It's The Policy, Stupid
I'm all for a Democratic political reform package but I wouldn't put too much stock into it. At the moment, Republicans are loving lobbying reform bills. Such bills allow them to seemingly get out from under the cloud of sleaze while remaining, fundamentally, in hock to corporate interests.
To run a campaign, you need ideas the other side can't sign on to. More to the point, you need ideas they can't easily co-opt by counterproposing a watered-down version. That means you need to attack some of the substance of what K Street Republicanism has done, not just the atmospherics of the lobbying trade. After all, why is the Medicare bill so crappy? Because the GOP is run by lobbyists. Why can't we make student loans cheaper? Because the GOP is run by lobbyists. Why can't we secure chemical plants against terrorist attacks? Because the GOP is run by lobbyists. Why is the tax code so full of loopholes? Because the GOP is run by lobbyists. And so on down the line.
Update [2006-1-6 9:37:54 by yglesias]: Or, again, why don't we have a serious energy policy? Becase the GOP is run by lobbyists. Why is our broadband internet so slow and crappy? Becase the GOP is run by lobbyists. This analysis works for about 90 percent of possible topics.
Matthew, you seem to be arguing the exact opposite of your headline. It's not the policy that will win or lose--it's the ability of the Democrats to attack the integrity of their opposition, to make the accusation that the Republicans are corrupt and in the pocket of the lobbyists stick, regardless of what policies the Republicans may or may not propose for reforming lobbying. Essentially, what works is an ad hominem attack, not a policy debate. Attack the character and motives of your opponent and win. Debate policy and put everyone to sleep. . .
January 6, 2006 6:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
The GOP feels free to violate the laws we now have so what good would another law do towards preventing them corrupting themselves?
Seems there is a great disconnect in the GOP in that they believe good government is the same as running a corporation and in such a context what they do isn't corrupt at all but just "good business" and if they didn't do it (dirty, corrupt activities) someone else would and profit would be lost to a competitor.
January 6, 2006 7:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
...to argue that the GOP is run by lobbyists. Then again it's not "the policy, stupid" either.
The argument here, in fact, has nothing to do with policy. It has to do with criminal activity.
You can't debate policy with this GOP anyway, because they're never looking for debate. They're just looking for cover. To argue is to lose.
January 6, 2006 7:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
The other 10% of possible topics* can be explained by saying...Because the President is a religious fanatic.
*For example,
"Why do Republicans make such a passionate case for discrimination against homosexuals?"
"Why have we decisively taken Israel's side against Palestine?"
"Why are we embarrassing ourselves by telling international aid organizations to spread 'abstinence education' instead of contraception?"
"Why do we have a global warming policy that consists of ignoring it and waiting until it causes the Rapture, hopefully within our lifetimes?"
January 6, 2006 7:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
If the goal of winning an election is to control policy, and if the best policy is found through debate, go for the goal and talk policy. It worked for Clinton.
Attacking the GOP may win by reducing the GOP voter turnout, but exciting voters with a positive message seems a more certain strategy. The former doesn't increase votes for either side, and the latter may draw undecideds into voting, and voting our way.
Show how GOP policies have not worked, of course, but show how new policies can. Let the corruption speak for itself.
January 6, 2006 7:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Attack the character and motives of your opponents and win. Debate policy and put everyone to sleep...==========
This is an arena, if you pet a dog, you are at once under suspicion for bestiality. If you are not found useful enough, you are branded as a loser. If you decide to transgress partisanship, you are considered a traitor. In other words, we seem to have privileged mindguards who magnify the actions of others 20-fold. I think there has come a point when significant number of voters are just tired of theatrics and turn to their own resources for sanity and support, for the voters claim that campaigns are after their donations but not their interests.
January 6, 2006 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, Matt's right. The repubs are lovin', and I mean really lovin', campaign and lobbying reform.
Not only do they want to look like the party of reform but also they want to implement any reforms in such a way as to disadvantage demo's in the next election cycle.
The repub's have a great opportunity to slip things by us if we madly rush into campaign and lobbying reform and we all need to watch out for this!
Ask yourself this...if the flow of money into the political cesspool stops right now...who does it give an advantage to? I don't have any numbers...but I suspect the repubs have a lot more money in their coffers than the dem's....wknjh
January 6, 2006 8:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
January 6, 2006 8:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Matthew is right. Proposing "a reform package" probably gives Republicans cover. I'd add that, at this point, it has a lame "me too" sound to it. As if Dems were casting about for "issues" and decided "oh yeah, reform looks good".
To have any credibility as reformers Dems need to have a big message. Republicans have a big message: government is bad and inept therefore we need to privatize everything. They live on the message; it works even when they RUN the inept government.
Democrats are the party of government. For the most part it's a proud heritage of government doing good: Soc Sec, Medicare, Medicaid, Civil Rights, labor law, national defense and the building of international institutions. Yes, sometimes government overreaches does thing I don't like. It needs checks and balances.
But somehow the idea that government isn't perfect has led to the dangerous idea that government can "get out of the way", and privatize everything. The idea is dangerous because we need a lot of things that government has to be involved in--health care delivery, energy policy, port security, securing nuclear material, social safety nets, competent spies, dam and levee maintenance. In addition, government never "gets out of the way". It just get corrupted.
Dems shouldn't be saying "the era of big government is over" as Clinton did, they should be saying the era of incompetent government dominated by private interests is over." When that idea gets across they can credibly start talking about reform. The average Dem can't articulate a concise vision of why we need government. Why reform it? Everyone's just cynical and getting more so.
January 6, 2006 8:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Matthew's Update-Tom Friedman's READING TPM Cafe posts. I made some similar points in one post.
Whoa! I'm breathless!
Now I've got goose bumps.
I might become a GRANDMA! Yikes I'm a nervous jervis today.
January 6, 2006 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
January 6, 2006 9:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why is our Israel-Palestine policy so crappy? Because the GOP is run by lobbyists. Why is US policy towards Cuba so poor? Because the GOP is run by lobbyists. Why can't we have a serious policy on steel imports? Because the US is run by lobbyists. etc etc etc.
The fundamental insight into US politics is that policy is produced by small organised groups who try to normalise their extremist policies and impose policy externalities on wider society. But this criticism is not of the GOP, but of US politics generally. Small group power is at the heart of Democratic party politics too (trial lawyers if you want just one example) and can't be removed from the US political system without a revolution.
January 6, 2006 9:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Attack the character and motives of your opponent and win.
That appears to be the primary road to success today, but, without also offering something positive, such as a way to control health care costs, I doubt that we can win. We just aren't willing to be a mean spirited as the Republicans are, nor are we willing or able to convince people that God told us to tell those lies about our opponents. So, we need to keep up the focused attack on the GOP corruption and incompetence, but also we need to be proposing a couple of big solutions to major problems.
January 6, 2006 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here are jsut a few changes I would like to see (and as you can see, I probably do not know as much about this area as I should):
1. Prohibit all campaign contributions, and contributions to those shadowy 527 groups, from non-humans i.e. from corporations, LLCs, partnerships.
2. Limit all individual contributions to political campaigns to $4,000 per person, per candidate, per cycle.
3. Prohibit any and all politically related adds by anyone or any entity unless that ad has the full and complete and publicly stated endorsement of the candidate which would benefit most from the ad.
4. Prohibit all corporations and other legal entities (as opposed to human) from making any form of contribution to any type of trade/lobby organization without the specific written permission of at least 51% of their shareholders, and eliminate any and all tax/book deductions for such expenses (frankly, I do not know if such contributions are allowed deductions or not, probably not but I am sure someone will let me know).
5. Require all proposed legislation to identify who drafted each section of the legislation and list all lobby groups that participated in the negotiation and drafting of all legislation.
6. Require each legislator to annually provide and publish to their constituency a list of all lobbyists they have met with, the topics they discussed, and the money they or their campaign has received from such lobbyists.
January 6, 2006 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
I like the way you frame the issue. Tying the bad policy to the corruption. We need to grap hold of this and hang on like a pit bull.
January 6, 2006 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe I should clarify my view on this (my original post about ad hominem arguments really was intended to get Matt to clarify his argument). Ad hominem arguments are of course logically flawed when debating the merits of a policy. But politics is about both policy and personal integrity. Attacking the integrity of your opponents is sometimes justifiable--if their integrity is lacking. Many Republicans (but certainly not all) lack integrity and therefore are easily bought by lobbyists (many Democrats are just as bad, by the way). Attacking this character flaw is legitimate--and necessary. It is an ad hominem attack--but in some cases it is the man and not the policy that matters and therefore and ad hominem attack is indeed justified.
That bad character leads to bad policy is also worth stating. Maybe that was Matt's original point.
January 6, 2006 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you know exactly what our Israeli-Palestinian policy is I congratulate you. Sharon before his stroke seemed to be moving in a direction different than Bush.
Our policy toward Cuba has nothing to do with GOP lobbyists. It is stupid but bipartisanly stupid. Cuban Americans have a lot of political sway and no one wants to seem weak on Communism.
January 6, 2006 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
"If you know exactly what our Israeli-Palestinian policy is I congratulate you."
In broad terms, enabling the colonisation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arabs especially around Jerusalem while throwing enough sand in the eyes of the Europeans ('we are seeking peace') to prevent them from acting against it. That is the permanent policy of the US and Israeli governments, as far as I can see.
"Our policy toward Cuba has nothing to do with GOP lobbyists. It is stupid but bipartisanly stupid."
Of course, many lobbies are bipartisan. That includes both GOP and Democrat lobbyists, rather than excluding ('having nothing to do with') either.
January 6, 2006 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I has been a basic tenet of conservatives for some time that bribing politicians is a form of free speech. Paying money to a politician or to influence an election should be re-defined as treason, punishable by hanging.
January 6, 2006 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Huh? I have not a single complaint with my broadband service.
January 6, 2006 9:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Republicans made their bed let them sleep in it why join them, don’t bring the cover of Reform
Let the Law do our work
Although a lot of people believe all of Congress is involved. The news coming out over the next few months is going to put Republicans in the spot light. Corrupt
Democrats need to focus on why important legislation did not get accomplished..
Focus what are the most pressing concerns facing Americans, and explain why we couldn’t address them. despite all of our attempts The democrats were OUT NUMBERED by crooks
This move now by Republicans to distance themselves from Delay is a sham. Remember when the Republicans walked lockstep with the leadership instead of joining the minority to care for the peoples needs. Now they want to cry they had no choice.
Put us back in power and we will focus on your concerns. Solutions not promises. Didn’t Gore say, lock up the money. Didn’t Bill Clinton try to solve the Health care crisis and was blocked by Republicans. Republicans do not have your best interest in mind, look see how corrupt they are.
Tell the American people “we tried to do your business but were blocked” overrun by corrupt, Republicans. Remove these obstructionists.
The Republicans used FEAR as the motivator.
The Democrats need to use ANGER as the motivator
January 6, 2006 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Democratic leaders have been cowering and running away from the New Deal for twenty and more years. And when Clinton came out with an idea for the last big piece: Universal Health Care, they insisted on tarting the whole thing up with Regional Alliances and other crap to keep the Insurance Companies happy. (Thank you Joe Liberman, Senator from Hartford, and I don't mean the City of).
Time to unleash our inner FDR. Single payer can work, single payer does work around the world, and its effectiveness varies generally by the percentage of the nations wealth you can devote to it. And we can devote more than Canada and still come out ahead.
If you dig to the core of any Right economic program from Privatization of Social Security, to Flat Taxes, to Supply Side, even to most versions of Free Trade you find out they are a really bad deal for ordinary workers and the poor. This is not some oversight, a substantial thread in Right thinking for centuries is that the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor. You see it in Roman History, you see it in Eighteenth Century English History, you see it in Nineteenth Century American History. It gets different labels and different theoretical justifications but it is always there. And you see it at NRO today.
Poor kids fight and die in Iraq because some people believe that is their role in life anyway. What else are the poor good for anyway?
Well screw that. The Democratic Party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Francis Perkins was the Party of Social and Economic Justice. They were not able to do what they wanted to on Civil Rights, but they did what they could and set the table for the post-war Civil Rights movement. 'Liberal' is not an insult, 'Fair Deal Democrat' is the very opposite of an insult, and if you can't take the occasional 'Socialist' thrown your way then get out of the kitchen.
Supply Side and all its associated economic and political doctrines are Voodoo Mumbo Jumbo. Time to call them on it.
January 7, 2006 6:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am unclear why ridding the world of Palestinian whiners and murders is the same as ethnic cleansing. Afterall it is the Palestians who want to exterminate Israelis.
January 7, 2006 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
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