You can forget about the intent of the protections of the Constitution, because that’s what the people who we elect to run the country do whenever it suits them. You can forget about one man, one vote because that’s not a definition of democracy, it’s just a mechanism for ensuring that things are run democratically and it began failing decades ago. And you can sure as hell forget about the hogwash you get from politicians at election time.

All you need to look at is what a democracy is supposed to accomplish. In a democracy that’s actually working, everyone should feel that their interests and concerns are given full and fair consideration in the processes that define public policy. Maybe things aren’t run the way you would like, but regardless of who you are, you ought to feel that your voice and the voices of people like you are heard and an effort is made to accommodate them.

And in a democracy, if things aren’t done the way you like, there are things you can do to seek to make changes. Things that are accessible to you and can actually have some impact on future policies.

In a democracy, regardless of your gender, age, race, religion, economic status, political views, eating habits, or anything else, your interests and concerns get fair and equal treatment with everyone else’s. It’s not one man one vote that counts. It’s every person believing in their hearts that they are treated by the government on an absolutely equal footing with every other person regardless of their wealth or social status. And it’s believing in their hearts that what the government does is always and only based on ensuring to every individual their God given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else.

So do you feel like you live in a democracy? Do you? Do you?? Go ahead say you really do. Make my day, I dare you.

More to come.

There can hardly be any question about that after Mr. Perry opened his presidential campaign by calling the Chairman of the Federal Reserve a traitor, and suggesting by innuendo that President Obama doesn’t love his country. Previously, Mr. Perry has suggested that Texas might be better off seceding from the Union, and refused to accept $300 million in Federal education funding when he learned that this money had to be spent in addition to the state’s regular funding. He had intended to use the money to allow the citizens of Texas to pay less than their already miniscule contribution to public education. Improvements to education in Texas be damned.

But the fact that Mr. Perry is a horse’s ass, or that Michele Bachmann is a one trick pony, or Ron Paul is, well, Ron Paul isn’t really what concerns me. I’ve been around for many, many presidential elections and I know that charlatans, buffoons, ideologs, and even a few crooks show up from time to time. That’s all part of the Great American Political Circus. What concerns me is that Mr. Perry is considered by a significant number of voters to be not just qualified to be President of the United States, but the best qualified of the lot.

I know we live in a country that takes pride in telling every school child he can grow up to be president, but come on folks, that’s just a marketing slogan. This is real life, and Rick Perry is damned scary.

I keep asking myself if the more or less direct election of the president is a good thing, and I can never seem to find a reason to answer in the affirmative. The Founding Fathers didn’t think so. (I wonder if all those “original intention” constitutional fundamentalists realize this.) The Constitution set up the electoral college explicitly because the Founding Fathers felt it would be difficult for ordinary citizens to have the time to invest in sorting out the candidates. The original idea of the electoral college was that folks would elect someone local whom they knew and trusted and send him off to Washington where he would meet with other electors from all over the country and after due deliberation choose the best man for the job.

Not really a bad solution to the problem of democratically choosing someone for national office. Too bad it was abandoned 200 years ago in favor of fervent partisanship.

So now the presidential election has become a contest to determine who has the best advertising firm. In it’s most recent issue, The Economist estimates that the $1 billion that Barack Obama is expected to raise for his re-election campaign would pay all the costs of 20 national elections in the UK. The money spent here would be money well spent if it did anything to make the voters better informed about the candidates’ actual qualifications for the office.

Now I’m not saying people don’t spend time talking about the candidates or reading the news or watching political ads on TV. I’m saying they spend precious little time thinking about what it really takes to be the President, and, honestly, it’s difficult to blame them, because nobody–the press, commentators, least of all the candidates themselves–does anything to provide a comprehensive, side-by-side comparison of the candidates’ positions on the issues that matter to the voters, let alone their basic ability to accomplish a tenth of what they promise. The candidates talk about whatever they think makes them look best and tell you what they think you want to hear. The talking heads of the media, bless their hearts, don’t dare press a candidate on his or her prevarications for fear of being kicked of the campaign bus and being unable to earn a living bringing us good information.

In my professional career I had occasion to hire a fair number of programmers, testers, technical writers, and even a few managers. In today’s dollars these people made between $40K and $140K and none of them, either through incompetence or malice, could have done much more than $100,000 in damage. But I spent ten times more effort in evaluating these people than the ordinary voter spends evaluating the person who will define the direction of our public policy and represent us to the world. And don’t forget this will also be the person who will have his or her finger on the nuclear war Start button. Oh, had you forgotten? Those missiles are all still in their silos, ready to go on 10 minutes notice. I’m telling you. Mr. Perry is damned scary.

So imagine if you will that, on behalf of voters across the country, I’m interviewing the candidates applying for the job of president. Some of the things I might ask about are:

• Do you have a solid understanding of macro economic concepts; the US and world financial systems; and the relative strengths and weaknesses of fiscal policy vs monetary policy. Just the ability to explain the difference between fiscal policy and monetary policy would be a plus. Would you like to take that one, Mr. Perry? Not right now? OK, how about you Mrs. Bachmann? No? And Mr. Paul, I’m really not interested in going back on the gold standard, so lets move on.
• How about your understanding of the differing concerns and interests of all of the various ethnic, socio-economic, geographic, and religious groups that make up the country. The President, after all, ought to be concerned with the fair representation for all interests, not just the concerns of those who were duped into voting for him or her. Yes, I am serious, Mr. Perry.
• Do you think you’ll be able to develop constructive relationships and negotiate difficult issues with the leaders of the major countries of the world, most of whom, by the way, are NOT horse’s asses, and many of whom have economic interests that are directly opposed to ours. Mr. Perry, are there any Democrats in Texas you could name as references on this one? And Mrs. Bachmann, how about some of your Muslim acquaintances? Yes, I understand, Mr. Paul, you really don’t get along all that well with anybody, so this isn’t really a fair question for you.
• Will you be able to work constructively with the leaders of both houses of Congress regardless of their political parties? Yes, I know some of them are Socialists and non-believers, but you need to play the hand you get. Good for you, Mr. Paul, you say you don’t dislike those people any more or less than you dislike anyone else.
• Do you think you’ll be able to present a positive and constructive view of America to the world, which requires some minimal understanding of what the concerns and interests of all those foreigners is. Can anybody here find Africa on a map for me? How about China? India? Afghanistan?? We’re fighting a war there you know. I suppose there’s not much point in asking about Tibet or Somalia, is there?

Some of the things that I probably wouldn’t get to in my interviews are:

• Is this someone I would like to have a beer with (for the working class voters) or play a round of golf with (for the professional class voters). (And by the way, this is not because I no longer drink beer or play golf.)
• Is a he or she snappy dresser. Looking presentable when you meet the Queen of England is probably a good thing, but you can hire somebody to help with that.
• Does he or she once live in my state, or does live in New York, California, or Oregon, known hangouts of elitist weirdos, or is fum Alabama, Mississippi, or Tennessee, known hangouts of redneck weirdos.
• Looks like he or she just disembarked from the Mayflower.
• And, although it makes good fodder for the tabloids, I personally have no interest in where a candidate’s father came from or how his mother worked her way through college.
• I also have not the slightest concern about whether or not a candidate wears an American flag pin on his or her pajamas. Well, OK, I guess I would have some concern about a candidate if he did wear a flag pin on his pajamas. Ow! Ow! Ow! Ouch! Ow! Will you take that God damned thing off, already?!!

Now, it’s unlikely that any of the candidates are going to respond positively to a request to sit with me for a job interview that’s on the record, is no holds barred, and focuses on the real issues, so I’m left with two choices: make up the interviews and publish the results or develop real interview questions that cover all the serious national issues and then try via letters and email to get the candidates to answer them, and/or read what they say in speeches, interviews, and on the Internet, and from that divine as well as I can what their positions actually are, and publish them in a public web site.

As much fun as I know I would have making up the interviews, the only good that accomplishes is helping to release the frustration found in trying to deal with a broken political system, so I’m going with the second option, but I’m going to need some help in identifying the right topics and coming up with questions that require a candidate to be specific without asking for a level of detail that a candidate really can’t be expected to have during the campaign.

The candidates include all of the Republican contenders still in the hunt plus Mrs Palin who may or may not join the fun. (That girl is just soooo flirty.) The candidates also include Mr. Obama and any rogue Democrat who wants to get into it. Plus the Libertarian and Green Party candidates, and the Tea Party presidential candidate who almost certainly appear if Mitt Romney wins the Republican race.

In a day or two I’ll publish a list of general topics and a start on questions on a relatively easy topic, say, public education. Stay tuned to this station for further developments.

The New Scientist reports: “Several Australian climate scientists have been given extra security after receiving death threats. Plans to levy a tax on Australia’s most polluting companies from July 2012 are being opposed by those who claim the move will lead to higher prices and lost jobs.”

Many of our most serious social and economic problems have been caused by scientists who as a group are fanatical about searching out facts and trying to explain things rationally, which only serves to that makes it that much more difficult for our leaders to allow us to believe that everything will be fine soon and in no case will it cost us anything to fix it. This kind of disruptive behavior is on its way to eradication among mainstream journalists, so it’s time to move on to the next clique of “factnatics”.

Mr. Perry, governor of Texas and soon to be candidate for the US Presidency, is taking some flak because of a report in the Huffington Post which revealed that Perry’s academic performance in college was less that stellar. In fact about half of his grades were C’s and D’s, including a C in US History and a D in The Principles of Economics.

I feel this criticism is unfair. Based on what I have seen of Mr. Perry during his tenure as governor, I’m convinced that he did the very best he could, and we should recognize that. I should also mention that if it were not for Mr. Perry and others of his stature, Uncle Grumpy might need to actually put some effort into finding absurdities to report on. I’m looking forward to a whole year of national electioneering.

The Governor’s transcript is included in the Huffington report cited below, in case you’re not feeling bad enough about the present state of things.

The Huffington Post report

My guess is that the decision to not promote the plotters was based on the assessment that the failure of the coup to even get off the ground reflected poorly on the competence of those officers.

The blog Gawker reported that Tea Party Nation president Judson Phillips made this statement on Tea Party Nation Radio. [The Tea Party Nation is one of the primary organizations that make up the loosely knit crowd referred to as the Tea Party by the media.]

I have tried to come up with some witty rejoinder but I’m speechless.

If you’ve conceded, after reading Part 1 in this series, that choosing a candidate based on his or her suitability for the job is futile, you’re probably now wondering how you do make a choice. As I said in Part 1, don’t be concerned, it isn’t all that difficult and it won’t take up a lot of your time.

There are two basic methods:

• Choose a political party and blindly vote for whomever they happen to nominate, or
• Evaluate the candidates based on the criteria that are made available to you.

Most voters go with option #1 so we’ll start there. This option is attractive because, once you’ve decided which party you’ll be supporting, you have pretty much eliminated the need for any further thinking whatsoever. Even the choice of a party doesn’t require a lot of thinking if you approach it correctly.

In the United States, there are two principle political parties, Republican and Democratic. There are a few minor parties that may have qualified for the ballot in your state. Libertarian and Green Party are the two most commonly seen recently, and there may be others by the time you vote. New ones seem to come and go every few elections. Of course, you can vote for the candidates in any party, but the winner of the election will be either a Republican or a Democrat, so if you want to feel that your vote counted for anything, you need to vote for a Republican or a Democrat.

There are other reasons why you may want to avoid any of the odd ball parties which we will get to in a later article. For now, the discussion is focused on the two main parties.

How do you decide if you’re a Republican or a Democrat? Again, there’s no reason to panic because there’s no real need for any kind of systematic, analytical approach to the question.

Some people choose to believe that each party has a coherent set of principles and a distinct general philosophy for addressing whatever problems are popular in the media at any given time. Don’t be fooled, there is precious little evidence to support this. Candidates of either party are likely to say and do pretty much whatever they feel is most likely to get them elected, and once elected they say and do whatever they think is most likely to get them elected again next time without any significant regard for whether the new stories bear any relationship to earlier positions or not.

Take the recent example of Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana who said in regard to President Obama’s compromise on tax reductions and the extension of unemployment, “This is beyond politics. This is about justice and doing what’s right, the almost, you know, moral corruptness [of tax cuts for millionaires]”.

This is not unlike the objections of other liberal Democrats and would perhaps been laudable as an expression of a strong stand in favor of the common man if it were not for the fact that Senator Landrieu is one of the very few Democrats who voted for the original tax cuts for millionaires in 2001. I don’t know this for a fact, but a reasonable person might be inclined to believe that back then, Ms. Landrieu felt she could garner more votes or perhaps more campaign contributions by doing something nice for rich people. Now that attitude has gone out of style in these economically hard times, and Ms. Landrieu of 2010 has proven her mettle as a serious politician, by being willing to stand up against the morally corrupt voting record of Ms. Landrieu of 2001.

Luckily for Ms. Landrieu and all the other prevaricators who can be found in the Congress of the United States, most voters have memories that expire in the time it takes to drive home from the polls.

There are many honest people of principled integrity who serve in the Congress. Unfortunately for them, the media is disinclined to provide any help in distinguishing the honest folks from those who have difficulty remembering what they said a while back, which tends to give the edge to those with just the right amount of moral flexibility.

As for a candidate’s allegiance to the party’s official position on the issues, most of them couldn’t score 70% on a quiz based on the details of their party’s platform. The would be disturbing if it were not for the fact that a majority of the voters who swear fealty to one party or another don’t even know what a party platform is let alone possess any knowledge of what’s in it. [NB: The major parties do have official platforms and those platforms are on the party web sites. It is not at all clear why. There was a time when parties actually ran on their platforms and elected officials were expected to at least offer some passing acknowledgment of them. This is no longer true, My best guess is that if a party didn’t have a platform, it would be exposed to attack by the other party, sort of like failing to have a flag pin on your pajamas. Better safe than sorry.]

Forget about trying to align yourself with phantasmagorical party positions. If you are not already convinced that this is the correct thing to do, consider the fact that if you want to determine which side you favor based on each party’s official positions, you will actually need to do some background reading and think through where you yourself stand on the major issues of the day.

So, can we now move on?

Here are some simple questions which should make it easy for you to determine which party suits your image and style best. No single answer should determine your party preference. Consider them all, and you should begin to get a feeling for where you stand.

1 – Family Background

What party do your parents generally support? Given that, how well do you generally get along with your parents?

For example, if Mom and Dad are Republicans and you feel they’re pretty lame, are too much about appearances, and have absolutely no ability to understand you or your friends, then you should seriously consider the Democratic party.

On the other hand, if Mom and Dad are Democrats and you went through high school wishing you didn’t have to drive a 20 year old Volvo, are sick to death of New Age music, and you really, really wish they would stop wanting to have serous talks about how you’re feeling, think of yourself as Republican.

If Mom and Dad support different parties and you think this is cool, you have Democratic leanings. If you think it’s unfortunate and absurd that your family doesn’t share it’s political values, think Republican.

If neither Mom nor Dad bothers to vote, you are either very rich or very poor, and it is widely accepted that both the very rich and the very poor are not encumbered by normal middle class social norms. This means that this little quiz isn’t going to do you much good. Just toss a coin.

2 – Material Aspirations

2a) Guys version: What kind of car do you dream of owning some day: Porsche or Ferrari?

Republican: Porsche because I know that when I get my [MBA, M.D., or J.D.] from a top tier school and land a fat job, I’ll have one.

Democrat: Ferrari because it is absolutely the best car in the world and, frankly, since I’m more interested in serving society than in making money I’ll never to be able to afford either a Porsche or Ferrari so better to be idealistic.

2b) Young woman’s version: How many flannel shirts from Sears do you own?

Democrat: Many.

Republican: Is this a serious question?

3 – Social Awareness

How many people live in poverty in the United States?

Democrat: It depends on how you define poverty. If you use the federal government’s official poverty measure, there are only 28 million who have been living in poverty for 12 months or more, but if you use a more realistic measure such as the income level that’s required to live in a safe neighborhood and keep your kids in school, the number exceeds 44 million. Now you can also make the case that poverty isn’t just an issue of income, but requires you to look at a family’s additional needs….(goes on for a while longer).

Republican: I’m not sure of the actual number, but I’ve heard that there aren’t as many as the Democrats claim because they include a lot of people who really aren’t poor, and a lot of people claim they’re poor just so they can collect unemployment and welfare.

4 – Education

What is the value of a college education?

Democrat: More than simply qualifying you for a decent job, a good education prepares you for full participation in American society. The Founding Fathers believed that public education is the cornerstone of a successful democracy.

Republican: Between $80,000 and $180,000, but if you get your degree from the right school it will enormously improve your chances of getting into a top tier business, law, or medical school which makes it easily worth the investment.

=====

I hope you’re getting the drift.

You may have noticed that the Democrat answers tend to take more words than Republican answers. This is not by chance. If you should be so bored as to go and look at the party platforms of the Democrats and Republicans, you will find that the Republican platform is roughly 2½ pages long. The Democratic platform is 59 pages long. A Democrat would say the Republican platform is too general and could mean almost anything. A Republican would say the Democratic platform is a typical wagon load of idealistic horse pucky. Of course, in either case, these comments avoid dealing with anything of substance.

Next time: How to vote as an independent.

Mr. Graves original appeals were denied as groundless, even though he had no acquaintance with the 6 people he was alleged to have murdered, had no motive, and 4 people swore that he was home in bed at the time of the murders.

It was not until Geraldo Rivera got the original prosecutor to admit that the only witness against Mr. Graves had recanted his accusations the day before he testified, but was coerced into sticking with the original story by the prosecutors. Even so, Mr. Graves appeal to the state courts was rejected, and he was only granted a new trial after his case got to the Federal District Court. Then after 4 more years of dithering, the newly appointed prosecutor finally admitted there was no case against Mr. Graves and he was freed.

In commenting on the release of Mr. Graves, Texas governor Rick Perry said, that Anthony’s exoneration was a “good example of the system working.”

God help us if the system should ever stop working so well.

There are a lot of young people between the ages of 16 and 20 who have never had the opportunity to vote in a presidential election. Since the campaigning for the 2012 election is well under way, I felt it would be a good idea to provide at least some basic guidelines to help prepare them for participation in this important responsibility.

Choosing a President

The most important thing to understand about voting in a national election, is that the greatest concern of most voters in any election is to spend as little time as possible actually thinking about the issues and candidates, but to spend a conscience satisfying amount of time in shallow discussions of vague first principles, primarily with people who already agree with you. For those who are too busy to have political discussions with their friends, or who have no friends, Fox News and MSNBC provide acceptable alternatives.

The United States being a true popular democracy, our electoral system has evolved to work well with this kind of superficiality. Once you know how to fit properly into the electoral process you will be able to enjoy the privilege of participating in determining who runs our government while maintaining the right to spend the years between elections complaining about the incompetence of the people for whom you voted, without ever needing to recognize the absurdity of your thinking.

To get started on the actual electoral process, let’s clarify what it is you really are being asked to do when you vote for President.

If you have never had to face the task, you may feel that choosing the person best qualified to lead our country will be daunting, given the wide range of significant capabilities the job entails and the variety of potential candidates. Don’t lose any sleep over this. There is almost no chance that in your entire lifetime you will ever have the opportunity to vote for the best qualified person for the job, much less to be required to choose between two highly qualified candidates, because such people are never on the ballot. That means there is never any need for any detailed understanding or analysis. In Part 3, Voting as an Independent, we’ll look at the real criteria you can use to make a choice.

Even people who have been voting in presidential elections for decades are sometimes unaware of the fact that the qualifications for getting elected have very little to do with the qualifications for being a good president, and the people on the ballot are inevitably those best qualified for getting elected. This is ensured because in almost every state, to get on the ballot as the candidate of one of the major parties, you must win a primary election. You can think of the primaries as essentially the same thing as the preliminary rounds on “Dancing with the Stars”. In most cases, being a good dancer has little to do with whatever it was that made you a celebrity and qualified you for the show, but once you’re all spangled up and in front of the camera, your former celebrity must take second place to your ability to dance. (Note 1, see below)

Marginally competent candidates is one of the best features of our American democracy. It provides every citizen with unfettered freedom of choice, but also simplifies the task of making a choice by generally limiting you to choosing between two mediocre individuals. By eliminating the need for you to trouble yourself with anything other than a superficial understanding of the issues and, optionally, a vague idea of where each candidate stands on each of the issues, our system makes it possible for all citizens to make their choices on an equal footing with all the other voters, even those who may actually have taken the time to attempt to make an informed choice.

Nowadays people are busy chauffeuring the kids to 3 or 4 social/recreational events a day while still trying to earn enough money to keep the bank from foreclosing on the house, and it wouldn’t be fair to expect everyone to be able to spend a lot of time worrying about who the next President should be. Besides, who can actually remember what they learned in those political science and economics courses they had to take to meet the distribution requirements for a degree in computer science or medieval French literature? So how could you be expected to understand anything well enough to make a reasonable choice?

In the United States, you can always vote with a clear conscience because in the absence of a right choice, can there really be a wrong choice?

Our country is based on the principle of being fair to everyone, and since thinking is a painful process for most people, rest assured that the system is set up to require only a minimal amount of thinking to decide how to cast your vote. No one is required or even expected to waste their time or limited supply of mental activity on choosing a President.

By the way, being a first time voter, you may feel that you should actually attempt to sort out the issues and candidate qualifications before making a decision. There is no harm in this, but just keep in mind that you cannot expect to get any worthwhile information about the issues or the candidates’ position on the issues from the candidates themselves. The news media are not any more helpful, but from time to time newspapers will print a summary of their understanding of the issues and what can best be described as a translation of what each candidate has said about each topic. (Be aware that what a candidate has said on an issue may or may not reflect his actual position on the issue. Candidates will often adapt their statements to meet the expectations of a particular audience, and this can be misleading if they are quoted without noting where the statement was made. When addressing the American Legion, even the most adamant pacifist will not be categorically against fighting for democracy.)

If you are unfortunate enough to be close friends with a lobbyist for the oil industry, you probably can get a good explanation of what the really important issues are and where each candidate really stands, but if you’re close friends with a big time lobbyist, chances are voting in a general election is for you a secondary path to political influence.

As I will explain in a later posting, this shielding of the electorate from the facts is important to the proper functioning of our political system.

(Note 1) The case of Bristol Palin may seem like a strange anomaly since she is neither a celebrity nor a dancer and seems to be doing well based on the celebrity of her mother. I believe the truth is that, precisely because her mother is in politics and, God save us, a possible presidential candidate, the minds of the voters have snapped into election mode and caused them to vote automatically for the person they like the best, the one they feel most deserves to win.

That’s enough for today. Next time: How to Choose between Candidates.