Tim Johnson Refuses Campaign Debates

South Dakota War College is on the story.  Just keep scrolling for several updates.  Here's the story from The Hill.

More Joseph Bottum

It appears that the entire SDP crew is out and about. I email from the warm climes of Boise, ID.  I got a nice email from First Things editor Joseph Bottum.  He's written another post, this time on the South Dakota Playhouse (which my nephew helpfully suggest is house where you play with trains).  Give it a read. 

Arkansas Traveling

Like Jason, I am out of my usual haunts.  It's hot and humid in Arkansas, but still feels good to be back in the land of my birth.  Blogging will probably be light.  My parents have decided to skip the internet age. 

I just noticed that my esteemed colleague emeritus, David Newquist, has this to say about the race card:

It has been clear since the primary  that the McCain campaign is going to be devoted to  ad  hominem attacks on Barack Obama.  The Republicans call the process "defining" him.  As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert points out, they have chosen to define him as "boy." He hasn't the experience, they say, to be president. That damned boy doesn't know his place. Abraham Lincoln did not have any more experience than Obama, and he was elected largely on the effectiveness of his words and his rhetoric. And, says McCain, that Obama boy sure can be glib. Watch out for him.

Actually, I the word "boy" doesn't occur anywhere in the Bob Herbert column.  Nor, does the argument that Professor Newquist makes here.  And what is that argument?  Here it is in standard form:

The Republicans say that Obama doesn't have the experience to be President.
Boys are inexperienced. 
Therefore: the Republicans are calling Obama a boy.

If that logic convinces you, then you can be convinced of anything. 

Professor Newquist says that "Abraham Lincoln did not have any more experience than Obama, and he was elected largely on the effectiveness of his words and his rhetoric."  Actually, Lincoln served a term in the U.S. House of Representatives before running for the Senate in Illinois.  In his 1858 Senate Campaign, Lincoln ran against one of the most important statesmen of his day, and whom he would meet again in the Presidential election of 1860.  The Lincoln-Douglas debates attracted the attention of people all over the United States, as they centered on the central issue of the day.  Obama went from the State Legislature directly to the U.S. Senate, and began exploring a Presidential run almost immediately.   I doubt very much whether anyone in Illinois can remember Obama's campaign for Senate. 

Finally I note that Professor Newquist accuses McCain of "ad hominem" attacks on Obama.  This use of the term "ad hominem" is, I think, illegitimate.  It is used to mean nothing more than personal attacks, but those who use it in that way apply it exclusively to personal attacks that the user disapproves of.  Does Professor Newquist disapprove of personal attacks in political discourse.  Clearly not.  I note these words from his prior post:

A few more covers like this should keep the red neck intelligentsia pondering its meaning up to election time.

I am not quite sure who the "red neck intelligentsia" is, but I am sure that calling someone red neck is a personal attack.  Why is not an "ad hominem" attack, as David uses the term.  Because it's only ad hominem when the Republicans do it. 

The Great Blog Silence of 2008

Blogging will be light to nonexistant for the next week on my end.  I will be in Knoxville, Iowa, for the Knoxville Nationals.  I'm heading out at 3 a.m. tomorrow morning and won't return until Sunday.  I'm assuming I won't have a connection to the Internet for the time being, so I'll see you all when I return.  Have a fantastic week!

Obama and McCain: Whom Do You Admire

My latest in the American News:

In a recent column in the Washington Post, Richard Cohen is concerned that he can think of multiple actions of John McCain that he truly admires while he can think of nothing Barack Obama has done to elicit similar admiration. Cohen is disturbed because he is politically inclined to favor Obama.

Cohen admires McCain's actions as a POW in Vietnam, undergoing torture but refusing early release for the Communists' propaganda purposes.

Cohen also admires McCain's advocacy of campaign finance reform, his opposition to the Medicare prescription drug plan as a budget buster, and McCain's call for a “surge” of troops in Iraq when the war was at its least popular; McCain was virtually alone in making this plea.

As Cohen points out, these policy positions were guaranteed to anger important parts of the voting population, yet McCain stuck to his guns rather than pander to polling.

None of this is to say that Obama is not admirable. Obama has reason to be proud. He is the first African-American to gain the presidential nomination of a major party and he has, in this author's opinion, a better than even chance of winning the election. But Cohen's concern is apt: Other than the good feeling an Obama victory would give to many Americans, what qualifies him to be president?

This question of admiration tells us of a key difference between McCain and Obama. To the extent McCain is admired, he is admired for what he has done. To the extent Obama is admired, he is admired for who he is.

Obama seems to know this, which is why he has made his personality a focal point of his campaign. Recently he told a group of Democrats, “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” This statement, along with much of the language and imagery surrounding the Obama campaign, indicates a conscious effort by Obama to make his very existence the reason for voting for him.

As pundit Jay Cost asserts, Obama's campaign theme is “this great man will unify a divided America around himself.” But, Cost argues, Obama might be making too grand a claim for himself, making it difficult for him to connect with the average voter. Obama runs the risk of acquiring the flaw fatal to many Democratic presidential candidates, namely taking the persona of an elite out of touch with the common man.

Obama has virtually no Senate record, having chosen to run for president before he could build one. His legislative record as an Illinois state senator is best characterized by a high number of “present” votes, earning Obama a reputation as a legislator who ducked the tough votes.

This does not mean that Obama would not be a successful president, even the transformational president some think he can be. It just means that, more than any candidate in recent history, we don't know what an Obama presidency will entail. Obama hasn't failed any of political life's tests, but he also hasn't really taken any of those tests.

McCain, on the other hand, has been tested, literally tortured for his commitment to his beliefs and his country. He is using his experience to his advantage, portraying himself as the wise statesman and Obama as the flippant celebrity who looks good but is devoid of substance. While Obama attempts to paint himself as the embodiment of tomorrow's promise, McCain portrays himself as the battle-tested warrior who is able to make the tough changes necessary in Washington.

Many voters cast their vote based on candidate characteristics. These are factors such as a candidate's perceived honesty, trustworthiness, leadership, commitment to “people like me.” This fall's campaigning will show which candidate's self-description is more attractive to the public. It will also show if the public prefers what Obama is or what McCain has done.

Links Enough For Everyone

I've been remiss is not linking to Joe Knippenberg's piece on an important federal court decision on religious freedom.  Give it a read.  Also read Jospeh Bottum discussing the tough life in Fall River County, South Dakota. 

Speaking of South Dakota, Ramesh Ponnuru discusses the new abortion regulations. 

Prof. Blanchard blogged on Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who holds the record for the hardest last name to spell (you can look it up!).  The New York Times obit is well worth the read as is Jay Nordlinger's excellent discussion of Solzhenitsyn's controversial Harvard commencement address from 1978.   Solzhenitsyn, it seems to me, taught at least one powerful lesson: in order to speak truth to power one must believe in truth.  In his view Soviet Russia was a brutal power and the West had ceased to believe in a counter-truth with which to oppose that brutality.  Prof. Blanchard says Solzhenitsyn was anti-modern.  That is probably true. But unless modernity is a utopia (and by definition no place is a utopia), then modernity contains certain errors, perhaps some false views on the human condition.  Solzhenitsyn seemed to argue that a dedication to self-interest and commodious living may cause the West to concentrate on mere life at the expense of the good life and in that sense was anti-human (humanity being meant for the good life). There may be some truth to that claim.  But, to be sure, Solzhenitsyn also fell prey to the error of the Eastern church, which is a kind of state worship.  The Eastern Christian church early on aligned itself with the state, something that the Roman church never really did.  While not precisely being a theocracy, the Russian Orthodox church in particular has historically apologized for authoritarian state power in ways one would not find in the West. 

Rasmussen

Rasmussen Reports:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation's voters say they've seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.

However, Obama's comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree.

Related thoughts from Rick Moran.

Obama and Affirmative Action

New York Times:  Delicate Obama Path on Class and Race Preferences

Alexander Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89

Solzhenitsyn was man who did one big thing very well.  He brought his experiences of Stalin's tyranny to light in extraordinarily well crafted detail.  From the end of World War II to the 1970's, defenders of communism were gradually forced to recognize that the Soviet Union had given birth not to any kind of liberation, but to an unrelentingly brutal despotism.  Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago made it impossible to believe that Marxism-Leninism had any trace of salvation in it.  That had the kind of impact that most writers can scarcely dream of. 

But his criticism of Soviet communism was part and parcel of a deep anti-modernism.  He stuck fast to a kind of religion that most Americans can hardly imagine. He was no friend of democracy or of Western style pluralism.   Like his native land, he survived Stalinism but was never able or inclined to break free of the bonds that continue to hold Russia back to this very day.   

Corporate Personhood

It is convenient to have some group of people whom one feels licensed to hate, without reservation.  For some folks it's Islamic terrorists; for Islamic Terrorists, its Jews.  For my esteemed Keloland colleague, Cory Heidelberger, it's Chuck E. Cheese's and all the other evil corporations.  So we get this bit of overcooked pepperoni:

Corporations have no worldview. They don't value human life the way either Christians like you or secular humanists like me do. They don't believe in God's salvation or man's inherent goodness. Corporations, these artifical entities that our courts blasphemously endow with personhood, are driven by profit, period. Not patriotism, not religion, not truth, nothing but profit...  Don't be fooled: those CEOs defending free trade with China aren't motivated by principle; they're motivated by the very selfish, materialist desire to keep their access to a market of 1.3 billion well-controlled Chinese workers and consumers.

Cory is surely right that corporations defend trade with China out of economic interest rather than some "world view," but for the most part that is a very good thing, isn't it?  I am very comforted that Microsoft only wants to strip my computer of any informations string that is not under its control.  I would be utterly terrified if they started caring about "God's salvation or man's inherent goodness." We have seen such corporations in the past: the Spanish Inquisition comes to mind. 

Cory has a stunted conception of "the corporation."  The Sierra Club is a corporation, after all.  So is the ACLU or the Obama Campaign.  Are non-profit corporations morally better than for-profit corporations?  One's view will like depend on the congeniality of the cause.  The National Abortion Rights Action League?  The National Right to Life Committee?  The National Rifle Association?  But the idea that for-profit corporations are uniquely selfish and soulless is flat wrong.  When teachers unions vehemently oppose merit pay or vouchers, they may claim all sorts of high minded motives, just as business corporations frequently do.  But what the teachers unions are in fact committed to are the interests and privileges of their constituents.

Likewise, individual farmers may be forgiven if they care more about the federal subsides for ethanol than they do about the food crisis in the developing world.  Cory may think that if only we got rid of capitalism, all this selfishness would go away.  Well, we tried that.  The Soviet Union is history, and Mao is selling tee-shirts. 

More entertaining than my friend's jaundiced view of corporations is his view that corporate personhood is a "blasphemous" mistake.  Corporate personhood just means that a corporation can be considered as a legal person in court, and that it can bear liabilities and obligations, as well rights and privileges.  It has been part of western law for centuries, and for very good reasons.  Corporations emerge when individuals pool their resources and talents and act as a body.  Treating those corporate bodies as legal individuals is the only way that governments can effectively regulate them.  But if you are going to expect corporate bodies to pay debts and accept responsibility for their acts (oil spills come to mind), you have to grant them a corresponding set of legal rights.  Otherwise they will be pillaged out of existence, which may of course be precisely what Cory wants. 

What applies to Exxon will also apply to the Sierra Club.  When someone gives money to the latter, who does it belong to?  It belongs to the corporation, which can own property the way Cory and I can.  Can government seize the Sierra Club treasury at a whim, or does the organization have a legal right to the money?  If you say so, you are endorsing corporate personhood.

But I am being a little unfair to Cory here.  The "corporate personhood" question is more narrow: granting that the corporation is a legal person, does it have all the rights that are enjoyed by "natural persons"?  Natural persons would be individual human beings, and maybe dolphins; I will have to check.  That is the significance of the Supreme Court case he cites. Now I think enemies of "corporate personhood" have a point here.  Surely some things in the Bill of Rights do not apply to corporate persons.  I don't see how Chuck E. Cheese Inc. can enjoy free exercise of religion.  But what about freedom of speech?  Well, does the Sierra Club or the National Organization of Women enjoy such a right? If so, then you can't pretend that you are opposed to corporate personhood in the narrow sense either. 

Corporations are groups of people.  That's all.  Individually and collectively, people are sometimes selfish and sometimes not.  It is piece of idle fancy to believe that any political reform will change such facts.