Exploring the Political Spectrum

California Gubernatorial Primary Results

2010-06-09T09:15:00.000-04:00

Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, won yesterday's Republican primary for governor of California. Whitman, 53, got 64% of the vote, to 26% for Steve Poizner, the state's insurance commissioner. As is the case with her ticket-mate, Carly Fiorina, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in California, this is Whitman's first run for public office.

Her general election opponent will be state Attorney General Jerry Brown, a former governor. Brown, 72, got 84% of the Democratic primary vote, against several minor candidates.

According to Real Clear Politics, polls show Brown ahead of Whitman by an average of 6.2%.

I wrote about the background of this race, here and here.

California Senate Primary Results

2010-06-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

Two female former CEOs of major corporations won the major Republican primaries in California yesterday.

In the primary for U.S. Senate, Carly Fiorina, who formerly headed up Hewlett-Packard, easily won the Republican primary. She won 54% of the vote, while her closest challenger, former Congressman Tom Campbell, got only 24%. Fiorina, 55, is making her first run for public office. Those of us who are alumni of a certain college will note that "Carly" is short for "Carleton" (with the "e"; that makes all the difference.)

In the Democratic primary, Senator Barbara Boxer saw off token opposition, winning with 80% of the vote. Boxer, 69, has held the seat since 1993, having previously served in the U.S. House for 10 years.

Polls reported by Real Clear Politics show Boxer with a fair-to-middling lead over Fiorina.

Resignations and History

2010-06-02T11:36:00.000-04:00

When did World War II end?

Of course, the history books tell us that May 8, 1945, was Victory in Europe (VE) Day. However, the war in Asia was still going on, and the end of the fighting can be dated from either August 15 of that year, when the Japanese announced their intent to surrender, or September 2, when the formal surrender ceremony was held.

Some would argue that the War didn't really end until German reunification, in 1990. I suppose, by the same token, an argument can be made that the true end of the War awaits a similar reunification on the Korean Peninsula. But, most would say that, by now, the War has been over for many years.

The War is a thing of the past, but its effects are still being felt in world politics. Two resignations of national leaders this week are both tied to World War II-related issues.

On Monday, the German head of state, President Horst Koehler, announced his immediate resignation. He had been strongly criticized for saying that:

A country of our size, with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests, for example, when it comes to trade routes, for example, when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes.

Everyone knows that protecting a country's economic interests is one of the primary reasons for maintaining armed forces. Politicians will softpedal that to some degree, preferring to emphasize, for example, the protection of human rights, as in the Kosovo War of 1999.

But, in most countries, it wouldn't be considered a scandal, if the head of state were to acknowledge the economic motive. Germany, however, is not most countries. Memories of German aggression in World War II make its own people, and those of other countries, sensitive about any hint of a renewal of an aggressive German foreign policy.

The Federal Republic of Germany (then West Germany, but now governing the entire country) became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1955. Under NATO's aegis, Germany has fought in places such as Kosovo and Afghanistan. Those wars have been clearly defensive in nature, and therefore are not seen to violate the taboo about Germany using military force to further its national interests.

It was in the context of the war in Afghanistan that Koehler made his remarks. Because that statement edged too close to taboo territory, he had to go.

The following day, in Japan, that country's head of government, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, announced his resignation, to be effective when his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has chosen a successor.

The main issue in Hatoyama's case is also an outgrowth of World War II. The U.S. retained control of some Japanese islands, including Okinawa, long after Japan's main islands again became self-governing. Finally, in 1972, those islands were returned to Japanese control. However, the U.S. has continued to maintain military bases on Japanese territory. Over the years, that American presence has become increasingly controversial with the Okinawan population.

As I described in this and other posts, the DPJ's victory in last year's general election was seen at the time as a major turning point in Japanese politics. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had maintained an almost-continuous hold on power for more than half a century, was finally booted out. Hatoyama and his party were to be the wave of the future. And one of their main policy changes was to be a recalibration of Japan's military alliance with the U.S.

Hatoyama recently reneged on a campaign promise to end the American military presence on Okinawa. Strategic concerns regarding China and North Korea militated against a weakening of the American alliance at this time. But, for residents of that island, the most important consideration was that it be "Not In My Back Yard" (NIMBY). In all parts of the world, NIMBY syndrome puts personal considerations ahead of national and international interests. As was the case with Germany's Koehler, Hatoyama mishandled a post-World War II issue, so he, too, had to go.

An episode of the 1970s British TV series Fawlty Towers involved innkeeper Basil Fawlty (played by John Cleese) playing host to a group of German tourists. The catch-phrase of that show was "don't mention the War." Even when German and Japanese leaders don't specifically mention the War, they still need to be careful what they say and do, regarding the consequences of World War II.

Oregon Primary Results

2010-05-19T13:45:00.000-04:00

No surprises in yesterday's Oregon primary.

Senator Ron Wyden was easily renominated in the Democratic primary, receiving 91% of the vote. His Republican opponent will be Jim Huffman, a law professor, who got 42%, putting him well ahead of his opponents in a crowded Republican primary contest.

Apparently there is no poll more recent that a Rasmussen poll in February, with Wyden leading Huffman by 14 points.

The gubernatorial election will be between Democratic former Governor John Kitzhaber and Republican Chris Dudley. Kitzhaber trounced former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, 66% to 30%, in the Democratic primary. Dudley got 40% in the Republican primary, to 32% for runner-up Allen Alley.

The most recent poll reported by Real Clear Politics shows Kitzhaber and Dudley tied.

Arkansas Primary Results

2010-05-19T10:33:00.000-04:00

Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, fell short of renomination in yesterday's first round of voting in her party's primary. Lincoln led the field with 45% but, because she failed to reach 50%, there will be runoff between the senator and the number-two candidate, Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, on June 8. Halter received 43% of the vote.

The Republicans, on the other hand, do have a nominee. Congressman John Boozman easily won the G.O.P. primary, with 53%. The runner-up, Jim Holt, a former state senator, got only 17%.

Polls reported by Real Clear Politics show Boozman ahead of both potential Democratic candidates, by almost identical margins, over 19%.

The 538 blog ranks this Senate seat as the second most likely Democratic seat to go Republican (after North Dakota).

Kentucky Primary Results

2010-05-19T10:10:00.000-04:00

Rand Paul, a physician making his first run for public office, won yesterday's Republican U.S. Senate primary in Kentucky. Paul received 59% of the vote, while his main opponent, Secretary of State Trey Grayson, got 35%.

The result is considered a victory for Tea Party upstarts against the Republican establishment. Grayson had been endorsed by senior Republicans, including the state's senior senator, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.

Rand Paul's father, Congressman Ron Paul, twice ran for president on a libertarian platform.

In a very close Democratic primary, Attorney General Jack Conway defeated Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo, by 44% to 43%.

Paul holds a narrow lead over Conway, according to polls reported by Real Clear Politics.

Pennsylvania Primary Results

2010-05-19T09:40:00.000-04:00

When Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter switched from Republican to Democrat last year, he made no secret of the fact that his motive was to give himself an opportunity to win a sixth term in the Senate. Yesterday, his strategy backfired.

Congressman Joe Sestak defeated Specter in yesterday's Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat Specter has held since 1981. Sestak's margin of victory was 54% to 46%.

The Republican primary was, as expected, won by former Congressman Pat Toomey. I mistakenly stated here that Toomey was unopposed. It's a sign of how ineffectual the campaign of his primary opponent, Peg Luksik, was, that I, a registered Republican Pennsylvania voter, who therefore received several mailings and robo-calls from Republican candidates, was not aware of her candidacy. Luksik, a perennial candidate who has never won an election, garnered only 21% of the Republican vote.

Polls reported by Real Clear Politics show Toomey slightly ahead of Sestak.

Allegheny County Executive Don Onorato won Pennsylvania's Democratic primary for governor. That was predicted by the pre-election polls. Onorato won with 44% in a multi-candidate race. His closest challenger was Jack Wagner, the state's auditor general, who got 25%.

As expected, Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett easily won the Republican gubernatorial primary. Corbett got 72%, to 28% for Sam Rohrer, a state legislator.

Corbett has a comfortable lead over Onorato, according to polls reported by Real Clear Politics.

Diversity: Both Harvard and Yale

2010-05-18T16:20:00.000-04:00

As I noted here, if Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination is confirmed, we poor oppressed Protestants will be shut out of the institution that we used to overwhelmingly dominate.

Just as Kagan's presence on the Court would mean that only two religions would be represented (Roman Catholicism and Judaism), it would also be true that only two law schools (Harvard and Yale) would have produced almost all of the nine justices.

The one exception, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who received her law degree from Columbia, had earlier attended Harvard Law School. So it is true, as noted in this National Public Radio report, that all of the nine (after a Kagan confirmation) would have been students at either Harvard Law or Yale Law.

NPR mentions certain highly-rated law schools further west, that have, up until recently, been represented on the Court. John Paul Stevens, whose retirement led to Kagan's appointment, is an alumnus of Northwestern Law School. Two recently-departed justices, the late William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor, went to law school at Stanford.

But, aside from that, there have been some justices in recent decades who attended law schools that did not sit particularly high in the ratings. Chief Justice Warren Burger got his law degree from what was then called St. Paul College of Law, later renamed William Mitchell College of Law. Thurgood Marshall graduated from Howard University Law School, and Hugo Black from the University of Alabama Law School.

During the first two years of the Burger Court, the Harvard/Yale group was in the minority (William Brennan and Harry Blackmun from Harvard, and Potter Stewart and Byron White from Yale). But William O. Douglas, a Columbia Law alumnus, made for an overall Ivy League majority.

Is there any correlation between the party of the president who nominated a justice, and which law school that justice attended? No. Including Kagan, and counting Ginsburg with the Harvard bunch, the five Republican appointees include three from Harvard and two from Yale. The four Democratic appointees include three from Harvard and one from Yale.

Governor -- Oregon -- Republican Primary

2010-05-17T16:50:00.000-04:00

Chris Dudley, an investment manager, and former professional basketball player, is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for governor of Oregon in tomorrow's primary election, according to this poll.

Dudley, 45, played in the National Basketball Association from 1987 to 2003. He was with the Portland Trail Blazers for five seasons is two different stints, the last of which ended in 2003. This is his first run for public office.

His main primary opponent is Allen Alley, a 55-year-old businessman. He was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for state treasurer in 2008. Alley briefly served on the staff of outgoing Governor Ted Kulongoski.

Governor -- Oregon -- Democratic Primary

2010-05-17T16:35:00.000-04:00

Governor Ted Kulongoski, Democrat of Oregon, is barred by a term limit from running in tomorrow's primary election.

According to this poll, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination is former Governor John Kitzhaber, 63. He was governor from 1995 to 2003, after having served in the state legislature for 14 years, including eight years as president of the Senate. Kitzhaber, a physician, has headed up health-related not-for-profit organizations since the end of his first stint as governor.

His main opponent is Bill Bradbury, a former Oregon secretary of state. He held that office from 1999 to 2009. Bradbury was in the state legislature from 1981 to 1995 and, for the last two years of that period, was Kitzhaber's successor as president of the Senate. He also worked in television news.

Senate -- Oregon -- Republican Primary

2010-05-17T15:33:00.000-04:00

Oregon will hold a primary election tomorrow. There are five candidates for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, none of whom have been elected to public office prior to this race. The Republican primary winner will face incumbent Democratic Senator Ron Wyden in November.

According to the poll reported here, the leader is Jim Huffman, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. Other candidates include:

Tom Stutzman, a real estate broker.

Robin Parker, a logistics analyst.

Shane Dinkel, an army officer.

Loren Later, a businessman.

Senate -- Oregon -- Democratic Primary

2010-05-17T15:10:00.000-04:00

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, will seek his party's nomination for a third full term in the U.S. Senate, in tomorrow's primary election. He faces only token opposition from within his party.

Wyden, 61, won a special election in 1996, to replace Bob Packwood, who had resigned his Senate seat in the wake of a scandal involving sexual harassment and related charges. Wyden was subsequently reelected to two full terms. Before that, he had served in the U.S. House since 1981.

Governor -- Pennsylvania -- Republican Primary

2010-05-17T14:40:00.000-04:00

Pennsylvania's Attorney General Tom Corbett remains the front-runner in tomorrow's Republican primary for governor.

Corbett has been attorney general since 2005. Also, he was appointed to that office on an interim basis in 1995, after Attorney General Ernie Preate pleaded guilty to mail fraud. Corbett filled out the remainder of that term, until 1997. Aside from that, he has worked in private practice, and as a federal prosecutor.

His primary opponent is state Representative Sam Rohrer, who has represented a district near Philadelphia since 1993.

I have received robo-calls from Rohrer's campaign over the last couple of days, that emphasize that he is the "conservative" Republican candidate. Corbett apparently accepts that notion, and embraces the moderate label, because he reprints this endorsement from The Philadelphia Inquirer, a newspaper with a left-wing editorial page, on his campaign website.

Pennsylvania has a history of electing moderate Republicans. Rick Santorum, who represented the state in the U.S. Senate from 1995 to 2007, is the most obvious exception.

Here is a report from The Morning Call, an Allentown newspaper, on polls showing Corbett well ahead of Rohrer.

Governor -- Pennsylvania -- Democratic Primary

2010-05-17T14:05:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is primary election day here in Pennsylvania, and the Democratic incumbent Governor Ed Rendell can't run for a third term, because of a term limit in the state constitution.

Several Democrats are vying for a chance to succeed Rendell. I described them in this earlier post.

It took a while for a front-runner to emerge but, by now, Don Onorato, county executive of Allegheny County (which includes Pittsburgh), has established a big lead in the polls.

Pennsylvania has a long-established pattern of switching back and forth between Democratic governors and Republican governors, at eight-year intervals. If that pattern holds, we will elect a Republican this year. Polls indicate that Republicans will make gains throughout the U.S. next November, which only reinforces that expectation.

But there is another pattern of alternation, between governors from the eastern and western parts of Pennsylvania. Rendell is a Philadelphian, so, this year, it is the westerners' turn. Is that why his party seems to be preferring Onorato over his primary opponents, some of whom are from the Philadelphia area?

Senate -- Pennsylvania -- Republican Primary

2010-05-16T16:45:00.000-04:00

Former Congressman Pat Toomey is unopposed in Tuesday's Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, here in Pennsylvania.

Toomey, 48, represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House from 1999 to 2005. In 2004, he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Toomey lost a close primary contest against Senator Arlen Specter, who might be Toomey's Democratic opponent this time.

In the meantime, Toomey was president of the Club for Growth, whose PAC had provided much of the financing for his primary run against Specter.

Senate -- Pennsylvania -- Democratic Primary

2010-05-16T16:30:00.000-04:00

My home state of Pennsylvania will hold a primary election on Tuesday. Incumbent Senator Arlen Specter, who switched to the Democratic Party last year, faces a tough primary contest in his new party.

Specter, 80, was first elected to the Senate, as a Republican, in 1980. He became a Republican in 1965, when he won that party's nomination for Philadelphia district attorney, an office he went on to hold for eight years. Specter chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 2005-6 Congress.

Specter's opponent is Congressman Joe Sestak, 58. Sestak was a career Navy man until 2005. Then, in 2006, he defeated longtime Republican Congressman Curt Weldon, as part of the Democratic midterm landslide. Sestak was reelected in 2008.

Specter had a large lead in early polls, but it's now a much tighter race. Real Clear Politics reports that polls now show Sestak with a slight lead.

Senate -- Kentucky -- Democratic Primary

2010-05-16T15:45:00.000-04:00

Two statewide office-holders are the leading candidates in Tuesday's Democratic Senate primary in Kentucky:

Attorney General Jack Conway, 40. Before becoming attorney general, in 2008, he divided his career between private practice and other state government work. Conway unsuccessfully sought a U.S. House seat in 2002.

Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo, 49. He served in the state Senate from 2001 to 2007. In 2004, he lost to Republican Senator Jim Bunning, in the previous general election for the U.S. Senate seat for which he is running this year. Mongiardo became lieutenant governor in 2007. He is a physician.

Real Clear Politics reports several polls, which average out to a five-percentage-point lead for Mongiardo.

I described the Republican primary here.

Senate -- Kentucky -- Republican Primary

2010-05-16T15:20:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, May 18, is primary election day in Kentucky. Republican incumbent Senator Jim Bunning is not seeking reelection after having spent 12 years in each of the houses of Congress.

The main Republican candidates to succeed Bunning are:

Rand Paul, 47, an opthamologist who is making his first run for public office. His father, Ron Paul, is a congressman from Texas, who has twice run unsuccessfully for president.

Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, 38. He has held his current office since 2004. Earlier, Grayson had worked in the private practice of law.

Polls reported by Real Clear Politics show Paul well ahead of Grayson.

Here is a Weekly Standard blog post that describes how Republican heavyweights, both within and outside Kentucky, are lining up in this contest.

Senate -- Arkansas -- Republican Primary

2010-05-16T14:55:00.002-04:00

Having described next Tuesday's Democratic primary, here is how the Arkansas Republican primary shapes up:

The leading Republican candidate for U.S. Senate is Congressman John Boozman, 59. He has served in the House since 2001. Boozman is trained as an optometrist, and worked in that field before entering Congress.

Here is a report on a poll showing Boozman well ahead of several Republican rivals. The only other candidates showing more than 10% support are:

Former state Senator Jim Holt, 45. After a military career, he was, in1996, ordained as a Southern Baptist minister. Holt subsequently served one term in each house of the state legislature. He lost the general election for this Senate seat, in 2004.

State Senator Gilbert Baker, 53. He has been in the Arkansas Senate since 2001. Baker has also worked as a college teacher.

It seems as though the only open question, with this crowded field, is whether Boozman will reach the 50% mark. If not, there will be a runoff on June 8.

Senate -- Arkansas -- Democratic Primary

2010-05-13T17:10:00.000-04:00

Arkansas will hold a primary election next Tuesday, May 18. Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln is up for reelection.

Lincoln, 49, is completing her second six-year term in the Senate. She served in the U.S. House from 1993 to 1997. Lincoln chairs the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.

Her main opponent in the primary is Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, 49. He has held his current office since 2007. During the presidency of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton, Halter worked in Washington in the Office of Management and Budget, and the Social Security Administration.

Lincoln has a significant lead, in polls reported by Real Clear Politics.

No Leaving Early

2010-05-12T11:25:00.000-04:00

Coalition negotiations between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives produced agreement regarding some fundamental changes to the British electoral system.

One of those changes is that Parliament should sit for a fixed term of five years, before the next general election. That will end the traditional practice, which I described here and here, of allowing the prime minister to set the election date.

The other method of cutting short the term of a Parliament has been the vote of no confidence. By a simple-majority vote, the House of Commons has been able to, in effect, fire the prime minister. Under the coalition agreement, that will still be allowed, but it will require a supermajority of 55%.

A no-confidence motion could be blocked by 294 MPs. The Conservatives, with 306 seats (and possibly 307 after the delayed vote in one constituency), could defeat such a motion, unless (as if often the case for a governing party) their numbers are eroded over the next five years via by-election losses.

In the short term, the effect will be to lock the two coalition parties into their deal, and not enable either of them to bring about the scenario that many had expected, i.e., another general election within a year or so, to try to resolve the deadlock, and produce a parliamentary majority for one party or another.

In the long run, it will probably change British politics in ways that are neither intended nor anticipated.

Also, the two parties are committed to a referendum on adopting the Alternative Vote system for electing the House of Commons. That method is sometimes called Instant Runoff Voting, and I described it here, in an American context.

While falling short of the Liberal Democrats' ultimate goal of proportional representation, Alternative Vote might increase support for that party in future elections, and make coalition negotiations, such as those that have taken place over the last few days, commonplace in Britain.

The Dust Settles

2010-05-12T09:20:00.000-04:00

After a wild day in British politics yesterday, the situation has become more clear by this morning. Major U.K. media outlets were live-blogging all day, and all sorts of contradictory stories were being posted. After all that, I'm not totally sure that all of the following is finally final, but here is how things look as of now:

David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, became prime minister Tuesday evening, several minutes after Gordon Brown resigned that office.

Some hours after that, the Liberal Democrats approved their party's participation in a coalition government with the Conservatives. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is deputy prime minister.

William Hague, 49 (an old man by the standards of this government), is foreign secretary. He has been a member of Parliament (MP) since 1989. Hague was elected leader of the Conservative Party in the wake of the party's landslide defeat in the 1997 general election. He held that position until 2001, when he resigned after leading the party into another landslide loss, in the 2001 general election.

George Osborne, a 38-year-old Conservative, is chancellor of the exchequer. He was first elected to the House of Commons in 2001. Osborne became shadow chancellor when Cameron took over as party leader in 2005.

The BBC has provided a summary of the Cabinet appointments so far, including the names of four Liberal Democrats in the Cabinet.

New Prime Minister

2010-05-11T16:00:00.000-04:00

David Cameron became prime minister of the U.K. this evening (London time). In contrast to a head-of-government transition in the U.S., which involves a huge outdoor ceremony, the British hand-over of power occurs in a private meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, in which she invites him to form her government.

British media are making much of the fact that, at the age of 43, Cameron is the youngest prime minister in 198 years. However, he is less than one year younger than Tony Blair was, when he had a similar meeting with The Queen, in 1997.

An odd story is emerging. After Cameron's predecessor, Gordon Brown, had delayed his resignation for five days after the general election, once he decided to leave, he reportedly was in such a hurry, that he didn't confirm with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats that their coalition was in place, before he resigned. According to a blog on the website of The Times, Liberal Democrats were "hacked off" at Brown, for upsetting the timing of the coalition negotiations.

There's still no official word on the shape of the coalition. There are several media reports that Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, will be deputy prime minister. While that has been a somewhat meaningless title in single-party governments, I suspect it might carry more weight in a coalition government. For example, in Britain's World War II coalition government under Winston Churchill, Labour leader Clement Attlee, as deputy prime minister, was more of less in charge of domestic policy, while the prime minister was preoccupied with the war.

The circumstances are different, now. But Cameron may need to allow Clegg to play a major role, in order to keep Clegg's party committed to the coalition.

It's Over

2010-05-11T14:25:00.000-04:00

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown emerged from 10 Downing Street a few minutes ago, and announced that he is headed to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to The Queen. Contrary to his statement yesterday of his intent to eventually resign as leader of the Labour Party, this resignation will take effect immediately.

He is changing his plan regarding his role as leader of the party. Brown will also resign that position effective immediately.

Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders have been reported to still be engaged in a marathon meeting to hammer out the final details of their coalition government.

I assume that Brown's statement means that those talks are completed. David Cameron, who will be prime minister in the coalition government, will need to follow closely on the heels of Brown to the Palace, because any delay would leave Britain without a prime minister.

Shifting Sands

2010-05-11T11:00:00.002-04:00

As London's afternoon goes by, media commentary from there has shifted once again, back to the notion that the Liberal Democrats will form a coalition government with the Conservatives.

More and more senior Labour Party figures are publicly stating their opposition to a deal between their party, the Liberal Democrats, and nationalist parties in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

For one thing, they are alarmed by the proportional representation proposals that have been put on the table, in Labour-Liberal Democrat talks.

At least one major Labour figure has stated something that is rather obvious, that his party could not co-exist with Scottish Nationalists in a coalition government. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is a Scotsman, and his government, and that of his Labour predecessor Tony Blair, have been dominated by Scotsmen at the highest levels. It has been a high priority for them to head off the movement for an independent Scotland, which is spearheaded by the Scottish National Party (SNP). The coalition arithmetic doesn't work without the SNP's six members of Parliament (MPs).

The Times reports that Liberal Democrat MPs will meet at 7:30 tonight (2:30 pm EDT), and speculates that they might at that time approve a coalition with the Conservatives.

UPDATE: London media are now reporting that a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition looks like a sure thing, and that Brown's resignation as prime minister could happen as early as tonight. There is even a report that moving vans are assembling at the back door of 10 Downing Street.

Paraphrasing Shakespeare

2010-05-11T09:15:00.000-04:00

When historians of British politics look back on the events of this week, they might say that nothing in Gordon Brown's political career became him like the leaving of it.

Brown's announcement yesterday that he would give up the leadership of the Labour Party within the next few months had what seems to have been its intended effect. That was to shift the Liberal Democrats' focus away from a potential coalition with the Conservative Party, and toward a coalition with Labour and some of the small regional parties.

Despite the Liberal Democrats' rhetoric about giving the Conservatives the first chance to form a government, it now seems as though they have maneuvered themselves into a position of being able to choose between Labour and the Conservatives as coalition partner. A report this morning on the BBC World Service opined that Brown's announcement caused this shift in focus.

There was really no news in Brown's statement. Everyone assumed that he would be leaving, one way or the other. If Labour ends up being shut out of government, his own party will want to replace him. On the other hand, if Labour enters into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, that latter party will probably insist on Brown's resignation as a necessary condition for entering into an agreement.

But, apparently, the timing of it, and the language of it, might turn it into a game-changer. Having said that, it's still quite possible that a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition will come together. If Brown's gambit succeeds, however, observers will be amazed that a leader thought to have a tin ear and a bad sense of timing, finally gave an example of eloquence and effective timing, right at the end of his time as party leader. Hence, the above paraphrase from Macbeth.

Where have all the Protestants gone?

2010-05-10T14:10:00.000-04:00

During the first 47 years of the existence of the U.S. Supreme Court, all of the justices were Protestant. The first Roman Catholic on the Court was Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, which held that African Americans were not citizens with standing to sue in federal court, and which contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War.

Although their monopoly had been broken, Protestants continued to dominate Supreme Court appointments for many decades.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis as the first Jewish justice.

Another milestone was passed in 1994, when Stephen Breyer, who is Jewish, was nominated by President Bill Clinton. For the first time, Protestants were in the minority; there were four of them, serving with three Roman Catholic justices, and two Jewish justices.

Now, if Elena Kagan, who is Jewish, is confirmed to replace John Paul Stevens, there will for the first time be no Protestants on the Court. Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito and Sotomayor are Roman Catholic, and Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, and Justice-designate Kagan are Jewish.

None of this is to say either that 1) I think adherents of any religion are inherently more qualified for any government office, including Supreme Court justice, than adherents of any other religion; or 2) I feel oppressed as a white, male, Protestant (my being gay is another matter).

I just find it interesting that there has been such a quick and thorough turnaround from such a strong preference for Protestant justices. Much has been said about the predominance of judges from the northeast, with Ivy League credentials, on the current Court. But those numbers make clear that this Eastern Establishment is not the same Eastern Establishment that existed before about 1980.

Lib-Lab?

2010-05-10T13:35:00.000-04:00

Throughout the weekend, the tone of much of the commentary surrounding negotiations between Britain's Conservatives and Liberal Democrats regarding the formation of a government in the wake of last Thursday's inconclusive general election, was to the effect that those two parties had passed a point of no return. Therefore, that line of reasoning went, they need to do whatever is necessary to complete a deal, and cannot back down. In part, that was based on the notion that the financial markets would react badly to a failure of their talks.

Now, there are increasing signs that a coalition led by Labour and the Liberal Democrats remains a real possibility. Two developments reinforce that impression:

First, it came to light by this morning that, while Conservative-Liberal Democrat negotiations were ongoing, senior Liberal Democrats also met, secretly, with a high-level group from the Labour Party (which did not include that party's leader, Prime Minister Gordon Brown).

Second, Brown announced today that he will resign as party leader. He suggested a timetable under which his successor would be chosen before Labour's conference next autumn. It has been obvious for some time that Brown could not continue as leader in the long term. But the timing of this announcement appears calculated to jump-start talks between his party and the Liberal Democrats, who have made it clear they do not want to participate in a Brown-led coalition. Brown's statement included a disclosure that "Mr [Nick] Clegg [the Liberal Democrat leader] has just informed me that, while he intends to continue the dialogue he has begun with the Conservatives, he wishes now to take forward formal discussions with the Labour Party."

Policy differences between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives constitute the main stumbling block to a deal between those two parties. But, the question of who will be prime minister appears to be the biggest issue standing in the way of a Labour-Liberal Democrat alliance.

Brown had already been criticized for being prime minister for almost three years before facing the voters, as leader, at a general election. If a new Labour leader now becomes prime minister, that situation, viewed by some as undemocratic, will only be prolonged.

Another complication for Labour and the Liberal Democrats is that they don't have enough seats between them to constitute a majority. Therefore, such a coalition would also need the support of Welsh and Scottish nationalists.

Experience

2010-05-10T11:55:00.001-04:00

When President Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, in 1981, O'Connor was a judge on a state appellate court in Arizona. Since then, all new justices have been judges on federal circuit courts of appeals.

In October of 1971, President Richard Nixon was presented with the unusual situation of appointing two new justices simultaneously. John Marshall Harlan II had retired the previous month, three months before his death from cancer. Also in September 1971, Hugo Black retired, just days before his death, following a stroke.

Nixon's two nominees were William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell. Rehnquist had been in private practice in Phoenix, and was an assistant attorney general in Nixon's administration. Powell's entire legal career had been in private practice. Those two justices are the most recent ones who had no experience as a judge, prior to joining the Supreme Court.

That's a bit misleading, however. Clarence Thomas had been an appeals court judge for less than two years, when President George H.W. Bush appointed him to the Supreme Court. Thomas's previous experience had been in state government, and in the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

David Souter had been a federal appellate judge for less than five months when he became an associate justice, also having been appointed by the elder Bush. Souter, however, had been a judge in the New Hampshire state judiciary for 12 years.

Now, President Obama has nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. She has never been a judge. There has already been much talk about whether someone from that background is qualified to join the Supremes, and there will be much more of that, during the next few weeks.

Those on one side of the argument say that long-time judges bring a uniformly sterile view of constitutional concepts, with insufficient appreciation of the impact of those concepts on everyday life.

The counterargument is that, when politicians join the Court, they are the ones who are most likely to legislate from the bench, judging according to their policy preferences, rather than the dictates of applicable law.

That's an interesting question. As with all issues connected to modern Supreme Court nominations, it will probably generate more heat than light. But I hope for at least some enlightened debate on the topic.

Elena Kagan

2010-05-10T10:15:00.000-04:00

Quite a few names were mentioned as candidates to succeed retiring Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, but, as it turned out, the appointment went to the one who had been considered the front-runner from the beginning. This morning, President Obama announced that he will nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 50, to the Supreme Court.

She was appointed to her current job by Obama in 2009. According to the Department of Justice website: "The Office of the Solicitor General is tasked to conduct all litigation on behalf of the United States in the Supreme Court, and to supervise the handling of litigation in the federal appellate courts." Kagan is a former law professor, who also worked in the White House counsel's office during Bill Clinton's presidency. Her bachelor's degree is from Princeton, and her law degree from Harvard.

I recently commented on my other blog about some discussions regarding Kagan, during the search process.

Kagan is 30 years younger than former Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and 27 years younger than Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But, as was the case with those other women, Kagan had her share of "first woman to" situations. She is the first female solicitor general, and was the first female dean of Harvard Law School.

Coalition?

2010-05-08T20:30:00.000-04:00

Negotiations are in full swing in Britain between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats regarding cooperation in forming the U.K.'s next government. In the runup to Thursday's inconclusive general election, the conventional wisdom seemed to be that those two parties would negotiate an arrangement under which the Liberal Democrats would refrain from voting a Conservative minority government out of office.

By now, there are indications that they might be looking toward forming a coalition government, with Cabinet positions split between the two parties. The Daily Telegraph reports that "the Tories denied they had offered three specific Cabinet seats to the Lib Dems – home secretary, transport secretary and Treasury chief secretary – but did not rule out Lib Dems having roles in a future coalition cabinet." The Times similarly reports that "Cameron is understood to be ready to offer at least three posts to Clegg’s team."

In terms of policy, one of the big issues is the Liberal Democrats' longstanding advocacy of proportional representation for House of Commons elections. Before the election Prime Minister Gordon Brown committed his Labour Party to a referendum on changing the voting system. But the Conservatives have consistently opposed any change to the so-called "first past the post" system, under which each constituency elects a single candidate to Parliament, with the winner being the top vote-getter, regardless of whether that vote total constitutes a majority of the overall vote.

According to The Times, "in a sign that the parties are moving closer to a settlement, senior Lib Dems indicated that voting reform is unlikely to be a “deal breaker”. That is consistent with other Liberal Democrat statements since Thursday.

In the past, when no one party has a House of Commons majority, the remedy has been minority government. Under that structure, the largest party holds all of the Cabinet jobs, and the role of smaller parties is limited to a pledge not to vote the government out of office, in exchange for policy concessions.

But coalition government is not unknown. Majority parties have brought other parties into the government at times of national crisis, for the purpose of achieving broader acceptance of difficult government actions. Those crises have included World War I, the Great Depression and World War II.

The use of the coalition concept to create a majority government that wouldn't otherwise exist is a common practice in many other parliamentary democracies, but would be a new experience for the British.

Timing

2010-05-07T14:15:00.000-04:00

One of the uncertainties in the current British political situation is how long it will take to resolve the questions of who the next prime minister will be, and what shape his government will take.

Under similar circumstances in 1974, then-Prime Minister Ted Heath resigned on the Monday following an inconclusive Thursday election, after conducting failed coalition talks. Some commentators expect similar timing this year.

A blog on the website of The Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper, give some clues on the timing question:

Lib Dem sources describe Cameron's offer as a "significant step". He will meet with his new parliamentary party tomorrow [Saturday] afternoon.

The first face-to-face talks between the Tories and Lib Dems are due to take place tonight [Friday], after David Cameron and Nick Clegg chatted on the phone earlier, the BBC reports.

The BBC's Nick Robinson predicts that the Browns will be packing their bags and moving out of Downing Street within days after Nick Clegg and David Cameron thrash out a deal over the weekend.

Coalition negotiations in some parliamentary democracies go on for weeks. Because the British rarely face these circumstances, I suppose we can't rule anything out. I suspect that the most likely scenario under which negotiations would be extended over a long period of time, would involve a breakdown in negotiations between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

It would obviously take additional time, if negotiations had to restart from square one, if Labour then became the Liberal Democrats' interlocutor. Also, Labour-Liberal Democrat negotiations might be more complicated by the fact that, unlike a Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance, a Labour-Liberal Democrat combination would require at least the tacit support of the nationalist parties outside England, because Labour and the Liberal Democrats do not have enough combined seats to constitute a majority.

Aside from the timing question, there are some interesting quotes on that Telegraph blog about the possible nature of an alliance between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats:

Sir John Major, the former Prime Minister, says Tory concessions to the Lib Dems to strike a deal would be a "price worth paying".

William Hague says cabinet jobs for Lib Dems are not off the table. He said "there must be a lot of scope to talk" about the subject of electoral reform between the two parties. He said Cameron has taken the initiative.

Looking back at my prediction

2010-05-07T12:20:00.000-04:00

The British general election results are as close to final as they're going to be, in that the vote in one constituency is postponed, due to the death of a candidate.

Here are the results in 649 of the 650 constituencies (with my predictions in parentheses):

Conservative 306 (300)
Labour 258 (255)
Liberal Democrat 57 (68)
Other 28 (27)

I overestimated Liberal Democrat support. While realizing that the major gains that were indicated by earlier polls would not come about, I didn't realize that the party would actually lose seats.

Keep her out of it

2010-05-07T11:50:00.000-04:00

A report on the BBC website addresses an issue I discussed here, which is the role (or lack thereof) of Queen Elizabeth II in the confusion about who should be prime minister of the U.K. following yesterday's inconclusive election.

While, formally, the monarch appoints the prime minister, a king or queen wants that to be a mere formality, after the issue has been decided by the electorate and the parties. Two reasons: 1) a perception that a monarch were engaged in partisan politics would weaken public support for the monarchy, perhaps resulting in a move to replace the monarch with an elected president; 2) the appointment of a prime minister with insufficient support in the House of Commons could immediately be overturned by a no-confidence vote in the House.

As the party leaders go through their mating dance, I'm sure they will keep in mind the need to avoid any scenario that would put the Queen in an awkward position. In addition to the difficulties for her, I would think that could create a backlash against the party of any leader who is perceived as having caused such a situation.

Shall we do it again?

2010-05-07T10:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's U.K. general election was the first one since 1974 in which no party won a majority of seats in the House of Commons.

A February 28, 1974, election gave Labour a four-seat lead over the Conservatives, even though the Conservatives got more votes. That Labour total was short of an overall majority.

Over the following weekend, the incumbent Prime Minister Ted Heath, a Conservative, unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a coalition with smaller parties. In the current situation, the incumbent, who in this case is from the Labour Party, wants to make a similar attempt, and I suspect he will be just as successful as Heath was.

Once Heath resigned, the then-leader of the Labour Party, Harold Wilson, returned to 10 Downing Street, at the head of a minority government.

But that situation didn't last long. On October 10, 1974, there was another general election. In that one, Labour won a tiny overall majority. They soon lost that majority through by-election losses, but were able to limp on for four-and-a-half years, until they lost a no-confidence vote. That resulted in the general election of 1979, when Margaret Thatcher led the Conservatives back to power, which they subsequently held for 18 years.

If the current situation plays out as expected, and David Cameron leads a Conservative minority government, the question becomes whether there will be a snap general election within a year or so. Peter Riddell, writing in The Times, a London newspaper, thinks the answer is "yes".

If so, will the result of a second general election be any different from yesterday's? For one thing, Labour may well have a new leader by then. If Gordon Brown fails to emerge at the head of a coalition government, it seems likely that he will be replaced as party leader, perhaps by Foreign Secretary David Miliband. That would test to what degree Labour's defeat is attributable to Brown's personal unpopularity, as opposed to a broader verdict against his party.

U.K. General Election

2010-05-07T09:25:00.001-04:00

As expected, the Conservative Party emerged from yesterday's British general election as the largest party in the House of Commons, but short of an overall majority.

The situation is still unclear, but it seems likely that the Conservatives' leader, David Cameron, will become prime minister, and will reach an understanding, but not a formal coalition, with the Liberal Democrats. If that is going to happen, it is not clear when it will happen, or exactly what sequence of events will lead up to it.

The nearly-complete results, as reported by the BBC, currently stand as follows:

Conservative 301
Labour 255
Liberal Democrat 56
Other 27
Undecided 11

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the Labour leader, has let it be known that he's interested in forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has said that the Conservatives, with the largest vote total, and largest number of seats, should be given a chance to form a government. Brown has backed off, and said he respects the right of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives to enter into discussions about a Conservative-led government.

Presumably, if/when Cameron and Clegg indicate that they've come to an agreement that is sufficient for such a government to be formed, Brown will resign, and the Queen will summon Cameron to Buckingham Palace to formally designate him as prime minister. It's impossible to tell, at this point, whether that will happen quickly, or take some days or weeks to be concluded.

Exit Poll

2010-05-06T17:17:00.003-04:00

The BBC has reported on its website on an exit poll of voters who voted in today's British general election. The poll projects the Conservative Party falling just short of an overall majority.

The Liberal Democrats would actually lose seats, according to that poll, which would be a major disappointment. Poll numbers in the middle of the campaign indicated that they might make major gains.

If those projections are correct, a coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats wouldn't be feasible.

The BBC brings up another possibility, i.e., that unionist MPs from Northern Ireland might be sufficient to shore up a Conservative government. The Liberal Democrats, and their leader Nick Clegg, might be shut out of the picture, after all.

WAG

2010-05-06T09:50:00.000-04:00

A prediction of the outcome (in terms of seats in the House of Commons) of today's British general election:

Conservative: 300
Labour: 255
Liberal Democrat: 68
Other: 27

Next Steps

2010-05-05T16:33:00.000-04:00

If, as expected, the British give no one party a House of Commons majority in tomorrow's general election, what happens next?

Apparently, there is an unwritten rule that the incumbent prime minister is given the first chance to form a government. That is typical of British constitutional principles. The so-called "British Constitution" is not a single written document, as is the case with most other countries, including the United States. Instead, it is a set of precedents, some of which are codified by acts of Parliament.

An article in today's Financial Times addresses how those precedents might apply to this situation:

Some Whitehall old hands are puzzled that both David Cameron and Nick Clegg have appeared to question the convention that allows Gordon Brown, as the sitting prime minister, the first opportunity to form a government. “It is absolutely the correct interpretation [of the rules] and if they feel that’s a rum deal they can challenge that in parliament,” said one who pointed out the practice was intended to ensure continuity.

That points up the tricky nature of dealing with an unwritten "constitution".

The article goes on to describe the roles of leading permanent civil servants in the process:

Sir Gus O’Donnell, cabinet secretary, is reshaping Whitehall practice to facilitate discussion while protecting the monarch, the integrity of the civil service and continuity of government. He is one of a “golden triangle” of senior officials – that includes Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Downing Street permanent secretary, and Christopher Geidt, private secretary to the Queen – with crucial behind-the-scenes roles in ensuring a smooth and stable transition after election day should there be a change of government.

One key consideration from their standpoint is:

ensuring the Queen is not “dragged into politics”. “She’s very loathe to be put on the spot,” said one person familiar with the conventions. “The strength of the system is that Her Majesty never has to use any of her latent powers.”

As I described here, a non-political head of state, such as Queen Elizabeth II, might intervene if there were a major crisis threatening her country's democracy. The need to negotiate a coalition government, while being an unfamiliar ritual to the British, would not constitute such a crisis. The Queen does not want to decide who the next prime minister will be, if it's at all possible for her to avoid doing so.

As a practical matter, coalition-building would largely involve the Liberal Democrats, and their leader Nick Clegg, deciding to back either the Conservatives or Labour. Some reports have indicated that Gordon Brown's resignation will be the price Labour will need to pay for a coalition. There are hints that Clegg may be willing to work with a successor to Brown, perhaps Foreign Secretary David Miliband, or Ed Balls, the secretary of state for children, schools and families. On the other hand, I don't think that a Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition can be ruled out.

Wonder where the yellow went

2010-05-05T14:00:00.001-04:00

The Liberal Democrats' poll gains seem to be fading away, on the day before the British general election. According to the BBC, that party has fallen back into third place, after having inched ahead of Labour in some earlier polls.

The BBC's "poll of polls" puts the Liberal Democrats three points behind second-place Labour. The numbers are: Conservatives 35%, Labour 29%, and the Liberal Democrats 26%. The Liberal Democrats' high hopes of a second-place (or even first-place) finish seem to be disappearing. If that trend continues, they might not poll much (if any) ahead of the 22.6% they got at the most recent general election, in 2005.

Despite a six-percentage-point Conservative lead, the BBC projects that those poll numbers would equate to only 270 Conservative seats, with Labour winning 272 seats, and 79 for the Liberal Democrats.

But, even if the Liberal Democrats merely replicate their 2005 total of 62 seats, they would still hold the balance of power in a "hung Parliament".

The BBC page with its seat projections includes an interactive calculator to vary those projections based on any hypothetical split of the vote. According to that application, the Conservatives would need to gain an additional 3.2 percentage points at the expense of Labour (i.e., up to 38.2%), in order to establish a razor-thin overall majority.

The headline on this post applies an old toothpaste slogan to the official color of the Liberal Democrats. They are yellow, in contrast to the Conservatives' blue, and Labour's red.

May 4 Primary Results

2010-05-05T10:50:00.000-04:00

No surprises in yesterday's primaries for senator and governor.

INDIANA -- SENATE

Former Senator Dan Coats easily won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Coats got 39%, to 29% for state Senator Marlin Stutzman, and 23% for former Congressman John Hostettler. Observers had called this primary a race between three factions: Coats representing the Washington GOP establishment, Stutzman as the Tea Party candidate, and Hostettler as libertarian. Perhaps an oversimplification, but there seems to be a good deal of truth in that analysis.

The state's Democratic Central Committee will meet on May 15 to choose the Democratic candidate. They are expected to nominate Congressman Brad Ellsworth.

Polls reported by Real Clear Politics for the general election matchup show Coats leading Ellsworth by double-digit margins.

NORTH CAROLINA -- SENATE

There will be a runoff primary for the Democratic nomination. North Carolina's Secretary of State Elaine Marshall got 36%, to 27% for her main opponent, former state Senator Cal Cunningham.

State law sets 40% as the threshold for nomination; because no candidate reached that mark, there will be a runoff on June 22.

Incumbent Republican Senator Richard Burr won his party's primary with 80% of the vote.

Real Clear Politics reports polls showing Burr comfortably ahead of both of the remaining Democratic candidates.

OHIO -- SENATE

As expected, Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher easily defeated Ohio's Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, by a margin of 55% to 45%, in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

Former Congressman Rob Portman was unopposed for the Republican nomination.

Polls indicate a close contest in the general election, according to Real Clear Politics.

Republicans had done very well in Ohio until recent years. Republican Mike DeWine won a U.S. Senate seat in the GOP landslide of 1994. Then, George Voinovich was elected to succeed Democratic Senator John Glenn, in 1998. Voinovich and his fellow Republican, Bob Taft II, between them held the governorship from 1991 to 2007. Then, Taft's approval ratings fell to single digits, after he pleaded no contest to charges that he had illegally accepted gifts. The Republican brand has been tarnished in Ohio since 2006. In that year, DeWine lost a reelection bid to Democrat Sherrod Brown, and Democrat Ted Strickland was elected governor.

So, in a Republican year, in what has traditionally been a swing state, a high-profile GOP candidate still faces a tough fight.

OHIO -- GOVERNOR

There were no contested primaries. Governor Strickland is in a very tight race with the Republican nominee, former Congressman John Kasich, according to Real Clear Politics.

Tory Momentum?

2010-05-04T16:20:00.000-04:00

Over the past few days, I've read several media reports about the upcoming British general election that state that the Conservative Party (a.k.a. the Tories), and their leader David Cameron, are gaining momentum as election day approaches (day after tomorrow).

But the opinion polls don't show much movement. The Liberal Democrats made a major gain after the first of the three unprecedented televised debates between the party leaders. Since then, the polls have put the Conservatives in the low-to-mid 30s, (in terms of percentage of the overall vote) with Labour and the Liberal Democrats close together in the high 20s.

The BBC projects that, based on its "poll of polls", an average of the results of several surveys, the Conservatives will win 278 seats, which would be the largest total, but well short of the 326 required for an overall majority. That projection puts Labour at 261 seats, with 82 going to the Liberal Democrats.

The reports of pro-Tory momentum sound credible, so I won't be too surprised if the election produces a small Conservative majority. However, it still seems likely that they will win a plurality, but not a majority.

That would put Britain into uncharted waters. Countries such as Germany expect to enter into protracted coalition negotiations after a general election. Those talks can go on for weeks. The British, on the other hand, are used to voting on Thursday and, if they decide to throw out the governing party, seeing the new prime minister move into 10 Downing Street on Friday.

This time, instead of wrapping things up on Friday, the fun might be just beginning.

How is Britain coming to resemble Canada?

2010-05-04T05:00:00.000-04:00

The expectation is still that, when the U.K. votes in its general election on Thursday, no party will win an overall majority in the House of Commons.

That sort of outcome has become standard operating procedure in one of Britain's former New World colonies, Canada.

2000 saw the last Canadian general election in which a party (the Liberals) achieved an overall majority in the House of Commons. Four years later, the Liberals won a plurality of seats, and formed a minority government. Two subsequent general elections followed in quick succession, in 2006 and 2008, in an unsuccessful effort to break that impasse. The Conservatives have led a minority government since 2006.

As I see it, there are close parallels between the circumstances that created that situation in Canada, and those that have led to the expected deadlock in Britain. In each case, the sequence of events has been: 1) a third party makes a significant gain in seats, and 2) the main center-right party experiences a resurgence.

In Canada, the third party is the Bloc Quebecois, which I described in this post. Pro-independence Quebecers left the other parties, and formed their own party at the federal level. Siphoning off votes from the established parties, the Bloc made it more difficult for any party to win an overall majority.

In three elections between 1993 and 2000, that wasn't a problem. The center-right was split, so the Liberal Party could amass a majority, even with the loss of some Quebec seats. But, by 2004, the center-right had united under the banner of a new Conservative Party, and the Liberals lost their majority. Later, they fell from power, as the Conservatives overtook them, albeit short of a majority of their own. As of now, a Conservative minority government elected in 2008 continues to govern.

In the U.K., the ascendant third party are the Liberal Democrats. Formed in 1988, via a merger of the Liberal Party, a once-major party that had long since fallen into third place, with the Social Democrats, a centrist faction that had recently broken away from the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats made steady gains in subsequent general elections.

But, as was the case with the Canadian Liberals, the British Labour Party became so dominant during the 1990s, that they were able to put together large majorities, even while the Liberal Democrats were gaining seats of their own.

Now, the U.K. Conservatives are overcoming their post-Thatcher hangover, and achieving their best poll numbers in many years. However, those poll numbers point to, at best, a small overall majority, and, quite possibly, a plurality of seats that falls short of a majority. Further gains by the Liberal Democrats during the current campaign may well contribute to such a result.

If Thursday's British election plays out that way, the question will become: is the U.K. fated to experience a series of inconclusive general elections, as their friends across the ocean have done?

Senate -- Indiana -- Democratic Primary

2010-05-03T16:35:00.000-04:00

There isn't one.

Tomorrow is primary election day in Indiana but, after incumbent Democratic Senator Evan Bayh abandoned his reelection campaign, the filing deadline came and went, with no other Democrat qualifying to get on the primary ballot. Therefore, the Indiana Democrats' central committee will choose a nominee.

That group is virtually certain to select Congressman Brad Ellsworth, 51, who has represented an Evansville-area district in the U.S. House since 2007. In the Democrats' 2006 landslide, Ellsworth defeated six-term Republican incumbent John Hostettler, who is a candidate in the Republican primary to nominate Ellsworth's opponent in this Senate race.

Ellsworth had previously worked in law enforcement, having been a sheriff at the time of his election to Congress.

Republicans accused Bayh of timing his withdrawal announcement so as to guarantee that party insiders could choose the Democratic nominee, and avoid a primary.

Senate -- Indiana -- Republican Primary

2010-05-03T16:05:00.000-04:00

There are three main candidates in tomorrow's Republican primary in the race to choose the successor to Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, who unexpectedly dropped out of the race in February:

Former Senator Dan Coats, 66. He was in the U.S. House from 1981 to 1989, and the Senate from 1989, when he was appointed to replace Dan Quayle, who had been elected vice president, until 1999. Coats was ambassador to Germany during George W. Bush's first presidential term. After that, he joined a Washington law firm.

Former Congressman John Hostettler, 48. His tenure in the House matched the Republicans' most recent period in the majority. Hostettler was first elected in the Republican landslide of 1994, and he was defeated for reelection when the Democrats regained control of the House, at the 2006 election. Trained as an engineer, he worked in that field before being elected to Congress. Since his defeat, he has worked in publishing.

State Senator Marlin Stutzman, 33. Stutzman, a farmer, has served in the state legislature since 2002, first in the House, and then, since 2009, in the Senate.

Here is a report from The News-Sentinel, a Fort Wayne newspaper, regarding a poll showing a comfortable lead for Coats.

Governor -- Ohio -- Republican Primary

2010-05-03T15:00:00.000-04:00

Former Congressman John Kasich, Republican of Ohio, is unopposed for his party's gubernatorial nomination in tomorrow's primary.

Kasich, 57, represented a Columbus-area district in the U.S. House from 1983 to 2001. When his party took control of that body in 1995, he began a six-year stint as chairman of the House Budget Committee. He had previously served in the state Senate for four years.

After leaving Congress, Kasich worked for several years for the now-defunct investment bank Lehman Brothers. He has also appeared frequently on FOX News Channel.

Governor -- Ohio -- Democratic Primary

2010-05-03T11:15:00.000-04:00

Governor Ted Strickland, Democrat of Ohio, is unopposed in his party's primary, scheduled for tomorrow, for a second term in that job.

Strickland, 68, has been governor since 2007. Earlier, he served 12 years in the U.S. House, representing a district in the southeastern corner of the state, bordering West Virginia. Before entering the political arena, Strickland worked as a psychologist.

Senate -- Ohio -- Democratic Primary

2010-05-03T10:50:00.000-04:00

There is a two-way race in tomorrow's Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Ohio, to choose the opponent of Rob Portman, who is unopposed in the Republican primary. The Democratic candidates are:

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, 53. She was elected to that office in 2006, after having worked in the private practice of law, and as a judge.

Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, 58. He has extensive experience in public office in Ohio, including 10 years in the state legislature, and one four-year term as state attorney general. Fisher has served in his current office since 2007. He twice unsuccessfully ran for governor.

Fisher has a substantial lead over Brunner in polls reported by Real Clear Politics.

Senate -- Ohio -- Republican Primary

2010-04-30T14:55:00.000-04:00

Next Tuesday, May 4, will be primary election day in Ohio. Republican Senator George Voinovich is not seeking reelection. Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, and later governor of Ohio, has represented that state in the Senate since 1999.

Rob Portman, 54, is unopposed in the Republican primary, in the race to succeed Voinovich. Portman has repeatedly jumped back and forth between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

He held some White House staff jobs during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. In 1993, he was elected to the U.S. House, representing a district near Cincinnati. Portman remained in Congress for 12 years, before being appointed U.S. Trade Representative and, subsequently, director of the Office of Management and Budget, in the administration of George W. Bush.

Senate -- North Carolina -- Democratic Primary

2010-04-30T11:10:00.001-04:00

A handful of Democrats are vying in the May 4 primary for their party's nomination to oppose Republican Senator Richard Burr. Two Democratic candidates appear to be the front runners:

Former state Senator Cal Cunningham, 36. He served one term in the state Senate, from 2001 to 2003. A lawyer, Cunningham did a tour of duty in Iraq as an Army reservist.

North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, 64. She was elected to her current office in 1996, after serving four years in the state Senate. In 1996, her Republican opponent was professional auto racer Richard Petty. This is Marshall's second run for the U.S. Senate; she lost the Democratic primary in 2002 to Erskine Bowles, who went on to lose to Republican Elizabeth Dole.

Polls reported by Real Clear Politics show Marshall slightly ahead. There will be a June 22 runoff, if no candidate receives at least 40% of the votes.

Senate -- North Carolina -- Republican Primary

2010-04-30T10:20:00.000-04:00

North Carolina will hold its primary election next Tuesday, May 4. The Republican incumbent Senator Richard Burr is running for reelection.

Burr, 54, was first elected to the Senate in 2004. After John Edwards gave up his Senate seat to run for vice president, Burr defeated his Democratic rival Erskine Bowles, who had been White House chief of staff during Bill Clinton's presidency. Burr had represented a district in the northwestern corner of the state, in the U.S. House from 1995 to 2005.

Burr carries the dubious distinction of being a distant relative of Vice President Aaron Burr. Aaron Burr is one of only two vice presidents to have shot someone while in office. And his episode was much more serious than the hunting accident involving Dick Cheney. Burr's victim Alexander Hamilton, died after his duel with Burr. After leaving office, Burr was charged with treason in connection with a plot to set up a rival republic on the western frontier; he was acquitted.

Richard Burr faces token opposition in the primary from three Republican challengers.

Longevity

2010-04-20T16:40:00.000-04:00

As I noted here, regarding retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and his predecessor, and here, regarding Supreme Court justices generally, people tend to stay in that job for a long time. Unlike most presidential appointees, they are not shuttled out of office with every change of administration.

But longevity in the seat Stevens is vacating has been exceptional. Just coincidence, I suppose, but interesting to a trivia buff like me.

The third-to-last justice in that seat was Louis Brandeis, who was appointed by Woodrow Wilson in 1916. (As an aside, Brandeis was the first Jewish justice, which ties into my discussion of identity politics and the Court, earlier today, on my other blog.) A short-timer by the standards of his two successors, Brandeis was on the Court for almost 23 years.

Brandeis's successor, William O. Douglas, appointed by Franklin Roosevelt, set a record, by serving as an associate justice from 1939 to 1975. After suffering a stroke, Douglas reluctantly agreed to retire from the Court. Stevens has held the seat since being appointed by Gerald Ford in 1975.

The seat that is the second most longevity-prone, by that measure, is that of Anthony Kennedy (Hugo Black 1937-1971, Lewis Powell 1971-1987, and Kennedy since 1988).

The seat with the most turnover is Stephen Breyer's. Still, not much turnover; three justices since 1965: Abe Fortas 1965-1969, Harry Blackmun 1970-1994, and Breyer since 1994. Breyer has one longevity record, which I described here.

Nick Clegg

2010-04-19T12:10:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned yesterday, the Liberal Democrats have been gaining in the polls for the May 6 British general election, ever since their leader Nick Clegg put in a good performance in a televised debate last week. That gives rise to an obvious question: who is Nick Clegg?

Clegg, 43, was elected leader of the Liberal Democrats in 2007. He was first elected to the House of Commons at the most recent general election, which was held in 2005.

Educated at Cambridge, Clegg spent time in two of my favorite places, before and after university. During what the British call a "gap year", before Cambridge, he worked for a while at a bank in Helsinki, the capital of the homeland of my maternal ancestors, Finland. Then, as a graduate student, Clegg studied for a year in my native city of Minneapolis, at the University of Minnesota.

After five years on the staff of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, Clegg was elected to the European Parliament, in 1999. He remained in that legislative body until 2004. The Liberal Democrats have consistently been the most pro-EU of the major British parties, so it's not surprising that their leader has had such close connections with that organization.

Clegg returned to England in 2005 to run for Parliament from the constituency of Sheffield Hallam, in the county of South Yorkshire. That had been considered a safe Conservative seat, until a Liberal Democrat won in 1997, the year of the Conservatives' landslide defeat. The Liberal Democrats have held the seat in the meantime, and Clegg won with 51% of the vote in 2005, as compared to only 30% for his nearest rival, the Conservative candidate.

Clegg quickly moved into a "frontbench" position, becoming his party's Home Affairs spokesperson in 2006. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats were having issues with their leaders.

Paddy Ashdown, a dashing former Marine and spy, led the party from the 1988 merger that formed it, until 1999. Sort of James Bond in politician's garb. The party did well under Ashdown's leadership, winning 46 seats in the House of Commons in 1997.

His successor, Charles Kennedy, had a less military bearing than Ashdown. But he continued the Liberal Democrats' uphill climb, increasing their total to 52 seats in 2001 and 62 in 2005. Kennedy's main opponent was not Labour or the Conservatives, but rather the bottle. As alcoholism led to increasingly erratic performance of his duties, Kennedy resigned as leader in January 2006.

Sir Menzies Campbell, who was deputy leader at that time, was elected to replace Kennedy. Sir Menzies represented a safe pair of hands, but, at the age of 64, many Liberal Democrats considered him to be past his prime. After an unhappy 19 months as leader, Sir Menzies resigned in October 2007.

Over the past few years, each of the British parties has tried turning to a Fresh Young Face when seeking a new leader. It worked well for Labour, after they chose the 41-year-old Tony Blair, in 1994. The Conservatives did less well with the 36-year-old William Hague, in 1997. Whether the Conservatives' current leader, David Cameron, who was 39 when chosen in 2005, can win a general election is very much an open question at the moment.

Despite that mixed record, the Liberal Democrats elected Clegg, who was then 40 years old, in 2007. Early indications are positive, in light of the party's poll numbers. The BBC reports on its website that its daily averaging of poll results has improved further for Clegg, putting his party in second place, two points ahead of Labour. This BBC report indicates that the other major parties have, presumably as a result of those numbers, been increasingly targeting Clegg and his party.

As a footnote, I will describe the candidates' joint television appearances as "debates", because they have so labeled them. However, I have not changed the opinion I explained here, that they are not really debates, but merely joint press conferences.

The Great Debate

2010-04-18T18:00:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday, the U.K. saw an event that was new to their political system: a televised debate between major party leaders during a general election campaign. Most of the speculation before the telecast centered on the leaders of the two largest parties.

David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, is a better television performer than Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who heads the Labour Party. However, Cameron, whose party has been leading in the polls, presumably has more to lose than the embattled prime minister.

No one seems to have considered the impact of the party that is currently the third largest in the House of Commons, the Liberal Democrats, being put on equal footing with their larger rivals. Nick Clegg, who has led the Liberal Democrats since 2007, participated in the debate against Cameron and Brown. There seems to be a consensus that Clegg "won" the debate.

Today, the BBC News website has posted poll results showing a major bounce for the Liberal Democrats. The BBC has average out the results of several polls, and shows the Conservatives in first place with 33%, and Labour and the Liberal Democrats tied for second at 29%. Normally, the Liberal Democrats are well down into third place, somewhere around 20%. In the 2005 general election, they got 22.1% of the vote, 13 percentage points behind Labour.

From the 1850s to the 1920s, the Liberal Party was one of the two major parties in Britain's two-party system, opposing the Conservatives. Liberal support collapsed in the general election of 1924. They continued on, as a minor party, for several decades. Labour replaced them as the Conservatives' main opposition. The Liberals won as few as six seats in the House of Commons in some 20th-century elections.

Their fortunes changed during the 1980s. In 1981, a centrist faction left Labour to form the Social Democratic Party. In 1988, that group merged with the Liberals, and the combined party is now called the Liberal Democratic Party. They were still the third party, but won 62 seats in 2005, more than they held at any time between 1924 and 1983.

In the runup to the current campaign, there was much speculation about the Liberal Democrats' potential role as a coalition partner to either Labour or the Conservatives in the event of a hung Parliament. If the current poll results prove to be more than a fluke, the question will become whether the Liberal Democrats can emerge as the largest party.

The next debate will be Thursday, April 22. We'll see what effect that has on this unexpected story line.

30 Years Ago 13: Playoffs

2010-04-17T20:00:00.000-04:00

What I've been calling the greatest hockey season in history, that of 1979-80, did not end with the American victory at the Winter Olympics, which I described here. The professional season continued, and culminated in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Montreal Canadiens have historically been the most dominant franchise in the National Hockey League (NHL). And the late 1970s constituted one of their most dominant periods. At the end of the 1978-9 season the Habs (Les Habitants is a rough translation of their name into the official language of their province) won the Stanley Cup (the NHL's championship trophy) for the fourth consecutive year. Their won-loss record was 16-3 in those four best-of-seven final series.

20 years earlier, Montreal had won the cup five years in a row. Would they repeat that feat, by winning it in 1980?

In order to accomplish that, they would need to win four rounds of playoffs. The Habs took the first step on April 11, 1980, when they completed a three-game sweep of the Hartford Whalers. Their next opponent: the Minnesota North Stars.

The North Stars had already established themselves as giant-killers, as I described here. But now they had to travel to the most storied venue in their sport, the Montreal Forum, to take on the defending champions.

Undaunted, the Minnesota team won game one of the best-of-seven series, by a score of 3-0, on April 16. Then, 30 years ago today, the North Stars continued their stunning road success, by winning game two with four goals to one for the Canadiens.

Home ice advantage was now with the North Stars, as the teams prepared for games three and four at Met Center, in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington. A comeback after losing the first two games of a playoff series at home is one of the most difficult feats in sports. Could even the legendary Montreal club perform such a miracle?

Narratives

2010-04-14T14:10:00.001-04:00

Republicans and Democrats are gearing up for a fight over President Obama's as-yet-unannounced next Supreme Court nominee. We can, of course, expect strong disagreements about the fitness of any Obama appointee. But the fact that the two sides can't even agree on the history of Supreme Court nominations over the past few decades gives some indication of how stormy the debate might become.

This article in Politico quotes some Senate Democrats as saying that Obama shouldn't even attempt to garner bipartisan support for any nominee:

“I think we need to push someone who would be on the liberal side, on the progressive side, just as Roberts and Alito are on that side,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), referring to Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who were both confirmed in George W. Bush’s administration. “Why do conservatives always get the conservatives, but we don’t get to get liberals? What the hell is that all about?”

Not everyone agrees with Harkin's historical analysis.

On the Power Line blog, Scott Johnson quotes from an article by Stuart Taylor, about why conservatives hardly ever get the conservatives:

One reason why so many Republican appointees have turned out to be more liberal than the presidents who picked them has been the difficulty of getting nominees with conservative paper trails through the Senate.

The point is that many justices who were appointed by Republican presidents have ended up at various places on the spectrum between left-wing and center-right, such as Earl Warren, William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter. But what about Democratic nominees?

Democrats Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman totally remade the Court during their combined 20 years in the White House. But, since then, Republicans have appointed 17 justices, to only seven for the Democrats.

Justices such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, the two who were appointed by Bill Clinton, have been reliably liberal on issues such as affirmative action, LGBT rights, and the status of enemy combatants. However, there are legal theories that are more radical than the positions taken by Ginsburg and Breyer and, presumably, those are the ideas backed by Senator Harkin and likeminded colleagues.

As usual, I believe that the truth lies somewhere between these polarized viewpoints.

On the strategic question regarding the upcoming nominee, the Democrats appear to believe that the Republicans cannot hold all 41 of their senators together to sustain a filibuster against Obama's choice. Unless that person is particularly a lightning rod (a sort of leftist version of Robert Bork), they're probably correct.

John Paul Stevens

2010-04-09T11:40:00.000-04:00

For only the second time since 1939, the Supreme Court seat held by Associate Justice John Paul Stevens is coming open. Stevens announced today that he plans to retire at the end of the Court's current term. He had telegraphed his intention well in advance, so no one is surprised by his retirement.

Stevens, 89, was nearing records for being both the oldest and the longest-serving Supreme Court justice in history. He has made clear that his longevity on the Court has not been based on an ambition to break those records.

The oldest justice was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was 90 years old when he retired in 1932. Stevens would have surpassed that mark, had he stayed on the Court into the early months of 2011.

The longest-serving justice was William O. Douglas, Stevens's predecessor, who was appointed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, and retired in 1975. That was when President Gerald Ford appointed Stevens as an associate justice. Stevens would have broken that record in 2012.

For the second consecutive year, President Obama will appoint an associate justice. As was the case with David Souter's 2009 retirement, the atmosphere in Washington will be slightly less heated than it might otherwise be, because Stevens, although he was appointed by a Republican president, is classified as being part of the Court's liberal wing. Therefore an Obama nominee will not be expected to change the ideological balance among the justices.

However, as we saw with the nomination and confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor last year, there is no longer any such thing as a non-controversial Supreme Court appointment. I doubt that the Senate's unanimous confirmation of Stevens's appointment will be repeated for his successor.

May 6 Election

2010-04-06T09:40:00.000-04:00

Officially revealing what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the "least well-kept secret of recent years", he announced that the U.K. general election will be held on Thursday, May 6.

The public announcement followed the formality of Brown going to Buckingham Palace to ask Queen Elizabeth II to dissolve Parliament and schedule the election, which she, of course, did. Formally, that is her call to make, but the precedent has long since been established that monarchs do not interfere in the making of such political decisions. This was the 15th time during her 58-year reign that the Queen has gone through that ritual. Parliament will be dissolved on April 12, and is scheduled to reconvene on May 18.

The BBC report to which I linked above, describes polls giving the Conservative Party a lead ranging from four to 10 percentage points.

I provided more background on the election here and here.

Hung Parliament

2010-04-05T12:40:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned here, the British refer to a situation where one of their general elections fails to produce an absolute majority in the House of Commons for any single party, as a "hung Parliament". That situation is common in other parliamentary democracies, such as Germany and Israel, but less so in Britain, where it hasn't happened since 1974.

Current polls regarding Britain's next general election, which must be held by June, and will probably be scheduled for May 6, indicate the possibility of a hung Parliament this year.

In recent decades, no party has received over 50% of the total votes cast in any general election. But there is almost always one party that wins a majority of seats in the House of Commons. Britain's "first past the post" electoral system leads to such outcomes.

One trend that contributes to the chance of a hung Parliament this year is an increase in voting for minor parties. Again looking back to 1974, in the first of two general elections that year, the two leading parties, Labor and the Conservatives, between them won 94.2% of the House of Commons seats. By the time of the most recent general election, in 2005, that total had fallen to 85.8%.

The Liberals won only 14 seats in February 1974. That party was rejuvenated in the 1980s, when it merged with a breakaway faction from the Labor Party. The party that emerged from that combination, the Liberal Democrats, won 62 seats in 2005. During that period, there was also increased support for local parties in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. A higher minor-party vote means that either Labor or the Conservatives needs a higher plurality over the other, in order to produce an overall majority.

Polls for the upcoming election show the Conservative Party leading Labor by five to 10 percentage points. For various reasons, many observers believe that a Conservative plurality in that range will produce, at most, a very small overall majority, and possibly no majority at all. Further explanations here and here.

There are two options for governing with a hung Parliament: 1) coalition government; and 2) minority government. See this post and this post for more background on that.

If a Conservative minority follows British precedent, they will not form a formal coalition government with a sharing of Cabinet positions among parties. Instead they are likely to form a minority government, which tends to involve an informal coalition with one or more parties that more or less explicitly agree not to vote to topple the minority government via a no-confidence motion. A Labor minority government in the 1970s had such an agreement with the Liberals, and a Conservative minority government in the 1990s was supported by unionist parties from Northern Ireland.

Last week, nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales made a joint statement about what policy concessions they would seek, if they hold the balance of power after the general election. The party holding more cards than those groups, the Liberal Democrats, has been less open about any such hopes on its part.

American observers should keep in mind two differences from the U.S. system. First, in the U.K., an election result takes effect immediately, without the two-month interim period between an American election and the January convening of Congress. Second, in Britain, a change in control of the lower house of the legislative branch means there is a new Cabinet (including prime minister); that is different than what an American president faces when an election shifts control of the House of Representatives. Under those circumstances, a president must deal with a speaker from the other party, as Bill Clinton with Newt Gingrich in 1995, and George W. Bush with Nancy Pelosi in 2007. That makes things difficult for such a president, but it does not change the leadership of the executive branch.

British elections are customarily held on Thursdays. If it's clear on election night that there's a new majority party in the House of Commons, the outgoing prime minister resigns on Friday, and the Queen immediately appoints the leader of the new majority party as prime minister. The new prime minister moves into the official residence, 10 Downing Street, that same day.

In some parliamentary democracies, the process takes much longer. When a formal coalition government is put together, negotiations can drag on for several weeks.

After that indecisive British election in 1974, Prime Minister Ted Heath spent the weekend trying to form a coalition. He resigned the following Monday, which seemed like an eternity for the British, but, by world standards, it was a quick resolution to such a situation.

Any prolonged period of coalition negotiations would create uncertainty about the leadership of the government departments. The expectation is that the current ministers, from the Labor Party, would stay in office as a caretaker government. Again, that is standard procedure in many countries, but would be a new experience in Britain.

New Blog: Center Right

2010-03-31T14:55:00.000-04:00

I'm launching a new venture.

With increasing frequency, I've been giving in to the temptation to write opinion pieces on this blog. That was not my original plan, which was to describe the political process in a (mostly) non-partisan manner.

As Oscar Wilde once said, "I can resist anything but temptation." So, I am giving in to the urge to continue with opinion writing, but I'm doing so elsewhere.

I have started a new blog called Center Right. I plan to continue writing on this blog, with posts about the political system and its history. But please check out the new blog, on which I'll be concentrating my opinion writing.

Staying in Washington

2010-03-31T14:45:00.000-04:00

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, is reneging on her pledge to resign from the Senate, and will instead complete her current term, which runs until 2013.

She lost her party's primary for governor earlier this year. Hutchison's plan to resign was originally intended to free her up to campaign in that election. When it became increasingly obvious that she couldn't win the gubernatorial primary, she maintained that she would still resign, regardless of the outcome of the primary. Immediately after the March 2 primary, there were signs that Hutchison was backpedalling from her decision.

The senator has made the same discovery that other Washington politicians have made over the years, i.e., that their continued presence in the capital is absolutely vital for the future of the country.

I'm reminded of the late Democratic senator from Minnesota, Paul Wellstone, who, when he was first elected in 1990, pledge to serve no more than two terms. By 2002, it was objectively clear to Wellstone that he was too important to leave the Senate. He was engaged in a tight battle for reelection when he died in a plane crash in October 2002.

Hutchison has not said anything about plans for a reelection campaign in 2012. If she does run, it will be interesting to see whether she faces as strong a challenge as Wellstone did, from Republicans or Democrats or both.

She gets some cover from Republican Senate colleagues, and from her erstwhile opponent, Governor Rick Perry, who have urged her to remain in the Senate. They want a secure hold on all of their current 41 seats, as they seem likely to get up into the high 40s in this year's midterm elections, with a possibility, though not a probability, of regaining the majority they lost in 2006.

Excellent analysis of the health care situation

2010-03-18T14:05:00.000-04:00

I agree with both of the main points in this analysis posted on the Power Line blog by Paul Mirengoff.

First, the rationing of health care services. Resources are always finite, and therefore need to be rationed among consumers. Products and services are, for the most part, rationed by price. That system works so well that we don't tend to think about it very often. In cases where government prevents rationing by price, then one or more of those mechanisms that we usually think of as rationing, must come into play.

In some cases, rationing is achieved by government mandating a certain allocation of resources. For example, in the U.S. during World War II, it was decided that each person would get a certain number of rationing points, documented by government-printed coupons. A purchase of gasoline, or certain types of foods, required a combination of cash and ration coupons. Another example of this type of rationing was the system in the Soviet Union, where the political elite were allowed to shop in well-stocked stores that were off-limits to the proletariat.

A more common method is rationing by standing in line. Those Soviet consumers who were kept out of the elite stores, were limited to stores where shortages were common (unless they traded in "black markets", i.e., those things that are known to the rest of us as "markets"). When they found out through word-of-mouth (nothing so bourgeois as advertising, of course) that a scarce product was available at a certain place, a long line quickly formed. Because prices were set by bureaucratic mandate, rather than supply and demand, the products could not be rationed by price, and were therefore rationed by waiting in line. A similar situation occurred in the U.S. at certain points during the 1970s, when federal price controls prevented the price of gasoline from rising to the market level. Shortages ensued, and we waited in line at the gas pumps.

Something similar has already happened with health care and, as Mirengoff explains, it's likely to get worse if some variation on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid plans is enacted. Various types of managed-care plans that have come into use over the last several years have imposed price controls on health care providers. Have you noticed how the waiting times at the doctor's office have lengthened, and the amount of time the doctor is willing to spend with each of us has shortened? I have, and I can identify with Mirengoff's opening paragraph, because my nonagenarian mother has noticed it too. It stands to reason that, if a physician is being paid less for each performance of a service, he or she must squeeze more work into each day.

Here in America, that type of rationing has not reached the level that's prevalent in the U.K., where the National Health Service puts patients on long waiting lists for procedures that we can have done pretty much immediately in the U.S. Those of us who oppose further American government involvement in health care do not want our country to emulate that practice.

The use of rationing-by-price raises the issue of what to do when people can't afford the price. The twofold answer is to maintain programs to provide services to those who can't afford them, and to improve the earning-power of low-income people. That first goal can be achieved through Medicaid-type programs (but not Medicare-type programs that pay for health care, regardless of whether recipients can afford it on their own). As to the second goal, efforts toward making people more productive, such as reform of the educational system, will bring them higher incomes. I don't see how poor people's situation is improved by restricting the right of those of us who can afford it, to buy whatever medical care we choose to obtain.

I also agree with his analogy to George W. Bush's persistence with his Iraq war strategy, which he pursued long after public support had fallen away. He clearly believed he was doing the right thing. Events of the last three years seem to indicate that, at the very least, he should have increased American troop levels sooner. Aside from that, many of us believe that he never should have invaded Iraq in the first place. Be that as it may, his actions brought about large losses for his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

Similarly, it seems clear that Democratic leaders such as President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi must believe that they are doing the right thing on the health care issue. All indications are that their efforts to push a bill through Congress despite a lack of strong public support for the measure, will adversely affect the Democrats in the elections of 2010 and 2012. I don't think they can be accused of seeking tactical political advantage through these actions. They must really believe in what they're doing.

Head of tiny state

2010-03-18T13:10:00.000-04:00

There is only one absolute monarch left in Europe. He (women are ineligible for this job) rules over an extremely small piece of territory. But his influence is far greater than the population and land area of his state would indicate. And, in a situation that (I believe) is unique among independent states, he is elected by a group of voters, most of whom are from other countries.

That man is Pope Benedict XVI, who, in addition to being the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, is head of state of Vatican City State. Its area is 0.44 square miles, and its population is 826.

According to this article is Slate's "Explainer" column, there is no mechanism for removing a pope from office. Accusations that, several years ago, as an archbishop, Benedict (then known as Joseph Ratzinger) participated in a cover-up of clergy sexual abuse scandals, bring those scandals closer to a pope than ever before. The question is whether he could be forced out of office. Christopher Beam's research indicates that the answer is "no". However, there is precedent (though not in recent centuries) for a pope to resign.

The issue of papal resignation was raised toward the end of the long reign of Pope John Paul II. During the last few years before his 2005 death, John Paul's physical decline led to suggestions that he should retire. As it happened, he died in office, apparently able to perform his duties until he was very near the end.

We'll need to wait and see whether pressure will be brought on Benedict to resign.

Normally, the fate of the head of state of such a small place would not generate this much attention. But, of course, Benedict's dual religious and political role magnifies his importance in world affairs. Joseph Stalin, when confronted with the reality of papal influence, is said to have asked "how many divisions does the pope have?" Stalin's successors leading the Soviet Union found out to their chagrin that, figuratively speaking, a pope can lead a huge army, when John Paul II played a major role in dismantling the European Marxist-Leninist regimes.

U.K. General Election

2010-03-17T10:00:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite times in the political cycle is fast approaching: the next British general election. The BBC sets out a tentative timetable of election events.

Why should an American like me be interested in politics on the other side of the ocean? Of course, events around the world affect the interests of America and Americans, and that's more true of the U.K. than of most countries. But that's not really it.

There are two aspects to my interest in politics: 1) the substance of public policy, how it's made, and its effects on myself and others; and 2) politics as a sport. In other words, I follow congressional debates, wondering what the future of American health care will be as I move further into middle age. But I also speculate about upcoming elections the same way I wondered in the spring of 2009 who would win the Stanley Cup playoff final between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings.

I can watch the sport of foreign elections more lightheartedly than American ones, because, when the politicians involved inevitably screw things up, the foreign ones have less effect on my life. And, with our common language (more or less) and the incomparable British pomp that accompanies certain parts of the process, the U.K.'s elections are toward the top of my list of favorites.

A review of some key elements, many of which I've written about in this blog:

Elections are not on a regular schedule (as, for example, the quadrennial U.S. presidential elections are). Queen Elizabeth decides, based on advice from her prime minister, when to dissolve Parliament and schedule the election (which means, if effect, that Prime Minister Gordon Brown will set the election date). As that BBC report has it, everyone expects him to call the election for Thursday, May 6, one month before the five-year deadline.

The election is for members of the House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament. If one party wins a majority of seats, that party's leader will become prime minister. If no party has an absolute majority, the result is a so-called "hung Parliament". Polls currently indicate that might be the result, which would be the first such occurrence since 1974. More about that in a later post.

As is the case with the U.S. president, the U.K. prime minister is not directly elected. The electoral systems are somewhat similar, in that, in each case, the result is a function of the sum of pluralities in individual sections of the country (states (and D.C.) in the U.S., and parliamentary constituencies in the U.K.) So, the winner is not necessarily the candidate/party with the highest overall vote.

In the U.S., of course, the controversy regarding recounts in Florida of the 2000 presidential vote was compounded by the fact that, even after George W. Bush was found to be the winner of Florida's electoral votes, his opponent Al Gore had a clear plurality of the nationwide popular vote.

The U.K. had a similar result in that indecisive 1974 vote, to which I referred above. While more people voted for Conservative (a.k.a. Tory) parliamentary candidates than for those of the Labor Party, Labor won more House of Commons seats than the Tories (though short of an overall majority). This year, there could be either a repeat of that 1974 result, or a scenario in which the Conservatives get a substantial plurality of the overall vote, but, while they win more seats than any other party, they fall short of an overall majority. Here is an analysis, on the 538 blog, of how the vagaries of British redistricting disadvantage the Conservatives.

The Tories have been ahead in the polls, by fluctuating margins, ever since Brown's popularity started downhill, shortly after he became prime minister, in 2007. Recent polls have shown a relatively narrow lead for the Conservatives, so expectations of a Tory overall majority are decreasing as the election gets closer.

One aspect of British general elections that always gets much comment in the U.S. is that, once the date is set, the campaign will only take one month. Why, then, does an American presidential campaign seem to take forever? There is now a period of about 10 months between the first primaries and caucuses, and the November election day. The vast majority of that time is occupied by the process of the parties nominating their candidates. Once the general election campaign gets underway, it's not that much longer than a British campaign.

In the U.K., each party's candidate for prime minister is its leader, and a party always has a leader in place. That's different from the American practice, which is to nominate candidates 2-4 months before the date of the general election. The Conservatives chose their current leader, David Cameron, in 2005. In a sense, the campaign will have gone on for about 4 1/2 years, by the time election day gets here. And, indeed, the British parties do campaign constantly; it is not, in any meaningful sense, limited to the month immediately preceding election day.

Part of that campaigning takes place in the House of Commons, at the weekly Prime Minister's Questions sessions. The opposition parties' leaders, and backbenchers of all parties, get their opportunity to direct questions at the prime minister. Those debates have gone on between party leaders for about half a century, and have been televised for about 20 years. But apparently that's not enough. This will be the first campaign during which the party leaders will engage in televised campaign debates, similar to those that have been a regular feature of American presidential races since 1976.

That seems superfluous to me, in light of those regular parliamentary debates. But, rightly or wrongly, they didn't ask for my opinion. We'll see what effect they have on the future of that ancient political system.

Bush Nostalgia?

2010-03-09T16:45:00.000-05:00

Stanley Fish, who blogs on the website of The New York Times, recently revisited a topic about which he had written a year and a half ago: the rehabilitation of George W. Bush's reputation. I had reacted to his earlier post here, and discussed similarities between Bush and one of his predecessors.

I've made no secret of my assessment of Bush's presidency, an evaluation that is, on balance, negative. (See this post and this post.)

I think Fish is overreaching in looking for signs of an early revival for Bush. The Minnesota highway billboard to which Fish refers was financed by some local businessmen, as Scott Johnson explains on Power Line. That says nothing about the opinions of any statistically significant part of the population.

But I do believe that, in the long run, Bush will be viewed much more favorably than he is now. Two reasons: 1) other people's criticisms of Bush have not been as measured as mine, and the passage of time will inevitably convince most people that the strongest of those criticisms were exaggerated; and 2) that is what has generally happened with other former presidents.

The case of Harry Truman has been much talked about, including by me, here and here. As to his successors:

Dwight Eisenhower was still popular when he left office in 1961. The first president to be constitutionally term-limited, he could otherwise probably have won a third term. Current opinions of him are generally favorable. Sophisticates among the comedians and other political commentators in the '50s portrayed Ike as genial but not too bright. I think that that view has faded away to a large extent.

Americans generally considered John Kennedy to be a demi-god, for a period of time after his 1963 assassination. An air of martyrdom and fresh memories of his charisma combined to raise his stature to a level far higher than the meager accomplishments of his 34-month presidency would justify. Today, people across the political spectrum generally have a higher opinion of him than I do. But it was inevitable that those opinions would fall back a little closer to earth over time. Allegations regarding adultery and drug abuse have contributed to that trend. Overall, opinion about Kennedy seems to have returned to where it was when he embarked on his ill-fated trip to Texas. His poll numbers had fallen back to a level just a bit above 50%, as he was seen as above-average but not great.

Lyndon Johnson left office under circumstances similar to those of Truman and George W. Bush. He was unpopular, largely because he got the country bogged down in an unpopular war. I've often thought that, if Johnson had done what he did in 1964, and then declined to run for a full term and retired to Texas, I would have a higher opinion of him that I in fact do. During his first year in the White House, Johnson pushed through Congress the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a supply-side tax cut. (The flaw in that analysis is that, had he been a lame duck, LBJ probably would have been less successful with Congress.) There was no good answer as to what to do in Vietnam during Johnson's presidency. But both Hawks and Doves have a case to criticize Johnson for maximizing our involvement in the war, in a way that minimized the chances of accomplishing anything. Emotions about Vietnam have cooled since 1975; as I see it, current opinion about Johnson is somewhat negative, but his critics are nowhere near as hysterical as they were in the late 1960s.

Richard Nixon was always, at best, more respected than loved. He was introverted and uncharismatic. Charismatic presidents such as Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were able to withstand scandals. But Nixon did not have a reservoir of good will to draw on, when the details of Watergate began to emerge into public view. When he resigned in 1974, Nixon's poll numbers were similar to the low ebbs of Truman and Johnson. After lying low for several years, Nixon began to re-emerge as an author and elder statesman during the 1980s. Toward the end of his life (Nixon died in 1994), I was astounded to hear some people say they wanted him back in the White House. I'm not sure how serious that talk was, but it was based on a misunderstanding of the term-limit amendment; Nixon could not have been elected a third time, despite his having ended his second term prematurely. The effects of charisma, or the lack thereof, seem to fade over time. By now, the foreign-policy-genius-Nixon has grown in relation to the unlovable-Nixon.

Gerald Ford was also charisma-challenged. Unlike his predecessor, Ford was a likable guy. But, perhaps if, in his football days, Ford had been a dashing quarterback, rather than a stolid offensive lineman, he would have had more of a hold on the public's imagination. Ford barely lost his bid for a full term in the White House in 1976. Had it not been for the support he lost when he pardoned Nixon in 1974, chances are Ford would have won that election. After a long ex-presidency, Ford was generally admired. By the time of his death in 2006, people had come to see the pardon as a sacrifice for the sake of the national interest. Further proof that ex-presidents are eventually looked at differently than when they were in office.

Time to end this. It's getting long, and historical perspective is less available in relation to more recent presidents. My point in all this rambling is that historical precedents bode well for an eventual improvement in Bush's reputation. But let's not be premature; one billboard does not a comeback make.

Tests

2010-03-05T17:15:00.000-05:00

Article VI of the federal Constitution provides that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." But I think people who are elected to either house of Congress should be required to take an economics test in order to qualify to be seated in Congress. Those who fail (and my guess is that a large number of current members would flunk) would be required to go to school for two years, after which they can try running for Congress again.

Exhibit A is this press release from Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. But responsibility is shared by some other Democrats, including my own junior senator, Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana.

Their premise seems simple. If the federal government is going to spend money to create economic stimulus, those funds should finance work done by American workers. And that's exactly what certain simple-minded senators think.

First problem: products do not tend to be purely American or purely foreign. The Honda that I drive was assembled in the U.S. from parts, some of which are American and some of which are foreign. The same goes for the components of Texas windmills that are at the heart of this controversy. It clearly makes sense for recipients of U.S. government grants to look to whichever suppliers are able to give the best value for money. Restricting the supply chain strictly to American suppliers would inevitably waste money.

Second problem: it makes no sense to try to create American jobs in a vacuum. Globalization is literally a 13-letter word; but, in some people's opinion, it's figuratively a four-letter word. I disagree. Globalization is necessary, in order to allow the concept of comparative advantage to improve the standard of living of Americans and of people in other countries. If we domestically produce those products and services that we can produce with greater relative efficiency, and import products and services in relation to which foreign producers have a comparative advantage, everyone is better off. On the other hand, history shows that countries that cut themselves off from the global marketplace subject their people to extreme poverty. Just ask the average North Korean.

Oh, and that reminds me. Those prospective congressional representatives who are studying economics should be required to minor in history. For example, they should learn how the recession that began in 1929 was turned into a great depression, when American international trade policy was turned in a radically protectionist direction. As we begin to emerge from the recent recession, a new wave of protectionism could produce a similar result.

The philosopher George Santayana famously said that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. " It wouldn't seem fair if all Americans, as well as potential trade partners abroad, were condemned to repeat that history, just because some of our senators are ignorant of economics and history.

Britain's Left Foot

2010-03-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

It's an interesting coincidence that, at this time when the U.K.'s Labor Party might be on the verge of being voted out of power, a man who had a major role in events that followed the last previous ouster of Labor, has died. Michael Foot, who was that party's leader from 1980 to 1983, died yesterday at the age of 96.

Foot was originally elected to the House of Commons in 1945. That was the long-delayed general election that followed the end of World War II in the European theater. A mere two months after London crowds had raised delirious cheers to Prime Minister Winston Churchill on V-E Day, the country gave a landslide defeat to Churchill's Conservative Party. Labor, led by Clement Attlee, had a mandate to implement socialism in the U.K.

Foot was at the forefront of that change. He was a protege of Aneurin Bevan, who, as Minister of Health in Attlee's government, oversaw the creation of the National Health Service, one of many activities that the government took over from the private sector during the late 1940s.

Foot served in the Cabinet under two later Labor prime ministers, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. But he didn't fit in very well with those leaders who were of a more pragmatic bent.

When Callaghan resigned as party leader in 1980, the year after the Conservatives, by then led by Margaret Thatcher, had won a general election, a showdown came about between heavyweight contenders from Labor's leftist and moderate wings. Those candidates, Foot and Denis Healey, respectively, opposed each other in the vote for leader of the Labor Party.

Healey had been Britain's finance minister (chancellor of the exchequer) under Wilson and Callaghan. That put him in the unenviable position of dealing with the economic effects of three decades of socialism. On his watch, the U.K. was reduced to virtual Third World status, when the country needed to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund.

Foot won that contest for the party leadership, which guaranteed that, for some period of time, at least, Labor would quixotically continue on a hard-left path. In 1981, that led a group of prominent Labor moderates (excluding Healey) to leave Labor and form a new party, the Social Democrats. They later merged with the Liberal Party, to form the party now called the Liberal Democrats.

Gerald Kaufman is a Labor politician who, despite having served for several decades in the House of Commons, is no more than a footnote in British political history. But he achieved an immortality of sorts, when he uttered a soundbite that is still widely quoted. He called his party's 1983 general election manifesto (the equivalent of an American party platform) the "longest suicide note in history." Foot fought that election campaign on the basis of extreme-left positions on nuclear disarmament, European integration, and socialism.

The Conservatives won a landslide victory in 1983, winning a House of Commons majority that was about as large as the majority Labor had won in 1945. Those two years can be seen as bookends around the period of British socialism. Thatcher's government privatized many of the industries that had been nationalized by Attlee's government. (The National Health Service is the main exception.)

Foot resigned as leader in 1983 (although he remained in the House until 1992). He was succeeded by Neil Kinnock, who began the process of moving Labor back toward the center. At the general elections of 1987 and 1992, Kinnock managed to shrink the massive Conservative majority of 1983, but not to return his party to power. It would take more radical surgery on Labor's policy positions, including an explicit repudiation of nationalized industry, for Tony Blair, who became leader in 1994, to put the party back in government. That was achieved at the general election of 1997.

If, as the polls predict (although they are volatile), Labor loses the general election that will be held later this year, it seems highly doubtful that that party will take another lurch to the left, as it did 31 years ago.

Foot's obituarists point out that, whether or not one agrees with him on the substance of policy, he was a refreshing throwback to an era that predated political consultants. Obviously, his image, and his rhetoric, were not vetted by consultants and focus groups. That era is probably gone forever.

Zuckerman won't run for Senate

2010-03-03T10:10:00.000-05:00

I wrote in this post that New York doesn't have a Ford in its future. Well, now if turns out that it doesn't have a Zuckerman in its future either.

Media and real estate tycoon Mort Zuckerman announced yesterday that, contrary to much speculation in recent days, he will not run for the Senate seat occupied by Kirsten Gillibrand.

That leaves it unclear who will represent the Republican Party in the special election for the last two years of the Senate term to which Hillary Clinton was reelected in 2006. Rumor has it that Republican former Governor George Pataki might throw his hat into the ring.

Great Casesar's Ghost, It's Perry White!

2010-03-03T09:45:00.000-05:00

The gubernatorial candidates who were nominated in the Texas primary election yesterday, remind one of the comic-book character who was Superman's boss as editor of The Daily Planet. As expected, Governor Rick Perry won the Republican primary, and former Mayor Bill White, of Houston, got the Democratic nomination.

Perry won slightly more than 50% of the Republican vote in a three-way race. That allows him to avoid a runoff primary against the runner-up, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who trailed Perry by about 20 percentage points. The runoff question was the only unresolved issue going into yesterday's vote. Debra Medina, a political novice who represented the Tea Party movement, finished third.

Yesterday, before the results were in, Chris Cillizza, in The Fix blog on The Washington Post website, pointed out that, even if Perry had fallen below 50%, Hutchison would have been under pressure to abandon the runoff. Medina's absence from a runoff contest would presumably only have strengthened the position of Perry, who has also associated himself with the Tea Party faction. Cillizza also discussed the $64,000 question: whether Hutchison will follow through on her pledge to resign from the Senate after the primary. That promise was easy to make, last year, when she thought she was going to win; Cillizza gives some reasons why she might be tempted to renege, now that she has lost the gubernatorial nomination.

White ran up a huge majority against a political newcomer, businessman Farouk Shami, and other Democratic candidates.

In what is shaping up to be a Republican year, in a state where Republicans have increasingly dominated in recent years, the Democrats might have been expected to put up a sacrificial lamb against a proven vote-getter such as Perry. But, as I mentioned here, while White trails in general election polls, Perry's lead is in single digits. White is a political heavyweight, so this race will be interesting to watch as the year goes on.

New York: There's not a Ford in your future

2010-03-02T09:45:00.000-05:00

Turning that old automobile slogan around, former Congressman Harold Ford has decided not to challenge Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in this year's New York Democratic primary.

Ford, who had represented Tennessee in the House, has since moved to New York, and had reportedly been considering a Senate candidacy in his new home state.

That appears to give Gillibrand, who last year was appointed by Governor David Paterson as the Senate replacement for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a clear shot at the Democratic nomination.

Most of the speculation about Republican opposition to Gillibrand centers on media mogul Mort Zuckerman. Zuckerman, 72, is editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report, and publisher of the New York Daily News. He is a political pundit, well known for his appearances on John McLaughlin's TV show The McLaughlin Group. A Senate candidacy would be Zuckerman's first run for public office.

Zuckerman has not declared a candidacy, but might run as an independent candidate in the general election; it seems to be an open question as to whether he would caucus with the Republicans. Apparently, the fact that he is not registered as a Republican voter complicates the possibility of his running in the Republican primary.

Olympic Hockey -- Precedents

2010-02-28T07:36:00.004-05:00

Not to put too much pressure on the U.S. Olympic men's hockey team, which plays for the gold medal this afternoon against Canada, but the U.S. has never failed to win the gold in men's hockey in the Winter Olympics in a year ending in zero.

The first Winter Olympics were held in 1924. The first time they would have been staged in a zero-year was 1940. The 1940 games had been awarded to Sapporo, Japan, but they were cancelled because of World War II. That city had to wait 32 years before getting its chance to host.

The U.S. won the gold medal on home ice in 1960 at Squaw Valley, California, and in 1980 at Lake Placid, New York.

Before 2000 came up in the rotation, there had been a fundamental change in the scheduling of the event. Beginning in 1994, instead of staging the games in leap years, they changed to half-way between leap years. That delayed the next zero-year Winter Olympics until this year.

I hope the U.S. team continues the pattern.

One caveat: Believe it or not, ice hockey was part of the Summer Olympics in 1920 in Antwerp. Apparently, it was a sort of dress rehearsal for the first full-blown Winter Games, four years later. Canada won the gold medal in 1920. But my statement still holds true for the Winter Olympics per se.

UPDATE: Apparently, I got it wrong. It's the team with home ice that wins in the zero-years. Congratulations to Team Canada, who beat the U.S. 3 to 2 in overtime, in one in-****ing-credible hockey game.

Governor -- Texas -- Republican Primary

2010-02-26T16:45:00.000-05:00

I described next Tuesday's Democratic primary here. Now for the Republicans:

The three candidates are:

Governor Rick Perry, 59. He is the longest-serving governor in Texas history, having taken office in 2000, when George W. Bush resigned, after having been elected president. Before that, Perry had won elections for the legislature, agriculture commissioner and lieutenant governor. He started his political career as a Democrat.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, 66. She has served in the U.S. Senate since 1993, when she won a special election to succeed Lloyd Bentsen, who had resigned from the Senate to join Bill Clinton's Cabinet. Trained as a lawyer, she worked in television, served in the state legislature, and worked in the banking business. Hutchison plans to resign her Senate seat after the primary, regardless of the outcome.

Debra Medina, 47. Originally trained as a nurse, she later founded a company providing medical billing services. This is Medina's first campaign for public office.

Perry is well ahead in the polls. Hutchison had apparently hoped that voters would perceive Perry as too far right, and as having been in office too long. But, even though Hutchison has been politically successful in Texas, that state's Republican primary electorate doesn't seem likely to prefer a moderate candidate to a right-winger. That would seem to especially be the case now, when the Tea Party movement is in the ascendant in the Republican Party, and Perry has strongly identified himself with that faction.

On Tuesday of this week, Chris Cillizza in The Fix blog on the website of The Washington Post, analyzed what has gone wrong with Hutchison's campaign. Then, today, The Post published this article about the primary, by Dan Balz.

If that newspaper is surprised by Hutchison's apparent failure, it might be because The Post tends to reflect the Company-town perspective of Washington. They're more familiar with a long-time senator, such as Hutchison, than with a governor, no matter how prominent. Writers working inside the Beltway may well be slow to realize that the voters in a conservative state won't react well to the notion of someone from Washington coming home to take over the reins in their state capital.

Medina's presence in the race might deprive Perry of an overall majority. Texas is one of the southern states that requires a runoff under those circumstances; a runoff would be held on April 13. Medina, who is even more of a Tea-Partier than Perry, was originally considered to be a major surprise factor in the primary. But her candidacy began losing altitude when she declined to dismiss conspiracy theories about American involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Polls for the most likely general-election matchup show Perry leading former Houston Mayor Bill White, the probable Democratic nominee. But it's only a single-digit lead and, if you believe the so-called "50% rule" which Nate Silver describes and criticizes in this 538 post, White might have a chance. While leading, Perry polls less than 50% in all surveys, which, according to that theory, is a death knell for an incumbent.

Between Bush and Perry, Republicans have held on to the governor's office for 16 consecutive years. That's longer than the combined tenure of all Republican governors in Texas history, prior to Bush's 1994 victory over his Democratic predecessor Ann Richards. Democrats hope to break that streak this year, but, while that's not impossible, it still looks like an uphill battle.

Governor -- Texas -- Democratic Primary

2010-02-26T14:25:00.002-05:00

Texas will hold a primary election next Tuesday, March 2.

The main contenders in the Democratic primary for governor are:

Bill White, 55, who was mayor of Houston from 2004 to 2010. He practiced law in that city from 1979 to 1993. White was Deputy Secretary of Energy in Bill Clinton's administration, from 1993 to 1995. He subsequently worked in the energy business.

Farouk Shami, 66, a businessman dealing in hair and skin care products. He is a Palestinian, originally from Ramallah in the West Bank, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1965. This is Shami's first campaign for public office.

White is well ahead in the polls. Here is a report on the website of the Austin American-Statesman, describing a poll earlier this month in which White held a 30-point lead.

Paterson Out of Gubernatorial Primary

2010-02-26T11:00:00.001-05:00

Several reports this morning indicate that Governor David Paterson, Democrat of New York, will withdraw from his party's primary for a full term in the position that he took over, when Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008, after being implicated in a prostitution scandal. Paterson has a budding scandal of his own on his hands, amid allegations that his staff, and perhaps the governor himself, acted improperly in dealing with charges of domestic violence by one of Paterson's aides.

Some months ago, President Obama had failed to persuade Paterson to drop out. But the new scandal has apparently changed the governor's position.

That appears to set the stage for state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to take the Democratic nomination. Cuomo has not officially joined the race, but he has reportedly been considering making a run, and polls indicate that he can win the Democratic primary, and could have done so even if Paterson had remained a candidate.

Former Congressman Rick Lazio, who lost the 2000 Senate election to Hillary Clinton, appears to be the frontrunner in the Republican gubernatorial primary.

30 Years Ago 12: Hyvää Huomenta

2010-02-24T05:00:00.000-05:00

That means "good morning" in the Finnish language. And morning it was, when the U.S. hockey team began their last game at the 1980 Winter Olympics, on February 24, 1980. The opponent was Finland. Yesterday, I set the stage for this game.

Finland led 1-0 after one period. Then the teams traded goals in the second. At 6:30 of the second period, Mikko Leinonen scored for Finland, to re-take the lead by 2 to 1. From there, the game followed a similar pattern to that of the American victory over the Soviet team, two days earlier; the Finns scored no more goals.

Phil Verchota tied it again, when he scored at 2:25 of the third period. Then, Rob McClanahan gave the U.S. its first lead, with a goal at 6:05. For several minutes, the Americans were defending a 3-2 lead. The U.S. "killed" two penalties (i.e., prevented Finland from scoring while the Americans were short-handed), when Neal Broten was put in the penalty box for hooking at 6:48, followed by Dave Christian suffering a similar fate (for tripping) at 8:54.

Then, as the U.S. was trying to hold their lead in the last few minutes of the game, Verchota was penalized for roughing at 15:45. (All of these penalties are two-minute minor penalties.) In hockey lingo, that put Finland on a "power play", and gave them an excellent opportunity to score a tying goal. The ABC network, still getting no cooperation from international hockey officials, had to fit in a television commercial while play was going on.

Perhaps the most unsung of the heroes of that U.S. team was Mark Johnson. He played at the University of Wisconsin from 1976 to 1979, coached by his father, "Badger Bob" Johnson. Despite their close identification with Wisconsin, they were both Minnesota natives, a point important to some of us.

Mark Johnson led the U.S. team in scoring during the 1980 Olympics, with five goals and six assists. He went on to play 11 seasons in the National Hockey League, and is now head coach of women's hockey at his alma mater. Johnson is also head coach of the U.S. women's team at the current Vancouver Olympics.

Back to live TV, and we find out that Finland's power play opportunity had been turned against them. Johnson had performed a somewhat rare hockey feat, by scoring a goal while his team was short-handed. His goal, at 16:25, with an assist from Steve Christoff, put the U.S. ahead by two, which was how the game ended, with a 4-2 U.S. win.

ABC commentator Al Michaels had another soundbite to offer. But his "this impossible dream comes true!" is overshadowed by his "do you believe in miracles?" at the end of the Soviet game. Kind of like Buzz Aldrin's "magnificent desolation" after Neil Armstrong's "one giant leap for mankind".

Later that day, the Soviet Union crushed Sweden, by a score of 9 to 2. So, the U.S. won the goal medal, the USSR took silver, leaving the bronze medal to Sweden, with Finland shut out.

While each player on the top three teams got his own medal, only the team captains were supposed to appear on the stand to symbolically accept the medal for the team, and to hear the winning team's national anthem. American captain Mike Eruzione upset that plan, by waving to his teammates to join him at center stage. Americans, starved for a moment of unabashed patriotism, ate it all up.

Tom Friedman's Narrative

2010-02-23T16:40:00.000-05:00

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has joined the growing chorus of those expressing disappointment in President Obama. Of course, the fact that Obama turned out not to be the second coming of Christ, as so many had expected, was bound to lead to disappointment. As is typical when I read Friedman, I find his particular narrative of the situation interesting, and I disagree with it in some fundamental respects.

Friedman invokes a story from Hebrew scripture. Joseph (he of the technicolor dreamcoat) interprets a dream for the Egyptian Pharaoh who has imprisoned him. According to the Book of Genesis, Joseph tells Pharaoh, "Seven years of great abundance are coming throughout the land of Egypt, but seven years of famine will follow them. Then all the abundance in Egypt will be forgotten, and the famine will ravage the land."

In Friedman's version, the U.S. has experienced not seven, but 70, fat years (since the end of the Great Depression circa 1940), and has now entered into the lean years. The last couple of years have, of course, been lean. Economic growth recently resumed. Time will tell whether the American economy bounces back, as it did after a similarly serious recession in 1981 and 1982. That recovery sparked a quarter century of nearly uninterrupted growth. With the American fiscal situation looking bleak for several years, even before the bulk of the baby-boomer retirements begin to put further strain on Social Security and Medicare, significant work needs to be done, in order to produce another such strong recovery.

In analyzing that fiscal problem, Friedman is totally focused on the budget deficit. A deficit can be decreased in either of two ways: 1) cutting government spending, or 2) raising taxes. He calls Republicans "irresponsible" for not wanting to raise taxes.

I agree that the deficit needs to decrease. But, as I see it, the more important goal is to reduce government spending, regardless of any balance or imbalance in the budget. Whether spending is financed by taxation or borrowing, it takes resources out of the private sector where they could have been used productively. Politicians spending other people's money are never going to allocate resources as efficiently as people handling their own money in free markets.

Certain government functions are necessary. Expansion of government beyond that necessary minimum imperils economic growth.

Apparently, Friedman thinks that taxes have been too low for several decades. He writes that "in these past 70 years, leadership ... has been largely about ... lowering taxes." But data from the federal Office of Management and Budget show that federal taxes as a percentage of gross domestic product have increased from 6.8% in 1940 to 14.8% in 2010. Tom's definition of "lowering" is apparently different than mine.

Friedman resurrects the old "if we can land men on the moon, why can't we ....?" line of argument. He wants to launch an "Apollo program" of "nation-building at home". That gets back to the issue of what the necessary functions of government are. Spending on the Apollo moon-landing program was controversial, but I would argue that it was a necessary component of our Cold War military spending. That doesn't mean we should similarly have the federal government spend large amounts of money on things that are better handled in the private sector.

I was one of those "Republican business types" whom Friedman identifies as having voted for Obama (but it's not true that I had "never voted for a Democrat" in my life). I wasn't looking for an expansion of government. On the contrary, I voted against John McCain because I feared he would continue the program of government expansion on which he and his fellow Republicans had embarked, earlier in the decade. I believed that some time in the wilderness would bring the Republican Party back to its traditional advocacy of smaller government.

That strategy seems to be working. Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, with his "Roadmap for America's Future" has a plan to get entitlement spending under control, and otherwise restrain the growth of federal spending and taxation, while still providing health care and other benefits to those who need them. I prefer that, as an alternative to Friedman's hope that Obama can better package his agenda.

30 Years Ago 11: The Day After

2010-02-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

30 years ago today, Saturday, February 23, 1980, American hockey fans were still celebrating the previous day's victory by the U.S. hockey team over the Soviet Union, at the Winter Olympics.

Later on Friday, the other two finalists in the Medal Round, Sweden and Finland, had played to a 3-3 tie. At that point, the Medal Round standings were as follows:

U.S. 1-0-1 (3 points)
USSR 1-1-0 (2 points)
Sweden 0-0-2 (2 points)
Finland 0-1-1 (1 point)

The schedule for Sunday, February 24, called for Finland and the U.S. to face off Sunday morning, followed by a game between the Soviet Union and Sweden.

An American victory would clinch the gold medal. But, if Finland beat the U.S., it was still possible that the Americans could drop to fourth place, and get no medal at all.

Dozens of Finnish players began playing professionally in North America, in the National Hockey League (NHL), during the 1980s. That country's 1980 Olympic team included a 20-year-old right-winger (in the hockey sense; I don't know anything about his politics) named Jari Kurri, who went on to become the most successful player among that early wave of NHL Finns. The American giant-killers faced another tough challenge.

30 Years Ago 10: Do you believe ... ?

2010-02-22T09:36:00.001-05:00

30 years ago today, the big day had arrived. The U.S. was matched up against the Soviet Union in a hockey game at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid, New York. I set the political context here, and the athletic context here. Now for the game itself:

The USSR scored first, with a goal by Vladimir Krutov at 9:12 of the first period. Then Buzz Schneider tied it for the U.S. at 14:03. The Soviets again took the lead, when Sergei Makarov, Krutov's linemate on the famed KLM line (Igor Larionov was the third) scored at 17:34. As the first period ended, the Americans got the type of goal no team wants to give up, the one that shifts momentum right at the end of a period. And I do mean at the end: Mark Johnson was credited with the tying goal at 19:59.

The Johnson goal prompted an amazing reaction from USSR head coach Viktor Tikhonov. His starting goaltender, Vladislav Tretiak, was generally believed to be the best hockey goalie in the world at that time. Tretiak had only played occasional exhibition games against North American professionals, so there was little hard evidence, but that was the consensus among observers of the sport.

For the last two periods, Tikhonov put in Vladimir Myshkin to replace Tretiak. Such a move is relatively rare in hockey. The Americans had already won a victory of sorts, by sending the great Tretiak to the bench.

For a while, the replacement goalie did OK. The only second period goal came at 2:18, when Aleksandr Maltsev put the USSR back in the lead, by a score of 3 to 2. Things looked good for the Soviets as that lead held up, going into the third period. But, in retrospect, Maltsev's goal was the high-water mark for the Soviet team.

At 8:39 of the third, Johnson scored again, to tie the game at 3 to 3.

Then, exactly halfway through the third period, came what is arguably the most memorable play in the history of American sports.

Mike Eruzione was the old man of the team, at the age of 25, He had played his college hockey at Boston University. Many of his Olympic teammates went on to play in the National Hockey League (NHL), and some of them have their names etched on the Stanley Cup. Eruzione was not among those NHL players; his subsequent involvement in the sport included television work and coaching.

But Eruzione instantly achieved athletic immortality, by scoring a goal at exactly 10:00 of the third period, with assists from Mark Pavelich and John Harrington. The U.S. led 4-3.

Attention shifted to Jim Craig, who played goalie for the U.S. throughout the Olympics. He stopped all of the Soviet shots during the final 10 minutes. Like Eruzione, Craig did not go on to achieve any significant success in the NHL. But Craig is given much of the credit for the American victory. The USSR team had 39 shots on goal, to only 16 for the Americans.

Ken Dryden, a former NHL goalie who was the analyst on the ABC telecast, commented, just before Eruzione's goal, that the U.S. team was relying too much on Craig. Perhaps so, but the results show that Craig was up to the task.

Dryden's broadcast partner was Al Michaels. Michaels, who is mainly known for his football and baseball work, had announced only one hockey game in his life, before the 1980 Olympics. As the final seconds were counted down, Michaels asked "Do you believe in miracles?" He then proceeded to answer his own question: "Yes!" The U.S. had defeated the USSR by a score of 4 to 3.

In the final minute of the game, the Soviet coaching staff made another startling decision; they kept their goalie Myshkin on the ice. Standard hockey strategy under those circumstances, is to pull the goaltender off the ice, and replace him with an additional player at a forward position. If a team is in danger of losing by one goal, it makes little difference if they instead lose by two or more, so it's worth the risk to give them a better chance of scoring a tying goal. I remember some speculation at the time, that the Soviet team had so often been far ahead of their opponents toward the end of the game, that they had no instinctive feel for the proper time to pull the goalie.

For some Americans, the Soviet game was the main achievement. It's often said, probably correctly, that most people carry a faulty memory that it was in that game that the U.S. won the gold medal. But the reality was that the Americans had one more game to play. Their final opponent was a sparsely-populated country next door to Russia, that punches above its weight in hockey. That country is the land of my maternal ancestors: Finland.

30 Years Ago 9: Poised for the Medal Round

2010-02-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

30 years ago at the Winter Olympics, the U.S. hockey team had continued to win, after their upset victory over Czechoslovakia, that I described here.

Their schedule became easier for a while. On February 16, 1980, the U.S. beat Norway by a score of 5 to 1. The Americans followed that up, two days later, with a 7-2 win against Romania. Then, on February 20, the final game of the first round ended with a final score of U.S. 4, West Germany 2.

There were 12 teams in the 1980 Olympic tournament, divided into two divisions. Sweden and the U.S. tied for first in their division, each having won all of their games, except for their tie game with each other. The USSR led the other division, with Finland in second place. Those four teams would therefore meet in the Medal Round, starting on February 22.

Unlike the current structure, there was no championship game. In the Medal Round, the U.S. played the Soviet Union and Finland, in that order, and Sweden faced, first, Finland, and then the Soviets. The gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded based on the number of points (two points for a win, one point for a tie) that each team had won against the three other Medal Round teams.

The Americans got their rematch against the Soviet team that had trounced them in their final exhibition game before the Olympics began. The rematch was scheduled for late afternoon on Friday, February 22, 1980. It was not shown live on American television.

Money had always been a factor in the Olympic Games, both ancient and modern. But the current level of commercialization of the Olympics had not yet taken hold in 1980. Corporate sponsorship accelerated, beginning with the 1984 summer games in Los Angeles. Then, in 1998, the National Hockey League began taking a break during the Winter Olympics, allowing its professional players to participate in Olympic hockey.

The commercial Olympics of the present day are designed as a television event. But, back in the Stone Age of 1980, international hockey officials were still adamant that they would make no accommodations to the needs of the TV networks in the scheduling and staging of Olympic hockey matches.

In Control

2010-02-20T17:00:00.000-05:00

People have differing opinions on things that Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr., said and did between December 2, 1924 and March 29, 1981. Same goes for things he said and did between March 31, 1981 and today, February 20, 2010, when he died at the age of 85.

But, for better or worse, he will always be remembered for the events of March 30, 1981. That afternoon, President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded, in Washington, DC. Vice President George H.W. Bush was away from the capital, on a trip to his home state of Texas. Haig, who had become secretary of state two months earlier, rushed to the White House and told reporters "I am in control here". His meaning was not entirely clear, but he appeared to be incorrectly claiming the next spot in the line of presidential succession, after the vice president.

From 1886 to 1947, the secretary of state was next in line. But the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate were then put ahead of the secretary of state. The rationale was that elected leaders should have higher priority than the appointed Cabinet secretaries. The president and vice president are the only federal officers who are elected by the entire country. However, congressional leaders are elected by representatives from all parts of the U.S., so they can claim an indirect mandate from the American people. And, of course, the president and vice president are also indirectly elected, by members of the Electoral College.

In 1988, Haig again tried to get in control at the White House. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination.

While Haig never became president, he had been, by some accounts at least, a sort of acting president, between May 1973 and August 1974. He replaced Bob Haldeman as White House chief of staff, when Haldeman resigned after having been implicated in the Watergate scandal. With President Richard Nixon spending much of his time on Watergate-related matters, Haig performed much of the work having to do with the regular business of government.

Haig's tenure as secretary of state in the Reagan Administration was cut short, when the president fired him, in June of 1982. Haig had never developed a good relationship with the White House staff. It's not clear whether the lust for power that Haig seemed to show in the wake of the assassination attempt had anything to do with the brief nature of his time as secretary.

For those of us in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, Haig was a former neighbor. He shared with professional basketball player Kobe Bryant the distinction of being an alumnus of Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

Where Republicans will be playing defense

2010-02-19T05:00:00.000-05:00

Looking further into the question I discussed here, whether the Republicans can regain a majority in the U.S. Senate in this year's midterm elections, let's examine individual state contests. Much attention has been paid recently to retirements of Senate Democrats, such as Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Evan Bayh of Indiana, but keep in mind that several senators (and House members, for that matter) from both parties are declining to seek reelection in 2010.

This recent New York Times article identifies four states where Republican Senate incumbents are not running, which represent possible Democratic gains: Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio. I think it's important to look at those states first, because I believe that the Democrats' chances of retaining their majority will increase exponentially with each victory they might win in these states.

KENTUCKY

Two-term Republican incumbent Jim Bunning is retiring. His fellow Republicans had come to see him as less dependable as a politician, than he was as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies and other major league baseball teams.

Two state officeholders are the main contenders in the Democratic primary on May 18: Attorney General Jack Conway and Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo.

A familiar surname shows up on the Republican side. Opthamologist Rand Paul is a son of Congressman Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, who was the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee in 1988, and advocated libertarian ideas in Republican presidential primaries in 2008. The younger Paul has not previously run for public office. Paul's main opponent is another state official, Secretary of State Trey Grayson.

Adam Nagourney, in the Times article noted above, mentions the argument that Paul might be perceived as extremist, which may harm his chances in November, if he wins the primary. But Rasmussen, in recent polls, shows either Republican contender ahead of both of the Democrats, generally by wide margins. That, combined with the fact that Kentucky has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992, does not bode well for the Democrats.

MISSOURI

Christopher "Kit" Bond, who was first elected to the Senate in 1986, is not seeking a fifth term.

Primaries, scheduled for August 3, appear certain to set up a general election contest between Republican Congressman Roy Blunt and Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. Both are part of family dynasties in the state. Blunt's son Matt was governor for one term, from 2005 to 2009. Carnahan's father Mel was governor from 1993 until his death in a plane crash in 2000. Her mother Jean was appointed to Missouri's other U.S. Senate seat in 2001. Mel had been campaigning for the Senate when he died, and when the voters elected him posthumously, the seat was declared vacant, leading the way to his widow's appointment. In 2002, Jean Carnahan lost a special election for the remainder of the Senate term.

Blunt has a slight lead in recent polls reported by Real Clear Politics. So a Democratic gain is possible.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Republican Judd Gregg, senator since 1993, after what I consider a rather bizarre flirtation with the Obama Administration, withdrew from the campaign.

The current front-runners to replace Gregg are Republican Kelly Ayotte, a former state attorney general, and Democratic Representative Paul Hodes.

Ayotte leads in polls reported by Real Clear Politics. Her lead is not overwhelming, so, again, a Democratic gain is possible. New England, formerly a Republican stronghold, now strongly favors the Democratic Party. New Hampshire had been a holdout against that trend, but Democrats have made recent gains there, too. The question is whether that Democratic trend will continue in what's shaping up to be a Republican year.

OHIO

Republican incumbent George Voinovich is not running for a third term. His party seems certain to nominate Rob Portman as their candidate to replace Voinovich.

Portman represented a district in the Cincinnati area in the U.S. House from 1993 to 2005. He subsequently served as trade representative and budget director in George W. Bush's administration.

In the Democratic primary, to be held on May 4, Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher will oppose Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. Fisher is considered the front-runner, but it could be a close race.

Polls reported by Real Clear Politics show Portman with a small lead over both of the Democratic contenders. Ohio is another state that has been trending Democratic in recent years. After giving Bush its electoral votes by a razor-thin margin in 2004, and thereby clinching his reelection victory over John Kerry, subsequent disenchantment with Bush, and scandals in state government, have eroded Republican support. Of these four states, Ohio is probably the place where the Democrats have their best chance to gain a Senate seat.

If Republicans hold all four of these seats, they still need to gain 10 seats elsewhere, in order to win a Senate majority. That will be difficult. But to gain 11, 12, 13 or 14 seats in the other states will be very difficult.

30 Years Ago 8: More Geopolitics

2010-02-18T16:00:00.000-05:00

Tom Friedman, in his February 14 column in The New York Times, addresses a point I mentioned here, which is the contrast between the events of 20 years ago, centering around the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and the events of 30 years ago, such as the hostage-taking in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

I decided that I prefer to write about hockey 30 years ago, rather than geopolitics. But, as I noted here, the two are not totally separate issues. The performance of the U.S. hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics took on high symbolic importance in the context of the dark world scene that prevailed at that time.

One comment about the specifics of Friedman's article: He criticizes Ronald Reagan by writing that "Reagan glorified the Afghan mujahedeen" [Muslim militants who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan]. It is correct that Reagan did so, and that that laid the groundwork for networks of Islamist terrorists, including Osama Bin-Laden, to subsequently attack the U.S. and other Western countries. However, two caveats need to be mentioned:

First, American support for the majahedeen was initiated by Jimmy Carter's administration. There is a marvelous piece of video in the CNN miniseries "The Cold War", showing Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, looking almost James Bond-like as he exhorts the Muslim fighters to resist the Soviet invasion. Carter, who, as he began his presidency with naive idealism, thought he could negotiate our way out of the Cold War, had, by 1979, belatedly come around to the view that the Cold War was a real war, and that he needed to fight it.

Second, even if we had better appreciated at the time the long-term consequences, I don't see how we could have avoided siding with the mujahedeen. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenarios have repeatedly caused dilemmas for American foreign policy.

A prime example from a bit further back in history is our alliance with Stalin against Hitler during World War II. Many people (especially those on the left) justify that with the notion that Hitler was a uniquely evil tyrant that needed to be stopped at all costs. In this post, I expressed my disagreement with that point of view. A case can be made that Stalin was a worse tyrant than Hitler, but Hitler was more ruthlessly aggressive against other countries, so I agree that our distasteful alliance with Stalin was necessary.

Similarly, I consider the Soviet Union to have represented the greater evil in 1979, and therefore the U.S. needed to construct the necessary alliances to contain Soviet expansionism.

Let's hope that Friedman's dream of returning to the optimistic atmosphere of 1977, after the influence of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Soviet Communist leader Leonid Brezhnev had been eliminated from the Middle East, and when Nasser's successor Anwar al Sadat was willing to go to Jerusalem for a summit meeting with Israeli leaders, can be realized.

Will Mitch McConnell become majority leader in 2011?

2010-02-17T14:33:00.000-05:00

As 2009 came to a close, it seemed clear that the Democrats would suffer some net loss of Senate seats in the 2010 midterm elections. The question was whether those losses would be minor, or would significantly cut into the Democrats' majority. Then, Democratic incumbents in North Dakota and Indiana announced unexpected retirements. And, of course, a Republican won the Massachusetts special election. Now, a significantly reduced majority looks like a best-case scenario for the Democrats, and the talk is about whether the Republicans can return to majority status.

There are currently 41 Republicans in the Senate. A net gain of 10 seats would restore the Republican majority that was lost at the 2006 midterms. They need 51; a 50-50 tie would be resolved in favor of the Democrats by Vice President Joe Biden who, as president of the Senate, is granted a tie-breaking vote by the Constitution.

Gains of 10 seats or more are rare, but not unprecedented. Here is a link to historical statistics on party division in the Senate, from the Senate website. During the 20th century, parties made double-digit gains in the following years:

1980 Republicans gained 12 seats
1958 Democrats gained 16 seats
1946 Republicans gained 13 seats
1942 Republicans gained 10 seats
1934 Democrats gained 10 seats
1932 Democrats gained 12 seats
1920 Republicans gained 10 seats
1910 Democrats gained 12 seats

These numbers might be somewhat distorted, because they don't take into account 1) results of special elections or party-jumping since the previous general election, 2) senators who were elected on third-party tickets, but caucused with a major party; and 3) the effect of new states joining the union. But they give some sense of the rarity of such an event: eight times out of 50 biennial elections.

Next, I'll look at the individual states in which this question will be decided.

30 Years Ago 7: Geopolitical Context

2010-02-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I should follow the lead of the great political blogger Paul Mirengoff, who unapologetically takes time out to write about sports whenever he feels like it. I tend to try to come up with a political angle on a sports story. There are many connections between the two subjects, and I'm often able to link them.

Politics and the Olympic Games are like conjoined twins. And the 1980 Winter Olympic hockey tournament was definitely no exception.

Those games were held three years into Jimmy Carter's presidency. Carter's message attracted many voters early on in his campaign for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination. But that glow started to fade, even before his party's convention. That Democratic wunderkind, then-Governor Jerry Brown of California, won some late primaries, but Carter had already built up an insurmountable lead.

In the 1976 general election, Carter defeated the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford, by a narrow margin. Carter's poll numbers kept dropping during the fall campaign. The electorate was not quite willing to stay with the charisma-challenged Ford, who was still in the national doghouse due to his having granted a pardon to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, shortly after Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal. By the time of Ford's death in 2006, most Americans had come around to the point of view that the pardon had been a courageous act that served the national interest.

There were economic problems during Carter's term. That was the period during which "stagflation" entered the national lexicon. But multiple crises in foreign policy had come to a head during the lead-up to the Winter Olympics.

Carter had taken what many considered to be too passive a stance in reaction to the continuing military buildup by the Soviet Union, a left-wing takeover in Nicaragua, and the overthrow by Islamists of the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran. In part, I suppose that was an overreaction to charges that the U.S. had acted as an aggressor during the Vietnam War.

Then, on November 4, 1979, Iranian terrorists seized the American embassy in Tehran. Dozens of Americans were held hostage for the remainder of Carter's presidency. That was followed, in December of that year, by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the long run, that military adventure was a significant element in the undoing of the Soviet regime, but, as 1979 ended, it seemed as though American power was fading, and the USSR and other adversaries of the U.S. were supplanting us.

The Cold War was colder than at any time since well before Nixon's Beijing and Moscow summits of 1972 (with the possible exception of an international game of "chicken" in which the U.S. and the USSR engaged during the Yom Kippur War of 1973).

So, as the Winter Olympics began in upstate New York, formally dedicated to peace, but with the usual national rivalries involved, Americans were feeling put upon, especially in relation to the Soviet Union. That largely explains the intense interest in a winter sport that had, until then, largely attracted the attention only of those of us in particularly cold regions of the U.S.

Bye Bayh

2010-02-15T19:00:00.000-05:00

A year ago, Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, was considered an up-and-coming power broker on behalf of moderate Democrats. Now, he has dropped out of the race for what would have been his third term in the Senate.

Bayh's predecessor, Republican Dan Coats, is now widely considered to be the front-runner. Coats has not declared his candidacy, but appears to be interested in a return to the Senate.

Coats, 66, spent 10 years representing Indiana in the Senate, after Dan Quayle became vice president in 1989. Quayle had won this Senate seat eight years earlier, defeating three-term Democratic incumbent Birch Bayh, Evan's father.

If the Democratic leadership in Washington had paid more attention to Evan Bayh's centrist perspective at the beginning of the Obama Administration, would both President Obama's poll numbers, and Bayh's reelection chances, be looking better right now?

30 Years Ago 6: Gut-Czech

2010-02-14T16:30:00.000-05:00

Things got no easier for the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, after their opening-game tie against Sweden.

Their next opponent was another perennial European hockey power: Czechoslovakia.

Hockey-Reference.com lists 259 natives of Czechoslovakia who have played in the National Hockey League (NHL). But only one of those players had done so before the 1980 Olympics. That was Stan Mikita, whose family had emigrated to Canada after World War II.

Elite hockey players in Czechoslovakia maintained the amateur status that was then necessary to play Olympic hockey, in a system similar to that of the Soviet Union, as I described here.

That might have created a mismatch against the true amateurs from the United States.

But, as of the end of the first period, the U.S. team was hanging in there. A brother combination who went on to become some of the pioneering Czechoslovakian players in the NHL, tied it for Czechoslovakia at 2-2. Marian Stastny scored at 12:07 of the first, off an assist from his brother Peter.

The U.S. then broke the game open with second-period goals by Buzz Schneider and Mark Johnson. Then, in the third, Phil Verchota and Schneider made it 6 to 2. Both sides scored one more (Rob McClanahan for the U.S. at 10:54 of the third), so the U.S. won by a score of 7 to 3.

In retrospect, it has to be considered one of the top two American victories (don't want to get too far ahead of the story, here) of the Olympics.

People started to, as someone would say on television later on, believe in miracles.

Gordon Brown Goes Alternative

2010-02-12T12:30:00.001-05:00

No, the stuffy former finance guru who is now prime minister of Britain, is not turning himself into the second coming of Kurt Cobain, and entering the alternative rock world. (Although he might be out of job by summer, so perhaps he should consider it.) Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair, who was part of a rock band called Ugly Rumours, as a student at Oxford during the 1970s, might have been more likely to take such a turn.

My much more prosaic meaning is that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed the adoption of an alternative vote (AV) system for elections to the House of Commons. The House voted, earlier this week, to put the question to the electorate in a referendum to be held by October of 2011.

Currently, the procedure for those elections is similar to the way in which most U.S. states hold general elections for representatives and senators in Congress. Each voter votes for one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins, whether or not the winner's total exceeds 50%. (Some southern states hold a runoff election if no candidate has an overall majority.) The British, who, from Her Majesty on down, are fans of horse racing, call that the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system.

The AV system (also known as instant runoff voting) allows a voter to rank all of the candidates in order of preference. For example, if Jeeves, Wooster and Thatcher are running (or, as they would say, standing) for Parliament in a given constituency, a voter might say Jeeves is his first choice, and might rank Wooster second and Thatcher third.

If, on the basis of first-choice votes, Jeeves leads (but with less than 50%), and Wooster and Thatcher trail in that order, Thatcher drops out of the race. The second-place votes of those who voted for Thatcher are awarded to Jeeves or Wooster. One of the remaining candidates will end up with more than 50% and will be declared the winner. If there are more than three candidates, the procedure is repeated, if necessary, until someone gets a majority.

Those with the most at stake are the Liberal Democrats, the third largest party in Britain. At the most-recent British general election, in 2005, the Liberal Democrats received 22.1% of the overall vote, but won only 9.6% of the seats in the House of Commons.

The bulk of the Lib Dem vote is scattered among many constituencies, in most of which they fall behind the two largest parties, Labor and the Conservatives. The other minor parties in the House of Commons don't have that problem. They're regional parties, based in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Their vote in concentrated is a few constituencies, so their percentage of seats is roughly equal to their percentage of the vote.

What would probably help the Lib Dems most would be proportional representation (PR). I described a very pure form of PR, the Israeli electoral system, in this post. Under that system, the British Liberal Democrats would have won 142 of the 646 seats in the House of Commons, rather than the 62 they were actually awarded under FPTP.

But the AV system, if it's adopted, might also help the Lib Dems. It would address the "wasted vote" issue. Voters for whom the Lib Dems are their first choice might be reluctant to vote for a Lib Dem candidate under FPTP. If such a voter has a strong second-place preference for, say, the Conservative candidate over the Labor candidate, she might consider a Lib Dem vote to be wasted, in that it has no effect on the outcome of the Labor v. Conservative contest.

If that person, and other like-minded voters, put a Lib Dem candidate in first place, with Conservative as the second choice, they could register both their Lib Dem preference, and their preference between the two major parties. That might induce more voters to support the Lib Dems, thereby increasing their number of seats, although perhaps still not to a totally proportional level.

Kennedyless

2010-02-12T11:05:00.002-05:00

On December 22, 1960, Senator John Kennedy resigned his seat, having been elected president the previous month. His brother Edward was sworn in to that Senate seat on November 7, 1962, after winning a special election. Aside from that period of less than 23 months, there has been at least one member of that family in Congress, continuously since John Kennedy entered the House of Representatives on January 3, 1947.

Representative Patrick Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island, will bring that streak to an end next January. He has decided not to seek reelection this year.

For the first four years of Patrick Kennedy's time in the House (1995 to 1999), there were three family members in Congress. Ted, Patrick's father, still held the Massachusetts Senate seat. And Patrick's cousin, Joseph Kennedy II, son of the late Senator Robert Kennedy, was a Massachusetts congressman from 1987 to 1999.

No Kennedy is an obvious candidate to carry on the tradition.

President Kennedy's daughter Caroline conducted an unusually public campaign for a gubernatorial appointment to replace Hillary Clinton as senator from New York, after President Obama appointed Clinton secretary of state. Caroline then abruptly removed herself from consideration. So it seems unlikely that she will want to reverse that decision and seek a congressional seat.

Among Patrick's generation, aside from himself and Joe, Joe's sister Kathleen Townsend served two terms as lieutenant governor of Maryland, and lost a gubernatorial election in 2002. But, by now, they seem to have all turned away from the idea of elected office. I'm not sure whether anyone in their children's generation will run for office.

So, a 64-year dynasty comes to an end, at least for the foreseeable future. Not that I'm lamenting its end. I consider a Kennedyless Congress to be better than a Kennedyful Congress. But it's a turning point that deserves to be noted.

30 Years Ago 5: Bill Baker

2010-02-12T05:00:00.001-05:00

30 years ago today, at Lake Placid, New York, going into the final minute of an Olympic hockey game between the U.S. and Sweden, things continued to look bad for the American team. After 59 minutes of the 60-minute game had been played, Sweden led by a score of 2 to 1.

Sweden has traditionally been one of the hockey powers of Europe. Interest in the sport cuts a crazy-quilt pattern through that continent. Sweden, Finland, and what, back then in 1980, constituted Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, were and are the main centers of European hockey. Other northern European countries field national teams, and occasionally see one of their players succeed in the National Hockey League, but their hockey tends to be second-rate.

The 12 teams competing in the 1980 Olympic hockey tournament were split into two divisions. The U.S. would face Sweden and Czechoslovakia within its own division. And if they finished among the top two in their division, they would play two games in the Medal Round, against teams from the other division, which included the USSR and Finland.

Their matchup against Sweden in the opening game was their first major test, and the U.S. team seemed to be failing.

Bill Baker was a 23-year-old defenseman from Grand Rapids, Minnesota. He had been part of two national championship teams at the University of Minnesota, in 1976 and 1979. At 19:33 of the third period, on February 12, 1980, Baker scored a goal against Sweden, to turn a seemingly-certain defeat into a 2-2 tie.

That was Baker's only point (i.e., goal or assist) of the Olympics. But it was a big one. For the first time, things started to look brighter for the red-white-and-blue. They would need to continue to play at a high level, especially in their next game against the powerful team from Czechoslovakia. But, in retrospect, Baker's goal can be seen as the first in a series of miracles.

30 Years Ago 4: A Flop on Broadway

2010-02-09T05:00:00.000-05:00

It's time to continue my description of what I've (subjectively) called the greatest season in hockey (1979-80).

The U.S. was slated to host the 1980 Winter Olympics, at Lake Placid, New York, in February. The Soviet Union had begun to compete in Olympic hockey in 1956. From that year until 1976, the Soviets had on only one occasion failed to win the gold medal. The most recent previous American hosting of the games had been in 1960, at Squaw Valley, California. The Americans had upset the USSR for the gold on that occasion.

It was still true in 1980, that those who played the sport professionally, in the National Hockey League (NHL) or otherwise, were ineligible for the Olympics. The American team was made up of college hockey players who had not, yet at least, turned pro. Their coach also came from NCAA hockey, where he had won the Division I championship in 1979, with his Golden Gophers from the University of Minnesota. That coach was Herb Brooks.

Players from Russia and the other Soviet republics had not yet begun to play in the NHL. They maintained their amateur status according to international rules, by staying home and playing within their own country's system, paid for by the government. There were worldwide complaints that that made them professionals, and therefore it was unfair for them to face off against amateurs from the US, Canada, Finland, and other countries. But they were in compliance with the rules, and they won a lot of gold.

The USSR was, once again, the heavy favorite, as the Lake Placid Olympics approached.

The US team, as was the custom at that time, took a year off from college hockey, to play a series of pre-Olympic games over a period of several months. The climax of that schedule occurred 30 years ago today, when they played the Soviet team at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, the Saturday before the Olympics began.

Once that day was over, it looked as though the Soviet Union's winning streak would continue. The USSR beat the American team by a score of 10 to 3. That game did not count in the Olympic standings, but it did not bode well for the upcoming games at Lake Placid.

Pennsylvania Democratic Committee Meeting

2010-02-07T09:23:00.004-05:00

Here in Pennsylvania, the Democratic State Committee met yesterday in Lancaster. The committee endorsed Senator Arlen Specter for a sixth term in the Senate.

Reporters from The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a cute lead-in to their story about the event. They surmised that many Democrats would wait until hell freezes over, before they would back Specter, who won his first five Senate elections on the Republican ticket. But this weekend, as a major winter storm hit this area, it was close enough for them.

Specter won 77% of the votes (a two-thirds majority is required for endorsement) over Congressman Joe Sestak.

The process is somewhat similar to the Minnesota endorsement procedure that I described here. The party endorsement does not put a candidate onto the general election ballot, but it gives the endorsed candidate greater credibility going into the primary which, in Pennsylvania, will be held on May 18. All indications are that Sestak will still contest the primary, but the endorsement confirms what the polls have been showing, which is that Specter is a heavy favorite.

The Democrats didn't endorse a candidate for governor, in the close multi-candidate race that I described here. Auditor General Jack Wagner won slightly more than 50% of the vote, so he can't officially claim endorsement, but it might turn him into a front runner for the primary. Don Onorato, who is county executive of Allegheny County, the seat of which is Pittsburgh, finished second.

(Some) Clarity in Illinois

2010-02-04T14:10:00.000-05:00

Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois is the Democratic nominee for a full term in that job. Quinn was lieutenant governor to former Governor Rod Blagojevich. Quinn took over the position when Blagojevich was removed from office by the state legislature.

State Comptroller Dan Hynes made a belated concession today. Quinn's margin of victory was less than one percentage point, so Hynes waited a couple of days to see how things would develop.

However, on the Republican side, where the differences is measured in hundreds, rather than thousands, of votes, there is still no clear winner. State Senators Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard could be headed to a recount in their gubernatorial primary.

Minnesota Precinct Caucuses

2010-02-03T10:20:00.000-05:00

Minnesota's political parties held precinct caucuses yesterday. Those neighborhood party meetings get more attention in Minnesota's southern neighbor, Iowa, when they begin the parties' nominating process for president.

In a mid-term election year such as this one, Minnesota's caucuses involve the election of grass-roots party officers, and discussion of issues. And, most importantly for the electoral process, they elect delegates to higher-level party conventions, that endorse candidates for local offices, the Legislature, and Congress. Those delegates also choose another level of delegates, who will vote at each party's state convention.

The biggest election in that state this year is for governor. The Republican incumbent, Tim Pawlenty, is not seeking a third term. Each party's state convention will endorse a candidate for governor. The endorsed candidates do not automatically get on the general election ballot. Primary elections will be held later in the year to officially nominate candidates. But a convention endorsement helps a candidate either win the primary, or fend off a primary challenge entirely.

Straw votes for governor were held at Republican and Democratic (the party is called Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) in Minnesota) caucuses. Those votes are a non-binding survey of opinion about the candidates but, because they are held among the group that indirectly chooses the delegates who will endorse a candidate, they have some value as a predictor of voting at a state convention.

Republicans showed a strong preference for State Representative Marty Seifert (see this post for background on the race). With 96% of the precincts counted, Seifert received 50% of the vote, to 39% for his main challenger, State Representative Tom Emmer. Because Emmer has pledged not to challenge an endorsed candidate in the primary, the straw-poll result gives a strong indication that Seifert will be his party's nominee.

The DFL vote was much less decisive (see background here). With 78% of the precincts having reported, two Minneapolitans are far ahead of the other candidates. Mayor R.T. Rybak garnered 21.8% of the straw vote, to 20.0% for State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

Those numbers don't mean a whole lot, for two reasons:

1. Those percentages indicate that no candidate is anywhere near putting together the 60% supermajority that is needed for endorsement. If, on the first ballot, the leading candidate only has a small minority of the votes, the delegates will continue balloting until a consensus emerges. When that happens, candidates who were front-runners at the beginning of the process might be supplanted by a dark-horse candidate.

2. The heaviest (figuratively speaking) of political heavyweights in the race, former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton, is bypassing the endorsement process, and planning to run in the primary. That guarantees that the party convention in April will not decide the nomination.

Illinois Primary Results

2010-02-03T09:30:00.002-05:00

The phrase "first-in-the-nation primary" is, of course, usually associated with New Hampshire. But, in this year's mid-term elections, Illinois has been the first to vote, having done so yesterday.

For the Senate seat that had been held by President Obama, things went as expected, as I described in this post and this post. Republican Congressman Mark Kirk will face Democratic State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias in the general election.

However, both parties' contests for their gubernatorial nominations were much closer, and the outcomes are still in doubt. I described the candidates in those primaries, here and here.

On the Republican side, the Chicago Tribune at this hour shows State Senator Bill Brady ahead of fellow Senator Kirk Dillard by a margin of 20.3% to 20.2%. Andy McKenna is running third, with 19.3%.

Democratic Governor Pat Quinn leads his challenger, State Comptroller Dan Hynes, 50.4% to 49.6%.

The possibility of a recount looms for both parties. With nine months to go until the general election, they have plenty of time to work that out.

UPDATE: President Obama has weighed in on the Democratic gubernatorial primary in his home state. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Obama has congratulated Quinn, who claims victory, even though Hynes has not conceded.

Line Dance

2010-02-01T15:20:00.000-05:00

Governor Tim Pawlenty, Republican of Minnesota, who is testing the waters for a 2012 presidential candidacy, has written an article for Politico, regarding federal budget issues. Its publication is timed to coincide with President Obama's release of his fiscal year 2011 budget.

Pawlenty describes the massive growth in federal spending over many years, and the recent acceleration in that growth. He then makes several suggestions for cutting back on such spending.

If he goes forward with his candidacy, Pawlenty may be well placed to emphasize that issue. He has not served in Congress, and therefore took no part in the spending binge of the Republicans who controlled the political branches of the federal government from 2003 to 2006. His record as state legislator and governor would give him credibility as a fiscal conservative. And, if those congressional Republicans of that earlier time spent like drunken sailors, their record has been surpassed by the current Democratic-controlled Congress, whose members spend as though their blood-alcohol level were several times the legal limit.

One of Pawlenty's proposals is to give the president the same line-item veto power that most state governors possess. That is the power to veto parts of an appropriation bill, rather than either accepting or vetoing the entire bill.

The federal Constitution, in Article 1, Section 7, Clause 2, provides that:

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated ...

Here, on the other hand, is an example of a line-item veto provision in a state constitution (Pennsylvania):

The Governor shall have power to disapprove of any item of any bill, making appropriations of money, embracing distinct items, and the part or parts of the bill approved shall be the law, and the item or items of appropriation disapproved shall be void, unless re-passed according to the rules and limitations prescribed for the passage of other bills over the Executive veto.

I recall that, during the George H.W. Bush presidency (1989-93), some commentators suggested that Bush press a constitutional challenge by declaring certain line items in appropriation bills to be vetoed. Their point was that they considered the federal constitutional language to be flexible enough to allow for line-item veto, even without the specific language to that effect that appears in state constitutions. It would then have been up to the federal courts to sort the issue out. Bush declined to try that; perhaps, as a certain comedian would have phrased it, he was being prudent.

Bush's successor, Bill Clinton, signed a bill in 1996 that attempted to establish a line-item veto by congressional statute, rather than constitutional amendment. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that statute unconstitutional, rejecting the argument I noted above, regarding the elasticity of the constitutional text.

That case settled the point that introduction of the line-item veto requires a constitutional amendment. Several versions of such an amendment have been introduced in Congress over the years. But the daunting requirements of a two-thirds supermajority in both houses of Congress, plus approval by three fourths of the state legislatures, have kept the concept from becoming reality.

While this issue has perhaps been pushed mostly by Republicans, presidents of both parties who had gubernatorial experience have advocated it. Republican President Ronald Reagan, who earlier had served eight years as governor of California, was one such advocate. As noted above, President Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas for 12 years, was the only president to use the line-item veto, during its short-lived existence in the 1990s.

Pawlenty, like Reagan and Clinton, has been used to having that power as governor, and it stands to reason that presidents and presidential candidates with such experience will be more likely to understand the rationale for the procedure.

It will be interesting to see whether the current concern about deficits and the growth of federal spending will produce the political will in Congress and the states to approve an amendment.

Governor -- Illinois -- Republican Primary

2010-01-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

Tuesday's Republican primary for governor of Illinois is a free-for-all. A Rasmussen poll indicates that Andy McKenna has a slight lead over five other candidates.

McKenna, 53, of Chicago, has never been elected to public office. He was Republican state chairman from 2005 to 2009.

The other candidates, in descending order based on their support in the poll:

Former state Attorney General Jim Ryan, 63. Ryan was attorney general from 1995 to 2003. He was the unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial nominee in 2002. He has a law practice in the Chicago suburb of Naperville.

State Senator, Kirk Dillard, 54, of Hinsdale, which is also in the Chicago area. Dillard, a lawyer, is in his 16th year in the state Senate.

State Senator, Bill Brady, 48, of Bloomington. He has been in the Senate since 2002, having previously served in the state House of Representatives. He finished third in the gubernatorial primary four years ago. Brady is a realtor.

Adam Andrzejewski, 40, of Hinsdale, co-founded a publishing company. This is his first bid for election to public office.

Dan Proft, 37, of Chicago, is a political commentator and campaign consultant. He also has never previously run for office.

The Chicago Tribune has endorsed McKenna.

Governor -- Illinois -- Democratic Primary

2010-01-31T05:00:00.000-05:00

The Democratic primary for governor of Illinois, to be held next Tuesday, February 2, is a two-way race. A Rasmussen poll shows State Comptroller Dan Hynes leading Governor Pat Quinn, 43% to 37%.

Hynes, a 41-year-old Chicagoan, has been comptroller since 1999. He finished a distant second to Barack Obama, in the Democratic Senate primary in 2004.

Quinn, 61, also from Chicago, was lieutenant governor from 2003 to 2009. He became governor when his predecessor, Rod Blagojevich, was removed from office via the impeachment process, one year ago. Quinn had previously served one four-year term as state treasurer.

Here is a Chicago Tribune report on a joint radio appearance by the two candidates. Further proof, if any were needed, that Chicago is one of those places where politics is a contact sport.

Senate -- Illinois -- Democratic Primary

2010-01-30T15:55:00.000-05:00

I described the Republican primary here; now for the Democrats. There is more of a contest than on the Republican side, but the Democrats have a definite front-runner: State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.

Giannoulias, a 33-year old Chicagoan, was elected to his current position in 2006. He has a law degree, has worked as a banker, and briefly played professional basketball in Europe.

Giannoulias was mentioned as a possible appointee to the Senate seat, when Barack Obama resigned from the Senate after being elected president. I presume Giannoulias would not have accepted an appointment from then-Governor Rod Blagojevich, after the governor was arrested in connection with accusations of corruption regarding, among other matters, the Senate appointment. The conventional wisdom was that only someone whose political career was largely behind him, such as Roland Burris, would have taken the risk of accepting an appointment from Blagojevich. Burris currently holds the Senate seat on an interim basis, and is not running in this year's election.

Here is a Rasmussen poll, showing Giannoulias in the lead in the primary, with 31%.

In second place, with 23%, is David Hoffman, 42, who is inspector general in the city government of Chicago.

The third place candidate, with 13% support in the poll, is Cheryle Jackson. She is president of the Chicago Urban League, and was an aide to Blagojevich.

Four More Years

2010-01-28T16:17:00.003-05:00

To bring closure to the story I wrote about here and here, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been confirmed by the Senate for another four-year term in that job, by a vote of 70-30. Not as close as some had expected, but the most negative votes that were ever cast against any nominee for that position.

UPDATE: The Senate has posted the roll call vote. The 30 who voted "no", range all over the political spectrum. Boxer, Sanders and Franken on the left. Grassley and Specter in the center. Brownback, DeMint, et al., on the right.

Senate -- Illinois -- Republican Primary

2010-01-28T12:35:00.000-05:00

The primary elections in Illinois will be held next Tuesday, February 2.

The Republican nominee for U.S. Senate is virtually certain to be Congressman Mark Kirk, 50, who has represented the 10th congressional district since 2001. Kirk is a lawyer, whose career before being elected to the House included the private practice of law, as well as congressional staff work. His congressional district includes northern suburbs of Chicago.

Kirk has a moderate congressional voting record. He scored only 48 on a scale of 100 with the American Conservative Union in 2008. That same year, his "liberal quotient", as measured by Americans for Democratic Action was 55%, compared to an average of 22% among all House Republicans.

This is the Senate seat that Barack Obama won in 2004. Roland Burris, the Democratic interim senator who was appointed after Obama was elected president in 2008, is not seeking a full term.