The Second Republican Debate: Truth and Democracy Lost

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the states of facts and evidence.”
—John Adams, 1770

‘Facts are stupid things – stubborn things, should I say.”
—Ronald Reagan

“Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I’m saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can’t run from science”
—John Huntsmann

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
—Mark Twain

By most accounts Carly Fiorina won the second presidential debate while Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee clearly lost.  Others had mixed performances at best.  But the real losers were truth and American democracy.  Across the board the Republican candidates lied, fabricated, or spewed out stereotypes in ways that reinforced the prejudices of the voters.
The distortions were on different levels.  All of them exaggerated their resumes.  Rubio again told the story of his grandfather fleeing Castro–even though he left well before he came to power. Trump describes himself as a self-made billionaire (even though he inherited his start in life from his multi-millionaire father) and denies his four bankruptcies.  Fiorina is in denial about her horrible business record at Lucent and HP, and Scott Walter and Chris Christie simply inflate what they have accomplished as governors of Wisconsin and New Jersey (and no Christie was not named a federal prosecutor on September 10, 2001).   Resume fraud should not be a surprise among politicians, such lying is unfortunately common in the general popular.
Moreover, there are lies or distortions that are not so much based on a contravening of facts as being groundless or highly suspect.  Bush saying his brother kept us safe–safe after the largest terrorist attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor?  And then there was the general tone of the debate–long on assertions but shy in terms of actual documentation about how dangerous the Iran nuclear deal is or what Obama did or did not do as president.
But there are deeper lies.  Lies about public policy, about factual states of affairs in the world which are just not true.  I have written about many of them in American Politics in the Age of Ignorance.  American politics is dominated by political myths and failed public policies: These are ideas or policies of which we have overwhelming evidence of their failure or falsehood but which nonetheless are constantly repeated and fail.  Perhaps the voters can be blamed for their ignorance, but it is deplorable that elected officials and policy makers drool out and constantly return to these myths, pandering to the prejudice and ignorance of, in this case, the Republican voter.
Consider a second level of lies.  Fiorina lied about the Planned Parenthood video.  First, the videos have been proven to be doctored and several state investigations have validated that Planned Parenthood is not selling baby parts.  She also lied about claiming that one fetus had a beating heart as it brain was ready to be harvested.  Rubio lied in his assertion that North Korea had a nuclear missile that it could launch to hit the US.  It could not even hit South Korea on a good day.  Cruz lied in many ways about the Iran nuclear agreement.  There are no sites off limits to inspectors.  Huckabee lied when he said Hilary Clinton is being investigated by the FBI for destroying government files.
But the deepest lies are policy based, those where the evidence and data is overwhelming.  The biggest lie again was the vaccination-autism connection.  The original study asserting this claim has been widely and repeatedly refuted yet Trump trotted it out again.  Even worse, Ben Carson–a medical doctor–failed to clearly challenge Trump on this.  Ditto goes to the other doctor Paul too for failing to challenge Trump.
Then there is immigration.  Trump throws out a statistic that says illegal immigration costs the US $200 billion per year.  There is no verification or support for that figure and it also fails to account for how much more money undocumented aliens put back into the economy.  As I point out in my book and as overwhelming studies show, immigrants have lower crime rates than the general  population and put more into the economy than they take out.    Rubio’s claim about 40% of those here illegally are because of overstaying visas is unproven, and contrary to what all the non-lawyers  said, the Fourteenth Amendment’s granting of citizenship to all who are born here is well-established  constitutional law and the US is not alone in granting birth-right citizenship.  And by the way, there is little evidence that such birthright citizenship is the incentive for those emigrating from Mexico to the US.
While in this debate no one outright denied global warming, when the topic came up non candidate was willing to acknowledge it was occurring, that it was a problem, or that they should do anything to address it, even just in case it was happening.
But one truth was revealed in the exchange between Trump and Bush over the former’s denial that her tried to get a casino in Florida.  Or consider Trump here and in his assertions about being too rich to be bought or previously asserting giving money to Clinton and making her feel obliged to attend his wedding, or listen to Christie’s rants on teacher unions. There is a consensus  that money and special interests rule America.  But instead of proposing to do something about it the Republican field simply accepts it as given.
The truth that emerged from the second debate is that truth and democracy lost.  We saw candidates simply lie about themselves or the state of the world.  We saw them accept as given that the democratic process is broken.  And we saw them repeat their lies to an American public on yet another media event that was less news than entertainment.  Real leadership is about telling the truth, not pandering to ignorance and prejudice.  It is looking reality in the eye and leading based on what the world is like and not on what we hope it would be.  On this score the 11 candidates in the main  GOP debate failed on Wednesday.

Tinker, Tailor, President, Spy: American Politics at the End of 2014

The November 2014 elections already seem ancient history.  Yet in barely seven weeks a host of major events have transpired, raising interesting questions about Barack Obama and the future of American politics, both short and long term.  Let’s review some of them and see what they potentially mean.

The End of the Cold War...Finally?

 The Cold War is over. Long live the Cold War!  These are the sentiments best captured by two events this past week–Obama moves to normalize relations with Cuba and the president threatens action against North Korea for hacking SONY.  Both events

Cuba and North Korea are perhaps the two last iconic symbols of the Cold War.  They conjure up images of the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, and a divided peninsula and war that would never end.  The two countries were supposedly the last two communist countries standing, and they both were surrogate grounds for the conflict between the US and USSR.  But at least in the case of Cuba and  Castro, it also represented a host of other rumors and conspiracies about the assassination of JFK, the FBI, CIA, and spying.

We embargoed Cuba for 50 years with no avail. No real good came of it and in fact one could argue that the embargo and US politics toward Cuba did more to hurt America’s relations with South America than help it.  It also meant that we had little leverage with Cuba when the inevitable day came when the Castros were no long around.  Obama’s move was smart–it represented or reflected the new realities of the world.  The generation that wanted to maintain the embargo is largely dead or gone (keep that in mind Senator Rubio) and Cuba is no longer a front line for the Cold War.

North Korea is different.  It is no longer the surrogate struggle between the US and USSR.  It represents a new type of battle–cyber-terrorism.  There is an old adage that says the most countries  are militarily prepared to fight the last war. The same is true with the US.  We still think of war and terrorism as the use of bombs and bullets or of physical invasion of one country by another with troops, planes, or even drones.  Think of terrorism and we think of 9/11.  But that is old thinking according to Richard Clarke who in Cyber War points out how vulnerable the US is to cyber terrorism and also how badly prepared we are to fight it.

The US may be one of the most wired and computer connected societies in the world.  Such sophistication means there is a lot to hack–anywhere from official government defense sites to power plants, trains, planes, financial institutions, and private companies such as SONY.   Clarke argues we are hackable, that are defenses are poor, and that the US is overall ill-prepared to fight back.  The terrorism is what happened to SONY and that it what the future 9/11s will look like.

Obama has vowed action against North Korea but options are limited.  Very little of Korea is computerized so points of vulnerability are fewer.  We have little trade with that country and few think that the president is prepared to deploy old-fashioned arms against it.  For now there is a standoff.

This is the new Cold War.  But this is not the only part of it.  The new Cold War is the on-going battle against ISIS.  And the new Cold War is how the Ukraine has become a symbol for what looks like a lingering or rekindling of the old Cold War between Russia and the United States.

The Lost Soul of American Politics

The on-going stories of race and policing in America and the Senate CIA torture report together raise troubling images about America, especially when one considers the reactions to both.  They paint a partisan and racially divided picture about the use of force against citizens and non-citizens around the world.   Collectively, they also question the moral legitimacy of the US.

One of the defining characteristics of America–or at least Americans like to believe–is that we are different and that we embody a set of moral principles that distinguish us from the rest of the world.  This exceptionalism–America as the shining city on the hill-gave us moral authority over the rest of the world.  Yet police violence and torture of prisoners destroy any credence in that exceptionalism.

There is also something wrong with the law that sanctions repeated police use of excessive force. I used to teach a class on police criminal and civil liability under state and federal law, including what is called §1983 violations. It is not easy to win these claims. The law and the public favor the police. Maybe once that was appropriate, but knowing that we have scores if not hundreds of police shooting Michael Browns per year leads one to question whether the law has tipped too far in favor of the former.  Conversely, I remember once doing a WCCO radio show years ago when news of torture fist hit the news.  I explained the Geneva Accords on treatment of prisoners and then took calls.  Repeatedly military vets called in to condemn torture declaring that they learned that if we tortured they (the enemy) would do the same to us or that we would be no better than them.  No surprise that John McCain was one of the few Republicans to condemn the CIA.

My point here is that the Senate report itself was not a surprise.  We have long since known that torture does not yield good information.  Nor should we have been surprised that the torture existed.  We have known that for years.  The real surprise is how some such as Dick Cheney seem completely morally tone-deaf and, to a large extent, how Barack Obama seemed to distance himself from the report.

A New Obama Presidency?

For a president who was supposedly rendered irrelevant by the 2014 elections, Obama is perhaps finally showing that there is still life to his presidency.  Yes he blew it on the Senate torture report, and ISIS, and on Syria.  But increasingly his moves on immigration and Cuba look bold.  While too much of his first six years has been marked by timidly, there is a glimmer of hope for progressives that his final two years will not be marked by constant capitulation to the Republicans.

However, there are still nagging doubts about his presidency for many on the left.  What will he give away to protect Obamacare or make it look like he is a compromiser?  The mistake the progressive  made in 2008 was to think he was progressive.  He was compared to George Bush but not compared to many other Democrats.  Obamacare was a Republican idea he embraced.  Obama was or became  a Wall Street candidate who took more money from the too big to fails than any other candidate in history.   Obama has done more to kill off campaign finance reform and limit in politics than any candidate in history.  Yes he protested Citizens United but he has raised more money than any other presidential candidate in history.  He was the first to opt out of the presidential voluntary public financing system, and he just signed a bill dramatically raising contribution limits to political parties.  His tenure a president will be footnoted as the one where money took over politics.

Start Your Engines

The Iowa straw poll is eight months away and the Iowa caucuses are barely 12 months out.  The 2016 presidential race is upon us.  All speculation is on Clinton v Bush, but not so fast.  But are running with a sense of inevitability but both are candidates with tired old names who may no longer  represent where the parties are.  At this point it is equally probable that either or both of them get their party’s nomination, but it is equally probable they do not.  Clinton has a better chance given a weak Democratic field, but a serious challenge from the left (almost anyone for the Democrats will be from the left) could change the equation for her.  For Bush, there are many other potential rivals such as Rand Paul who excite the base more than him.  Finally, both Clinton and Bush have many liabilities that could be exploited.  Long records in office give opponents lots to attack.

Les Republicans–I Dreamed A Dream (That Nothing was Wrong with Our Party)

Marco Rubio is living a dream along with the rest of the Republican Party.  It is partly  a dream that the government can do no good and the free market can do no wrong.   It is a dream that the Party’s core message is fine but that the tone needs to change.  It is a belief that being a party that is against helping one another, a party that has only one message, a party that tells the public that you are on your own and that 47% are takers, simply needs to put better candidate faces in front of the public to succeed.  It is a party that believes that opposing gay rights, reproductive rights, the Violence Against Women’s Act, civil rights, higher minimum wages, and reasonable gun restrictions is not a serious impediment to winning the votes of young people, moderates, people of color, and the poor.  This is Rubio’s dream, or perhaps fantasy.
    The challenge for the GOP is evolve or die.  While many Republicans may embrace Social Darwinism, they fail to realize the reality of Political Darwinism–parties must too evolve and change or face extinction.  While today we have become accustomed to the American two party system composed of Republicans and Democrats that was not always the case.  Over time the Whigs and have come and gone along with the Know Nothings and other major or minor parties that have graced the political landscape, only to vanquish because they failed to roll with the times.  The challenge that the GOP may be facing is that there may have been a critical realignment of the American political system but no one has told them about it.  What is a critical realignment?
    Over time membership, labels, and even the existence of who the major parties are has changed over time.  Political scientists such as Walter Dean Burnham describe critical realignments, or realigning elections, as until recently, have occurred about every 30-40 years in American politics.  Realignments were triggered by changing economic conditions or crisis that slowing build up to a very intense election that redefines the major political agenda and parties in American politics for the next couple of generations.  Among the characteristics of such elections were short lived but very intense disruptions of traditional patterns of voting behavior.  Major parties become minor; politics which was once competitive becomes non-competitive, or vice versa.  Formerly one party areas become arenas of intense partisan competition; large blocks of voters shift their partisan allegiance.
    Second, critical elections are characterized by abnormally high intensity.  This intensity includes ideological polarization within and among parties and an abnormal rise in voter participation. This intensity spills over into party nominations and platforms where "rules of the game" are changed and/or the party becomes polarized. Party coalitions shift or existing parties decompose and new or third parties emerge to reflect changes in coalitions and voting.
    Finally, critical elections produce new majority parties and policy programs and agendas that dominate the institutional structure of American government.  These parties will continue to dominate for a couple of generations until the next realignment occurs.
     Burnham has identified several critical elections over time with the first in 1800.  Here the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican and the Adams Federalist parties emerge.  The Democratic Republicans win the presidency and take over the two houses of Congress.  This party is composed of mainly farmers, former Anti-Federalists, and those from the southern and middle southern states.
    The second critical election is in 1828. The Jacksonian Democrats emerge as the major party.  The Democrats now are composed of southerners and westerns representing rising middle class merchants and investors.  The third is in 1860 when the Republican Party of Lincoln emerges.  The Republicans represent the northern anti-slavery states and those committed to the supremacy of national power over states’ rights.  The fourth critical election is in 1896 when Democrats no longer simply represent the southern slave states but they include the prairie states and farmers.  The Republicans take on the Progressive banner of reform.  Finally there is the critical election of 1936.  The FDR landslide creates a pro-government and emerging civil rights oriented Democratic Party consisting of unions, workers, Blacks, Catholics, and Jewish voters.  The Republicans are pro-business and anti-government.
    Since 1936 political scientists have been waiting for their realigning Godot. Some claim it occurred in the 1960s when Barry Goldwater drove the Republicans to the right and Lyndon Johnson signed civil rights legislation that lost the south for the Democrats.  Or maybe it  occurred with the election of Reagan and the emergence of Reagan blue collar Democrats.  One could even make the case that Obama’s 2008 election was a critical realignment that moved the Democrats in one direction and forced the Republicans further to the right as the party of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. The point is that right now the GOP is living in the Reagan past and they need to evolve and  realign much like the Democrats did in the 1980s.
    Realigning and reinvention is not easy.  But the GOP is on the road to oblivion otherwise.  Republicans have all but disappeared from the Northeast. Look to votes on issues such as the debt limits, medical marijuana,  and others, the core Republican votes are in the South with even mid-west and western states bolting to vote with moderate Democrats.   The Republicans are not just in danger of being the party of the two percenters, but also of just the South.  They are the party of cranky, greedy old  rich folks who seem not to care about anyone else.  They are the party of Marie Antoinette and "Let them eat cake." To think that this is a game winning strategy for the future is more than a dream, it is a fantasy.

Addendum:  One reader sent me this comment.  I think it is worth posting.

Great column.  History demonstrates that 1800, 1828 and 1860 were clearly
realignment elections.  Arguably, there was no further realignment until
1932-36, when the Democrats replaced the Republicans as the majority party.
That majority began to unravel with the defection of the southern Democrats
on account of civil rights.  In 1968 and later, the Republicans became the
national majority, but lost the Congress for a period on account of
Watergate.  The Republican majority was built on a coalition of the racist
white South and the old business Republican party; but this coalition was
inherently unstable.  Minnesota is probably at the forefront of the ongoing
realignment due to moderate business Republicans rejecting reactionary
right-wing positions and moving toward the Democratic Party.  In Minnesota,
we have the Independent Party as a way-station for many of these people.
Its inability to elect legislators and a Governor likely limits its future,
and at the same time will increase the Democratic hold on the state.  This
same realignment is occurring across the northern, far-west and into other
areas with a dominant urban population.  The best evidence of this is to
compare the electoral map of 1896 and 2008, which are remarkably similar,
but the parties are reversed.  If the election of 1800 was a triumph of the
agricultural vote, the election of 1936 was the triumph of the urban vote.
Since we have become an urban nation (with a significant majority living in
urban areas and living urban lifestyles) the question for the future is from
where will there come a second urban party.