Stu's Views

In a recent comment, a commenter here said, " although I call myself "moderate," let's face it-- I haven't voted for a Republican in over ten years." I too consider myself a moderate (see the subtitle of the blog) but have not voted Republican in an even longer period. So are we truly moderates?

I would say yes. There are several reasons I think that moderates have become disenchanted from the Republican party. The first and foremost is that obviously the current leaders of the party are the most conservative the Republicans have ever had. Whether it be in foreign policy with the war in Iraq or the reallocation of wealth to the upper classes through tax breaks in a time of huge deficits, the Bush Administration has taken step after step that no one would call "moderate."

While I continue to believe that most of the American public resides in the great center of the political spectrum, the Republicans have highlighted the fear of terrorism and a few wedge issues where the American public leans rightward (particularly guns and gays) and mask their most conservative policies (particularly the tax cuts, deregulation, and cutbacks in government programs) from public view. They of course have considerable help from the Democrats in this endeavor.

Numerous moderate Republicans have been rumored to have presidential ambitions in 2008 including McCain, Hagel, Giuliani, Pataki and Romney. The more weaselly of these (Pataki and Romney) have started moving rightward in the hope of wooing Republican primary voters. The battle for the Republican nomination should be a fascinating one. My guess is that none of these moderates will succeed in garnering the Republican nomination although I would certainly think about the Republican nominee if it were McCain or Hagel.

That would again leave it open to the Democrats to make their case to the center of the electorate. Doing so will require someone who 1. does not come from the left wing of the party and 2. can be seen as someone of true conviction and not a political opportunist (as Gore was portrayed) or a flip flopper (as Kerry was portrayed). If they are not successful we will have another very conservative president and moderates (and I believe a majority of this country) will continue to be homeless in the American political system.

One side thought: the dominance of the Republican party by the right wing is in part a result of the primary system. Before primaries, party elders picked someone they thought had the best chance of winning an election, ensuring no radical departures from the past. With primaries, more well organized radical voters get energized and the nominees tend more toward the extreme of the party. I'm not advocating taking the nomination away from the people but it is tempting.  

The idea of "peak oil" has taken hold among many who are concerned with the stability of the oil supply and the recent increase in oil prices. The idea (as described in a New York Times Magazine article last week) is that the key question is not when oil will run out but rather when demand will surpass the ability of suppliers to extract oil.

When demand passes supply, those demanding the oil will begin bidding up the price, potentially creating an immeditate astronomical rise in the price of oil. Currently at $60-70 a barrel those who believe in the peak oil theory see prices in the triple digits and as one expert said, "not the low triple digits."

The idea certainly has an intuitive appeal and I'm not convinced it is incorrect. What makes me skeptical however is that every time a resource crisis has been predicted, those making the predictions have been wrong, often spectacularly so. On the other hand, they only have to be right once in order for a crisis to occur.

I think that oil suppliers are smarter than they are being given credit for. Once the price rise signals increases in demand as it is currently doing, then more expensive extraction technologies (or oil fields that do not currently appear lucrative) will become economically feasible and come into use. Those with the oil have probably been prepared for the eventuality of increasing demand for a long time and will be ready to deal with it.

Of course rising oil prices also make alternative fuel technologies more economically feasible (we just bought a hyrbid for example). Over the longer term this will depress demand for oil and keep prices from spiraling out of control as people transition to these alternatives. Will the transition be a smooth one? I tend to be an optimist on this issue (as opposed to many environmental issues) and do not think a resource crisis is around the corner or even will be experienced in my lifetime.

As the pre-debate debate on John Roberts winds on, one question continually resurfaces. How conservative is he? Work on a pro-bono case case supporting gay rights leads some to question his conservative credentials. Opposition to comparative worth in the Reagan Administration lead others to say he is too conservative. I don't think that anyone really understands what a conservative judge is, particularly since the three models on the court, Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist all present us with different models of conservativism.

The phrase most often associated with a conservative judge is he won't legislate from the bench. Only Rehnquist among the current justices fits that definition well (and to a lesser extent Kennedy). Scalia and Thomas have voted to overturn more statutes than any of the other justices. Rehnquist, in contrast, is a true majoritarian. This led him to trouble at his confirmation hearings when critics highlighted his opposition to Brown v. Board of Education as a law clerk (he has since admitted he was wrong on this). Basically Rehnquist believes that if a legislature has enacted a statute, the bar to overturning it is very high, even if he personally disagrees with it.

Scalia on the other hand holds the constitution sacred and cares much less about individual statutes. This leads him to be "liberal" on some criminal issues (particularly those involving unreasonable search and seizure) but "conservative" on most issues. He is not as true to his blessed originalist philosophy when it comes to religous issues however regularly questioning the necessity of a wall between church and state.

Thomas also is often described as an originalist but to me it seems that Thomas opposes all government action not involving national defense and criminal prosecution. While the constitution is indeed a document of limited government, it is not that limiting. On economic issues, Thomas is a libertarian type conservative seeing no role for the state. On criminal and some social issues, Thomas is the exact opposite. To me this is the least intellectually consistent ideology and the most dangerous one.

Which will Roberts be? Of course we don't know yet and I doubt we will after the confirmation hearings afterwards. If he turns out to be a Rehnquist conservative (my best guess, particularly since he clerked for the future chief justice) that is not the worst thing in the world given the possibilities. If he is a Scalia conservative or a Thomas conservative however, then the country will have taken a real step backwards.

The movies are having a tough year. There are many reasons for the financial downturn at the box office, most prominently the quick turnaround of movies to DVD and the increasing entertainment alternatives. One reason gets particular play however, the declining quality of the movies.

Upon lying in bed one night recently I was thinking that none of my favorite movies of all time (a separate blog entry) are from the past ten years. Now in part that is because the list is unduly influenced by movies I watched growing up but still you would think that some movie made in the past 10 years would crack the list. But no, Pulp Fiction (1994) is the most recent one there. So what are my favorite movies from the past 10 years. The list below is a partial answer (partial because I am confident I am forgetting some).

One clarifying note, my main criteria is that if the movie is on tv and I run across it, I could watch it again even though I've seen it a bunch of times. I make special exceptions for particularly moving movies but by and large these are movies that are fun. They are more or less in order.

1. LA Confidential. Upon reflection, this is probably the best movie of the past 10 years. Great cast, great plot, unexpected twist at the end, exciting, and most of all, fun.

2-4. Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, Mighty Wind. If I had to choose between these 3 mockumentaries, I would probably go with Best in Show. I have all 3 at home and would not hesitiate to pop any one in on a moment's notice. Laugh out loud funny even the fourth time around.

5. Clerks. Before Kevin James got all serious on us he put out one of the funniest movies of the past decade. The slacker video store clerk is an all time great character and like the three movies above it provides guffaws on the tenth viewing.

6. Training Day. This one actually gets better with repeated viewings. Denzel Washington gives what may be the best performance of his career opposite a very good Ethan Hawke. The slowly unfolding sense of evil as the day progresses is very compelling.

7. Sideways. I've only seen this one once so far but it is criminal that it didn't win the best Oscar last year. Paul Giamatti's character is one of the richest in recent years and the other three lead performances are stellar as well.

8. Usual Suspects. Yes by now we all know who Keyser Sose is. However whenever this movie is on cable as I'm flipping channels I can't help watching.

9. 25th Hour. Spike Lee's second best movie (after "Do The Right Thing"). Ed Norton is one of my favorite actors and this movie is part of the reason why. A very underrated movie.

10. Anchorman/Old School. They are both extremely silly but Will Ferrell makes me laugh throughout both of these movies. Wedding Crashers falls just a bit short of the standard set by these two movies.

Honorable Mentions: The Contender, Mystic River, Almost Famous, Lost in Translation, Election, and American Pie.

So there are some damn fine movies on this list. But in thinking about all of them I did not even consider altering my top 15 or 20 movies of all time. So maybe film quality is declining. Or maybe I'm becoming an old fuddy duddy who thinks everything was better in his day.

Cindy Sheehan has made a national name for herself over the past few weeks by camping outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford Texas demanding to meet with him. Her son died in the Iraq war and she left the perfunctory meeting that families of the dead soldiers get with the President unsatisfied (Bush called her "mom" and said he couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose a cousin or aunt or uncle).

Sheehan's protest has gathered steam over the past several weeks and many fellow protesters have joined her. This raises the question of why the usually astute advisers to President Bush didn't meet with her early, invite her into the ranch for a cup of coffee, and turn this into a positive event for the Administration.

I understand of course the argument that the President can't meet with everyone who demands to do so but I don't buy that this is the reason here. It would have been very easy and popular to make an exception to that rule in this particular case and I doubt that it would have led to a groundswell of relatives of soldiers demanding to meet with Bush.

That leaves two possibilities in my mind for the otherwise inexplicable decision not to meet with Sheehan. The first is the Administration's (and particularly the President's) refusal to admit they are wrong on anything and that a meeting with Sheehan would be a sign of weakness. This is plausible to me but still rings a bit false. It's not exactly clear what admission would be given by simply meeting with Sheehan and issuing a statement supporting the troops and the war.

I've never entirely bought the "Bush is stupid" argument but it does provide a compelling argument for this decision. Just this week Bush said that he "had to get on with his life" when giving a reason for not meeting with Sheehan. In unscripted moments such as this Bush is prone to say very dumb things like that quote. A meeting with Sheehan would be an unscripted event with a potentially hostile person. Perhaps Bush's advisers were afraid of what he would say in such a meeting.

As we are often prone to do on driving vacations we spent a fair amount of time listening to Rush Limbaugh et. al. on our drives to and from the Berkshires. In part this is because it is one of the few non-country, non-Christian rock options available for long stretches of the drive. In part, it is because it is amusing. In part however it is also because I think it is important to hear what other parts of the country (read red America) is listening to.

In listening to Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in particular I was struck by two things that were different than on trips in the past when I had listened to such luminaries. When Limbaugh became big, he was entertaining, took calls often, and occasionally made sense to blue-staters like me. None of those things were true this time.

Limbaugh was somewhat boring. He repeated the same things over and over and didn't appear to understand the points his few callers were making. He didn't take very many calls, almost as if he didn't have the wherewithal to argue with other callers. Finally his arguments were so simplistic that poking holes in them seemed like a trivial exercise. I'm not sure if this means that conservative talk hosts have decided their listeners are stupid, or if they really have no coherent arguments to make. I tend to think the latter is true and they are hoping that the former is true as well.

The second thing that struck me was the remarkable ability of the right to stay on message. The Limbaugh and Hannity shows both addressed the same topics the same way. There was literally no variation between the two shows. I had read about how the right wing media stayed on a message that was likely dictated from a central source, but until last week I did not understand the extent to which this was true. This also points to the paucity of coherent right wing arguments. However it also points to the level of coordination across the right wing and what liberals are up against. I'm not sure that even this coordination will save Republicans as their arguments become weaker and weaker with each passing day but it might.

We just got back from a week in the Berkshires. It was the first time I'd been there and I can heartily recommend it for a relaxing (assuming you don't bring along a seven month old baby) and cultural vacation.

The highlight was attending two concerts at Tanglewood. We heard Mozart, Bach, Brahms and Beethoven played in a gorgeous setting. One of the concerts was during the day and the other was during the night so we got to enjoy the atmosphere in the bright of day and observe a sunset over the mountains to the tune of classical music. Best of all, the baby behaved wonderfully for both concerts (the day after each concert was another story).

We also drove up Mount Greylock, the tallest peak in Massachusetts. Unfortunately the day we went up was cloudy but one could still tell that the views were tremendous. The entire span of the Berkshires is filled with natural beauty. We stayed in Williamstown, home to Williams College and what everyone imagines a New England college town to look like. Nestled among rolling hills are old churches, quaint stores (that close at 5pm -- not something a city boy deals with easily) and beautiful college buildings.

Politics, sports, travel reviews, you get it all here at Stu's Views. Back to politics and sports this weekend.

One of the advantages of going to Harvard is that one gets to meet people who one will read about in the newspapers someday. Of course you never know which ones will show up there. I was therefore quite surprised to see the name of one on the front page of the New York Times the other day.

John Carr was someone I got to know quite well at Harvard. A joint degree student at the Kennedy School and Law School, he was far from the typical grad student. For one, he had graduated the Air Force Academy. Second he came from a tiny town in Ohio. These two sets of experiences made him more conservative than most Ivy League grad students and led him to often question the prevailing orthodoxy at the two schools (it also allowed him to teach me the one or two things I know about Nascar).

I'd lost touch with John but was quickly reminded of him on Monday when this story appeared. While I was very surprised by the story, I was not at all surprised by the courage and integrity that John apparently displayed. He had always struck me as a very upright person. He is moral in the sense that we like to think of the word rather than the sense that it is currently used in our political discourse.

The story of course is also a reminder of the length to which we have compromised the ideals upon which this country is founded to fight the War on Terror. When anyone questions the patriotism of those who criticize this compromise, this story will serve as a reminder of what patriotism really is.

Off to vacation for a week so no posting for a while.  

In a somewhat startling development, Rafael Palmiero was suspended from Major League Baseball today for ten days for violating the league's new drug policy. Since the policy was initiated to much criticism this offseason, the only players found in violation have been relatively minor players. This has served to validate the criticisms that the policy wasn't serious and that baseball would protect its stars.

Palmiero got his 3000th hit last week. He became one of four players with 3000 hits and 500 home runs and until a year ago the only controversy surrounding him was whether he actually took the Viagra he endorsed (please hold your performance ehahncing drug jokes). Then he was mentioned by Jose Canseco in Canseco's tell all memoir of steroid use in the majors. He testified before Congress that he never took 'roids and and then once again faded behind more controversial stars, Sosa, McGwire and especially Bonds.

No longer will he be less controversial. Palmiero, at least until a bigger name tests positive, is now the face of steroid use in baseball. His Hall of Fame chances which I would have estimated at 80-90% yesterday fall well below 50% with this revelation. His career statistics, so impressive, are now going to be questioned for the rest of baseball history. There is also a very small chance that he will be subject to perjury chances for his testimony before Congress.

The ten day suspension was criticized as unduly light for first time offenders. Bud Selig, who I rarely agree with, said that the suspension was not the important part of the punishment. In the most important case to come up so far, he is being proven correct. The ten days is a tiny fraction of the price that Palmiero will pay for his stupidity (or greed or whatever quality you want to ascribe to him). That is why his positive test may serve as a deterrent to steroid use among other players. That is why today is a good day for baseball.

p.s. an outstanding summary of the Palmiero case.