Notes

Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post has an interesting piece with a series of excerpts from various journalists looking back over the last few months of the presidential campaign. Check it out.

And again, with the Republicans. As my brother summarizes this political ad, “You can’t trust a politician that takes support from atheists or agnostics or infidels of any stripe.” Because, you know, it’s uncontroversial that everyone who believes in God is automatically a better person than everyone who doesn’t.

Look, if you want to believe in God, go right ahead. But when you question the patriotism of people who don’t believe in God, or suggest they ought not participate in politics, or run ads like the one above, you’ve crossed a line. There’s no substance in that ad. Elizabeth Dole’s campaign says nothing worthwhile in that ad. Instead, they simply rely on the underlying assumption, which they clearly expect the television viewers in North Carolina to share, that people who don’t believe in God are untrustworthy or shady or somehow otherwise evil.

And you can draw the obvious comparison, if you want: Obama’s comment about people in rural Pennsylvania clinging to guns, religion, and xenophobia when times are tough. What’s the difference? Obama was drawing an analytical conclusion, one that is far from completely unwarranted, while the Dole campaign was simply appealing to irrational, ignorant fear. In some ways, this Dole campaign ad itself is evidence that Obama’s pop-psychological analysis was not without merit.

When religious people wonder why atheists can summon such rage against them, they should remember that there are still enough people in many parts of the nation to create an audience receptive to ads like this one.

Here’s another example of the lunacy I pointed out earlier today, that Republicans are intellectually bankrupt:

[T]he Republican National Committee blasted the timing of [Obama's primetime, half-hour advertisement], which pushed back the start of a World Series baseball game.

“It’s unfortunate that the World Series’ first pitch is being delayed for Obama’s political pitch. Not only is Obama putting politics before principle, he’s putting it before our national pastime,” spokesman Alex Conant said.

Wait, what? Really? Did Alex Conant say that with a straight face? “[H]e’s putting [politics] before our national pastime”? They are complaining about politics trumping baseball? Worse, they’re factually off base:

The Obama campaign did not ask that the game be delayed, said a spokesman for Fox, which broadcasts the World Series.

“They asked Fox to buy the air time,” the spokesman said. “Fox went to our partner, Major League Baseball, and asked if it would be OK to delay the game to take this important political advertisement. They agreed.”

Look, if all you can do is complain that Obama caused a World Series game to be delayed for thirty minutes, what do you have, really? What substance can you offer? You just sound like a bunch of whiny children.

From the New York Times, on the future of Sarah Palin:

Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative group, called it a “top order of business” to determine Ms. Palin’s future role. “Conservatives have been looking for leadership, and she has proven that she can electrify the grass roots like few people have in the last 20 years,” Mr. Bozell said. “No matter what she decides to do, there will be a small mother lode of financial support behind her.”

The Democrats are running a candidate with an impressive intellect, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, who is so articulate that the humorists at Saturday Night Live still haven’t figured an effective way to make fun of him. Even conservatives are impressed by how well he’s run his campaign.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are running a couple of intellectual lightweights who are so easy to parody that even I can totter around like a mental patient saying “my friends” or pull out a snippet of halfway decent Palin-speak sometimes. You betcha. Then you have Republicans saying things like the remark quoted above, conflating “leadership” with the ability to “electrify the grass roots” and raise “a small mother lode of financial support.” Who are these people? Could they be more transparent about their desire to have power even at the cost of putting idiotic figureheads in the Oval Office, destroying our national respect at home and abroad, and systematically dumbing down our social discourse?

When was the last time Republicans ran a candidate who had some intellectual heft or at least respectability? Twenty years ago? Thirty years ago? Maybe. But then Alan Greenspan wrote in his recent book that Richard Nixon was hands-down the smartest president he ever worked with, so maybe a wicked-smart Republican is not what the world needs.

If the Republicans could run somebody with the intellectual credentials, articulation, and rhetorical strength of Barack Obama, on a solid conservative platform without all the “moral” issues that have plagued the Republican party for the last thirty-five years, since Roe v. Wade, then I would probably vote for him or her. But who are they looking at? Sarah Palin. Ridiculous.

Today I received a letter from The State Bar of California, the pertinent contents of which are:

The Committee of Bar Examiners is pleased to advise you that you have been found to possess the good moral character required for certification to practice law in California.

Being one who pays attention to the way things are worded, I cannot help but notice that the letter does not say, directly, “you possess good moral character.” Instead, I have “been found to possess” moral character. And not just “good moral character,” nor even “moral character good enough to practice law,” but just what is “required for certification to practice law.” Not to practice anywhere, either—only in California.

In other words, “We, the Committee of Bar Examiners in California, couldn’t find any good excuses to keep you out of our Association on account of your being a scoundrel or a criminal or anything.” Hardly a ringing endorsement, but it will have to do.

I just discovered one of the most interesting demographic breakdowns for the United States I have ever seen. It’s from the Christian Science Monitor and is called “Patchwork Nation.” Check it out. I was surprised to see that Fresno County is categorized as a “Boom Town” and not as an “Evangelical Epicenter.”

And while you’re at the CSM, read this fascinating commentary, which suggests that the “principal narrative” driving the presidential race is “‘policy’ versus ‘character.’”

It’s fair to say that this character/policy divide has been evident in Patchwork Nation for a while. Even as Mr. Bush’s rating has dropped in the polls, for example, the people who have continued to support him say they do because they like and respect him personally. Most of them live in our more socially conservative enclaves.

But as the campaign has progressed and the economy has worsened, the question in many of our communities has switched from “What kind of person are you?” to “What are you going to do?”

I think that concept does a pretty good job of explaining the tensions evident in one of my brother’s recent posts.

Here’s the best picture from last night’s debate.

That’s what you call “emblematic.”

Video of the Autry-Wanger debate is available at the Fresno Bee website, so I won’t recount their combat blow by blow. But I have one overriding observation: Alan Autry is woefully misguided about how courts work.

Autry spent the debate hammering a completely wrong sense of “judicial notice” as “common sense,” even after Judge Wanger explained how judicial notice actually works (and even cited the applicable Federal Rule of Evidence). Autry essentially wanted Judge Wanger to “judicially notice” that the ACLU has carried out a “reign of terror on American values since 1920.” (He never managed to articulate that clearly, but from what I could tell, that’s what he was trying to say.) As the Judge pointed out, one requirement for judicial notice is that the matter be completely uncontroversial. The Rule specifically requires that its “accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.”

Autry confused constitutional amendments with decisions on constitutional questions by the Supreme Court. After talking about amendments like the Bill of Rights, he threw in Brown v. Board of Education. It was an odd non sequitur. Then he argued that Brown shows judges can use common sense to overturn precedent—in that case it was Plessy v. Ferguson. But then he claimed “the same thing happened” with Planned Parenthood v. Casey. People thought the Court might overturn Roe v. Wade in Casey, but instead it stood by Roe as precedent. How that helped Autry’s argument, I’m not sure.

Instead of making good arguments, Autry advanced bizarre ones, like claiming that the Endangered Species Act is “blatantly” unconstitutional. He can say that all he wants, but unless the Supreme Court holds it unconstitutional, he has no traction. (During the question-and-answer period at the end, someone asked the Judge whether anyone ever advanced that argument in the ESA cases he heard. Nope. And, as the Judge pointed out, an argument not presented by the parties is one the court cannot consider.)

In a debate that was supposed to be about the role of courts in society, Autry spent a lot of time making extremist comments about the American Civil Liberties Union. He made a lot out of the old saws that the ACLU was “founded by an avowed agnostic and socialist” and that it wants to “take God out of this country.” Never mind, I guess, that the ACLU has often defended religious freedom on the side of Christians.

Finally, during the question and answer period, lawyers in the audience asked the mayor some hard questions. Does he actually read Judge Wanger’s decisions before he criticizes them? When the dust cleared from his hemming and hawing, it was clear that he doesn’t. In the homeless people’s case against the City of Fresno, couldn’t the city deal with that problem before it got to litigation? Apparently not, apparently because Autry didn’t think to take “the media” with him when he went to visit the homeless encampment. (Where, by the way, he could apparently tell, just by looking, that a mattress was infected with both hepatitis and E. coli.)

Overall, Autry was loud, angry, incoherent, and inaccurate. During one segment, he kept repeating that “all men are created equal,” with emphasis on the word “men.” Judge Wanger got up to respond and pointed out that both women and men are equal in the United States. Autry’s reply? First a sarcastic apology for not being politically correct enough. Then: “Of course I meant all women. I have two daughters. Gimme a break.” Right. That makes a lot of sense.

Alan Autry is charismatic and popular, but when he opens his mouth, he spews ignorance and incoherence. Judge Wanger’s final remark at the end of the debate lamented that Autry is uninformed and does not understand the issues they were discussing. He was right. Even though their debate was more entertaining that most live theater I’ve seen in Fresno, it was depressing to see the quality of person Fresno allows in the mayor’s office.

If you want to see more, you can watch the video linked above, but if you live in Fresno, just be glad that Autry will soon be gone. Maybe he’ll do what he said at the end of the debate: “I just wanna get back to makin’ bad movies, Judge.”

As we were walking out of the room at the end, I heard Mayor Autry say to his coterie, “I have to get back to Starbucks.”

Later this evening, I will tell you more about the noon-hour debate between Fresno Mayor Alan “Bubba” Autry and Federal District Judge Oliver Wanger. All you need to know for now is that there were plenty of fireworks. The last words of the debate were the ones quoted in the title of this post.

Here are a couple good political commentaries for the presidential race. The first one turns a critical eye to John McCain:

Negative attacks — on either side — somehow seem less salient when you’re watching your retirement savings dwindle. Voters want ideas, not punches, no matter how deftly delivered. A candidate will appear risky only if he appears to be unable to think and lead the country out of its recession.

The second one puts the same challenge to Obama:

Obama has dealt deftly with the economic crisis — at least in a political sense. Unlike McCain, he was fairly calm during the first days after Lehman’s collapse and the government bailout of AIG.

. . .

But it’s not clear that he has had any better ideas — or put them forward more aggressively — than Paulson and Bernanke when it comes to dealing with the crisis in the credit markets. It’s not clear that he has pushed ideas that would have dealt with the crisis more effectively.

I agree that “[v]oters want ideas” and that a candidate with “better ideas . . . than Paulson and Bernanke” would be pretty impressive. But I disagree with the second commentator.

Expecting a politician to have better ideas about the financial crisis than professionals like Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke seems pretty disingenuous to me. But the thing everyone wants to avoid, a panic, tells us what is important: someone who can remain “fairly calm” in the face of recent events. That’s probably why Franklin Roosevelt famously said, during his first inaugural address, given during the Great Depression, that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” When the way forward is not clear, would you rather have someone who tends toward the erratic, or someone who keeps cool and stays on course?

As Obama pointed out during the most recent debate, “it’s never the challenges that you expect. It’s the challenges that you don’t that end up consuming most of your time.” What we learn from Obama’s approach to the financial crisis is a matter of substance. When those inevitable unexpected challenges arise, he will approach them coolly and rationally, which is what we need in the Executive branch.

The question of who is best to occupy the Oval Office has much less to do with specific strategies planned out in advance. We all know the saying about best laid plans. Instead, the important matter is how the candidate will face the unexpected. When everything falls apart, is it more important to have someone who will always have the best ideas, or someone who will refuse to panic?