? The evangelical wing of the Republican party still likes George W. Bush, and he was advised--accurately, it seems--that the "get out the vote" efforts that propelled Bush to the White House twice required evangelicals to be active. McCain, especially after his experiences in 2000, could not afford to distance himself too strongly from the Bush adminstration for fear of making the evangelicals even more tepid in their support than they already were.

Yet, the volunteers and energy were simply not there in the Republican campaign until the nomination of Sarah Palin as vice-president. Palin is popular with evangelicals for her fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and her selection seemed to finally convince them that McCain was worth electing--something that even his answers at the Rick Warren forum earlier in the campaign had not achieved. While evangelicals clearly preferred McCain's simple, clear answers at that forum to Obama's "above my pay grade" approach, it hadn't been enough to get volunteers out.

While Palin has clearly gotten the Republican base energized, her inclusion on the ticket--issues of competence aside--also served to associate the McCain campaign with the same sort of right-wing social agenda that the Bush administration had pursued, and effectively associated McCain further with Bush to independent voters--exactly what he didn't need.

So, in the end, it would appear that evangelicals may be on the verge of engineering John McCain's defeat for the second time. They defeated him in 2000, and their influence appears to be leading to his defeat in 2008.

Margin Notes: Lefties, Radicals, and even Len

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The next President of the United States will be left-handed. I don't know how I managed to miss this until the final debate, but both Barack Obama and John McCain are left-handed. This seems to be a modern trend--Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton were all left-handed, whereas before the 38th president, only James Garfield, Herbert Hoover, and Harry Truman had been left-handed, the rate to that point being consistent with the percentage of left-handed people in the general population. What changed in the 1970's?

* * * * * * *

The best Freudian moment in the last week's Presidential debate in the United States had to be John McCain referring to Barack Obama as "Senator Government". I was almost disappointed Obama didn't return the favor by calling McCain "Senator Military."

* * * * * * *

In his weekly radio address this week, John McCain stated that "of Americans... more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now." This seemed like an absurd statement to me, but none of the fact-checking sites seemed to have vetted it yet, so I tried to do some research on my own. I found nothing definitive, but economist Mark J. Perry states on his blog that 62 million people will not pay income taxes in 2008. That's 37% of an estimated 170 million taxpayers, though considering that the population of the US is about 300 million, I'm not certain 170 million is really the right total to be using. I am surprised at this number, even if it's not more than 40% and McCain is at best exaggerating. McCain's conceptual point that Obama's tax cut really amounts to a tax credit for a substantial number of people is true, though it misses the fact that non-income taxes (like Social Security and other payroll taxes) are paid by these individuals. Furthermore, he seems to be missing the point that 62 million Americans are so poor that they are not required to pay income taxes. Isn't their economic status the real problem, not the tax rate (or lack thereof) that they are paying?

* * * * * * *

While spending time as a scrutineer during the Canadian Federal Election last week, I noticed a surprising number of people walking out stating "I didn't realize there was a Radical Marijuana Party." I knew there was a Marijuana Party, but not a Radical Marijuana Party. It turns out some of their candidates didn't know this, either. According to the Abbotsford News, candidate Tim Fegler had not known of the name change until election day. Was he too busy smoking you-know-what?

* * * * * * *

The best recent speech in my opinion did not come from a politician, but from John Walcott, the Washington bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers who accepted the I. F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence on 7-October. Read Walcott's speech, entitled "The Truth is Not Subjective," here.

* * * * * * *

The ongoing world financial crisis has brought out some previously-fringe ideas to the mainstream. One that hasn't gotten there is this thought from activist David C. Korten: "...capitalism's relationship to democracy and to the market economy is much the same as the relationship of a cancer to the body whose life energies it expropriates. Cancer is a pathology that occurs when otherwise healthy cells forget that they are part of the body and begin to pursue their own unlimited growth without regard to the consequences for the whole. The growth of the cancerous cells deprives the healthy cells of nourishment and ultimately kills both the body and itself. Capitalism is doing much the same to the societies that it infests." How does the body normally keep cells from forgetting they are part of a larger whole? Regulatory proteins and signaling pathways. Hmm.

* * * * * * *

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was recently quoted as saying "a person who believes is a person who hopes." (Note that he didn't say that religious belief was a prerequisite for hope.) Unfortunately, in many cases, I think he left out an adverb. A person who believes naively is a person who hopes naively.

* * * * * * *

In the unnoticed musical connection category, I heard "More, More, More" by Andrea True on the radio last week. This 1976 work had some remarkable musical similarities with "Steal My Sunshine" by Len, a 1999 minor hit. Listen to the beat in each song and it will be obvious.

* * * * * * *

Elizabeth May apparently has more influence on the Canadian economy than we thought. Less than a week after the Green Party leader did a variety of interviews calling for an exchange rate between the currencies of about 80 US cents per Canadian dollar, the Canadian dollar briefly collapsed to that level before stabilizing at about 85 US cents. The next time she makes a statement like that, look out!

Margin Notes: Elections, One World, Guilt

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I thought I heard a quote on the CBC's The World This Weekend on Saturday night that might have been taken out of context, so I looked it up. Also according to the Toronto Star and others, Stephen Harper really did say “What we know about voting patterns across the country generally is that less and less people you know kind of vote for their grandfathers, right? They basically vote on what they think their needs are and how they think the parties are responding in this election.” Granted, he was speaking descriptively rather than prescriptively, but he's saying that voters are becoming more individualistic and selfish and are not only not thinking less about society, but less about even their other family members. Doesn't he think there's anything wrong with that?!? What about voting for the sake of one's children and grandchildren? Canadians, keep thinking for the good of society, and not narrow selfish wishes--dare I say it--like Americans!

* * * * * *

In the vice-presidential debate in the United States on Thursday night, many people couldn't help but notice that Republican Sarah Palin's body language--especially all the winking she was doing--was straight out of a beauty pageant. In fact, Palin's background as Miss Wasilla and runner-up to Miss Alaska in 1984 seems to surface fairly regularly. Why did she give virtually non-sense answers to Kate Couric during the now-infamous interview, and appear to have more confidence than content during the debate? Beauty pageant contestants are rewarded for keeping their poise in all circumstances and saying something, even if there isn't much content behind it. Basically, beauty pageant contestants are rewarded for spin--and Sarah Palin learned her lessons from those experiences, perhaps too well. It seems that she can't transition from beauty contestant to substantive politician on the national stage.

* * * * * *

I have contemplated if there is anything significant about the fact that John McCain has surrounded himself with "Beauty Queens" in the form of his wife Cindy and running mate Sarah Palin. While Palin may not be rising above her past, Cindy McCain most certainly is a woman of substance--whether I agree with her views or not--so I'm not certain that it says much about John McCain. I think he fits right in with many Americans and their emphasis on appearance.

* * * * * *

On last weekend's God Talk on San Francisco's KGO Newstalk 810, host Brent Walters stated that contrary to some teachings, "In all western traditions, God never deals through guilt; God only deals through encouragement... Guilt only cripples us." One doesn't need to have religious faith to recognize the truth in the latter sentence.

* * * * * *

For those that aren't familiar with Paul Harvey's "This Is Not One World" features on the radio, he includes them in his commentary broadcasts in an attempt to demonstrate that the United States is better than the rest of the world. Often, they are bizarre interpretations of news stories, to the extent that I've long-felt some counter-point was needed, because like it or not, there is only planet for all of us and there are more ways in which we are all similar than different.

In the "This Is One World" Department: The Christian Science Monitor quotes Ozlem Sandikci of Bilkent University as stating that "Across the Muslim world, there are numerous signs that Ramadan... is transforming from a religious month to a cultural and commercial holiday." In an article focusing on Turkey's Ramadan fast-breaking Iftar dinners, Monitor correspondent Yigal Schleifer notes that they are resembling "gala events" instead of religious ceremonies. I hope they don't invite Stephen Harper...