From Minnesota Public Radio:

There’s plenty of buzz in Minnesota’s political circles today about former Republican Gov. Arne Carlson endorsing Barack Obama. But the move isn’t terribly surprising.

Carlson is a more traditional East Coast Republican — a Williams College educated intellectual with an appreciation of both social service and fiscal conservatism — a progressive Republican. That’s the kind of Republican the party purged in the ’90s.

Carlson was a thorn in the side of the party, even when he was its highest-ranking official as governor, so the endorsement is unlikely to sway many — if any — Republicans. During his term, the party consistently endorsed more conservative candidates for governor. Carlson usually ignored them, then beat them handily in the party primaries. Carlson was the first Republican governor in the state’s history to be denied the endorsement by his own party.

Alan Quist lost in a landslide to Carlson in 1994 after running a campaign based on moral issues — Carlson supported legalized abortion — but that was back before that became the party mainstay, and when Republicans in the state were known as Independent Republicans.

Since leaving office, Carlson has teamed up with former VP Walter Mondale to try to repeal the concealed carry handgun law in the state, criticized Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s budget plan to use money from the Health Care Access fund, which funds the state health insurance program, and went to the Legislature to lobby against Pawlenty’s cuts in a state program to curb fetal alcohol syndrome, which was his wife’s project. He’s also endorsed the occasional Democrat in state Legislature races, as he did in 2004 in DFLer Jim Carlson unsuccessful bid inDistrict 38B, and he endorsed DFLer Rebecca Otto in her successful campaign for state auditor in 2006.

And earlier in this campaign, the Washington Post published a letter from Carlson lamenting that religion was being used in the Republican Party as a litmus test for the vice presidential selection.

For more than a decade, Arne Carlson has had nothing in common with the Republican Party. Today was no exception.

(Listen to Carlson’s announcement via Polinaut)

Can any of the numerous Class of 1957 folks on EphBlog (or, you know, anyone else who happens to have known him) tell us more about Gov. Carlson?

From A.Word.A.Day at Wordsmith.org:

palinode

PRONUNCIATION:

(PAL-uh-noad)  

MEANING:

noun: A poem in which the author retracts something said in an earlier poem. 

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek palinoidia, from palin (again) + oide (song). It’s the same palin that shows up in the word palindrome…

NOTES:

The illustrator and humorist Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) once wrote a poem called The Purple Cow:

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.

The poem became so popular and he became so closely linked with this single quatrain that he later wrote a palinode:

Confession: and a Portrait, Too,
Upon a Background that I Rue!
Oh, yes, I wrote ‘The Purple Cow,’
I’m sorry now I wrote it!
But I can tell you anyhow,
I’ll kill you if you quote it.

USAGE:

“The more lighthearted palinodes were more successful, such as Geoff Horton’s recantation of his youthful view that a martini should be shaken rather than stirred.”
Jaspitos; I Take It Back; The Spectator (London, UK); Jan 24, 2004.

Items to discuss may include hallucinogens used by Mr. Burgess, the proper construction of a martini, and whether Mrs. Palin will issue a palinode.

Now that 7-11 has gotten in on the electoral prediction game, I suggest that the time has come for EphBlog to jump on the bandwagon, because, hey, no matter how much you people hate Eph Pundit, it’s better than ungrounded rants about Bolin fellowships, no? We did this four years ago on WSO, and, though I hesitate to blow my own trumpet, I was closest to the eventual result (I think I predicted 284 votes for Bush, when most posters were giving Kerry 300+). That garnered me a Spring Fling bracelet as a prize.

This time, sadly, I have no Spring Fling bracelets to give out, but the winner will receive an etched Williams College beer stein shipped from Goff Sports. The winner of the contest will be determined as the commenter whose prediction for the winning candidate’s electoral tally comes closest to the actual result. If there is a tie, the tie will be broken by whoever came closer in their estimate for the winner’s share of the popular vote.

Go here to simulate the electoral college results.

I’ll start. Here are my predictions:

Electoral College: Obama 286, McCain 252
Popular Vote: Obama 48.5%, McCain 46%

Here’s the map as I see it:

Make sure you use a working email address when you comment, and only 1 submission per person, please.

Most interesting race featuring an Eph this election cycle? Not Chris Murphy’s re-election bid in CT-05; his seat should be safe in a year when Democrats look set to control every single House seat from New England. Instead, I would keep an eye on the race for New York State’s 9th Senate District, where Roy Simon ‘71, a professor at Hofstra University law school, is taking on the current Republican Majority Leader in the State Senate, Dean Skelos. Though state legislative races get hardly any media attention, this one could have important consequences.

Why this race could matter: Currently, in New York, the Republicans hold a single-seat majority in the State Senate. Republicans have controlled the State Senate for 70 years, and it is now their last remaining statewide power base; it is also the only remaining obstacle to New York granting full civil rights to gay couples. Gov. Paterson has already done everything within his power, and the Democrat-controlled Assembly has passed a bill, but the Republican State Senate still stands in the way. In addition to what would be his systematic importance in flipping control of the Senate, Simon appears to be a property-tax-cutting, pro-public transport, pro-environment politician with a record of integrity and impressive professional achievements.

You can read more about Simon or donate to his campaign here.

I picked up a manilla folder marked “AMLO-NYT” from the front of the organizer where I have let it sit,  waiting for review, for nearly a year.  The draft with hand-written annotation, between quotes in the above, begins:

“The Western democracies have recently faced a growing number of close elections,  with ambiguous results.  Today,  ——- faces such a quandary.”

David Shipley’s team did not allow us that explanation– amusingly,  published more words than we submitted– though it found expression elsewhere.

I wonder still what nation we were trying to address,  what…

For the next 21 days, I will be wondering where we are,  whether I will have to draft this again,  whether…

Michel Balinski came to campus today for a Math/Stats colloquium and a well-attended presentation in Wege tonight. His presentation was on the problems with current voting systems, involving gerrymandering and how a minority can elect a majority, as is the case in the UK. This PDF is the hard academic text behind his work; I could not understand all of the involved math. Follow the jump for commentary.
(more…)

My opinion on the bailout? What Nouriel Roubini says.

The Treasury plan also does not explicitly include an HOLC-style program to reduce across the board the debt burden of the distressed household sector; without such a component the debt overhang of the household sector will continue to depress consumption spending and will exacerbate the current economic recession.

Thus, the Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown. It is pathetic that Congress did not consult any of the many professional economists that have presented - many on the RGE Monitor Finance blog forum - alternative plans that were more fair and efficient and less costly ways to resolve this crisis. This is again a case of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses; a bailout and socialism for the rich, the well-connected and Wall Street. And it is a scandal that even Congressional Democrats have fallen for this Treasury scam that does little to resolve the debt burden of millions of distressed home owners.

Indeed. If I were Obama, I would avoid voting on the bailout or even expressing a strong opinion on the topic. McCain’s best (albeit slim) chance for winning the election is to come out strongly against the bill (whatever his actual opinions on the topic). Previous discussions here and here.

The Record featured an interesting roundtable with three Economics professors on the credit crisis.

What do you think about Henry Paulson’s $700 billion bailout plan? Do you think it will help ease the crisis?

Kuttner: Paulson’s plan is basically a carte blanche: it is basically Paulson saying to Congress, “Look, give me 700 billion dollars and I will just buy up these securities that are backed by the bad debt.”

Will that help? Surely it will. It’ll get all this bad debt off the balance sheets of financial institutions. The question is, are there smarter ways to do it? This is really just throwing money at the problem. A lot of the criticism of Paulson’s plan has come under is those who say, “Well, this is going to have a lot of unintended consequences that may be undesirable.”

Caprio: The plan can be far more expensive because it removes any accountability for the Treasury department so we don’t know how much they’ll really pay for the bad assets they are going to buy.

If you look at other countries that have been through this for good and bad practices, as well as U.S. history and the depression, the programs that were really careful with taxpayer money, that were very transparent, forced very hard conditions on banks. If they were going to get any money from the government, they had to accept a lot of tough conditions – limits on salaries and no dividends for shareholders – until the government got its money out. And the taxpayers got all the upside, and what I think we’re worried about is that American taxpayers may be getting the downside which will then really make the consequences dangerous for the dollar.

…

So last question. Can each of you say how you think the crisis will play out?

Caprio: There are going to be major changes in regulation in the financial sector. That’s a relatively easy forecast. Which way it’s going to go is harder to know. There are a lot of people who are saying that this represents the failure of deregulation, and I just think that’s fundamentally misleading.

Indeed.

An Eph connection to the bailout?

Republican Sen. John McCain said he would suspend campaigning to help tackle a $700 billion bailout proposal and called on Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama to postpone their debate Friday, as the roiling U.S. financial crisis took center stage in the presidential campaign.

…

Another key event that aides said prompted Sen. McCain’s actions: a roundtable Wednesday morning with some of Wall Street’s biggest names, financial titans who told him that the rescue legislation must be passed soon. “We urged John to get all over it, that this is a national-security crisis,” one financial executive said.

The financial executives, who were told on Tuesday that Sen. McCain wanted to meet with them the next day, included Merrill Lynch & Co. CEO John Thain, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Vice Chairman James Lee and private-equity fund owner Henry Kravis.

For Sen. McCain, figuring out how to handle the bailout bill presented a particular challenge because much of the resistance to the plan has come from conservatives alarmed at the cost of bailout and the scope of powers that would be granted to the Treasury secretary.

Sen. McCain, who has never been close to conservatives, has worked hard during the election season to earn their trust. But that could be at risk if he were to support a package that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called “a dead loser on Election Day.”

Why are so many Democrats in favor of this bail out?

1) A “national-security crisis?” Give me a break! We are already in a recession. Obviously, we all hope that the recession will be brief, but there is no good evidence that this particular plan will do any good. All the smartest observers (e.g., here, here and here) are against it. Haven’t Democrats learned that “national-security crisis” is a smokescreen for policies that they ought to oppose? Just because rates on short term commercial paper are high does not mean that alien invasion is nigh.

2) As much as all good Ephs like Jimmy Lee ‘75, don’t Democrats read EphBlog?

Someone at Chase once said, Jimmy is like a crocodile: He sits there with his eyes just a bit above the water saying, “Oh yeah, come just a little bit closer.”

Come a little close John McCain (and the rest of the Washington establishment). Just a little closer.

Jimmy Lee (and John Thain and Henry Kravis and most of Wall Street) have hundreds of billions of dollars of lousy assets, stuff that they value at 50 cents on the dollar but which is actually worth only 25 cents (or whatever). They want the US Government (which means you, future taxpayers) to buy it from them at 50 cents, or even more. I can imagine plutocrat-worshiping Republicans doing that, those shameless lick-spittles, but why would any Democrat be in favor of making Jimmy Lee richer?

Perhaps my Democratic friends can explain this to me. (And don’t even start with “No bailout means financial Armageddon.” That is just bunk, designed to stampede the rubes into action.)

3) And aren’t the politics interesting? Unless something dramatic happens, I don’t see how McCain can beat Obama. But what if McCain demagogued the bailout, as I previously urged Obama to do? Doing so would allow him to be against both Bush and the Washington consensus. He, not Obama, would become the candidate of change. Perhaps such a gambit wouldn’t be enough to win, but it is the only plausible hope as far as I can see.

I was writing a comment to respond to Soph Mom in David’s posting of my Record op-ed, and realized that my comment was getting too long. See below for more thoughts:
(more…)

(This gets at the argument started by Frank here. One of the perils of a Williams education is that you can never convincingly be one of those mythic “real people”. You will end up looking like a giant phony if you even try.)

There are many, many topics right now that I would like to discuss on EB, but I only have so much mental space.  Living in Washington, DC and working for a federal agency that is a *little* bit busy during this current, ahem, situation, I’m about up to <i>here</i> with the attempted campaign hijacking of the bailout package.  This situation is already bad, stressful, partisan, etc. etc. etc. without the additional bs.  I’m going to stop now before I go off the rails about this “suspending” nonsense.

What this post is actually about is lobbyists, mostly one particular (former?) lobbyist.  Much has been made this year about campaigns not being beholden to lobbyists or not being run by lobbyists or not taking contributions to lobbyists, etc.  I’ll be honest that I’m not sure how giving up your lobbying status the week before you work on a campaign makes some kind of difference.  You’d need a pretty extensive break to really shake that influence.  Anyway, we’ve also heard a lot about campaign folks that have ties to the mortgage giants and failing investment banks.  We all know that Jim Johnson was kicked off Obama’s veep search team because of his mortage ties.  McCain’s campaign tried to tie Obama to Raines (obviously false, but didn’t stop the commercial).  And now, we have a bit of drama about Rick Davis and the payments from Freddie Mac to his lobbying firm, Davis Manafort.

The McCain campaign, and Davis himself, tell the story that he severed his relationship with the firm in 2006.  There may have been payments to the firm after that date (indeed, until the takeover), they say, but that is irrelevant as Davis is now a part of Davis Manafort in name only.  So I was willing to buy that this had been kind of blown out of proportion…it looks bad, but other than Freddie paying money for work Davis was apparently not doing anymore, I didn’t see a big problem other than appearances.

Then this evening I read a Newsweek article about the whole situation.  I still don’t think there really is anything untoward going on, but it feels an awful lot more like Davis and the McCain campaign blithely lied to the American public.  That campaign has “misstated” aka lied to our faces about a lot of silly things this year, and I suppose this is just another case.

First the McCain version of events:

In its initial statements to reporters this week, the McCain campaign said that the disclosure of the payments from Freddie Mac was irrelevant because Davis, who was never a registered lobbyist for the troubled housing corporation, had severed his relationship with Davis Manafort in 2006, and was no longer drawing any income from it. Jill Hazelbaker, the campaign’s communications director, said in an e-mail Tuesday that Davis “left” Davis Manafort in 2006. In a statement attacking The New York Times, posted on the campaign’s Web site on Wednesday, campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb said that Davis “separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006.” (A senior campaign official, in an e-mail statement to NEWSWEEK that was not for attribution on Tuesday night, said “Rick is no longer affiliated with the firm.”)

Sounds good, right?  Except…

But those statements appear to have overstated the extent to which Davis had severed his relationship with his lobbying firm. Filings made by “Davis Manafort Partners” with the Virginia Corporation Commission as recently as April 1, 2008, show that Davis was still listed as one of only two corporate officers and directors of the firm, according to records on the commission’s Web site reviewed by NEWSWEEK. That filing records Davis as the “treas/clerk” of the firm; his business partner, Paul Manafort is listed as the president and chief executive officer.
Another filing by “Davis Manafort, Inc.” (with the same Alexandria, Va. address, and recorded on Oct. 17, 2007) also lists Davis as an officer and director of the firm, reporting his position as “T/Clerk,” a reference to his formal title as corporate treasurer and clerk.

So you can draw whatever conclusions you’d like from this.  I don’t think that the Freddie payments were necessarily a big deal, except the holier than thou tenor of both campaigns makes anything like this seem hypocritical.

I’m interested in anyone sharing thoughts about the whole anti-lobbyist theme to this campaign.  Lobbying in and of itself, in my opinion, is not a bad thing.  It becomes bad when any elected official takes so many handouts, etc. that s/he feels beholden to the big money behind a particular breed of lobbyists.  Do others think that Davis and the McCain campaign really lied about this?  Did they tell the truth, and the rest of us are reading too much into a board position?

EphBlog author Will Slack ‘11 on the lying land of politics.

The past few weeks have seen McCain ads accuse Barack Obama of comparing Sarah Palin to a pig and liberal bloggers argue that Sarah Palin’s five-month son is actually the child of her teenage daughter, Bristol Palin.

Granted, McCain later disavowed his earlier accusations, and the bloggers were embarrassed when it came out that Trig couldn’t be Bristol’s baby since she was pregnant with another child at the time of Trig’s birth. Still, there’s an underlying problem that exists and has always existed in politics.

Elections aren’t about the truth. They are about what people perceive as truth.

Indeed. Normally, I don’t like it when the Record devotes scarce op-ed space to non-Williams topics, but, in Will’s case, I’ll make an exception. Read the whole thing.

At the end of our previous discussion over whether or not the town of Wasilla had billed victims for rape kits used to gather evidence, I had (generously?) conceded that the issue was not “nonsense.” Care to revisit the topic?
(more…)

President Bush is speaking on the bailout. Your comments welcome! I am too lazy to watch, but isn’t this bearish for the passage of the plan? (Intrade has the odds at 75%.) It is one thing for Democrats to support a (relatively) non-partisan plan proposed by respected figures like Bernanke and Paulson. But how many Democrats want to vote for something championed by Bush, especially when their Republican opponents are likely to run (effective?) campaign commercials against them if they vote Yes? If, say, Congressman Chris Murphy ‘96 votes for the bailout, you can be sure that his opponent will accuse him (fairly?) of spending taxpayer money to bailout Wall Street fat cats.

Most unhinged anti-Palin rant? I’ll go with Naomi Wolf (ex-wife of an Eph).
(more…)

As I sit here pondering what to write about when it comes to the campaign (How’s this: The Palin bump appears to be relegated to the GOP base now; Both sides are increasingly putting out misleading ads though McCain’s campaign continues to lie about a whole array of factual matters; Obama is back in modest advantage when it comes to the aggregate polling results; This is going to get uglier before it gets prettier. There. Consider my Punditry duties fulfilled.)  for whatever reason I am brought back to my own years at Williams. And I am going to say something that may well arouse controversy: Relative to the rest of my life, when it came to politics, the much-lamented Purple Bubble was real. Oh, sure, I had my share of debates with conservatives and with my liberal friends. I am not claiming that the bubble is hermetically sealed, nor would I refute the intellectual value of the discussion that did occur; mine is a quantitative rather than a qualitative argument. But on the whole, I would argue that politics and policy and engagement with the specifics of politics and foreign policy has been a much more salient aspect of my life during and since Williams. I do not remember the 1992 election representing  a huge, all encompassing topic of conversation my senior year, whereas I do recall the 1994 midterm elections as a much bigger deal when I was a first-year MA student in Charlotte, much less of an intellectual hotbed environment than Williams.

Here is an example of this: I was a double major at Williams. I was a lousy student those days (lazy, too many other largely dumb priorities, probably dumb) but I figured I’d cover up my lousiness by being lousy in two disciplines, history and political science. I liked history much better than Poli-Sci for a host of reasons. (Poli-Sci’s over-reliance on theory and jargon, the affectation that something is better if couched in terms of a model or a math problem, the sometimes soul-deadeningly awful writing. Oh, and the fact that I was a much worse poli sci student than I was a history student, though there are cause and effect issues we can discuss here. And keep in mind that while I am a historian I am also a member of the American Political Science Association and I cross-list courses with my university’s political science department. Consider mine a love-hate relationship with what I certainly see as one of history’s cognate fields or sister disciplines.) But perhaps the main gripe I had is also the one that still strikes me as most absurd: In four years as a political science major at Williams it never helped and sometimes hurt to know what the hell was going on in the world around us. Not once at Williams was I required to subscribe to a newspaper or magazine or politics journal. To a degree this is understandable: There are principles and theories and schools of thought in political science that a student needs to be acquainted with irrespective of the currents of the moment. But that reasoning only goes so far.

So what do others think? Was I merely a hopeless philistine at Williams or do others concur with regard to their own experiences? What about the current environment on campus? Am I going to go back on Homecoming, days before the election, and see a campus festooned with signs and bumper stickers and buttons, howling with debate and argument? (And is part of the issue a presumption of liberalism among the bulk of the student body? Was 1992 so relatively muted on campus because there were relatively few supporters of George H. W. Bush, something I do remember to be true?)

Megan McArdle provides a fine summary for why so many small government federalists (like me) will be voting for Obama because we want to vote against McCain.
(more…)

Since David didn’t want to pollute his negative Obama post with the exact same issue from McCain, as promised I am posting it separately.  I will try to be more balanced than his post, because I don’t appreciate the misleading ads that have come from either side.  Both of these candidate came in claiming to take the high road.  Neither has stayed on that road, although I have a clear opinion as to who has strayed farther from it.  I’m not going to go point by point and argue which individual ad is more misleading than one particular other ad.  They’ve both put out some true slime.  I do think, however, that McCain’s distortions have been more egregious and more frequent.  All politicians try to make themselves sound more important, make their accomplishments a little better, etc.  But there is a difference between a lie about character and twisting your (or your opponent’s) record on an issue.  The mud is flying fast and thick this year.  Watch out.

- McCain energy web ad from June or July:  said Obama was against energy innovation and the electric car which is not true.  McCain was citing Obama’s dismissal of his idea for a monetary award for an electric car.  Problem being that Obama actually didn’t say he was against is - he called it a gimmick that actually didn’t do enough to support energy innovation.  Same ad said he was against “clean and safe nuclear energy” which is exactly opposite to the truth.  Obama has actually taken heat from the left for saying he is open to nuclear energy if it is clean and safe - in those exact words.

- McCain tax ads from August: says Obama will raise taxes on “people” making $42,000 a year while showing a mother with children.  Actually, a single taxpayer (not a family) would see a $15 raise but families would not.  Spanish language version of similar ad says “families making $42,000″ would see taxes raise - flat out false.  Also says he’d raise taxes on the middle class, which is NOT true.  I haven’t met anyone who calls $200,000 for a single person or $250,000 for families the “middle class.”  Now just deception but not a true lie is the claim that Obama would raise taxes on home sales.  Only if you made a profit of more than half a million dollars.  That is just misleading, because so so few people would ever fall into that category….but I admit is technically true.

- Obama lobbyist ad from August/Sept: it lists some of McCain’s top campaign staff and says that so-and-so “lobbies for…” whomever.  They are not currently lobbying for anyone.  Obama could have quite fairly and truly stated that “until very recently, so-and-so lobbied for ____ ” but they didn’t.  I’m not a fan of this ad…I find it misleading, because I’m sure someone could parse it in a way to technically be true.  But unnecessary slime.

- McCain lipstick ad September: this has obviously been hashed and rehashed so I won’t repeat it.  He just didn’t call her a pig and McCain himself has subsequently admitted it.  Finally, it is misleading at the end where it takes a quote from Katie Couric from before Palin was even in the race and tries to make it somehow about Obama’s treatment of Palin.  It was egregious enough that CBS got in a huff about it and asked the campaign to pull it.

- McCain Fannie/Freddie ads from today and from earlier this week: 2 separate claims, both of which are at the least very misleading.  One is that Obama took more money from Fannie and Freddie than anyone else but the chairman of the committee that regulates them.  Okay, again - as McCain’s campaign has claimed against Obama in the oil company ads - no candidate takes money from corporations so that is misleading.  Also, he’s not second on that list, I think he’s fourth (don’t remember what factcheck.org said).  Employees of companies often give money to people that wouldn’t treat their companies well.  Individual people have opinions (employees includes from the cafeteria worker to the middle manager to the CEO - range of opinion much?).  Second egregious claim is that former Fannie head Frank Raines is an advisor on economic issues to the Obama campaign.  Uh, nope.  And the “source” they cite doesn’t say that either.  The source says that Raines claimed to have taken calls from the campaign.  Not quite the same thing…if he did take calls, the ad is misleading.  If he didn’t, it’s a flat out lie.

- Obama’s oil ad from sometime early in the summer: Obama made some kind of claims about McCain being “fueled” by the oil industry or some such turn of phrase.  Actually, the percentage of donations that an be traced to big oil is quite small, no one takes money from corporations, etc.  It was a misleading ad, I can’t say anything to defend it.

- McCain’s “fact check” ad: tries to cite factcheck.org as supporting its claims that Obama made claims about Palin that were false and misleading.  Um, except that they never ever attributed such things to Obama.  The quotes were about emails and rumors.  Also that ad talks about Obama sending a team of people to dig up dirt on Palin, except that the WSJ quote they tried to rely on doesn’t quite say that, and the Obama campaign has asked the WSJ for a retraction.

- McCain’s “Obama doesn’t support the troops” ad: as we all know (but some may have forgotten), while claiming Obama didn’t want to see the troops, he actually uses footage of Obama…visiting the troops.  Uh, right.  And he didn’t cancel the visit because press wouldn’t be allowed - that is a flat out lie.  Press were never invited.  It was a no-win for Obama, and you may not agree with why he decided to cancel that part of the visit, but it was not because of press coverage.

So there is a mini-recap of the slime being tossed around in ads.  Now this is just ads (and not even some winners likes the celebrity ad hogwash), I’m not even going to go into the “she never asked for earmarks,” what percentage of the nation’s energy Alaska provides, or “I’ve been to Iraq” issues.  Let someone else tackle that list.  I’m tired.

And if I’ve missed your favorite slimefest, by all means mention it in the comments - from either candidate.  I am deeply cynical and deeply naive all at the same time.  I know and expect that things turn out this way, but I still keep hoping that one day it won’t be down in the muck.  This year, I think I’m more annoyed by all of it because these two actually gave me more hope.  Oh well, another day another dollar (spent on ads).  The one good thing about all of this crap is that the campaigns are helping to bolster a few particular sectors of the economy with the absurd amount of money they’re spending.

There has been much commentary at EphBlog about McCain’s “dishonestly” and “lies.” What do you expect? He’s a politician! But the general attitude seems to be that Obama, on the other hand, has been honest and truthful in his campaigning. Not if you believe ABC News.
(more…)

Let’s try to keep the level of discourse high and on topic. Clive Crook on the Bush Doctrine flap.
(more…)

Now can we please move on to more important things? Thanks.

Looks like our Eph Pundit discussion series is a success. Yea EphBlog! However, several people have mentioned, both in comments and to me privately, that they wish the tone of the discussion were higher and less ad hominem. (I cast no stones as to who started this and who is most at fault. I, for one, am particular guilty of throwing around words like “stupid” in unhelpful ways.) Let’s fix this.

1) Amnesty is declared for one and all on previous sins. Even if you were rude before, no one will hold that against you if you are polite going forward.

2) Imagine that you were reading your post aloud in a Williams tutorial, perhaps one led by EphBlog board member Professor Joe Cruz. Imagine that the person you are arguing against was in the same tutorial. Would you be willing to say to her face, and with Professor Cruz watching, what you have just written? If so, post away! If not, please revise your post to make the same point more politely.

3) Although we value free speech at Eph Blog, we will be enforcing basic politeness in any Eph Pundit thread. (Other threads maintain our previous almost-anything-goes standards.) If you see a comment that, in your view, does not meet the standards, just add another comment to the same thread saying “Comment 29 does not meet the standards.” I, or another EphBlog administrator, will delete the offending comment and your request. If your comment was deleted, you are free to make the same point again, but more politely. We do not want to censor the content of your speech, but, as an experiment, we will be censoring based on civility, or lack thereof.

4) My plan is to not spend any time or energy judging civility myself. If anyone requests that a comment be deleted, I am just going to delete it every single time. If someone is so unhelpful as to request that every comment, no matter how civil, on topic X or written by person Y, be deleted, we will deal with that then. I have such faith in my fellow EphBlogians, that I doubt this will be a problem.

5) Although I hate to pick just one commentator to praise, I will be trying to make my future comments as polite and substantive as those made by Whitney Wilson ‘90.

6) To get buy-in to this idea, I hope that all our regular commentaters will add a comment to this thread saying something like “Henceforth, my comments on EphBlog will be civil enough that I would be willing to say the same in a Williams classroom.” Or words to that effect.

Who will join with me?

Thanks to Jeff Z for the pointer to Mika Brzezinksi ‘89 interviewing John McCain.

Comments:
(more…)

Since hwc has been so kind as to inform us that his criteria for choosing a president is the “commander in chief” test, it got me thinking about what mine might be.  And I don’t actually know.  There are understandably a variety of “key issues” that people use to focus their opinion about a candidate.  And as far as liberals, I know most will say there isn’t one test, we’re all multi-issue, blah blah blah.  Yes, my little herd of cats, I know.  I’m there with you.  But I’m wondering if we can’t all think about it and see if we can figure out what it might come down to for each of us personally.  Clearly people on this blog differ as to who is more successful in a “commander in chief” test - but focusing on military issues as key to the presidency reflects hwc’s priorities for the country.  On one side or the other, it shows a desire to protect or a desire to prevent another Iraq debacle or to spread the American version of democracy or ….  It goes on and on, and is fascinating.

Soph Mom has been accused of using a sexism test - something she denied.  So what is your test SM?  Personally I think that if that were your test, that’s your choice and good for you.  There are people who vote on children’s issues, women’s rights, foreign policy, education, the economy, criminal justice…you name it, there’s an issue that is someone’s heart.  And people have very good reasons as to why that issue is an accurate test of character in some manner or why that issue is so fundamentally important, it must come first.  It might be a more abstract “judgement test” or “honesty test” even.

I’m going to think on this and comment later, but I invite others to do the same.  Please, can we hold off (at least for a bit) on attacking the wisdom of the criteria or the eventual choice?  I’m interested to see how your minds work.  So if you’re willing to share your test, and if you’re really brave why your choice of candidate passes that test, I’d appreciate it.  It’s pretty clear that we aren’t going to change certain entrenched viewpoints here - on both sides - so focus on the task, eh?

Mickey Kaus offers excellent advice to Obama.

1. Ignore Palin; 2. Get in McCain’s head the way McCain’s getting in Obama’s; and 3. Refocus on the economy in an accessible way.

And much more good stuff. Saying “Palin” does nothing but hurt Obama. Why does he keep doing it?

Lehman Hall on the Williams campus is named after Herbert H. Lehman ‘99, the son of Meyer Lehman, who, along with his brothers Emmanuel and Henry, founded Lehman Brothers. The building bearing the Lehman name was completed in 1928, at the very height of a prolonged stock market boom. The Lehman Community Service Council is also, I think, named after Herb Lehman - along with a college, a couple of high schools, numerous buildings at other colleges, and a library and professorship at Columbia. Herbert Lehman ‘99 was one of those people that get many things named after them.

He worked at Lehman Brothers after graduating from Williams, but spent most of his adult life in public service. He was part of the General Staff Corps in Washington during World War I; after the end of the war, he worked for Al Smith’s gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, and served as Lt. Governor to FDR. After Roosevelt’s election to the Presidency in 1933, he became the Governor of New York, and was a very popular chief executive, with a reputation for nonpartisanship.

As Governor, Herbert Lehman was heavily involved in trying to mitigate the banking crisis of the 1930’s, shutting New York’s banks to try to avert a panic in March 1933. In an eerie premonition of this weekend’s meetings, he also tried, unsuccessfully, to organize a Wall Street rescue of the Bank of the United States in 1930; the failure to reach an agreement caused the largest bank failure in US history up to that point, one of the first large commercial bank failures of the Depression; depositors were not made whole, and the ensuing fear and hysteria led to thousands of other banks collapsing over the next few years (cf: Ron Chernow’s The House of Morgan, pp. 320-360).

During World War II, Herbert Lehman resigned his governorship to head the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), an agency set up to assist citizens of nations that had been occupied by the Axis powers. He became a Senator from New York in 1949; in the Senate, he was a vocal critic of McCarthyism, voting for McCarthy’s censure, and was a strong supporter of Truman’s liberalism.

Towards the end of his life, he continued to work as an activist and reformer within New York’s Democratic party, alongside Eleanor Roosevelt. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, but died the day before the award ceremony, which took place on December 6 - just two weeks after JFK’s assassination. This was the citation that was read for Herbert Lehman in absentia by President Johnson: “Citizen and statesman, he has used wisdom and compassion as the tools of government and has made politics the highest form of public service.”

No one can hope for a better epitaph.

This weekend, the firm that Herbert’s father and uncles founded went out of business. American finance is being shaken to its core, and fear and foreboding have Wall Street in their grip. Lehman Brothers started as a dry-goods store in Montgomery, Alabama, and rose to become a storied investment bank. In partnership with Goldman, Sachs and Kuhn, Loeb (which it absorbed in the 1970s), it helped to finance many nascent industries over its 158-year history. The three Jewish banks did banking work for unglamorous and risky companies in retail, oil, and broadcasting; they promoted up-and-coming stocks, like Macy’s and RCA, that the Anglo half of Wall Street (the Morgans in particular) would not touch. They were risk-takers in the very best sense of the term. On 9/11/2001, Lehman Brothers survived a direct hit to its headquarters at the World Trade Center. Exactly seven years later, it was destroyed by the natural processes of the market and by its own derivatives and leverage. There is a crude analogy to be drawn here, but I won’t go there.

It is a near certainty now that Lehman’s 26,000 employees (including a significant number of Ephs) will lose their jobs. The impact on the financial system will be extremely serious (though you wouldn’t know it from watching the evening news, which has spent more time covering political nonsense). Many employees will lose both their jobs and their savings, because they were compensated in stock. This is the toughest, most challenging situation the financial system has seen in a very long time - if we are to believe Alan Greenspan, it is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

We’ll reckon the wider economic fallout from this in due time; now, however, I’d just like to wish good luck to all Lehman employees, and goodbye to the Lehman name. One might be tempted to say, sic transit gloria mundi, were it not for the buildings and schools named after Herbert. Those will continue to stand, at least for the time being.

UPDATE: I am answering in bold my own questions below, Thanks to links/comments from JG, Rory and other readers.

When someone as smart as Ken Thomas ‘93 gets tricked by this rape kits nonsense, it is time to devote a thread to the topic.

A more important question to me would be: did any soul choose not to have a test, or not even to call or show up to the hospital, because of Wasilla’s exceptional policy?

Ms. Palin chose to use State power to disempower women, based on her religious beliefs. Period. And tip of the iceberg.

Please. I have not had time to investigate this properly, but this gibberish — that Sarah Palin originated a policy to charge rape victims for the forensic kits used to gather evidence — seems, on its face, totally implausible. Why on earth would she do this? Conservatives like to arrest/prosecute/jail rapists. They are, if nothing else, law-and-order folks. Why would Palin, or any conservative, do this?

So, consider this a thread where the anti-Palin’s among the Ephs might substantiate, with quotes and links, this charge. My questions:
(more…)

Courtesy of John Cole over at Balloon Juice:

Since I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the vast majority of this country is dumber than a sack of hammers, perhaps this will be on the level the public can understand:

Probably not, because, as we all know, Bill Clinton got a blowjob.

Amazing how other blogs can so easily point out the ridiculousness of some arguments.  While he can be a bit of a snob at times, John does make sure you can’t miss what he’s saying.

Arianna Huffington spoke at Williams. She said one stupid thing.

Political pundit Arianna Huffington thinks the Democrats need more fire in their bellies.

The founder of The Huffington Post said on Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama needs to get angry — not with the distractions of his competitors but over the state of the union.

“Every transformational leader has to show his cosmic rage to change the world,” said Huffington, speaking to journalists in a classroom at Williams College. “It can’t just come from his head, it has to come from his gut.”

Rage is the last thing Obama needs right now. Rage does not get you elected President. Huffington also made a smart comment.

But Huffington said the soap opera that’s become the Republican ticket is threatening to derail any talk of issues.

Calling Palin the “Trojan Moose,” she described the governor as a “major distraction.”

“If McCain makes this about Palin, they win,” said Huffington. “Even if the Democrats prove all the little lies, even if they prove all that they still lose, because the election becomes all about Palin’s small lies and not about the big truth.”

The big truth, according to Huffington, is the failed policies of President Bush and the nation’s future.

“She’s a compelling figure. She’s a smart, accomplished woman,” Huffington said of Palin. “There’s something fearless about her. I wrote a book about fearlessness and there’s something about that that’s very, very appealing.”

Indeed. Obama and his supporters should mention the “failed economic policies of Bush/McCain” a thousand times for every once that the name “Palin” crosses their lips.