Bob McDonnell: the archconservative revealed

            With Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, Virginians knew that we were getting a social conservative-cum-moderate whose onetime fixation on limiting abortion rights now translates into a focus on ending transportation gridlock and bringing jobs to the state.  But over the weekend, The Washington Post explored a whole new dimension of the former attorney general.

            McDonnell’s master’s thesis, written at age 34 for Regent University (which was at the time called the Christian Broadcasting Network University), laid out a fifteen-point action plan for Republicans to follow to claim the moral and electoral high ground on family values.  Most of them were explicit statements of deep conservatism: pass anti-abortion laws and right-to-life constitutional amendments at the state level; make respect for parental authority and views on covenant marriage (in which it is more difficult to receive a divorce) a prerequisite in considering judicial appointments; gradually transfer responsibility for social welfare programs to community-based groups; use vouchers for housing, education, and medical care; repeal welfare by eliminating “conditional federal funds for family programs.”

            Two of the points deserved to be quoted entirely. Number 8: “Fight any attempts to redefine family by allowing special rights for homosexuals or single-parent unwed mothers.”  Number 9: “Fight the use of federal funds for state sex-education programs or school-based health clinics giving abortion referrals, contraceptives, and family planning.”  He also lamented the fact that Judeo-Christian traditions were not being taught in schools, that women entering the workforce are a detriment to families, and that “government…should prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals, and fornicators.”

            McDonnell has quickly asked Virginians to judge him on his record as a legislator and as attorney general, rather than a strongly-worded piece of academic literature.  In response, his Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds, put out a fact sheet laying out McDonnell’s record.  It includes such instances of voting to extend conscience protections for pharmacy workers dispensing contraception; voting to ban college health centers from distributing the morning-after pill; voting against improving child care training and access to child care for low-income families; voting against a resolution in support of eliminating the gender pay gap; and voting against allowing for local distribution of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families grants.

            To be fair, McDonnell’s apparent sexism and homophobia is not indicative of a typical Virginia Republican.  Democratic Sen. Jim Webb caused a stir in his 2006 campaign when it was revealed that he had written an essay entitled “Why Women Can’t Fight” at age 33.  He succinctly argued that given the horrors of war and the raw endurance needed to train for it, women had no place in the military.  I did not entirely agree with that conclusion, and neither did Webb in 2006.  Normally, such literature would deal a heavy blow to a person’s candidacy, especially if he were a Republican. 

         But, given that national attention was focused on the “macaca” gaffe of Webb’s opponent, George Allen, Webb emerged relatively unscathed.  Since the election, nothing in his voting record—including his support for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination, and the new GI Bill—has shown Webb to be against protecting and expanding the rights of women.

         This begs the obvious question: if McDonnell is elected, will he govern pragmatically and economically like former governor Mark Warner?  Or will he let his anti-tax, anti-social welfare, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual agenda define his administration?  Either way, if McDonnell keeps hammering the moderate-to-conservative Deeds because of his supposed support for the Obama administration’s “liberal” policies, Deeds has every right to question just how centrist McDonnell will be if elected.

GOP senator speaks of a “classical” Constitution

         A nominee for the Supreme Court is anticipated from the White House any day now, and the timing of gay marriage legalizations in the Northeast and Iowa will probably make that issue the first order of business for conservatives on the Judiciary Committee.  No problem, I am sure that whomever Obama picks, she will be able to convey her beliefs with allusions to “equal rights,” “adherence to precedents,” “states’ prerogatives,” and “social norms.”

            But Sen. Jeff Sessions from Alabama, himself a failed judicial nominee from the 1980s and now the ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, gave a somewhat coded answer as to why a judge’s view on gay marriage even matters in the first place.  He said that such attitudes “may reflect the degree to which they think that they’re not bound by the classical meaning of the Constitution, and that they may want to let a personal agenda go beyond what the law said”.

             Classical meaning of the Constitution?  What does that even mean?  He could have mentioned the “original intent” doctrine, but that would have sounded even sillier considering that the Founding Fathers could not have imagined that their plan for government would ever be scrutinized for clues regarding same-sex marriage.  Indeed, marriage is not a constitutional right, but a civil right, meaning it can be taken away by unscrupulous majorities.  Interracial marriage was not legalized by the Court until 1967, unanimously; can you imagine those conservatives screaming about interracial marriage destroying “traditional family values”?

            Which brings us to the word “classical” (or “traditional,” I assume they are interchangeable): he means, essentially, that we should be doing things as they have always been done, without respect to changing social customs or ways of thinking.  But that is the frightening part of conservatism—where would these people like us to stop the clock?  1950, before “activist courts” forced integration on the states?  1910, before women were given the right to vote and before factory workers were protected from grueling workdays?  1800, when life expectancy was forty years, university education was reserved for elites, and there was no high speed Internet?  Does anyone seriously want to go back to the “classical” American days?

            The problem with original intent is that a.) the Founders could only provide, at best, a rough outline of how we should be expected to deal with changes one hundred or two hundred years in the future; and b.) two hundred years of changes have indeed taken place.  Technology, mobility, industry, and education have made us a more tolerant people.  That is why so-called activist courts have broken down barriers (I call it “democratization”) to participation in government and have moved to protect individuals’ liberties.

            Conservatives use the word “traditional” to exclude groups of people who do not fit in their utopian vision of churchgoing, small town, breadwinner-homemaker styles families.  In fact, it was not too far back in our history where “traditional” meant ensuring that white men held power at the expense of everyone else.  Obviously both of these models are breaking down, and with good reason.  “Traditionalism” involves a superiority complex—those who call for it think that their way of life should be forced on everyone else because they think change could be unhealthy.  It is that kind of mindset that gives rise to traditions that we (should) find abhorrent—such as the “separate but equal” doctrine (Plessy v. Ferguson) or that women receive less pay than men (Ledbetter v. Goodyear).

            I hope that Obama’s nominee is respectful of the Constitution, as she will be, and even of “tradition” (whatever that means); but I by no means want today’s bigotry to be codified in a way that restricts tomorrow’s Americans.

Partnership or partisanship?

            Each of our three branches of government has a different guiding principle.  For the judiciary, it is deliberation.  Judges are philosophers of the law, pondering the meanings and implications of statutes; they then privately reach an interpretation that is most beneficial and most just when applied to the general public.  For the executive, it is decisiveness.  With the ability to use the media and the sprawling bureaucracy to set the tone for policy, the executive is expected to listen to input from competing factions; but at the end of the day, he or she alone provides the face of success or failure for a wide array of ceremonial and political duties.

            The legislature is characterized alternately by competition and compromise.  Legislators represent different demographic interests and in order to receive benefits for their constituents they sometimes must strike bargains on issues that would be unpalatable on their own merits.  At the same time, the myriad interests being represented also ensure that the coalitions behind different issues are not always the same.  A friend on matters of the environment today might be an enemy on discussions of infrastructure improvements tomorrow.  The underlying assumption is that while each representative tries to get the most for his or her constituents while caring less about the situation of everyone else, enough similarity among interests exists to form consensus on the important issues.

            What gums up the works for this system is a little factor called ideology: the more rabid the liberal or the more rigid the conservative, the less opportunity there is for consensus and the more we lament “do-nothing” legislatures.  Exhibit A is the near-stalemate that occurred in early February over the stimulus legislation, when only three Republican senators worked to compromise on the massive spending bill.  Immediately, they were castigated for not marching in-step with the white, southern, evangelical elements of their party, and were called liberals and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).  It seems that Republicans don’t recognize moderates because there are so few of them left in their party.

            Exhibit B is the budget catastrophe that recently ended in California.  Three Republican state senators needed to join all of the Democrats in order to reach the two-thirds majority needed to pass a spending bill.  The anti-tax Senate Republicans ousted the minority leader after he supported legislation that would increase taxes.  Virginia faces a similar ideological—in addition to a regional—split between the conservative, anti-tax, anti-gun control, pro-tobacco, pro-death penalty faction and their progressive counterparts.  Like California, Virginia draws district boundaries through the party leadership after each census, which the entire legislature subsequently approves.  The result is that convoluted, non-competitive, “landslide” districts are drawn that are either reliably-Republican or reliably-Democratic.

            A redistricting bill was proposed in the Virginia Senate to establish a non-partisan panel to redraw boundaries, with the Republican-controlled House of Delegates appointing half the commissioners, the Democratic-controlled Senate appointing the other half, and then those people would pick a chairperson.  The Senate unanimously approved of this measure; a House committee voted along party lines to reject it.

            If most districts are controlled by a single party, that means the party primary is the determinant of who gets elected.  When that happens, each candidate tries to out-liberal or out-conservative his or her opponent, resulting in cookie-cutter ideologues on both sides.

            As the national GOP decides whether to soften its ideology on God, gays, and guns in order to invite moderates into their ranks and start winning elections again, the states need to make sure that the people can elect representatives with more nuance.  Moderates, centrists, and pragmatists are hot commodities in politics because they owe allegiance to nothing but their own sensibilities.  Neither side can have all the solutions all of the time, which is why there needs to be a select group of people who can get past the talking points and the name calling to be productive.

            Ironically, people might not be inclined to vote if two moderate candidates are seen to be too similar to make a difference.  But it is usually better to have small movement around the center than to be frozen on the fringe.  Our country’s system lets citizen vote for which candidates represent them, rather than voting only for which party.  That is because we highly value the character traits and personal accomplishments of the individual—someone who can be a catalyst for change, not an impediment.  Virginia has one more year to change the way it draws districts in order to ensure geographic continuity and competitive elections between candidates who seek to form coalitions across party lines.

Phunny Fotos

The Voiceless Majority

In an opinion piece to The Washington Post, Andrew Klavan, a Hollywood writer, asks why conservative ideology never wins out on the big screen.  He claims that in most programming, “American might is sinister, soldiers are criminalized by war, Christians are intolerant and hypocritical, housewives are desperate, corporations are evil, the environment is in mortal danger from wicked man and, in general, something is terribly wrong with mainstream society.” Furthermore, anyone can be blacklisted for downplaying the reality of racism and sexism.  I could not agree more: it is shameful how conservatives have been completely shut into the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court for at least the past decade.  In a country dominated by conservative politicians, conservative religious leaders, and conservative business executives, our culture has somehow marginalized conservative entertainers—when was the last time you saw a movie about two corporations founded by emotionally sensitive soldiers who find love by shitting on the environment together?  (By the way, since conservatives champion the free market, I find it incongruous that he doesn’t accept how the market thrives on the types of shows that supposedly advocate liberal values.)   In that vein, Mr. Klavan’s next movie project admittedly seems  to have all the elements of an ideologically-pure box office smash:

Don’t C*ckblock the Vote

            Nearly every day I check this blog to see a.) how many people come to visit our cozy little corner of cyberspace and b.) by what means they came to click here.  Lately, I have been somewhat bemused at the large quantity of people who were linked to the site after searching on the web for “28th amendment.”  There are, in my mind, three reasons why such high traffic exists: people want to read this website (not likely); people are checking to see if there is an actual 28th Amendment in our Constitution (until I can get ¾ of state conventions to ratify this site [keep writing to your congressmen, people! I know we can do it someday], there is no such article); or, there is some porn/gay porn/bestiality site of the same name (probably the case) whereby people are mistakenly led here.  My apologies to the many horny visitors for that misunderstanding.

            That having been said, consider this formula: if young people are the future, and young people compose the Democratic Party, is the Democratic Party our future?  California Republicans seem to fear so, because they are blocking two bills in the State Assembly that would allow sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to preregister to vote, as well as allow seventeen-year-olds to vote in primaries if they will be eighteen by the general election.  Naturally, since young people tend to be more liberal—and since eighteen- to 29-year-olds prefer Barack Obama to John McCain by roughly two-to-one (with party identification mirroring that margin)—and liberals tend to cling to the Democratic party, Republicans are unsupportive of these measures.  One representative, Anthony Adams, said that “I’m a pretty conservative guy now, but when I was seventeen I was a raging liberal….You start to see problems as you get older. As you get older, you get wiser.”

Those remarks translate to: young, dumb liberals grow into old, wise conservatives.  Of course, liberalism is not exclusively the domain of the young—half the wrinkled heads on the Supreme Court at any given time are bound to bend liberal, as is currently about half of Congress, not to mention the elderly Jewish community in Florida who mistakenly voted for Buchanan in the 2000 election.  Nor is liberalism a sort of naiveté or recklessness with the country’s values: from the liberal civil rights agenda of the sixties to the liberal gay rights agenda of today; from the liberal cause of Medicare to liberal national health care; young people in America expect to be prosperous, healthful, and to respect the color and gender barriers that will continue to be knocked down throughout their generation.  Young people, in supporting these points, are merely looking out for their generation just as every generation has done.  Some of them may agree with the Republican agenda, but all of them have a right to be suspicious of the political party of rich, white men who are trying to block their ability to vote.  Maybe the best measure to supplement voting rights for new registrants is to abolish the requirement to register with one party or the other.

The Republicans’ argument seems to be that young people are not mature enough to pick their representatives, rather than being unknowledgeable about politics.  But the people who are elected are knowledgeable—the voters’ job is to pick the candidate whose agenda on the issues is preferable.  Besides, is the middle-aged conservative who believes that Barack Obama is a racist Muslim less dangerous to the political process than a college student who knows otherwise?  Is it fair that young Barack Obama should be left to resolve the Iraqi war, whereas wise old Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were unable to do so?  And really, what has youthful liberalism ever brought America?  There was 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson’s anarchist scheme that all men are entitled to “life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”; 25-year-old James Madison’s idea that the freedom to practice any religion or no religion should not be infringed upon; seventeen-year-old Benjamin Franklin’s anonymous observation that an honest atheist is superior to a hypocritical holy man.  Thank goodness none of those indiscreet radicals were able to hold positions of power in the American republic.

Certainly older conservatives have more experience with the socioeconomic forces at work in this country, but does that mean that young, idealistic liberals should not have a say in current affairs (which is also the theme of the 2008 campaign)?  As for “seeing problems” when they get older, are issues such as providing the opportunity to marry for gay couples, welcoming immigrants, and supporting health coverage for each American really going to ruin the country when all is said and done?  Young people are living in a country with more freedoms, more people who are of different colors and lifestyles, with better medicine, and with the ability to receive and dispense information faster than any other generation, so it only makes sense to want to improve on that standard of living and to see results quickly.  I suppose most governmental creations do run awry sooner or later: civil rights reform now has to contend with affirmative action lawsuits; Social Security is a broken system; but those reforms were necessary at the time and continue to be necessary.  It is up to the young people to adapt new solutions to the old problems of social and economic injustice.

 

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