Abu Hatem أبو حاتم

Jeffery Hart makes a Burkean conservative case for Barack Obama in the Daily Beast.  Hart is a professor of English at Dartmouth and was a speechwriter for Nixon and Reagan.  He is antiwar, although he also favors abortion.  I still consider him a traditional Burkean conservative.  After supporting Bush in 2000, Hart makes the conservative case for Barack in today’s Daily Beast.

I see many of his points, and I would agree with the Burkean case for Barack when it comes to a lesser of two evils.  In fact, I have been actively campaigning for Barack as the lesser of two evils.  I have worked on the local Barack Obama campaign a few times in the past few weeks, making phone calls and canvassing.  Yet that doesn’t mean I will vote for Barack personally, like Hart, Buckley, Demeic and other conservatives.  I will most likely vote for Ralph Nader, although I am mulling a libertarian vote for Bob Barr - but I don’t like how he dissed Ron Paul.  Western Confucian, Northern Agragian, and many writers at the American Conservative and Taki’s Magazine have gone with Nader.

Hart writes:

 There are common sense conservatives who are prudential, who try to match means with ends, and who calculate the probabilities of gains and risks. But there are philosophical (analytical) conservatives, the most useful being Edmund Burke, whose “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790) understood the great dangers in trying to change society through abstract (republican) theory. My first book that dealt with these matters was “English Political writers: From Locke to Burke” (Knopf, 1963).

Republican President George W. Bush has not been a conservative at all, either in domestic policy or in foreign policy. He invaded Iraq on the basis of abstract theory, the very thing Burke warned against. Bush aimed to turn Iraq into a democracy, “a beacon of liberty in the Middle East,” as he explained in a radio address in April 2006.

I do not recall any “conservative” publication mentioning those now memorable words “Sunni,” “Shia,” or “Kurds.” Burke would have been appalled at the blindness to history and to social facts that characterized the writing of those so-called conservatives.

Obama did understand. In his now famous 2002 speech, while he was still a state senator in Illinois, he said: “I know that a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, of undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without international support will fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda. I’m not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

Burke would have agreed entirely, and admired the cogency of so few words. And one thing I know is that both Nixon and Reagan would have agreed. Both were prudential and successful conservatives. But all the organs of the conservative movement followed Bush over the cliff—as did John McCain.

Obama was the true conservative, the Burkean. Like the French radicals of 1790, Bush wanted to democratize Iraq, turn it, as he said in a speech at Whitehall, into a “beacon of liberty in the Middle East.” Now, Robespierre and the other radicals were criticized by Burke for wanting to turn France into a republic. Not a bad idea, but they tried to do it all at once, and according to republican theory.

Maxmillien Robespierre himself would have been horrified by the notion of democratizing Mesopotamia. That may—possibly—happen. But it will take a long time, an Enlightenment, and the muting of sectarian hatreds.

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Being that election will be over very soon (what a very depressing thought, I will be listless and melancholy for the rest of the year!) I thought I would include one last election projection post.

McCain’s campaign for the last two weeks has finally become smart.  McCain’s dumbest decision was basically conceding Michigan and Minnesota.  Those were places he was on the offense, and it opened up ranks for Obama to go into McCain strong holds.  Yet Obama is being a little cocky going into Arizona and places he can’t win.

McCain has basically no hopes of winning any Kerry states except for Pennsylvania.  He has basically conceded the Bush West to Obama.  Colorado is looking harder and harder, as is New Mexico, with only a Nevada victory possible.  Moreoever, Virginia looks more and more likely to be the one major Obama pickup from the Bush states.

McCain’s campaign for the last two weeks has been smart, for the first time.  He has moved to a traditional conservative position on taxes.  Joe the Plumber was a good rallying cry, and so was the ads on Joe Biden’s gaffe.  The Republican National Committee sponsored some ads against Jeremiah Wright.  The whole Khalidi scare and the Bill Ayers stuff has also gone full gear.  Yet its not enough it seems.  While Zogby had McCain up for a single day of polling on Friday, he was back down by 10 on Saturday.  Hillary tried a kitchen sink strategy and it didn’t work, and it seems like McCain’s won’t work either.  His withdrawals from Michigan and Minnesota seem to have hurt him badly.  Also his decision to take public financing destroyed any hopes of a monetary advantage.

It is still winnable for McCain though.  Most national polls has him down about by 4-5.  Thats outside the margin of error but there are many undecideds.  Moreover, Pennsylvania is now within 4, as is Virginia.  Virginia is the home of the “Wilder effect,” and so many white rural working class voters may turn on Obama.  It is very possible that Obama doesn’t win this one, even though the polls have him up.  Pennsylvania was very hard for even Bush to close the gap in.  Bush lost it twice, but by razor thin margins.  Still in a democratic year, winning Pennsylvania seems very hard.  The racist vote against Obama though may turn the tables against him.

As for the other swing states where Obama is close - Missouri, Florida and Ohio are possible pickups, yet they have an inherent tendency towards republicans.  I wouldn’t be surprised if in the end they all went with McCain, though its possible they won’t.  Indiana and North Carolina would be very very hard to pick up.  Even though Obama is only down by one or two in these states, most competitive elections there are lost by one or two points.  It would be very hard for Obama to pick them up.

Here is a scenario when McCain wins the presidency with a razor thin margin of 272 electoral votes through picking up Pennsylvania.  You see, when he picks up Pennsylvania, McCain doesn’t even need Colorado, or Virginia.

Or for instance, here is a scenario where he wins Virginia while losing Pennsylvania.  In this scenario, McCain can also eek out at least a tie, if he wins New Hampshire:

But its an uphill route for McCain.  I think Pennsylvania and Virginia hold the most luck for him.

I think in the end we are heading towards an Obama victory, but a razor thin one.  I don’t really think there is going to be a landslide of 1996, 1988, or 1980 proportions.  I think what we’ll see is Obama winning by 270-280 electoral votes, at most 290.  I don’t think he’ll cross 300.  He may lose Virginia and Pennsylvania (I doubt that one) but a Colorado and New Mexico victory, along with perhaps Nevada, can cross him over the finish line.

Obama needs to barely win because if he gets a huge victory he will interpret it as a mandate.  Moreover, his extremely hubristic ego needs some taming.

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My good blogger friend, Western Confucian, a traditionalist conservative Catholic living in Korea, tells us the silver lining in the clouds of an Obama victory.  Many of you all may wonder how I can completely diss Obama and McCain post after post yet still not be completely ennui about an Obama victory.  The answer is theological, something which I don’t usually mention on this blog, but I will now since it corresponds to Western Confucian’s post on the cardinal virtue of hope.  As a Muslim I believe the creation is a manifestation of reflections of God’s attributes, and that there does not exist anything in creation which does not somehow contain God’s beauty.  God’s beauty surrounds us.  When you realize this you are happy with all possibilities.  Or as the praised one Muhammad taught that strange is the affair of a believer - all of his affairs are good., if he finds evil he is patient and it is good for him, and if he finds good he praises God and it is good for him.  The point is - always be optimistic because you can find hope in everything.  Confucius himself said “Beauty surrounds us.”  Its axiomatic truth.

I don’t like to delve into my personal theology on this blog because it is intended to be for a general audience interested in American politics not a religious lesson.  I don’t even link to articles about the “Arab American” or “Muslim American” vote because I would rather be broad and general in my approach and discuss my political beliefs.  There is no religious test for constitutional office.  Indeed, the Muslim in the Congress, Keith Ellison, supports socialized medicine and an interventionist foreign policy - voting for a resolution condemning the UN for condemning Israel’s response in the 2006 Lebanon war.  Do you know who voted against that resolution - two guys - in the entire congress: Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.  I’d for for those two and I wouldn’t vote for Ellison.  And Tuesday, on election day, I will be voting for a self-proclaimed agnostic libertarian for senate because of his beliefs in free markets and noninterventionism in foreign affairs.

Western Confucian on Obama:

Even those of us who cannot stomach the idea of his opponent as president are starting to get a sinking feeling about Barack Hussein Obama’s victory next week. Hope, however, is the second of the Theological Virtues, and there are a glimmers of it:

His middle name should serve as a reminder that America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

His promise to shift our imperial forces to Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, may just bring about a restoration of the Old Republic. Of course, the painfree way would have been to have listened to Dr. Ron Paul.

Ignorant foreigners (and fellow citizens, to be fair) will finally have to shut up about America, the least racist country in the world.

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Voting is a very important matter, not to be taken lightly.  Voting is a means of helping a candidate win an election, and be given the power to govern the United States of America and its relations with the world.  It is no light matter.

Thus mantras to “get out the vote” heard echoed repeatedly on television programs, schools, universities, and elsewhere are nothing more than vacuous cliches.

Contrary to popular belief, voting too much is bad for democracy.  While elections are a means of keeping politicians accountable and stunting tyranny in its tracks, populations characterized by high percentages of voting are usually very politicized, ideological, and discordant.

This was observed by the great British parliamentarian Edmund Burke many years ago.  He wrote that overly political societies were sick societies characterized by division and ideological sectarianism wherein the polity places its faith in government to solve all of its problems.

Case-in-point: France and Germany have a very high voter turnout - 84% and 77% respectively.  France is one of the most conflictual political cultures on the planet.  France’s political parties are extremely antagonostic to centrism in their ideologies and are much more ideological than American political parties, as in Germany.  The difference between the democrats and the republicans, which have a much broader base as political parties, and the French Socialists and the UMP or the German CDU and SPD.

High voting rates reflect dissatisfaction with the direction of the country and an uncontented populace.  If things are merry, people don’t go out to vote, because they don’t care.  If they don’t care, then however bad the government is doing is irrelevent because it clearly does not directly affect people to any significant degree.

Moreover, the founders of America did not want us to be a “democracy” by any means.  The word “democracy” does not even exist in the constitution.  The founders wanted us to be a republic.  Who wants the tyranny of the majority?  I know I certainly do not.  And hence we have mechanisms such as the ingenious electoral college which gaurd us from pure popular democracy.

People say that immigrants and others left their tyrannical countries because of American democracy.  This is not exactly true.  People came here for liberty - whether economic (free market) or personal (civil liberties).  Liberty is antithetical to tyranny, whether the tyranny by the majority or tyranny by a single monarch.  Free markets are more important than democracy, and as the great French political philosopher Frederic Bastiat tells us - the major problem with democracy is that it undermines and encroaches upon the free market and natural God-given property rights.  To quote Basitat - “The state is the great fiction where everyone endeavors to live on behalf of everybody else.”  Bastiat, for this reason, argued against women and children voting in France - not because he was against women or children per se - but because he realized that voting can actually be harmful to the ideals of liberty, voting can be tyrannical.

The purely comedic aspect of the “get out the vote” nonsense is the claim that your vote matters.  If you live in a safe red state or safe blue state, your vote doesn’t matter.  Trust me.  Especially if the campaigns spend no money in that state.  The amount of campaigns that have flipped a pure red or blue state without campaigning in the age of modern campaigns is 0.  Yes, 0%.  If you live in a swing state, your vote may matter, but as Francois Jacob reminds us in his work The Logic of Life - voting is still illogical in this case because the mathematical probability that your vote will actually matter in an election is extremely high.  Jacob, an economist and logician, writes that logical human beings would actually lose out by voting instead of doing something more productive - like safisfying yourself to a nice lunch.

Those who say that not voting forfeits one’s right to complain haven’t read the first amendment.  Hey bozos, not voting is a right - a civil liberty and freedom - and so is the right to complain regardless.  No amount of pro-voting propaganda can abridge my freedom of speech.

And finally, the main reason you should not vote is that your vote gives legitimacy to the corrupt politicians of our two political parties.  By voting for either one, you are giving their policies legitimacy.  As we know, many past presidents have made some very immoral policy moves - whether infringing on the right-to-life through war or legalized abortion - or theft and the gospel of envy through economic statism.

Joel Stein makes the case much more humorously, cogently and succinctly in last week’s LA Times:

Don’t vote. People will try to guilt you into it, but stay strong and resist… A high voter turnout doesn’t make our democracy work better. Canada typically has a turnout of more than 75%, and it has yet to pick a leader anyone’s heard of. If voting truly helped other people, you’d get an orange drink and cookies along with that “I voted” sticker…
Organizations that try to increase voter turnout — Rock the Vote, HeadCount, the New Voters Project, the League of Women Voters and the Dorky Self-Important Guy Whose Office Is Near Yours — will try to guilt you into casting a ballot. Most will use the scare technique of telling you that if you don’t vote, you will forfeit your right to complain, which, if there had just been some Jews at the Constitutional Convention, would have been ensured by an 11th Amendment. But I’m pretty sure that not voting is the safest way to assure your right to complain. Because if you do vote, the odds are slightly better than even that you’re going to vote for the winner, which will ruin your ability to gripe about him. If I were John McCain, I’d put all my money behind ads that say “Vote for me so you can complain for the next four years.”

I will be voting in this election.  Maybe for a third party, maybe even not voting for president.  But don’t feel pressued into thinking that by not voting you are doing anything wrong or are unpatriotic.  Depending on the election, not voting can be a good thing.  And very high levels of voting are nothing to be proud of.  In fact, those who vote blindly for horrible candidates are the ones who should be consulting their consciences.

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Judge Andrew Napolitano rips both Barack Obama and John McCain in this morning’s Wall Street Journal.  A strict constitutionalist, and a free marketeer, he rips into both for supporting the bailout like a judge reading a guilty verdict:

Mr. Obama is hardly alone in his expansive view of legitimate government. During the past month, Sen. John McCain (who, like Sen. Obama, voted in favor of the $700 billion bank bailout) has been advocating that $300 billion be spent to pay the monthly mortgage payments of those in danger of foreclosure. The federal government is legally powerless to do that, as well…

There is no power in the Constitution for the federal government to enter the marketplace since, when it does, it will favor itself over its competition. The Contracts Clause (the states cannot interfere with private contracts, like mortgages), the Takings Clause (no government can take away property, like real estate or shares of stock, without paying a fair market value for it and putting it to a public use), and the Due Process Clause (no government can take away a right or obligation, like collecting or paying a debt, or enforcing a contract, without a fair trial) together mandate a free market, regulated only to keep it fair and competitive.

It is clear that the Framers wrote a Constitution as a result of which contracts would be enforced, risk would be real, choices would be free and have consequences, and private property would be sacrosanct.

The $700 billion bailout of large banks that Congress recently enacted runs afoul of virtually all these constitutional principles. It directly benefits a few, not everyone. We already know that the favored banks that received cash from taxpayers have used it to retire their own debt. It is private welfare. It violates the principle of equal protection: Why help Bank of America and not Lehman Brothers? It permits federal ownership of assets or debt that puts the government at odds with others in the free market. It permits the government to tilt the playing field to favor its patrons (like J.P. Morgan Chase, in which it has invested taxpayer dollars) and to disfavor those who compete with its patrons (like the perfectly lawful hedge funds which will not have the taxpayers relieve their debts).

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I may cause a stir on this point, but I thought I would put my two cents in after Obama wrote that the constitution was “fundamentally flawed” because it did not include income redistribution.  Of course, that is rubbish.  But anyway, there are a few things I think we did get wrong in our legal system and our constitution that I would go back and change.
Civil law makes much more sense for conservatives and libertarians to support than common law.  If you really think about it, civil law is much less court-based.  Common law, in every country it has been tried, has been rife with judicial activism and policymaking from the bench.  Jefferson didn’t even like the concept of judicial review itself, what would he think of today’s judicial activism?  Conservatives on the Court like Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito still use the court for judicial activism.  This is what libertarian constitutional law professor Cass Sunstein writes of frequently, and other advocates of judicial minimalism.  Rather than being “income redistribution” as Obama said - the fundamental flaw of the framers in writing the constitution was that they should have more clearly and explicitly defined the role of the Court and adopted a civil law system.  It is not very conservative to throw the baby out with the bathwater and change, but in this case I do think it was necessary to gradually adopt a foreign law system.  The other major problem with the constitution, is that the 14th Amendment should have been more explicitly written such that the Bill of Rights was incorporated to the states.  I know some will chide me saying that this gives more power to the federal government - but it doesn’t.  These rights are natural inalienable rights, and for some states to even have the possibility to ignore them is a major problem.  Of course the states should also be the fundamental enforcers of such rights.  It is a moot point anyway since (1) most of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated, and (2) every state Bill of Rights protects the natural inalienable rights codified in the federal constitution.

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As an antiwar foreign policy voter at heart, at first I thought John McCain was worse than Obama.  Even though Obama’s advisers have talked up bombing Iran, or that Obama wants Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, or that Obama wants to expand the Afghanistan war, I thought that the man was simply much better than bellicose McCain.  Especially in regards to ending the Iraq war and diplomacy as a new approach, Obama remains to be much better.

But the past month has had me more and more disgusted with Obama.  First came his utterly disgusting rhetoric during the third debate with McCain wherein he affirmed a radically pro-abortion message that extended to even partial birth abortions.  Then came Joe the Plumber and Obama’s extreme Welfare Statism.  Then came the fact that the democrats are going to perhaps get a fillibuster-proof majority and hence be able to reverse the Reagan revolution.  Then came the fact that Obama wants to completely shift American the left - par a European socialist model such as Gordon Brown - as a reponse to this financial crisis.

But then came yesterday and Obama’s extremely radical views on the constitution.  Obama wants the constitution not to be a document protecting “negative liberties,” but instead a radical redistributionist document.

Obama is heading us into European socialism, no not Marxist-Lenninism, but instead the more tame European social democracy models of Labour in the UK, the SPD in Germany, or the Socialist Party of France.  An Obama presidency is a disasterous turn to the left.

Thus, I cannot say for sure that Obama will be better than McCain.  I can only say that in general - both will be equally bad.  The American Conservative had some good articles today encouraging people just to NOT VOTE.  I don’t know if I will take that advice personally, but the sheer sadness and depression both Obama and McCain induce on lovers of peace, order, and liberty is too much to bear.  Maybe the only solution is the hopless non-vote in federal elections.

Pat Buchanan today describes the disasters of an Obama administration one by one:

1. Swift amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and a drive to make them citizens and register them, as in the Bill Clinton years. This will mean that Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona will soon move out of reach for GOP presidential candidates, as has California.
2. Border security will go on the backburner, and America will have a virtual open border with a Mexico of 110 million.
3. Taxes will be raised on the top 5 percent of wage-earners, who now carry 60 percent of the U.S. income tax burden, and tens of millions of checks will be sent out to the 40 percent of wage-earners who pay no federal income tax. Like the man said, redistribute the wealth, spread it around.
4. Social Security taxes will be raised on the most successful among us, and capital gains taxes will be raised from 15 percent to 20 percent. The Bush tax cuts will be repealed, and death taxes reimposed.
5. Two or three more liberal activists of the Ruth Bader Ginsberg-John Paul Stevens stripe will be named to the Supreme Court. U.S. district and appellate courts will be stacked with “progressives.”
6. Special protections for homosexuals will be written into all civil rights laws, and gays and lesbians in the military will be invited to come out of the closet. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” will be dead.
7. The homosexual marriages that state judges have forced California, Massachusetts and Connecticut to recognize, an Obama Congress or Obama court will require all 50 states to recognize.
8. A “Freedom of Choice Act” nullifying all state restrictions on abortions will be enacted. America will become the most pro-abortion nation on earth.
9. Affirmative action — hiring and promotions based on race, sex and sexual orientation until specified quotas are reached — will be rigorously enforced throughout the U.S. government and private sector.
10. Universal health insurance will be enacted, covering legal and illegal immigrants, providing another powerful magnet for the world to come to America, if necessary by breaching her borders.
11. A federal bailout of states and municipalities to keep state and local governments spending up could come in December or early next year.
12. The first trillion-dollar deficit will be run in the first year of an Obama presidency. It will be the first of many.

Welcome to Obamaland!

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I still think Sarah Palin had the potential to be the heroine of the American right.  McCain’s handlers schooled her in neoconservative interventionist foreign policy and made her out into a far-right attack dog.  She also obviously, as an Alaskan governor, had no experience in foreign policy, and her interview with Katie Couric brought about her downfall.But you know what, there is still much good in Sarah Palin.  Palin is a staunch social conservative but at the same time very libertarian.  In Alaska she fought against an ordinance which closed bars, even though the church she attended banned drinking.  She cut taxes, and she really was a reformer.  Who has the guts to run against the incumbent governor of their own party?  Her husband isn’t even a republican anyway.

I think the way they rolled Sarah Palin out was ridiculous.  She had no clue she was being picked until a day before, and had a week “crash course” in American national politics.  She obviously was not ready for this job, there is no question.  The McCain campaign banned her from talking to the media and basically destroyed any potential she had in her.  She was actually a pretty centrist governor in Alaska in many ways, and had a 80% approval rating.  The left painted her out to be from the radical right, and if Palin was allowed to talk to the media more and reach out to the center she would have been a more Obama-like “post-partisan” figure.  But there is just no question that now was not her time.  Maybe if she had known about running for a few months earlier.  Maybe if she had been governor longer.  There is no question she had national aspirations, but it was rolled out in the worst sort of way.  She also had to run with the worst republican in the Senate - Senator John McCain - the liberal big-spending tax-hiking bellicose warmonger.  That was certainly not a plus.

After this election, I hope Sarah Palin remains on the scene, because despite her role now as the chief McCain surrogate, when she gets to speak her mind she will be far more effective.  I hope she doesn’t turn out to be another Dan Quayle.  I would certainly not vote for Sarah Palin if she was on the ballot today due to her Lieberman-McCain foreign policy, but I would vote for the Sarah Palin of a few months ago for statewide office Most people hate Sarah Palin not because of her conservative views, or even her obvious ignorance on the Katie Couric interview, but because of their urbanite elitism.  I have lived my life in predominately rural areas, and even in my visits to the Middle East I visit predominately rural areas.

I have always been astounded at what Ibn Khaldun calls the strong differential between rural and urban life.There is an urbanite elitism in the United States, and almost every country, wherein the people of the cities see residents of rural areas as backwards, old fashioned, reactionaries.  Even though urbanites, if you ask me, live in the fast-paced nihilism of the tensions of existence (shout out to Blaise Pascal).In his great novel, Maria Chapdelaine, French writer Louis Hemon illustrates traditional French Canadian society in Quebec as compared to his homeland of France.  Hemon realizes that although traditional societies are superstitious, they also cling to religion, culture, family, community, and neighborly virtue.  Hemon, through the novel, bewails how far his homeland of France has fallen from the classical French ideal, and how the French Revolution and urbanization had basically destroyed all cultural roots of modern France.

Urbanites with their fad fashions, materialism, and fast-paced life style, miss out on a lot.  Just because one lives in a big city, or one has a lot of money, does not mean one is better than another.  Hence the chief vice of urbanite life is arrogance.  You find this in any city, whether Washington D.C. and New York or Damascus.  City dwellers look at the rural traditionalists as backwards.  And in many ways, rural traditionalists are more superstitious and ignorant than urbanites.  Yet beneath those prejudicial glances, traditional societies have so much that the postmodern “city mentality” is lacking.Of course, there is nothing wrong with cities or city dwellers.  But this is the main reason behind the vitriolic aversion to Sarah Palin.  Most people are not against Sarah Palin because of her disgusting foreign policy views, like me.  They hate her because she is like the average joe.  People get mad at Americans for wanting their presidents to be in touch with the heartland.  But if you think about it, what good is an elitist arrogant snob?

Sarah Palin reminds me of average people I run into every single day.  Average Joe’s all around the country - any country - which I have seen time and time again.  Average Joe’s whether in the United States or Syria may be slightly xenophobic and nativist.  They may be slightly arrogant, and they may often fall into the vices of racial discrimination.  I know this in both countries.  Yet average Joe’s have just as many flaws as city dwelling elitists who may not be nativist, xenophobic, or racist but who are often elitist, arrogant, greedy, and militantly prejudicial to ruralites.

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I keep remembering Lord Acton’s dictum - power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Ibn Khaldun said something similar, also.  Anyhow, when one party controls all the branches, especially in times of crisis, it finds the power to do what it wants (see the Bush, Johnson, and Roosevelt administration).  John Kerry already wants a “New Deal II.”  These are disgusting times for freedom, and people should truly be fearful.  Most Americans would rather have a divided government than control by one party, at least according to the most recent polls.

This study on the growth of government spending caught my eye at the Cato-at-Liberty blog today:

 Slivinski calculates that when one party controls the political branches, the growth of real per capita government spending is 3.4%. Under divided government, the rate is 1.5%. And it doesn’t much matter whether Democrats or Republicans are in sole charge: 3.3% government growth under Democrats vs. 3.6% under Republicans. The most libertarian combination seems to be a Democratic president with a Republican Congress, where the average rate of government growth is 0.4%.  (This is also the rarest alignment in modern times, so it may be less significant statistically.)

Lets hope that whatever happens the democrats don’t achieve a fillibuster proof majority.

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McCain is going to lose badly in 11 days.  But right now he has improved a lot strategy wise.  You just can’t fix a campaign which was schizophrenic from the start with no common theme.  Remember how from February to June, McCain was pandering to the right, by August he was attacking Obama as a celebrity and on national security, then three weeks later he picks someone with no national security experience as VP.  Sarah Palin is not who brought down McCain, although after she talked to Katie Couric she did shoot herself in the foot to never recover.  McCain just never had a cogent, consistent, campaign message.

Either you are a maverick, or a staunch conservative.  Not both.  McCain also went negative way too late.  If you want to swift-boat someone then you start in August.  Bush in ‘04 began in August, and so did Bush in ‘88 with the Willie Horton ad.  McCain was injured from the start.  He was a liberal left-wing republican who couldn’t get the base (which got Bush winning in ‘04), and he was connected to an unpopular administration.

If he could of start over, he should have begun the general by attacking president Bush repeatedly, offering a different vision.  Like David Gergen said on CNN last night, he should have ran like Sarkozy did in France while Chirac was unpopular.  But you know what, McCain was just a horrible candidate.  If the right would have picked anyone else as their candidate, he would already have the right and be able to reach out to the independents.

To win, McCain right now has to keep up a really negative attack ad strategy like he is doing.  He has to keep up the Joe the Plumber economic conservatism, but also bring back the discussion to foreign policy so he can taut his bellicose militancy to small town Americans.  Right now his campaign is moving more in line with a common message and theme, but its still schizophrenic, and there is no time left.  He is doing a good job by moving into Pennsylvania and moving out of Colorado.  McCain if he can take PA from Obama and win Ohio still has a fighting chance (but he would still have to win North Carolina, Florida, Missouri, and other swing states).

In the end this campaign is dead, and has been dead from the start.  This is just not the year for the GOP.  No amount of Karl Rove tactics was going to have McCain win because, to put it bluntly, nobody can get excited about McCain.  The left hates McCain because of his foreign policy, the right hates McCain because he has always been a social and economic liberal.  McCain is basically a Joe Lieberman democrat, but more centrist on social and economic issues.  No matter what he does is he caught in this trap.  The only way I could even see McCain getting himself out of this hole is for there to be some kind of international security crisis - such as Russia invading Georgia again or something.  But even then, I don’t know.  Obama just has so much more money than him, and McCain has absolutely no ground game, no enthusiasm, nothing.  In my book its over.

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