Recommended - Our Broken Senate

I recommend the article Our Broken Senate, by Norman Ornstein in the March/April 2008 Issue of The American, the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute. As originally conceived, the Senate was supposed to be the slower, more deliberative legislative body, tempering the more populist, impulsive tendencies of the House. That was a wise choice, but over the decades the Senate has evolved a number of dysfunctional procedures that give too much obstructive power to individual Senators.

Republicans – what it would take to get my vote again

I come from a staunchly Republican family, and have voted Republican more often than not. I did vote for Lynden Johnson, because much as I liked Barry Goldwater personally, it was clear he intended to ramp up our involvement in Vietnam, but of course Johnson then did exactly the same thing, and less effectively – so much for that vote.

This past election I voted, albeit reluctantly, for Obama. I liked McCain personally (let’s not talk about Palin), but after eight years of Bush-Chaney, I was pretty disillusioned with what the Republican party had become.

I’m not happy with the prodigious spending and projected debt that the Obama administration seems to be committed to, and Republicans could have my vote again in future elections, if they reverted to their traditional values. Here’s what Republicans would have to change to get my vote again:

1. Lose the religious right. The Republicans used to be religiously moderate. The world has enough meddlesome mullahs imposing their peculiar religious views on whole nations; we don’t need the Christian right doing the same in this country’s government. We do need high national ideals and ethics, but the dogma-driven views of particular organized religions have no place in the government of a free people. Keep imposing minority religious views on matters like abortion, family planning policy, creationism and stem cell research and you will keep losing my vote. If Republicans feel they need to keep pandering to the religious right to keep them as their base, then they have become an irrelevant political party in any case.

2. Go back to your roots as real fiscal conservatives. Republicans used to be for balanced budgets and fiscal restraint. The Bush administration clearly abandoned any fiscal restraint, trying to produce both guns and butter on credit, with no attempt to pay for it. In recent presidencies, strangely enough, it has been under Republicans that government deficits have increased, and under Democrats that it has decreased (but our current president may well reverse that trend). The tired old Republican mantra of “no new taxes” just won’t cut it anymore – there is no free lunch, and somebody someday has to pay off the huge debt the government has accumulated. There will have to be new and higher taxes, so be honest about it and demonstrate that the extra tax money will be used wisely.

3. Get serious again about protecting civil liberties. Republicans used to be strong supporters of civil liberties. But again, the Bush administration produced the biggest assault on civil liberties in my lifetime, condoning torture, imprisonment without trial, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, and all manner of other violations of Constitutional civil rights. The only civil liberty today’s Republican party seems to be interested in maintaining is the right to own an assault rifle.

4. Get serious about reducing the size of the Federal government. Republicans used to be suspicious of big government. Despite lip service to smaller government, in fact the Bush administration massively increased the size of government. Clearly this Democratic administration is going to increase it even more. This is unsustainable. Show me a plan and a commitment (not just vague campaign slogans) to significantly reduce the size of the Federal government and you have my interest again.

5. Move to the political center. Republicans used to be a “big tent” party, but now they have moved far right and lost the moderates. Some Republican leaders seem to think they lost the last election because they didn’t go far enough to the right (wrong!).

6. Get some articulate spokesmen/spokeswomen and candidates. The Republicans used to field articulate, competent candidates – Reagan fit that model, as did Republican greats like Dwight Eisenhower, Everett Dirksen, Barry Goldwater and Robert Taft. So long as the party is represented in public by people like Rush Limbaugh, Governor Sarah Palin or Governor Bobby Jindal, it’s going to be hard to take the Republicans seriously. And so long as Republicans keep recycling the same old tired and insincere campaign slogans, it’s going to be hard to take the Republicans seriously.

Maybe Republican strategists think returning to traditional Republican values would lose them more votes than they would gain. Perhaps they are right. But stay on the present course and they have certainly lost my vote.

Recommended: Arne Duncan's Fundamental Dishonesty

Relevant to the preceding post, I recommend David Harsanyi’s April 8 article in the Denver Post, Obama & Duncan's Dishonesty on Education.

Federal Education Policy

Almost no one disagrees that American public primary and secondary education is in trouble. Improving the quality of public education was a priority in the Bush administration, with passage of the unfortunate “No Child Left Behind” act. It remains, at least in rhetoric, a priority in the Obama administration. America spends more per student than almost any nation in the world, yet our primary and secondary students rank on average well below most industrialized nations in the world on a variety of achievement tests and in a variety of subjects.

Of course there are good schools and good teachers, as well as bad schools and bad teachers. But clearly the public system has too many of the latter and too few of the former. Can any federal program really fix this problem?

It seems to me three things indicate that the answer is no.

First, the funding for public education, the control of the curriculum, and control of hiring and firing exists at the state and local level, not at the federal level. The federal government can offer supplemental funds, but under our present system it does not control the main funding for public schools. And state and local school boards completely control the selection of textbooks and specification of the curriculum, as well as teacher certification, training, hiring and firing.

Second, one of the main impediments to solving this problem (but not the only one) is the politically powerful teacher’s unions, which tend to block the sorts of improvements that are needed, like merit pay, school voucher systems, and the like. Both parties are beholden to the teacher’s unions, but especially the Democrats. Teachers’ unions paid $55,794,440 in political donations between 1990 and 2008, 96 percent of it to Democrats. So it will be hard to pass legislation that the unions oppose. If one doubts the political clout of these unions, consider that among the very first acts of President Obama’s new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was to kill the highly-successful Washington DC school voucher program, which the teachers’ unions strongly oppose, and to suppress an internal agency report that clearly demonstrated the success of the voucher program.

Third and finally, despite the rhetoric, parents and voters really aren’t nearly as upset about the quality of our schools as they ought to be, and aren’t pushing their federal representatives (or their state representatives either, for that matter) nearly hard enough for improvements. So long as people’s votes are more swayed by other issues, politicians are not going to spend much real political capital on addressing the problem.

All of which leads me to conclude that despite the eloquent words, the Federal government isn’t going to be very effective at improving the quality of American public education. If anyone is going to drive such improvements, it will have to be done at the state and local levels.

Recommended - Free At Last

Fareed Zakaria always seems to cut through the political rhetoric to get to the sensible position. I recommend his April 4 Newsweek article Free At Last, in which he talks good sense about energy independence.

Recommended - President Obama's First 70 Days

I recommend Victor David Hanson's article President Obama's First 70 Days from the National Review Online. Whether or not one agrees with all of Hanson's assumptions, and whether or not one finds his sarcasm a bit grating, he is right that those who lead in Obama's administration shape their policies based on their perceptions of the world, just as all their predecessor administrations have done. So it is important to try and understand how they see the world, and to ponder whether we agree with those perceptions.

Recommended – The Democrat’s problems

I recommend two related articles. First, Jonathan Chait’s article Why the Democrats Can't Govern in The New Republic. Then Sean Trende’s related article, The Real Reason The Democrats Can't Govern on the Real Clear Politics site.

Despite the titles, neither of these is a right-wing polemic. They are instead an analysis of how structural factors in our Constitution, and in the way we elect representatives, makes it harder to build effective left-wing coalitions than right-wing coalitions. Well worth reading.

Recommended - The Trouble With Subsidies

I recommend Fareed Zakaria's recent article in Newsweek, The Trouble With Subsidies. I find his argument convincing.