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Monday, August 02, 2004
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WHERE DID ALL THE SMART PEOPLE GO?
There was a time, not very long ago when politics was largely regarded to be populated with morally challenged and duplicitous people. One should always remember that some of the basic requirements of a successful political career are saying unflattering things about people, discussing politics, money and religion in public and asking strangers for money. This hardly makes for a profession for the polite.
However, political professionals were generally considered to be extraordinarily bright people. As much as you might think that Karl Rove is savage with the survival insticts of a brain damaged Doberman (and John McCain will agree with you all of those points), he was widely accepted as a brilliant political strategist. This is further affirmed when you understand that he got his guy elected president, despite having no interest in such elementary subjects of the craft as history and geography and a government resume that consisted entirely of holding the largely ceremonial office of Governor of Texas. Add to that the fact that his guy won despite losing the popular vote, which had only happened three times prior, and you can agree that Rove is pretty impressive cat.
Of course, this president is gifted, as was his predecessor, in the quality of his opponents. Al Gore was the political version of Sominex. The guy was classically uninteresting. And he went on to lose despite winning, largely due to horribly stupid mistakes that I'm pretty sure your average sixth grade civics student would have avoided. How do the Democrats respond to this monumental failure of strategy? By nominating a guy even more boring and craven than Gore.
But it turned out that Kerry/Edwards ticket did get their much anticipated bounce from their convention in Boston. Unfortunately, it went the wrong way.
In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, Bush led Kerry 50%-46% among likely voters. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was at 2%.
The survey showed Kerry losing 1 percentage point and Bush gaining 4 percentage points from a poll taken the week before the Boston convention.
The change in support was within the poll's margin of error of +/-4 percentage points in the sample of 763 likely voters. But it was nonetheless surprising, the first time since the chaotic Democratic convention in 1972 that a candidate hasn't gained ground during his convention.
Now, I should point out that I hold a long standing distrust of CNN/USAToday's polling. This is because it is so frequently incredibly wrong. These are, after all, the people who had Gore losing the popular vote but winning in the Electoral College. There's currently a Newsweek poll out that has Kerry over Bush by 7 points which I'm much more inclined to believe. But this poll is just too funny to ignore.
Whether Kerry is slightly ahead or slightly behind isn't really the issue here. The fact that it's even close is. Given the year the president has had, with continuing American casualities in Iraq, the failure to apprehend Osama bin Laden, the continuing (even escalating) threat of terrorism, The Abu Gharaib prison scandal and the lagging economy, would ordinarily put a challenger anywhere between 15 and 20 points ahead.
For any number of reasons, Kerry is failing to "close the deal." Firstly, he's the single most uninspiring speaker of any major party candidate in my lifetime. He chose a running mate who brings absolutely nothing to the campaign - which is even more disturbing when you consider that the head of the ticket had prostate cancer surgery less than a year ago. His strategy seems to be intent on ignoring the 11 states of the former Confederacy (which, as Senator Edwards has pointed out, no Democrat has won without carrying at least four of) and cutting back resources in states he absolutely MUST win, like Missouri. His speech accepting the nomination reaffirmed the belief of many that he's been in the Witness Protection Program since 1971. And make no mistake, Kerry will make pecisely the same mistake Gore did in underestimating George Bush in the debates.
Kerry is also largely untested as a candidate. I'm not sure how to break this to you folks, but winning as a Democrat in Massachussettes is hardly a towering achievement in anyone's eyes. In his 6 campaigns (1 for the House of Representatives, 1 for Lieutenant Governor and 4 to the US Senate), he has faced exactly one impressive challenger, then Governor William Weld. In his four campaigns (1 for the House, 2 for Governor of Texas and 1 for the presidency), George Bush faced off against two of the most powerful names in the Democratic Party, Ann Richards and Al Gore, and beat both. One could point to Kerry's string of primary victories, true. But one should look at his competetion. Richard Gephardt is a guy who was soundly beaten by Jesse Jackson in 1988, John Edwards is fourteen years old, and Howard Dean is a psychopath. I should hope you can defeat that field of misfits if you intend to face as skilled a politician as President Bush.
It's hard to draw any other conclusion than that the Democrats are determined to lose this year. Holding a convention where they almost never named their opponent certainly didn't help.
So, you'd think this would be an easy win for the Republicans, right?
Well, actually, wrong.
It almost seems that the president figures that Kerry won't be much of a challenge, he'll handicap himself by doing and saying stupid things. First, he opposed and then supported the 9/11 Commission. Then he came out and openly said that he doesn't make mistakes. His obstinancy in making his insane tax cuts permenant is both econically retarded and dishonest. George Bush will have to "raise taxes." It's just a question of whether he does so in 2005 or in 2006. Of course, by then George Bush won't be running for anything.
But what's most amazing is that the GOP is helping to make this election as close as possible. This started with the US Senate nomination in Oklahoma of Dr. Tom Coburn, who has said that abortion providers should be prosecuted for murder and proudly displays an endorsement from the "Doctor" James Dobson on his website. Oklahoma is natural territory for modern Republicans. But nominating someone like Coburn could lose that seat and leave a giant crack in the Republican south. Add to that close races in Colorado and Louisiana, plus the blowout in Illinois, they could very well fuck up their Senate majority. I projected a net gain of 5 seats, that could go down to three or even lower.
But what about the House? If anythng, House Republicans are far goofier than their Senate or Administration allies. One thing that I suggest that you'll notice is the distinct lack of House members at their convention later this month.
You'll certainly hear from them though. On Wednesday, Speaker Dennis Hastert is releasing a book wherein he advocates the single most insane political strategy I've ever heard. Hastert is actually saying, in public during a campaign year, that the focus of a second Bush administration should be abolishing the IRS and the progressive income tax system. This could be disasterously stupid.
Hastert is claiming that the income tax should be replaced by a national sales tax, a Value Added Tax, or a flat tax on income. This is the precise quote;
"If you own property, stock, or, say, one hundred acres of farmland and tax time is approaching, you don't want to make a mistake, so you’re almost obliged to go to a certified public accountant, tax preparer, or tax attorney to help you file a correct return. That costs a lot of money. Now multiply the amount you have to pay by the total number of people who are in the same boat. You can't. No one can because precise numbers don't exist. But we can stipulate that we're talking about a huge amount. Now consider that a flat tax, national sales tax, or VAT would not only eliminate the need to do this, it could also eliminate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) itself and make the process of paying taxes much easier."
"By adopting a VAT, sales tax, or some other alternative, we could begin to change productivity. If you can do that, you can change gross national product and start growing the economy. You could double the economy over the next fifteen years. All of a sudden, the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won't be so daunting anymore. The answer is to grow the economy, and the key to doing that is making sure we have a tax system that attracts capital and builds incentives to keep it here instead of forcing it out to other nations."
If I were a Democratic operative and read that from a Speaker, I would be in Nirvana. This is a gift from Hastert to Kerry/Edwards that they never in their wildest dreams could've hoped for.
Replacing the income tax sounds very nice in theory. I spent years arguing that taxing consumers on both ends of their income,when its earned and when its spent, is morally and intellectually wrong. On the other hand, I do recognize that voters want lots and lots of free stuff. Free stuff is famous for costing a lot of money.
And it's not just liberals who want tons of goodies from the government. While liberals have spent decades screaming for federal supports for guys who photograph crucifixes in urine and a guaranteed income for everyone that would "level the playing field" between your average single mother and Thurston Howell III, conservatives want a giant military that will kill brown people effectively. Conservatives have also, at least traditionally, preferred the progressive income tax system. This is because tax rates can be manipulated in times of recession to stimulate the economy.
A flat tax or national sales tax will kill that. It's much harder to manipulate sales taxes than income taxes. This is because things like cash registers need to be reprogrammed. Which leads to another point. Going to a national sales tax merely "outsources" the function of the IRS. Instead of the government, your local supermarket becomes the main tax collector.
And this says nothing of the burden this new system would have on the middle class and the poor. Here's a way of proving it. Go to your local Costco and take a poll of the average family income of its shoppers. I'm betting that you'd be hard pressed to find anyone there making less than $50,000.00 a year. Rich people can afford to buy in bulk. Bulk usually costs less than buying items individually. Thus, your average "well-off" family would pay less in taxes than the poorest families. Democrats were BORN to campaign on issues like this.
If I were the DNC, I would put up ads quoting Hastert's book at length and bombard states like Wisconsin, Michigan and most importantly, Ohio with them. Plus, I'd get all my union buddies together and remind them that, under the Republican plan, janitors would probably pay more in real-dollar taxes than CEO's will. Then the unions would put up their own, unregulated advertisising and spend even more on their substantial get out the vote effort. If they only did this Ohio, there would be no stopping Kerry from becoming president. If they do it in five or six other states, he could take the House and, possibly, the Senate with him.
Was Hastert an idiot to put this thought on paper in an election year? Yes, he was. But will the Democrats exploit this gift to the maximum possible advantage? Probably not.
Like I said, I remember a time when smart people controlled politics.
Quite frankly, I miss it.
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