Political Burnout

I love politics. Shocking, I know, but it's true. It's probably my chief interest in life, aside from trying to make Brazen Hussy happy. But I have to admit that I tend to have a bit of an obsessive personality, which applies to politics as much as anything else. I didn't slow down much after the last campaign. Locally, I went directly from working on a campaign to consulting with the City Council. Nationally, I've paid excruciatingly close attention to every jot and tittle of Obama administration.

Yesterday I was having lunch with a friend who was regaling me with political stories, and I suddenly realized - I just didn't care very much. I wasn't feeling it in my gut the way I usually do. Perhaps my frustrations in both instances (local and national) are the cause of my recent disenchantment, or maybe I just need some time off. But whatever the source, I need to create some distance between myself and Politicalworld. I have a lot I'm tackling right now - writing a book of fiction, academic articles, politics, exercising, my job, and my life at home (not in that order) - and I feel that something has to give. So to my surprise, I think - for the time being at least - it has to be politics.

So for a time I'm not going to read the newspapers or the blogs. I'm not going to worry about what Democrats or Republicans are up to. I'm not going to go to local political events. I'm going to just stop. For a while, anyway.

This doesn't mean I intend to give up blogging, just that the focus will likely change a bit. And it's perfectly probable that in 3 weeks I'll be back to normal. Right now, though, I'm just tired.

Thanks

I'm not going to say much about my grandmother's passing, other than that I very much wish I'd made more an effort to stay in touch with her over the last few years. I just want to thank everybody who commented on Brazen Hussy's post for wishing us well. I appreciate it.

An Argument I Don't Expect To Have

An ungenerous person could easily take certain tactless comments out of context. I might note that someone with the slightest degree of sensitivity would hesitate before suggesting that my marriage will more likely fail due to a decision not to have children. Particularly when that statement has elicited a negative reaction in the past. I could go further, arguing that said my interlocutor has a sadly impoverished view of marriage if he thinks it requires the obligations of reproduction to remain intact. I could suggest that he is engaging in the sloppy and long-discredited "ought implies is" naturalistic fallacy. I would question the statistics he uses - are they so incontrovertible, is the correlation so strong, that one can make determinative inferences from them about individual couples? Has he the data about all the other characteristics that I have, which might outweigh the supposed liability of lacking children? I could also say that the other person is sliding dangerously close to an anti-choice position - that it is our job to have children, whether we want them or not. I would then respond by saying that whatever the adaptive or social bases for monogamous pairings, we are morally autonomous beings capable of using old institutions for new purposes. Traditional peasant food has become gourmet cooking, oftentimes without a significant change in preparation, but with an entirely different purpose. If I were want to impugn the other person's character, I could make broad-brush comments about the arrogance of believing one's own choices are appropriate for everyone. I could be cheap and ask the other person whether those who do not want - or cannot have - children should even bother getting married, since according to his supposed "sociological facts" they are doomed in any case.

I could say all of those things if I were of a mind to, if I believed that my friend really wanted to get into this. But I know he doesn't, does he?

Correction

In response to Marriah's somewhat inflammatory comment. No, I have never blogged the words "2000 was stolen." But I did a quick search of old posts and found the following:

May 26, 2006:

It was hard to watch Al and not think about how he was robbed in 2000....

Septmber 21, 2006:

He [Broder] also makes the factual error of stating that Bush defeated Gore in the 2000 election, when everybody who knows anything knows that Gore won the national popular vote, and that more people voting in Florida wanted Gore rather than Bush.

April 22, 2008:

First, Gore didn't lose the national popular vote (he won 48.4% to 47.9%) and probably should have won Florida.
....
In a "fair" election without Nader and a media that didn't personally loathe Al Gore, Gore probably would have won a fairly comfortable 51.6% to 47.4% victory.

February 10, 2009:

And I remember giving people crap for paying more attention to what happened in Florida than the fact that Gore had won the national popular vote and wouldn't be president. Stupid electoral college.

While the precise wording I used about 2000 wasn't what Marriah would have liked, in each instance I argue that the election of 2000 was improper, that the wrong person became President.

One would hope that one's friends would offer the most charitable interpretation of one's actions and words, rather than nitpick like an opposition researcher.

Looking In the Mirror

I've been paying - if not close attention - real attention to what's happening in Iran. The people protesting are nothing short of courageous, and I wish them well. But, being an American, I have to think about what the events in Iran say about us. The civil disturbances in Iran threw the U.S. into rather unflattering light in two important respects. I put off writing about it, but thankfully others have raised these points. First, the Iranian people are in the streets after a stolen election, whereas in the U.S. in 2000 we sat around quietly and accepted the outcome. Yes, yes, the circumstances were somewhat different, but not really that different. In a republic the candidate with the most votes is supposed to win the office, and that didn't happen, and we just put up with it.

Second, well, I'll just quote Juan Cole:

Moreover, very unfortunately, US politicians are no longer in a position to lecture other countries about their human rights. The kind of unlicensed, city-wide demonstrations being held in Tehran last week would not be allowed to be held in the United States. Senator John McCain led the charge against Obama for not having sufficiently intervened in Iran. At the Republican National Committee convention in St. Paul, 250 protesters were arrested shortly before John McCain took the podium. Most were innocent activists and even journalists. Amy Goodman and her staff were assaulted. In New York in 2004, 'protest zones' were assigned, and 1800 protesters were arrested, who have now been awarded civil damages by the courts. Spontaneous, city-wide demonstrations outside designated 'protest zones' would be illegal in New York City, apparently. In fact, the Republican National Committee has undertaken to pay for the cost of any lawsuits by wronged protesters, which many observers fear will make the police more aggressive, since they will know that their municipal authorities will not have to pay for civil damages.

The number of demonstrators arrested in Tehran on Saturday is estimated at 550 or so, which is less than those arrested by the NYPD for protesting Bush policies in 2004.

You don't lose your civil liberties all at once, but one at a time. Usually when you're not paying any attention.

Campaign Finance and Public Policy

Nate Silver has built a statistical model over at his website that seeks to explain congressional roll call voting behavior with campaign contributions. The naive model of how this works is that special interests buy off elected officials with funds, either through giving money before hand so that the elected will be beholden to them, or afterward as a reward. Unfortunately for Nate, he doesn't seem to have read the voluminous political science and economics literature on this subject, which has never been able to conclusively demonstrate a strong effect. Brendan Nyhan and John Sides summarize all the reasons why Nate's analysis is faulty. There just isn't any clear evidence that campaign contributions buy political support.

That last statement might seem surprising coming from me, given how much I care about campaign finance reform. Ah, but you see I don't subscribe to the naive model of money = votes. I think there are a number of ways that campaign contributions could have an indirect or constraining effect on the decision-making of congresscritters. Money might just make lobbying more effective. Elected officials might try to neutralize potential opposition by co-opting groups that could fund a rival. Or it could just be the case that, because you need money to get elected in the first place, it tends to be pro-corporate types that win election in the first place (particularly in political primaries). These are all scenarios that would take very sophisticated models to test. I just hope some talented social statistician picks the idea up, because at the moment I really don't have the time.

To Clarify

I want to expand a bit on what I wrote yesterday in response to Rebecca's comment. I certainly place most of the blame for our generation-long failure to do anything real about our problems on our leadership class - in both parties. But ultimately we elected these people. The point I'm trying to make is that it's not enough for a republic to get all fired up and put people who say all the right things into office. You also have to hold them accountable for what they do once they're in there. The American people should have risen up and demanded Congress investigate George Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes, but we didn't, because too many of us were either too ready to believe that they "kept us safe" or didn't like the spectacle it would create. We should be burying the Congress in phone calls and letters demanding real health care and financial regulations with teeth. But we don't because we can't be bothered.

The fact is that Obama and the Democrats in Congress are about to punt on health care, climate change, labor law, financial reforms - you know, everything we elected them to fix - and do you know what's going to happen? Nothing. Either they'll get re-elected anyway, in which they "get away with it," or the Republicans get in office and make everything worse. And the lesson for politicians won't be "fix these problems or else." It'll be "don't try to do major reforms." And the country will continue to circle the drain.

I'm beginning to agree with Martin Luther King - the real obstacle to reform isn't the right, it's the moderates.