Rachel DiCarlo, at the Weekly Standard's website, repeats the claim that Libertarian Kurt Evans cost Republican John Thune the South Dakota Senate race. As I've blogged before, this claim is almost certainly not true. While Evans did indeed get more votes than separated Thune from Johnson, that was weeks after Evans had dropped out of the race and endorsed Thune. This means that the Libertarian-Republican swing voters are very likely to have swung to Thune. (The 3,000 votes represents a much smaller share of the vote than Evans was picking up in polls before he dropped out.) The remaining 3,000 probably wouldn't have voted for Thune in any event; and on net Evans helped Thune (first, by swinging his way those voters who could be swung; second, by keeping 3,000 of the other voters from voting for Johnson).
It's true that, most of the time in most states, Libertarians drain more Republican votes than they do Democratic ones (though not by nearly the same margin as Greens drain more Democratic votes than Republican ones). But in this race it wasn't. Kurt Evans did something that was most unusual for a political candidate. He genuinely tried to help one of his opponents to win. For the Republican commentariat to keep criticizing him for costing their guy the race is deeply unfair.
Pointing out the idiosyncratic facts about this race of course seems like a distraction from the big argument about whether voting for Libertarians hurts freedom by hurting freedom-minded Republicans, or helps it by focusing the minds and energy of Republicans on protecting their libertarian flank, the argument over third parties and strategies and tactics. But I want to insist on the details of the particular case, before "Evans cost the Republicans a seat" becomes too entrenched in people's memories.
After my first post on this topic, I recieved an e-mail from Evans himself. He said that he's been "trying to lay low and be quiet," but he's clearly irked by the unfair attacks on him. (Some of those attacks have been from Libertarians calling him a traitor, others from Republicans who believe the story that he cost Thune the race.)
"First of all, my actual support of roughly 3
percent was acquired mostly by positioning myself
as a protest against attack ads. My opponents both
said I was drawing from them about equally.
"But let's assume that *every vote* finally cast
for me (91/100ths of 1 percent) would otherwise been
cast for Congressman Thune.
"When I gave him my endorsement, I drew attention
to the voter fraud controversy and said it was a
reminder that our entire political system depends
on truth and honesty.
"I went on to say that it had become apparent
to me that Congressman Thune shared my commitment
to being a man of integrity and character.
"The announcement got tremendous media play
on television and radio and in the newspapers.
"If my endorsement shifted 46/100ths of 1
percent of the vote away from Johnson and toward
Thune, the net effect of my candidacy was to narrow
the margin of victory."
Republicans: Send this gentleman an apology, and a thank-you note, not continued flak.
Monday, November 25, 2002
Have a look at Andrew Sullivan's Bradley Lecture on the political thought of Michael Oakeshott. A nice analysis of the ways in which Oakeshottian skepticism sits oddly with a variety fo ways of understanding conservatism.
A poltical theory dissertation ripe for the writing, it seems to me, concerns the turn to skepticism in the mid-twentieth-century liberals. The connections between Oakeshott and Hayek, and between Hayek and Popper, are fairly well-known. But Popper's skepticism has some fascinating echoes in Isaiah Berlin's; indeed, Berlin like Popper threw skeptical water onto claims of historical determinism. Shklar and Oakeshott each had Montaigne as a major point of reference. Shklar and Hayek shared Montesquieu in a similar way. (Note that, excpet for Oakeshott, each of these came from one of the European lands that spent the middle part of the century under totalitarian rule-- Berlin and Shklar from Lithuania/ Russia, Hayek and Popper from Austria.)
Now, Berlin didn't much like Hayek, and Shklar seems to have really disliked him. Berlin and Shklar were on the social-democratic side of Cold War liberalism, not on Hayek's and Oakeshott's free-market side. (Popper is a complicated case on that question.) But in all sorts of ways it seems to me that these thinkers shared insights that are more interesting than are the political questions that divided them. Yet-- except for the peculiar case of John Gray-- very few students of Hayek have also been students of Berlin. Those who know their Oakeshott don't often also know their Shklar. I have a suspicion that the study of each of these thinkers could be much enriched by the study of the others, and skepticism as part of the defense of freedom would be a major unifying theme.
Not, mind you, that the skeptical defense of freedom is clearly right. I'm inclined to think that skepticism leads us down John Gray's relativist and nihilist pathways pretty quickly. Skepticism, to be an ally of liberalism, must be something more like a temperment than like a comphrehensive theory of knowledge. Of the five philosophers, Oakeshott's skepticism ran deepest; and I can never shake the sense that Oakeshott is a philosopher of and for England only, for a country in which freedom feels organic and evolved and in little need of deliberate promotion. Each of the other four struggled with the question of how to reconcile skepticism with reform, with deliberate planned political and social change-- since one could hardly look at the world of 1935 or 1945 or 1955 and think that freedom was to be had by just leaving things alone. And I'm not sure that any of the four was fully successful in reconciling a skeptical account of the limits of knowledge and certainty and rational planning with the spirit of radical reform that liberalism required in the face of totalitatianism. Indeed-- but now I'm starting to sound like the book that I'm writing-- I think that that tension is a terribly difficult one to overcome at all points in liberalism's history. There's something importantly true in both of those liberal impulses-- the skeptical and the reformist-- but those truths sit exceedingly uneasily with each other.
But the heart of my book is in 1740-1850, not in 1930-1960; that work is for someone else to do...
A poltical theory dissertation ripe for the writing, it seems to me, concerns the turn to skepticism in the mid-twentieth-century liberals. The connections between Oakeshott and Hayek, and between Hayek and Popper, are fairly well-known. But Popper's skepticism has some fascinating echoes in Isaiah Berlin's; indeed, Berlin like Popper threw skeptical water onto claims of historical determinism. Shklar and Oakeshott each had Montaigne as a major point of reference. Shklar and Hayek shared Montesquieu in a similar way. (Note that, excpet for Oakeshott, each of these came from one of the European lands that spent the middle part of the century under totalitarian rule-- Berlin and Shklar from Lithuania/ Russia, Hayek and Popper from Austria.)
Now, Berlin didn't much like Hayek, and Shklar seems to have really disliked him. Berlin and Shklar were on the social-democratic side of Cold War liberalism, not on Hayek's and Oakeshott's free-market side. (Popper is a complicated case on that question.) But in all sorts of ways it seems to me that these thinkers shared insights that are more interesting than are the political questions that divided them. Yet-- except for the peculiar case of John Gray-- very few students of Hayek have also been students of Berlin. Those who know their Oakeshott don't often also know their Shklar. I have a suspicion that the study of each of these thinkers could be much enriched by the study of the others, and skepticism as part of the defense of freedom would be a major unifying theme.
Not, mind you, that the skeptical defense of freedom is clearly right. I'm inclined to think that skepticism leads us down John Gray's relativist and nihilist pathways pretty quickly. Skepticism, to be an ally of liberalism, must be something more like a temperment than like a comphrehensive theory of knowledge. Of the five philosophers, Oakeshott's skepticism ran deepest; and I can never shake the sense that Oakeshott is a philosopher of and for England only, for a country in which freedom feels organic and evolved and in little need of deliberate promotion. Each of the other four struggled with the question of how to reconcile skepticism with reform, with deliberate planned political and social change-- since one could hardly look at the world of 1935 or 1945 or 1955 and think that freedom was to be had by just leaving things alone. And I'm not sure that any of the four was fully successful in reconciling a skeptical account of the limits of knowledge and certainty and rational planning with the spirit of radical reform that liberalism required in the face of totalitatianism. Indeed-- but now I'm starting to sound like the book that I'm writing-- I think that that tension is a terribly difficult one to overcome at all points in liberalism's history. There's something importantly true in both of those liberal impulses-- the skeptical and the reformist-- but those truths sit exceedingly uneasily with each other.
But the heart of my book is in 1740-1850, not in 1930-1960; that work is for someone else to do...
How odd is it that this article about a butchering of Animal Farm in China and this one about a butchering of it in an English-language "parody," independently reported, appeared within a day of each other?
And no, it's not because of the Orwell moment we're currently living through; it's not because of the ways in which Mr. Blair is part of the current zeitgeist. The Chinese director-adaptor in the first article shows no signs of being part of, or having the least interest in, the current Western fascination with Orwell and his legacy. At least Reed's attack on Orwell is on-topic; he understands what Orwell was for, understands the relevance of Orwell to the current climate in the west, and he's against all of it. Shang has created a play that is so utterly orthogonal to Orwell's concerns, so irrelevant to the Sullivan-Hitchens-Cockburn-Amis-etc debates, as to be jaw-droppingly bizarre. That he's created it right now is simple, but disturbing, coincidence.
The Reed parody sounds utterly vile to me; and the Orwell estate is right to be outraged. But it does seem to me clearly and rightly protected under U.S. law; I would not want to see the satire-and-parody exceptions to IP law narrowed.
And no, it's not because of the Orwell moment we're currently living through; it's not because of the ways in which Mr. Blair is part of the current zeitgeist. The Chinese director-adaptor in the first article shows no signs of being part of, or having the least interest in, the current Western fascination with Orwell and his legacy. At least Reed's attack on Orwell is on-topic; he understands what Orwell was for, understands the relevance of Orwell to the current climate in the west, and he's against all of it. Shang has created a play that is so utterly orthogonal to Orwell's concerns, so irrelevant to the Sullivan-Hitchens-Cockburn-Amis-etc debates, as to be jaw-droppingly bizarre. That he's created it right now is simple, but disturbing, coincidence.
The Reed parody sounds utterly vile to me; and the Orwell estate is right to be outraged. But it does seem to me clearly and rightly protected under U.S. law; I would not want to see the satire-and-parody exceptions to IP law narrowed.
Friday, November 22, 2002
GOOD RIDDANCE: Neal McCaleb, Undersecretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs, will retire at the end of this year. He seems to think that too much attention has been paid to the Interior Department's mismanagement and simple loss of billions of dollars in royalties owed to Indian landowners. Being held in contempt of court for his role in this ongoing scandal proved a distraction from his understanding of his job.
It's hard to understand what could be more important for someone in this office than cleaning up the accounting of the trust fund (and then, as I've argued before, getting the manifestly-unsuitable-as-trustee U.S. government out of the paternalistic "trust fund" business altogether). The creation of more programs of government dependency for Indians is surely less important than is the return of vast sume of money that already and rightfully belongs to them. There's no special reason to think that the next occupant of the position will do better, but no special reason to think that he'll do worse, either.
It's hard to understand what could be more important for someone in this office than cleaning up the accounting of the trust fund (and then, as I've argued before, getting the manifestly-unsuitable-as-trustee U.S. government out of the paternalistic "trust fund" business altogether). The creation of more programs of government dependency for Indians is surely less important than is the return of vast sume of money that already and rightfully belongs to them. There's no special reason to think that the next occupant of the position will do better, but no special reason to think that he'll do worse, either.
Thursday, November 21, 2002
Most fascinating, compelling read of the day: this Atlantic article about the life and times of now-America-hating-and-Jew-hating (they always seem to go together) Bobby Fischer.
Via Kieran Healey,CalPundit's comment on the fact that Harvard English has never tenured a woman from within. (CalPundit also refers to the tenure process as taking "about five years," which is too short. If I get tenure, it won't be until the middle of my seventh year, and I think Harvard takes a little longer than that.) But the thing is that Harvard (like Yale) almost never tenures from within; its junior faculty have to stop off elsewhere, get tenure, get famous, and then be hired back again. This is less true of early-peaking and early-productivity fields such as math, econ, and some technical areas of philosophy. It's almost always true in the social sciences, and asymptotically approaches always being true in most of the humanities (and the more humanistic social sciences, i.e. political theory). Harvard History is notorious for having refused tenure to many of the finest minds in the discipline.
And then there's the fact that faculty openings don't come along all the time. In the couple of decades since Harvard ceased actively discriminating against women in hiring, Harvard English might have had fewer than a dozen assistant professors come up for tenure at all. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that no assistant professor of English had been tenured from within at Harvard in 30 years or so.
I don't mean to deny that some Harvard departments-- and for all I know these include English-- have a gender problem. Many of the very senior faculty are still holdovers from the bad old days. As Kieran and CalPundit should both know, an ideological commitment to gender theory, feminist postmodernism, queer theory, and all the rest is perfectly compatible with plain old-fashioned sexism (or homophobia) as a personal trait. Academia is filled with the type (and they're thick on the ground in David Lodge novels to boot). But the evidence for sexism in a Harvard department isn't that they don't tenure women from within. It's got to come from evidence about hiring from outside (either junior or senior faculty), about the treatment of grad students, and about the treatment of women faculty while they're there.
Someone I know was hired at Harvard for what s/he took to be a long-term adjunct position, because the ad said "three-year contract renewable" rather than "tenure track." When told that the job was a regular assistant professorship, my acquaintance inquired as to why the ad was written that way. "We don't like to even use the phrase tenure-track, since it's basically misleading at Harvard," was the answer.
UPDATE: A correspondent from Harvard social sciences writes:
I don't have university wide statistics, but I think the situation is
changing fairly rapidly. In my department, [...], and in my subfield,
[...], there are basically 6 tenured professors (not counting two very,very
senior faculty about to be emeritus). Of these 6, 4 were promoted from
within the department's untenured ranks. Only 1 person coming up through the
ranks in IR in the last 9-10 years that I have been here has been denied
tenure. 3 left the department before their tenure processes began, 2 of whom
left well before there could have been any signals one way or the other from
the senior faculty about tenure chances. So over all, I think our department
is doing pretty well with internal promotions, certainly compared to English
or History. I think under the new president internal promotion will be more
common. [NB: THe Wall Street Journal reported last year that Summers plans
to push hard on this issue. JTL] Harvard still doesn't refer to 'tenure-track' but we are
now hiring junior faculty pretty much on the assumption that if all goes well they will
be seriously considered for tenure. In our department, at least, the bad old
days of hiring and spitting out junior faculty are disappearing.
As far as the old system goes, CalPundit had already blogged his recognition of it, which I ahdn't noticed when I wrote this post.
And then there's the fact that faculty openings don't come along all the time. In the couple of decades since Harvard ceased actively discriminating against women in hiring, Harvard English might have had fewer than a dozen assistant professors come up for tenure at all. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that no assistant professor of English had been tenured from within at Harvard in 30 years or so.
I don't mean to deny that some Harvard departments-- and for all I know these include English-- have a gender problem. Many of the very senior faculty are still holdovers from the bad old days. As Kieran and CalPundit should both know, an ideological commitment to gender theory, feminist postmodernism, queer theory, and all the rest is perfectly compatible with plain old-fashioned sexism (or homophobia) as a personal trait. Academia is filled with the type (and they're thick on the ground in David Lodge novels to boot). But the evidence for sexism in a Harvard department isn't that they don't tenure women from within. It's got to come from evidence about hiring from outside (either junior or senior faculty), about the treatment of grad students, and about the treatment of women faculty while they're there.
Someone I know was hired at Harvard for what s/he took to be a long-term adjunct position, because the ad said "three-year contract renewable" rather than "tenure track." When told that the job was a regular assistant professorship, my acquaintance inquired as to why the ad was written that way. "We don't like to even use the phrase tenure-track, since it's basically misleading at Harvard," was the answer.
UPDATE: A correspondent from Harvard social sciences writes:
I don't have university wide statistics, but I think the situation is
changing fairly rapidly. In my department, [...], and in my subfield,
[...], there are basically 6 tenured professors (not counting two very,very
senior faculty about to be emeritus). Of these 6, 4 were promoted from
within the department's untenured ranks. Only 1 person coming up through the
ranks in IR in the last 9-10 years that I have been here has been denied
tenure. 3 left the department before their tenure processes began, 2 of whom
left well before there could have been any signals one way or the other from
the senior faculty about tenure chances. So over all, I think our department
is doing pretty well with internal promotions, certainly compared to English
or History. I think under the new president internal promotion will be more
common. [NB: THe Wall Street Journal reported last year that Summers plans
to push hard on this issue. JTL] Harvard still doesn't refer to 'tenure-track' but we are
now hiring junior faculty pretty much on the assumption that if all goes well they will
be seriously considered for tenure. In our department, at least, the bad old
days of hiring and spitting out junior faculty are disappearing.
As far as the old system goes, CalPundit had already blogged his recognition of it, which I ahdn't noticed when I wrote this post.
NRO has an interesting piece this morning arguing that Granholm beat the unfortunately-named Posthumus in Michigan because she was willing and able to twist traditional gender politics. She "fought back like a man." She showed the voters that the necessary toughness to be a chief executive.
What's primarily interesting about this piece is that it never mentioned this pre-election article from the New Republic. It would be all well and good to do a post-election recap and say, yes, Jonathan Cohn's analysis was fully borne out in the closing weeks of the campaign and in the results. But as it is, with nary a nod to Cohn? Tacky, tacky. I expect better from the flying monkey crowd over at NRO.
What's primarily interesting about this piece is that it never mentioned this pre-election article from the New Republic. It would be all well and good to do a post-election recap and say, yes, Jonathan Cohn's analysis was fully borne out in the closing weeks of the campaign and in the results. But as it is, with nary a nod to Cohn? Tacky, tacky. I expect better from the flying monkey crowd over at NRO.
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Geekdom moment: I'm actually disappointed that Birds of Prey (the TV series)
won't get a chance to find its footing. OK, so the dialogue is bad. I mean, it's really, really bad. But that can be fixed, can't it? The Dawson's Creekiness of Smallville seems to be permanent, and the genuine superheroics of BoP are a pretty cool contrast to that. And seeing the Black Canary, Batgirl/ Oracle, and a version of the pre-Crisis Huntress on live-action TV has been worth enduring some bad (awful, really) dialogue.
My biggest complaint with the show has actually been the willingness to have flashback-Batman and flashback-Joker be so prominent. I think that the opening segment would be much more effective if neither was seen full on, or even named-- a bat-shaped shadow, a fleeting shot of a maniacal grin. Batman's status should be like it was in issue 1 of Dark Knight Returns. If this was a war that nobody knew about, why do we have to see it for two full minutes every week? And the Alfred-Barbara conversations make talking about Batman and Bruce Wayne seem, well, ordinary. That sets the wrong tone.
Ah, well. None of the rest of you care, since I appear to be the last person still watching the show...
/geekdom moment...
won't get a chance to find its footing. OK, so the dialogue is bad. I mean, it's really, really bad. But that can be fixed, can't it? The Dawson's Creekiness of Smallville seems to be permanent, and the genuine superheroics of BoP are a pretty cool contrast to that. And seeing the Black Canary, Batgirl/ Oracle, and a version of the pre-Crisis Huntress on live-action TV has been worth enduring some bad (awful, really) dialogue.
My biggest complaint with the show has actually been the willingness to have flashback-Batman and flashback-Joker be so prominent. I think that the opening segment would be much more effective if neither was seen full on, or even named-- a bat-shaped shadow, a fleeting shot of a maniacal grin. Batman's status should be like it was in issue 1 of Dark Knight Returns. If this was a war that nobody knew about, why do we have to see it for two full minutes every week? And the Alfred-Barbara conversations make talking about Batman and Bruce Wayne seem, well, ordinary. That sets the wrong tone.
Ah, well. None of the rest of you care, since I appear to be the last person still watching the show...
/geekdom moment...
I must admit: I never thought I'd see this happen. There aren't many chances to say this, but for this one moment: thank goodness for the EU.
I missed the New Gore rollout on Letterman. But I saw the Al & Tipper show on Charlie Rose, and it sure seemed like the worst of Old Al to me-- hectoring, condescending, smarter-and-more-righteous-than-thou. Maybe Dave's basic good-spiritedness brought out some of the same in Gore, while ROse's basic insufferability brought that out instead.
Of some interest to libertarians and to those who follow American Indian politics (I'm both): Russell Means-- actor, former AIM leader, former seeker of the Libertarian nomination for the presidency-- has lost his race to lead the Ogala Sioux nation.
Australia and U.S. begin free-trade negotiations, ina story unlikely to be covered in the American press. I have the usual ambivalence about bilateral free trade pacts vs. progress in the Doha round or other multilateral trade-freeing agreements. And I'm not sure I can even conceive of what the agriculture negotiations are going to look like if we're trying to move on FTAA, Australia, and Doha simultaneously. (Tariffs can be lowered for one country's goods at a time, but U.S. farm subsidies can't be.)
But if we're going to be in the bilateral deal business, this would be a good one to get done.
But if we're going to be in the bilateral deal business, this would be a good one to get done.
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Small worldism: Instapundit blogs (quite rightly), of course) against the idea of Harvard Law adopting a speech code governing in-class discussions, and approvingly refers to my own University of Chicago's policy on such matters, which I've quoted several times in Campus Watch discussions. A longer segment of the policy is as follows:
"At the University of Chicago, freedom of expression is vital to our shared goal of the pursuit of knowledge, as is the right of all members of the community to explore new ideas and learn from one another. To preserve an environment of spirited and open debate, we should all have the opportunity to contribute to intellectual exchanges and participate fully in the life of the University.
"The ideas of different members of the University community will frequently conflict and we do not attempt to shield people from ideas that they may find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even offensive. Nor, as a general rule, does the University intervene to enforce social standards of civility."
(For some internal administrative reasons I now know these words almost by heart; we talk about them, and about the principles behind them, a lot around here.)
This story came to light thanks to the efforts of the Boston Globe's crack higher-education correspondent, Patrick Healey, whom I've known personally if casually for many years. (Patrick also broke the Harvard grade-inflation story last year.) I knew him through mutual friends at Brown, my alma mater; and Brown's in the blog-news today, too as Tapped and Instapundit rightly praise President Ruth Simmons for her understanding and defense of free debate on campus. (Note that the they're praising took place more than a year ago-- not that that makes it less praiseworthy, but sometimes the seamlessness of blog-linking makes old stories appear new.)
I'll say for the record that the regulation of merely offensive speech in classroom settings is an utterly noxious idea. I shan't blog about it at length at the moment, though; I'm just disappointed that this isn't as obvious at Harvard as it is to me...
"At the University of Chicago, freedom of expression is vital to our shared goal of the pursuit of knowledge, as is the right of all members of the community to explore new ideas and learn from one another. To preserve an environment of spirited and open debate, we should all have the opportunity to contribute to intellectual exchanges and participate fully in the life of the University.
"The ideas of different members of the University community will frequently conflict and we do not attempt to shield people from ideas that they may find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even offensive. Nor, as a general rule, does the University intervene to enforce social standards of civility."
(For some internal administrative reasons I now know these words almost by heart; we talk about them, and about the principles behind them, a lot around here.)
This story came to light thanks to the efforts of the Boston Globe's crack higher-education correspondent, Patrick Healey, whom I've known personally if casually for many years. (Patrick also broke the Harvard grade-inflation story last year.) I knew him through mutual friends at Brown, my alma mater; and Brown's in the blog-news today, too as Tapped and Instapundit rightly praise President Ruth Simmons for her understanding and defense of free debate on campus. (Note that the they're praising took place more than a year ago-- not that that makes it less praiseworthy, but sometimes the seamlessness of blog-linking makes old stories appear new.)
I'll say for the record that the regulation of merely offensive speech in classroom settings is an utterly noxious idea. I shan't blog about it at length at the moment, though; I'm just disappointed that this isn't as obvious at Harvard as it is to me...
COME BACK TO US, DAN! Dan Drezner's self-imposed two-week penance for miscalling the elections should be over; it's been two weeks since votes were cast. E-mail him and ask him to come back from blogxile...
Monday, November 18, 2002
Y'know, the funny thing about John Miller's NYT op-ed (see full commentary and links at Instapundit) on Libertarians swinging Senate races to Democrats (a topic I've blogged several times below) is that this year's exhibit, South Dakota Libertarian Kurt Evans, dropped out of the race and endorsed John Thune. He dropped out too late to be removed from the ballot, and the 3,000 votes he got nonetheless were more than the Thune-Johnson gap.
First, that means that it's possible that Evans actually swung some votes Thune's way, and Thune lost anyways.
Second, [political scientist's hat on:] the fact that Evans had dropped out and endorsed Thune almost certainly means that those 3,000 voters were disproportionately not Libertarian-Republican swing voters. All those voters probably swung to Thune. The remaining 3,000 were either hardcore libertarians, who would have stayed home or left the Senate race blank rather than vote for either major-party candidate; or Libertarian-Democrat swing voters who didn't find Johnson sufficiently pro-civil-liberties but who wouldn't have voted Republican in any event. Under usual circumstances I think that Libertarian candidates draw more otherwise-Republican votes than otherwise-Democratic votes (though not by nearly the margin that Greens draw otherwise-Democratic over otherwise-Republican votes). But these weren't usual circumstances; Evans had already endorsed Thune. It's therefore actually more likely that Evans' absence from the ballot would have increased Johnson's lead than that it would have decreased it.
See more from Radley Balko, Eugene Volokh, Clayton Cramer.
First, that means that it's possible that Evans actually swung some votes Thune's way, and Thune lost anyways.
Second, [political scientist's hat on:] the fact that Evans had dropped out and endorsed Thune almost certainly means that those 3,000 voters were disproportionately not Libertarian-Republican swing voters. All those voters probably swung to Thune. The remaining 3,000 were either hardcore libertarians, who would have stayed home or left the Senate race blank rather than vote for either major-party candidate; or Libertarian-Democrat swing voters who didn't find Johnson sufficiently pro-civil-liberties but who wouldn't have voted Republican in any event. Under usual circumstances I think that Libertarian candidates draw more otherwise-Republican votes than otherwise-Democratic votes (though not by nearly the margin that Greens draw otherwise-Democratic over otherwise-Republican votes). But these weren't usual circumstances; Evans had already endorsed Thune. It's therefore actually more likely that Evans' absence from the ballot would have increased Johnson's lead than that it would have decreased it.
See more from Radley Balko, Eugene Volokh, Clayton Cramer.
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
HARVARD ENGLISH RELENTS. An announcement posted on the department's web page:
Announcement: By mutual consent of the poet and the English Department, the Morris Gray poetry reading by Tom Paulin, originally scheduled for Thursday, November 14th, will not take place. The English Department sincerely regret the widespread consternation that has arisen as a result of this invitation, which had been originally decided on last winter solely on the basis of Mr. Paulin's lifetime accomplishments as a poet.
Announcement: By mutual consent of the poet and the English Department, the Morris Gray poetry reading by Tom Paulin, originally scheduled for Thursday, November 14th, will not take place. The English Department sincerely regret the widespread consternation that has arisen as a result of this invitation, which had been originally decided on last winter solely on the basis of Mr. Paulin's lifetime accomplishments as a poet.
Monday, November 11, 2002
With the election over but the new Congress not yet in office; with the UN vote over but the inspectors not yet back on the ground; now seems like a good time to step back and take a longer view, look at the bigger picture. Perhaps that's why Josh Chafetz and Matthew Yglesias both have new reading lists up: recommended works in political theory and political philosophy. I'll recommend 'em both without further comment-- after all, the point is to start reading books, not to keep reading commentary about commentary about lists of books! On that note, I'm turning my computer off for the rest of the day.
No, really.
UPDATE: See the follow-ups, amendments, and additions from Kieran Healey, Chris Bertram, Armed Liberal, Pejman Pundit, and ther irrepressible Chris Sciabarra. (For what it's worth, my opinion is that Josh's list should precede Matthew's and Kieran's, and that the others include a number of excellent and interesting books which aren't nearly so fundamental as the ones on these three lists.)
This is a nice exchange among scholar-bloggers. Chris Sciabarra is a maverick professor of philosophy. Kieran-- whom I know, just a little, from our shared time in the Woodrow Wilson Society of Fellows at Princeton-- is a professor of sociology. Chris Bertram is a professor of philosophy. Matthew is a Harvard undergrad philosophy major; Josh is an Oxford political theory grad student. Pejman is, I think, a practicing lawyer (?) but his autobio is filled with enough paeans to the University of Chicago (where he got two degrees) as to show a scholar's temperment. (Armed Liberal doesn't, as far as I can tell, have an online autobio, presumably for privacy reasons.)
Why don't I join in further? Two reasons. 1) I just don't have that much to add to Josh's, Matthew's, and Kieran's lists. 2) It seems too much like work! Between syllabus construction and helping to put together the U of C's epic political theory general exam reading list, I do this sort of thing too often as it is...
No, really.
UPDATE: See the follow-ups, amendments, and additions from Kieran Healey, Chris Bertram, Armed Liberal, Pejman Pundit, and ther irrepressible Chris Sciabarra. (For what it's worth, my opinion is that Josh's list should precede Matthew's and Kieran's, and that the others include a number of excellent and interesting books which aren't nearly so fundamental as the ones on these three lists.)
This is a nice exchange among scholar-bloggers. Chris Sciabarra is a maverick professor of philosophy. Kieran-- whom I know, just a little, from our shared time in the Woodrow Wilson Society of Fellows at Princeton-- is a professor of sociology. Chris Bertram is a professor of philosophy. Matthew is a Harvard undergrad philosophy major; Josh is an Oxford political theory grad student. Pejman is, I think, a practicing lawyer (?) but his autobio is filled with enough paeans to the University of Chicago (where he got two degrees) as to show a scholar's temperment. (Armed Liberal doesn't, as far as I can tell, have an online autobio, presumably for privacy reasons.)
Why don't I join in further? Two reasons. 1) I just don't have that much to add to Josh's, Matthew's, and Kieran's lists. 2) It seems too much like work! Between syllabus construction and helping to put together the U of C's epic political theory general exam reading list, I do this sort of thing too often as it is...
Hmm. Now that most of the tenured social sciences and humanities faculty on my campus have signed a letter about Campus Watch-- a careful letter that allows professors with very divergent political views to sign it, unlike the Judith Butler petition I've blogged about before-- some of the fun has been taken out of my little crusade against the website's attack on the University of Chicago. Keeping it up would start to look like currying favor with my senior colleagues. (Many of the signers are tenured members of my department, and at least one is an administrator who was involved in hiring me.) This would be especially tacky since they had the decency not to ask junior faculty to sign their letter; they deliberately avoided creating the temptation to curry favor, or the fear of retribution among dissenters. So I think I'm going to quit talking about Campus Watch now.* But I would like the record to show that my first post on the subject preceded this faculty letter by nearly two months-- and that it documents a public disagreement I've had with a tenured member of my department on these subjects, so at the time I could hardly have been accused of sucking up. And I'll close by beating my drum one last time: If Campus Watch is sufficiently embarrassed by its University of Chicago reports-- filled with stories that have been discredited, irrelevancies, rumors, and complaints abou the peaceful expression of anti-Israeli views-- that it feels the need to put disclaimers on them, then it ought to be embarrassed enough to take them down. The statement by the University's Hillel Center seems to me the final nail in the coffin of those reports' credibility.
So the complete arc of my comments on Campus Watch:
September 19
September 23
September 26
September 27
September 29
October 22
November 6
*(That is, unless they really do something new to annoy me...)
So the complete arc of my comments on Campus Watch:
September 19
September 23
September 26
September 27
September 29
October 22
November 6
*(That is, unless they really do something new to annoy me...)
I've previously called attention to the work Australian political scientist Bill Maley has done on refugee policy. He has a concise and powerful new statement of his arguments here.
Wednesday, November 06, 2002
Not only does Campus Watch now have special disclaimers on its University of Chicago reports here and here. Now it has added a little thumbs-up icon to recommended articles (to distinguish them, in part, from all the pieces it links to by the scholars it criticizes)-- and on the University of Chicago survey page, it declines to even recommend its own campus reports.
Again I'll say: if they've figured out that they should be embarrassed by those reports, then they ought to take them down and apologize, not just downplay and disclaim them.
Again I'll say: if they've figured out that they should be embarrassed by those reports, then they ought to take them down and apologize, not just downplay and disclaim them.
One more post-election point. I've blogged here several times on when it might make sense to vote for your local pro-gun Democrat, even though he'll deliver control of a chamber of Congress to an anti-gun party, or for your local pro-choice-Republican, even though she'll deliver it to a pro-life party. The voters have now had their say, and they seem less willing to overlook party in Congressional races than they used to be, and less willing than they are in gubernatorial ones (which is rational, as discussed earlier). New York and all of New England now have Republican governors, and at least five of those seven are moderate-to-left Republicans. But Connie Morella lost her attempt to get to the House on the basis of an "I don't agree with my party" platform. Max Cleland didn't make it, either. The gubernatorial map now looks very mixed; the House-and-Senate maps now look pretty sharply red-state/blue-state divided. Voters figured out that party control matters in Congress, and voted accordingly. Zell Miller and Lincoln Chafee are going to start to feel pretty lonely.
This results in the loss of some useful caucus-dissent; and may encourage the sort of majority-party-overreach that contributes to electoral see-sawing. As I've said, I want there to be pro-choice, pro-gay Republicans, and anti-tax, pro-trade Democrats. But today we're one step closer to something like parliamentary responsible-party government, as both Congressional parties look increasingly internally homogenous.
This results in the loss of some useful caucus-dissent; and may encourage the sort of majority-party-overreach that contributes to electoral see-sawing. As I've said, I want there to be pro-choice, pro-gay Republicans, and anti-tax, pro-trade Democrats. But today we're one step closer to something like parliamentary responsible-party government, as both Congressional parties look increasingly internally homogenous.
THIRD PARTY OUTCOMES: On the third-party questions below: Yep, there was a break away from 3rd parties after all. In South Dakota, the L, even though he had withdrawn and thrown his support to Thune, exceeded the R-D gap. But I think that was the only Senate seat tipped by one third-party candidate. In Missouri, neither the G nor the L exceeded the Carnahan-Talent gap, though both combined did (meaning that if Carnahan had somehow managed to get both those groups in her camp she could've won). In Minnesota, neither the Indepedence nor Green candidates (though, again, both combined) exceeded the Mondale-Coleman gap, and that's in a state that, for the moment, has both a senator and a governor from the Independence Party. NH Senate: the L is close to but not at the Sununu-Shaheen gap. It's actually striking how many Senate races were blowouts (look here for the tallies). There are R-D gaps of 5 points or less in only MN, MO, SD, NH.
Less of a 3rd-party collapse in gubernatorial races, suggesting that voters understood that their decisive Senate vote might become thedecisive Senate vote. For governor: L solidly bigger than the gap in Alabama; the Republicans can fairly think that the Ls cost them that one assuming even a slight R-over-D preference among southern Ls. Arizona governor: Mahoney twice the size of the gap, costing R Salmon the race-- though Mahoney's listed as an independent and I don't know where his support came from. California governor: Neither G nor L, though both combined, bigger than the gap. That means that California's not as much in play for Republicans as they might briefly think; they were hardly going to get that 5% G vote, and even the 2% L vote is likely out of reach because California Libertarians are a much more pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-drug group than are southern guns-and-taxes Libertarians. Maine: G (9%!) greater than the gap, but it's unlikely the losing R could have picked them up under any circumstances. Mass: it would have taken not only G+L but also the votes of "other" Johnson to make up the D-R gap. MN governor is a special case; Independence candidate and former Congressman Tim Penny exceeds the gap, but 16% isn't very impressive considering his resume and the fact that he's from the incumbent governor's party. NY: even had every last Golisano voter gone to McCall (unlikely!) it wouldn't have tipped the race. Incomplete results make it look likely that an L tipped Oregon governor to the Ds. An "other" tipped OK to the Ds. An "other" tipped Vermont to the Rs. L Thompson, Tommy Thomspon's brother, tipped Wisconsin to the Ds. The L is within a hair's breadth of the gap in Wyoming, but the D would have scraped it out even if every L had gone R.
A quick scan of CNN's list of the competitive House races: L greater than the gap twice, G greater than the gap twice, other greater than the gap twice; but Colorado 7 is all three, so these six thrid-party candidates were in just four districts. But G did well in a district that went D, L did well in a district that went R. Continuing to assume that Ls break more for Rs than for Ds, no L actually tipped a race. The Green tipped Colorado 7 to the Rs (though R+L>D+G).
G alone greater than the gap: Maine gov (but the Ds won). L alone bigger than the gap: SD Senate, Alabama, Oregon, Wisconsin gov (each of which the Ds won, meaning that the Ls at least arguably tipped them). Other or independent greater than the gap: Arizona Vermont, Minnesota, Oklahoma gov. No more than four House races, and probably only two, affected by the presence of third-party candidates.
The Dems seem to have neutralized the Green threat this time out. The Republicans still have a Libertarian problem; but unlike in 2000, it didn't cost them the Senate. It didn't even cost them their gubernatorial majority. The party Perot began and the one Ventura spun off from it are now basically dead.
Note: Most of the above makes the disputed-by-Greens assumption that all Green voters would otherwise be Democrats; (except where noted) the genuinely-false assumption that all Libertarian voters would otherwise be Republicans (I know this is false, because it was certainly false for me for Illinois governor); and the probably-false though I think not-terribly false assumption that all third-party voters would have gone to the polls, or could possibly have been motivated to go to the polls, in the absence of the third-party candidates. I’m well aware of the arguments around these claims. But from the perspective of major-party strategists, I think these are the working assumptions, i.e. Democrats think that every Green voter is someone who would vote for their candidate if there were no Green in the race.
UPDATE: The Alabama figures are in flux, and the R may pull it out.
Less of a 3rd-party collapse in gubernatorial races, suggesting that voters understood that their decisive Senate vote might become thedecisive Senate vote. For governor: L solidly bigger than the gap in Alabama; the Republicans can fairly think that the Ls cost them that one assuming even a slight R-over-D preference among southern Ls. Arizona governor: Mahoney twice the size of the gap, costing R Salmon the race-- though Mahoney's listed as an independent and I don't know where his support came from. California governor: Neither G nor L, though both combined, bigger than the gap. That means that California's not as much in play for Republicans as they might briefly think; they were hardly going to get that 5% G vote, and even the 2% L vote is likely out of reach because California Libertarians are a much more pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-drug group than are southern guns-and-taxes Libertarians. Maine: G (9%!) greater than the gap, but it's unlikely the losing R could have picked them up under any circumstances. Mass: it would have taken not only G+L but also the votes of "other" Johnson to make up the D-R gap. MN governor is a special case; Independence candidate and former Congressman Tim Penny exceeds the gap, but 16% isn't very impressive considering his resume and the fact that he's from the incumbent governor's party. NY: even had every last Golisano voter gone to McCall (unlikely!) it wouldn't have tipped the race. Incomplete results make it look likely that an L tipped Oregon governor to the Ds. An "other" tipped OK to the Ds. An "other" tipped Vermont to the Rs. L Thompson, Tommy Thomspon's brother, tipped Wisconsin to the Ds. The L is within a hair's breadth of the gap in Wyoming, but the D would have scraped it out even if every L had gone R.
A quick scan of CNN's list of the competitive House races: L greater than the gap twice, G greater than the gap twice, other greater than the gap twice; but Colorado 7 is all three, so these six thrid-party candidates were in just four districts. But G did well in a district that went D, L did well in a district that went R. Continuing to assume that Ls break more for Rs than for Ds, no L actually tipped a race. The Green tipped Colorado 7 to the Rs (though R+L>D+G).
G alone greater than the gap: Maine gov (but the Ds won). L alone bigger than the gap: SD Senate, Alabama, Oregon, Wisconsin gov (each of which the Ds won, meaning that the Ls at least arguably tipped them). Other or independent greater than the gap: Arizona Vermont, Minnesota, Oklahoma gov. No more than four House races, and probably only two, affected by the presence of third-party candidates.
The Dems seem to have neutralized the Green threat this time out. The Republicans still have a Libertarian problem; but unlike in 2000, it didn't cost them the Senate. It didn't even cost them their gubernatorial majority. The party Perot began and the one Ventura spun off from it are now basically dead.
Note: Most of the above makes the disputed-by-Greens assumption that all Green voters would otherwise be Democrats; (except where noted) the genuinely-false assumption that all Libertarian voters would otherwise be Republicans (I know this is false, because it was certainly false for me for Illinois governor); and the probably-false though I think not-terribly false assumption that all third-party voters would have gone to the polls, or could possibly have been motivated to go to the polls, in the absence of the third-party candidates. I’m well aware of the arguments around these claims. But from the perspective of major-party strategists, I think these are the working assumptions, i.e. Democrats think that every Green voter is someone who would vote for their candidate if there were no Green in the race.
UPDATE: The Alabama figures are in flux, and the R may pull it out.
I get to rightfully claim a) that my predictions were less wrong than Dan Drezner's and b) that I was one of not many people who said that Sununu would beat Shaheen. (Another of those people, Chip Griffin in NRO's Corner, is a New Hampshire hometown acquaintance of mine.) But I'll renounce bragging rights, since I had the big story wrong-- and even went out of my way in the middle of the day yesterday to say that I didn't believe there was a late Republican surge...
Tuesday, November 05, 2002
Larry Sabato senses a last-minute GOP drift in the Senate. "Suddenly, a 50-50 Senate (Republican-controlled) looks as likely as a 51-49 or 52-48 Democratic Senate." And TNR has collected several recent pieces into a "how the Democrats blew it page. Sabato and TNR are much closer to being insiders than I am and presumably have information I don't. But I'm sticking with: House GOP +2, Senate no change. UPDATE: Turns out that last minute GOP surge was real after all. Check out Kaus' funny pbservation that the NYT had the big story over the weekend but couldn't bear to believe it. But I won't gloat at the NYT, since I didn't believe it either. (Neither did Kaus, who blogged it yesterday as the "phantom surge."
One minor but interesting indicator to keep an eye on tonight: third party votes. No one believed that the 2000 election would be so close. Everyone believes that the 2002 elections willbethiscloseorcloser. How many of Nader's 2000 voters will feel driven back to the D column? How many Senate races are tipped by Greens or Libertarians? Look for the L vote to exceed the D-R gap in NH Senate, Mass governor, GA Senate, MO Senate, but maybe not SD Senate since the L suspended campaigning and endorsed Thune. Look for significant D defection to the Greens in CA gov, as disaffected lefties decide that Gray has a lock on the race. Golisano in NY gov & Penney in Minn gov are special cases; their vote totals are going to be big and therefore, for current purposes, uninteresting. Keep an eye on those 1%-5% candidates. In general, we have a test of the idea that voters feel pressed to vote major-party when the election is close. Those who vote third-party today are either really determined, or really convinced that the two majors don't differ enough on the issues important to them. The SD dropout shows that not even all candidates are that determined; but a lot of voters still are.
If today we end up with a 48-48 nation instead of Kaus' 50-50 nation, then Ds & Rs come under immediate strategic pressure to get those third-party votes; and this is tricky to do while keeping overall positions near the median. (The Ds can't go green, or embrace L drug legalization; the Rs can't swing very far toward L posiitons on taxes and spending.) There were Rs who noticed this in 2000 and blamed the Ls for costing them the Senate. This time either Ds awill blame Gs or Rs will blame Ls for costing them the Senate; and the major parties will start to devote staff and resources to neutralizing these threats to their flanks. Bad news would be D-R collusion in tightening of ballot access requirements, as happened after John Anderson's 1980 campaign. Useless news would be denouncing the third parties, as the Ds have been doing to Nader for two years now. (Today's third party voters aren't going to be swayed by denunciations; they'll be alienated by them.) Interesting news would be major parties trying to co-opt selected minor-party issues that they don't think will be noticed by or scary to centrist voters.
If today we end up with a 48-48 nation instead of Kaus' 50-50 nation, then Ds & Rs come under immediate strategic pressure to get those third-party votes; and this is tricky to do while keeping overall positions near the median. (The Ds can't go green, or embrace L drug legalization; the Rs can't swing very far toward L posiitons on taxes and spending.) There were Rs who noticed this in 2000 and blamed the Ls for costing them the Senate. This time either Ds awill blame Gs or Rs will blame Ls for costing them the Senate; and the major parties will start to devote staff and resources to neutralizing these threats to their flanks. Bad news would be D-R collusion in tightening of ballot access requirements, as happened after John Anderson's 1980 campaign. Useless news would be denouncing the third parties, as the Ds have been doing to Nader for two years now. (Today's third party voters aren't going to be swayed by denunciations; they'll be alienated by them.) Interesting news would be major parties trying to co-opt selected minor-party issues that they don't think will be noticed by or scary to centrist voters.
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