Mitt …. Sings …. ?
Posted by Kevin

I don’t think I have ever felt embarrassed for a politician before:

January 22nd, 2008 | General, Politics | 3 comments

Quote of the Day, 2008-01-22
Posted by tgirsch

Jared Bernstein:

Final snarky comment: isn’t it interesting to see how quickly these supply-siders become deeply committed Keynesians when they actually need to accomplish something useful?

January 22nd, 2008 | Politics, Economics, Humor | 11 comments

Fred!
Posted by tgirsch

Via TPM Fred! Thompson has dropped out of the GOP race. Does this surprise anyone? I’ve blogged about this before, but I just don’t get what it is that anyone ever saw in Thompson, other than maybe that he simply wasn’t 9iu11ani, McCain, or Romney.

With Huckabee’s second-place finish in South Carolina, I expect the GOP primaries to become a two-horse race between Romney and McCain. And I expect the GOP establishment to redouble their efforts to get behind Romney.

[Note: I stole the exclamation point idea from SayUncle.]

January 22nd, 2008 | Politics | one comment

How Our Press Fails Us
Posted by Kevin

Matthew Yglesias, speaking about the the death of four girls in DC, says this:

Thus, I might note that DC Mayor Adrian Fenty seemed completely justified in his decision to fire these six social workers whose screwups contributed to the murder of four girls. That other civil servants are pissed off about that accountability moment is understandable, but it’s simply vital that this city demand a higher quality of public services.

That is a hard sentiment to argue with in the abstract, and maybe since Matthew is a resident he is hearing more details about this story than I am, but the two articles Matt links to are completely and utterly useless for anyone who wants to know what the hell is actually going on. In the first, the basic facts of the firing are well covered: the Mayor, under pressure after a terrible failure that lead to four children dying, fired six workers he blamed for the failure and offered up a phone call that he said supported the firings. The second article discussed the firings as one example of the Mayor having more difficulty than usual in moving his agenda and dealing with critics. In neither case did the articles provide me with much, if anything, in the way of evidence to support the Mayor’s claim that the six deserved to be fired or the critics claims that the six were being made scapegoats. It is infuriating and a sign that the rot in our news media is truly out of control.

In cases like these, athere are three main possibilities: either the people had the authority to do more and did not, the system is broken, in that it either does not allow the agents tot take the required steps or it does not train agents well enough to inform them of the proper steps, or the system is underfunded and the agents were unfairly buried in cases. It could be any of the items, some of which justify the firings, some of which do not, or it could be a combination of the three. My point is not to choose one or the other, my point is that the articles spend no time examining any of these possibilities. There is no attempt to find out what did happen, what could have happened, and how the budget, the systme polices, and the behavior of the agents interacted and lead to to the tragedy. We have a simple recitiation of non-contested facts and “he said, he said” arguing for the rest.

That cannot be acceptable journalism. The Washington Post is allegedly one of the greatest newspapers in the world, but when it is confronted with an issue vitally important to the well being of its home city, it responded with journalism that would make a high school editor fire reporters. It apparently made no attempt to work out what the actual policies are, what effect the budget had on the implementation of those polices, and, what, precisely, were the agents empowered and expected to do. Something is broken in the family services department of DC. It would have been nice if DC’s home town paper would have bothered to try and find out what.

January 22nd, 2008 | General, Media | no comments

They Are Just Politicians
Posted by Kevin

I watched the first hour of the presidential debate last night and thus got to see most of the attacks first hand. People have been calling it the nastiest debate of the cycle, and, from what I saw, they might just be correct. I am not terribly bothered by that. The GOP will not hold back any piece of slime, mud, dirt, or excrement they can get their grubby little paws on long enough to fling and how a candidate deals with that aspect of campaigning is important. More than that, though, there are real differences between the candidates. Their health plans are not the same. Their plans for Iraq are not the same. Even where they agree on the broad outlines, such as the stimulus plans they discussed, they still differ substantially on the details. There are also differences in temperament and in priorities that hard questioning and heated discussion can bring that information to light. So some nastiness and tension in a debate, even an intra-party debate, is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the followers of the campaigns don’t allow themselves to become bitter over the process.

That significant groups of people would become so embittered by the primary process as too drop out is the one worry I have when the candidates go after each other. When you have two candidates who are historic and another candidate who is the first serious candidate who is also a populist in about a generation, its natural for their followers and supporters to become even more emotionally invested in the head of the campaigns than normal. But these people are just politicians. There is nothing wrong with being a politician. It can be a noble calling and I think ofr the three candidates on the Dem side and even a good chunk of the GOP side, it has been a noble calling. But they are politicians, not demi-gods ready to leap astride their white horses and lead us all to the promised land. They aren’t going to save us all with a well timed legislative victory and a cheery wave to the camera. Every single one of them will, at one point or another, betray something you consider vitally important to get somehting else, usually something you think is ridiculously over-valued. That’s becasue we live in a democracy with a diverse population. Compromise and deal making is how things get done, it’s how a democracy was designed to work. If you want to change things, if you want to have someone “save” us, then you have to look to your fellow citizens. It’s not the job of politicians to save us, its the job of citizens to save themselves.

At the end of the day, our candidates are politicians, nothing more and nothing less. They aren’t meant to be leaders, or heroes, or saviors. In a democracy, we are supposed to save ourselves. That’s sorta the point of the thing.

January 22nd, 2008 | General, Politics | one comment