Election Watch
Looks like Warner has decided against a presidential bid.
Also, here are two good poll tracking maps to keep an eye on in the next few weeks:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Looks like things are a little more unstable than we would have thought.
posted by Chris @ 12:27 PM
7 Comments:
Warner's out, and who else?
I'm really not certain that Sen. Clinton will want to take the plunge this time around, either. She's far, far more cautious than her husband in this respect. Not only that, she's earned enough respect in the Senate to make a run at leadership there!
I would love for Clinton to stay in the Senate, of course:
1) It would keep her out of the White House, a place I do not want her.
2) It would force the Democrats to tap other names and other regions of the country for their Presidential ticket.
3) If Clinton becomes an assertive spokeswoman for the Senate, that august body may regain some of the prestige and power lost over the last decade or so.
Don't Run!
If Clinton becomes an assertive spokeswoman for the Senate, that august body may regain some of the prestige and power lost over the last decade or so.
That would be nice, but I'm willing to be that we'd also see some boneheaded nanny-state legislation targeting the great social evil that is video games.
I'm sort of split between to the two points here. For one, I've written to Sen. Clinton on several occassions begging for her to stop her tilting-at-windmills nanny-state policies, which I believe to actually be a simple ploy to grab at the "moral-values" ground in future debates. I also don't want her to run for President, though that seems pretty foregone by now. Still, once she's out of the political limelight, she's more passionate about using government and policy for actual good than almost anyone else out there, and while I know that some hear don't agree with how readily she'd like to use government as a tool for social change, I at least admire and agree with her intent.
All in all, I think that senate leadership would be a great role for her, though at this point, in her mind, I bet those shoes are a little too small.
"While I know that some here don't agree with how readily she'd like to use government as a tool for social change, I at least admire and agree with her intent."
Except that you don't agree, based on what you said above. That is, if you're writing letters begging her to stop using the government as a tool for social change, your statement that you 'admire and agree with her intent' becomes a bit curious.
As an aside to that, I find it fascinating that people - and here I do mean everyone - have such a schizophrenic attitude toward government's abilities and powers.
The same person who thinks the government has no right to craft legislation to improve morality often thinks - at the same time - that it's perfectly okay for the government to confiscate property for fantastical schemes of wealth redistribution & transfer payments. The opposite is also true, of course.
I remain skeptical of most schemes, moral or economic, which are touted as being in the name of "social change." Society is so infinitely complex that a bill passed in Washington is likely to have a plethora of unintended consequences. Witness the social change wrought by welfare, the minimum wage, and affirmative action: all designed to ameliorate specific ills, all in their turn creating greater ills.
This is the core of my dislike - if you wish to call it that - of Sen. Hillary Clinton: she's always given me the sense that she knows best, and that the complexities of society are nothing that can't be dealt with through a series of well-intended bills.
Sorry, perhaps I missed the "greater ill" created by that pernicious minimum wage. Please elaborate. Also, while you are correct that almost all large social programs have unintended consequences, many of them negative, on account of society's complexity, analogous logic applies the criticizing such programs. The structuring and management of a program like welfare is complex enough that the entire idea cannot be discredited because our current management or implementation of it is flawed. The enormous debt crisis lurking in this country's future is an obvious and immediate problem, but equally obvious is that millions have been saved the worst effects of living at society's poorer end by programs like welfare.
Finally I would like to point out that property rights as we conceive them are and always have been a social program. There is nothing inherently flawed in holding that government power is best used in some areas and kept out of others. As someone once suggested to me, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds"
A thoughtful answer to my less-than-carefully worded comment. It deserves a response!
"Sorry, perhaps I missed the 'greater ill' created by that pernicious minimum wage. Please elaborate."
Here I was referring to high levels of African-American unemployment and high levels of illegal alien employment. Let's say we have a businessman has a task that, by his economic analysis, is worth $2.50/hour. His likely labor pool consists of 100 citizens - whom he would have to pay $5+ per hour - and 250 illegals whose compensation will not be legally scrutinized. It's a no-brainer, isn't it?
If we factor in additionally that those 100 citizens competing for a $5 job are likely to comprise a greater percentage of African-Americans than the population as a whole, the picture becomes even clearer. Mickey Kaus (among others) likes to cite this argument frequently.
The same Mickey Kaus, I should add, whose policy preferences helped reform welfare in 1996 from its previous ghastly incarnation (to hint at your other point). A thoughtful, slow-working (conservative, dare I say) program of reform was undertaken, and the results have been excellent.
As for property rights. Yes, the particular conditions under which private property can be used is a 'social program' of sorts, and you know that I have no truck with zoning laws and planning boards. But the default condition - again, excepting sensible regulation - is that private individuals are free to own and dispose property as they see fit. The philosophical basis for this can be found in Locke's concept of the right of having "property in one's self."
And this is my fundamental point in all: it is all well and good for the government to want to fix something. But it's not enough to say a problem could be fixed: the burden of proof should always be on the government, to show that the rights of the people will come to no harm through the action. This is what careful, conservo-libertarian government is.
Or are we saying that inalienable rights are just a social program too?
By the way, Socratic, it's good to have you back on the blog! Stay around, would you?
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