Why I could NEVER vote for Mike Huckabee

I have never much liked Mike Huckabee. First I found out that when he was Governor of Arkansas, he was liberal on all the things I'm conservative on, and conservative on all the things I'm liberal on. Then there was his comment, nearly three years ago, that "what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards." This is so contrary to what I believe, that the Constitution must be religiously absolutely neutral, that this one quote alone would make me unalterably opposed to Mike Huckabee and all he stands for.

But he's now added one more quote to the picture. Recently, Iowa voters voted to remove three judges who had issued a pro-gay-marriage opinion. Now, it is clear that a lot of "social conservatives" disliked that opinion. And it should not surprise me that there's a lot of gnashing of teeth on this judicial decision, though I for one applaud Iowa's judges for having the courage to do thr right thing. But Huckabee's defense of the removal vote goes beyond disgusting. To me it is the victory of bigotry at the polls, worthy of condemnation by all. But to Huckabee,

"The significance and historic nature of the judicial elections here in Iowa were far bigger than the borders of Iowa. It was a very important statement that voters made, a statement that resonated across the country and one that I think will give legs to a larger movement over the next few years."

Obviously, Huckabee's bigotry knows no bounds. And that is why I could never vote for him for any position in government.

Lisa Murkowski, write-in winner

It seems that Alaska has elected Lisa Murkowski to another term in the Senate, even though it was required of Alaska voters to write in her name. A tremendous victory for common sense, since her opponent, Joe Miller, seems to have been a very light candidate, intellectually. And a major defeat for Sarah Palin, coming in her home state.

I congratulate Sen. Murkowski, who certainly was the candidate I hoped would win Alaska's Senatorial election. But I hope that the personal animosity between Palin and Murkowski can be toned down. I think everyone understands that both of Alaska's highest-profile political women despise each other. But for the good of the Republican Party, for the good of the State of Alaska, and for the good of American political progress, I hope they can bury this hatchet.

The Republican Party, I believe, is the only hope for any short term improvement in American political fortune. So anything like this Palin-Murkowski feud hurts America, not just the GOP. It also hurts Alaska particularly; however, not being an Alaskan, I don't have as much to concern myself with there. But I would think that both Murkowski and Palin, as important Alaskan politicians, would be concerned.

Health care reform

Now that Republicans who have vowed to "repeal and replace" Obama's health care bill control the House of Representatives, it will be interesting to see what they can do. They can't override a veto by the President, and they certainly face, even before it gets to the President, a Senate that still has a Democratic majority (though very closely divided, especially since one of the Democrats is Joe Manchin, who was elected as an anti-Obamacare candidate).

There are some parts of the health care bill I like — like barring denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions — but one provision that I feel must be gutted, whether by the Courts or by Congress: the individual mandate.

If they make no other change, the new Congress must find a way to derail that single provision. And if that is all they can do, I'll be satisfied. Now, if they can do things like allowing purchase of plans across state lines, or meaningful tort reform, I'll be happier, but the individual mandate is the one thing I consider the worst part of the bill as it ended up. (They thankfully scrubbed the "public option," which would have been even worse.)

Joe Miller, sore loser

It seems that in the Alaska Senatorial race, the Republican candidate, Joe Miller, is trying very hard to have all ballots rejected where the name of his write-in opponent, Lisa Murkowski, is misspelled. And according to at least one other blogger, he has Alaska law on his side. I'll get to whether Alaska law says that Miller is right in a bit. But even if it does, Miller is a sore loser, who has about as much of a conscience as Barack Obama does. (Remember how Obama used the nuances of Illinois law to rule three opponents off the ballot so he could run unopposed for the State Senate?) If I were Joe Miller, sitting in the Senate because a few people misspelled "Murkowski," (and it's pretty telling that I bet nobody has ever misspelled Joe Miller's name!) when they actually meant to vote for her, I think my conscience would haunt me all six years of my term. But Joe Miller, I guess, has no conscience.

Now what does Alaska law say? "(11) A vote for a write-in candidate, other than a write-in vote for governor and lieutenant governor, shall be counted if the oval is filled in for that candidate and if the name, as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy, of the candidate or the last name of the candidate is written in the space provided." Note that, as written, the phrase "as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy" in that statute seems to modify the first occurrence of the word "name." So the way I read this statute is that "last name" is not qualified by the phrase "as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy." The blog post I cited disagrees. But I think English grammar is on my side.

It is to be hoped that enough people spell Murkowski's name correctly that her win is clear even to those who insist that the law must be construed as that blogger believes it should be. But if not, we may end up having a court case to determine what the law means!

Working toward 2012 endorsements

Now that this year's election is over, it's time to start looking at 2012. I had hoped that Meg Whitman might have been elected Governor of California, and had she been, she would have been — as I said more than once — my first choice for the 2012 nomination. But I think that one of the qualifications that would have a major bearing on acceptability would be having run a State Government. (Running a big corporation, which Whitman certainly has done, is helpful, but I don't think enough.) So she's out of there for now. Being a Senator is about the only other qualification that I might accept as even close to a Governorship of a State, and if Carly Fiorina had won and Whitman had not, she might be my first choice. But she didn't win, either. So the two people I really might have endorsed enthusiastically under different circumstances are out. So who might I favor?

Two years ago, I was somewhat negative about Mitt Romney, in part because of some ambiguity in where he stood on a lot of issues. But in the current situation, the importance of economic issues makes Romney look pretty good to me. He is currently my #1.

I don't know as much about Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, but whatever I've seen about him I like. I am particularly impressed by something he's said which infuriates a lot of "social conservatives" — as I've said in the past, I think that they harm the party more than helping it, so what infuriates them pleases me. And Daniels has said that he felt that social issues should be de-emphasized, even though he is socially conservative. I strongly support his stand there and for that reason alone, he ranks high in my opinion. And his performance as Governor of Indiana is creditable. Daniels, then, is currently #2 on my list, and I would not be surprised if, on learning more about him, he moves up to #1.

Finally, recently I saw a story to the effect that former Governor of New York George Pataki might run. He is also someone I could easily support. Call him #3 for now; again, as time goes by, he might move up on the list, depending on what happens regarding Romney's or Daniels' actions.

The season I hate

Tuesday I was shopping and I noticed that the background music had shifted to Christmas music. Actually, I should probably be thankful this was the first time I'd heard any — usually it starts in October or even September, and it was already nine days into November this time — but I wish there were some way to just get away from it all! Oh, some of the music was innocuous stuff like Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride" (not a mention of Christmas in the whole song, thank goodness!) but most of it was the usual carols, heavy with the spirit of Christian dogma.

It's the one time of the year I really feel I'm a minority. Now, at least this isn't an actual Government-sponsored commemoration. But as some people don't like mosques near Ground Zero, which are just as privately organized, I would love to see Christians keep their observation of a holiday I find distasteful in their homes and churches.

Let us be factual. Christmas is the commemoration of the birth of the man who created a split in my religion, whose followers over the centuries have persecuted my co-religionists, and who continue to try to proselytize to win converts. They have the right, under our great First Amendment, to freely exercise their religion; but I wish they would realize that drawing other people into their celebration is offensive to some of us.

Hopefully, I will not have any more reason to mention Christmas this year. Just understand that, as far as I'm concerned, I wish to ignore it as totally as I can — though I can't totally, because I'll have to contend with such matters as the fact that even places that are normally open seven days a week will be closed on December 25^th.

The Political Compass and similar measures

A bit more than a month ago I posted a comparison of my scores on the Political Compass and other similar measurement schemes. The one thing I have always noted about these is that, while they work better than simple "left/right" scales, two-dimensional schemes like these never get it quite right. I wonder if yet more dimensions are necessary. (But then, I need someone else to devise the test; I'm not a psychologist and I don't think I can do it!)

There is a common psychological analysis test called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. It has engendered a number of clones, but all use the same four-dimensional system for classifying people. And I note that every time I've taken one, I always come out the same way, an unambiguous ISTJ. (My wife comes out almost the exact opposite; she is usually an ENFP, which is truly the exact opposite, but on the "thinking-feeling" axis she is so close to the zero point tat she sometimes comes out as an ENTP, and thus is often categorized as an ENxP. But the important thing is, all these personality measures seem to be consistent, while the political ones sre not.) I really think there needs to be more teased out. Perhaps not a four-dimensional scheme, but certainly more than two.

One thing I note is that there is a distinct urban character to my libertarianism. While I want to be left alone to my own way of thinking, I'm not eager to be left on my own. The idea of providing for my own self-defense rather than relying on the police appalls me, as does the idea of driving everywhere rather than using public transportation. This, of course, comes from growing up in a big city, but it separates me from many libertarian types. And it probably explains why I part company with them on Second Amendment-related questions.

I wish people would look at this more closely. There needs to be a better way of gauging political similarity.

Postmortems - Part 3 (Pennsylvania/Maine/Rhode Island)

Of all the States, the one about which my feelings are the most complicated is Pennsylvania. I had followed the career of Arlen Specter for many years, beginning in the 1960s when I had a job in Philadelphia and Specter was a young DA uncovering corruption in that city. Over the years Specter developed into the Senator I had my greatest agreement with. So the ideal result for me would have been for Specter to stay a Republican and serve six more years in the Senate. But six years ago Specter was challenged for the nomination by Pat Toomey, a "Tea Party" type before they ever called it that. Given the rightward drift of the GOP, Specter apparently figured he could not beat Toomey in a primary this year, so he went over to the Democrats, which saddened me, though I could understand why he did it. This didn't work, because as far as the GOP primary voters were to his right, so were the Democratic primary voters to his left, and Specter lost that primary to Joe Sestak, so Specter was out of the pictue completely. If Specter had won the Democratic primary, and I had been a Pennsylvanian, I would have been faced with a terrible decision: Support someone who agreed with me on most issues, but whose first vote would be for Harry Reid to lead the Senate? or someone far ro my right, but who at least would help keep the Senate Republican? Sestak's winning the primary made the choice pretty straightforward. And so I wanted to see Toomey win, and was glad to see it happen, even though this was one of the closest races in the 2010 election. Pennsylvania, unlike both of its neighbors New York State and Maryland, was good territory for the GOP this year. Not only was Toomey elected, but a Republican Governor and State Legislature. All I can say is I wish Maryland had done so well.

Both Maine and Rhode Island had independent candidates running for Governor. Maine has in the past actually elected an independent to the office, so there was really a chance, but the Republican, Paul LePage, pulled it out. Maine seems to be the one State in New England which the GOP still can win frequently — it has two very competent Republican women as its Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who, with Specter gone, are probably the best representatives of the kind of Republicanism I prefer. LePage is considered a Tea Partier, so we'll have to see what sort of job he does as Governor of Maine. But I congratulate him and wish him well.

It was Rhode Island, however, that actually elected an independent this year. And Lincoln Chafee, Rhode Island's next Governor, is an enigma. He used to be a Republican, but supported Barack Obama's candidacy for the Presidency in 2008. And Obama recognized this and refused to endorse Chafee's Democratic opponent, Frank Caprio. (This led Caprio to say Obama could "take his endorsement and shove it," certainly one of the most impolite things a politician has said about a President of his own party!) Obviously, Chafee got elected mainly by Democratic votes, so it will be interesting to see whether he governs as a Democrat or a Republican. He looks like another Lowell Weicker to me, becoming a Democrat in all but name as Weicker did in neighboring Connecticut.

Postmortems - Part 2 (Maryland/California/New York)

A local weekly newspaper in this area printed a headline, following the election, saying "GOP Wave misses Maryland." Yes, it certainly did. As I said in yesterday's post, the most important observation to take from Tuesday's election is that every State is different. Maryland is sandwiched between Pennsylvania and Virginia, both of which were great states for the GOP this year. (Virginia was already so red that there was not much to go redder, but the GOP took 3, or possibly 4, House seats away from the Democrats there. I'll say more about Pennsylvania in a subsequent post.) But in Maryland, as I said in my October 12, 2010 post, the GOP made hardly a dent in the blueness of the State. One House seat, which should have been Republican anyway, but which went to Democrat Frank Kratovil in 2008 because of an internecine split in the local GOP, came back home. A few more seats in the lower house of the State's legislature went red, but in the upper house, a couple went the other way. And a good former Governor, Bob Ehrlich, certainly not a bizarre "Tea Party" type, lost by 10 percentage points to the sitting Governor, Martin O'Malley. In the Senate, one of the most liberal members of the chamber, Barbara Mikulski, had no trouble winning by a much larger margin, over a pretty uninspiring Eric Wargotz, who was pretty much unknown outside his home county. As I said in that post on Oct. 12, it seemed strange to see the GOP winning all over the place, while seeing nothing but blue here at home. It may be because so many Marylanders are Federal Government employees, and thus unsympathetic to a "smaller Government" GOP, and rather sympathetic to a President Barack Obama who the rest of the country was rejecting. As I said earlier, O'Malley even invited Obama into the State to campaign for him, something most Democrats were certainly not doing. Pretty dispiriting, though I'm happy for the rest of the country.

New York didn't look much better. As a native of that State, I tried to follow it; the GOP didn't help their cause very much by nominating a lame excuse for a gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino. They elected a Democratic Governor and two Democratic Senators; most of the time you don't see two Senate seats filled in the same election in a State, but here there was one term expiring and the other seat vacant because Hillary Clinton had left to become Secretary of State, with Kirsten Gillebrand only appointed to an interim position. Both Gillebrand and Chuck Schumer easily won re-election, and Andrew Cuomo, son of a previous Governor, won the gubernatorial office.

While New York State elected the son of a governor from the 1980s and 1990s, California was restoring a governor who had served even earlier, in the 1970s and 1980s, Jerry Brown. Like New York and Maryland, California seemed to be bypassed by the GOP wave. And this one was even stranger, because in California, the GOP had some excellent candidates. Meg Whitman, running for Governor, and Carly Fiorina, running for the Senate, were well qualified, very desirable candidates, and both put millions of dollars of their own money into their campaigns. But Jerry Brown beat Whitman, and Barbara Boxer gained reelection to the Senate over Fiorina. I guess California voters just couldn't see what was best for them, but that's how democracy works sometimes.

Postmortems - Part 1 (Florida/Alaska/Delaware/Nevada)

Last Tuesday's elections showed a lot of different things. But the most important is that every State is different.

In Florida, the "Tea Party" candidate, Marco Rubio, succeeded in gaining the support of the entire Republican electorate. While I might have liked to see a better showing by Charlie Crist, he made a serious mistake. He let himself be painted "blue" (i. e. a secret Democrat). First, when some people were saying he might join the Democratic caucus if he were elected to the Senate, he refused to come out and say he was a Republican who would never support the Democratic leadership (i. e. Harry Reid et al), which lost him voters who wanted to express their hatred for the Obama/Reid/Pelosi agenda. Second, when such as Bill Clinton worked to get Kendrick Meek to withdraw so that the Democrats could unite to defeat Rubio, Crist accepted this role without saying anything that might have inspired Republicans to stay with him. This made Crist seem to be a Democrat while Rubio managed to unite all the Republicans, even those who had originally supported Crist. So Crist and Meek split the Democratic vote, instead of Crist taking both the moderates among the Republicans and those among the Democrats, which would have been the way to win. Too bad. But at least the winner in this scenario was a Republican, though further to the right than I'd like. Better this result than what happened in Delaware and Nevada, about which I will say more later in this post.

Alaska was a bit like Florida, but here the "Tea Party" candidate, Joe Miller, did not reach out to mainstream Republicans, who rallied behind Lisa Murkowski. So even though Alaskans had a harder job — Murkowski's name had to be written in — they seem to have done so. The write-in votes have to be examined to see how many of them are for Murkowski, but most people think she will become the second person in United States history to win a Senate seat on a write-in vote. If she does so, I congratulate her. It was a hard job, but it looks as though she did it!

The other two States I'm discussing in this post had much more unfortunate results. In both Delaware and Nevada, the "Tea Party" candidates were relatively unqualified people who made outrageous statements that drove even anti-Obama voters into the camps of their Democratic opponents. As disliked as Harry Reid was in Nevada, people voted for him over Sharron Angle, and in Delaware, Christine O'Donnell was so ridiculous in some of her statements that even Chris Coons' admission of having been a "bearded Marxist" did not prevent his beating O'Donnell. (And more to the point, Mike Castle, who was the loser in the GOP primary to O'Donnell, probably could have beaten Coons, according to all polls.) Obviously, if a "Tea Party" candidate like Marco Rubio (or Pat Toomey, to be discussed in another post) could run a sufficiently mainstream campaign to win, it is pretty clear that one cannot paint all the "Tea Party" candidates the same color. Some were plausible candidates, but others, like Angle and O'Donnell, were not. Too bad. Imagine if Sue Lowden had won in Nevada and Mike Castle in Delaware. The GOP would have been closer to tying the Senate. I just wish...

Jeff Vanke

It appears that Jeff Vanke's candidacy as a Modern Whig got about 13% of the vote in the 6^th Congressional District of Virginia. Is that a good number? It's pretty far from winning — the winning Republican candidate got six times as many votes — but for a candidate whose party is unknown to most people, it is probably a decent start. But it looks as though there's a long way to go.

An interesting development

In the Civil War, a political alignment was established that lasted for many years. Since the party of Abraham Lincoln was the Republican Party, white Southerners universally became Democrats, even as the party became rather liberal elsewhere in the country and they stayed conservative. For the same reason, African Americans became Republicans, to the extent they were able to vote at all. (In the South, after Reconstruction, they generally were not, because of major obstacles placed by the white population, which led to the South being firmly Democratic.) This alignment remained the case until the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he put into place a number of economic changes that most people considered beneficial to the poor, and as most African Americans were poor, they moved into the Democratic Party. (White Southerners remained Democrats, so there was the odd phenomenon that the African Americans and their greatest opponents were both in the Democratic Party.) But even then, the African Americans were not solidly Democratic; Republicans received perhaps 1/3 of the vote of those who were able to cast ballots.

The big change took place in 1964, because Barry M. Goldwater voted against a civil rights bill. Goldwater was not a racist, but simply believed in limited government and felt this was too much of an incursion of Government into people's lives. (To me that was a misguided attitude, but I'm only stating Goldwater's feelings here, not agreeing with them.) As a result, almost all African Americans moved into the Democratic Party, and white Southerners became Republicans, though more gradually; they continued voting for local Southern Democrats for a couple of decades, though supporting Republicans nationally. A few African American leaders were Republicans, such as Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, and more recently Justice Clarence Thomas, General Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice, but the African American voters generally split approximately 90-10 Democratic, and almost all of their politicians were Democrats as well.

But this week, two African American Republicans were elected to Congress. There were a few others in the past, but both of these were from the old South, and it's the first time in more than a decade that two African American Republicans will be serving at the same time. This will be an interesting development. Will the Black Congressional Caucus treat them as traitors to their race? It's going to be interesting to see.

Mixed emotions

The results of Tuesday's elections leave me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, Nancy Pelosi gets to hand her gavel over to John Boehner, which is absolutely great, and the Republicans gained a significant number of seats in the Senate (though not a majority, but nobody really expected that) and a bunch of Governorships as well. These are the positives. But it seems that none of the specific elections I really cared about went right, except perhaps in Alaska where the results are not too clear yet.

In the State I live in, Maryland, it seems that Martin O'Malley won by a rather big margin over Bob Ehrlich. Certainly this was not a big surprise, but Ehrlich seemed to have a real chance, and so this result was a major disappointment. In California, there was an even bigger disappointment: both Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina seemed to have good chances to win, but neither one could pull it off. And in my original home state of New York, only one of the third party candidates got the 50,000 votes needed to keep his party on the ballot, and that was the Green Party candidate, the one I liked least. (The Libertarian, Warren Redlich, came very close: nearly 45,000, but close is not enough to do it. And the other third party candidates got no more that 20,000-30,000 each.)

Florida is another state I was looking at. That one was not too bad — I was very pleased to see the Democrat, Kendrick Meek, finish third! And while I would have preferred Charlie Crist to the actual winner, Marco Rubio, I think Rubio would be a reasonably good choice from what I've seen.

The worst of the results this Tuesday was in Nevada. I really thought that Harry Reid could be defeated. But this was not to be. Apparently, by nominating Sharron Angle, just like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, The Tea Partiers threw away a good chance to help throw the Democratic rascals out!

Perils of plurality voting

One of the perils of plurality voting, the system we use here in the US for most elections, is that the candidates most similar to each other are the ones who will attack each other the most viciously. There are two candidates for Governor of New York in yesterday's election who could be described as "libertarian": Warren Redlich, who actually had the Libertarian Party's nomination, and Kristin Davis, who ran under the banner of the Anti-Prohibition Party (apparently favoring legalizing prostitution). Davis had tried to gain the Libertarian nomination, and before Redlich had secured it, he called her a "whore." (She had actually run an "escort service," though apparently she was not a prostitute herself.) Later on, just before the election, campaign flyers were distributed, it would appear by members of Davis' campaign staff, though with the actual connection obscured by using a fake sponsor's name, calling Redlich a child molester. Obviously, these two candidates, who were seeking to get the same voters' support, felt it necessary to attack each other rather than their more remote opponents.

And this is only one such example. I remember one election, many years ago, also in New York when I still lived there, when the Socialist Workers' Party and the Socialist Labor Party candidates found themselves on adjacent lines of the ballot. Now it is granted that these two parties differed more than their names would imply, but they were the most left-wing of the parties on the ballot and were obviously competing for the votes of those who favored some sort of socialism. So again, they felt it necessary to attack each other rather than their more remote opponents.

It's one of the plurality system's biggest flaws. Candidates who should be boosting each other as second-best end up fighting tooth and nail. If we had score voting, or approval voting, or even instant runoff voting (though supporters of SV and IRV mostly oppose each other's ideas almost as strongly as supporters of rival, but similar, candidates in plurality do!) you would not see this. Candidates who were rather similar would be more likely to boost each other since it would not hurt themselves to do so.

That alone is a good reason to change our voting system.

Carl S. Milsted, Jr. and his "Holistic Politics"

Carl S. Milsted, Jr. runs a website named "Holistic Politics." Normally, a name like this would send me running for the hills. Usually anyone who uses the wod "holistic" is the mystical kind of person, definitely antithetical to my rationalistic mode of thought. And Milsted's site uses psychedelic colors and lettering which might go along with that perception. So why am I writing this post, which, as you will see, is strongly in favor of some of the things he says?

Well, if you actually look at his site, his politics is not too far from mine. He started as a Libertarian but has grown away from its more extreme ideas — my first, and still current, political beliefs are really those of a "Rockefeller Republican," but this includes a lot of at least "small-l" libertarianism, and even some sympathy for the Libertarian Party's ideas, though I feel they are in need of watering down. He uses the Nolan Chart to plot political philosophy, which is the same as the "World's Smallest Political Quiz," which I mentioned in an earlier post. And on the basis of the chart, he argues that the political group most poorly served by our present two-party system is a big area in the upper-left portion of the chart, exactly where I find myself.

Actually, it looks as if Milsted was the author of the quiz that called me a "social liberal" which I referenced in my earlier post.

I'm getting rather interested in Milsted's ideas, though obviously I don't totally agree with them. And I will be commenting more on them in the future.

Tomorrow is Election Day

Tomorrow is Election Day. And it is customary to urge everyone to vote. But I differ with that sentiment. I believe that not voting, if you have a good reason, is a perfectly good option. But if you don't vote, let it be because you really mean your vote to be an abstention.

There are specific contests on the ballot for me tomorrow that I will consciously abstain in. For example, I have already given my reasons for abstaining in elections for the Board of Education. There is a question on the ballot tomorrow about amending the State Constitution to change the qualifications for judges in one court in the City of Baltimore. Because it's a State Constitutionsl requirement, everybody in the whole State is entitled to vote on this. I would favor taking things like this out of the State Constitution entirely. But since they haven't put that question on the ballot, all I can see myself doing is abstaining. In all these, though, my abstention is deliberate. If you don't vote because you deliberately mean to abstain, that is reasonable. Otherwise, if you don't vote, you are failing your civic obligation.

So, instead of telling people to vote tomorrow, I am saying in this post, "Vote, unless you really mean to abstain!"

Unintended consequences? Or the greatest good for the smallest number?

At some point, some wise guy decided that, in order to accommodate the few people who are wheelchair-bound, every transit bus needs to be equipped with wheelchair lifts — complex mechanical contraptions that frequently break down. This morning I had an experience that bore this out. I got on a bus, and a few stops down the route there was an intending passenger in a wheelchair; the lift broke down as the driver was lowering the lift to take her on. So the bus was stuck, with its wheelchair lift mechanism stuck in a middle-of-the-track position, and about thirty passengers had to wait half an hour until the next bus came along.

Why could the powers-that-be not have decided that wheelchair passengers could be accommodated by alternative transportation — such as specially equipped vans — and allowed the buses to be left alone? It seems that, for the benefits of a very small number of wheelchair-bound passengers, requiring such breakdown-prone equipment is really perverse. Is it a case of "unintended consequences"? (The people mandating the wheelchair accessibility not realizing that it's just one more device that can break down?) Or is it "the greatest good for the smallest number"? (The people mandating the wheelchair accessibility simply deciding they don't care about the majority of the bus-riding public — we can all go to hell, so a few wheelchair-bound people don't feel discriminated against? And is it really discrimination, if they can't use a regular bus and need to call for a special vehicle to take them somewhere? After all, they'd probably have the whole van to themselves!)

I find myself daily, every time I get on a bus, hoping there will not be anyone in a wheelchair wanting to get on it, or if there is already one on the bus, that he will not want to get off before I do. And if I'm waiting for a bus and there is someone in a wheelchair waiting at the same stop, just praying that he doesn't want the same bus I do.

The homestretch

We are now in the last week before the elections. And clearly there are important races to be decided. (Some people have already taken advantage of "early voting" provisions in their States' election laws to vote earlier than the standard election day. So they just have to wait till the results come in.) At this point I want to review what I've already advocated for the voters of the country.

In one district, the 6^th District of Virginia, voters can put a new face in the House of Representatives, Jeff Vanke, who stands for a kind of moderation sadly lacking in today's politics. The Modern Whig Party, which he represents, deserves the vote of thoughtful residents of that district. Unfortunately, some of the remaining 434 districts do not have good choices available to them; there are some where candidates, usually incumbents, are running unopposed. But in most of the districts, voters do have a choice (of varying degrees of viability). It is imperative that the voters choose as many Republicans as possible to retire Nancy Pelosi from the Speakership. If you have a Democrat as a representative, even if he (or she) seems reasonable and moderate, remember that the first vote that Congressman will take in January, if re-elected, is for Pelosi as Speaker. And that is good enough reason to vote for the Republican opponent. (In districts like mine, of course, it won't do much good: Chris Van Hollen will win, even though Mike Phillips would be a far better choice.) But even if it's only going to be symbolic, cast your vote for the Republican.

In the Senate, it's a mostly similar story. It looks to be unlikely that the Senate will actually go Republican, so Harry Reid (or Chuck Schumer, if Sharron Angle can win Reid's Nevada seat) will be the Majority Leader. But in the Senate, the minority has more power than in the House. So again, it's necessary to elect Republicans. However, just as there is one House district where the Republican is not the preferred candidate, there are two States whose Senate seats need to be given to someone other than the "official" Republican candidate. These are at opposite corners of the country, Florida and Alaska. In both States, there are moderate Republicans running independent candidacies, who have real chances to win, running against extremist right-wing Republicans who won the "official" nomination. So Charlie Crist, in Florida, and Lisa Murkowski, in Alaska, deserve people's votes. And in neither case will splitting the Republican vote elect a liberal Democrat. In both States, the Democrat is running a distant third.

Governorships are slightly different. It's not like the Senate, where a vote for any Democrat helps elect Reid or Schumer to a position of power, or the House, where a vote for any Democrat helps elect Pelosi to a position of even more power. Governorship votes stand and fall on themselves. It's still a good thing to elect the Republican in most states — though not in New York State, with the primitive Carl Paladino as candidate. (But he has little chance of winning, so you can vote in clear conscience for one of the numerous third party candidates in that State. And this is exactly what I think you should do.)

Running against whom?

There are a lot of campaign signs in my neighborhood for Mike Phillips, the Republican candidate for Congress in my district. and all of them seem to couple his name and the office he's seeking with one other thing: Replace Pepco. Now, Pepco, for those who do not live near here, is the local electric company, and they have proved rather incompetent in handling some of the power outages resulting from recent storms, so a lot of people might be swayed to vote for anyone running against Pepco like this, but what on earth does a U. S. Congressman have to do with Pepco's franchise to provide electric power in this area? I might see "Replace Pepco" as a vaild campaign point for a candidate for County Council or County Executive, or possibly even for the State legislature, but it seems Phillips is running against the wrong opponent. Certainly, I'm sure that he realizes that Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic incumbent Congressman, is still so popular that he'll be hard to beat. But I cannot see how he can tie Van Hollen to Pepco's shortcomings. He could run against Nancy Pelosi's leadership, which Van Hollen certainly abets (in fact, he's a trusted member of her team, as the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee). Or he could point to things that Van Hollen has actually done to hurt the district. But this seems a strange campaign tactic.

Now, Phillips will get my vote in November. He was not my choice in the primary, but once the primary is over, we need to get behind the winner — especially to try (though I'm afraid it's an impossible task) to defeat someone as important to the Pelosi/Reid/Obama team as Chris Van Hollen. But I think it's a crazy way to run a campaign.

Campaign finance reform and term limits: two cures worse than the disease?

Some people (including John McCain, a man with whom I agree on a lot of things, and was willing to give the Presidency to, though this does not mean I think he's always right!) have thought it desirable to put various limits on campaign funding — on who can contribute, or how much, for example. This is, to me, an interference with freedom of speech, and I prize the First Amendment enough that I think it's not a good idea. It seems to be based on the premise that if you have enough money, you can buy an office. But when was Ross Perot our President? Or Steve Forbes? I think we can handle the influx of money without limiting it. There are better approaches.

Another proposal that has been made is term limits. I really dislike this, because it means that the most qualified people for an office, the people who have actually held it, are barred from the job. I know of no field outside politics where a person with no experience is preferred to an experienced one in seeking any job. And we have a perfect mechanism for ending the term of office of someone who is doing an unsatisfactory job: the next election.

In fact, when the 22^nd Amendment was put into the Constitution, it was by Republicans who resented Franklin Delano Roosevelt's flouting of the two-term limit tradition, and it immediately came back to haunt them — the first President who was barred from running for a third term was Dwight Eisenhower, who just might have won a third term if he had been allowed to run!

I don't see any good case for either of these reforms; in fact term limits are an extremely bad idea, because I believe that experienced professionals are usually better than amateurs at almost anything, so I cn only see negatives to that idea.