Campaign Blog: News & Updates

Now to scrape up $55 for a VHS tape ...

Hello,

I am writing in response to your inquiry about the Firing Line television program broadcast archive. The program you requested, S0018 "The Politics of William Proxmire," is available for purchase.

Attached to this message is an order form for VHS tapes of Firing Line programs. You can fill in the information on your computer, then print out the form, sign it, and mail it to me with your payment. Please be sure to include the program number(s) and title(s), and to sign the form. We cannot fill orders until we have your signature on the copyright agreement and a payment by check or money order made out to ?Hoover Institution Archives.? Payment must include shipping and tax, if appropriate. Once payment is received orders can take four to six weeks to process.

Sincerely,
Heather Wagner

Heather M. Wagner
Audio-Visual Specialist
Hoover Institution Archives

I'd probably have more to say about this ... but since I let this go unmentioned, I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, we're all tools for our own ideological predilictions, but to be a tool for the government is a bit different. I mean, do I now expect the WSJ to rag on George Will for his 1980 work on behalf of Reagan before performing punditry on ABC news?

That said, there's a case to be said for openness and far be it for me to be the biggest defender of any of the above parties, but each was open about it in their own way (none the same): KOS ran a disclaimer, Jerome stopped blogging, Chris has an About Me page that tells you what he does for a living as well as how much difficulty he has in getting "Welcome Back Kotter" references. Williams (and Will) did no such thing. Big difference, there.

TRB FROM WASHINGTON: Golden

In Texas, DeLay clearly set out to destroy political competition. His Republican allies in the state legislature crammed African American and Latino Texans into their own heavily Democratic districts while making the surrounding ones overwhelmingly white, thus handing the Republicans five new House seats. The move made a mockery of the GOP's supposed opposition to racial separatism. And it blanketed the Lone Star State with one-party congressional districts and incumbents who will probably never face a real challenge.

Schwarzenegger's proposal, by contrast, could dramatically increase political competition. When it redistricted in 2001, California's state legislature drew congressional lines that virtually guaranteed reelection for every incumbent, Republican and Democrat. As a result, in 2002, only one of the state's 53 districts witnessed a contested race (and that district wouldn't have been competitive either had Representative Gary Condit not gotten embroiled in the scandal over murdered intern Chandra Levy). Two years later, in 2004, not a single California House seat changed party hands.

New technology, which lets state legislators use precinct-level data about partisan identification to draw exquisitely uncompetitive districts, virtually guarantees that incumbents win reelection. That makes them less accountable to their constituents and more accountable to lobbyists and party bosses. And the problem keeps getting worse.

Earth to Kevin Drum ... is being "more accountable to lobbyists and party bosses" what you really want to defend?

Gee, this is a good idea. If only I had thought of it earlier. Oh, wait.

In any event, always a plus to see a good idea latching on elsewhere ... ya know, by people that get paid to mutter opinions.

Hat tip to Centerfield

Metaphor Country: Bush at The Wall Street Journal: Frames and Counter-Frames

"Exploit the gaps between frame and policy, to illuminate real programmatic differences."

Thanks Adam ... you just erased whatever remaining need I had to read Lakoff's "Moral Politics." That advice is worth far more than any Lakoff Meetups. Another good point in the strand connecting Wittman's and Kilgore's takes today.

White House Heat

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer goes easy on his former boss but occasionally knocks reporters in "Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House," out March 1. Fleischer, who now lives in New York, said his memoir is "about how the news gets made and how it gets covered." He said he explores "the dynamic between a free press and a sometimes-reluctant-to-share White House."

"My conclusion is that the press is biased -- biased in favor of conflict," Fleischer said. "There is an ideological element -- a subtle bias on policy issues, particularly on social policy issues, that favors Democrats more than Republicans. But that bias is secondary. Conflict comes first, regardless of whether the press is covering a Democrat or a Republican."

So Fleischer is only partially paranoid ... but still more correct than most conservative cranks on this issue.

The Washington Monthly

Nice to see others validating what I've been saying ...

In popular legend, one of the blogosphere's greatest strengths is its ability to expose media bias and malfeasance and hold the press accountable. For a long time I've disagreed: God knows the press deserves its share of criticism, the same as any other large institution, but with few exceptions blogosphere criticism tends to be both ignorant and juvenile.

Instapundit, for example, has written a seemingly endless stream of contemptuous posts about the media over the past year, but when I click the links and read the stories in question, there's usually nothing there except trivia: a tendentious reading of one word in a headline, unhappiness that a favored group wasn't quoted, etc. There's just no there there.

Yeah, pretty much exactly what I've been saying. I guess the pickings are really getting even slimmer than I suspected for the "liberal media" carpers as of late.

I swear, I was all set and prepared to make some keen observation on Ed Kilgore's latest post about Messages vs Messengers, but damned if Mark Schmitt didn't beat me to it. So I'll just piggyback on his take. Lesson learned ... strike while the iron is hot!

Now, Ed takes precisely the view that one might take if they worked for a think tank. Fully invested in the world of ideas, you'd expect "the message" to be a pretty big item for such folks. And that's not an entirely wrong idea, either. But as Mark alludes to, I think there's a coexistence between message and messenger that usually makes each ingredient more than the sum of its parts.

Schmitt puts it as succinctly as I think can possibly be done:

Much as The Prince was written for Lorenzo II De Medici, many of these ideas were contrived with an audience of one in mind. Clinton would "get it," they knew. And of course, the fact that he "got it" was exactly what led to the frustration that so many of the idea-advocates had with him. He loved the ideas, he made them feel brilliant and relevant, and then he took their ideas and stirred them deep into the soup.

Now, my version didn't have a comparison to classic works of literature. Hell, I'd be lucky if I could work in an Andy Kaufman movie reference. But one point worth launching off on from Mark's take is that the synergy wasn't entirely as tight as he suggests, at least in the case of the DLC's history. Remember, the DLC had a fairly well defined segment within the Democratic Party official ranks for much of their early history. The audience wasn't so much one person as it was one type of person. Bill Clinton was certainly among that type, but so was Al Gore, Sam Nunn, Chuck Robb, and Dave McCurdy. Each of those either did run for the White House or contemplated it, or had Al From ask them flat out to run. When 1992 came around, it was clearly Clinton's turn at bat, but in 1988, it was Al Gore's. And in 2004, the DLC had a toe in so many camps that it was ludicrous to think of simply one DLC candidate even though one of the candidates was the longest-serving President in DLC history.

Now, that point right there, I think confirms as much of what I believe Mark wanted to make ... that although there is an understandable importance to place on message itself, it cannot be cleanly separated from the messenger itself. Simple marketing at work here, actually. I mean, I can come up with the best philosophical framework for a candidate to run on as a pro-free-trade, pro-life, pro-school choice Democrat, but the list of people to run as such is down to myself and maybe a handful of others with even less name ID. So is it wise of me to invest in that process of idea-building? Probably not, at least not beyond what I do to ground myself on the ideas I care about personally.

Now, all that said, there is certainly a time and place for emphasizing the search for message versus the search for messenger. The hunt for a DNC chair is something of a proxy for that quest for a messenger, but it's far more minor than even my postings on the subject might indicate. 2005 and 2006 is not the time, in my view, to get too worked up on Presidential candidates. With that in mind, although there's a ready list of people I'm inclined to like for the 2008 nomination, I think its overkill at this point. Yet, with apologies to KY Dem and others ... someone has to do it. I can't sit here and claim that if Lieberman wanted to take another ill-fated swing at the crown, I wouldn't have revived TexansforJoe.com for just such a purpose.

Instead, this part of the process ought to be more about hashing out the ideas that the party ought to run with in the short-term future. In fact, the need is even more critical for reasons that Mark touches on ... many of the ideas promoted by Democrats are leftovers from the Clinton era. One of the disappointments of the Kerry campaign (there are, regrettably, too many) is that in the most meaningful campaign of our lifetimes, there was an inexcusable dearth of ideas presented by Kerry's campaign ... although, similar to Kilgore, I believe Kerry's health care plan will be a staple of Dem campaigns for the next few years. If it isn't, it should be. But "quality health care" isn't enough and Mark's point that campaigns are as much about indicating what type of President one will be during unforeseen instances is far more important than having the right position on the issues that come up in polling.

That final point is one that I think, unfortunately, defines where the two parties are right now. Democrats have most of the issues on their side, but there is more needed to get over the electoral hump ... putting it into a narrative that explains how the various policies advocated fit into an understandable and identifiable framework ... and sending the right message about what type of elected official one will be based on the issues and narrative offered.

Clinton put his issues into the narrative that he was a "New Democrat." It wasn't just an empty catchphrase. It meant breaking the stereotype of what being a Democrat had become on the national level (and more gradually, at the local level). It meant showing the goods on a variety of issues that proved that point. It meant consistency across the board in advocating his third way. And Clinton did all of that magnificently (although I quarrel incessantly with the concept of 'triangulation'). Clinton indicated he would govern as a New Democrat and with some key exceptions that drove those of us who were New Dems before it was cool, he did just that.

The broader lesson here is something that ought not be new to any PoliSci nut. It's taught in Sam Popkins' classic tome: The Reasoning Voter. Voters sift through the cacaphony of information provided with far more nuance and insight than they are often credited for. As such, when I first read the book during the 1992 campaign (required in Dr. Murray's "Presidential Campaigns" class at UH), I regularly caught a few mocking taunts from Republican friends who took it to be a liberal rationale for why anyone could see fit to elect Clinton. Yet the book's lessons still stand at this time where liberals mockingly taunt those who voted for Bush. There's a surprisingly consistent rationalization that voters make and the cues picked up on are very similar to what Schmitt suggests when he suggests "we elect a president not just because of his position on issues we know about, but to make choices that we cannot foresee." This past campaign didn't merely vindicate Schmitt's view on this matter ... it vindicated Sam Popkin as well. Unfortunately, every election in modern history has pretty much vindicated Sam Popkin, yet the lessons continually get forgotten from time to time.

?I think we [Democrats] are a stale party of ideas. We can?t talk about education. We can?t discuss when it is failing our members? (children) in public schools in urban areas. You know, we?re the experiment. Maybe vouchers aren?t the only answer, but then what is? I?m tired of hearing if we just pay teachers more, you know, life will be terrific. It?s a huge problem.?

Which right wing ideologue muttered these words? Why, it'd be SEIU cheif Andrew Stern, speaking openly to the Washington Post. Historians will note that Stern has never had a shortage of unique takes, such as endorsing Howard Dean for President (before rescinding it, of course).

Hat tip to PPI's Eduwonk

So I'm old ... shoot me. What started out as a minor offensive over at Burnt Orange Report warrants a bit more elaboration. At issue is the notion that "Howard Dean got us started thinking about reform." By extension, this goes into the inane little DLC vs every left-leaning nutcase with internet access whereby the likes of KOS and Jerome and Sirota seek to claim the "Reform" mantle as their own and even if there's an agreeable idea that the DLC puts forth, they are to be shunned because somehow a group that is only 20 years old is responsible for the 40 year slide the party has been in here in the south. Make sense? I didn't think so.

But the concept of reform is one that demands a bit more elaboration because I think the reformist strain is inherent in progressive politics and instead of asserting with some degree of pride that one is a "Reform Democrat" it is far wiser to ackowledge that one is a Democrat, and therefore we seek to reform the status quo for the better. What Marshall Wittman says recently is something I've been suggesting for a long time. You cannot simply stand in the way of the other side, you must offer a truer path towards reform. Yet all too often, this gets viewed as legislative sausage making ... One side proposes a bill, the other side proposes a bill, and the numerically superior side picks apart just enough goodies from the alternative to win going away with an otherwise bad bill. Need proof? See Medicare Reform. See the Bush tax cuts ... any of em. The bottom line for Democrats, however, is the acceptance of the fact that you can listen to Dems debate reform when we're in the majority, or you can let the other side take over and ramrod their version over your cold, dead body. Guess which one they chose?

For a better example, one need only look as far as City Hall here in Houston. Mayor Bill White knew that the Colorado-style revenue cap likely would have passed if it were the only game in town. So we got Bill White's version as a competing idea. White won and now the right is up in arms because they got beat soundly and at a game they usually win at. Houston area Dems may not be entirely in favor of the caps that White's proposition puts in place, but the alternative would have been the types of caps that are now putting Colorado in an economic bind (although it is worth noting that the situation, combined with Gov. Bill Owens' sagging popularity led to a Democratic revival in the state this past election).

In any event, I thought I'd do my part to aid and assist the younger sorts who think all this reform whatnot was invented by Howard Dean. As stated in my comment to the BOR post, I've been at this game a lot longer. Pick a few books off the shelf here and dig in.