Common Sense Political Thought

Every once in a while a song will just get stuck in my head, repeating ad nauseum. This one was playing in the Turkey Hill in which I picked up my morning coffee and Philadelphia Inquirer, so I’ll inflict it on you:

Writing in The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal, Abigail Thernstrom wrote, concerning the Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven firefighter’s discrimination case:

Second Circuit judge, José Cabranes, properly posed the broad constitutional question at issue: “Does the Equal Protection Clause prohibit a municipal employer from discarding examination results on the ground that ‘too many’ applicants of one race received high scores and in the hope that a future test would yield more high-scoring applicants of other races? Does such a practice constitute an unconstitutional racial quota or set-aside?”

Unfortunately, only Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia addressed this issue — and only briefly. “The war between disparate impact and equal protection will be waged sooner or later, and it behooves us to begin thinking about how — and on what terms — to make peace between them,” he concluded.

Hat tip to Donald Douglas.

This brings me to another article, which I also heard about due to Dr Douglas, from Fred DeBoer, in which he concluded:

I am afraid for my country. This country has a permanent black underclass; Hispanic economic mobility is not much better. Decades of affirmative action have done little to fix that. Now, we appear ready to abandon those attempts to level the playing field entirely. Of course, principles and ideals are important. But my question is open, and I apply it to the most thoughtful opponents of affirmative action and the most rabid and unthinking alike: what are the effects, for our country, of a permanent racial achievement divide? And can we reasonably expect to maintain a peaceful and just society with such a gap between the races?

And how long can we continue to pretend that these questions aren’t staring us in the face, or that they don’t matter?

Such a question could have been asked by a neutral observer, but Mr DeBoer makes no claim to being neutral: he is very much in favor of Affirmative Action, or something to equalize the races in America. He wrote:

In light of the decision by the Supreme Court in the now-famous New Haven firefighters case– or, rather, the decision by our country’s ruling philosopher king, Anthony Kennedy– I think we need to pause and consider effects in addition to principle when it comes to affirmative action and what it has meant for the preservation of a multiracial society. This, incidentally, was part of the appeal of the Slate piece on the case that Mark rightly praised.

Consider, for example, the abolition of racial preferences in the University of California system in 1996. We can talk about the principles involved, and we have, ad nauseum, as a public discourse. But what about the effects? In the UC system, the effects have been dramatic: black and Hispanic students are significantly underrepresented in comparison to their numbers in the state generally. That effect may not play out in the same way throughout the country, if racial preferences are done away with en masse. But I see no reason to suppose that they wouldn’t, and California, our most populous state (and one of the most racially diverse) would seem to be an ideal test case. The results have been dramatic, and they have been scary, if you believe that society has a vested interest in maintaining something resembling equity between the races, in terms of income, in terms of education, and in terms of social mobility. The Ricci case threatens to do for the country’s job market what the UC decision has done for California’s university population. And even if we can draw no conclusions about Ricci’s larger effects on employment, surely, the stark racial divides in California in regards to college education should give us pause, as (controversial or not) the college premium exists, and has a great deal of salience for any individual’s earning potential and access to socioeconomic mobility.

This is important, because Mr DeBoer entitled his article “What about effects?” Mr DeBoer is very concerned, as our many of our friends on the left, with the societal and cultural effects of abandoning Affirmative Action, yet he conceded that, over almost four decades of Affirmative Action being used, “this country has a permanent black underclass; Hispanic economic mobility is not much better. Decades of affirmative action have done little to fix that.”

It seems a rather obvious question: if Affirmative Action has been so ineffective in fixing the problems it was meant to address, why would we continue with it? In her majority opinion in Grutter v Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), now retired Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor concluded:

We take the Law School at its word that it would “like nothing better than to find a race-neutral admissions formula” and will terminate its race-conscious admissions program as soon as practicable. See Brief for Respondents Bollinger et al. 34; Bakke, supra, at 317—318 (opinion of Powell, J.) (presuming good faith of university officials in the absence of a showing to the contrary). It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in student body diversity in the context of public higher education. Since that time, the number of minority applicants with high grades and test scores has indeed increased. We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

That was six years ago; we have 19 years left before the date the Grutter majority “expect(ed)” that the use of racial preferences would no longer be necessary.

Which brings us back to Ricci v. DeStefano. Reading through Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s strong dissent, I find page after page after page disagreeing with the reasoning of the majority opinion by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s concurring opinion, and I found a great deal about why the now overturned decision of the city of New Haven did not constitute an improper discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, and how the test discarded by the city might have been discriminatory, but nothing at all about the actual effectiveness of Affirmative Action.

I wish here to set aside completely arguments concerning whether Affirmative Action and racial preferences violate the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court has said, in effect, that such policies do not necessarily violate Equal Protection, depending on how they are structured and whether there is a compelling government interest in doing so. (The companion cases of Grutter and Gratz v Bollinger offer some guidance: absolute quotas are forbidden, but some consideration of race is allowable.) What I wish to ask is: has and does Affirmative Action actually work to achieve the ends its proponents, and the Grutter majority, held were good and compelling government interests.

I hold that it has not. In Ricci, we had a case in which the city of New Haven tried to have written a promotion eligibility test for firemen. The very best was done to insure that it was not somehow racially discriminatory, yet, when the tests were scored, white applicants did significantly better than minority test takers. The case at hand is hardly an isolated one: the Gratz and Grutter cases turned on the same things: on standardized measures, white applicants outperformed minority candidates. As these examples go on and on, despite many, many attempts to produce completely race-neutral tests, isn’t it reasonable to question whether our efforts at helping minorities before they even get to the test taking stage have been ineffective?

Affirmative Action is, in effect, a program that is intended to bandage an already-inflicted wound. It seeks ways to help minority candidates who are less competitive with white applicants achieve equal outcomes. But it seems to me that the program should be far less about helping the already-behind candidates get ahead than it should be about keeping minorities from getting behind in the first place. It shouldn’t be about adjusting the scores of minorities who underperform on some form of application test than it should be about enabling them to perform equally in the first place.

The simple answer is: throw more money at public schools. If that had actually worked, we wouldn’t be having this discussion now.

The ball’s in your court, people; give us ideas.

Representative Mike Castle (RINO-DE) is a man of great ambitions but seemingly few principles. He can be a tool of moneyed interests and jump to their call. Yet he can arrogantly ignore calls from hundreds of constituents and take the path of trendiness as with the recent energy bill.

He has powerful friends and what passes for leadership of his nominal party is laden with fawning sycophants. Such leaders have thrown away potential demographic advantages as refugees from tax-and-spend Maryland and New Jersey move to Delaware for fiscal respite.

Delaware leaders sought a quick financial fix by luring in bloodsuckers by abandoning usury rules. Yet what real industries have been attracted? Perhaps more gambling will save the day or squeezing the goose will yield a few more golden eggs. But this is State business and Mike Castle is simply a former governor.

When some in the Bush Administration called for some bailouts for bankers, there was a revolt that had conservative and neo-populist elements. Mike Castle voted to help the big banks. He knows his friends and supporters.

A year earlier, the Supreme Court dealt with the Second Amendment in what seemed to be a ‘clean’ case and not one with a criminal looking for a loophole. An amicus curiae brief was circulated among members of the House and Senate that supported the original intent of the Second Amendment. A majority in both houses signed, and this included a lot of Democrats. Among the few Republicans in the House who did not sign were Mike Castle, three nominal Republicans from New Jersey, and another renegade Republican from Cook County.

This move from Castle is what he could expect from a person who has long championed the cause of incremental victim disarmament. Perhaps making life safer for thugs in Wilmington is part of the Castle agenda.

Quite a few Democrats saw the harm in the Markey-Waxman ‘energy’ fiasco and defied their leadership in opposing it. Thanks to Mike Castle and his fellow RINOs from New Jersey and Cook County, Obama and his energy commissars won a great victory at the expense of the American public.

Mike Castle has Senate ambitions but could he be trusted with the duties of that office? A handful of weak-willed Republicans refused to stand up to Democrat obstructionists who blocked some excellent judicial nominees. Yet these same legislative weaklings have rolled over to confirm some of the worst Obama nominees. Could we expect better from a Senator Castle? He gushed over quota-queen Sotomayor so the answer should be obvious.

Mike Castle has long been weighed in the balance and found grossly wanting. His saving grace has been a blind party loyalty and the selection of someone far worst by state Democrat Party with a base highly populated by congenitally partisan ‘good old boy’ types in the base but run by Liberals at the top.

A GOP run by an elitist clique that is dedicated to a cult-of-personality worship of the likes of Mike Castle cannot hope to return to the a treasured concept that involves the true sense of the consent of the governed. This also entails the continued reduction of the positive influence of the Delaware Republican Party as an instrument for the furtherance of Liberty and Prosperity.

Mike Castle needs a primary. Even failed challenge would send a message that he cannot ignore. He might learn something from the experience.

Senator Tom Coburn (who has an MD appended to his name) sought advice from the mavens of ethics in that great deliberative body as to the propriety of him providing obstetric care to some of his former patients. Such activity was deemed to be highly improper and inappropriate for a sitting United States Senator.

One wonders if he would have gotten the same response had he contemplated setting up an abortion mill.

Perhaps senate ethics is the ultimate oxymoron.

Our younger daughter, aged 17 years, 11 months and 25 days, and the spare daughter, aged 17 years and 27 days, went to WalMart with my sister-in-law, and to amuse themselves, they bought Play-Doh.

The containers say that Play-Doh is for ages 2+. I was informed the the + covered them.

Those who travel I-95 through Maryland may notice an overpass sign for Gorman Road. Baltimore City has street names that could be the basis for a fascinating historical essay. Key Highway is no mystery. Broening highway is named for long-dead Mayor. Barney and McComas streets honor heroes. There is even a Bonaparte Alley that is named for Jerome rather than Napoleon. Walther Boulevard has a family connection that remains a personal mystery.

Yet who remembers Arthur Pue Gorman, once one of the two most powerful men in Maryland politics. Gorman was once attacked in an editorial as: “A man who knows no trade nor profession save politics but who has grown rich in the practice”.

Maryland Politics in the latter part of the 19th century was dominated by Democrats and the American (aka Know-Nothing) Party. Republicans were active only in black precincts in Baltimore City and in Western and Southern Maryland. Two men ruled the state politically, I. Freeman Raisin in Baltimore and Gorman in rural Maryland. Raisin was the ‘Boss’ of Baltimore City Democrats and had made massive vote fraud a finely-honed political tool. Freeman sought no high office for himself and was content with the post of Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas. His lieutenants could turn out a hundred votes or more from a single rowhouse that was not populated by more than two families. On
election day, the practice known as ‘cooping’ would see stumblebums herded from polling place to polling place to vote in the names of registered phantom voters. A swig of Maryland rye whiskey was the reward for voting the ticket. The technique continues in a refined form.

Arthur Pue Gorman began his career as a political hack as a congressional page. He became linked with Senator Douglas and moved to the Senate. Gorman rose in the political structure and had some plums of lucrative patronage thrown his way. He was elected to the Maryland General Assembly and appointed to the United States Senate. While a Democrat, Gorman pushed for protectionism while President Cleveland championed free trade. Gorman enjoyed a substantial income from a corporate directorship and a CEO post.

Gorman rose in the ranks of his party and had visions of taking the presidential nomination to run against Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. The plan failed and there are apocryphal tales of a box of gold Gorman for President pins being dumped into a lake.

Gorman is the prototypical political hack. His type has generally replaced the citizen-legislator.

There was a political revolution in Maryland in the 1898 election in which the issue of vote fraud was paramount. A lot of rascals were voted out but there was a return to politics as usual. There would never be another monolithic machine in Baltimore City as ‘bosslets’ ruled their fiefdoms at substantial personal profits. A few cooperative nominal Republicans could cut deals with the bosses and get elected mayor and even governor. The last was Spiro T. Agnew (a former Democrat who made the most of a tactical party switch).

The most recent Republican Governor of the (once) Free State was Robert Ehrlich, the real thing and a man who lived up to the German meaning of his name

It may seem strange that politicians who choose to live in rather transparent houses are sometimes entrapped in sexual scandals of their own making. Sexual scandal was once deemed to be a political show-stopper. Or was it?

Benjamin Franklin one of the most active and brilliant of the Founding Fathers. He allegedly lived a bit on the wild side. This seems to have been overlooked during his extremely productive lifetime. This is fortunate. He was a true Renaissance man among political leaders, even to a greater extent than Thomas Jefferson. Later politicians are often drawn from the ranks of second and third rate attorneys with far narrower scopes and depth of intellect than Franklin or Jefferson.

Presidents Jefferson and Jackson were the targets of scandalmongers but were not politically injured by the attacks. It was riskier to badmouth Jackson than Jefferson as Old Hickory might fire back more than words, Allegations against candidate Grover Cleveland seemed to have backfired. His misbehavior came when he was young and single and the woman in questioned shared her favor with many men before becoming pregnant. The young Cleveland chose to financially support the child even though there was no legal proof of biological fatherhood. When the old issue was made the center point of the campaign to defeat him, he answered promptly and forthrightly and the issue became a non-issue. Honor and candor won the day.

The next presidential scandal involved Warren G. Harding, an appointed senator with a very randy nature. His White House escapades were confined to encounters in broom closets rather than tawdry episodes in the Oval Office and some thought that his death may have been chemically induced by a greatly wronged wife. He had a splendid funeral. Harding’s sexual excesses were not public knowledge until long after his death.

The rather dour Coolidge was never seen as a sex symbol and Herbert Hoover married his college sweetheart and never seemed to stray. Franklin Roosevelt was protected by members of the press and his long-term affair with Lucy Mercer was rather discreet. Some may find his loveless marriage an excuse for indulging in some latter-day courtly love in an era where divorce was political suicide.

Harry Truman was a devoted husband and father and allegations against Rumors about Eisenhower were limited to a wartime fling with his driver. There is little proof of this.

Things changed with the Kennedy Era and the son was likely influenced by a father whose Hollywood connections provided him with ample opportunity for another sort of connections. Yet JFK charmed members of the press and his extreme excesses were ignored until after his demise. Successor LBJ was far more crude than Kennedy and privately boasted of a better ‘box score’. Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush were in the pattern of Truman in terms of political self-restraint.

Bill Clinton obviously took Harding, JFK, and LBJ as sexual role models.

Politicians at lower rank have had their escapades and some have been career damaging. Gary Hart seemed to be on the fast track to the Presidency until the ‘Monkey Business’ episode with Donna Rice derailed his quest. One southern politician remarked that the only really damaging scandal would involve a dead girl or a live boy. Episodes involving Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank show that the political moral climate has changed.

How do we explain the foolish and sometimes self-destructive sexual misbehavior of politicians?

Males tend to be more sexually aggressive than women. The lack of sexual encounters for men is typically the result of lack of opportunity. This is not the case for women, who often choose restraint for a variety of other reasons.

The very qualities associated with candidates for office provide them with greater opportunities for sexual encounters than those who avoid the political process. Sexual excess among extreme introverts often assumes a criminal nature. Extroverts who seek office may be more open in their approach to women. Every pass will not lead to the bedroom but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Political candidates tend to have certain qualities that are attractive to women. The mix of these winning attributes varies greatly with the individual make and their appeal to the target females. The man may be charming, handsome, intelligent, articulate, and wealthy to varying degrees. John F. Kennedy had all of these qualities and did very well with a variety of women. Yet one may need not excel in all of these aspects to attract more women than the average male. There is also the quality of power. It has been noted that power may be the ultimate aphrodisiac.

A similar effect is noted with entertainers and athletes where star power often leads to sexual excess.

Those elected to office may well have achieved a certain arrogance as a result of defeating others in the process. Gladiators were socially despised but some aristocratic Roman ladies sought furtive encounters with them so the effect is not a recent phenomenon. Elected officials are often surrounded by sycophants who seldom suggest restraint. In the case of JFK, aides served as facilitators in his escapades.

Misbehavior can be infrequent or an ongoing stream of encounters. The latter are the more politically damaging. The discovery of undeniable proof of sexual misbehavior by some rival often triggers an orgy of partisan schadenfreude and can result in political career termination. Democrats have often ducked the morality issue among their own ranks. Responses vary. Clinton could be excused but a certain New York Governor was ousted. Gary Hart self-destructed and we may have heard the last from John Edwards. Yet Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank retained their offices. The affairs of the brilliant Maryland Republican Representative Bob Bauman with ‘rent boys’ was long known to District of Columbia police officers and they attempted to discourage his seemingly flagrant behavior. He ignored the warnings and his career self-destructed.

Maryland Governors Mandel and Glendenning both were caught in adultery while in office and were dumped by their spouses. Glendenning gave his sweetie a state job and married her about the time of the birth of their child.

Republicans seem to have been held to a higher standard by the Party leadership as well as the voters. Democrats are more tolerant of a wide range of misbehavior and have even been elected while in cells. A notorious pimp and mobster could be elected to Congress, as could an impeached Federal judge.

Yet the very qualities that attract votes often attract members of the opposite sex and quite often the affairs are initiated by the non-politician. Some people have a hard time saying ‘no’.

Adultery remains a crime in many jurisdictions, but prosecutions are rare. In Maryland, the penalty was a fine on the par with a parking meter violation.

We may see more scandals in an era where self-restraint is not deemed trendy but will we see a rather biased media response to the peccadillos of the powerful?

This was last week’s dust storm in Iraq.  This is also what you do with civilian lawyers working for the Army in Iraq, you send them out to look.  He’s also my kid, the lawyer, working for the Army Corps of Engineers working in Iraq.  He told us yesterday’s sand storm from the same location, you could not see the road behind him.