The Scary Part Is, It Was Close

Louisiana voters have booted William "Cold Cash" Jefferson out of office.

Spinning Conspiracy Theories Is Fun....

But you can be a lot more convincing than this:

Al Franken could win the recount in the Minnesota Senate race.... But odd things have been happening. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal noted that Mr. Coleman’s lead has been mysteriously shrinking, even before the recount begins. Election officials in various jurisdictions, mainly liberal, have been discovering “lost” ballots or “miscommunicated” results.

Well, that sounds bad. How about a f'rinstance?

It doesn’t look bright: one very Democratic area has discovered that its ballot-counting machines registered overwhelming support for Barack Obama but somehow didn’t tally any votes in the Senate race. Hmmm. Guess who those will turn out to favour.

Well, you don't have to be very smart to recognize that a district that has any appreciable number of voters, but where zero votes are cast for the U.S. Senate, odds are that you have a bona fide undercount. You don't have to be very smart to realize that in a district that has overwhelming support for Obama is likely to have at least majority support for Franken. And you don't have to be very honest to acknowledge that there's basis for alleging "conspiracy" in the counting of votes that were actually cast but inadvertently omitted from the first vote count.

So, what's the National Post's excuse, other than perhaps a desire to join the WSJ in a "race to the bottom" for editorial page partisan hackery? (And why aren't they obsessing over the vote count in a Canadian riding somewhere? Surely there's a fake scandal they can gussie up somewhere in Canada....)

The result is critical because the Democrats are three seats away from absolute control of the Senate, and two other states - Georgia and Alaska - also remain unsettled. If the Democrats somehow take all three, Republicans might as well spend the next four years on the beach.

For all the National Post's whinging about the possibility of the Democrats having a sixty vote majority in the Senate, I doubt that they would be expressing equal concern over a Conservative majority government in Canada's Parliament. But they should relax. It's extremely unlikely that the Democrats will win all three seats and, even if they do, Lieberman has all-but-promised to join Republican filibusters, so on many important issues they would still really be a seat short.

Amendment vs. Revision of the California Constitution

At Volokh, Dale Carpenter offers a thoughtful post on the distinction between amendment and revision of California's constitution, and whether Proposition 8 should properly be categorized as an amendment (requiring simple majority vote) or a revision (requiring "approval by two-thirds of each state house, followed by a majority vote"). Without having looked deeply at the issue, I suspect that the distinction was supposed to offer a procedural safeguard, but Carpenter raises interesting points about stripping away people's constitutional rights by majority vote.

Personally, I can't help but wonder if the amendment process itself should be amended (or is it revised). I recognize that it's a double-edged sword - if you make it harder for the people to amend the constitution, you effectively leave that power in the hands of legislatures who may be slow or reluctant to honor the wishes of a clear majority of the population on subjects like medical marijuana. But you also get bad policy, and it seems particularly bad tax policy, enshrined in the constitution, with the likely result that you will have financially mandated tax inequalities and budget problems. And you raise questions of whether matters arguably best addressed by legislation should be enshrined in a state constitution.

That is, you may try to fix a cyclical problem (e.g., budgeting issues) and end up creating a structural problem (a constitution that prevents the government from obtaining the tax revenues it needs to fulfill basic functions, or enshrining discriminatory tax policy that may deter immigration into a state or unduly burden a subset of state residents).

Premature Obituaries

I'm not personally going to declare a winner until after the election, but it's interesting to read the premature obituaries being penned about the McCain campaign and the Republican Party.

On the right, Clark Stooksbury describes the Republican Party as the "Party of Delusion", calling for an honest assessment of the reasons for the party's failure from inside, but expressing doubts about Republican-oriented conservatives' ability to do so:

A good example is this post from Robert Stacy McCain, who was engaged in some preemptive complaining about media spin of next week’s election. McCain describes the GOP as “the party of low taxes, limited government, traditional values and strong defense.” Only the part about taxes is accurate. the GOP would be more accurately described as the party of tax cuts, debt, cronyism, aggressive war and cultural resentment. The formula that worked for a couple of election cycles, but the party’s chickens have come home to roost.

In the referenced post, McCain also seems to expect that (the other) McCain will lose, but has words of criticism only for the mainstream media. Dan Larison is more in tune with Stooksbury,

Endorsing Obama is a vote of no confidence in the Republican Party, but in a weird way it is also an expression of what is probably utterly misguided hope that the Republicans will learn from the defeat and adjust to new political realities.

He seems to regard it as foolish to vote for Obama to "punish the GOP" out of hope "that there is some small chance that the GOP might change its ways", but presents no alternative. If you concede, as Larison does, that from a conservative standpoint "the GOP has failed so badly that it has made the unthinkable [a vote for Obama] mundane and ordinary", how could you possibly justify a Republican vote? While I recognize that there are third parties, and would not be surprised if Larison ends up voting for a third party candidate, the fact remains that our system is heavily biased against third parties and, in this election and into the foreseeable future, the two dominant parties will remain dominant.

On the left, Paul Krugman speculates on what the Republican Party will look like ("assuming that McCain doesn’t pull an upset"), suggesting,

the GOP that’s left after this election will probably be even further off in right field, even further out of touch with the rest of the country, than before.

If the Republican Party heeds those conservative intellectuals who call for it to reexamine its platform and priorities, that might be avoided. Or not. There's a possibility that if various conservative factions were invited to try to impose their brand of ideological purity on the Republican Party, the ensuing bloodshed would actually harm party unity, or that the bizarre, hybrid consensus version of conservatism emerging from the process would be a cure worse than the disease. Also, the branding issue would remain, as even a fruitful meeting of the party's best minds would have to overcome recent experience - "We're the Republican Party, and this time we really mean all those things we've been telling you we stand for all these years.... Trust us!"

But again, I'm not going to write the party off before it even loses, or after. Similar things could have been said about the Democratic Party many, many times over the past thirty years. They could have been said a year ago. No, actually, they have been - for most of the past year we've been hearing about how this election should be easy for the Democratic Party, how Obama can't "close the deal" and how the Democratic Party's only real strength lies in its ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. If Obama weren't ahead in the polls, people would be saying them right now. If Obama loses, well, I don't have to tell you, do I.

When a party seems to be destined to lose, its pessimists expect the party to be reduced to ashes and its optimists expect a phoenix to rise, but a more likely outcome is that the party somehow manages to hobble itself together, keeps its "party faithful" in the fold, and gets the benefit both of time making people forget its past, and the other party's overreaching making them once again seem like the "lesser of two evils" to the block of "swing voters" that ultimately decides elections.

If I were to speculate as to what future path the Republican Party might take that would help keep it in the minority, at risk of trying to get rich by overestimating the intelligence of our nation's people, it would be the path endorsed by Robert Stacy McCain, who offers an unabashed "defense of ignorance". For example, McCain argues,

Palin's honest ignorance of presidential-level issues was held up as evidence that she is, or was, unprepared for the vice-presidency - as if years of studying such issues were in itself qualification for the office. Evidence contradicts this idea.

Even if we assume that "evidence" contradicts the idea that years of serious study of foreign policy better qualify somebody to serve as Vice President, that does not automatically mean that foreign policy ignorance is an equal qualification to foreign policy study, let alone make ignorance a qualification for the job. And it's more than being unschooled - somebody who has lived a lifetime demonstrating disinterested in a particular subject, to the point that in her forties she is described by her supporters as "ignorant", is unlikely to ever achieve proficiency. Is it possible? Sure, but that's a gamble. McCain's observation that Palin is "a very popular and for all I know a very good governor" is fascinating - before urging the party to jump on her bandwagon, might it not make sense for him to learn enough about her that he doesn't have to qualify his endorsement of her record?

Sarah Palin is extraordinarily shrewd and is a natural as a politician. She figured out early on that some people on the McCain campaign are profoundly incompetent (hello, Tucker Bounds) and that other people on the McCain campaign are selfish and arrogant beyond words (you know who you are, sweetheart).

So if you can identify Tucker Bounds - this Tucker Bounds - and Michael Goldfarb - this Michael Goldfarb - as less than the best, you're "shrewd"? That seems like a pretty low bar - as low as the ground level bar set for Palin in the Vice Presidential debate. So really, what's the reason McCain likes (the other) McCain's pick so much?

Sarah's shortcomings on Aug. 29 have been rapidly remedied, and by 2011 could be remedied entirely. Considering that she is the strongest, most viable alternative to Jeb Bush, I would suggest that some of her conservative critics should try to befriend her, and not merely join the sneering snobs.

The only other choice being Jeb Bush, and the Bush brand having been burned so badly by his brother that, despite his having what appear to be far superior credentials, experience, intellect and interest in national and international affairs, you should saddle up the unknown horse and hope for the best?

Truly, J.S. McCain has a limited memory if he believes that the presidential nominee or eventual president can be spotted four years out. The Republican party doesn't have to hope, so much as it should expect new leadership to emerge over the next four years. If Palin turns out to be the best of the bunch, without wishing to caricature her, diminish her accomplishments, or underestimate her political skills and charisma, the party has a lot to worry about... assuming it loses on Tuesday.

But again, the election ain't over 'till it's over.

The Cost of the Candidates' Health Care Proposals

The Washington post, demonstrating astonishing credulity, tells us about the McCain and Obama health care proposals:

Overall Price Tag

Obama

Says his plan would cost $50 billion to $65 billion a year when all elements are phased in. Money would come from ending tax cuts for people with incomes exceeding $250,000.

McCain

Says his plan would be budget-neutral over 10 years.

How hard would it be to find somebody else's estimates - devoting about five seconds to searching with Google, I came up with this from the Wall Street Journal:

The Tax Policy Center, which is affiliated with the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, projected the Obama plan would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years, and the McCain plan would cost $1.3 trillion. Lewin Group had different figures putting the cost at $2.1 trillion for McCain’s plan and $1.2 trillion for Obama.

So if you ask anybody outside of Obama's campaign, you're likely to hear that he's probably (at best) halving the likely cost, and if you ask anybody outside of McCain's campaign you're likely to get a "He's claiming what?!"

Not that I'm suggesting that you shouldn't take political candidates at their word, but... No, wait, that's exactly what I'm suggesting.

A Freshly Recalibrated ATM-Style Voting Machine At Work

This is reassuring....

Via The Independent.

"If Only Those Idiots Treated Our Ideas With Respect"

Mixing common sense with nonsense, Douglas MacKinnon warns, Don’t Count Him Out Yet, "John McCain can still win." Well, no kidding.

In pointing to things that can drag Obama down, MacKinnon presents an interesting exercise in contrasts. Having recently written, GOP unfairly branded racist, lamenting the suggestion that the GOP might play to racial prejudices, he now argues,

Finally, the ugly side of this equation. Race is going to be a factor in this election. How much, no one knows. A New York Times/CBS News poll gave some indication when it found out that “one-third of voters said they knew someone who would not vote for Mr. Obama because he is black.”

It is unfair to assume in advance that a campaign is going to take a particular political low road, even factoring in history, and it's certainly unfair to work from the assumption that most or all GOP supporters are racist or sympathetic to racism. But if you're going to concede that one third of voters aren't going to vote for Obama because he's black, you don't have to spend much time scrutinizing the polls to know where those votes are flowing. The fact that McCain has largely stayed away from race issues does not mean that there aren't people at other levels of the state and local party, or people who enjoy a national audience who informally align themselves with the party, who are doing their utmost to depict Obama as the scary, dark-skinned, supposedly Muslim "other".

I don't happen to think that the election is going to suddenly swing to McCain because voters have a sudden revelation that, <gasp>, Obama's black. I suspect that most of the 1/3 of voters MacKinnon describes have already made up their mind to vote for somebody other than Obama, and advice pollsters accordingly. I doubt that there are more than a tiny number of people who think that they are voting on the issues but will decide, upon entering the voting booth, that they're really part of that 1/3. The rest of us will decide out votes on other issues.

MacKinnon doesn't like unfair stereotypes of Republicans, but....

Beyond today’s experience argument, why do Democrats sometimes lose when all indications are that they will coast to victory? One reason that has gained traction in certain quarters is that the people who control the Republican Party understand and respect their opponents. Republicans think Democrats are wrong, but Democrats think Republicans are stupid, and that’s why Democrats lose.

Oh, really? So if I listen to the speeches McCain and Palin gave at the national convention, I'll hear their deep respect for the Democratic party and its ideas?¹ If I flip on talk radio, I'll hear Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage sensitively analyze the issues of the day with great respect for the positions of Democrats? No, wait, if I listen to the pundits and analysts who pen best sellers directed at Republican readers and read their books, I won't find their ideas exemplified by titles like "Godless: The Church of Liberalism", "Obama Nation" or "Liberal Fascism"? Or "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans"?

Spare me.

The leading difference is that the GOP manages to gin up its base with fantasies of a "liberal elite" that is plotting to "take away your rights" (or, in the case of gay marriage, abortion or birth control, give you rights or protect the rights you have), an approach that is perhaps exemplified by MacKinnon's, "They think we're stupid" line.² But what you're seeing there isn't Democrats condescending to Republican voters or treating them like they're stupid. And it's certainly not a demonstration of Republican respect for the ideas and values of the Democratic Party.
________________
1. Some have suggested that the Republican Party's past anti-intellectual stances are serving to both undermine conservatism and marginalize conservative intellectuals.

2. There are similar caricatures that some Democrats attempt to present to excite their base, but for a variety of reasons they're much more scattershot and much less effective.

Of All The Things To Obsess About....

Sarah's song?

Seriously, it seems silly, but can you actually imagine a candidate, male or female, running for national office in a wardrobe by JCPenney? With a Borics haircut? And wearing the same "nice clothes" for multiple pubic appearances, perhaps even within the same two week period? The horror....

I will grant, it's easier for a man to get away with wearing the same suit more than once in two weeks. As long as it's sufficiently generic that nobody will notice. (Even then it's probably at least $1,500 - $5,000 worth of "generic", before we start adding in the cost of the shirt, shoes, tie and accessories.) There's a different standard for women, in no small part resulting from the fact that women's clothes are (and are expected to be) less generic.

Had Palin not been professionally dressed, coiffed and polished, that would have been the focus of news stories, rumors, and jokes. Now, having been found to have expended quite a lot of RNC money on her appearance, she risks the "John Edwards" treatment. And while the McCain campaign's defense of her,

With all the important issues facing the country right now, it's remarkable that we're spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses. It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.

is weakened by its silence in relation to similar non-scandals directed at candidates from the other side of the aisle and its celebrity ads aimed at Obama, they're right.

Now let's get back to the real issues. Like falsely accusing our political opponents of being "socialists" and of "palling around with terrorists", or of having a secret plan to eviscerate Medicare.

You Play The Hand You're Dealt

This comment, from a venture capitalist, is pretty typical following... well, pretty much any election:

I think Obama has the election pretty wrapped up absent a major external event. I think my parents might vote for him. They are army people, lifelong republicans, who are in their late 70s/early 80s. But if they vote for Obama, they are not really voting for him, they are voting against the GOP and what is has become and what it has done to this country. Obama's mandate, if he wins, will be thin and he should not overplay it. He must win these skeptics who held their nose and voted for him if he wants to govern with a real mandate. And that won't be easy and he must govern from the far center which is where our country really is right now. And I think he can and will do that.

If you recall how G.W. overplayed his hand following the 2004 election ("I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.") this might appear to be common sense. G.W. was narrowly elected, didn't have great public support for the changes he wished to press, and his initiatives failed. Something similar might be said about Bill Clinton's first couple of years, where he was stymied by his own party.

But in both cases, was the problem that they didn't have a strong enough mandate? Or that they overplayed their hands? Bill Clinton probably anticipated greater support from his own party - in retrospect he should have worked to build that consensus, or in its absence to at least build a popular consensus for his initiatives, before he tried to push them through. G.W. wanted to reinvent Social Security, proposing "reforms" that were supported more in theory than in practice within his party and which were viewed skeptically by the public. Like Clinton, and in contrast to the party unity of his first four years in office, he suffered a breakdown in party discipline that made it impossible for him to advance his proposals. After that, his continuing efforts to advance his "reform" agenda eroded his public support.

Don't underestimate G.W.'s tactics merely because they failed. He managed to cram through a great many controversial initiatives during his first two years in office, most of which were treated as minor issues or non-issues by the time the 2004 election rolled around. Saving "Social Security reform" for his second term reflects the greater political risk involved. But the Republicans had the sense to know that initiatives that pass more than two years before an election generally won't be big issues when the election finally comes. News coverage will dwindle, pundits will move on to other issues, voter anger will subside, and in all likelihood the election will turn on other issues.

To advance his agenda, the new President, Obama or McCain, should evaluate his position: What initiatives are likely to be well-received in Congress, by the public, or both? What important initiatives might pass with some finessing of Congress, the public, or both? What initiatives are likely to fail? He can build a first term agenda based upon that analysis.

But what he shouldn't do is worry about whether three or four years later a particular set of swing voters will be offended that he carried out his promises, when they had secretly hoped he would not. Really, what's the advice here? "Wait four years to see if you get a bigger mandate"? Absent catastrophe a President probably has only one chance to be transformative - and that chance most likely comes (and goes) in the first half of the first term. No, certainly, the newly elected President won't want to overplay his hand - but if he wants to change the country in any meaningful way he needs to play his hand for all it's worth.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Given the tendency to try to hold candidates responsible for the worst behavior of their supporters, we should remember that the larger body of supporters is often opposed (and perhaps appalled) by some of that behavior.

I Hate Polls (Sort Of)

I read them, but I hate them. Actually, I'll acknowledge a like-hate relationship. They can be highly informative, or highly misleading. The way you phrase a question can dramatically skew the outcome, as can any number of other factors. For political junkies, they can be a lot of fun.

But although polls inspire much triumphalism and gloominess, what do they really mean? About six weeks ago, we heard a continuous whine from partisans and pundits that Obama wasn't polling at over 50%, and that this somehow meant he couldn't close the deal. As if you can close an election that far out in a nation that's pretty evenly divided, absent a horrendous scandal befalling your opponent. Then McCain had his post-convention/Palin bounce, and it was nothing but doom and gloom from Obama's supporters. Now Obama's polling significantly ahead of McCain, he's over 50% in a couple of polls, and we have people claiming that unless something big happens McCain can't win.

Guess what - the economic problems we're presently facing are big, and they happened. Lots of things can happen in five weeks, and it's not that you want any game-changers to come along, as they're often catastrophic, but... they could. And perhaps what we're seeing right now is a "financial bail-out bill bounce", not something that will hold any more than the McCain post-convention bounce. So let's take the polls for what they're worth, but remember that we're still five weeks away from the only poll that matters.

The Absurdity of Running Against Earmarks

John McCain's official campaign position on earmarks:

I will veto every bill with earmarks, until the Congress stops sending bills with earmarks.

John McCain, acting as a Senator:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Sunday he probably would have voted for legislation to keep the federal government running after midweek, even though it was packed with the kind of "outrageous pork-barrel spending" he has long opposed.

"That's the way they always do," the Arizona senator said dismissively of fellow lawmakers. "You put in the, you put in the good deals, and then you put in the pork, as well." He said separate votes should be allowed on the bill's different provisions.

McCain did not vote on the measure when it cleared Congress on Saturday, although he returned to Washington after Friday night's campaign debate in Mississippi. McCain said he was working on other matters at the time of the vote, including negotiations on a bailout of the financial industry.

"I certainly would have done everything in my power to remove those earmarks," he told ABC's "This Week" in an interview. "But I may have voted for it if, I probably would have ended up voting for it, but I decry a system where individual members are, are faced with taking all this unacceptable, outrageous stuff that has contributed to the largest growth in spending since the Great Society."

So as a Senator he sees the necessity of voting for a bill, loaded with earmarks, to keep the government running or to avoid a financial crisis, but as President he would veto the bill and shut down the government or allow the credit markets to freeze up? Why do I doubt that.

Focusing on government waste and excess is easy because there are so many measures that either appear wasteful or are wasteful, and people don't like to see their taxpayer dollars wasted. But they're a reality in our political system, and it's not realistic to threaten to veto "every bill" that contains earmarks. There's also the question of whether particular earmarks, even those that are among the easiest to ridicule, are inappropriate uses of federal funds. Does McCain understand the purpose of analyzing bear DNA in Montana? If so, does he oppose the goals of those who requested and obtained that earmark? Also, unfortunately, we can't balance the budget, or even make an appreciable dent in the deficit, even with the total elimination of earmarks - technically they don't even increase the budget, but instead allocate funds that have already been appropriated to specific projects.

I'm singling out McCain hear because of the particular absurdity of his concession that, yes, he would vote for bills with earmarks (and in fact voted in favor of the bill containing the Grizzly Bear DNA earmark). I'm not sure, though, if it is worse to throw out fake "solutions" to deficits, or to take Obama's approach, pretty much ignoring the issue. I don't expect Presidential candidates to spend a lot of time talking about how to balance a budget, save perhaps for those rare occasions when they're fighting over how to burn through a budget surplus. But I wish we were in a culture where we could have a mature discussion of deficits and tax policy within the context of a Presidential election, or for that matter at any other time. There's a media failure here, but it's also a societal failure of will.

Battle of the Sound Bites

Eagerly awaiting Friday's debate? This is about what I expect.

You may be familiar with some of the dramatic, history-turning moments. Gerry Ford saying in 1976 that there was no Soviet domination of Poland. Ronald Reagan asking voters in 1980 to devastating effect: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Bill Clinton locking eyes with a citizen in 1992 who asked him to put a human face on the deficit problem, as George HW Bush stood by mute. Al Gore sighing too much in 2000.

If that last example doesn't seem of a piece with the others, there's a reason. These days, debates aren't 90 minutes. They're 72 hours. In today's American media culture of cable television and ideologically competing blogs, there is first the debate itself and then the debate over the debate. The latter is hashed out over the three days following the debate, during which the instant, debate-night conventional wisdom can be turned on its head by the side that has the more aggressive spin operation.

I can hardly wait.

It Might Work, But...

It's a bit disheartening. I would prefer a way to get the focus of the campaign away from personalities (and suggestions that the candidates change theirs) and back on issues. Yet the author of this analyisis is probably correct, that to get back on top Obama should probably move away from the issues and focus on character.

In 1980, Richard Wirthlin - Ronald Reagan's chief strategist - made a fateful discovery. In his first poll he discovered that most people didn't like Reagan's positions on the issues, but nevertheless wanted to vote for Reagan. The reason, he figured out, is that voters vote for a president not primarily on the issues, but on five other "character" factors; values; authenticity; communication and connection; trust; and identity. In the Reagan-Carter and Reagan-Mondale debates, Mondale and Carter were ahead on the issues and lost the debates because the debates were not about the issues, but about those other five character factors. George W. Bush used the same observation in his two races. Gore and Kerry ran on the issues. Bush ran on those five factors.

In the 2008 nomination campaign, Hillary ran on the issues, while Obama ran on those five factors and won. McCain is now running a Reagan-Bush style character-based campaign on the Big Five factors. But Obama has switched to a campaign based "on the issues," like Hillary, Gore and Kerry. Obama has reality on his side. And the campaign is assuming that if you just tell people the truth, they will reason to the right conclusion. That's false and they should know better.

And even when we're speaking of character, we seem to be speaking of perceptions.

Lies, Lies and More Lies

From around the web:

• Dan Larison wonders why the conservative media is unwilling to call out lies by the McCain Campaign - Tell the truth? "Why do that when lying works so well for them"

• James Fallows asks whether the media will treat obviously false claims by Palin in the same manner as they treated obviously false claims by Hillary Clinton.

• Michael Kinsley asks, Why do Lies Prevail - the primary "reason is that no one - not the media, not the campaign professionals, not the voters - cares enough about lying."

This Is About Right....

Paul Krugman observes,

So the Obama campaign is going all out on the issue of McCain’s multiple houses. Isn’t that kind of stupid? Yes, it is - and it was also necessary.

Mainstream media, j'accuse!

Is Campaign Finance Reform Possible?

You can't have an election without a campaign finance outrage, can you? Last election cycle, the outrage was 527's. This time, it's bundlers.

Ah, the good old days, when bundlers supported G.W. and were given cute names like "rangers" or "pioneers". Then some people bundled for Edwards and were called... criminal suspects. (Oh, I know... I'm assuming that some straw donations collected by Bush's bundlers were conveniently overlooked, and I should instead assume the purest of motives and methods....) Now McCain has a bundling scandal, and the New York Times is calling for reform.

Last week, The Washington Post disclosed that Harry Sargeant III, a prominent McCain booster in Florida and part owner of an oil-trading company with business in Iraq, had rounded up thousands of dollars in small donations from Americans of Middle Eastern origin. Many had not made political contributions before, and were of relatively modest means. The Times followed with a report that at least $50,000 of this had been solicited from a single extended family in California, the Abdullahs, by one of Mr. Sargeant’s business partners, a Jordanian named Mustafa Abu Naba’a.

Though it is unclear whether any of this is illegal — including whether the law forbids foreigners from soliciting contributions — the McCain campaign hurriedly announced that it was returning the money raised by Mr. Abu Naba’a. It also promised to review the money raised so far - about $500,000 - by Mr. Sargeant.

What can we assume about bundlers? If they were solely interested in raising money for a candidate, they wouldn't have to stick themselves in the middle - between the donor and the candidate. It's reasonable to assume that they expect something, whether it's a starry-eyed wish for a photo op with a newly elected President, some form of quid pro quo somewhere down the line, or something in between.

The Times looks at the situation and notes that neither candidate wants to come clean about their bundlers. Obama apparently comes closer, and "is sponsoring legislation that would require disclosure of all bundlers who raise more than $50,000." The fact that McCain isn't all over that reform suggests how important bundlers are to his fund-raising, and how important it is to some of his bundlers that their names not be made public.

The Times continues, "That could be a useful addition to the law, but it is not enough." Right. Why not have complete transparency, and require full disclosure about all bundlers? No, that's too logical a direction to take.

What is really needed is an overhaul of the public financing system for presidential campaigns, which has not kept pace with the actual costs of running for office.

Here's a sad truth: the public financing system can't keep pace with the "actual costs" of running for office. No matter how much money you toss into the system, it's just a matter of time before one candidate or the other, perhaps both, find it inadequate.

You want to complain about increasing college tuition costs? Colleges have nothing on political campaigns. Or even gas prices. I have the following (unverified) figures for the cost of the winner's campaign in the last few Presidential races:

• 1996 - $141.3 million (Clinton) out of $449 million total.


• 2000 - $256.4 million (Bush) out of $649.5 million total.


• 2004 - $457 million (Bush) out of $1,016.5 million total.

This election cycle looks like another bank breaker. Can you really expect public financing to keep up with that?

At this point, I think we need to be pushing for maximum transparency. It won't fix the system, but at least we'll get a sense of who's trying to buy the candidates favor.

It's Like A Black Fly in Broder's Chardonnay

David Broder tells us how the candidates feel about the negative tone of the campaign:

"I'm very sorry about it," McCain said in a Saturday interview at his Arlington headquarters. "I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings" together, as he had suggested, during the summer months.

Obama, in a phone interview yesterday from Elkhart, Ind., argued that "the classic tit-for-tat campaigning" of recent weeks "is part of the politics of the past that we have to move beyond." Ironically, having turned down McCain's proposal for weekly joint town halls, Obama argued that the formal debates, starting in late September, may refocus the campaign on real issues.

How is that ironic?

In any event, I think it's simplistic to suggest that if there were an exhausting series of "town hall meetings", the discourse would suddenly become elevated. I don't recall that, during their respective, seemingly never-ending series of debates, either the Republican or Democratic primaries were sunny and positive. Broder quotes McCain,

"When you have to stand on a stage with your opponent, as I've done in other campaigns, you obviously have a tendency to improve the relationship. . . . When you have to spend time with somebody, I think it changes the equation."

Why let facts get in the way of that?

Campaign Ad Humor

I know that it's dangerous to run ads like these, because you're going to get an indignant response, "Can you believe he just compared himself to one of our great Presidents," as if that's the point. But you could still have some fun with the idea:

You know I respect you, but you're a newcomer to the Capitol. You've only been here a couple of years. I've been here working hard for decades. Sure, you're a celebrity. Everybody knows your name. They love you in France. Heck, they love you so much, they're probably going to put up a statue in your honor. [Chuckle] But does your standing up to George - opposing his war - really qualify you to be President?

No, Mr. Washington, it doesn't.

---

I appreciate your work for civil rights. Me, I've fought my entire life for equal rights for everyone. But aren't you being presumptuous? You did some good things as a lawyer back in Illinois, but you're trying to become commander in chief. These are troubled times, my friend, times of war. You've never been on a battlefield. You've never commanded soldiers. What makes you think that you can govern a divided nation and defend our way of life?

Sorry, Mr. Lincoln, I just don't think you're qualified.

---

You? President? You're kidding me, right? You write beautifully, I have to admit that. But you're inconsistent in your support for our nation's military forces. And you're always talking about civil rights and freedoms, but your policies make it hard for us to fight terror. You talk about "due process," "excessive bail," "probable cause" - admit it, you're soft on crime. If we do things your way how do we keep terrorist off our streets?

Sorry, Mr. Madison, your ideas are way too liberal.

Laugh It Off?

As you might expect from a person smart enough to see through the smokescreen, Dan Larison believes that Obama has a viable campaign tactic in laughing off attacks:

This is very much like the overheated response to “Celeb” or “The One”–rather than simply laughing off these ads and articles as ridiculous, Obama’s supporters and many media figures seem to be deadly serious about stressing the cunning, super-secret deployment of racial messages in both. Whether it is Perlstein hallucinating Nazi propaganda film homages or Gergen detecting racist tropes or Noah discerning skinniness as the latest one of these tropes, the responses have managed to make the various targets of their criticism seem sane, well-balanced and serious by comparison.

Yet one of the reasons campaigns don't laugh off these attacks can be seen in the history of the Swift Boat Liars campaign against John Kerry. Kerry attempted the Larison approach, "mock them for their stupidity, and stop investing them with the importance that their creators want you to give them", and by the time he recognized the failure of his tactics it was too late to stamp out the lies.

Obama seems intent on staying above the fray, with statements like "John McCain is an honorable man who is running an increasingly dishonorable campaign". But history tells us, dishonorable campaigns work. That's why McCain is running one, and why he now has a nominal lead in the polls. If they're unrebutted, they grow legs. That's what happened with the Swift Boat nonsense, to the point that a lot of people who were more than smart enough to "know better" were defending the attacks. And for people so passively receptive to smears and innendo as to believe that Obama's comment about not looking like past presidents was racist?Larison wrote,

What I find even more remarkable is the idea that anyone could interpret Obama’s comment as being racist. It is now “racist” to hint that others are going to use a candidate’s race against him? Does that make any sense? Do 53% of likely voters really think Obama making an obvious reference to his race (one so obvious that you have to think your audience morons to deny it) is racist? If so, can we officially declare that the word has no more meaning, or at least that for the most part it is trotted out whenever we want to refer to something as Very Bad? Obama’s remark may be many things, but of all the words I can think of to describe it racist is not among them.

What hope should anybody have that those voters will see through McCain's smokescreen?

If I were running ads, I would pull some examples of McCain deploring negative campaigning in the past, contrast them with his current smear tactics, and lament that McCain's sense of honor seems to have disappeared. Perhaps that's the next step after "he's an honorable man who is running a dishonorable campaign" - it could become, "I used to think he was a man of honor, but actions speak louder than words".

I don't actually have a problem with "attack ads" as such - a lot of fair comparison ads get called "attack ads". I don't see accurate ads that boil down to, "My position is X, my opponent's position is Y, and my position is better" as a bad thing, even if unflattering pictures are presented of the opposing candidate as ominous music plays. I don't think the public would be served by a sushine and lollipops campaign of positive ads that elide any differences between the candidates - we saw in 2000 how a popular conception of, "there are no real differences between the candidates," coupled with media ennui, can lead to huge numbers of voters actually buying into that nonsense.

You know what? The biggest audience for the harshest critics of the current round of McCain ads is Obama's supporters. Check the blogs - to the extent that they're commenting, McCain's supporters appear to be uniformly gloating about them. They're unaffected by the criticism. To the extent that there has been a shift, it has been in the perception of some pundits who are pretty much taking Obama's line - they can't believe that the great and honorable McCain is behaving like this. (Maybe it's mind control.)

Obama's probably correct, to keep his official pronouncements in sync with the punditocracy's views. Letting them decide when this is, in fact, McCain's "real voice" rather than the work of a doppleganger. To get ahead of them would likely result in their turning on him. But no, pretending to laugh at bad jokes doesn't make them go away. It's more likely to trigger a response of, "It's not funny unless there's some truth behind it, and even you think it's a joke." When a smear campaign is launched, its authors are deserving of scorn, and although I see it as largely ineffectual I have no problem with the target's supporters initiating what amounts to a grassroots expression of scorn. At the same time, smear campaigns usually don't get legs without the active cooperation (and sometimes collaboration) of the mainstream media. So for criticism pointed in that direction, at all levels of the campaign, I say "(cautiously) turn up the heat."