C'mon already

Anyone else getting sick of the endless analysis of Hillary Clinton's crying jag?

Sure, the reaction to it is an interesting sociological study in gender bias and the politics of projection. And there's a side story about how Hillary is perceived as so controlled that anything spontaneous -- including tears -- is a notable break in the facade.

But c'mon: it's embarassing that grown men and women, supposedly deeply knowledgeable political observers, can aver with a straight face that Hillary tearing up is the reason she won in New Hampshire.

Besides seriously dissing the intelligence and judgment of the average New Hampshire voter, let's try to follow the logic.

Polls showed Obama with a pretty good lead. The undecideds generally weren't big enough to be the swing factor.

So we're supposed to believe that there were a large number of voters who intended to vote for Obama (for instance) but then saw footage of Hillary crying and thought, "Wait a minute! That's the one for me."

Does that make sense to anyone?

As I noted before, the results in New Hampshire were surprising mostly because they contradicted the pre-election polls. But if you hadn't been paying attention to the polling and someone came up to you and said Clinton and McCain had won in New Hampshire, you'd say "Well, duh." Because in their respective primaries they're the closest match to that particular electorate.

There certainly is a story into why the polling was wrong. My pet theory: A bunch of Biden, Richardson and (particularly) Edwards supporters threw their vote to either Clinton or Obama at the last minute, knowing that their preferred candidate had little chance and wanting to influence the frontrunners. Or maybe the polls were just, you know, wrong. It happens.

And I certainly understand why embarassed pundits had to scrap around for something to blame for their poor prognostication.

But putting it down to Hillary's tears is contemptuous of both Hillary and the voters.

Hillary, politics, midtopia

Ron Paul, racist?

The blogosphere brouhaha of the day is a New Republic report on Ron Paul, in which they comb through his old newsletters and come across some surprising articles. Some choice excerpts are here. My excerpts from the excerpts:

This 1978 newsletter says the Trilateral Commission is "no longer known only by those who are knowledgeable about international conspiracies, but is routinely mentioned in the daily news."

A 1986 newsletter names Jeane Kirkpatrick and George Will as "two of our enemies" and notes their membership in the Trilateral Commission.

An October 1990 edition of the Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" would be better alternatives--and says, "Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house."

The January 1991 edition of the Political Report refers to King as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours" and a "flagrant plagiarist with a phony doctorate."

"A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992: "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided."

A January 1994 edition of the Survival Report states that "gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense," adding: "[T]hese men don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners." Also, "they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick."

If you want to look at PDFs of the newsletters in question, visit TNR's selections link and click on the red type in each example.

You'll see that I ignored some topics. That's because I'm not that concerned with the sections on Israel, secession and the Mises Institute; I can see principled explanations there.

Libertarians -- and Andrew Sullivan -- are dismayed. Reason Magazine got a comment from Ron Paul, whose campaign later issued a statement. The defense is notable for its blandness and lack of specificity, but the basic argument is that this was old news, and reflective of poor oversight on Paul's part, not racism.

Ron Paul supporters, of course, are apoplectic. Just read some of the comments under TNR's main piece. They do have one valid point: the timing of the piece was a bit precious, coming on the day of the New Hampshire primary. Sure, given that we're in primary season, just about any date will have some timing-related effect. But it wouldn't have killed TNR to publish it tomorrow or Thursday, giving Paul enough time to respond before the next primary.

So how much is smoke and how much is fire?

Let's start with the indisputable facts.

1. For decades, various newsletters went out with Ron Paul's name on them.

2. Some of the issues contained material that was far, far, far beyond the pale of being defensible.

3. Paul himself didn't always edit them, and it's unclear which articles, if any, he wrote himself.

4. In particular, Paul disowns the racist, homophobic issues of the early 1990s, which he said were written and edited by others while he was retired from politics. He accepts a "moral responsibility" for not paying closer attention to what was being said in his name.

5. It's also clear that the views expressed in the newsletter are not what he espouses now. Indeed, he flatly told Reason that he considers MLK a hero and spoke in support of Rosa Parks in a Congressional speech in 1999.

But there are troubling questions involved here.

1. I cannot imagine letting a publication be put out in my name without being aware of -- and concerned about -- its content. So if Paul is to be believed, we're talking about a truly stunning lack of oversight.

2. Paul says this is "old news." I'd be willing to dismiss the conspiracy stuff as too old to be relevant -- except that he continues to believe much of it today. The rest is too recent to simply dismiss. It may indeed not reflect his views, or at least his views today, but they're recent enough to require at least some explanation.

3. The "poor oversight" argument would be more persuasive if we were talking about one bad issue or an article here or there. But I bolded the dates in the excerpts above for a reason. Here's how the categories break down:

Conspiracy theories: 1978-present.

Racism: 1990-92.

Homophobia:1990-94.

Militia movement:1992-95.

These things went on for years. Is it possible to be that completely out of touch with a publication bearing your name?

4. Even if we (rather charitably) accept Paul's claim that he was totally uninvolved with the newsletters and never even read them, we come to the question of who Paul entrusted to edit and publish them. I don't see how he would have consented to let someone use his name unless he knew that person and felt they would reflect his own philosophy more often than not. It seems to me that he must have known the political views of the editor, if not the writers. For one thing, a person capable of publishing some of the newsletters TNR discusses could not hide their extremist views very well or for very long. Indeed, the editor presumably had no desire to hide them, seeing as how he or she volunteered to print them up in a newsletter and mail them off to subscribers.

So the explanation that Ron Paul owes us is severalfold:

1. Did the writings reflect your views?

2. Did you ever read the newsletters published in your name?

3. Why did you lend your name to publications you totally disagree with?

4. How did you pick the editors, publishers or writers of these publications?

5. Who were the editors and writers involved, and do you still associate with them today?

For what it's worth, while I think Paul is a conspiracy-minded extreme conservative from the nutty end of the libertarian spectrum, I never had him pegged for a racist. I'm willing to believe that the newsletters do not reflect his personal views. But he then must explain why and how he put his name on the publication containing such trash.

Update: Stubborn Facts has some cogent commentary.

Ron Paul, politics, midtopia

Obscure election, outsized result

While the nation's attention was focused on Iowa, here in Minnesota we had our own touch of drama: a special election for the State Senate.

This normally wouldn't be a big deal. But it's got irony and surprisingly large political consequences.

Last fall, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (a Republican) appointed State Sen. Tom Neuville (also a Republican) to be a county judge. Neuville had been in the Senate since 1991, and his seat, in Northfield (a college town just south of the Twin Cities), was thought to be pretty safely Republican.

Until last night. That's when DFLer (Democrat to everybody else) Kevin Dahle defeated Republican Ray Cox, 55 percent to 42 percent, to win the seat.

So what, you might ask? Well, in the irony section, that one seat happens to be what the Senate DFL needed to secure a two-thirds majority -- giving them the power to override a Pawlenty veto.

So to recap: Gov. Tim Pawlenty, by appointing a Republican judge, ended up drastically weakening his political clout.

He's not totally irrelevant: the DFL only has 85 seats in the state House, five short of a veto-proof majority. But there often are enough Republican collaborators in that body to get an override on important issues. And if past trends continue, the DFL may secure a two-thirds majority in both houses this November -- the prospect of which makes it easier to find Republicans willing to support an override in the meantime.

November looks like it will be interesting on both a state and national level.

Pawlenty, Kevin Dahle, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Political justice

People concerned about the politicization of prosecutions in the Bush Justice Department now have this feel-good story to look at:

The Justice Department delayed prosecuting a key Republican official for jamming the phones of New Hampshire Democrats until after the 2004 election, protecting top GOP officials from the scandal until the voting was over.

An official with detailed knowledge of the investigation into the 2002 Election-Day scheme said the inquiry sputtered for months after a prosecutor sought approval to indict James Tobin, the northeast regional coordinator for the Republican National Committee.

They're referring to this case, which led to the near bankruptcy of the New Hampshire GOP.

There's more:

The official said that department officials rejected prosecutor Todd Hinnen's push to bring criminal charges against the New Hampshire Republican Party.

Weeks before the 2004 election, Hinnen's supervisors directed him to ask a judge to halt action temporarily in a Democratic Party civil suit against the GOP so that it wouldn't hurt the investigation, although Hinnen had expressed no concerns that it would, the official said.

Excellent.

Bad as that looks, there's a legitimate conundrum: How to handle election-related charges on the eve of an election? I appreciate not wanting to drop last-minute indictment bombshells, which could influence an election even though the underlying facts don't ultimately support conviction. Ignoring that reality could lead to sham indictments of opposition party members.

In this case, the underlying facts seemed pretty clear. But considering that Tobin's conviction was overturned on appeal this year and he now awaits a retrial, perhaps some caution was called for -- even though the verdict was overturned on a technicality, not because the court thinks Tobin didn't do anything wrong.

It'd be tempting to adopt one of two objective positions: prosecute without regard to the calendar, or don't file politically-related indictments within 30 days of an election. Either would remove the second-guessing about motive that this case engenders; but both have their flaws -- either the risk of politically-motivated indictments, or the risk of justice delayed and voters kept from having relevant information.

There are no real good answers here. Only the observation that when someone on your team screws up, it's probably better to err on the side of prosecuting too early than it is to delay and risk allegations of a cover-up.

Justice Department, Tobin, politics, midtopia

Why I don't support Ron Paul

Update: I cross-posted this over at Donklephant, where the comment count is up to 83 and counting.

Caracarn, a regular Midtopia reader and commenter who I've known for a long time and greatly respect, took me to task in this post for curtly dismissing Ron Paul as a nutty libertarian. It's a fair point, so I decided to go into detail about why I think Paul is too far out there to be considered a good presidential candidate.

I think Ron Paul is great in some respects. I've got enough libertarian leanings that I voted for Jesse Ventura, and I certainly respect Paul's commitment to principles. But I think he often follows those principles out the window. Further, he's a strongly conservative libertarian, with whom I disagree on substantive policy issues.

Let's just go through the positions he admits to holding, on his campaign web site:

FREE TRADE
He opposes free-trade agreements as infringements on American sovereignity. He specifically sees NAFTA as part of a master plan to form a North American Union with Canada and Mexico. He opposes the International Criminal Court, World Trade Organization, GATT, etc. He in effect opposes any practical agreement that will work in a multilateral world, where the only way you make progress is if you get buy in -- and enforceability -- from dozens or hundreds of nations. He also opposes nearly all forms of foreign aid, which besides providing humanitarian benefits is a crucial diplomatic tool.

BORDER SECURITY
He's strongly anti-immigration, which is fine, and his proposals aren't actually nutty. But he elides over the cost of his plan, and I think his proposal to "eliminate welfare for illegal aliens" will have unintended and self-damaging consequences, particularly because he defines "welfare" as using hospitals, schools and roads, as well as social services.

DEBT AND TAXES
He supports low taxes and low spending, but he fetishizes the former as an absolute good and doesn't spell out how he's going to cut spending. He opposes the Federal Reserve system, mirroring conspiracy and gold-bug arguments that misunderstand the nature and function of the system and the money supply. He would return us to a gold standard, which is good for retirees but bad for economic growth unless it is jiggered to be essentially a fiat currency system like the one he decries.

EDUCATION
Paul would abolish the Dept. of Education and end all federal involvement in funding or regulating public education, except for offering a tax credit to pay for private school -- essentially a direct federal bribe to pull kids out of public school. Stuff like that makes it appear that he opposes public education in general, despite some statements to the contrary. Never mind that a consequence would be an increase in education inequality, with kids in poor states and poor areas receiving far worse educations than those in rich states or rich areas -- which can afford to fund their schools properly.

ENVIRONMENT
Here he takes a swat at Caracarn's favorite issue. A quote: "The key to sound environmental policy is respect for private property rights." While he does support renewable energy, opposes logging on federal land and doesn't believe in subsidizing polluters, his solution to environmental issues would be to let property owners sue each other over environmental damage.

That is not really a solution, being expensive, time-consuming and impractical. It ignores the hassle of suing, the difficulty in placing a monetary value on environmental harm, and the fact that environmental harm can be small on a given parcel but large in aggregate, or can affect a commons rather than an individual private property. Or that harm may not become apparent until it's too late, as with overgrazing or loss of topsoil. It also ignores the history of land use and degradation, which has shown way too many people willing to make a short-term buck in exchange for long-term harm. It doesn't address side issues, either, like how to save endangered species, or problems like preserving water quality where there's often no single, clear culprit available to be sued.

HEALTH CARE
He opposes universal health care, which is fine. And he has some good ideas here, like making all medical expenses tax deductible and making health savings accounts easier to use. But that won't help the people who can't afford health care in the first place: they either don't make enough period, or they don't pay much in taxes anyway. It won't address the problem of your health care being tied to your place of business, with many small employers (the engines of economic growth) either not offering it at all or offering expensive plans that provide lousy coverage. He ends up railing against bogeymen: HMOs, big drug companies and government bureaucrats. That's a screed, not a reasoned analysis.

HEALTH FREEDOM
That's his term, not mine. It mostly means doing away with the FDA to as great an extent as possible and preventing it from having any power over "alternative" medicines and treatments. I support his opposition to forced vaccinations, even though I think that in most cases refusing to get vaccinated makes no statistical sense.

HOME SCHOOLING
He will protect the right to home schooling, and demand that home-school diplomas count just as much as regular diplomas when it comes to college-admission and scholarship time. That's fine as far as it goes.

But he opposes any federal regulation of home-school activities or national standards or testing for home-schooled kids.

So he demands parity, while opposing any means of determining if they are, in fact, comparable. Never mind that his commitment to guaranteeing admission parity amounts to federal interference in a private decision (a college deciding whom to admit), something he claims to oppose everywhere else.

LIFE AND LIBERTY
Or, as we say in the rest of the world, "Abortion." He opposes it. He would repeal Roe v. Wade and leave such decisions up to the states -- while also authoring bills that would define life as beginning at conception. Such contradictions aside, it's a pretty standard anti-abortion stand.


NO TAXES ON TIPS
This is a minor issue, but the philosophical aspect is interesting. He, rightly, criticizes the unfairness of taxing estimates of tip income. But his solution is simply to exempt tips from federal taxes. Considering that wait staff, for instance, typically are paid a sub-minimum-wage hourly rate and make most of their money on tips, his solution would create a special class of worker whose income is largely tax-free. I'm curious to know why he thinks such people deserve such special treatment.

PRIVACY AND PERSONAL LIBERTY
This is Paul's strongest area. He opposes a national ID card, and wants tighter control on medical and financial information. He strongly opposes the Patriot Act. All good things, but he's an absolutist about it. For instance, one of the things he opposes is the rule that banks must report currency transactions of $10,000 or more -- a law that has proved very useful in uncovering fraud, money laundering, drug rings, terror financing and the like. I support greater privacy rights, but I think Paul takes it too far.

PROPERTY RIGHTS
He opposes abuses of eminent domain, which is good. But he's vague about where he draws the line. Many dogmatic libertarians, for instance, think zoning laws are a violation of sacred property rights. If your neighbor wants to put up a 24/7 metal-shredder on his property, your only recourse would be to sue him -- on what grounds I can only guess, because there wouldn't be any law prohibiting him from doing so. That's a recipe for clogged courts, well-paid lawyers and completely chaotic community growth.

RACISM
I agree with nearly everything he says here, although I think government has a role in combating racism: They can't legislate attitudes, but they can criminalize the most damaging expressions of racism so that minorities do not suffer unnecessarily for their skin color.

SOCIAL SECURITY
Here, oddly, is a program that Ron Paul doesn't just accept, he defends it like a lioness defends her cubs. Well, sort of. He says a "sacred promise" has been broken, and we're underfunding Social Security. So he'll propose laws ending taxation of SS benefits and requiring that SS taxes only go to fund SS -- in other words, the "lockbox" idea that would prevent the government from borrowing the surplus.

He also would prevent illegal aliens from getting SS benefits -- which is a fine idea, except that that's already the law, and illegal aliens almost certainly pay far more into the system than they take out.

But then it gets weird. Because he would also cut payroll taxes and let younger workers invest some of their SS payments in the private market.

This, then, is essentially Bush's plan for partly privatizing Social Security. Paul doesn't explain how he'll protect that "sacred promise" to retirees while also cutting payroll taxes, nor does he mention the $1 trillion to $2 trillion transition cost that would result.

SECOND AMENDMENT
He's a gun-rights absolutist. He opposed the assault-weapons ban, which is fine, and has sponsored various bills to allow guns in specific situations: national parks and airline cockpits.

But he also would repeal the Brady Bill -- the one that requires background checks before you can buy a handgun. He would also repeal the 1993 Firearms Licensing act, which required that recipients sign a receipt when receiving firearms in the mail and tightened licensing requirements for gun dealers, both moves intended to close loopholes that could dodge the Brady Bill requirements. He lumps in his efforts to end our membership in the United Nations, viewing them as a major threat to gun ownership.

WAR AND FOREIGN POLICY
He says, rightly, that we shouldn't go to war without a Congressional declaration, and that too often our foreign policy has led us to support despised rulers, such that we, too, became despised.

He opposes foreign aid, because it has backfired on us before.

He would bring all of our troops home from wherever they are.

He seems to think it's easier to fight wars that are thrust upon us than to dispatch troops overseas to prevent wars before they reach us. He also completely ignores the diplomatic and political benefits of providing financial and military assistance to friendly countries.

Or the military realities: had we not intervened in South Korea, for instance, North Korea would have overrun its neighbor. Had we not remained there for decades, they might have done it again. These days, South Korea is an economic tiger and has a large, modern, professional military. So it's completely reasonable to discuss whether it's time to bring our troops home from there (my answer: yes in isolation, but no if you take into account our interest in keeping tabs on the growth of Chinese power in the region). But Paul's isolationist enough that I'm not sure he would have intervened in the first place, much less kept troops there for more than a couple of years afterward.

In my opinion, being fully engaged in the world is a requirement for our own security, and serving as the world's policeman is a calling to which we are uniquely suited. Our challenge is to pick our battles and conduct ourselves in such a way that we do more good than harm, and do not simply throw our weight around for our own selfish interests. Paul would simply turn his back on the whole thing, which is appealing in its simplicity but would be appalling in its consequences.

All of the above is why I dismiss Paul as a serious candidate, and classify him more toward the nutty end of the libertarian spectrum. Some of his ideas have a certain resonance to them, particularly in a nation fed up with partisan bickering, perpetual crisis and a host of nagging problems that have no easy solutions. But he's vague on unpleasant details, and many of his ideas sound good in theory but would be disastrous in practice.

I look forward to the hail of rabid Ron Paul supporters who will show up to call me a dunderhead once this post hits the search engines....

Ron Paul, politics, midtopia

A little humor goes a long way

You gotta hand it to Mike Huckabee. He didn't bobble the priceless opportunity that fell in his lap, although he's about as funny as a marble statue.



A few more commercials like this might make the primaries bearable.

Huckabee, politics, midtopia

Catching up

Some quick thoughts on current events:

IRAQ
The surge is working from a military perspective. With all due credit to our troops and Gen. Petraeus' solid planning and execution of a competent strategy, however, the turnaround is mostly due to thousands of Sunni tribesmen switching sides, joining the U.S. to fight Al-Qaeda militants.

The switch is partly due to AQ's self-destructive tendency to attack other Sunnis. When AQ stepped up attacks against fellow Sunnis, it marked the beginning of the end of their fall. Particularly because Iraqis are not, by and large, extremist material.

But because the improvement is largely based on a change of allegiance, the improvement is fragile: if the Sunni tribes switch back, the improvement could disappear as quickly as it appeared.

Which underscores the main challenge remaining in Iraq: achieving the political changes that will make the security improvements permanent. And progress there has been slow.

Whether the invasion, even in hindsight, was justified or worth the cost is not the question here; we're concerned only with achieving the best end we can now that we're in Iraq. In that context, Petraeus and Bush have achieved enough to stave off demands for withdrawal; they've earned a chance to demonstrate that they can make the changes stick. I hope they can, but it's way too early to declare victory.


IRAN
The CIA has thrown the administration's Iran rhetoric into disarray with a new intelligence estimate that indicates Iran's nuclear weapons program has been frozen since 2003.

Some blindsided neocons, like Norman Podhoretz, were reduced to floating conspiracy theories -- that the new NIE is an attempt by the CIA to undercut the administration for political purposes, as if the CIA is so politicized that they're willing to let Iran get nukes if it lets them make Bush look bad in the short run.

For my money, though, this doesn't really change things much. It's good news if true, and it certainly short-circuits the premature (and hopelessly naive) drumbeat for war that was being beaten in certain quarters. Fact is, thanks to the ongoing mess in Iraq, this country has no appetite for war with Iran unless and until they actually drop a bomb on somebody.

But Iran still has a program, even if it's in mothballs. And we still need an intrusive inspection regime and other concrete assurances that Iran cannot and will not develop a nuclear weapon. So all the NIE does is put the ball firmly in diplomacy's court, where it should have been all along. I support limited military action to avoid a Persian Bomb, but that necessity is still a long way off.

As an aside, I love watching how people accept or don't accept the NIE as credible based on its contents. Up until now, many administration critics have all but accused Bush and Cheney of making up the NIEs to support their policy -- while administration supporters pointed to the NIE as authoritative grounding for our Iran policy. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and the roles are reversed. Not everyone is playing that game, of course -- Hot Air is doing a pretty good job, for example, despite linking to lots of people who aren't. But those who do demonstrate that partisanship has pickled their brains.

THE ELECTION
I'm still not seeing anything to love. My biggest fear is that we'll get a Rudy-Hillary matchup in the general. On the one hand this wouldn't be too bad, because they're both basically centrists. On the other hand, they have the highest negatives of the candidates, and both can be fairly criticized for blowing with the political winds. So if they clinch the nominations, we will see perhaps the most negative presidential campaign in history, and the lowest voter turnout in decades.

Giuliani, Hillary, Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia

What century is this?

What finally tipped me over the edge into resuming posting was the announcement that Mitt Romney will be making a major speech on faith in a couple of days, hoping to neutralize his Mormonism as a campaign issue.

Regular readers know that I'm no big Mitt Romney supporter, and as an agnostic I often take a jaundiced view of religion in general. But c'mon: Have we learned nothing from history, or even the last five years?

We're deeply engaged in an overseas war, ostensibly to fight religious extremists who wish to impose their brand of faith on everyone. One way we're doing that is by attempting to persuade Iraqis, Afghanis and everyone else that a person's race and religion does not matter: Sunni and Shiite can live together peaceably, ruled by a government representing all of them. In particular, we're trying to persuade Sunnis that it's quite all right to be ruled by a Shiite majority.

But at the same time, here at home, a longtime governor and serious presidential candidate feels compelled to make a national speech in order to advance the argument that it's okay to elect a Mormon as president.

Like, duh.

Seriously. What century is this? And what sort of mixed message are we sending to the people abroad whom we presume to instruct in tolerance? Sure, "refusing to elect" is a far different thing than "executing as infidels". But the philosophical underpinning is too similar to dismiss.

If Romney were a religious nut, that would be one thing. I would never vote for Pat Robertson, for example, because he holds extreme, often apocalyptic views and seems all too willing to try to put those views into practice. But that doesn't mean I would refuse to vote for any evangelical Christian candidate. And I tend to oppose conservative Christians because I disagree with their politics, not because they're Christian. Just like I oppose conservative Jews, Hindus and Muslims.

Grow up, people. Vote or don't vote for Romney because you agree or disagree with him, not because of where he goes to church on Sunday (or Saturday, or whatever).

And Republicans? Consider this event as further proof of the excessive and damaging hold that the religious right has on your party.

Romney, religion, politics, midtopia

Redistricting update

In Wednesday's post about a new redistricting algorithm, I focused on the technical specifics of the proposed method, and the pros and cons that made it different from previous proposals.

I deliberately avoided delving into all the standing arguments about how best to draw districts, largely because I've discussed them in tedious detail before. But judging by the comments and e-mails I've received, a quick overview would be useful.

The complicating factor is that there are situations where gerrymandering produces a better result than a purely nonpartisan approach. That's because redistricting involves several legitimate but competing principles:

1. District boundaries should make geographic sense.

2. District boundaries should be nonpartisan.

3. The makeup of Congress should reflect the makeup of the citizenry. If a given group makes up 15 percent of the citizens, it should probably have about 15 percent of the Congressional seats.

4. Districts should be socially coherent, so that their representative can truly represent them. A suburban neighborhood on the edge of the city, for instance, is better grouped with a suburban district with similar demographics than an urban district with which it has nothing in common.

The problem is that #4 is highly subjective, and it's hard to get #3 if you want both #2 and #1. For instance, assuming minorities are somewhat evenly spread through the population, a totally nonpartisan approach would create zero districts where blacks, say, are a majority -- greatly reducing the political power of black voters.

So one consequence of a completely objective method for drawing districts would probably be a steep drop in the number of minority members of Congress.

That doesn't feel right. That's why increasing minority representation is one of the few legal exceptions to the "no excessive gerrymandering" rules.

Besides leading to travesties like District 12 on the above map of North Carolina, such efforts created a whole new set of problems. Republicans, for instance, found that if you draw those minority districts right you not only get more minorities but you also get more safe Republican seats. Republicans gained 10 House seats in the 1992 elections -- 12 of them in states where minority districts had been created. Gains in those states, in other words, offset losses elsewhere.

This, in turn, has contributed to careerism and the alarming polarization of national politics, because someone with a safe seat is free to demagogue as much as they like, and it's harder to find common ground with other legislators. Why would a representative from poor inner-city Detroit care about the issues most dear to people in suburban Orange County, Calif.? Or vice versa? Their constituents have almost nothing in common.

If more districts were politically and racially mixed, you might find more legislators with direct experience and interest in a range of issues, making sane policy and pragmatic compromises more likely.

The problems don't end there.

Once you allow gerrymandering for one purpose, it opens the door for a whole host of questions, like: How much gerrymandering is too much? If it's okay to gerrymander for race, how about gender or religion or other demographic features? You end up having to engage in a lot more arbitrary, complicated and difficult-to-defend line-drawing than if you simply ban the practice altogether.

And while we must recognize race as a political force, why should we encourage it? Being willfully color-blind often disguises residual racism, but that doesn't mean we should build racial assumptions into the very structure of our political system. Perhaps if we stop reinforcing the idea that race should be a factor in politics, it will stop being as much of a factor.

In the end, while #3 and #4 are commendable ideals, in my book they come in second to #1 and #2. As an extension of adjusting the algorithm to account for existing political boundaries I'm willing to accept very minor adjustments to a district's boundaries in order to nudge it over into "minority" status. That will result in fewer minority districts, but more than if no adjusting were done at all.

To minorities who say that such a move destroys their political power, I'd say "join the club." Speaking as an agnostic political moderate, I can confidently say my views aren't proportionately represented in Congress, either.

The solution to that is to organize politically to create a voice out of proportion to your numbers. It worked for the religious right; it works for unions; it can work for racial groups, too. And it has the added advantage of making a given minority's concerns part of the political calculus of a far larger number of Congressmembers. Sufficiently organized, that could result in far greater political influence than could every be achieved by packing minorities into their own districts.

Even better would be to stop viewing representation through the prism of race and start organizing around specific issues instead. Symbolically important as minorities in Congress can be, would black voters, for instance, really prefer a black representative with whom they totally disagree, or a white representative whose positions they support?

Here in Minnesota, one of the main political divides is rural vs. urban. I find it difficult to believe that a rural black has more in common politically with an urban black than with a fellow rural dweller of any color.

In sum, then, the collective good of removing politics from the redistricting process generally outweighs the collective good of proportional representation. The first should be the priority, while the second should be a bonus to be added where possible -- but only if it doesn't derail the whole shebang.

redistricting, politics, midtopia

Nonpartisan redistricting

Last week, Simon over at Stubborn Facts linked to a group that has developed a mathematical algorithm for drawing Congressional districts -- one that would make gerrymandering a thing of the past.

The so-called splitline algorithm follows a few simple rules to divide up a state using the fewest number of straight lines as possible.

For example, here's how Tennessee looks now:


And here's how it would look if the algorithm were used:


Obviously, the computer-generated map seems far more in keeping with the spirit of geographical representation.

But just as obviously, the upside of total nonpartisanship is gained at the expense of ignoring all existing natural and political boundaries. The district lines would arbitrarily split cities, neighborhoods, even streets. It would be technically simple to determine what district you were in using a GPS device, but it would be hard to do so simply looking at a map.

That said, gerrymandering often produces the same result, and for far less defensible reasons.

Such a problem seems solvable, however. The algorithm could be linked to a database of geographical and political boundaries, and modified to draw the simplest districts while giving maximum deference to those boundaries. The key point -- automated, nonpartisan district drawing -- would be retained. All that would change is that the district borders would get a little more complicated in order to be easier to understand.

Like Simon says, it's a start, not a finish. But it's a promising one.

BTW, here's how Minnesota might look.



redistricting, politics, midtopia

Spitzer to introduce gay-marriage bill

I love Eliot Spitzer. He's got courage.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer will introduce a bill in the coming weeks to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, his spokeswoman said Friday, a move that would propel New York to the forefront of one of the most contentious issues in politics.

That's gay marriage, not civil unions. And it's not the most popular thing he could have done. It'll play well in New York City, but not so much upstate.

Prospects for passage are uncertain.

Legislation to allow same-sex marriage has never made it to a floor vote in either the Assembly, which has a Democratic majority, or the Republican-controlled State Senate. Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, has declined to take a stand on the issue. Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, has supported legislation to outlaw hate crimes and workplace discrimination against gays, but he remains opposed to same-sex marriage.

Even among lawmakers who say they favor the legislation, there is some division over the best strategy to get it passed. Two legislators from Manhattan, State Senator Thomas K. Duane and Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, both Democrats, have tried for several years to shepherd a gay-marriage bill through the Legislature and are trying again this year. That bill has at least 14 sponsors in the Senate and 42 in the Assembly.

So it's a start, but it might be a symbolic one.

I also like the other initiative mentioned in the story: pushing a constitutional amendment requiring nonpartisan legislative redistricting. I've written about the general idea here and here, but it's nice to see a state taking actual steps to get it done.

Spitzer, gay rights, redistricting, politics, midtopia