With the Beat - When people ask me how I can defend gradualized Prohibition considering that the Original Prohibition (OP, y'all!) failed, I always point to cigarettes. Yes, people still use them but they always seem to be on the way out. And at least the educated in society feel guilty when they use tobacco products.

Thus, it was interesting and perverse to see an unorthodox reversal in a long NYT Magazine piece on cigarettes:

The people in the room weren't neo-prohibitionists; they were trying to solve a terrible public-health problem, and they were justifiably angry with the tobacco industry's historic tactics of denial, obfuscation and trench warfare. CIGAR RATS

In this reversal, prohibitionism (i.e. the advocation of the elimination of the sale and consumption of alcohol) is separated from its twin targets of public-health catastrophe and greedy corporate exploitation. Prohibitionism is a type of policy or—in the case of my gradual prohibitionism—an outlook for preferred goals. Just thought I would correct that.

Bustin' makes me feel good - As part of my Levyblog dump in the runup to Levyblog suspension (read the Humblog!), I'm posting my longer unpublished and severely unedited rambles. Atcha now is an attempted elaboration of the bus driver metaphor that was written in mid-January 2005:

The Unassailable Redoubt
The fundamental question facing the Democratic Party today is “Can the Democratic Party function as an American opposition government without opposing American government?” The Democratic Party, as a vehicle for socialist and domestic and foreign interventionist policies and beliefs, is at a unique historical crossroads as it nears its 75th year as the party of federal democracy looking in at anti-government forces at the wheel.
It is perhaps bad politics to label Democrats as the party of government, though certainly not inaccurate. There has always been a libertarian streak in certain Democratic goals though these are mostly confined to Warren and Burger Court victories (like protecting the right to choose and generally extending a broad use of the Bill of Rights to individuals) or part of the more fringe left (ending the war on drugs through legalization of controlled substances or ending the war on terrorism by non-intervention in Afghanistan and/or Iraq.) But these rails of thought consistently take a backseat to primary objectives of the Democratic Party: programs that downwardly redistribute wealth in the promotion of equity and opportunity, that fulfill needs in which myopic near-capitalists cannot see the profit motive, and that require and encourage unified national action in the building of a better nation and a better world.
Expressing the Democratic Party as the “party of government” is only bad politics, however, if one sees people and government as separate, conflicting organizations. Polling that shows how Vietnam and Watergate affected public confidence in government is now trite. Since then the occupiers of government have become an enemy for pro-government forces, who by 2008 will suffer 8 terms of anti-government Republican and weak Democratic presidents. Moreover active forces of reactionary anti-New-Dealers, passive institutional changes, and left-leaning good-government criticism have all had a generation to absorb and magnify the self-feeding seeds of skepticism implanted in the Great Society era and thereafter.
The modern public conception of government suffers from four major and overlapping factors: Republican mismanagement, money and its appearance of corruption, examples of actual corruption, and sensationally magnified idiocies introduced by interest groups and the press.
For any avid Democrat the problems of the Republican leadership are a catechism, a series of all-capital disasters and lamebrain schemes whose damning qualities should be evident even to non-politicos. In the Bush Administration we have the PATRIOT Act, No Child Left Behind, the Iraq War, Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, John Ashcroft, Halliburton, Donald Rumsfeld, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban and Dick Cheney. Each one of these is the expansion or use of government power or a government official perceived to be active in the expansion or use of government power. Left off from the litany is tax cuts for the wealthy, for reasons exceeding punctuation to be detailed later.
Of the list, perhaps Halliburton belongs the least. It is merely the beneficiary of Truman-style reconstruction, which has gained its notoriety. The dubious necessity of the circumstances surrounding the famed Democratic primary debate gimmie “sweetheart, no-bid contract” for Halliburton, to say nothing of its connections to government officials, its story being repeated in other shadowy corporations, and the dubious necessity of invading Iraq, would not be consequential to millions of Americans unless they saw, as Michael Moore certainly felt to be important, the money trail. The millions of dollars involved presented possible avenues for corruption. And with enough cynicism and focus on previous corruption, the possibility of corruption begins shading toward assumed corruption. It stands to reason for a citizen unused to the large sums of money involved in electioneering, big business, and generally running the government (congressional salaries, pensions, and government buildings for instance) that the sums would have to be used in more than the basic purchases of supplies. In short, Buckley was right about the critical nature of the appearance of corruption.
And it is liberal, good-government fixation with campaign finance that heightens public assumption on the matter. Certainly, money buys influence and access. And equally as certain, quid pro quos are difficult to prove. But the more individuals and groups crusade on “clean campaigns” and insist that the volume of dollars involved necessitates corruption, the more likely it appears to an observer that campaigns now must be dirty in some way. Further as long as campaign finance regulation continues to follow the water parallel, channeling hard money maximums to soft money to 527’s, the increased dodginess of each individual contribution reflects terribly on the whole.
This criticism of American cynicism and one of its contributors, good faith attempts at reform, may sell actual corruption short. For one thing, it ignores the deliberately befouling affects of anti-government forces like the ATR, Club for Growth, and NTU hyping disproportionate charges that when taken has a whole indict every government-spent dollar as wasteful. Further, America has not wanted for examples of illegitimate behavior, neglect, and mismanagement. Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich stands out as an unpardonable ethical lapse. So does President Bush’s lies about the state of Iraq. So does the illegal fundraising committed by Clinton, Gore, and Dole in 1996. So does the attempts of certain state Republican Parties to intimidate voters. So does ABSCAM. So does Iran-Contra.
But for each of these real, uncorrected wrecks there are a million smaller scandals that have suffered from the Scott Peterson effect. A sample: the government post office scandal, the sacrifice of Bob Livingston, the Monica Lewinsky impeachment, the seam in George Bush’s debate jacket, left attacks on the fraudulent 2004 election, and right attacks on Al Gore’s lawyers.
Moreover, it is not merely the supersized scandals that are conveyed to the public in every form of communication – that is, beyond the hazily defined media and into entertainment, textbooks, and common personal discussions. Deep down, the conception that people have of government is darker than pitch. According to portrayal, pork spending constitutes 85% of the budget except the parts that go to abortion on demand and arms manufacturers run by ex-Congressmen. Every federally-purchased toilet seat costs $640 and that the government does little other than purchase toilet seats, build useless military bases, give money to the incorrigible indigent, and hand out millions of dollars to favored corporations. This cynicism is well-expressed in the January 13, 2000 Goats comic strip which parodies the movie “Speed.” A terrorist on board a bus is expectedly portrayed as a lunatic for threatening to blow up the bus if its speed is below 50 miles an hour. The punchline is the ironic comment that no public bus would ever reach such a reasonably high cruising speed. Rendered starkly rather than with the artist’s intelligence, the base audience thought is that public transportation is laughably unable to compete with standard cars.
This comic rings as a thorough analog because, essentially, Democrats are trying to sell the public on a bus. They are trying to convince the nation that there is a purpose to traveling together for the good of the environment, social justice, and community even while encouraging people to profit by work when they leave their stop. Unfortunately, objections to the concept are overridden by the details in practice. The bus is driven by the man who owns or has connections with all the surrounding automobile dealerships and is a second generation bus-hater. It has been in accidents which left the bus structurally sound and the passengers safe. But forces – again, active, passive, and counter-productive – are handing out magnifying glasses showing the scratches in the exterior, relating gruesomely over-dramatized stories of constant near-disaster, and calling into question the integrity driver. Is it any wonder that people are unable to see the working whole is actually the sum of themselves rather than of the defective-looking parts?
The only solution to the first problem is to remove Republicans from office. But that can’t be done until Americans have enough faith in government to elect the party of government as its replacement. According to this logic, the other three problems have to be tackled first. For the money issue, additional regulation seems unable to take the money out of politics. Since the character of political aspirants is not something easily affected, the level of corruption is difficult to change. For the magnification, the institution of the press is easy to malign and difficult for anyone with an agenda to change concretely. This leaves two malleable factors, then, for liberal activists, politicians, and organizations.
There is a seriously unfortunate way of dealing with the public pressure to manufacture or magnify government problems to fit its now fully-blossomed conceptions. That way is secrecy. The possibly apocryphal Bismarck comment: “Laws are like sausages – it is better not to see them being made” may hold especially true when, thanks to what-would-be an information overload. Everyone can tour every sausage plant simultaneously. Though perhaps practical and less likely to be practicable, liberty has always been seen as tied to transparency. Additionally, backlash would or at least should be inevitable. Few would choose to ride a bus blindfolded.
The only foreseeable lever of change, then, is that liberals and liberal interest groups must find a way to divorce their criticism of the hideous dealings of the Bush Administration from the character of the government. This is much easier said than done – perhaps impossible as we liberals carry the same scars of bad government. The fear of government is becoming a dominant feature in the Democratic Party today, as epitomized by its presidential candidates. Bill Clinton, hurrying to zip up his sheep’s clothing, was famous for declaring: “We have moved past the sterile debate between those who say government is the enemy and those who say government is the answer. [. . .] We have the smallest government in 35 years, but a more progressive one.” Howard Dean, the take-no-prisoners liberal darling boasted of his record of having “balanced the budgets with iron fiscal discipline for 12 years” and of his character: “much more conservative with money than George Bush is.” John Kerry said, “I am not a redistribution Democrat.” He also touted his plan to “to restore fiscal discipline, rein in out of control spending, and cut the deficit in half in four years.” None of these sound like men ready to get people to join together in the pursuit of common cause. They sounds like people who maintain a bus system out of tradition and for the emergencies – not like people who want to encourage public transportation on its own merit.
Simple models of presidential elections since 1968 can be seen through the prism presented above. Nixon’s campaign was based upon avoiding press and public scrutiny while Humphrey was hindered for his tactical politicking and McGovern developed the same reputation after dumping Eagleton. On the heels of Watergate, Carter ran on restoring honesty to politics with promise to never lie to us. The disastrous Reagan years were approved on the basis of his assault on the character of national government. Even as he sought historic budget increases, he argued “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Bush I can be seen as a high crest of the first wave of cynicism, exploiting public distrust of the morals of a technocrat who believed in good government. Bill Clinton’s argument for change because the federal government was failing those hit by the recession was later replaced by his declaration of the end of big government and his sole major domestic achievement, welfare reform.
Similarly caricatures of these presidents advanced the anti-government Argument. Nixon was a crook. Ford was incompetent. Carter was incompetent. Reagan was incompetent and a crook. Bush was incompetent. Clinton was a crook.
The 2000 and 2004 elections’ closeness related to both parties fielding nominees that played well to American cynicism. Gore ran on a paranoid’s dream platform of the “people vs. powerful,” but was undone by his exaggerations fitting the stereotypical lying politician. Bush ran on a mostly anti-government platform. He promised to restore dignity to a rhetorically tarnished White House, to heal the divided capitol, and take the budget surplus away from spendthrift politicians.
In 2004, both Kerry and Bush ran against government. Bush ran against a “political zealot” Kerry straw man who changed his position with the wind to gain political advantage. Bush’s “ownership society” central focus, as the demolition of all progressive programs, will be discussed below. Kerry meanwhile made no bones about opposing government intervention in foreign dictatorships and government aid to education, health care, and law enforcement as he attacked the war on Iraq, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare drug plan, and the PATRIOT Act. It’s true that liberal opinion – pro-government or not – has firmly concluded that these are all bad. But John Kerry’s speeches talked more about the benefits for the bottom line of dismantling expensive government programs rather than the creation of preferable alternatives.
Finally, importantly, and currently, the utter devaluation of government by deliberate and accidental campaigns of interest groups, magnifications in media, politicians, the mistakes of officeholders, and the ever self-fulfilling Conventional Wisdom has led to Bush’s immense policy success. Republicans have offered Americans the ability to trade in a lifetime bus pass for $50 toward the purchase of a car of their choice for decades. And when the current, individual bus seems unsafe, using any bus in the bus service becomes unthinkable, and the bus pass is seen as valueless. Bush’s first term hallmark achievement was tax cuts. Bush, DeLay, and the rest are able to run record deficits, huge corporate welfare giveaways, and pollute the environment simply because the American people don’t expect any better. Now he appears set to try to dismantle social security. After decades of Republican complaints about the infeasibility of any socialized system and decades of robbing the trust fund, the party of the faith-based initiative is counting on Americans to have no faith whatsoever in any reasonable economic prediction, especially when it is positive. American lack of faith in this system – or in any system – means that people are hungrier than ever before to get $50 toward the purchase of a car, even when there are certainly no cars in that price range.
For conservatives, this is the best of all worlds. They are given the platform to yell that the sky is falling, the power to make it fall, and then the power to mold the public conception that there never was a reason for the sky to stay up in the first place.
Of course, there’s hope. The government expansions of the Bush administration that Kerry railed against signify that people really do want the federal government to promote education, protect Americans from terrorism, and increase health care. But by election Republicans to fulfill those functions, they make it clear that they don’t want anyone who has pie-in-the-sky beliefs about government to be involved. And when Republicans oppose sincere attempts to help on these matters and introduce poison pill measures, they enforce systemic doubt.
In conclusion, semi-dishonest marketing appears to be the only solution. The problem is not the misguided sense of an impending bankruptcy of social security, but the appearance of impending bankruptcy, not officeholder corruption but the appearance of officeholder corruption, not inefficiency inherent in government but the appearance of inefficiency in government. These appearances lead to assumptions. Thus, first and foremost, the Democratic solution must be a scheme to rebuild the appearance of integrity, which will lead to assumptions that favor pro-government politics and policies. This bus needs a new paint job and a better bus driver (better bus driver selection system?) before we can convince our comrades that the bus could make use of a new engine and that such an engine can help us reach a conceivable destination.