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John Roberts and Election 2012

December 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

Fiscal cliff . . . blah, blah, blah . . . dysfunctional government . . . blah, blah, blah.

I know it’s important.

But I just can’t bring myself to talk about it, other than to say that the posturing is idiotic and that it is more obvious than ever that everyone who is “serious” about solving [INSERT PET CRISIS HERE] is apparently only serious about doing it on their own terms, which is an approach that always works well.

Blah, blah, blah . . .

Oops, even I slipped into it there for a second — sorry!  You don’t really want to here any more about that, right?

OK . . . how about I talk about Chief Justice John Roberts instead?

I am, after all, a lawyer.  Sigh . . . .

I saw the following headline this morning that got me thinking:  John Roberts is the Person of the Year.

If the approaching new year has you looking about for “most influential” types, then look no further than the Chief Justice, a lawyer’s lawyer, who, intentionally or unintentionally, almost certainly had more influence on Election 2012 then all the millions of dollars in hounds-of-hell SuperPACs he unleashed on the unwitting public via Citizens United (which, interestingly, I haven’t heard a peep about since early November . . .).

While people were awaiting the Court’s decision on Obamacare, both sides were a bit ambivalent on the political consequences.  After all, if conservatives lost at the Supreme Court, they could run against both an unpopular law and activist judges.  As for President Obama, if he lost he could run against both the wealthy and an antiquated, out-of-touch, white male judiciary (+ Clarence Thomas).

In fact, the best political outcome for both sides was probably a loss, right?  Right??!!  Just look at the expanded list of villains!!

Ha ha.

All that ambivalence was just a bunch of posturing.

The reality was that both sides really wanted an Obamacare win.  And President Obama really needed an Obamacare win.

If you can remember all the way back to late June this year, you’ll remember that it wasn’t a great time for the President.  The economy wasn’t doing well . . . for the fourth summer in a row . . . and there were few signs of improvement.  There was the debt ceiling debacle.  His image as a pragmatic compromiser was being, well, compromised.  His list of accomplishments — despressingly short already given (probably unfair, but largely self-inflicted) expectations — was posed to grow even shorter.  Although liberals were still sanguine about the election, Republicans were licking their chops, sure that the President’s signature domestic policy accomplishment was about to be dismantled by the Supreme Court.  ”Just what has he done the last four years?,” they would say.  ”Passed an ineffective stimulus bill and an unconstitutional healthcare law?”  ”Saved Solyndra and wasted all his time trying — unsuccessfully, thanks to us — to subvert the Constitution by undermining the quality of your healthcare?”

And what would President Obama’s response have been?  ”Well, when it comes to jobs, we’re *almost* back to where we started?”  ”Blame it all on the Wall Street, Congressional Republicans, and the Supreme Court?”  Ouch.  Though we might all have been saved some of the rhetoric about birth control . . . or not.

Would the election have turned out differently?  I don’t pretend to know.  But even if the result was the same, the election surely would have been different.  And I think there is a decent chance that things would have turned out differently.

Maybe that’s all wishful thinking. :)

But I struggle to think of anyone else as politically influential in 2012 than our Chief Justice.

In his own version of the Switch in Time that Saved Nine, John Roberts fundamentally changed the anticipated direction of the electoral conversation and, I think, had more influence on Election 2012 than anyone else.

I don’t think John Roberts is an activist judge (if that phrase has any meaning at all).  I don’t think he aspires to be a political power player.  I think he’s pretty much the ultimate lawyer’s lawyer.

In fact, I’ve been pretty open about the fact that I think our Chief Justice’s Obamacare decision was motivated primarily by a desire to keep the Supreme Court out of politics rather than to inject it into the middle of another Presidential election — whether you think that’s a legitimate judicial consideration or not.

But that’s the long-game, and sometimes you have to take some short term hits to get where you ultimately want to be.

So, whether he wanted it or not, John Roberts has my vote for most politically influential of 2012.

Now that he’s no longer kept in suspense, he can get back to scheming over how to incense half the country over affirmative action.

And with that, I return you to the fiscal cliff . . . .

Filed Under: Election 2012, Law, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , ,

Sandy Hook.

December 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been MIA since the election for a number of reasons, but primarily because work has demanded enough of my time that blogging has to take a back seat.  It’s also been a nice break.

But I, like all of us, was jolted out of my life’s busy holiday reverie by what happened in Newtown on Friday morning.

The tragedy for the parents who lost children, and children who lost mothers, is unspeakable.  For me, anyway, their pain is unimaginable.  Any attempt to comprehend what they must be feeling makes me physically exhausted, terrified, and emotionally wrung out.  The senselessness of it all — the cold-blooded murder of Kindergarten children by someone scarcely older than a child himself — makes it an event that simply can’t be understood.

Like 9/11 and Columbine — the two tragedies with which it most closely compares — the effects of Sandy Hook will reverberate down the years in the form of a shattered sense of security for our us as parents and each of our little ones and, hopefully, the actions taken to try and prevent this from ever happening again.

Already, a great national conversation has begun over gun control, as it always does during these times.  While this is a good thing, it’s not the main thing.

What we’re all talking about is not really the conversation we need to be having.

Rather than asking ourselves about access to guns, we need to be asking ourselves why this keeps happening in America, and, almost, only in America?  And why does the level of violence seem to be escalating?

And these are not, primarily, questions about access to guns.  They are questions about our national soul.

It is the prevalence of bullying?  Is it mental illness?  Is it lack of access to adequate healthcare?  Is it a culture of violence and celebrity?  Some combination of all of the above?  Or something else entirely?

I don’t pretend to know what it is.  But these are the pressing concerns.  These are the real questions we need to answer.  And we need to answer them now — before this happens again.  Because the Columbines, Virginia Techs, and the Sandy Hooks seem perilously close to becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Tragedies like Sandy Hook should never happen.

And though we can never guarantee that this will never happen again, we can, and must, guarantee that we will put our very best efforts to heal the wounds in our national soul.  Questions about spending, debt ceilings, energy independence, climate change, and progressive taxation fade into near total insignificance in comparison.

If we do nothing more than grieve and talk over the next two weeks, we will have failed the victims of the next tragedy.  If we pass reasonable gun control legislation, we’ll have done more.  But if we have failed to confront what is actually behind the Columbines, Virginia Techs, and the Sandy Hooks and declined to put our best efforts into correcting it, we’ll once again look back with pain and regret at what might not have been.

God bless us, every one, that we’ll have the courage to do whatever needs to be done.

Filed Under: News, Opinion

Election 2012: Morning After Thoughts on the National Election

November 7, 2012 by 6 Comments

Has the Republican Party lost its way?  Did it get beaten so badly because of Tea Party craziness?  Or was it, yet again, too moderate?  Did it get beat because it’s party of angry old white men?  What lessons should the GOP take away from this drubbing?

Here are some of my brief thoughts.

(1) This was not that much of a drubbing.  It was predicted to be a close election.  It was a close election.  The country remains evenly split.  Republicans and Democrats should both keep that in mind.  Enough of the American electorate responded to President Obama’s primary message, which was, “better me than him,” for him to win.  Certainly not a mandate for four more years of the same.

(2) Candidates, candidates, candidates!  Right now, the GOP has a problem with its candidates, and I’m not talking Mitt Romney.  Democrats picked up seats in the Senate due to some incredibly inept Republican candidates, not a Democratic groundswell.  Whatever the reasons — whether it’s Tea Party extremism or the party getting too comfortable with certain seats, I’m not sure.  But the GOP has lost too many races that it should have won over the last 4 years.

(3) Despite the close election, Republicans do have a serious issue with minority appeal and demographic realities.  As a result, I suspect we’ll finally see bipartisan immigration reform before 2014.  However, Republicans have lost ground on the issue that’s going to be hard to make up.  They really need to do some serious outreach.  There are Hispanic voters that would fit well in the GOP, but it’s going to take time, words, and action to make them feel comfortable enough to join up or come back.

(4) Republicans need to make peace with the idea of serious healthcare reform.  Obamacare isn’t going away; there will be no repeal.  It was ultimately a losing wedge issue this time round, it will be more so in future years.  The other thing about the Republican stand on healthcare is that it hurts the party’s minority appeal.  The issue going forward becomes how to mitigate the negative impacts, of which there will be many. The GOP needs a serious alternative healthcare approach.  Now!

(5) The GOP foreign policy does sound like the 1980s part II.  Although I don’t believe for a second that Mitt Romney really conceived of Russia as the United States’ primary foreign policy threat, the GOP needs a foreign policy that is more than Israel, Iraq, + military spending.

Before my fellow Republicans despair that we’re entering a new era of Democratic dominance and all is lost, let’s keep in mind one thing: The Democrats have their own problems.  Pretty big problems.  In his effort to win this election, President Obama repeatedly villainized wealth and openly engaged in the type of class warfare we haven’t seen since before Reagan.  I think some damage was done to the Democratic Party as a result.  President Obama and Congressional Democrats have some time to try and rehabilitate their image.  An improving economy will help.  The significance of the Democratic “firewall” of rust belt swing states is also subject to coming demographic realities.  Continued unconditional support for unions is going to hurt elsewhere and the political benefits will be reduced as the rust belt becomes less electorally significant.  Democrats cannot continue to offer, as their only solutions for an obvious entitlement crisis (1) reduced military spending, and (2) more entitlement programs.  Both parties need course corrections.

Finally, let me wax philosophical on a couple things.  First, the Tea Party.  My few regular readers will know that I’m no great fan of the Tea Party.  But for me, the problem with the Tea Party has always been about the penchant for constitutional politics, not the stances on the major issues of our time, which are debt and entitlement reform.  The Tea Party energy is a positive thing for the Republican Party; it just needs to be re-directed to where it counts.

Second, Mitt Romney.  I was a Jon Huntsman supporter during the primary.  I still like Huntsman.  But I like Romney as well, and I’ve always thought he would be a tremendous President.  I think that Romney represented Republicans well.  I think he represented the Mormon Church well.  I think the door is now wide open for a Mormon President — of any political persuasion.  Mitt ran for office with a deck stacked against him in many ways.  Evangelicals were suspicious of his religion.  Republicans were suspicious of his record.  Democrats attacked his wealth.  If he flip-flopped to navigate the minefield, I forgive him.  He did a good job.

Anyway, my random morning after thoughts on the national election.  Utah thoughts coming soon . . . .

Filed Under: Election 2012, News, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s Over, Right? So What?

November 5, 2012 by 5 Comments

Friends and countrymen, 48 hours from now it will finally be done.  Nearly two years of political posturing, campaigning, villainizing, deifying, and aggrandizing will be at an end.  Finally!

Unfortunately, when it all ends, many — if not all — of us won’t be able to feel the relief we should feel after completing such an ordeal.  Half of us will be despondent and looking to lash out.  Half of us will be jubilant, at first tempted to gloat . . . and then tempted to lash out in response to attacks and promises of intransigence from the despondent other half.  The less considerate of us will blunder around in jubilation, while the more considerate will tiptoe carefully around the exposed feelings of our friends and neighbors — the losers — all the while smiling inside.

That’s the best case scenario.  Because, who knows?  This thing may not actually end tomorrow.  It may drag on for weeks . . .  .  Remember 2000?  Accusations of lying pale in comparison to accusations of cheating . . . .

So, for the next week or so, today is probably as relieved and introspective as we’re going to feel.  And before we get to the glorying and the doomsdaying, I want to take a minute for some thoughts about just what the last two years have meant.  Please bear with me.

Today — even with all the negative campaigning — we’re still hearing all about hope for the next four years.  Tomorrow, we’ll hear much less optimistic predictions about the incalculable damage that a President Obama or a President Romney will inflict on America.

But I would suggest to you all that, regardless of who becomes President, that more significant damage has already been done.

The wounds we’ve inflicted on each other in the cause of selecting leadership are deep and severe.  Right now, the pain is blunted by the desperate hope that our side will still win.  But, as in so many things, one side will win, the other will lose.  And the loss will expose the wounds that have already been inflicted, while the win won’t feel nearly as satisfying as we had hoped.  The scars will still be there, even for the winners.

Sure, a lot of us will try to patch things up.  We’ll post about the need to come back together, the fact that we’re all Americans, the fact that we have much more in common with each other than the few ways in which we’re different.  That’s all nice, and very true.

But coming from an awful lot of us — winners or losers — these expressions of conciliation will mean relatively little after the last two years we’ve spent overtly, or more subtly, villainizing each other and each other’s belief systems.  And it will mean even less if it just starts back up again in five days.

I’m as guilty, if not more guilty than most.

How can anyone govern a country after a campaign like this?  How do individuals, much less a country, heal when this happens every two years?

Surely the solution isn’t for us all to become more hardened or to just ignore the election . . . .

I’m not naive enough to romanticize America’s political past.  We are, by and large, where we have always been when it comes to political campaigning.  But the fact that we’re not any worse shouldn’t give us much comfort.  It’s a problem.  A big problem.  One that not only savages our governance but our personal relationships.  This country has improved in many, many ways since 1787, but we have not gotten much better when it comes to political campaigning and our selection of leaders.

Unfortunately, we’ve just run up against human nature.

Fixing healthcare or balancing the budget is a cakewalk compared to fixing something like this.

But my own personal belief system tells me that a person’s nature can change, and I suggest to you that we need to try and change when it comes to how we conduct our campaigns and how we cope with elections.

Rather than offer solutions that I don’t have, I’d just like to leave you with a few words (that I suggest we all apply to ourselves, rather than to any candidate or candidate’s supporter):

Zechariah 13:6

“And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.”

Romans 12

“Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.

“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;

“Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.

“Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

“Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.

“If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”

Marvin J. Ashton

“Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet.  Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped.  Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us.  Charity is expecting the best of each other.

Joseph B. Wirthlin

“Love is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the pathway of discipleship. It comforts, counsels, cures, and consoles. It leads us through valleys of darkness and through the veil of death. In the end love leads us to the glory and grandeur of eternal life.

. . .

“The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of transformation. It takes us as men and women of the earth and refines us into men and women for the eternities.

“The means of this refinement is our Christlike love. There is no pain it cannot soften, no bitterness it cannot remove, no hatred it cannot alter. The Greek playwright Sophocles wrote: ‘One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.’

“The most cherished and sacred moments of our lives are those filled with the spirit of love. The greater the measure of our love, the greater is our joy. In the end, the development of such love is the true measure of success in life.”

This process of selecting our leaders is both a fundamental right and a necessary evil.

It’s hard, and it hurts.  We need to be at our best, not at our worst.  Because if we’re not careful, it will never end.

Filed Under: Election 2012, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

From the Past: My Thoughts After the 2008 Election

November 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment

These days everyone’s predicting the likely winner of the election next week.

Rather than make a solid prediction, I’ll just stay with this race is too close and leave it at that.

I am, however, already working on a post-election day post, and my efforts reminded me that I had written a similar post four years ago on a former blog.  Although the blog has long since been taken down, I saved all the content in a database, in the unlikely event that there was something worth preserving.  So I went and pulled it up this morning and I’ll put it here, just for fun.

Keep in mind I was still in full-blown financial crisis mode and quite a bit farther to the right when I wrote it.  Enjoy! :)

It’s Over–Finally!

I voted this morning, and, though I won’t tell you who for, it wasn’t for either Obama or McCain.  I refuse to vote for anyone who supports the government’s ridiculous and harmful bailout proposals.  And you can expect the government printing presses to continue unabated under either one of our two main candidates.

I suspect that Obama will win this election, so it will be a historic one in that America will finally elect an African-American President.  Let me tell what I look forward to (and don’t look forward to) in an Obama Presidency:

I look forward to the impact of a new and more powerful role model for African-American youth than rappers and sports stars.  I predict the impact of President Obama the role model will be lasting, substantial, and very beneficial–much more so than Obama’s policy accomplishments as President.

I look forward to having a President who’s a good speaker again.

I look forward to having a President who is committed to at least trying to resolve this country’s health care crisis.

I look forward to the Republican Party being humiliated at the polls and regrouping to reclaim its identity as the party (more) in favor of limited government and American values.

I look forward to an end to the Bush and Clinton dynasties in American politics.

I look forward to an end of the constant and rather whiny complaints about evil geniuses Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.

I do not look forward to the appointment of liberal law professors (e.g. Harold Honghju Koh) to the United States Supreme Court.

I do not look forward to New Deal II, complete with foreclosure moratoriums and continued government bailouts.

I do not look forward to Democratic control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress.

I do not look forward to large amounts of high-flying rhetoric inconsistent with the ordinary, and very political, strategies being pursued on the ground.

I do not look forward to the fulfillment of Joe Biden’s foreign policy test prophecy.

And there you have it, some of my take on the next four years.  Best of luck, President Obama, you’re going to need it.

And congratulations to President Bush.  I bet there is no one happier than him that the election is now over and he can begin making permanent plans to get out of the White House . . . well, except perhaps for a large majority of the American people.  But their minds will change (at least a little bit) in the coming years.

Remember, it hath been foretold . . .

Filed Under: Election 2012, Fun, Opinion

Judicial Retention: Utah’s Forgotten Elections

November 1, 2012 by 1 Comment

Folks, for those of you (like me) who haven’t yet voted, either because you want to stick it out to the bitter end or you just like going to the polls on election day, let me raise an important issue that gets almost no publicity — judicial retention.

In Utah, our judges are appointed to their positions.  But to remain in their positions, they must be re-elected in periodic, unopposed retention elections.

It’s in the Utah Constitution:

Article VIII, Section 9.   [Judicial retention elections.]
Each appointee to a court of record shall be subject to an unopposed retention election at the first general election held more than three years after appointment. Following initial voter approval, each Supreme Court justice every tenth year, and each judge of other courts of record every sixth year, shall be subject to an unopposed retention election at the corresponding general election. Judicial retention elections shall be held on a nonpartisan ballot in a manner provided by statute. If geographic divisions are provided for any court of record, the judges of those courts shall stand for retention election only in the geographic division to which they are selected.

If you’ve voted before, you’ve probably seen the questions on the ballot: “Should Judge X be retained?”  At which point you probably thought to yourself something like, “Crap, I’ve never even heard of Judge X and there’s not even a party affiliation for me to go by,” and then either: “Throw them all out,” or, “I’ll just vote yes.”

I offer it as my personal opinion that retention elections are a bad idea.  I much prefer the federal model of life tenure subject to impeachment.  By and large the judges that we have in our state do a fine job.  There are some that are exceptional.  But regardless of whether a judge is exceptional, or less than so, it is not helpful to a judge’s work to be concerned about retention when making rulings.  Judges have it hard enough, and no judge should be thrown out just for getting a ruling wrong, or, heaven forbid, getting an unpopular ruling right.  Remember, every decision that a judge makes alienates someone, or some large, influential public interest group.  Often, decisions alienate everyone involved.  And retention elections invite punishment for a judge just doing the job we sent him or her to do.  A judge who abuses his or her office is more likely to be punished via impeachment than through a retention election.  The retention mechanism is unnecessary and invites problems.

To those who would say “throw them all out, every time,” I really don’t know what to say to you.  If you believe that the best thing for Utah’s judicial system is the regular destruction of institutional memory and indiscriminate punishment for public service . . . well, we probably just don’t have much to say to each other.

Commentary and unsolicited opinion aside, we have these elections in Utah and their continuation is mandated by our Constitution.  So, we should at least try to do this all intelligently, right?

In an effort to try and provide voters some basis for casting their retention votes, Utah has created a Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, which “rates” judges on the basis of interview questionnaires filled out by attorneys and litigants.  You can access the information at http://judges.utah.gov.

Take some time to read through it before heading out to vote.

Filed Under: Election 2012, Law, Opinion Tagged With: , , , ,

Partisanship in American Politics — Is it Really Any Worse Today?

October 30, 2012 by 2 Comments

We’re down to the last 7 days of Election 2012.

Thank heavens.

By all accounts, Obama and Romney are neck and neck in an all-out sprint to the finish.  Poor voters in the campaign-designated “swing states” have been, and will continue to be, subjected to a constant stream of last minute negative campaign ads.  And people will wonder, as they always have, why has our political discourse gotten so uncivil?  Why do we villainize each other so?  Why can’t politicians work together to get something done?  Why can’t we talk to each other any more?  And why oh why do today’s campaigns always degenerate into name calling or bitter fights over stupid slogans (binders of women) and inconsequential matters (birth certificates).

A common (and generally accurate) response to these complaints is a bit of historical perspective.  Politics in America has always been a bit rough and tumble.  Partisanship — severe partisanship — has been part of American politics since the very beginning, and gridlock in Washington D.C. has been the rule more than it has been the exception.  Think some of our campaigns get nasty?   Think Democrats treated President Bush shabbily or Republicans are excessively mean to President Obama?  Go back and read what John Adams and Thomas Jefferson said about each other — it wasn’t pretty, and oftentimes makes us look down right civil by comparison.

So maybe it’s just the same old same old, and we’re just appalled all over again.

Certainly that’s part of it.

But despite the historical perspective, I think something has changed, and I’ll tell you what.

It’s not the politicians.  They’re pretty much the same as they’ve always been . . . generally good people thrown (OK, maybe jumping in with both feet) into a mostly impossible situation.

Nope, it’s not the politicians.  What’s changed is you and me.

And why?

Well, I don’t claim to know all of it, but part of it is the internets, people.

No longer are we dependent on geography or circumstance for our news source.  These days, news is (nearly) 100% ala carte.  And this is generally a very positive thing.  I’m in charge of my own destiny, so to speak, when it comes to information.

But our (relatively) new found freedom can also be very problematic for political discourse when we’re lazy or comfortable about it.

Why?  Because I no longer have to sort through or be exposed to anything that annoys me or doesn’t validate my opinions.

As a consequence, unless I make a conscious effort, my preconceived notions don’t get challenged.  Instead, every piece of news that enters my world confirms my political predilections.  All the commentary I see reaffirms that I’m right.  It’s like I’m the judge in a courtroom with only one side’s attorney.  Everything is crystal clear to me and I just can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t see it.  The other side is either evil or stupid.

And we increasingly demand candidates who profess to see as clearly as we think we do.  The political results of our electoral decisions are predictable.

I think the so-called “vital center” of American politics remains intact, but it can be hard for us to see where it is, or even where we fit in relation to it, when differences are magnified and our circles of political thought and exposure grow ever smaller.  Sometimes it seems that people who are not really too far apart from us are on a separate planet . . . .

In the United States our judicial system operates on the principle that truth is best determined when you have skilled individuals advocating for each side of the case. Regardless of the merits of the advocate system (and I don’t really want to get into that debate here), you don’t get anywhere — at least so far as the search for truth is concerned — when you excise one side from the courtroom.

Now, I’m not trying to romanticize the good old days where we were stuck with whatever happened to come to our porch at 6 AM or our TV in the evening.  But I do offer it as my opinion that with the right to control your own destiny when it comes to news sources comes the responsibility to challenge yourself a little bit.  And to the extent more people do, we’ll move a bit further back to the status quo of American politics, which, though itself not always great shakes, was a bit better than what we have today.

Filed Under: Election 2012, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

On Corporate Personhood, Balanced Budgets, and Constitutional Amendments

October 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

In the 220+ years since it was drafted and ratified, the United States Constitution has been amended 27 times.  The first 10 amendments were actually adopted prior to Vermont’s ratification of the Constitution itself (Vermont was the last of the 13 colonies to ratify), as part of a strategic concession by Federalists to secure ratification.  Two of the remaining 17 amendments cancel each other out, as the 21st Amendment was adopted specifically to repeal the nationwide prohibition of alcohol established by the 18th.  Another 3 amendments — the 13th, 14th, and 15th — are direct results of the Union victory in the Civil War, while the 16th (authorizing a national income tax) and the 26th (lowering the voting age to 18) are quite clearly the indirect results of two other wars — World War I and the Vietnam War, respectively.  Finally, the 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, was actually proposed in 1789 and is therefore best viewed as part of the initial pre-1804 amendments.

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Filed Under: American Constitution Post-1787, Law, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Most Significant News of the Last 24 Hours

October 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

What’s the most significant news of the last 24 hours?

President Obama winning the debate?

More moderator shennigans (I love how we’re now all on a first name basis with Jim, Martha, and Candy)?

Binders of women?

The more or less consensus that President Obama’s win is unlikely to “move the needle”?

That fact that both candidates now make no pretense about their dislike for each other?

The Yankees on the brink of elimination?

Nope.

The most important news of the last 24 hours has nothing to do with last night’s debate, but has potential  to impact the election (and, more importantly, the next 4 years).

It’s the news that housing starts increased 15 percent to a 4-year high.

Recessions (both because of and in spite of politicians’ best efforts) don’t last forever.  And the uptick in housing starts, when coupled with the less-positive (but still positive) employment news from last month, are both good signs — green shoots, shall we say (and as a more confident and less-chastened President might have said in early 2010)?

No question there’s still plenty of bad news and big problems out there.  But each successive piece of positive news subtly alters the narrative of the race, from one where Romney runs against Obama’s record and Obama runs against Romney’s wealth (c’mon liberal friends, admit that this is precisely what he’s doing) to one where Romney’s attack has to be moderated a bit and Obama can cautiously trot out a piece of actual news now and again.

Naive as I am, I’m not naive enough to believe that many people are paying attention to the housing starts news.  And, frankly, the election narrative is probably too well-entrenched to change much, if at all.  But in an election where only a handful of voters matter, pieces of news like this could have some significance, especially, if say, a favorable jobs reports comes out the first week of November . . . .

And if the economy is beginning to cycle out of this recession, the next President stands to get some credit, whether he deserves it or not.  As it was put (somewhat facetiously) on Twitter this morning:

If housing is accelerating, whoever wins may soon be presiding over a real recovery. No wonder the candidates are getting testy …
October 17, 2012 4:51 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite
@davidfrum
davidfrum

Who wouldn’t want to be the guy presiding over a recovery, right?

In case you were wondering, none of this changes my vote.  President Obama’s record is what it is at this point.  I’m more than a bit skeptical of attributing improvements in the housing market to a stimulus bill passed nearly 4 years ago now, and I’ve set out my opinions generally here.

But it’s significant news, certainly more significant that binders of women.

Filed Under: Election 2012, News, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Foreign Policy and Election 2012

October 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

One thing that becomes clear when reading the Constitution and the minutes from the Constitutional Convention is that our Founding Fathers didn’t really know what to make of the American President.

Article II generally speaks in vague terms about the President, unless it’s referring to primarily procedural matters outlining the method of election, length of term, oath of office, criteria for impeachment, and obligation to provide Congress information regarding the state of the union.

Even by the standards of our intentionally sparse Constitution, there’s not much to go on when it comes to the President’s substantive authority.  Indeed, in comparison, the authority of Congress is spelled out in great detail.  The President?  He has “the executive Power,” is the Commander in Chief, can grant pardons, make treaties, appoint ambassadors, and must faithfully execute the law.

But as vague as Article II is, it makes one thing clear: the President has a substantial role to play when it comes to the foreign affairs of the United States.  Indeed, one of the primary embarassments of the Articles of Confederation was the utter inability of the United States to prosecute a coherent foreign policy.  Everything that Congress did (or tried to do) was subject to the whims of individual states, and, as a result, the “United States” (when they could negotiate treaties) weren’t able to fulfill their obligations.

And so the Founders, with all their intentional vagueness about the President made clear that he would *the guy* (even if not the sole guy) when it came to foreign affairs.

And the area when individual Presidents have most clearly impacted the history and development of the United States (things domestically are usually much more fuzzy when it comes to attributing responsibility) is in foreign policy.

But Presidential elections don’t often turn on questions of foreign policy, even if they should.

And this election doesn’t appear to be an exception to the rule.  Despite all the obfuscation and intentional vagueness, the domestic policy positions of President Obama and Mitt Romney are relatively well-defined.

Not so when it comes to foreign affairs.

With President Obama, we know a few things: (1) he killed Osama bin Laden, (2) he pulled American forces out of Iraq, (3) he put more troops in Afghanistan, (4) he favors greater diplomatic engagement, (5) his administration panicked about the recent terrorist attack in Libiya and latched onto a storyline that just wasn’t credible, (6) the whole thing about the NDAA, and (7) he will pull American forces out of Afghanistan by 2014.  We don’t know much about what he’d do when push comes to shove with a nuclear Iran.

But with Mitt Romney we know almost nothing.  And, while this is a relatively common complaint from Democrats when it comes all aspects of the Romney/Ryan ticket, the vagueness about foreign policy is the only vagueness concerns me a bit.  When it comes to the economy, when it comes to healthcare reform, when it comes to balancing budgets and bipartisanship, Mitt Romney has a strong record of accomplishment.

But when it comes to foreign affairs, he stands where President Obama did four years ago (minus one anti-Iraq War vote — which was all that candidate Obama had to recommend him).

Romney’s tried to differentiate himself from the President when it comes to military spending, on free trade, talking tough with China, on Israel, and on the Benghazi debacle.  And in advance of the upcoming foreign policy debate, he gave a speech that didn’t say much, striking a different tone instead of drawing many significant substantive contrasts.

My opinion is that the reason we haven’t heard much about the details of a Romney/Ryan foreign policy is because it would likely mimic much of what President Obama has done and has promised to do.  Foreign policy, like everything else, suffers in an intensely political climate (witness both campaigns’ dismal responses to Benghazi:  Mitt with a press conference to condemn the President, with the President, in a moment of political panic, starts peddling an unbelievable story and then persists in the error long after it’s utterly discredited), and I think Romney’s not saying much because the President has done a much better job when it comes to foreign affairs than he has to the United States’ domestic challenges.  And, frankly, it’s difficult to give details about complex international issues when the precise contours are still developing.

But still, the area where the President can most clearly affect the immediate direction of the United States is foreign policy, and I’d like to see both candidates pressed and provide some details (to the extent they can).  It’s probably too much to expect them in the upcoming debates, but anytime prior to November 6 is good enough for me.

Filed Under: Election 2012, Law, News, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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