Since politics increasingly resembles satirical representations of it, Senator Al Franken makes a particularly apt sigh of the times. He's more articulate than Caroline Kennedy, more credible than Ted Kaufman, and more likely to step onto the Senate without a sergeant-at-arms tackling him than Roland Burris. Fortunately for Franken, voters were more able to differentiate his Stuart Smally persona from the man playing him than they were able to separate Tina Fey's Sarah Palin from the genuine article. This weekend on The McLaughlin Group, to cite but one example among millions, Montgomery Clift's sister-in-law attributed Fey's "I can see Alaska from my house" to Palin in deriding the Alaska governor. Elinor is able to discern that her brother-in-law only played a mentally-damaged man sterilized by the Nazis. Why does she conflate Sarah Palin with the woman who parodied her on Saturday Night Live?
In New York, Caroline Kennedy looks to inherit a senate seat as is her birthright. In Minnesota, Al Franken has apparently sued his way into the senate. In Illinois, Governor Rod Blagojevich attempted to auction off a senate seat. When Ben Franklin explained the Constitution provided "a republic, if you can keep it," selling, inheriting, and suing your way into "elected" office may have been a few of the dangers that Franklin envisioned imperiling the fledgling republic.
Is it a coincidence that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's political donors won lucrative state contracts? If so, Richardson must be lamenting, oh unhappy accident! Alas, these "coincidences" are rarely that. The unseemly juxtaposition of a corporation donating more than a hundred thousand dollars to New Mexico's governor only to have New Mexico's government then award it more than a million dollars in contract work has cost Richardson a spot in Obama's cabinet. He withdrew his name from nomination as the new administration's secretary of commerce. More government, more corruption--something to think about as Obama seeks $700 billion to stimulate the economy. What corporate fatcats, merely by investing a few hundred thousand dollars into Barack Obama's campaign, will reap an exponential return on their investment through profits on this stimulus package? A small, constitutionally-restrained government offers few temptations for political entreprenuers on the make and politicians on the take. A $3 trillion behometh invites corruption.
There are too few stoners to make today anything like December 5, 1933. Nevertheless, I've heard numerous firsthand reports of veteran potheads celebrating the demise of pot prohibition in Massachusetts by sparking up a joint. I voted for it in November. But tonight I vote for liquids rather than herbs. In other words, it's the principle, not the particular, that motivated my "yes" vote on Massachusetts Ballot Question 2. And if that logic doesn't do it for you, consider that when you vote your narrow interests and ignore the principles today, the principles may come back to undermine your interests tomorrow. More than 150 years ago, for instance, the Massachusetts Know-Nothings made the Bay State the Dry State. Booze? Pot? Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
The calendar's ten best songs is a FlynnFiles tradition. See how the fifth annual installment ranks with past lists. See how it holds up next to your list.
10. Saints of Los Angeles, Motley Crue
9. Cobwebs, Ryan Adams
8. In the New Year, The Walkmen
7. This Is Your Life, The Killers
6. Time to Pretend, MGMT
5. Strange Overtones, David Byrne/Brian Eno
4. Supernatural Superserious, REM
3. Missing Cleveland, Scott Weiland
2. Viva la Vida, Coldplay
1. Sex on Fire, Kings of Leon
What's missing? Share your "best songs of 2008" with the readership in the comments section.
"In the cosmopolitan alternative, the world reshapes America. In the imperial alternative, America remakes the world. The end of the Cold War eliminated communism as the overriding factor shaping America's role in the world. It thus enabled liberals to pursue their foreign policy goals without having to confront the charge that those goals compromised national security and hence to promote nation building, humanitarian intervention, and 'foreign policy as social work.' The emergence of the United States as the world's only superpower had a parallel impact on American conservatives. During the Cold War America's enemies denounced it as an imperial power. At the start of the new millenium conservatives accepted and endorsed the idea of an American empire and the use of American power to reshape the world according to American values."
--Samuel Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, 2004
Gerald J. Russello accuses me of being a "journalist" in his University Bookman review of A Conservative History of the American Left, but makes up for the insult by labeling my book "wildly popular." Read the review here.
What is the best post on FlynnFiles from the year past? I've selected ten worthy candidates for the "post of the year" designation. I need your help, loyal reader, determining the post that stood above the rest in 2008. Make your choice in the comments section. And the nominees are...
Global Cooling, Courtesy of the Fiery Globe 93 Million Miles Away, February 27
Acute Viral Nasopharyngitis, You Don't Stand a Chance, April 19
Ticketmaster Math, May 2
25 Conservative Critics of the Iraq War, June 4
The Day the Keg Went Dry, July 14
Protection Money, September 23
This Is Barack Obama Speaking, October 30
Get a Life, November 6
Damm Intallekshuals, November 12
Don't Drink the Kool-Aid on Jonestown, November 18
Cast your vote in the comments thread.
I will be guest hosting for Michele McPhee on Boston's Talk Evolution 96.9 WTKK from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, December 26 and Wednesday, December 31. If WTKK's strong FM signal does not reach you, please listen live online.
Listen to me on the radio this weekend on Boston's Talk Evolution 96.9 WTKK. I will be filling-in for Michele McPhee tonight (Friday) from 7-10 p.m. and again tomorrow (Saturday) from 8-10 a.m. To quote Elvis, not the King but the one from England with oversized glasses, you had better do as you are told, you better listen to the radio. If WTKK's strong FM signal does not reach you, listen live here.
For Kennedys, working your way to the top is the route for suckers; starting at the top, that is more like it--the Kennedy Way. The Kennedy Way allowed Ted Kennedy to avoid gainful employment, save for a stint in the U.S. Army, before becoming a U.S. senator. Now it pushes Caroline Kennedy to cut the line of public servants in her power grab to become a U.S. senator from New York. Read my article at the American Spectator on why a hereditary claim to a political office in New York should offend democratic sensibilities as much as a monetary claim to a political office in Illinois.
I voted to reduce the penalty for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana to a $100 fine in November's elections in Massachusetts. Nobody voted for the Boston Public Health Commission, but it devised a penalty of $200 for cigarette smokers who dare light up in Boston's hotel rooms. Yes, that's right. Smoking tobacco in the wrong place within the city of Boston gets you a heftier fine than smoking marijuana any place within the city of Boston.
The Democrats in Illinois would rather the corrupt governor retain the power to appoint the state's next senator than allow the people of Illlinois decide on Barack Obama's replacement in the senate. That's right, Democrats won't strip Rod Blogojevich, caught on tape stating that he wants something of personal value in exchange for the senate appointment, of the power to choose the state's next senator. All power to the people, except when the party loses power--then all power to the party.
Yesterday was election day. November 4th? That was just the day we voted on the electors. The electors we voted for, the Electoral College, gathered in the 50 state capitols yesterday and elected Barack Obama the next president of the United States. The Associated Press dubbed the vote "a largely ceremonial procedure, but one mandated by the Constitution." Isn't that the case these days with just about everything in the Constitution, "largely symbolic"?
One might just as easily say that November 4th's vote was "largely symbolic" in that it merely symbolized to most Americans that they were choosing their next president. Instead, they actually chose who would vote for the next president. The Electoral College gets the silent treatment in the press because it offends leftist sensibilities in various ways.
First, a majority of voters in the United States does not elect the president. As Americans rediscovered in 2000, a candidate need not even receive a plurality of the popular vote to win the presidency. As the examples of George Bush, Benjamin Harrison, Rutherford B. Hayes, and John Quincy Adams attest, a candidate can lose the popular vote and win the presidency because--surprise--the popular vote doesn't matter very much in our system. A candidate need only win a majority of votes in any combination of states that make a majority of the Electoral College, and not a single popular vote in any other state, and that candidate, barring the possibility of unfaithful electors, will find himself or herself in the White House. The vote that matters is the Electoral College vote, the one that took place yesterday, and not the vote that took place on November 4.
Second, there is the annoyance of unfaithful electors. Every few years an elector freelances. In 1988, for instance, an elector flipped the Democratic ticket by voting for Lloyd Bentsen for president and Michael Dukakis for vice president. By allowing electors the leeway to buck the choice of the voters who selected them, the Founders put multiple buffers between the people and the president. Unfaithful electors are another way of the Founders reminding us that we live in a republic, not a democracy.
Third, the electoral college is a reminder that ours is a federal government. The states, more so than the people, elect the president. Just as it is the states rather than the people that are represented in the Senate, the states rather than the people vote in the Electoral College. The body votes in each state capitol, rather than in the Capitol in Washington. It is crucial that the state legislatures determine the manner of appointing the electors.
Leftists prefer a simplistic narrative of the people electing the leader. Buying into this notion romanticizes strongmen presidents as representing the will of the people rather than their own will. Reality is more complicated than that, and thwarts the rationalizations of sycophants to unchecked power in the hands of one man.
Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist whose bias is about as subtle as his American counterparts', never hurled his footwear at Saddam Hussein. Think about that.
