Stromata Blog

An Indirect Approach to PBGC Solvency

In 1974 Rep. John Erlenborn (R-Ill.), one of the principal architects of that year’s pension reform legislation, argued in vain against setting up a government agency to insure pension benefits. He offered two objections: first, that empirical studies showed that participant losses from plans that terminated without being able to pay all benefits were insignificant (less than one percent of participants lost anything, and the present value of their average loss was $2,500); second, that an insurance program would create a mechanism for companies to run up large unfunded liabilities, then dump them into the lap of the federal government, giving an impetus to precisely the kind of behavior that ERISA’s minimum funding standards aimed to forestall.

Hardly anybody listened back then. Nowadays Rep. Erlenborn’s points are conventional wisdom, confirmed by the $23.3 billion deficit shown in the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s financial statement for fiscal 2004. The Wall Street Journal has called the PBGC “The Next S&L Crisis” [link for on-line subscribers only]:

The big problem is that the agency, by insuring private pension plans, has created its own moral hazard. Essentially, PBGC is writing a put option for which any private plan that is not fully funded is in-the-money; therefore, exercising the put by dumping liabilities onto the PBGC is attractive. Ultimately, of course, the put is written by taxpayers to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

This slow motion train wreck is almost a perfect re-enactment of the thrift crisis in the 1980s. Back then, the government kept trotting out short-term fixes that deepened the problem until, finally, the thrift industry collapsed, presenting taxpayers with a $200 billion bill. Republicans in Congress are now promising a comprehensive overhaul early next year. They don’t have a moment to spare.

There is a mild degree of exaggeration here. Thanks to patches enacted in 1987, a plan sponsor can exercise its “put option” only if it is bankrupt – not the most attractive of financial strategies. Furthermore, the size of the deficit is somewhat overstated. The PBGC values its liabilities using interest rates of 4.8 to 5.0 percent, compared to 6.5 to 7.5 percent commonly used for FAS 87 valuations in the private sector. A valuation at a standard interest rate would lop several billions off the deficit (though one could counter-argue that FAS 87 assumptions are too sanguine). In any event, PBGC insolvency is not imminent. It has $39 billion in assets and cash outflow equal to only 25 percent of income. The Journal quotes a prognostication, “At the current pace of pension plan takeovers, PBGC could run out of money in 16 years.” Interestingly, when I headed the agency’s Policy and Regulations Department in the mid-1980’s, our staff prepared an estimate of how long the insurance program’s funds would last if then-existing trends continued. The answer was 16 years. That was 18 years ago.

Still, whether or not the PBGC is destined for a future bailout approximating the savings and loan industry’s, its situation promises no good cheer and demonstrates that “moral hazard” is not merely an economist’s shibboleth. In 1974 pension insurance looked like a cheap way to deal with a petty problem. The cure has, however, aggravated the disease.

Loscon Highlights

Were I a more dedicated blogger, I would have posted regularly from Loscon instead of treating it as a vacation. But if Instapundit can occasionally take time off, so can minor participants in the blogosphere like me. Belatedly, then, I present a few notes and comments from last weekend’s convention going.

Loscon was the second convention in a row I’ve attended that has this year exchanged a long-standing home for new digs. Windycon had been 20 years at the Woodfield Hyatt, Loscon eleven at the Burbank Airport Hilton. The former’s transition was smoother. The new Loscon hotel is the LAX Marriott, an imposing structure that seemed to have a little trouble adjusting to the peculiar demands of a science fiction convention. The most visible blunder was Catering’s refusal to believe that fans would really consume the quantities of ice cream ordered for the Friday Night Social. Less than a third of the required amount showed up, leading to a long delay while convention staff raided nearby supermarkets. I was lucky enough to get in early and thus was one of the few to savor the macadamia ice cream provided in honor of Fan Guests of Honor James and Kathryn Daugherty (residents of Maui and other locales). In fact, I was able to eat to satiety and leave while most of the con as still waiting patiently (sort of) in line. Now I know how it felt to be a French aristocrat gazing contentedly upon the starving mob.

The concomm, too, seemed in need of time to adjust its habits. Signage was initially inadequate, though the deficiencies were corrected quickly, and the program book was less useful than it should have been. Among the more conspicuous absences were descriptions of the program items; only not-always-informative titles were printed. Also left out were the locations of the Art Show, Dealers’ Room and Con Suite.

These teething pains did not prevent the convention from being a success, and next year will doubtless be better. We’ll have to see whether the con settles in for as long a run as it enjoyed at the Hilton.

My personal convention was dominated by the Prime Time Party (see below), which came off with only a handful of hitches. The worst was post eventum: the loss of John Hertz’s absinthe spoon. Attendance and the consumption of food and drink were down marginally from last year, probably because some other parties remained open later than in the past. Given that our hidden agenda is to revive the fannish tradition of late night party going, we won’t complain about that development.

Two bits of the rest of the con stand out. One was Mike Glyer’s interview of Author GoH Tim Powers, one of the best sessions with a writer that I have ever seen. Powers’ description of his meticulous approach to constructing a novel, which involves spreading hundreds of note cards across his living room carpet, was hilarious, even if the method is unlikely to be adaptable to households with children, pets or unsympathetic spouses. His current work in progress is set in Pasadena in 1987 and involves the consequences of Einstein’s residence there half a century before. He seemed fascinated to learn during the discussion that the Pasadena Hilton was the site of that year’s Loscon.

A second highlight was a chance to view Finding the Future, an independently produced documentary that was largely filmed at Chicon 2000. After watching the director and his crew swarm about for days, I heard nothing further and had wondered what had become of the project. It was a pleasant surprise to run into the producer at Loscon and be told that there would be a screening Sunday afternoon. (I’ve since learned that it was also shown at Noreascon, but I missed it there.)

The movie melds two subjects: SF fandom – portrayed with more emphasis on its intellectually pioneering spirit than its oddball denizens – and contrasting visions of the future, from the extravagant optimism of Ben Bova through the gloom of Global Warming alarmists. While there are a lot of heads talking (including, for about fifteen seconds, my own), they generally say succinct, interesting things, and the visuals are first rate. The footage gives a good sense of what a Worldcon looks like and is supplemented with inter alia photos of early conventions, rare movie clips and montages of pulp magazine covers.

A number of threads weave ongoing debates. For instance, several clips make a point of the SF community’s fearlessness of the rapid pace of change. Later, a writer avers that a warmer climate wouldn’t be so terrible per se, but it’s just happening too fast.

Although most of the wordage comes from big names – Bova, Lois McMaster Bujold, David Brin, Forrest J. Ackerman et al., there is also screen time for rank-and-file fen. Columbus fan Jim Green, to take one example, gets a couple of appearances, as do Bandit and a fellow I don’t know called “Orange Mike”.

Finding the Future doesn’t yet have a distributor, rendering its Hugo prospects negligible. Still, it’s worth any fan’s while if it shows up at a local con.

Contrary to my wont, I have nothing much to say about Worldcon races this time. The only bid party was for Chicago in ’08. It seemed to go well. At least, Dave McCarty and Helen Montgomery got rid of all of the dozens of hot dogs that they brought along. Any real developments for 2008 or any other year will doubtless come next week at SMOFCon, from which I shall send back a report unless this week’s travel schedule (I’m on the road except for two half days in the office) leaves me too weary to blog.

Addendum: Joe Major informs me that “Orange Mike” is Michael Lowrey, a Midwestern fan and editor of Vojo de Vivo

The Prime Time Party, 2004

No, not the political type of party but the real thing.

At Loscon in 1999, John Hertz, Becky Thomson and I were sitting around not long after midnight lamenting that all of the parties had gone to bed. The normal follow-up would have been to grumble about the degeneration of fandom, then go to bed ourselves. Instead, we resolved to do something about the situation and lingered for several hours plotting the Prime Time Party.

The idea is simple. On Saturday night (or, to be technical, Sunday morning) at 1:00 a.m., we put out food and drink, open our (or, to be technical again, my) door and keep it open until dawn or the departure of the last guests, whichever comes later. The first four editions of the party were well enough received to encourage us to come back this year.

Therefore, if you are present at Loscon 31 next Saturday/Sunday, consider this post an invitation to drop by Room 1744 at the Marriott to engage in fannish conversation, nibble on cheese, chocolate and the occasional vegetable, and refresh yourself with bheer, wine, soft drinks or our irenic Cypriot coffee. We look forward to seeing friends old and new.

For the curious, my main Web site has photos of the 2000 and 2001 parties.

A Tentative Thanksgiving in Washington State

The good news on Thanksgiving Eve is that the recount in the Washington gubernatorial race is complete, and Dino Rossi is the winner by 42 votes. Whether the Democrats will demand further recounting remains to be seen, but it is, for now, a welcome landslide.

The discouraging news is that the county-by-county results spell finis for my former home state’s reputation for high quality political procedures.

Consider these interesting facts: As of noon today, the recount had resulted in only a de minimis change in the initial totals. With 38 of 39 counties, representing 69 percent of the total votes cast, reporting, Rossi’s margin was up by a net of 26 votes. He had gained 722, Christine Gregoire 696. The increases mostly represented ballots that the voting machines failed to tabulate on the first go-round but accepted the second time, plus the effects of minor human errors.

Then came King County. Based on the pattern everywhere else, there should have been about 640 newfound ballots, of which one could have expected Gregoire to receive roughly 58 percent (her overall percentage in the county), or about 370 new votes to Rossi’s 270. Instead, over 900 additional ballots appeared, 62 percent for Gregoire, giving her almost enough to close the gap.

I don’t wish to sound paranoid, but how likely is it that the machine count in King County was that seriously out of line with the rest of the state? Suspicions founded on these quick stats are supplemented by reports of odd goings-on in the counting room. As reported by the invaluable Sound Politics, Republican observers complained repeatedly about refusals to count ballots clearly marked for Rossi, inadequate security for ballot boxes, missing ballots and alterations of ballots by pro-Gregoire election workers. We can expect to learn much more about all this if Rossi vs. Gregoire turns into 2004’s Bush vs. Gore.

The next step, if the Democrats choose to pursue it, is a recount by hand, where the opportunities for partisan “improvement” of the results are far greater than in a machine tabulation. Republican happiness over the apparent outcome thus has to remain a bit tentative. Here is a sobering summing up from Sound Politics’ Jim Miller:

And if Gregoire wins this second recount, will I consider her win illegitimate? Almost certainly yes. Not because of the glitches in the recounts, which at times almost seemed intended to create Republican suspicions, but because of what I have begun to call “distributed vote fraud”, the vote fraud committed by individuals, and made easier by our lax election laws. (I described the problem here and here.)

Here is my guesstimate again. If a Democrat wins a statewide election in Washington by fewer than 100 votes, then their margin almost certainly came from fraudulent votes. If they win by fewer than 1,000 votes, then their margin probably came from fraudulent votes. I can’t prove those numbers are correct, of course, but neither can anyone who disagrees prove that they are incorrect. We simply don’t know how many fraudulent votes are cast in our elections, but we can be almost certain that they benefit Democrats, net.

Wi-Fi Socialism

Today’s on-line Wall Street Journal poll asks, “Should cities offer wireless Internet access to their residents, or leave it to companies?” The question keys off an article [link for on-line subscribers only] that illustrates how far the mentalité of the Journal’s news pages is from its editorial stance. Under the headline “Telecom Giants Oppose Cities on Web Access”, we read:

Dozens of cities and towns across the country are rushing to provide low- or no-cost wireless Internet access to their residents, but the large phone and cable companies, fearful of losing a lucrative market, are fighting back by pushing states to pass legislation that could make it illegal for municipalities to offer the service.

Over the past few months, several big cities – including Philadelphia and San Francisco – have announced plans to cover every square block with wireless Internet access via the popular technology known as Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity. Cities say these plans will spur economic development and help bridge the digital divide, making Web access nearly ubiquitous.

But that's bad news for the large Bell telephone companies and cable operators, who are looking to their digital-subscriber-line (DSL) and cable-modem businesses for growth. . . .

Philadelphia announced during the summer that it would hook up the entire city with Wi-Fi. Its current Wi-Fi service is free, but it hasn’t decided whether that would continue with wider deployment; it may charge a small fee. “There are some very specific goals that the city has that are not met by the private sector: affordable, universal access and the digital divide,” says Dianah Neff, the city’s chief information officer. She says that less than 60% of the city's neighborhoods have broadband access.

However, last week, after intensive lobbying by Verizon Communications Inc., the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a bill with a deeply buried provision that would make it illegal for any “political subdivision” to provide to the public “for any compensation any telecommunications services, including advanced and broadband services within the service territory of a local exchange telecommunications company operating under a network-modernization plan.” Verizon is the local exchange telecommunications company for most of Pennsylvania, and it is planning to modernize the region using high-speed fiber-optic cable. The bill has 10 days for the governor to sign it or veto it.

The Pennsylvania bill follows similar legislative efforts earlier this year by telephone companies in Utah, Louisiana and Florida to prevent municipalities from offering telecommunications services, which could include fiber and Wi-Fi.

Critics denounce this legislative tactic, arguing that the U.S. lags behind other countries in broadband Internet access because the phone and cable companies have been slow to roll out the service in some areas.

“We should be encouraging our municipalities to take a major role in broadband, the way other countries are doing,” says James Baller, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who represents local governments on telecommunications issues.

The article continues in this vein, freely quoting supporters of municipal wi-fi and never suggesting any reason, other than a desire to protect corporate profits, why anyone could oppose so clearly benign a measure. So far as my own self-interest is concerned, I ought to applaud Mr. Baller. If Chicago had free or cheap wireless access everywhere, I could save the $40 a month that I pay Earthlink. What that means, though, is that the city’s taxpayers, almost all of whom have lower incomes than mine, would be subsidizing my Web browsing. The majority of Chicagoans don’t even own computers and have little practical use for the Internet. At this point in time, wi-fi is a luxury good, and paying for it with tax dollars is a bald exercise in redistribution from the poor to the rich.

The day may come when the World Wide Web really is part and parcel of every American’s daily life, like the automobile and the telephone. If so, it will be only after a vast amount of progress beyond the current Stanley Steamer level of broadband technology, progress that won’t occur if wi-fi socialism acts as a prophylactic against profit. If cities had preempted telephone service c. 1900, we would still be dialing numbers on rotary phones, talking to operators and paying a day’s wages to call the next state. I won’t speculate on what city-subsidized cars would be like. If the “digital divide” is truly a great social ill, freezing the status quo is the prescription for making it eternal.

Liberals’ enthusiasm for tax-funded Internet access is just another symptom of the Left’s penchant for good intentions over good sense – and also of its indulgence in fashionable superstitions. Whether or not Al Gore invented it, the Internet is a communications medium, not a panacea for the ills of mankind. Philadelphia will be better off if it spends that $10 million slated for its wi-fi project on police, firemen and garbage collectors while Verizon takes care of getting on-line.

Frank Merriwell’s Fast-Rotating Grave

A very busy week ended with a trip to Albany to join various fellow Yalies in an excursion to Cambridge for The Game. It was not, alas, the finest hour in Yale football history: our fourth consecutive loss to Harvard (the first such streak since 1919-1922) in perhaps the worst-played Bulldog game that I’ve ever been unlucky enough to witness in person. All that one needs to know can be gleaned from the fact that Yale suffered two delay of game penalties in the first five minutes of the first quarter! Has that ever before happened in college football?

The final score was 35-3, but the game wasn’t actually that close. Last year’s defeat was frustrating, because the Yale offense was spectacular (30 first downs, 575 yards of total offense) at everything except scoring (17 points). This year was just dismal, a sad end to what had begun as a promising season. Oh, well, in sports there is always hope for next year, and at least we beat Princeton.

The consolation was plenty of time with people whom I don’t see nearly often enough, including my old friends George and Libby Pataki. George endures the frustration of being the center-right governor of a state whose Republican Party has revived the spirit of Nelson Rockefeller and now devotes most of its limited energy to trying to outbid the Democrats for left-wing backing. A sign of that strategy’s “success” is that the mushy GOP Senate candidate didn’t do even as well as Alan Keyes.

At the moment, the Republican-in-name-only State Senate majority is preparing to override the governor’s veto of a bill increasing the state’s minimum wage by two dollars an hour, a hike of almost 40 percent that constitutes economic masochism. The notion that the government can command employers to pay above-market wages to low-skill workers is a charming delusion. The Left nurtures it out of confidence in the power of planning and distrust of liberty, but what kind of Republican shares those sentiments? One whose ideological forebear was a billionaire shielded by wealth from the facts of economic existence, of course.

Libby meanwhile has undertaken a nonpolitical venture, a fictionalized tour of New York City for young readers. I picked up an inscribed copy for a just-turning-four great-niece and recommend it heartily.

During the traditional after-the-game poker marathon, the players devised what I think is a new concept in betting: a “middle” bet to supplement “high” and “low”. As implemented Saturday night, it was far too convoluted for social play, but I offer a simplified version here:

Middle Bet: Instead of, or in addition to, betting “high” or “low”, a player may bet “middle”. If only one player chooses that bet, he wins one-third of the pot. If two or more players go “middle”, the winner is the one whose best high hand is most nearly equidistant between the best and worst high hands on the table. For example, if five players are in after all betting is completed, the one with the third best high hand (compared to all players, including those who bet “low” or “middle”) is sure to win “middle” if he bet it. If two middle bettors are equally equidistant (e. g., second and fourth with five players in), they split one-third of the pot.

Whether this idea will catch on I don’t know, but it is certainly innovative and forms a nice contrast to, say, the Yale play calling this weekend.

Searching for McCain-Feingold’s Well-Hidden Virtues

[Note to visitors from The Corner: If you want to read about who really won the popular vote in 1960, the pertinent post is here. But feel free to browse wherever you like.]

One might assume that the election season just past would have dimmed liberal enthusiasm for the Free Speech Deprivation Act, otherwise known as “McCain-Feingold”. Senator McCain himself complained noisily that the evils he so hated – big money from fat cats, negative advertising, invasion of the politician/media monopoly on political commentary by bloggers and other members of the uninformed public – did not abate. He attributed the lack of results to the wimpiness of the law’s enforcers, but anyone less brimming with paternal pride could reasonably conclude that the whole enterprise was misbegotten.

Still, when a liberal position becomes blatantly indefensible, we can always count on Al Hunt, the Wall Street Journal’s ambassador from the Loony Left, to defend it. In his column today he declares that “McCain-Feingold Did Its Job” [link for on-line Wall Street Journal subscribers only]. The proof: In Al’s telling, the law succeeded because it actually did nothing at all. So what if the 2004 Presidential election was the most expensive in history, or if billionaires infused cash into the race more freely than ever before, or if the rhetorical tone was slightly less elevated than a fishmongers’ convention. None of that mattered. “The purpose of the McCain-Feingold law was not to reduce the amount of money in American politics; it was to reduce the corrupting influence peddling. It worked.”

I recall hearing quite a bit about other purposes when the law was being debated, but let that pass. What about “influence peddling”? I’m pleased to see that Mr. Hunt believes that it has been eliminated and presume that he will not in the future rail about how the Bush Administration is doing the bidding of its financial backers. I’m surprised that he didn’t notice that a money-heavy special interest group, plaintiffs’ lawyers, effectively selected one party’s Vice Presidential nominee. It was obvious last March that John Edwards would add zero to the Democratic ticket, and he abundantly confirmed that expectation during the campaign, failing to carry not just his home state (56 percent for Bush) but also his home precinct (a 70 percent Bush landslide). If John Kerry had been a free agent, he would undoubtedly have chosen someone else, but he wasn’t, because plaintiffs’ lawyers are the financial bulwark of his party and demanded their man in the number two slot. I can’t think of any pre-McCain instance in modern times of monetary influence being deployed so openly and effectively.

So much for what McCain-Feingold supposedly did. What, in Al’s left-eyed vision, didn’t it do?

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell charged McCain-Feingold meant “the mutual assured destruction of the political parties.”

Instead the Republicans and Democrats flourished, raising more money – well over $1 billion, up about 20% from four years ago, even without soft money – vastly increasing the number of donors, especially small givers, and expanding their support for candidates around the country.

The Republicans had, as it happens, vastly expanded their donor base before McCain-Feingold, and it was clearly in the Democrats’ interest to do the same. Mr. Hunt seems to be suggesting that the party couldn’t recognize its own self-interest without government prodding. Well, that does fit in with his general view that citizens are helpless without Uncle Sam’s benevolent guidance.

With all of its newfound financial strength, however, is the Democratic Party really in better shape than before? One of the most conspicuous features of the campaign was that Senator Kerry didn’t control his own organization or message. A major segment of pro-Kerry (or, more accurately, anti-Bush) advertising came from non-party groups, many of them on the alienated fringe of American politics, and much of the Democratic get-out-the-vote effort fell to the likes of Americans Coming Together, which more or less openly promoted vote fraud. Perhaps the net effect of such support was positive for the Democrats, but for better or worse, the party could do little to influence it. Instead of putting tens of millions of dollars into the hands of the Democratic National Committee, George Soros and his ilk set up their own structures imbued with their own extremism. Official Democrats had little choice but to coordinate as best they could, with the knowledge that many policy options (e. g., an affirmative attitude toward the war effort) were anathema to their much-needed allies.

That the GOP suffered this loss of control to a much lesser extent was due to the comparatively low level of independent pro-Bush expenditures. One can imagine, though, what might have happened in 1996 if McCain-Feingold had been in force then and Richard Mellon Scaife had decided to play Soros by making huge ad buys on a “Vince Foster Was Murdered” theme. Poor Bob Dole’s respectable loss would have turned into a rout and poisoned the party for years to come. One of the great vices of the new electoral regime is that it removes a safe outlet for men with more dollars and anger than sense, viz., soft money, and encourages them to conduct their own independent campaigns. That development undermines the political parties more than the acquisition of more hundred-dollar donors reinforces them.

More important than the fate of political parties is the future of free political discourse. Here, too, Mr. Hunt sees no problem at all.

The soft money ban, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch flatly insisted, “is an infringement on the rights of free speech.”

Perhaps Sen. Hatch can tell us whose speech was silenced this year? There was no shortage of views and counterviews; no points of view were eliminated by McCain-Feingold. The campaign-reform legislation didn’t outlaw speech. What it did say was that overtly political activities in federal campaigns fell under the federal law.

I suspect that a newspaper columnist would grasp the absurdity of his last couple of sentences if their logic were applied to his employer, but he is right about “no shortage of views and counterviews”. Naturally not, since the law did not stifle either political parties or the media; the target of its restrictions on speech was the ordinary citizen who doesn’t have either a party or a network at his disposal. There, happily, the legal barriers proved ineffective, thanks to the ability of “527 organizations” to speak out freely. But Mr. Hunt does not cheer that parade of “views and counterviews”.

The proliferation of the 527s – named for a section of the Internal Revenue code – was fueled by wealthy donors of both sides: Democrats like billionaire George Soros and Peter Lewis and Republicans like Texans Boone Pickens and Bob Perry. This resulted in this year’s toughest attack: the sleazy anti-Kerry swift boat ads and the anti-Bush Media Fund attacks. [BTW, how do the SBVT ads, consisting largely of eyewitness statements, earn the epithet “sleazy” while Moore-like conspiracy theories are merely “anti-Bush”?]

These groups should have been curtailed; it has nothing to do with free speech. The law for more than a quarter-century has said that if the “major purpose” of any group is to affect the outcome of a federal election, it falls under the campaign-finance law and is subject to a contribution ceiling of $5,000. It’s estimated that 80% of the 527s’ funding was from fat cats who gave $250,000 or more.

The problem is the nefarious [sic] Federal Election Commission was unwilling to enforce this law. If it had, there still would have been a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry and a Media Fund against George Bush, but to thrive and grow these groups would have required genuine grass-roots support not the deep pockets of Boone Pickens or George Soros.

Though phrased as an objection to the source of funding of 527’s, the attack is really on their right to speak out at all. If, as Mr. Hunt elsewhere avers, McCain-Feingold took “federal officeholders out of the game; that's where the corruption took place”, it follows that large individual donations to 527’s are not “corrupting influence peddling”. What, then, is wrong with them, except for the fact that they make it possible for groups like the Swifties to get their message out effectively?

What would Al Hunt think of a law that forbade anyone from investing more than $5,000 in a newspaper? Would he accept the argument that it had nothing to do with freedom of the press, since a paper could still be published if it relied on “genuine grass-roots support” rather than “deep pockets”?

McCain-Feingold was not fatal to democracy, because neither regulators nor courts are yet willing to enforce it rigorously. Nonetheless, to the extent that it was applied, it had only detrimental effects: facilitating the entry of extremism into American politics while simultaneously curbing First Amendment rights. Continued advocacy of this system of prior restraint is not rational from anyone’s point of view. Unfortunately, the statute has become a liberal icon. It will, I fear, have to wreak much more damage before the Al Hunts of the world recognize the urgent need for its repeal.

Further reading: As usual, Matthew Hoy’s analysis is worthy of attention.

This Year’s Lesson from Washington State

The State of Washington’s charming image, a compound of mountain vistas, latté shops, Microsoft, mellow ex-hippies and excruciatingly pure, high-minded government, may suffer remaking as the gubernatorial vote count drags on. Today is the official deadline for counties to certify results, but the race between Republican Dino Rossi and Democrat Christine Gregoire (a favorite of the plaintiffs’ bar, whose unstinting support has pushed her forward despite a record of dubious legal competence) is so close that it puts on embarrassing display the slovenliness of the state’s election process and the negative consequences of voting by mail instead of at the polls.

The most attention-grabbing election incidents were the late appearance of some 10,000 “magical mystery ballots” in King County, rescuing candidate Gregoire from what had looked like inevitable, no-recount-needed defeat, and Democrats’ trolling for affidavits from “voters” whose provisional ballots didn’t bear their own signatures. The former may have been the result of incompetence rather than fraud. The latter is, at the very least, disturbing. As recounted by vote fraud expert John Fund (in the subscription-only OpinionJournal Political Diary, just $3.95/month, cheap):

How Many Votes Do I Need? Because I Got’em Here Somewhere

Republican Dino Rossi holds a 19 vote lead out of 2.8 million votes cast as Washington state begins its final day of vote counting to determine if Mr. Rossi or Democrat Christine Gregoire is the state’s new governor. But this race is clearly heading for a recount and possible litigation.

Yesterday, King County superior court judge Dean Lum refused to stop election officials in liberal King County (Seattle) from counting 400 provisional ballots that had been rejected because the signatures on them did not match signatures on the voter registration forms. Democratic Party workers were able to obtain a list of 929 rejected ballots and over the weekend gathered signed affidavits from 400 of those voters asking that their rejected ballots be counted.

Ryan Bianchi, communications assistant for the campaign of Ms. Gregoire, admitted their approach was blatantly partisan. A Democratic volunteer asked if the person who filled out the provisional ballot was a Gregoire voter: “If they say no, we just tell them to have a nice day,” he told the Seattle Times. If voters said yes, they are asked if they wanted to make their ballots valid. Only those ballots were turned into King County officials, who promptly announced they would count them. This makes Al Gore’s 2000 call for a selective counting of Florida counties look positively kosher.

State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance is outraged that King County would determine that ballots were legitimate based solely on signatures collected by Democrats. Democratic state chairman Paul Berendt responded: “Going to court to stop ballots from being counted is disgraceful.” Seattle Mayor Greg Nickles chimed in: “Let’s count every vote.”

Yes, but what about Washington State’s other counties, where two-thirds of the state’s people live? Many provisional ballots in counties won by Mr. Rossi were rejected but no one sent squads of partisans out to try to convert them into valid votes. Even Judge Lum expressed displeasure that he had been asked to “micromanage an election,” but he nonetheless allowed King County to count provisional ballots harvested by Democratic workers.

King County officials say they are applying the same standard of scrutiny given to absentee ballots that face rejection because of inconsistent signatures. King and other counties accept written oaths vouching for their veracity. But unlike absentee ballots, provisional ballots, which are given to voters if their names don’t appear on registration rolls, don’t have a presumption of validity. They must be set aside and investigated to make sure they are legitimate. For King County officials to reject such ballots because of mismatching signatures and then allow partisan operatives to selectively verify them represents a blatant attempt to put a fist on the scale in favor of one party. Sadly, it looks like this election will wind up in court.

The fact that the signature on a ballot envelope isn’t the same as a “voter’s” real one is good prima facie evidence that somebody else cast it. Maybe it was given away freely. Maybe it was bought, coerced or stolen. In any case, the non-voter shouldn’t be able to legitimize his own or another’s illegal action by ratifying it after the fact. If votes secured through bribery or intimidation count just like all others, why don’t we just put public offices up for sale on eBay?

The same comment applies to non-provisional absentee ballots with phony signatures and begins my tug at the skein of impropriety inherent in any election conducted primarily by mail.

In Washington State, there are no restrictions on absentee voting. This year about 70 percent of all votes were mailed in. Ballots cast by mail are not secret. An individual may choose to keep his own confidential, but he can also sell it, give it away or yield it to superior physical or moral force. I know personally of instances in which indifferent voters handed their ballots to family members or friends to fill out, and there surely were many sinister cases. If as few as one percent of the 2.8 million votes cast for governor were improper, the election, in which the winner will have a plurality of a few hundred at most, may well have been decided by patently illegal ballots. Should the governorship be bestowed on the contender whose supporters were most successful in securing the ability to vote more than once?

In the 19th Century, tremendous battles were waged to obtain the right to the secret ballot. In the 21st we have grown indifferent to it. If the Rossi-Gregoire squabble wakes us up, it will have been a useful election, no matter who winds up as the official winner. If, on the other hand, these abuses become the norm, democracy is doomed to degenerate into a clash of opposing fraudsters.

Update, 9:26 p.m. CST: With all counties having certified their results, Dino Rossi is the winner by 261 votes, at least until the mandatory recount is completed. The fact that my preferred candidate has (so far) won does not alter my opinions about the process by a single iota.

A Few Words from Windycon

The year that I chaired Windycon (and what matter what year that was?), the post factum consensus was that the venue was unsatisfactory, so ISFiC, the con’s parent, appointed Bob Beese and a couple of colleagues to find a new home. The committee lighted upon the Hyatt Regency Woodfield in suburban Schaumburg, which must have been a good choice, for the convention stayed there twenty years. In time the cadre of regular attendees learned to navigate its nonintuitive layout and grew familiar with the local restaurants, particularly the nearby Mongolian barbecue, which practically doubled as the con suite on Saturday nights.

But the union between a convention and a hotel is not eternal. The Hyatt changed, becoming more oriented toward business travelers and less enamored with crowds of casually dressed, late night roaming science fiction fans. The wonderful fifth floor set of rooms that had served as the con suite was frenchified and made unavailable to the con. Room rates gradually climbed. There was also, on the concomm’s side, a feeling that Windycon was stagnating, that too many years in the same comfy home made it easy to fall into routines that became traditions that became dogmas. When the latest multi-year contract expired, the ISFiC board of directors summoned Bob Beese from fannish semi-retirement and sent him out to find a new hotel. The upshot was that Windycon XXXI was announced for the Radisson O’Hare in Rosemont, just beneath the airport flight path.

The actual location turned out to be the Wyndham O’Hare. The facility didn’t alter. It merely changed affiliations in late October. Several attendees who took taxis from the airport found that the drivers didn’t know about the new name and had no idea of how to get to the “Wyndham”. Luckily, someone thought to plaster a large “Windycon” sign on the side of the hotel’s shuttle bus. In the end, I think that everybody found the con. I certainly hope that no prospective member wound up at the next closest Wyndham, about 20 miles away (not far, in fact, from the Woodfield Hyatt).

The new site had virtually no impact on attendance (about the same as last year’s 1,300), but a 30 percent drop in rates sparked a dramatic increase in room pickup. For the first time in many years, Windycon sold out its main hotel and had to send late registrants to the overflow. Breaking in the hotel staff also proved, so far as I could see, delightfully simple. The was one to-be-expected hitch: The restaurant manager didn’t believe the concomm’s estimate of how intensively fans would eat and didn’t have enough staff on hand. She says that she has learned her lesson and will do better next year. Also unfortunate was a certain vagueness at the local fire marshal’s office, which led to a last minute rearrangement of the dealers’ room. Beyond that, there were the traditional idiot setting off a fire alarm (fortunately at 8:00 p.m. rather than the middle of the night), a few routine check-in problems and a shortage of high-speed Internet connections (available only in random rooms). The last situation was mitigated by free wireless access in the lobby, though I had a fair amount of trouble getting a usable connection. (Others reported no difficulties, so perhaps my equipment is at fault.) All in all, things went swimmingly for a hotel debut.

Another debut was ISFiC Press, which was launched this year with the assistance of a grant from Chicon 2000’s surplus funds. Its first book, Relativity, a collection of short stories, speeches and essays by Windycon XXXI Author GoH Rob Sawyer, appeared at the con and seemed to be selling briskly. Publisher Steven Silver hosted a signing party for Rob and Jael, the cover artist, Friday night, drawing a moderate number of buyers and giving me the chance to learn that the next Sawyer opus will be Mindscan, which will feature the popular device of personalities uploaded into computers, doubtless with a few of the author’s typical unconventional philosophical twists. Unlike The Neanderthal Parallax, it is not the first volume of a trilogy. Rob admitted what was evident, I think, to careful readers: that he stretched the Neanderthal story to three books only because his publisher liked the economics of the package. Artistically, he prefers to tell a complete tale in one volume.

Owing to a scheduled panelist’s sudden illness, I was drafted for a program item, the first that I’ve been on at Windycon in quite a few years. The title was “Illegal Alien”, taken, like many other panel names, from a Sawyer novel, and the more informative subtitle, “How Science Fiction Looks at the Legal Profession”. Having three practicing lawyers (Charles Petit, Joel Zakem and me) address the topic was perhaps a miscalculation, as we went a bit overboard opining that writers who tackle legal themes need to pay greater attention to really important matters like standing, jurisdiction, venue and choice of law, and less to the Perry Mason stuff. The audience was a dozen or so, about ten more than I’d expected, and they had the courtesy not to walk out en masse.

Aside from ISFiC Press’s, the only party that I saw at any length was the one for the Chicago in 2008 bid, now firmly in the hands of new chairman Dave McCarty. I should mention, though, that author and sword dealer Mike Williamson threw a party in honor of his wife, who has just enlisted in the National Guard and expects to be ordered to Iraq to serve as a combat photographer. That news was a refreshing change from the general run of fannish anti-war, anti-Bush leftism. (I did, however, encounter a few “9/11 Republicans” at the con, and only one person regaled me with loony left conspiracy theories. His was that Colin Powell is secretly against the war but is being blackmailed by the Bush Administration into maintaining silence. Pretty minor league next to Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann.)

Turning to fannish politics of a more interesting variety, the bidcomm for Columbus in 2007 more or less declared that it will run again for 2008. Its proposed facilities sent representatives to Noreascon and were so impressed that they now desperately want a Worldcon of their own. Bid chairman Kim Williams made a pro forma effort to talk the Chicago committee into switching to some more distant year and, not surprisingly, got nowhere. Hence, it looks like two cities in the old Central Zone will compete, possibly to be joined soon by a Denver entry.

In other races, Kansas City, despite so far nominal opposition from Montreal (not even a Web site yet), is an overwhelming favorite for 2009, Melbourne is unopposed for 2010 and likely to stay that way, and there continue to be rumblings of a Washington bid in 2011, contingent upon the advent of an adequate hotel adjacent to the D.C. convention center. For the 2007 NASFiC, bids have been announced for St. Louis and Ocean City, Maryland, the former backed by the long-running Archon regional, the latter by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. For my sins I am the NASFiC site selection administrator and so must refrain from commentary. The voting will take place at next year’s NASFiC, CascadiaCon.

Update (11/16/04): I neglected to mention one other hotel problem, an instance of too much of a good thing: The Wyndham provided free parking. Unfortunately, there was too little of it. There was an overflow lot, but so far away that one had to take a shuttle back to the con. One old-time fan complained, “When’s the last time you had to ride a shuttle bus to a regional?”

It is an irritant, I suppose, but there would be more complaints at having to pay, and the lot at the Woodfield Hyatt used to get very full, too.

Electoral Reform: A Package Deal

To be blunt, we all know quite well why American elections have fewer safeguards against fraud than almost any others in the world: because one of the major political parties likes it that way. Hence, it is so easy to register to vote that every election cycle brings a host of stories – chuckled over then ignored – about people registering their cats, dogs and infants or putting their names on the rolls of more than one state or otherwise illegally gaining eligibility to cast a ballot. It isn’t astonishing, scarcely even surprising, that several of the 9/11 highjackers, illegal aliens all, were registered voters.

Then, on election day, hardly any voter faces the minimal hurdle of having to show photo identification. More care is taken to make sure that people are the right age to buy cigarettes than that they are the persons whom they claim to be when they appear at the polls.

Unfortunately, the current state of affairs is so useful to the Democratic Party that reform seems impossible. It occurs to me, though, that there might be a chance of offering the minority party a package deal that it won’t want to refuse.

In today’s Washington Post liberal stalwart David Broder laments the decline in competitive elections for the House of Representatives:

Five of Florida’s 25 representatives ran unopposed this year, four of them . . . with no primary opponent. Around the country, 30 others were similarly unchallenged. In Florida, as in other states, even those who had opponents waltzed to victory. Nationally, more than 85 percent of House incumbents won by landslide majorities of more than 60 percent. In California, with 53 House members, only three fell short of that mark. In Florida, only one of the representatives – the famous Katherine Harris – received less than 60 percent of the vote. The district lines in these and most other states were drawn by partisan legislatures to protect incumbents of both parties from the inconvenience of competition.

Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote–The Center for Voting and Democracy, said in a memo last week that “this House election was the least competitive in history.” He based that claim, he told me, on the fact that outside of Texas, where a controversial Republican redistricting in 2003 succeeded in defeating four of five targeted Democrats, only three incumbents lost their seats. That’s a 99 percent success rate outside Texas.

Gerrymandering has, of course, been practiced ever since the First Congress, and Democrats never complained about it very loudly until Republicans started to use it effectively. The Republican gerrymander in Texas replaced an arguably worse Democratic gerrymander that gave one of the most Republican of states a majority Democrat House delegation. Did you hear David Broder’s outcry against that unfairness?

For Democrats to regain control of the House at any time before 2012, when the next general reapportionment will occur, is all but inconceivable, even should they find a way to appeal strongly to the majority of voters. Their unhappiness with that state of affairs may be self-interested, but it isn’t unreasonable.

We have, then, two evils – vote fraud and gerrymandering – one of which is detrimental to Republicans and the other to Democrats. Might this not be an opportunity to eliminate both? In return for more secure voting procedures, Republicans could agree to a nonpartisan apportionment process that would the most compact districts possible without regard to political demographics.

I realize that both aspects of my proposed tradeoff would harm one party to which virtually all politicians belong: The Party of Incumbency. But it would do much to lance our Republic’s current boils of discontent. Is it too much to ask a Congressman to risk the safety of his seat for the good of his country? No cynical answers, please.

“Take Up Our Quarrel With the Foe”

One of the most famous poems from World War I is very much on point in the midst of this very different war.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

My Only Comment on the Demise of the Senior Terrorist

De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

De Arafato sicario, nihilissimum.

Vote Fraud Reminder

Because President Bush won Ohio by more votes than Cleveland Democrats were able to steal, vote fraud (the real thing, that is, not the Loony Left fantasies about how Diebold rigged all the voting machines) hasn’t been a hot post-election topic. Had Ohio been closer, matters would be different. We would be hearing a lot about the counties with more voters than citizens old enough to vote, as well as about dubious ballots in Philadelphia, Detroit, Madison and other locales in states that went narrowly for John Kerry.

That fraud did not swing this election is not a good reason to go to sleep. The invaluable OpinionJournal Political Diary (subscription only, but a bargain at $3.95 a month) offers a reminder from another close state, New Mexico, where Democrats are trying to keep Republicans from watching the last stages of the count:

Yesterday afternoon, Democratic Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron asked the state Supreme Court to overturn lower court ruling that had allowed Republican observers into the polls in Sandoval and Dona Ana counties. She also seeks to overturn a decision by the Bernalillo County Clerk to allow observers there. In her court filing, she contends state law doesn't provide for challengers to be part of the review process.

But cynics point out that she filed her petition shortly after the Bernalillo County Clerk told media outlets that observers had discovered instances of voter fraud during the qualification of provisional ballots. Provisional votes are cast by people whose names did not appear on registration rolls but nonetheless were allowed to vote pending verification of their eligibility. In counting the first 5,000 provisional ballots in Bernalillo County, observers turned up 53 instances of individuals voting more than once. They also found four voters who were dead and dozens of felons attempting to vote. In two cases, the same individual tried to vote three times: early, absentee and on Election Day.

Double voting appears to fall into two categories: voters who themselves may have voted multiple times, and those whose votes were essentially stolen. Dwight Atkins of Albuquerque attempted to vote on Election Day, only to discover that someone had already voted early in his name. Rosemary McGee showed up to vote at 3 pm on Election Day. But someone had voted in her place at 7:00am (the imposter actually misspelled her name on the signature roster). Both were shocked to learn that if an imposter votes first, the fraudulent ballot will stand, and the provisional ballot, cast later by the legitimate voter, will be disqualified.

Earlier this year, when Secretary of State Vigil-Giron went to court to prevent expanded enforcement of the state’s requirement that first-time voters show a photo ID, New Mexico Democrats insisted voter fraud didn’t exist in New Mexico. So much for that argument. But now it appears that local Democrats are willing to go to court to make sure more evidence of it doesn't turn up.

Making dishonest election practices more difficult ought to be among the highest Republican priorities. Actually, it should be a high priority for all honest citizens, and I retain the hope that plenty of honest Democrats concur, despite the maneuvers of a few of their party’s “leaders”.

Addendum: By virtue of the comment from Kevin Standlee, this post is now included in the “Science Fiction” category as well as the obvious ones. Incidentally, the 14-hour tally at the 1991 Worldcon was turbo speed compared to the Washington State gubernatorial count  this year. One begins to wonder whether Washingtonians will know the identity of their new governor before the old one leaves office!

Dementia and History

New York Times reporter Dean E. Murphy does not look forward hopefully to the assassination of President Bush. He says so himself in a form letter responding to criticism of an essay that he wrote for yesterday’s Times entitled “Can History Save the Democrats?”:

The goal of the article was to review some of the history surrounding so-called realigning elections, as many have described President Bush’s victory, and examine clues from the past about how such realignments have come to an end. In a sense, it was meant to look at what tomorrow might bring through the prism of yesterday.

Readers might have gotten a different impression from the fact that the two historical events discussed at greatest length are the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and McKinley, after which the piece ends ominously:

Professor Wilentz of Princeton said that even if the 2004 victory was an incremental one, that should not comfort the Democrats. He said Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush now have a chance to do what Hanna and McKinley never did: Lay the foundation for lasting Republican dominance.

“The Republicans are basically unchecked,” Professor Wilentz said. “There is no check in the federal government and no check in the world. They have an unfettered playing field.”

Until the next act of God, that is.

All quite innocently meant, the writer avers in his apologia:

As the article states near the beginning, “an act of God” during the Bush presidency could range from “a national calamity, a deep schism in the ruling party, the implosion of a social movement under the excesses of its own agenda or the emergence of an extraordinary political figure.” While assassination would certainly qualify as a national calamity, many other events would as well. Certainly, the article never advocated any of them.

Very well. I grant that Mr. Murphy had no malign intention. His analysis is instead a good example of how Bush Derangement Syndrome leads men without malign intentions to write driveling nonsense that reinforces dementia in their readers.

The essay has nothing accurate or informative to say about “how such realignments have come to an end”. Its linking of McKinley’s death to the end of Republican electoral hegemony is preposterous:

Had McKinley not been killed, Marcus A. Hanna, the political handler who was as instrumental to McKinley’s success as Karl Rove has been to Mr. Bush’s, would have pursued his dream of “creating a Republican machine that would go on forever,” Professor Wilentz said.

Instead, Theodore Roosevelt became president, and pursued progressive policies at home and power projection abroad. “What followed shifted the Republican Party in a direction it had not planned to go, and created the groundwork for 1912 and eventually the New Deal,” Professor Wilentz said. When his successor, William H. Taft, turned back to conservatism, Roosevelt ran against him in 1912 on the Progressive, or Bull Moose, ticket, and split the Republican Party, yielding the White House to the Democrats and Woodrow Wilson.

“One can't imagine what American history might have looked like had McKinley continued to the end of his second term,” Professor Wilentz said.

Yes, one can. Progressivism would still have been a major force within the Republican Party. TR was hardly the party’s sole progressive and he would have been a strong contender for the Presidential nomination if McKinley had served two terms. Had he been thwarted, a Democrat might well have captured the White House earlier than Wilson, drawing votes from Republicans restive under dogmatic conservative dominance. In any event, no Hanna-built machine could have survived the Great Depression.

Mr. Murphy’s counterfactual evidently differs toto caelo from mine. He (for it is clear that he quotes Professor Wilentz with unstinting approval) views McKinley’s assassination as a fortunate deliverance from what would otherwise have been perpetual right-wing Republican misrule.

Nothing else is treated in as much detail, and the other suggestions for ending realignment that are casually tossed about – a schism in Republican ranks, “the emergence of a paladin the Democratic Party”, “new waves of immigrants entering the electorate” – are patent long shots. A Democrat who swallows Mr. Murphy’s theses will be drawn to the conviction that President Bush is in a position to “lay the foundation for lasting Republican dominance”, an ascendancy that will be “unfettered” with “no check in the federal government and no check in the world”.

Doesn’t that sound ominous? Mr. Murphy offers his readers a choice among despair, hope for an improbable rescue and the direct course of killing the tyrant. He apparently regards trivia like regular elections as no limitation at all on the ruling faction. There is only one logical inference to be drawn from such a chain of discourse. If Mr. Murphy does not like that inference, he ought to reconsider his premises.

Lawyerly Egoboo

Last Friday, the Seventh Circuit handed down the latest decision in Matz v. Household International Tax Reduction Investment Plan, a long-running case that turns on the criteria for determining whether a qualified retirement plan has undergone a partial termination within the meaning of section 411(d)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. I am one of the very few people in the universe who cares about that issue, so I was delighted to see that the treatise that I co-authored on Pension Plan Terminations is extensively cited in Judge Posner’s opinion.

Though I would quibble with some parts of the exposition, the opinion reaches two important (well, important in this context) and, I believe, sound conclusions: first, that the familiar benchmark for the existence of a partial termination – a 20 percent reduction in plan participation – ought to be treated as a rebuttable presumption; second, that, for the purpose of determining the extent of the reduction, the numerator and the denominator should each include both vested and nonvested participants. These principles are particularly meritorious in light of the virtual obsolesence of section 411(d)(3). It was formulated in an era when long periods of service could be required for vesting. Nowadays any individual participant with benefits worthy of a court’s attention is fully vested without regard to the partial termination rule. Hence, the simpler the rule, the better, and Judge Posner has made matters as simple as they can be within the confines of the statute.

The Same-Sex Petard

How delightful it would be if the Massachusetts Supreme Court could be given credit for President Bush’s second term, if its holding that same-sex marriage is embedded in the Commonwealth’s constitution had really drawn a flood of evangelical Christians to the polls and halted an otherwise irresistible Kerry juggernaut. That would be enough irony to last the rest of the decade.

Alas, it isn’t true. One doesn’t need statistical analysis to disprove it, only a little knowledge of the evangelical and fundamentalist species of Christianity, about which the average left-wing commentator (or right winger, for that matter) knows as much as he does about Martians. I’m no expert either, but, though not an evangelical or even a Protestant myself, I have some acquaintance with evangelicals and don’t find the forces that affect their voting behavior impenetrably mysterious.

The reason why so many in this group routinely stay away from the polls isn’t because they are ignorant, pace the comforting secularist stereotype, but because they take seriously St. Augustine’s dichotomy between the City of God and the City of Man, not regarding themselves as full-fledged citizens of the latter. They are well aware that it allows and encourages abominations – what else would one expect? They do not believe that it can be changed in any essential way by changing its political leaders. Hence, no-fault divorce, legal abortion and other social issues have not in the past spurred them to vote. It isn’t plausible to assert that the less palpable threat of state recognition of same-sex “marriage” would motivate them more strongly.

What motivated them this year was exactly what moved a lot of other voters: the threat of Islamic terrorism. However little one may care about the internal affairs of the secular polity, responding to a direct attack is a different matter. St. Augustine himself took part in the defense of his earthly city against the Vandals.

That first time evangelical voters strongly preferred President Bush to Senator Kerry is no wonder. Like the majority of other Americans, they considered him more resolute as a commander-in-chief. That their primary issue was the conduct of the war (which many may well have seen as a matter of “moral values”; isn’t every issue at some level a moral one?) is shown by their failure to boost Republican candidates further down the ticket. The GOP lost a batch of state legislative chambers and had no net House or Senate pickup outside the South. In those contests, the Democrats’ new voters, who are convinced that all Republicans are fascists, were more efficacious.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court did not, then, swing the Presidential election. The impact of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health was more limited and predictable: A large number of states enacted constitutional amendments to head off any similar action by their own courts. The effect will to present a new obstacle to advocates of same-sex marriage if and when, as they claim to anticipate, public opinion turns in their favor. If they really believe that the future is on their side, the clever follow-up to Goodridge would have been to support a Federal Marriage Amendment. Pro-homosexual lawmakers could easily have ensured passage of a version that restricted only courts, not legislatures. Congressional action to send such an amendment to the states for ratification would have killed enthusiasm for state constitutional changes and thus left same-sex marriage proponents in a better long-run position than they occupy now. Like many zealots, however (including some on the Right), they were quite incapable of discerning their own strategic interests.

The Fundamental Reason Why Bush Won?

An e-mail from a friend:

On election night, I was in Hong Kong (where it was locally already Wed, morning) getting ready to fly back to the US. The outcome was still unknown as I was watching CNN at an airport lounge. A fellow sitting a few seats down blurted out that if Bush won he’d rather stay in China and live under the communists that come back to America. I replied that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. That no matter who won, living in the US was a hundred times better than living in China. I then predicted that Kerry would lose because it was well known that too many Democrats are just one step away from turning on their country and thus cannot be trusted. I then stalked off to my gate.

The Spectre of Specter’s Scepter

The first post-election kerfuffle has already arisen: Should Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania’s erratic and temperamental RINO Senator, be permitted to exercise his seniority to take over the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee? The case against him is easy to make: He is staunchly pro-abortion and has publicly intimated that he would use his power as chairman to block judicial nominees whom he deemed “too conservative”.

I donated money to Pat Toomey’s primary campaign, think that his defeat was one of the year’s lost opportunities for the GOP and don’t dispute John J. Miller’s denunciation of “The Awful Specter of Yet Another Term”, so I am predisposed to favor any step that will reduce Senator Specter’s authority. Nonetheless, I find myself agreeing with Hugh Hewitt: This is not the issue on which to expend right wing political capital.

If the Senator were truly inclined to sink the President’s choices for judgeships, he has had ample opportunity over the past four years and hasn’t taken it. He has yet to oppose any of them. Moreover, if the Senate Republicans expand their Judiciary Committee majority to 11-8 from the present 10-9, as their Senate gains entitle them to do, Senator Specter will have no power to mount a one-man blockade. He will have many prerogatives as chairman but ultimately won’t be able to overrule the majority of his committee.

Conservatives should also bear in mind that a Senator with Specter’s long service will have to be given some committee chairmanship, and an important one, too. The questions that come within the purview of the Judiciary Committee are the ones on which his record is least liberal. I’d rather have him there than in a position to gut Social Security reform, hinder tax reduction or expand pork barrel spending. Remember the fable of King Log and King Stork.

How Sixty Minutes Could Have Destroyed America

Suppose that Ra^thergate had been postponed until the Sunday before the election. Had Senator Kerry not been running so poorly in the polls right after Labor Day, CBS might well have delayed release of its forged documents until the last minute, when there would scarcely have been time for them to be exposed and discredited. Intrinsically trivial though questions about President Bush’s National Guard service were, the charges aired by Sixty Minutes, like the DUI roorback in 2000, would have swayed some voters. All that would have been needed to change the outcome were fewer than 100,000 switches in Ohio.

So John Kerry would be President-elect, very likely without a popular vote majority, but Republicans can’t complain about that. Then, inevitably, proof would have emerged that his victory was founded on a blatant fraud.

Republicans haven’t been as emotional about this election as Democrats. There are few, if any, Kerry Haters to match the legion of Bush Haters. Nonetheless, forbearance has its limits. There would certainly have been an uproar, and the Kerry Administration would have been poisoned from the start. In time of war, that is not a good condition for the nation’s commander-in-chief.

These considerations explain why investigating the CBS fraud and punishing its instigators remains important. It was not merely a lark or a misjudgement; it was a serious threat to constitutional government. The perpetrators ought not to be allowed to elude justice.

The New Electoral Map

A closer look at the state-by-state returns shows why Republican strategists feel optimistic about the future:

Overwhelmingly Republican (60%+): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Mississippi (6), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Dakota (3), Texas (34), Utah (5), Wyoming (3). Total: 107
Overwhelmingly Democratic: District of Columbia (3), Massachusetts (12), Rhode Island (4). Total: 19

Strongly Republican (55%-59%): Arizona (10), Georgia (15), Louisiana (9), Montana (3), North Carolina (15), South Carolina (8), Tennessee (11), West Virginia (5). Total: 76. Running total: 183
Strongly Democratic: California (55), Illinois (21), Maryland (10), New York (31), Vermont (3). Total: 120. Running total: 139

Republican Edge (52%-54%): Arkansas (6), Colorado (9), Florida (27), Missouri (11), Virginia (13). Total: 66. Running total: 249
Democratic Edge: Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Maine (4), New Jersey (15), Washington (11). Total: 44. Running total: 183

Contested (Neither party above 51%): Iowa (7), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Mexico (5), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Wisconsin (10). Total: 106

In other words, a Republican candidate who holds onto every state in which George W. Bush got at least 52 percent of the vote needs to pick up a mere one-fifth of the electoral votes in the “battleground” states.

Electoral maps are, it must be observed, written in the clouds. Compare and contrast 1896 with 2004. Nonetheless, for a few election cycles at least, the GOP will begin the race for the White House with a decided head start.

Exeunt Exit Polls (A Fond Hope)

I hope that this year’s fiasco persuades the news media to stop conducting and disseminating exit polls. Not because they are necessarily unreliable but because they have spoiled election night. Since at least 1980 the pattern has been consistent: Polls close in a bunch of states on the hour; with ten minutes the states are called based on exit poll numbers; airheads chat aimlessly for 50 minutes; repeat until ennui sets in. There is almost no old-fashioned discussion of how the vote count stands, where the counted votes come from or how the trends compare with earlier years. If a state’s exit poll isn’t conclusive, the talking heads don’t know what to talk about. It makes for a boring, uninformative show – and sometimes a misleading one. This year, for instance, it was clear from an early hour that President Bush would carry Florida, because he was running comfortably ahead of his 2000 margin in the northern and central parts of the state. The network commentary should have been emphasizing that fact and how difficult it would be for Senator Kerry to reverse the tide with returns from not-yet-reported Dade and Palm Beach Counties. Instead, only Republican operatives provided that information, and they were naturally discounted as partisan.

Modern computer databases make it simple to put a plethora of past election statistics at reporters’ command, and modern computer graphics allows the data to be presented in readily assimilable form. Just from a pure business point of view, wouldn’t that attract a bigger audience than long stretches of Dan Rather growing progressively more disconsolate?

One might think that, without exit polls, we would lose statistics on how various subsets of the electorate voted, e. g., that President Bush drew 11 percent of the black and 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Leaving aside the question of how badly we need that knowledge, it would not in fact be unobtainable. Anyone with precinct-by-precinct vote totals, Census data and a flair for multiple regressions can infer how any identifiable group split its vote with at least as much accuracy as a poll. No doubt the political parties already carry out that analysis, though they have little incentive to share their results with the public.

Although the aesthetic case against exit polling is overwhelming, I suppose that not everyone will consider it decisive. Millions of innocent words will be slaughtered in the debate over what went wrong with the 2004 surveys, if anything went wrong at all. The pollsters themselves, as I understand it, insist that they got everything right and have been misrepresented. Maybe so, but here are numbers, including virtually every state considered to be “in play”, that were being reported around the blogosphere shortly before the polls closed. I list Bush first and Kerry second, followed by the actual results and the difference between Bush’s predicted and real percentages.

Florida 49%-51% [52%-48% (-3%)]
Pennsylvania 46%-53% [49%-51% (-3%)]
Ohio 49%-51% [51%-49% (-2%)]
Michigan 47%-51% [49%-51% (-2%)]
North Carolina 52%-48% [56%-44% (-4%)]
Missouri 54%-46% [53%-46% (+1%)]
Arizona 55%-45% [55%-44% (0)]
Minnesota 44%-54% [48%-51% (-4%)]
Wisconsin 47%-52% [49%-50% (-2%)]
Colorado 51%-48% [52%-47% (-1%)]
Louisiana 56%-43% [57%-42% (-1%)]
Iowa 49%-49% [50%-49% (-1%)]
Arkansas 53%-47% [54%-45% (-1%)]
New Mexico 49%-50% [50%-49% (-1%)]

None of the deviations is huge. Individually they fall within the poll’s margin of error, but it is certainly striking that, in 12 of 14 cases, the Bush percentage is understated. Moreover, the larger states tend to have larger discrepancies. I am hesitant to offer an explanation, but innocent ones are not easy to formulate.

Anyway, I don’t want innocent explanations. When returns start arriving on November 7, 2006, I want to hear much more from guys like Michael Barone and Larry Sabato, who know what elections are about, and as little as possible from Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. The lower the credibility of exit polling, the more likely we are to see real analysis.

Michael Moore’s “Freedom Fighters”

When American and Iraqi troops assault Fallujah, we will hear a lot of shrieking about civilian casualties. Tragically, innocent people will die, as always happens in war, but let’s not forget what manner of enemy we are fighting. From a United States Central Command press release:

CAMP RAMADI, Iraq – An Army unit assigned to I Marine Expeditionary Force, discovered and defused an explosive-laden youth center in Ramadi Nov. 4, which was rigged by insurgents to detonate and potentially kill dozens of Iraqi children. They also discovered more than two tons of explosives hidden in a mosque.

The discoveries were made during a sweep of the city looking for improvised explosive devices [IED’s].

After a thorough investigation of the youth center, the Soldiers discovered that the explosives were rigged to detonate three ways: through a light switch, a remote control and by wiring that ran from the youth center to the nearby Al-Haq Mosque, where the unit discovered the firing mechanism.

At another mosque, a search yielded the discovery of more than two tons of ammunition, explosives, mortar systems and RPGs. Artillery rounds; assault rifles and various IED-making materials were found, as well. Fifty suspected insurgents were also detained during the sweep.

There is no need for further comment.

Addendum: But this story makes comment inevitable. A group of 26 Saudi “scholars and preachers” have penned a “letter to the Iraqi people” supporting the legitimacy of the “resistance”, that is, of the thugs who set traps to murder Iraqi schoolchildren. If leaders of Islam wish to render their faith repugnant to all men of good will, this is the way to do it.

Our First Encounter with the Martians?

Something or someone has been cleaning the solar panels of our Mars rovers. As reported by Space.com:

Opportunity recently experienced an unexplained rejuvenation from what can so far be described only as two or three significant “cleaning events,” said Jim Erickson, the rover project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

“Now we’re assuming they're cleaning, but all we can really say is that overnight the solar panels produced between 2 and 5 percent additional power immediately,” he said. “We’re surmising that for some reason dust is being removed from the solar panel and that's increasing the efficiency of the sunlight being converted to electricity.”

The rover team has been bandying about theories, but hasn’t figured out the cause.

“One favorite is that a dust devil happened to pick the vehicle to go through and go over the surface of it and clean it off a little bit,” Erickson said.

Yeah, sure. We have plenty of wind in Chicago, and I haven’t noticed that windows here are cleaner than elsewhere. Obviously, NASA Is Covering Up The Truth. Probably to protect the interests of Halliburton.

As Drudge would say, Developing. . . .

“Please to Remember the Fifth of November”

Every year one hears more complaints about Halloween, from fundamentalist Christians who object to a pagan remnant or politically correct types who think that it offends witches or nutrition Nazis who abhor the massive distribution of sweets to susceptible children.

In the hope of making everybody happy, especially disconsolate liberals who need sympathy and comfort this week, I have a suggestion: Let us strike Halloween from the calendar and celebrate Guy Fawkes Day instead. It certainly could not be offensive to fundamentalists or witches. Liberals will be harder to please; bonfires and fireworks are only marginally more acceptable than candy. Still, they may be able to overlook those drawbacks in light of the day’s anti-Catholic origins. The white-wine-and-brie crowd can gather joyously in Manhattan, along the Chicago lake front and in San Francisco to burn the Pope in effigy and denounce those stupid minions of Rome who mostly voted for the Bushitler over the sophisticated, nuanced, post-modern Catholic John Kerry. It would be great fun, mostly harmless and helpful in dissipating the emotions of outrage caused by their fellow citizens’ failure to recognize the superior intelligence, not to mention tolerance, of the Left.

Are There No More Editors?

This currently appears on the front page of the on-line Wall Street Journal:

Arafat slipped into a coma and was at one point reported dead, drawing a condolence from Bush. French media say he is on life support. Having designated no heir, worry over a Palestinian power struggle grew.

“Worry over a Palestinian power struggle” “designated no heir”, which will make it bigger than before? How much will I grow if I tear up my will?

Do you remember when the Wall Street Journal was the best-edited newspaper in America? Alas, it probably still is.

Balm in Illinois

Illinois was an enclave of blue, as in gloom, last Tuesday. It’s not much consolation that the Republican Senate candidate did slightly better than the hapless GOP standard bearer in New York or that Republicans narrowed the Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate by one seat each. Still, there was one bright light. In the Fifth Appellate District, covering a large part of southwestern downstate, Republican Lloyd Karmeier won a formerly Democratic State Supreme Court judgeship. What’s more, his opponent’s campaign was heavily funded by the notoriously corrupt Madison County plaintiffs’ bar, the nation’s premier example of why the tort system needs reforming. The contest was reportedly the most expensive judicial election in American history, and it was money well spent. The cause of legal common sense gained a judge (reducing the Dem majority on the Supreme Court to four-to-three). Meanwhile, the Madison County sharks wasted something like $5 million and lost a judicial ally, for their candidate not only did not get elected to the high court but also was up to retention in his current appellate court position and failed to garner enough votes to keep his job. He is the first appellate judge ever rejected by Illinois voters.

The Mediacratic Experiment

Though the fact will be routinely brushed aside by liberals, the most important news (or should that be “news”?) media were Democratic Party house organs this election. The New York Times, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, the news pages of the Wall Street Journal (very different from the editorial page), Time, Newsweek and others maintained the veneer of impartiality only to the extent necessary to render credible their campaign in behalf of the Kerry-Edwards ticket. By weight of numbers and authority, they set a tone that could not be counteracted by outlets that strove simply to report what was going on, without fear or favor, such as the Washington Post, Fox News and many local and regional papers.

This election can be viewed as an empirical test of the influence of the media: If the top tier of journalists swing behind one of the parties and shape news reporting to mesh with its themes, how much effect will they have on the outcome? Evan Thomas of Newsweek, in a moment of candor, speculated that the media could add 15 percentage points to its favored candidate’s vote. That is a gross exaggeration for a national election, where neither Republicans nor Democrats are very likely to fall below 40 percent, no matter what, but it is nearer the truth than the conclusion that some will draw from President Bush’s victory: that the elite media don’t really have much influence at all.

To quantify the media impact, one has to ascertain how Senator Kerry would have performed if the media had been genuinely neutral. Suppose that favorable news about the War of Terror and the economy had not been routinely buried and bad news highlighted, the candidates’ backgrounds had been subjected to equal scrutiny, there had been no roorbacks, forged documents or hyping of the Democratic candidates’ mediocre debate performances, and Democrats had not felt free to push absurd conspiracy theories to target audiences (the “secret plans” to revive the draft and cut Social Security benefits), knowing that the non-targeted part of the electorate would never hear about them. Weighing that large set of counterfactuals, I think that it is fair to say that, with unbiased coverage, Senator Kerry would have gotten no more than 45 percent of the two-party vote and perhaps as little as 42 percent. Scoring higher than 45 percent seems inconceivable for a liberal candidate running in a basically conservative country in a time of prosperity and a successfully conducted war. Falling below 42 percent is difficult for a major party candidate unless he wages a boldly ideological campaign à la Goldwater or McGovern.

On that rough basis, which empiricists may refine but are unlikely to alter substantially, media support added somewhere between three and six percentage points to Senator Kerry’s share of the popular vote. That wasn’t enough to carry him to victory, but it might have in less unpropitious circumstances.

This post is not intended as yet another lament about liberal bias in the media. It is bad for one’s blood pressure to complain incessantly about conditions that can’t be changed. Looking at the phenomenon from an historical rather than a partisan perspective, a few points deserve attention:

1. Although the major media have leaned toward one Presidential candidate in many elections, 2004 was unusual for the intensity of their effort. That I attribute to the War on Terror. Like much of the Left, liberal journalists simply do not perceive Islamofascism as a threat that requires more than a mild defensive response. Hence, they can’t believe that anti-terrorism can possibly be the true motive behind the President’s foreign policy. There has to be a hidden agenda, or the President must be crazy. From there to Michael Moore Land is a short journey. People like Dan Rather sincerely believe that the U.S. government is in the hands of a crypto-fascist billionaire cabal and see themselves as latter day minutemen. In the absence of the war, they would regard George W. Bush as just another conservative, not an incipient Hitler, and their passion to unseat him would be no greater than their animus against Ronald Reagan, Bush père or the Bush fils of 2000.

2. A corollary to the preceding is that media bias will eventually revert to the pre-9/11 level of “nuisance” instead of “threat”. How long will “eventually” be? Not long, if enough liberals decide that they prefer even conservatism to the ideology of Osama bin Laden. Years and years, if we have to wait until the last safe havens and state sponsors of terrorism are gone.

3. Have the old media discredited themselves, leading to a new era of “distributed journalism”? I doubt it. Talk radio and blogs are excellent means of disseminating opinion, but news gathering is hard work. It takes a big, expensive organization. It’ll be a l-o-o-o-ng time before Instapundit’s tip jar accumulates enough cash to make it possible for Glenn Reynolds to displace Bill Keller. The “new media” can present alternative interpretations (as they did to counter CBS’s forgeries and the al-QaQaa fabrication), but the information that the public receives remains under the control of the “old media”. Where they lack curiosity, news will be hard to come by.

4. One unambiguous detriment arising from the current state of affairs is its impact on the rest of the world. What foreigners hear about America comes from our TV networks and is filtered through their own reflexively anti-American pundits. Is it any wonder that overseas polls showed an overwhelming preference for Senator Kerry almost everywhere (the notable exceptions being the special cases of Israel, Poland and Iraq)?

5. Finally, we must not overlook the pernicious effect of media bias on its beneficiaries. Knowing that your words and actions will be subjected to only light scrutiny encourages laziness and carelessness. I doubt that, in a neutral media environment, Senator Kerry would have put such inordinate stress on his Vietnam service as a Presidential qualification (thus stirring up the Swift Boat Veterans and turning a mild positive into a significant negative), and he would have marshaled his ideas about how to deal with terrorism into better order. “Global test”, “nuisance” and “I have a plan” were mistakes born of media-nurtured indolence. The absence of audible criticism also lulled the Kerry campaign into letting itself associate with unsavory characters like George Soros and vote fraud operations like Americans Coming Together and Moveon.org. Whether backing from such quarters helped or hurt in the short run, sensible Democrats would have rejected them if they had been forced to think about the implications of having radicals and cheaters on board the campaign.

The United States and the whole world would, needless to say, be better off if all news came via fair and balanced reporters. That has, alas, never been the case and never will be. We can take solace in the thought that, in their year of maximum effort, the elite media went all out for their man and failed to deliver the votes that he needed. On the other hand, we cannot complacently assume that they will not try again and succeed in a future election.

Opportunities Lost

Next to the President’s reelection, nothing was sweeter yesterday than the Republican gains in the Senate, which came in at the upper bound of everyone’s predictions and put the GOP in a position to break judicial filibusters with the aid of just a handful of Democrats. Our side prevailed in some hard-fought battles: Richard Burr’s final sprint in North Carolina, Mel Martinez’s edging out a better known opponent in Florida, Lisa Murkowski’s defeat of Alaska’s most popular Democrat in the face of a quasi-scandal over the circumstances surrounding her appointment, Jim DeMint’s bold advocacy of free trade in the country’s most protectionist Republican-leaning state. At the same time, the Senate was where we muffed the easiest chances. Three states in particular leave one full of regret for vanished opportunities.

Illinois: If there were a political equivalent of Chapter XI, the Illinois Republican Party would have entered it long ago. The leadership’s Senatorial folly, when it forced Jack Ryan out of the race without having any idea of who should replace him (and effectively wound up with no one), was a final act of bankruptcy. Mr. Ryan’s sex scandal without the sex was a momentary embarrassment, but it didn’t have the makings of a vote-moving revelation, particularly not when his opponent was an untested young radical who owed his nomination, won over the firm opposition of the party hierarchy, to lucky breaks. As Peter Fitzgerald showed six years ago against Carol Moseley-Braun, a moderately conservative Republican has excellent prospects in Illinois against a far left Democrat. Maybe Ryan would have lost, but not by a super-landslide, and a victory would have put him in a position to ease out the Topinka-Edgar-Kjellander crowd whose blunders have steadily decimated what ought to be a powerful party.

Pennsylvania: President Bush may have lost Pennsylvania by campaigning for erratic liberal Arlen Specter in the GOP primary. Senator Specter did nothing to help the Bush-Cheney ticket and will do as little as possible, when he becomes chairman of the Judiciary Committee next year, to smooth the way for the President’s judicial nominees. (He openly declared as much in the course of seeking newspaper endorsements.) Although his primary opponent, Rep. Pat Toomey, wouldn’t have been a sure winner, his presence in the race would have maximized conservative turnout. There would have been no blowback from the Left; liberal turnout, including scores of thousands of ghosts in Philadelphia, was already maximized. A Toomey victory would have been a clear Republican gain. Defeat would have had the consolation of removing a Specter that is haunting the Republican caucus and can’t be considered worse than a marginal loss.

Georgia: Republicans were as sure to pick up the Georgia Senate seat as the Democrats, post-Ryan, were to win in Illinois. A rare chance was punted when they didn’t choose black conservative Herman Cain as the state’s next solon. Not only is Mr. Cain more conservative than the eventual winner, Rep. Johnny Isakson, but he would have been a marvelous counterpoint to Senator Obama: a successful black entrepreneur contrasted with a guy who has only worked for the government all his life. It would have been a fine demonstration of the benefits of conservatism for minority groups. Alas, that demonstration will have to await another year.

Heil dir, Sonne! Heil dir, Licht!

Superficially it may be a cold, damp, gray day in Chicago; psychologically it is morning in America. I hadn’t realized until I went to bed last night, knowing that George W. Bush was reelected, how much shadow the election had cast over my spirit. The hour wasn’t even as late as I had feared it might be, indeed scarcely past my normal bedtime, though the Kerry campaign had yet to concede defeat. As I write, it still hasn’t, but 175,000 provisional ballots (legally presumed to be invalid, let us remember) aren’t going to overturn the President’s 138,000 vote lead in Ohio. For the first time in months, I do not need to think about a Kerry Administration, and the birds are singing in Winter.

While one might think that, after four years of complaining about the unfairness of having a President who finished a fraction of a percent behind in the popular vote count, Democrats would be reluctant to fight in the last ditch for Electoral College victory against a candidate who won an absolute majority and finished 3½ million votes ahead, I suppose that we shall have to listen to hours, if not days, of increasingly fantastic assertions that Senator Kerry will win “when all the votes are counted”. Kerry spokesmen where shrilling that message before the polls closed. Why should they stop now? They know that the elite media won’t criticize them for petulance, and the grievance hunting pleases their large core constituency of conspiracy theorists. (John Hillen aptly calls their insistence that no GOP win can be legitimate “the glue that holds the Dems together”.)

So much for them. I concur with young Jonah:

Went to bed right before Edwards announcement refusing to concede. To be honest, I can’t get too worked up about it. The entire Democratic Party is built around a cult of “never again” with regards to accepting their “victim” status in Presidential politics. Let them have the night. But I think they are making a grave mistake if they are counting on the patience of the American people to endure for very long the clear loser refusing to concede – especially when it’s clear he can’t win. But give ’em the morning. Let them have their coffee. Let the propellor beanie types come in and explain things to them.

My reason for being inordinately chuffed by the Bush victory has little to do with sheer partisanship. Usually I take election results in a properly Stoic manner, neither elated by success nor crushed by failure. What makes this one different is that we are at war, and Senator Kerry volens nolens was the preferred candidate of our enemies. Had he won, thugs in Fallujah would be celebrating gleefully. Now we have reason to hope that they will lose heart and fall more easily to the coming Iraqi-American assault. We can hope, too, that the shell that left-wing media have built around European opinion (vide Davids Medienkiritik to see how German TV covered election night) will begin to crack, and sensible Europeans will figure out that the “hyperpower” is not the great threat that their intelligentsia portray.

Many further thoughts are jumbled together. I’ll post more as the day goes on but first must attend to business.

Update: I see that Senator Kerry has now had the sense to concede. Good for him.

The Next Orders of Business

Having no special psephological expertise, I have no confident ideas about how the election will turn out. I think that President Bush will win, possibly by a surprising margin, for three reasons. First, it seems unlikely that, in the middle of a war, the electorate will dump the commander-in-chief in favor of someone who, according to polls, is considered by a substantial majority to be less fit for the office. Second, the economy is in good shape. Numbers no better than the current ones guaranteed Bill Clinton’s reelection in 1996. Finally, polls in close elections usually underpredict the performance of conservative candidates. We saw that in Australia, a country where accurate polling is much easier than here, just last month. The race was, said the pollsters, excruciatingly tight, with an edge to the Labour Party. Right-wing pundit Tim Blair was not alone in his pessimism. In the event, the right-of-center governing coalition won nearly 53 percent of the two-party vote, gained five seats in the House of Representatives and won control of the Senate for the first time in over a quarter-century.

Regardless of the outcome, however, American history will go on, and conservatives will need to cope with the future. (In our topsy-turvy new millennium, it is liberals who dwell incessantly on the past and angrily yearn for the restoration of a romanticized golden age of peace, prosperity and political correctitude.) Here, then, are what I regard as the most urgent tasks that face our country over the next several years.

First, needless to say, is to fight the War on Terror, preferably with enhanced aggressiveness. A Bush victory will be a superlative opportunity, because it will, at least for the moment, demoralize anti-Americans around the world and will suggest to waverers that waiting for the United States to retreat into an isolationist shell is not a profitable strategy. A Kerry win will have the opposite impact, of course, but it need not be fatal. George W. Bush will remain President for three more months. I’m sure that he won’t follow the Clinton course of making things as difficult as possible for his successor. Instead, he will most likely ease the way for a Kerry Administration by cleaning out Fallujah and other Islamofascist pockets in Iraq and making sure that the elections scheduled for January can take place on schedule. After that, a President Kerry will be on his own, but he will swiftly learn what he doubtless already knows in the nuances of his mind: that France, Germany and the U.N. won’t bail out the “hyperpower” and can’t be appeased by any concession that it is politically feasible for an American President to yield. Though he doesn’t want to and will do it badly, he would be fated to be as much a unilateralist war President as his predecessor. (David Frum made this point excellently yesterday, but it should be obvious. My 20-year-old niece has been saying the same to her college roommates.) The Left will in that case come to detest John Kerry as much as it once did Lyndon Johnson. It will be up to the Right to offer intellectual and moral support.

Second, the economy cannot be ignored. No one today, thankfully, is as fatuously optimistic as during the Clinton years, when the conventional wisdom seemed to be that the Business Cycle had been repealed and unending prosperity was a natural state of affairs. The problem is to find the right tonic to mitigate the fluxes. If one looks at the economic facts of the Clinton period, the one that stands out is that, from 1994 through 1998, federal spending declined in relation to the size of the economy, thus putting more economic decisions in the hands of utility-maximizing private parties and spurring expansion. Then the spending tide began to turn, and recession was in the air by the latter half of 2000, when the GDP contracted for a quarter, struggled through a couple more and definitively declined in early 2001. The Bush tax cuts provided the stimulus for a recovery, but the long-term way to limit the number and severity of downturns is spending discipline, which has not been a prominent feature of either party’s platform in recent years. Bringing rationality to discretionary spending, much less entitlements, is politically a daunting task, but an essential one.

Third, President Bush (assuming that is still President after next January) appears to be willing, though he may have trouble being able, to address our greatest long-term economic problem: liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. The current system is demographically unsustainable. It was designed for an era when the nonworking elderly were a small fraction of the population, not an emerging majority. Barring the discovery of an elixir of youth that enables us all to continue laboring productively into our 90’s (and is that what we really desire?), the day will come when retirees will have no choice but to live on their own accumulated capital. We can either prepare for that day by gradually converting Social Security and Medicare into private savings programs, or we can be grasshopper liberals, wait for the collapse and blame capitalism. Old Europe is on course for the latter, Latin America (oddly enough) for the former. It may be a century before the results are fully visible, but what they will be is scarcely in doubt. The United States has yet to make its choice.

Finally, it is essential to attend to the American democratic process itself. With luck tomorrow’s predictably massive fraud won’t tip the balance, but John Fund’s Stealing Elections assembles enough data to alarm any citizen who isn’t himself engaged in ballot theft. Congress made stabs at reform after the Florida contretemps, but they were worse than inadequate, as demonstrated already by widespread phantom voter registration – Philadelphia alone has 60,000 more voters on the rolls than citizens old enough to vote – and sure to be confirmed tomorrow. At a minimum, there ought to be a national data base of registrations, so that, for instance, 27,000 people cannot continue to be active voters in both Ohio and Florida, coupled with a requirement of photo ID at the polling place. In my eyes, the only motive that a politician can have for opposing those minimal measures is a belief that he or his party benefits from fraud and has the right to continue to do so.

It would also be nice to end the erosion of the secret ballot. Balloting by mail has become so commonplace that there can be no assurance in many states that the choices marked on the ballot represent the true opinions of the nominal voters. It may mean little to independent-minded denizens of the blogosphere that a domineering parent, spouse, social worker, employer, shop steward or other person with influence over the lives of others is in a position to demand to see how those others vote. Not too long ago, the effect of overt and covert pressure was confined by the fact that almost all ballots were cast on Election Day out of the sight of anyone but the individual citizen, who could solemnly promise to mark A and pick B instead. Have we so utterly forgotten why the 19th Century reformers insisted that the privacy of the voting booth could not be optional?

Oh, let’s also not forget another quaint 19th Century notion: freedom of speech. REPEAL McCAIN-FEINGOLD!. A democracy whose government controls what citizens can say for and against political candidates will not remain a democracy for long.

There are many other issues that can occupy our attention, but these are, I think, the big ones. Many Americans will prefer to shunt them aside; that is a way of pretending that the future will inevitably be sunny and serene. It is the spirit that animates the leadership of the Democratic Party, an illusion that our country and our civilization can no longer afford.