Today's Musical Selection: "Ninety-Six Tears" by ? and the Mysterians
Hi, everybody! Hope you like our new contributor; we should be hearing from him sometime in the new year. For now, though, I want to vent my spleen about a couple things I've seen lately that have made me sick to my stomach. As it happens, both of these things involve members of the Republican Party.
Please note, my conservative friends: This is not a partisan rant. I am not attempting to argue that the Democrats are political angels. I'm simply pointing out two things that might damage public faith in the political system, and it happens that Republicans did them both this time. If you know of something similar that a Democrat has done recently, pass it along and I'll rant about it too, okay?
(Yeah, I get tired of writing that disclaimer, too. But our political commentary landscape is so polarized that if a reader detects a partisan slant in an article, too often said reader will ignore said article if he or she does not agree with said slant. And people wonder why political discourse has gone down the commode.)
Our first item comes to us from the always-industrious Republican House leadership, which seems to have been spending every waking moment since the election finding ways to bend the rules to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who's found himself in a couple unfortunate ethical pickles lately. I wrote a couple months ago about the GOP rewriting their caucus ethics rules to prevent DeLay from being bounced from the leadership ranks just because of something silly, like him being indicted by a grand jury. Now, your run-of-the-mill group of sleazy politicians might let it go at that, but the House Republicans are not ones to give up so easily. Now comes word that Speaker Dennis Hastert is weighing the idea of replacing House Ethics Panel Chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colorado). Why? Because he thinks for himself:
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert is leaning toward removing the House ethics committee chairman, who admonished House Majority Leader Tom DeLay this fall and has said he will treat DeLay like any other member, several Republican aides said yesterday.Although Hastert (Ill.) has not made a decision, the expectation among leadership aides is that the chairman, Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), long at odds with party leaders because of his independence, will be replaced when Congress convenes next week...
Hefley, a conservative, was co-author of an October letter saying that certain DeLay actions "went beyond the bounds of acceptable conduct." A committee report said DeLay broke no House rules.
The chairman told the Denver Post in July and reported in October that he would handle charges against the leader "in the ethics committee like I would handle anything else."
Got that? The Republicans put an independent thinker in charge of the Ethics Committee, largely because it's a post that no one wants. Then a top Republican risks a trip in front of the committee and, suddenly, it's time for Mr. Independent Thinker to go. Hmmm. Funny how that works.
But fear not, friends! Lest the above sequence of events cause you to think that the House GOP lacks integrity, look at the man they're weighing as Helfley's replacement:
The aides said a likely replacement is Rep. Lamar S. Smith, one of DeLay's fellow Texans, who held the job from 1999 to 2001. Smith wrote a check this year to DeLay's defense fund. An aide said Smith was favored for his knowledge of committee procedure.
All right. So Smith hails from the same state as DeLay, undoubtedly owes him a debt for his career in politics (what Republican House member in Texas doesn't?), has given money to DeLay's defense fund, and the Republicans expect us to believe they picked him because he knows the committee procedure?! This is like a Chicago machine boss being tried for embezzlement in front of a judge he appointed to the bench! Knowledge of committee procedure! (Unless that phrase is shorthand for "knows which strings to pull to get his friends off," in which case the statement is entirely correct.)
How stupid do they think we are? Do they assume the public won't notice how crooked this whole business is, or do they just not care? They certainly don't care about the damage they're doing to the public's faith in the political process. "Congressional ethics" is already a punchline, but the Republicans appear determined to remove any doubt that the ethics system is anything other than a process to be manipulated to serve yourself, one of the spoils of victory. They pull stunts like this, and then they wonder why politicians are ranked in public esteem next to used-car salesmen and pornographic film producers.
Item #2 comes to us from the other Washington, the state, boyhood home of my man Frinklin. You may have heard something about the governor's race up there, which has turned into a replay of the 2000 presidential race, only stranger. A brief recap for those who weren't paying attention: the race pitted Democratic Attorney General Christine Gregoire against Republican businessman and ex-State Senator Dino Rossi. The vote went down to the wire, and when all was said and done, Rossi won by 261 votes. This margin, however, was close enough to trigger an automatic machine recount. When this was done, Rossi won by 42 votes. The Democrats then paid for a hand recount, which was their right under the election rules, and Gregoire promised to concede if she lost again. The hand recount, which was done by bipartisan teams, put Gregoire ahead by 10 votes. Then the state Supreme Court ruled that a batch of disputed ballots from King County, a Democratic stronghold, could be counted, and this put Gregoire ahead by over 100 votes.
Faced with defeat after this thorough hand recount, faced with the Secretary of State (a Republican, by the way) about to certify his opponent as the winner, Rossi, not wishing to put the state through any more trauma and confusion over its political future, called Gregoire and graciously conceded.
Ha! Just kidding! No, of course he didn't do that. That would be far too honorable an avenue for modern politics. Typically in the twenty-first-century political rules of engagement, this is the part where both sides say, "See you in court." And the Republicans are indeed exploring their options in this regard. But Dino Rossi is far too creative to settle for a mere legal challenge. Rather, drawing on our common-law tradition from the third grade, Rossi is calling for... a do-over!
The night before Washington's secretary of state was scheduled to certify Democrat Christine Gregoire as the governor-elect, her Republican rival Dino Rossi called for a complete re-do of the longest, closest governor's race in state history."The uncertainty surrounding this election process isn't just bad for you and me - it is bad for the entire state. People need to know for sure that the next governor actually won the election," Rossi said Wednesday evening, reading from a letter he sent to Gregoire.
"A revote would be the best solution for the people of our state, and would give us a legitimate governorship," the letter added.
Excuse me? A revote? When did this become the Ukraine? Here we've been sending Jimmy Carter to all these third-world nations, trying to ensure that their elections are on the up and up, and it turns out we should have been sending him to the Pacific Northwest.
Funny. Surely this Dino Rossi, who appears to believe that we should vote as many times as we need to make sure we feel comfortable about who won, isn't the same Dino Rossi who called for an end to all the recount madness when he thought he'd won, is it? Let's take a look:
"We are going to move forward now. We are putting people in place," Rossi said at a news conference after [Secretaryof State Sam] Reed made the tally official. "The reality is that we've won."While he stopped short of calling on Gregoire to concede, Rossi said, "She has to decide what she wants to do and what she believes is in the best interests of the state of Washington -- not what's in the best interest of her.
"If you count and recount and recount and just keeping recounting until you finally win, what do you really have in the end? An illegitimate governorship, that's what you have in the end."
Wow. Same guy. How about that? Apparently a legitimate election result is only one that has him winning it. (By the way, in case you're wondering, the Democrat-sponsored hand recount did cover the entire state, not just Democratic stronghold counties, as was the case in Florida.)
When asked why he thought such a stupid plan was worth pursuing (not in so many words, presumably), Rossi said he was thinking of... the good of the state!
While noting that he could contest the election, Rossi said Wednesday that a legal challenge could drag on for weeks or months. The better way to clear up the mess, he said, would be to ask lawmakers to pass a bill calling for a special election as soon as the Democrat-controlled state Legislature convenes Jan. 10.
I see. Well, you know what would be an even better way to clear up the mess, Dino? For you to concede and let the state move on without dragging this out.
There's the long-term good of the political system to think about, Dino. You may remember it. It was the same good of the system you wanted Gregoire to think about back when you were calling on her to give up. Voters want their candidate to win, yes, but they also want to be able to have some degree of faith in the outcome of the process. If every close election winds up in the courts, or in an endless series of revotes, we aren't going to have faith in the outcome of any close election. And given the number of close elections out there these days, we run the risk of having our faith in the electoral system collapse. Bad things happen when we lose faith in our electoral system.
You know the difference between a statesman and a political hack? A hack cares only about winning. A statesman wants to win, but also wants the best thing for the country. I know it's tough to accept defeat know, having won the first two counts. I know it's embarrassing that you've had people call you "governor-elect," and now it's taken away from you. But you need to let go. The state needs to know who the governor is. The last thing anyone should want is for Gregoire to take office and then be removed a couple months later by court order. You think you'll have a fun time governing then?
And the irony of it all, Dino, is that it may be better for you personally if you concede gracefully now rather than fighting on, even if you win. Consider the lesson of Al Gore. Gore never figured out when people were ready for him to step aside. Throughout the process, he seemed fixated on one thing and one thing only: being in the Oval Office. It seemed like he would keep counting for twnety years if that's what it took to put him ahead.
And what did his intransigence do for the country? It left a bunch of Democrats who were hopping mad about what they perceived as a stolen election. And it left a mass of middle-of-the-road voters with a negative impression of Gore and the Democrats as sore losers. Had Gore conceded gracefully in 2000 and worked to build up support for the party afterward, he might have been a viable candidate again in 2004 or 2008. Instead, he fought as long as he could, gave up in a huff when forced to and went into hiding. As a result, when word surfaced that he was thinking of trying again in 2004, the general public response was, "Oh no, not again." I understand that you, Dino, are thinking of running for Senate in 2006. As it stands, you've got a pretty good shot. If you keep up the fight, though, don't be surprised if voters are ready to run when they see you coming in two years.
Right now, the only person who looks good in this whole mess is Secretary of State Reed, who has done his job quietly and respectably and has refused to put public pressure on either side regarding the outcome. He has done an admirable job establishing himself as a neutral arbiter, one whom both sides can trust. Other states, please take note. This man's example is one to emulate.
You know what really bothers me about shenanigans like either of the examples above? There's only two ways you can justify behaving as either Rossi or the House Republicans have. The first is if you really are a selfish bastard who cares only about the success of yourself and your side. (Classical economists take note: Once again, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" fails where the social good is not the sum total of each individual's self-interest. In the real world, individuals cannot be trusted to think beyond their own narrow concerns.) If all you care about is winning, then you have no business in public service. But at least rampant selfishness is to be expected in politics, and can be dealt with if proper safeguards are installed in the system.
The second possibility, however, is much more grave. It's possible that such politicians believe that the other side is so evil that they must be stopped at all costs. Truth be told, I think this mindset is generally less of a concern among politicians than among their supporters. Few politicians could survive the give-and-take of the democratic process if they really believed the other side was evil. But voters can, and do. Those who defend to the death everything their side does while attacking the same faults on the other side, faced with charges of hypocrisy, tend to justify it on the basis that the other side is automatically up to no good. To a point, this is harmless and amusing to a detached observer. But if that belief system really sinks in, if voters really start to believe that the other party is the enemy... well, that's the kind of thinking the got us into the Civil War. And with faith dwindling in the electoral system, many disaffected voters don't believe they can effect change through the system. This leads to people dropping out of the system, yes, but it also leads to a search for alternative outlets for change. That's the part that scares me.
Do I believe we're on the brink of civil war? No, of course not. But I do see signs of the same conditions that lead to the breakdown of the system that allowed the Civil War to take place. Declining support of the parties, growing frustration and anger over the electoral system, a hardening of ideoogical rigidity, the belief that the other side is trying to suppress you and your beliefs and culture... some of the parallels are eerie. While I don't believe we're about to take up arms against each other, I do think the situation bears watching.
That's all for me today. See you tomorrow for the last post of 2004!
Posted by Fred at December 30, 2004 01:40 PM