on treating politics as a game

[jrtom]

snagged from filkertom's other blog: Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo on the dangers of political strategizing.

Today we hear Democrats asking whether they should take a hard line on Social Security or a soft line, stand in opposition or come up with a contending plan. Here's what I propose whenever Democrats have a question about just what stance to take on the Social Security debate.

One question ...

What is the actual policy outcome that would be most preferable on Social Security (to protect, preserve or augment it -- whatever) and how important is it that it take place in this Congress?

Comments

Young fool...

[fdmts.livejournal.com]

Remember when I said that the Democrats need to be destroyed, because they'll never be anything more than a loose consortium of wafflers pandering to too wide a variety of special interests? Such a consortium can't compete with clarity of vision, even if it's an evil vision.

We need to field a party with clearly articulated centrist goals. Right now what we've got is a party who can't decide which of their bases to pander to.

Re: Young fool...

[(Anonymous)]

i would love to see the rhetoric of a clearly defined centrist party.

hell, i would love to write said rhetoric.

t.

Re: Young fool...

[fdmts.livejournal.com]

hell, i would love to write said rhetoric.

Do so.

We're all friends here. Focus not so much on making it perfect as on articulating the major points.

But don't waste too much time on it. ;)

Re: Young fool...

[(Anonymous)]

I'm skeptical. I suspect that "centrist" is just short-hand for "wafflers pandering to too wide a variety of special interests"

Or, to put it slighly more politely, if your goal is to be in the center you are by definition playing tactical politics, not establishing policy.

What we need is a party with clearly articulated policy goals which provide useful solutions to important problems. If that happens to be near the "center" this year, so be it.

Of course, "useful solutions" is a synonym for "pandering" and "important problems" is a synonym for "special interests". Oh, well.

-JKL

Oh for God's sake...

[fdmts.livejournal.com]

Now you're playing word games, after such a promising start (what if politics were more than word games!)

Bah. You know as well as I do what I'm getting at, you're just afraid of it. Being "centrist" is not a goal. Building non zero-sum compromises is. The core problem that you're perceiving in the two party system is that the two parties tend to stake out extremes and then play hoping that one wins and the other loses.

I contend that most Americans would prefer a system in which we each give way, a little bit, rather than chosing between demonstrably flawed extremes.

Your pedantry stings me. I too seek a constant star of moral clarity, rather than poll-driven hackery. If we can't use "center" to define this, then fine. How about "rational" or "civil" or perhaps "reality based," or "non zero sum?"

Re: Oh for God's sake...

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Speaking of "civil"...I actually think that JKL has a point. If being centrist isn't your goal, then "centrist" probably wasn't a good word for you to use, because it has the implications he pointed out. Politics shouldn't be word games, true, but semantics are important.

I wish I believed that most Americans believed as you suggested. Not sure it's true, though, since people don't generally view their _own_ beliefs as/priorities extreme, no matter what they are.

Personally I wouldn't insist on having a _party_ that had clearly articulated policy goals that drove their actions as politicians. Having politicians that behaved this way would be a nice start, regardless of what (if any) party they belonged to.

Re: Young fool...

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I'd go find my sister's post on this subject from a couple of months ago, but she recently deleted her LJ, dammit, and I haven't yet persuaded her to undelete it. If she does, I'll post it here.

Naming the band

[fdmts.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of the Bob's song Naming the Band

"...We should be writing tunes,
And learning where to stand
Instead we're spending all our time
Naming the Band..."

I'll repeat my challenge: Start articulating policies on current hot button topics. Be sure to show your work so that we can see how you came to your conclusions. That way (a) we can have an answer to "what do you believe about X" and (b) we may be able to distill some general principles from the specific cases you work out.

At least, that's how I'm approaching it. Details when I have more than a couple such points.

As to semantics: No words in common usage are going to be suitable, because all of them have semantic baggage. I could be happily going along with my "civil discourse" party, and get slammed for wanting to revert to the "civil society." Thus the genius of the "Bull Moose" party. The what? Yeah, here's what we stand for.

This was part of Newton's genius when he abstracted space, time, position, motion and energy into symbols like X. That, however, is way off topic.

Re: Oh for God's sake...

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for the word games. I agree that last sentence was just semantic wanking.

But I'm trying to make a real point here: Everybody loves a "centrist" party (or candidate or whatever) because "centerist" doesn't really mean anything so everyone can project their own fantasies on the term.

So no, I don't know what you're getting at. I don't know very much about your politics so I don't know whether I should support your hypothetical party. I might consider your vision of a "centrist party" a bunch of lunatic anarchists or a bunch of repressed fascists or some other kind of extremism.

I (as I originally said) am skeptical of your proposal because I don't yet see anything to hang my hat on about real policy. I'm all for "centrist" and I'm all for "non-zero-sum compromises", but I share these enthusiasms with a vast horde of other people who frequently violently disagree with me about basically all matters of public policy.

I may be overly cynical, but I think none of the things you list are a source of moral clarity. The "center" is just whatever the majority opinion of the moment is (in 1850 the center believed that you have to support slavery but you should have the decency to feel bad about it in private). You can insert the obligatory philosophy lecture here about how rational thought alone can't generate moral principles, but it may be better to insert a history lesson about how many "realists" from Pilate to Kissinger have made really ugly choices. "reality based" only works as a sound-bite response to a small group of current idiots -- usually all sides of every argument believe they hold the key to "reality". As for "non-zero-sum", I'd say only tackling the non-zero-sum problems is cherry-picking -- the real test of a politician is what they do when it really is a zero sum game any they have to make a decision anyway.

I kind of like the notion of "civil" as in "civil society". It suggests to me a careful balance between the society's responsibility to serve the rights and dreams of individuals and the individuals' responsibilities to support the society. A political movement which articulates what a "civil society" should look like would eb a good thing. It can tackle issues from public transportation to freedom of speech. Heck, it can co-opt the quote "freedom isn't free" away from video games about shooting people and reapply it to things like serving on juries. Oops. I'm drifting off into semantic games again.

Two candidate rules of thumb for policy:
1. If somebody does something you don't like you aren't allowed to take it out on someone else who just happens to be standing near them (either literally as in "there was a terrorist inside so we blew up the whole apartment block" or figuratively as in "Bush is an idiot so I'll assume that applies to all Republicans")
2. If your moral principles are telling you to hurt people you should think carefully about why they're your moral principles. (I don't care of the people in question are "bad")

Right now I feel like advocating either one of these (let alone both) puts me unconfortably far left of center.

-JKL

Re: Naming the band

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

OK, my sister (red_frog) recently reinstated her LJ, and I found the post I was talking about earlier (http://www.livejournal.com/users/red_frog/344385.html). Presented without comment, here is a series of policy statements that I lifted directly from that post. I don't necessarily agree with every single one as stated, but it's a good place to start from, I think. "Discuss."

I want:
* a country that respects freedom of religion. Someone made a good point that the Democrats have got themselves in the position of freedom FROM religion, and while that's more my position I can see how it could alienate a lot of people.
* a country where people have enough money to live on, without making handouts to people who don't need them.
* national service for high school graduates. Get a small salary and go intern teaching reading, or learning the ropes of environmental cleanup, or whatever. Doesn't have to be a military slot, I'm just trying to invest people in the place where they live.
* a country where the civil rights associated with marriage are extended to all adults.
* a country that acknowledges the reality that industries change and helps both companies and individuals ride out those changes. I don't want policies to try to prevent those industries from changing, since that only delays the change and may make it worse. (There's a good example of this going on in Central America now--tons of maquiladoras built to supply textiles under a trade agreement that expires now. They're fucked, because many did not prepare for this and they're going to lose to China.)
* a country where people have a decent chance at improving their economic standing from what they were born into.
* a country where kids can get a good education without their parents having to pay for private school.
* a country with a clean water, air, and sidewalks
* a country that is asked to arbitrate in international affairs, and even fight if need be, but does not direct by arms.
* a country that people like well enough to think it's cool that you're from there.

Harried thoughts in the morning

[fdmts.livejournal.com]

First, thanks very much for starting with these. It grounds us in reality. Give or take my opinions on these points, here are two meta-opinions about the manner in which they are framed (before I run off and start my day):

(1) Negation: It's important to me that statements of policy articulate choices which have sensible opposites. Many of these points don't really have an opposite, and thus are meaningless at some level - "A country with clean water, air, and sidewalks" is certainly a good goal. That said - I can't think of a single politician in history who would say "I stand for making our country dirty, with unbreathable air and no sidewalks."

Where goals like this come from is when leaders seem to implicitly be striving for those anti-goals through their idiotic policies.

I suppose that there's room for both sorts of statement - I would look at these as test conditions for a policy rather than the policy itself. That's very valuable, as I think about it. We can use them to check our work. "Sidewalks clean? No? Clearly we need further work."

(2) Specificity: "Marriage rights for all adults" clearly refers to same-sex marriage, right? Or maybe it doesn't. Perhaps it's the mentally deficient, sibling marriage, polygamy, or some as-yet-unspoken thing that would upset the new pope. If the goal is "sexual orientation is not a ban to any civil right, including marriage" then let's come out and say that.

The problem is that I don't get much contact with popular culture, and so I get confused by the slogans that everybody else understands. A protester with a sign reading "A living wage for EVERYONE!!!!" confused the hell out of me. Was it minimum wage, immigrant labor, or what?

Thank you for posting these. I'll give them some thought during the day.

Re: Harried thoughts in the morning

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Just a brief response: you're right in that some of these aren't so much policies as they are goals. However, I'm not sure that policies are generally either/or so much as they are priorities, in practice. (Politicians may not be pro-dirty-air, but they may prioritize clean air considerably less than, say, happy energy companies.)

I think that the question of what oughtta be done about marriage and its associated rights constellation may be as thorny as the question we tackled a few months back about national service. Worth pursuing, but I'm not sure that the best answer is an easy one.