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Ironman on Generation W
Tweet Share on Facebook December 28, 2005 CommentMy frequent e-mail correspondent Ironman picks up on my latest U.S. News column on lessons of the past 25 years in which I wrote that "in December 1980, Jimmy Carter was serving his last full month in office and Ronald Reagan was president-elect ... Experts preached that America's best days were behind it"—and expands on it. I'm not sure I agree, but I pass it along as interesting:
"It is a truism of American politics that a generation's political attitudes are shaped by the events they experienced in adolescence and young adulthood. The Jimmy Carter post-Vietnam malaise was the informing experience of "Generation W"... those voters born from 1955 to 1966 or so who were too young for the Vietnam draft and had matured before the end of the Cold War.
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Texas Districts: Hold 'em
Tweet Share on Facebook December 28, 2005 Comment (46)Rick Hasen, a law professor who runs the thoughtful and informative electionlawblog.org and who seems to be a Democrat, has an interesting post on Slate as to why Democrats should not wish the Supreme Court to overturn the Texas redistricting.
It's a good, solid contribution. Also, it's not clear that the substitution of the Texas districting proposal ordered by the three-judge federal court in 2001 for the DeLay plan passed by the legislature in 2003 would result in Democrats gaining more than a seat or two. The court plan did follow the contours of the 1991 partisan Democratic design (except for awarding Republicans the two new seats Texas gained in the reapportionment following the 2000 census). Even so, several Democrats held on in 2002 and earlier elections largely because they enjoyed the advantages of incumbency. But they were beaten or chose to retire in 2004. And even in the old districts, the new Republican incumbents would probably hold an advantage. Exception to the rule: Martin Frost, the 26-year incumbent and Democratic leader who lost in 2004 in the 32nd District, which was very different from the 24th District in which he won in 2002.
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Alaskan Senator: Popular or not?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 27, 2005 CommentIn an article in the December 20 Washington Post, reporter Shailagh Murray writes, "[M]any Alaskans take a practical view of [Sen. Ted] Stevens. 'I would not say he's the most popular person in Alaska,' said Gerald McBeath, a professor of political science at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. 'But people are aware of the seniority system and its benefits. It's a very healthy contribution that we receive from the federal government.'"
Reporters are not supposed to put their own personal estimates of a politician's popularity into their articles. So they often quote supposed experts, like this in-state political scientist. But anyone with an acquaintance of political scientists knows that most of them are not particularly expert on local politics. Few politicians would pay them as political consultants. McBeath does appear to have written on Alaska state politics, and so he is probably a better choice as a commentator here than many political scientists would be. Still, his estimate seems faulty to me.
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A bump for Bush?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 27, 2005 Comment (25)Scott Rasmussen's automated poll has George W. Bush's job rating up sharply, from 44 percent on December 19—about where it's been lingering for months—to 50 percent on December 23. By itself this just might be taken for an outlier, but other polls have also showed a significant uptick in Bush's job rating. Mystery Pollster, inclined to regard the first of these upticks as an outlier, has now taken the view that Bush's numbers are up; compare his initial post and his updates. Both are models of intelligent and thoughtful poll interpretation, reading the numbers carefully as they come in.
Few if any polls are going to be taken over the Christmas week, so it looks like Bush will end the year with an uptick. But it's still far from clear that he can make some policy headway off it in 2006.
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Join the Salvation Army
Tweet Share on Facebook December 27, 2005 Comment (20)This is the time of year when many of us sit down and write out checks for charities. One of the most worthy, in my view, is the Salvation Army, as I have written before in baroneblog. Here are two interesting and moving articles by Roy Hattersley, former deputy leader of the Labor Party, about the Salvation Army. Let me quote the concluding lines of Hattersley's Times piece: "I list the volunteers who work the streets at night among the best people I have ever met. I wish that I had the courage and grace regularly to join them. In my inadequacy, I do no more than assert that they are worthy of your support."
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The people of Iraq speak
Tweet Share on Facebook December 15, 2005 Comment (46)Here is a link to the Pajamas Media blog coverage of the election in Iraq, where polls are closing as I write.
For a look at how the voting went in Mosul, my U.S. News colleague Julian E. Barnes has an on-the-ground report.
Here's some more coverage from the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph. It appears that turnout was high—higher than in the January 30 and October 15 elections—and violence low—lower than in January and October.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean may think that victory in Iraq is impossible, but the people of Iraq seem to take a different view. I continue to find it fascinating that so many on the American left are rooting for the failure of democracy and freedom in Iraq. And that many on the left here and abroad agree with Michael Moore that the terrorists are the Minutemen and that they will win. People on the left like to believe that they are the vanguard of history and that they stand for freedom and democracy. On Iraq, because of their hatred of George W. Bush and their disdain for the assertion of American power, they seem to stand on the other side.
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The president speaks and speaks again
Tweet Share on Facebook December 15, 2005 Comment (13)Two more excellent speeches this week by George W. Bush. Once again, Bush admits that mistakes were made and tells how tactics were changed in response. Once again, he argues that he has followed a consistent strategy throughout.
The four speeches he has made on this subject over the past two weeks have clearly moved American public opinion his way. Bush's job approval is up to 42 percent in the www.realclearpolitics.com average, up from 36 percent a few weeks ago.
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Sprawl is the natural human condition
Tweet Share on Facebook December 14, 2005 Comment (17)Robert Bruegmann's book Sprawl: A Compact History has inspired some interesting reviews. One is by the witty architect and architectural critic Witold Rybczynski, who has written many fine books himself. Another is by Joel Kotkin, author of the recent The City: A Global History. Rybczynski and Kotkin reach similar conclusions.
Rybczynski: "It appears that all cities–at least all cities in the industrialized western world–have experienced a dispersal of population from the center to a lower-density periphery. In other words, sprawl is universal. Why is this significant? 'Most American anti-sprawl reformers today believe that sprawl is a recent and peculiarly American phenomenon caused by specific technological innovations like the automobile and by government policies like single-use zoning or the mortgage-interest deduction on the federal income tax,' Bruegmann writes. 'It is important for them to believe this because if sprawl turned out to be a long-standing feature of urban development worldwide, it would suggest that stopping it involves something much more fundamental than correcting some poor American land-use policy.'"
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All the news that's print to fit
Tweet Share on Facebook December 14, 2005 Comment (19)Ken Auletta has a long piece in this week's New Yorker on New York Times Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. "Young Arthur," as Auletta tells us he is often called, had had a bad few past years–the Jayson Blair scandal and the firing of top editor Howell Raines, the backing and then abandonment of reporter Judith Miller, the ham-handed and financially unrewarding takeover of the International Herald Tribune. The company's stock price fell 33 percent between December 2004 and October 2005. Not a very good performance for a man who has the job because his family owns a controlling share of the company. Perhaps the best summary of Auletta's piece comes in a quote. "Gay Talese, who, in the '60s, wrote the definitive history of the Times, 'The Kingdom and the Power,' says, 'You get a bad king every once in a while.'"
One issue Auletta does not address here is whether the increasing (in my view) left-wing bias of the Times is a problem. Young Arthur has made no secret of his own ideological leanings and, Auletta tells us, started off with a determination that no one would exert the control over the newsroom that longtime top editor A.M. Rosenthal did. Rosenthal also worked hard to keep the newsroom's left-wing bias from getting into the paper, with at least some success. Raines certainly did not do so, and the current top editor, Bill Keller, for whose reporting and writing I have the highest regard, doesn't seem to be turning things around. What I think we're seeing at the Times is the self-destruction of a great national institution.
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Executive Pay
Tweet Share on Facebook December 14, 2005 Comment (24)Over the years, I've moved from left to right on most issues. But there are still some issues on which I'm with the left. One of them is executive pay. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that, as the subhead put it, "Compensation Rises Again as CEOs Get Lavish Packages for Coming, Going or Staying" (sorry, subscription required). Here's the bottom line:
Total compensation for CEOs at 1,522 big U.S. companies rose a median of 30% last year to $2.4 million, double the 15% increase for 2003, according to researchers at The Corporate Library in Portland, Maine. The figure includes salary, bonus, restricted stock grants, gains from exercising options and payouts from long-term incentive plans.
