Keyes to Victory?

 Posted by Mike  2008 Election  No Responses »
Nov 302007
 

I just discovered, while looking something else up, that Alan Keyes is once again running for President in the GOP primary.  He’s even slated to appear in the next Iowa debate, which is being organized by the Des Moines Register.  I probably have a better chance at winning the GOP nomination than Mr. Keyes, but hey, I’m trying to be thorough, and Keyes at least claims to have filed the appropriate FEC paperwork.

So for all those Republicans who were worried there weren’t enough bad candidates to choose from, you now have one more.  Good luck with that.

What it means to be humanitarian

 Posted by Doc Opp  Allies and Alliances, Charity  3 Responses »
Nov 302007
 

The Humanitarian Response Index has rated the United States as in the bottom third of western countries in humanitarian giving.  Should we be alarmed that our country is so miserly and unhelpful?

Well, not if we look at how the ratings are calculated.  In terms of the amount of dollars given, the US does quite well.  And if you look at ratings at how well we work with nonprofits, promote accountability, and otherwise the efficiency of US aid dollars, America also ranks quite high.  The overall ratings of the US suffer because the US refused to ratify several treaties regarding human rights.  We also refuse to give cash aid to countries or organizations that actively work against US interests.

In other words, its not that the US is stingy, or that the US doesn’t help others, or doesn’t allocate its aid effectively – its that the political ideology of the US doesn’t happen to align with the Europeans who did the rankings.  And for a group that claims that the U.S. suffers from a lack of “neutrality” in its giving of aid, one has to wonder about hypocrisy in the lack of neutrality about political ideology was in the construction of these ratings.

For some reason, the US always gets the short end of the media stick in the giving of aid. After the tsunami, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland called the US “stingy” for its limited pledge.  But, as reported by Bill Ashton of CUNY, while the US pledged less per capita than other countries, it actually paid a large portion of what it pledged, while other countries that pledged considerably more actually paid considerably less.  Somehow, this never made it into the news – only the stinginess.

And none of these reports ever mentions the fact that US citizens charitable giving for humanitarian projects is larger than from most other countries (especially in Europe) and that if you consider both government and private contributions then the US becomes a leader in humanitarian giving.

It’s unfortunately in vogue to think about the US as an ogre and a bully and play down all the good that America does in the world.  Yesterday, Mike talked about the PR war, and how to make America seem like the good guy.  Biased reports based on political ideology like the HRI don’t help, and neither does uncritical media coverage of it, such as in the link above.

The Fallacy of Compromise in the War on Terror

 Posted by Mike  2008 Election, Bill of Rights, Foreign Policy, Terrorism  2 Responses »
Nov 292007
 

One of the big issues in this primary season is how the War on Terror should be fought. On the one hand, you have the Democratic candidates, plus Senator McCain and Representative Paul, who believe that the War on Terror is fundamentally a public relations war that the United States can only win by seizing and holding the moral high ground. On the other extreme, you have Vice President Cheney and his neo-conservative advisers who argue that the only way to win the War on Terror is to capture and kill all the terrorists. It’s Thoreau vs. Machiavelli, Martin Luther King vs. the Black Panthers, Eliot Ness vs. Jim Malone, etc. It’s a tough, but important debate that ultimately reflects on debates like secrecy, torture, the Bill of Rights, the Iraq War, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even our moderation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

My problem with the Bush Administration, not to mention the candidacies of Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson, is that they want to have it both ways. Cheney may be evil, but his “do whatever it takes” philosophy is at least logically consistent. What doesn’t make sense is trying to have it both ways. Either torture is wrong, in which case we ought to take the moral high ground and proclaim our position from largest mountain we can find, or torture is acceptable if it leads to the deaths of more terrorists in the future. A position of “it depends”, or of “it’s usually bad but I’m not going to tell you why or when” both sacrifices the moral high ground and fails to accomplish our goal through brute force. It hands the public relations war to our enemies without putting the fear of eminent destruction into them.

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A Dicey Proposition

 Posted by Mike  Foreign Policy, Israel and Palestine, Middle East  No Responses »
Nov 282007
 

Bush, Olmert, and Abbas have promised an Israeli-Palestine Peace Treaty in 2008.  It’s good to see the President finally taking an interest in the issue.  The thing is, I can’t decide if an agreement at these negotiations would be the best thing to happen to the peace process in a long time, or the worst.

The potentials and the pitfalls both stem from the same basic fact: the Palestinians are on the verge of civil war, and Abbas does not speak for a significant percentage of his own people.  This goes back to the fact that Hamas won those last elections, and since then Abbas’ people have basically been driven out of Gaza.  Hamas has already organized protests against these talks, which will only worsen as the process moves forward.  Whatever agreements Abbas comes to, Hamas will not accept them or abide by them, which makes these negotiations a giant crap-shoot.

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The Richardson Paradox

 Posted by Doc Opp  Uncategorized  1 Response »
Nov 262007
 

This past week I was in California for a conference and then Thanksgiving.  I had a chance to talk to a number of people that I rarely see, and naturally the conversation turned to politics.  I had at least a dozen conversations that followed the same pattern:  I would ask them who they liked among the democrats, and they’d name Clinton, or Obama, or (in one case) Edwards.  They’d ask me who I liked, and I’d say I’m still thinking about it, but at this point I’m leaning towards Richardson.  At which point they would say “Oh yes, I much prefer Richardson to [Candidate they had previously named] but he has no chance, and so I didn’t consider him when answering your question”.

Here’s the weird thing – everybody seems to like Richardson, but nobody is naming him in the polls, because everybody seems to think he has no chance.  Which, of course, drives down his poll ratings and perpetuates the cycle.  Now, it could very well be that I’m biased.  Its possible that most people really don’t have strong political preferences and upon hearing that I like Richardson they pretend to agree with me so as to avoid confrontation (although, most of my friends like a good political debate and are more likely to pretend to disagree with me than the opposite).

But I think there’s something  to the notion that the media has turned what could be a wide open race into a three person race.  And that Richardson has much more widespread support than the media seems to be willing to grant him, and pluralistic ignorance is driving polling at this point.  So I’m wondering – is my perception accurate?  And if so, what could Richardson do to overcome the paradox?

I should note that I don’t know nearly enough about Richardson to be willing to give him my actual endorsement.  My support for him primarily comes from the fact that he hasn’t said anything to alienate me yet, and one of my former students works for his campaign (and I like to support my students).  This post isn’t so much about my personal political preferences (Vote Ron Paul – that’s not an endorsement either) as it is about trying to understand the dynamics of the campaign.

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