Quiet Declarations

In case you haven’t figured out by now, I take an irrational pride in chiming in at least two weeks late on all major stories. So, let’s talk Alan Keyes, recent benefactor/goat after the mother of all non-scandals.

Here’s the quick back story. In Illinois, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jack Ryan is forced from the ballot in a sex-charged smear campaign. Desperate for a candidate, the Illinois GOP asks Maryland resident and radio host Alan Keyes to run against Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Keyes, a vehement critic of Hillary Clinton’s move to New York for a Senate run, moves to Calumet City, IL and thus becomes a carpetbagger himself among other flip-flops. So now he’s running a hypocritical campaign with slim odds for victory against a popular and heavily-favored opponent. This makes it all the more politically stupid that some idiotic Illinois Democrats tried to deny Keyes ballot access, but that doesn’t change the fact that Keyes is fighting quite the uphill battle.

(Side note: check out the winners of the Loop Carpetbagger Deflector Contect and pick out your favorite sound byte for overcomming allegations of carpetbaggery.)

While Obama will enjoy widespread support for generally being a Clintonian centrist, Keyes is more than a little bit to the right on issues such as Second Amendment rights. Prominent Republicans such as former Illinois Governor Jim Thompson seem less than enthused about supporting Keyes. Even the authors at Townhall.Com — about as conservative as it gets — have conflicting opinions of Keyes. While Thomas Sowell argues that Keyes has common sense that contrasts well with Obama’s image and rhetoric, Kathleen Parker contends that Republicans with aspirations of inclusiveness do themselves a disservice by picking a candidate largely because he’s black and smart.

Quick thoughts? The fact that Jack Ryan had to resign because the Tribune forced open sealed divorce records and publicized a he-said/she-said that, even if true (which is still unproven) wasn’t even adulterous or illegal, is an entirely pitiful excuse for a scandal. I acknowledge that Ryan’s off the ballot primarily because he told the state GOP there was no dirt in the divorce papers — and anything less than spotless counts as dirt when you’re a Republican — but my point remains valid. However, I wonder if the GOP was better off running a lesser-known candidate and chalking the loss off as bad luck, rather than turning Keyes and Illinois into such high-profile Senate losses and party embarrassments. It’s great that at least Illinois will be electing a rare black senator. Unfortunately, while I hope Keyes will pose enough of a challenge that Illinois actually gets to learn something about Obama, somehow I doubt things will get past an offense/defense of carpetbagging. Stupid scandals.

So we’re all trying desperately to find something besides the Swift Boat ad to watch, and the only other major story is the he-said/he-said rhetoric of the McGreevey scandal. Score: nimrods 2, intellectuals 0. Let’s recap:

Governor Jim McGreevey starts off as a moderately corrupt, anti-gay politician in his second marriage, which normally qualifies one for automatic re-election in New Jersey. Suddenly, he’s gay and he’s resigning and the soap opera unfolds. It turns out if he leaves by September 3 there’s a special election in November, but if he leaves on his announced date of November 15 the Democratic Speaker of the Senate gets his job until January 2006. This is just one of many quirks that make New Jersey’s succession process ridiculously shady. Some Democrats want him to quit now; McGreevey himself says he wants to stay longer. Hmm, what to do.

Reaction #1: in New Jersey this is what one clever-titled editorial calls par for the course.

Reaction #2: clearly the actual control of governorship is a non-story, because McGreevey’s not going to be impeached by a Democrat-controlled state legislature and he’s not going to resign early. That makes this banter merely a cheap rhetoric game, and man am I sick and tired of hearing trained party spokespeople accuse the other side of playing politics.

Reaction #3: instead of resigning, why isn’t McGreevey fighting back like Clinton or pretty much any governor would in this situation? The answer is because nobody (okay, maybe Clinton) could defend themselves against the many scandals that are now becoming public knowledge. Had McGreevey announced a delayed resignation based on these scandals — presumably the only reasons he would actually have to resign — the political pressure to resign immediately would be unbearable. But instead he declares that he’s resigning because of the hardship incurred by his newfound homosexuality, and the pressure subsides just enough that he buys himself another three months.

Is it just me, or is this a clear case of exploitation? If I were gay I think I’d be highly upset about this whole thing — and actually I’m not too happy with it in any case. And the sad part is this is actually our comic relief from the presidential election…

Yes, I’ve been extremely busy, but that’s not really why I haven’t been blogging. I haven’t been around these parts because the “scandals” of the past weeks have been so devoid of intrigue and full of trite rhetoric that it’s taken this long for them to play far enough out to generate anything worth commenting on. So let’s start with the big story: the Swift Boat story that’s been on every channel nonstop for weeks now.

My opinion has always been that videos like the August 4 Swift Boat Ad are the kind of negative publicity your campaign simply doesn’t want, and as such all the press Kerry’s public defenders generated for the ad amounted to a terrible idea. However, I felt Kerry was smart to ignore it and hope the subject changed. But three weeks went by and the subject didn’t change, so Kerry mounted his counter-offensive starting with a cute quote: “When you’re under attack, the best thing to do is turn your boat into the attacker.” I initially felt the whole counter-offensive strategy was risky at best, but some pundits like Mickey Kaus felt it was necessary:

The problem is that Kerry is running for president on this official hype of a more-than-honorable record (one reason he’s constantly referring reporters to his official medal citations). He’s not only running on the hype but pushing it to the limit, milking it for all it’s worth. That’s dangerous in, yes, the Internet era! Obsessive fact-checkers can smoke out the exaggerations and get them past the ex-gatekeepers.** Unfortunately, it’s more or less all Kerry’s got. It wouldn’t be so important if Kerry had a) a discernable ideology; b) a political message; c) a record of achievement; or d) an appealing personality!

Okay, so I’m thinking that now Bush is on the defensive and should at least deal with this by changing the subject or coming up with a more effective sound byte or something. When Bush said nothing, I could only assume he didn’t want to show his cards before the convention or something. Boy was I wrong. The second Kerry turned that boat his lead evaporated, returning the electoral college projections to a virtual dead heat. My guess is it’s the reverse Fahrenheit 9/11 effect: it’s only a novelty until you start fighting it, and then it becomes a phenomenon. Moreover, when Kerry calls for a ban on a negative ad he becomes vulnerable to a counter-offensive calling for removal of all ads by 527s, which is exactly what happened. “Bush wants all negative ads removed, but he’s skirting the major issue which is that I want only this one ad against me removed” simply isn’t an effective argument for Kerry even if Bush is skirting the issue.

Let’s recap: Bush lets Swift Boat Vets do his dirty work; Bush lets media do his dirty work; Bush lets Kerry let media do his dirty work; Bush comes out against 527s; Bush gets a 6-point shift right before his convention. And how much money came out of the campaign war chest for this? Hot campaign tip: when your strategy results in the media essentially running your opponent’s attack ads against you, change the subject fast.

If you’re an issues person, you’ve got to be simply disgusted with this story. When the entire thrust of the Kerry-Bush banter has been reduced to the semantics of whether denouncing all 527s counts as denouncing a specific one, this election’s politics may have degenerated even further than I thought. It’s like The Filthy Critic once said: “I hate George Bush, but I have better reasons than this”. I can’t wait for the Republican National Convention, if only so we can talk about something else for a change.

Any Nashvillian with a comparative eye knows that The Tennessean is a fairly pathetic excuse for a news source. It’s not necessarily their fault — consider their audience after all — but still, this is a paper that, on the same day when the Washington Post runs the headline “Charley Leaves at Least 13 Dead”, graces us with the human interest story “Local Man Witnesses ‘Awesome’ Power of Charley”. And by the way, the pride of Nashville not only blew off its Charley coverage (no pun intended) but the one article it did have found itself tucked comfortably below both an article on political views of country music singers and the Titans preseason game summary. So normally, sheer pride and fear of embarrassment would prevent me from posting any article that could in any way be traced back to their editing staff — but exceptions to this rule will flow freely when the subject matter is absurd or incriminating.

Consider this report on Tennessee’s specialty license plates. The focus of the story — that Titans plates rank sixth in total sales after only seven months and have raised $262,000 for local charities — is all well and good. But far more interesting are the 5 plates ahead of them. I was more than a bit surprised to find out that 4 of the top 5 plates are environment-related. See, I’ve gotta admit, I find it a little ironic that 52,000 Tennesseans each paid $35 over their plate fees to place a pro-environment advertisement on their bumper to show off as they drive their gas-guzzling smog machines past the park ranger on their way up to pollute the Smokies. And speaking of disturbing, about the remaining specialty plate in the top 5? Yes, it’s the University of Tennessee national championship plate. From 1998. One, two, three…that would be six years ago, and 11,000 fans devoted to the fair hue of prison-uniform orange have probably had to renew their plate twice since then. Good lord.

Well, after being chided by friends for months I’ve finally completed this web site. Those familiar with my procrastinating may well look below and laugh when you see the date I started trying to post — to say nothing of the date the site was first created — but all water under the bridge now that it’s done! It’s not my day job so I’ve had to choose between blogging and building of late, but with things settling down around here I should be able to turn my attention toward far more frequent postings. A warm welcome to new visitors!

[Update 08/14/04: Welcome to those of you who’ve wandered over from Jacob’s site! It’s good to see you, especially since we’re recruiting friends over here at QD. Let me know if you run your own page and want to join my sidebar — you might have to claim to know me if asked but I guarantee your link won’t be lost among an arsenal of networkees like on the site of someone I know!]

Even though it’s been over two weeks and I wasn’t following as closely as some due to lack of cable (a crisis that has since been remedied), I’ve been asked by several people to share my thoughts on the Democratic Convention, and in particular John Kerry’s acceptance speech. What follows is a weak attempt to justify the flattery.

First, it’s important to understand that the nation is spotting Kerry 42% of the vote this election. 42% of the electorate would vote for their dead grandmother, their pet turtle, or the tree in their backyard over Bush. The significance here is that 42% of the electorate has essentially given Kerry a blank check to do whatever it takes to get the remaining 7-9% he needs. The bad news for them is that Kerry has absolutely zero political appeal and has been able to secure virtually none of those votes so far. The good news, however, is that not having to worry about 42% of the electorate places quite a few more tools in Kerry’s arsenal — hence the Democratic Convention.

If the main advantage to hosting the second convention is the ability to carry momentum to the election, the primary advantage to hosting the first convention is the ability to win the race to the center. In other words, the Democratic Party’s goal when its base is secure is to chip away at the Republican “unbase“. That’s one reason why the DNC rewrote the Democratic platform to essentially echo Kerry’s campaign rhetoric instead of actual majoritarian party positions. That’s also why — in case you hadn’t noticed — the DNC staged the most flag-flying and pro-military convention in the party’s modern history. The goal couldn’t be clearer: ignore the left (you already have their votes) and capture everyone who’s uneasy about Bush but fears they’ll be less safe with Kerry. And they pulled it off beautifully.

I felt that Kerry’s acceptance speech did a reasonably effective job of portraying him as strong on values and security. However, most articles about Kerry’s “shining moment” accuse him of a rushed speech or a missed opportunity, both assertions with which I’d be hard pressed to disagree. It was a strong image-builder, but as David Brooks notes, in Kerry’s main opportunity to prove all his critics wrong he delivered a sermon in nuance. So why would I claim the speech was a relative success? First, because he didn’t screw up — I echo Tim Boyd’s position that convention speeches can’t make winners but they can make losers. Second, because after a year of hearing Kerry speak the long-windedness and ensuing boredom had driven expectations so low that he couldn’t help but exceed them! Again, success by avoidance of failure.

Finally, let’s talk convention bounce. The average post-convention bounce hovers at about 7%, and Kerry got -1% to 4% depending on who’s polling. There are a number of plausible theories as to why the bounce wasn’t greater, but here’s the one I like the best. Kerry makes no impact on the electorate because Kerry is a meaningless pawn in what is essentially a referendum on Bush. The aforementioned 42% is off the table. Bush has single-handedly swung the black vote and the gay vote against himself, which is a travesty because “Bush and slightly less Bush” are far from acceptable choices for these constituencies. Libertarians are tending toward Kerry not because he’s actually a good candidate, but because they are praying for gridlock and believe Kerry is cautious and uninspiring enough to deliver. Even the soccer moms are fluctuating over who will make their children safer — after all, the kid who hands over his lunch money is less likely to get beat up. And remember, Bush got every single thing he wanted for four years, so we may not like his policies but it’s hard to accuse him of idle hands. If there’s such a thing as running on what you won’t do, it could easily pass for Kerry’s least-nuanced position.

Yes, for all its technical successes I believe Kerry’s speech and Kerry’s convention both mean very little because Kerry means very little. It’s a referendum over the guy in the White House, and if he loses we’ve got a placeholder ready.