Things I meant to post yesterday but never got around to....
+ A Georgia congressman called Obama "uppity," but then claimed he didn't realize it had racial connotations. Uh huh.
+ New Rule: If conservatives considered a line of questioning or form of attack acceptable during the Clinton years, they must also consider it acceptable during the McCain-Palin campaign.
+ There are not nearly enough people reading Dean Baker's economic analyses. Go fix that now.
+ When even FoxNews' Chris Wallace pushes back on the "Palin is a crusader against earmarks" lie, maybe there is hope yet for the media. Video here for those so inclined.
+ After saying that Palin would only give interviews when she "felt comfortable," team McCain announced she would do an end-of-week sit down with Charlie Gibson. After his atrocious performance during the debates, my guess is that he is the new go-to guy for conservatives. Expect all fluff, no substance, followed by triumphant cries from conservatives about how she has "proven" that she can stand up to the "liberal elite media." God help us.
+ Political Science quote of the day from non-political scientist Sandy Levinson:
If one assumes the validity of his slanderous comments about his colleagues (and friends?) in Congress, then perhaps one might look to the Constitution for an explanation: The fact that every single member of Congress is elected from a defined geographical area and subject, in the case of members of the House, to election every two years, guarantees that "rational" members of Congress will put the interests of their constituents, who will enable their re-election, ahead of evanescent interests of "the country." Democratic senators and represenatives from Michigan can be offered as examples, to prove my non-partisanship on this point. If McCain (or anybody else) wants to increase the number of "country first" members of Congress, then we have to talk about restructuring our institutions in such a way that there will be greater incentive for leaders to take the broader view. Larry Sabato has an interesting discussion of this point in his book on the Constitution (which also calls for a new constitutional convention). And this would include getting rid of the electoral college, which generates incentives to pander to "battleground" states and to ignore the rest.One of the worst features of our present politics, and I've said before (and will undoubtedly say again) is that it leads people of all politial persuasions to focus on" character," "leadership," and "vision" and away from even the beginnings of a conversation about how structures generate these attributes. Barack Obama is, of course, no better in this regard than John McCain. He may have taught constitutional law for ten years, but I would be pleasantly surprised if he ever thought seriously about structural issues, since, except for that tiny subset of such issues that are litigated, they are simply untaught and ignored in our leading law schools. The last presidential candidate seriously to address constitutional structures was probably Teddy Roosevelt. It's time for a change....
