Money Voting

It's odd that there seems to be so much emphasis on the voting process and so little on campaign finance in America. They are both integral parts of how we elect people.

For me it is the slam-dunk factor in the upcoming election. I would have voted for John McCain in any event, for many reasons discussed below, but what puts it way over the top is how Barack Obama has trashed the campaign finance reform movement, by breaking a well-documented pledge to use public financing and, as a consenquence, by outspending McCain by, what, 200 percent?

How sad, and how short-sighted. The right wing in this country never liked campaign finance reform much anyway. After Senator Obama's sucker punch they never will. And do the Democrats think they can beat the Republicans on fundraising? This one time. Next time, and the time after that, and the time after that, campaigns will be all about money and not much else.

You do not see much about this in the media. Could it be because most of those dollars go to media buys? D'ya think?

Written Early Enough to Look Ridiculous Later

The next paragraphs are taken from an email to a couple of great old friends. I post them knowing full well that this kind of topical stuff usually looks ridiculous in hindsight. But that's one of the reasons for the post - indeed, for the whole project - maybe it can help with the twin problems of humility and short-sightedness.

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I am going to vote for John McCain enthusiastically. Mrs. Palin knows who she is and has a firm grasp of fundamental values - reminding me, at this point in the candidacy, of Harry Truman when he ran with FDR in 1944. For them to win at this point, however, would take a miracle.

The miracles have been running in the opposite direction, especially the fact that this final liquidation stage of the 90-year Kondratieff wave is breaking between nomination and election. No Republican could survive that, absent a miracle.

Obama has done one thing - run a brilliant, ruthless campaign. Look at the choices he has made with impunity - breaking his pledge on public financing, going 180 degrees on gun ownership, refusing to reveal any records of his history while at Occidental, Columbia, and very little about Harvard, among many examples. I can predict with some confidence that the information he has concealed would have made a difference in the election.

I am reminded of the revelations that Kennedy had Addison's disease, or that Sorenson and others wrote Profiles in Courage, for which Kennedy received a Pulitzer prize. I am still very curious about the connection between William Ayers and Dreams From My Father.

Running and winning a brilliant, ruthless campaign for President ain't chopped liver. I don't think it outweighs McCain's achievements and record, but oddly I am left where I began. I am going to vote for JMcC, and hope he wins, but I am not terrified of the probability that Obama will win. Pretty much for the reason that the pendulum always swings, and usually in proportion to the previous swing.

The only thing that worries me, a little, is the idea that we are in Russia and about to elect Kerensky - that we are about to get into a period of extreme instability and that Obama will not be able to stand up to truly radical voices that will emerge. I would much rather we had John McCain at that point. But I think it's a long shot.

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The Long March Through the Institutions

For years I have toyed with a plot for a novel, I guess, that would be along the following lines: three or four radicals in the early '70's, realizing that they were not going to accomplish radical change through Weather-style activity, sat down and made a pact. They would go back to the educational worlds they came from, and work their way up through institutions. (This long march through the institutions idea did not originate at all with me - I heard a lot about it at the time.)

Fade to the early 21st century. One of them, say, is a university president; one a CIA manager; one an appellate-level judge, and one has made his way through politics, and now is up and running for Vice President.

OK that's the gist...

I never worked out whether the next step would be a collaboration sparked by post-hypnotic suggestion - or maybe led by one of them, a real Svengali, the judge? - or just based on their adherence to their original pact. And would it be interesting to explore the possibility that some would have second thoughts, based on the decades they had led straight lives?

All this came back to me recently, with the emergence of William Ayers, a very famous Weather Underground fugitive, in the presidential campaign. A plot twist I hadn't imagined: the Svengali would recruit a brilliant, but desperately-seeking-father-figure young politician, and achieve his agenda through a national political campaign that is almost a coup d'etat.

Ahhh.... time for a cocktail. This election is getting to me.

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Golden Choice (2)

Back in July I wrote that maybe, with these two much-better-than-average candidates, we could look forward to an intelligent policy debate.

Wrong.

All the ad hominem crap, all the over-simplification, all the sloganeering that afflict this system are back, just as ever.

There is only one glimmer of light in this democratic darkness - I do not think it is pulled by the media, mainstream or other from the candidates. I think it originates, as much as anything, from the candidates themselves. Why is this a glimmer of light? Because the problem seems less systematic and more a function of bad conventional wisdom about the ways campaigns are conducted. Better behavior could be learned. Next time.

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