“The mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain a thought without accepting it.” That’s one lesson to take from the Big Bad Bullard Barney.

The quotation is attributed to Aristotle. He noted another mark of an educated mind: “to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.”

Last week, I posted (here and on ThoughtLeader) the argument I thought David Bullard was attempting to stir, namely that colonialism, for all its evils, had benefits too. In particular, that in many places it established institutions and infrastructure that formed the basis for later prosperity growth. This may or may not be a valid argument, but despite Bullard’s careless and condescending approach to the subject, it seemed worthy of discussion among civilised, intelligent people. (As it happens, I was wrong: Bullard didn’t intend to go that far. He told Lerato Mbele on CNBC Africa on Thursday morning that he intended only to say we shouldn’t keep blaming present ills on past injustices. But first, he went to see his lawyer.)

As often happens with controversial subjects, the argument quickly turned absolutist, divisive, and personal.

Sadly so. It would be not only more polite and entertaining, but also more instructive, to suppose that someone who raises an interesting argument might wish to discuss its merits and implications, rather than stating it as cold fact or firm belief so partisans can shout each other down. Why would they raise the debate if the issue was simple and settled in their own mind? It seems reasonable to assume they’re able to see more nuances than just a simplistic, binary distinction between good and evil.

It seems fair to assume it isn’t very likely they run down neighbourhood cats in their spare time. I’m sure Bullard doesn’t, for example. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least.

Anyway, the argument on colonialism, which I hadn’t thought much about until I read it in an editorial by an Indian economist a few years ago, was put forward for consideration.

If parts of the argument appeal to me, that is irrelevant. I may well be wrong, but that is also irrelevant. The merits of, perspectives on and conclusions from the argument is what matters in public debate. In a public forum such as a blog, anyone is welcome to try to convince readers the argument is invalid. I dare say they won’t do so by calling their opponents Holocaust deniers or unreconstructed racists.

I did not, for example, state a conclusion on whether colonialism was, on balance, good or bad. On the contrary, I noted several caveats, several grave iniquities of colonialism. Yet half the responses, both in support and in opposition, seemed to assume that even just raising the argument was tantamount to unequivocal support of colonialism. On the contrary, there isn’t even an intellectual need to reach a definitive good-or-evil conclusion. The subject is far too complex for such a simplistic judgement, it would involve exactness that simply is not in the nature of the subject, and the point is moot in a world that has moved on and looks toward future progress.

Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, in 2005 said the following:

Today, with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian Prime Minister to assert that India’s experience with Britain had its beneficial consequences too. Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age old civilisation met the dominant Empire of the day.

These are all elements which we still value and cherish. Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served the country well.

Just look at him, in those colonial clothes! He must be a racist lapdog of British imperialism who thinks Indians are an inferior race!

Or is it possible to consider that his statement does not amount to nostalgia for colonialism? That it does not claim Indians could never have built these institutions and infrastructure without the British Raj?

Lest this post reopens the colonialism argument, let’s consider a few different examples.

Roe vs Wade is a 1973 ruling by the courts in the US. Based on the constitutional right to privacy, it ruled that a woman had a broad and unequivocal right to choose to have an abortion, no matter what the circumstances before the foetal viability, and for the sake of her health afterwards. Since “health” was defined very broadly, the legal hurdle for third-trimester abortions was set low.

Some people argue that this ruling is wrong. They base their argument on the fact that the US constitution says nothing about abortion, and that there is a clear conflict between the constitutional right to life and other legal rights. By ruling as it did, the court created a sweeping legal right where none existed before. Such a decision, opponents argue, should have been made by the people’s elected representatives in the legislature, and not by appointed judges from the bench.

Obviously, moral conservatives and religious opponents of abortion use this argument. It suits their political agenda to overturn the ruling that made it legal. I happen to agree with the argument, purely on principles of law and political philosophy. There are good reasons for separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, and this ruling crosses that line. It does not interpret law, but writes it.

Given the knowledge that I oppose the Roe vs Wade ruling, would you think I’m pro-life (anti-abortion), or pro-choice (in favour of abortion)?

It surprises many people to discover that, bar a few important caveats for the purposes of this argument, I am pro-choice. I oppose the Roe vs Wade ruling because of legal principle, not because of its substance. I would want that question to come before an elected legislature, to be openly debated, and decided according to the will of the people. I would want that decision to be pro-choice. If that is indeed the outcome, opponents would have suffered a fair, democratic defeat. If not, I would accept an anti-abortion decision in the knowledge that democratic principles were preserved. Moreover, I’d take comfort in the fact that should society change its mind in future, and wish to change the law, it would not be blocked by legal precedent declaring such legislative decisions to be unconstitutional.

How about the death penalty? As a white guy, affected by and deeply concerned about crime, you might think I’d support the death penalty. Let’s establish a few facts in support of that view. First, I’m no bleeding heart. I have little sympathy for the scum that murder and rape and victimise our townships and suburbs. More importantly, I accept the pro-death-penalty argument that honest, innocent and hardworking taxpayers should not have to support the life imprisonment of such murderous scum. But even though I agree with that argument, I oppose the death penalty. Not, I might add, because I have reached definitive conclusions on whether the state should have the right to kill citizens, whether the risk of executing innocent people outweighs the benefit of executing the guilty, or whether the death penalty would be an effective deterrent. Such questions are, to my mind, preceded by the more mundane consideration that if you can’t catch criminals, can’t prosecute them and can’t keep them in jail, it is premature even to begin debating the likely success of reintroducing the death penalty, and the complex philosophical conundrums posed by something like the death penalty. Supporting the death penalty, in my opinion, is putting the cart before the horse.

Or let’s take another common source of generalisations: party affiliation. In South Africa, ANC supporters include communists, unionists, welfare statists, left-liberals, black racists, non-racists, crony capitalists, market-oriented capitalists, and a few classical liberals. I’d have much in common with some of them, and strongly oppose the views of others. Likewise, DA supporters include left-liberals, welfare statists, white racists, free-market capitalists, classical liberals and chihuahuas. When they gain power, they’ll include crony capitalists too.

In the US, the Republican Party is aptly named the “Grand Old Party”, and is commonly described as a “big tent”. That’s because the GOP includes libertarians of both the Austrian School, such as Ron Paul, and the Chicago School, such as Alan Greenspan. It includes religious conservatives like Mike Huckabee, religious nuts like Pat Buchanan, and non-religious social conservatives. It includes foreign policy hawks who envision a global Pax Americana, but it also includes small-government isolationists and libertarian pacifists. It includes big-government conservatives and crony capitalists. It includes socially conservative minority groups who believe in the American Dream and don’t believe the welfare state is it. It includes rural rednecks and sophisticated urban capitalists. It includes sophisticated rural capitalists, and urban rednecks too. It includes xenophobic nativists and free traders. There’s a big ol’ rumble going on in that there big tent. Likewise, the Democrats include a disparate collection of unionists, socialists, free-market liberals, marxists, free traders, anti-free-traders, big-government welfare statists, and spending hawks. If someone tells you they support the Republicans, or the Democrats, which of these many conflicting positions would you assume to be their policy positions and philosophical beliefs?

The point of this long list of examples is this: It does not improve the quality of discussion, on a blog or anywhere else, to assume that someone who presents an argument for debate necessarily accepts it. Or if they do, that this implies a more general stereotypical, partisan or extremist position. It neither addresses the merits, nor raises the tone, to get personal, denounce someone’s character, or reduce their argument to simplistic caricature.

Those who do this end up demonstrating only one thing. That while their opponent is able to entertain a thought without accepting it, and can rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits, they sadly lack these marks of an educated mind.

Every time another public-office sex scandal breaks, it’s the same tired old political fight. If it’s a Democrat, the Republicans demand that the sinner’s head rolls, and the Democrats call the Republicans partisan hypocrites. If it’s a Republican, the Democrats demand that the hypocrite’s head rolls, and the Republicans call the Democrats partisan opportunists.

So, who’s right in this political pickle and moral morass?

First, a warning. This post may contain generalisations. Generalisations are statements about groups that are often, but not always, true for individuals. Not all Republicans are moral conservatives, and not all moral conservatives are Republican. Likewise, not all Democrats are liberals, and not all liberals are Democrats. In my own case, as a classical liberal I largely share the modern liberal’s principles on morality. I believe in individual liberty. Within the boundaries of laws that protect such liberty, I think private behaviour is no business of the state, nor of or the public. There are exceptions, such as in cases of public officials breaking laws they swore to uphold, or exposing their offices to risks such as blackmail, but in general, what Paul does with his Peter is none of my concern.

Now, what about the liberal charge of conservative hypocrisy over morality?

The liberal left claims to be, well, liberal. It claims to tolerate just about anything in terms of private behaviour. Rightly, in my view, liberals say it’s none of the government’s or public’s business what goes on behind closed doors.

On the other side is the self-styled “moral majority”, who define morality in rather more narrow terms. They claim moral behaviour in private defines a person’s character, and therefore it is a prerequisite for public office.

Now when someone gets caught with his pants down the moral conservative simply says, “resign”. This is perfectly consistent with the conservative’s political position. With the liberal left it’s different, however. Their reaction depends not on their own objective principles, but on the subjective principles of the culprit. When a Democrat (like Bill Clinton) gets caught with his Peter where it doesn’t belong, they say it’s just a bit of hanky-panky and it’s not that serious. But when a Republican gets caught with his pants down, they’re all over it like a rash, if you’ll excuse the image. That’s when they accuse Republicans of hypocrisy.

But the Republicans aren’t being hypocritical at all. If you call something a sin, that doesn’t make you a hypocrite if you sin. It makes you a sinner. Declaring that you expect moral behaviour in yourself and others doesn’t make you an infallible saint. Frowning on moral failings doesn’t make you immune from those failings. Moral conservatives would be hypocrites if they didn’t apply their own standards of behaviour to their own politicians. But they do. They’re being perfectly consistent: they expect morality, and punish immorality.

By contrast, the supposedly liberal left are being hypocritical by applying different standards to different people. They would like everyone to apply their own liberal standards to their own people, but then apply standards they don’t even agree with to others. Why was Larry Craig, the Congressman with the suspiciously wide stance, excoriated by Democrats? Because Republicans consider what he did wrong, the Democrats hold his behaviour up as evidence of hypocrisy. Cue shrill schadenfreude. But those Democrats would be wrong. Craig’s actions were not evidence of conservative hypocrisy. He wasn’t above the standards he espouses. The moral conservatives didn’t let him get away with it because he’s Republican. He resigned, and that’s perfectly consistent with the morals he claims to uphold. It was their own reaction that was hypocritical. Shouldn’t liberals be defending his moral right to have anonymous sex with uniformed fellows in toilet stalls? Shouldn’t they apply their own standards of privacy and moral choice to everyone? Instead, he got mobbed for reasons of partisan hypocrisy.

On Eliot Spitzer, for example, a real liberal — whether classical or leftwing — would say what he does with his Peter is his own business, but he did break the law in the state of which he was governor, and he did lay his office wide open to blackmail. So he should resign on those grounds, as opposed to moral grounds. A moral conservative would be perfectly consistent by saying the filthy sinner must burn. That some moral conservatives don’t live up to their own standards does not make this position hypocritical.

Liberals would have a lot more credibility if they didn’t yell “hypocrisy” every time a moral conservative gets caught in an immoral position. Because by doing so, they betray their own hypocrisy instead.

Over at Commentary South Africa, Laurence notes an interview with fiction writer John Grisham, in which he says:

I think what the Republicans have done in past elections is brilliant. Because, they’ve convinced a lot of people to vote for them against their own economic self-interest, and they’ve done that by skillfully manipulating a handful of social issues, primarily abortion and gay rights and sometimes gun control. And the Republicans have used those to scare a lot of people into voting for Republican candidates. It’s skillful manipulation.

Laurence’s comment is that it’s morally questionable to expect that “people should use their vote as a tool for self-enrichment, by voting for whichever party promises to give them the greatest largesse from the state treasury”. And he’s quite right.

He also points out that the Republicans haven’t exactly been true to their small-government roots, but I’d argue (and the political promises seem to bear me out) the Democrats in the US would be considerably worse.

What few on the left recognise, or what they deliberately fudge, is that the Republicans in the US consist of an uncomfortable alliance between three constituencies: economic conservatives (i.e. small-government libertarians), foreign policy conservatives (hawks who believe the best defence is superior strength), and social conservatives (consisting mostly of the religious right). Even those constituencies are split, for example the foreign policy conservatives are divided between those who believe in strength as a useful tool in the service of liberty and democracy, and isolationists who believe government shouldn’t be entrusted with anything, including foreign wars. Calling all Republicans social conservatives is a false characterisation, and betrays either the rhetoric of a shallow partisanship, or a profound lack of understanding of American voters.

It’s a step too far, moreover, to say that people vote against their own economic self-interest. In fact, if they happened to be rich, undoubtedly their votes would be considered selfish. True, “the rich”, as leftists describe anyone who has achieved middle-class success or more, often know how a society creates prosperity. (The exception seems to be the populists in the ego-driven entertainment industry.)

But classical liberals, or economic conservatives — call them what you will — might vote against government handouts even if they’re not rich themselves. Not because they selflessly forgo them (or stupidly pass them up, as Grisham appears to believe, rather patronisingly). They vote against handouts because they believe those handouts are not in their self-interest. They believe that their individual right to determine how their income is spent and their capital is allocated is in their best interest, while tax-and-spend government programmes are not. They believe that individual productivity creates wealth, and government redistribution destroys it.

It’s true, as Laurence notes, that whether Republicans have been true to this economic view of small government and low taxes is debatable. Many on the economic right (as opposed to the social or foreign policy right) would argue that it has not. That it betrayed the Reagan legacy, and the Gingrich revolution, and that this cost them a heavy price in the 2006 mid-term elections, and might cost them even more later this year.

More interesting, however, is the general mischaracterisation of the economic right, because the same generalisations are made elsewhere in the world, including in South Africa. Those who argue the economic virtues of free markets, believing that they not only encourage wealth creation, but that this dynamic creates jobs and improves the quality of life of all of society, are all too often tarred with the same brush as the religious right and social conservatives. And they, in turn, are caricatured as bigoted.

When John Grisham says economic conservatives who vote Republican do so because of “abortion” or “gay rights” or “gun control”, he’s using exactly the same rhetorical technique as someone who caricatures the South African economic right — fiscal conservatives, free marketeers, classical liberals, free traders and libertarians — as “racist” or “counter-revolutionary” or “Uncle Toms” or “elitist” or “coconuts” or “Eurocentric”. Witness the more rabid partisans: the rhetoric of the ANC Youth League, for example, is littered with examples. The thing is, not only are such caricatures often false, but they miss the economic point entirely. And the thing is, they’re designed to miss the point.

This is a sweet little election gimmick. It estimates what Barack Obama — who clearly is already the GOP’s main target — would spend in his first term, if he were to keep his campaign promises. Even adjusted for partisan bias, that’s a pretty hefty budget. He sure wasn’t kidding when he told his California supporters that, “I suspect a lot of this crowd — it looks like a pretty well-dressed crowd — potentially will pay a little bit more. I will pay a little bit more.”

(Hat tip: Ed Morrissey @ Captain’s Quarters)

Update: Over at the Tygrrrr Express, Eric has a great post arguing that the GOP isn’t going after Obama because they see him as the presumptive nominee, but because they’d rather fight Hillary Clinton in the election, and are salivating over the prospect. It includes this lovely paragraph:

The Clintons could deck Obama’s children, take their candy, and make them cry, and James Carville would mumble, “that’s just Arkansas politics.” The republicans would get blamed.

Despite his admitted lack of evidence for why Clinton will defeat Obama, it’s a worthy theory, and expressed (ha ha) with his usual from-the-gut flair for ranting eloquent.

Mark Helprin has written an excellent piece on the opposition to John McCain from right-wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and other thorns in the liberal side, such as Ann Coulter. The latter has threatened to campaign for Hillary Clinton if McCain wins the nomination, a show for which I want front-row tickets.

His writing is sparkling — note the line about “bloody ink of a dying industry” — but the most intriguing of his points concerns the ratings boost that would come from bitching about a Democratic presidency, as compared to relentless defence of all things Bush. I fail to see how campaining for Romney or Huckabee gibes with such a motivation. Either way, that allegation is also the point that Michelle Malkin takes the most exception to.

Here’s a cut version of Helprin’s column, followed by Malkin’s rebuttal. Great reading, on both counts. Now, where were the claims of some monolithic right-wing dogma, or some vast right-wing conspiracy?

What a kerfuffle! Half a dozen talk-radio hosts whose major talent is that, like hairdressers, they can talk all day long to one client after another as they snip, have decided that the presumptive Republican nominee does not hew sufficiently close to their gospel.

As anyone who has listened to them knows, the depth of their thought is truly Oprah-like. And if a great institution of the left can weigh-in as it does in the choice of a nominee, why not its fraternal twins on the right? It doesn’t matter that Mitt Romney, suddenly their Reagan, became a conservative in a flash of light sometime last year, or that their other champion, a populist theocrat, is in many ways as conservative as Vladimir Lenin. The task is to stop the devil McCain.

As a mere print person whose words are not electrified and shot through walls, automobiles, pine trees, and brains, I realize that what I write in the bloody ink of a dying industry may be irrelevant. But from my antiquated perspective, something is very wrong.

Ostracism following tests of “right thinking” is a specialty of the left. Not that it doesn’t exist on the right, blooming with great malice especially on the radio. But in light of their prospects, conservatives have no room for it. For by their neglectful forfeit they have lost the battles of culture and education, and to remain other than an occult force they must express their beliefs through politics, from which, after November, they may be for a time excluded.

[…]

[The protracted Iraq war] and the economy threaten to throw the conservative enterprise back to where it was before Ronald Reagan or even William F. Buckley. Along comes John McCain, who has an 80% positive rating from the American Conservative Union but who as a truly independent soul does not fit, at the margins, some of the transient notions of what makes a conservative. Because of his independence and flexibility, he is the only Republican candidate who has a chance of winning, and thus preserving the core principles of conservatism, in relation to which he is unimpeachable. They are national security (in particular the strength of the military after Iraq and vis-à-vis China and a resurgent Russia), Constitutionalism (as in individual vs. collective rights), and the economy (free markets vs. government industrial policy).

One can agree or disagree with his peripheral positions, but political orthodoxy is political death. If those who are in a hissy fit about Sen. McCain would rather have Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, they will get Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton … and they will wake up to a great regret, as if in their drunkenness they had taken Shrek to bed.

But, guess what? Even if, as the country veers left, living conservatives gnash their teeth and dead ones spin in their graves, a small class of conservatives will benefit. And who might they be? They might be those whose influence and coffers swell on discontent, and who find attacking a president easier and more sensational than the dreary business of defending one. They rose during the Clinton years. Perhaps they are nostalgic. It isn’t worth it, however, for the rest of us.

So, rather than playing recklessly with electoral politics by sabotaging their own party ostensibly for its impurity but equally for the sake of their self-indulgent pique, each of these compulsive talkers might be a tad less self-righteous, look to the long run, discipline himself, suck it up, and be a man. And that would apply equally as well to the gorgeous Laura Ingraham and the relentlessly crocodilian Ann Coulter.

And from RealClearPolitics, parts of Malkin’s response:

The most anti-conservative rhetoric against conservative talk radio these days is coming from supposedly free-market conservatives. It’s disgusting.

[…]

It’s one thing to hear such petty snark coming from the left. Outraged that conservative talk radio has succeeded in the marketplace while liberals have bombed, and unnerved that new media outlets have upended mainstream journalism’s monopoly apple cart, liberals have long crusaded against the medium. […]

But now, we have establishment Republicans parroting liberal ad hominem rhetoric: Talk-radio hosts are talentless blabbermouths. Their listeners are mind-numbed robots. Or, as supposed free-market conservative and McCain supporter Phil Gramm put it in his broadside against talk radio in the Washington Post last week: “They say they have principles, but some of it is their ego and power, too. They’re well-known, and they’re used to having power.”

Funny. These trash-talking GOP politicians and pundits had no problem when conservative talk-radio hosts used their “ego and power” to help kill Hillary Clinton’s massive government health care takeover in 1994. They had no problem when conservative talk-radio hosts used their “ego and power” to galvanize support for the Republican revolution, two Bush presidential campaigns and the war in Iraq.

[…]

Helprin accuses conservative talkers who oppose McCain of rooting for a liberal presidency because their “influence and coffers swell on discontent” and they are “nostalgic” for the Clinton years. Translation: They’re all just greedy self-promoters who care more about themselves than the good of the country. Gramm leveled the same attack: “They’re people who put their dogma in front of the interests of the country.”

Cocooned conservative establishment snobs denigrate talk-radio hosts for preaching to the choir. But these same critics have no problem using the medium to market their own work. Ask their publicists. The message of the anti-conservative conservatives dissing talk radio: Self-interest for me, but not for thee.

No need to wait for a Clinton to take the White House. Clintonism is alive and well among conservative talk-radio haters on both sides of the aisle.

Excuse me while I fetch the popcorn.

The greedy capitalists are once again going to be on the short end of the stick. The reason? Global warming, of course. Why? Because of hurricanes, as Americans call low-pressure system storms also known, depending on where they occur, as cyclones or typhoons.

As everyone knows, global warming is going to make hurricanes worse, so they’re going to increase the payouts insurance companies have to carry. It will, “generate more storms and more intense hurricanes,” says hurricane historian Jay Barnes of Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina in paragraph two. Paragraph three continues: “Numerous studies in recent years have found no evidence that the number of hurricanes and their northwest Pacific Ocean cousins, typhoons, is increasing because of the rise in global temperatures.”

Nevermind paragraph three. Let’s try this again.

As everyone knows, global warming is going to cause fewer killer hurricanes, so they’re going to decrease insurance premiums insurance companies will be able to charge.  “Using data extending back to the middle nineteenth century,” the story quotes physical oceanographer and climate scientist Chunzai Wang of the NOAA, “we found a gentle decrease in the trend of U.S. land-falling hurricanes when the global ocean is warmed up.”

An explanation I’ve heard before for predicting fewer and lighter storms is that global warming will decrease the temperature gradient between the poles and the equator, which is the engine driving the atmospheric circulation that causes disturbances such as low pressure systems that could turn into cyclonic storms.

Wang’s explanation is different. He attributes the historical data to increased vertical wind-shear caused by an increased temperature gradient between low-altitude and high-altitude air. Which also makes sense, if the presupposition that global warming is a long-term trend is true (which, of course, it probably is not).

So one way or another, there will be either higher payouts or lower premiums. Or lower payouts and higher premiums. Nobody knows. Either way,  insurance companies are screwed. Or not. But then, I guess that’s why they call their business “risk management”. Who’d be stupid enough to try to manage risk? Them capitalists have it coming.

Whatever the facts, we must act now, before it’s too late. Must act. Must act now!

Can we really risk the future of mankind when even the scientists have no clue what’s going to happen? No! We must make commitments! We must make sacrifices! We must atone for our sins! We must make election promises! We must soak the rich, to buy the votes of the poor! No, wait, that’s old. We must do more! We must soak the sensible, to buy the votes of people who risk living in hurricane-prone states! In fact, let’s soak everyone, to buy the votes of the soaked! With enough taxes and subsidies and government funds and wealth redistribution, everyone’s a winner!

That’s exactly what half the US presidential candidates campaigning in states such as Florida are proposing to do. They promise to transfer the risk to the US taxpayer. And, would you believe it, that’s the Republican half. Imagine what the Democrats could get up to. The only way they could improve on this populist glad-handing and socialist redistribution is to outlaw hurricanes that make landfall without the proper government authorisation.

That’s how it always ends with eco-politics. No matter what the data says, you can be sure someone, somewhere, is setting up to fleece you.

On one level, I love the American election process. It’s long. It’s ruthless. It exposes every potential flaw in every candidate, be it character or policy, present or past. It forces them to take or explain positions on issues that matter to voters.

On another, I abhor the shallowness of much of the what we see. With “we”, I mean those of us who are separated from America by an ocean or more, away from the barrage of posters everywhere, town hall meetings every day and television adverts every hour. Where we should, in theory, be able to watch with some detachment, some time for analysis, some depth of coverage.

It may be true that when voters care more about superficial style and sound-bite glibness, this suggests their real-life concerns can’t be all that grave. After all, who in Africa really believes that Americans have the faintest idea what poverty or hunger is? What political violence does to people and families? The shallowness of their electoral rhetoric is a measure of their contentment. I don’t mean to condescend; I salute them for that achievement. I don’t mean to oversimplify; there are substantial issues in play, but they don’t always resonate deeply with the figurative man on the street.

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2007 turned out to be a pretty good year for George W. Bush.

Late last year, voters turfed Republicans out of Congress over either lack of spending restraint or dissatisfaction with progress in Iraq or both, depending who you ask. (Robert Novak: war; Alan Greenspan: spending; Rush Limbaugh: both, and liberals suck; Reason magazine: both, and government sucks.)

This electoral loss, which meant Bush could no longer rely on a compliant Congress to send him only bills he likes, merely reinforced the view that Bush now is a lame duck, unable to govern effectively. (CNN: Is Bush already a lame duck?; Lou Dobbs: Beware the lame duck; The Guardian: ‘Lame duck’ Bush faces struggle to push through new agenda; The Telegraph: Allies desert ‘lame duck president’; Dan Froomkin: How lame a duck?)

A few voices ran against the media herd, but looked like wishful thinkers. (Christian Science Monitor: Bush’s lame-duck advantage.)

But on Friday, Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, and Steve Huntley of the Chicago Sun-Times (apparently independently) noted that Bush hasn’t had a bad 2007 at all. Moore’s item is worth quoting in its entirety:

Bush on the Comeback Trail

Just as Newt Gingrich was the best thing that ever happened to Bill Clinton, so Nancy Pelosi has become a great political asset to George W. Bush. Mr. Bush is on a roll legislatively and even his poll numbers are inching up while Congress’s have sunk into the teens. There’s nothing like having a foil in Congress to rehabilitate a president. Just ask Harry Truman.

This time last year it would have been inconceivable that Mr. Bush would have a successful 2007, or that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congress would have fewer than one-in-four voters approving their performance. I’ve made a list of Mr. Bush’s policy victories over the Democrats:

1. S-CHIP — Mr. Bush vetoed the Democrats’ bill expanding middle-class health care subsidies and Democrats were unable to override that veto.
2. Alternative Minimum Tax — Democrats passed AMT reform without the offsetting tax hikes they had threatened.
3. Energy bill — What was a monster at the beginning of the year is now just a fairly harmless CAFE standards bill. Environmentalists are fuming.
4. Hate Crimes Legislation — Mr. Bush blocked it. The Congressional Black Caucus is furious.
5. War funding — Mr. Bush prevailed without any pull-out date. At the start of the year this looked impossible.
6. The Budget — Mr. Bush mostly prevailed on domestic spending totals.
7. No new taxes — all of the Democratic tax proposals were killed, including tobacco taxes, hedge fund taxes and energy company taxes.

It pretty much looks like the White House ran the table. Merry Christmas, Madam Speaker.

As I’ve noted before, US economic and foreign policies matter most to me as a foreigner: whether Americans permit gays to be married, guns to be carried or God to be harried doesn’t keep me up at night.

During the 2004 presidential elections, I said to a friend that perhaps the US needs a presidential term under a Democrat, if only to remind the people in general (and Republican voters in particular) that the Democrats aren’t very good at low taxes, low spending, light-touch environmental regulation and effective foreign policy. Either a John Kerry in 2004, or a Hillary Clinton in 2008, would achieve this goal, and as a result, cement the longer-term rise of the GOP. It now appears that Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco leftist in charge of the ineffectual Democratic Congress, may have achievedachieve this in just two years. Especially if the Democrats nominate Clinton (admittedly, Dennis Kucinich would do too), my money’s on a Republican presidential election win just less than a year from now.

Update: Repaired a grammatic blunder in stating Nancy Pelosi’s term: either she “may have achieved it in just one year”, or she “may achieve it in just two years” — my phrasing was inconsistent, and the former may yet be undone by a sparkling Congressional performance in 2008 (when Martians may land and I may win the lottery).

I haven’t blogged much about the US presidential contenders, because in truth no candidate on either side of the aisle has really grabbed my attention to date. I’m lukewarm, at best, towards all of them. However, a WSJ survey of economists gives some useful pointers, and they point strongly in the direction of the GOP:

Asked which presidential candidate would be best for the economy, only half responded but most threw their support behind Republicans. Thirty-five percent said Rudolph Giuliani would be best, while 19% chose John McCain and 15% picked Mitt Romney. Hillary Clinton got the support of 8%, while John Edwards was the only other Democrat to register with 4% of the vote.

Whether Americans permit gays to be married, guns to be carried or God to be harried doesn’t much matter to me. Economic policy, on the other hand, does matter. A vote of confidence by people who’ve actually been to economics class — and who will therefore tend to disavow the populist economic fallacies that permeate so much public, academic and media opinion — matters.

(Via Greg Mankiw)

It is true that the Republicans, in the US, haven’t had a stellar record on government spending since 2000. It has a high standard to meet, if it is to match its own rhetoric. It has been vulnerable to attack over profligacy, and in particular over Bush’s refusal to veto fat-laden bills. (Or rather, his inability to do so in practice because he has no line-item veto.)

It’s got so bad, I’m told, that the Democrats are now the party of fiscal responsibility, and if I’m a small-government libertarian, I should prefer to see Democrats in charge in the US.

Luckily, some people keep track of these things. Witness the House and Senate “RePORK Cards”, published by the Club for Growth, for example. It ranks senators and members of Congress on their voting record against pork barrel spending. These votes all involve amendments to bills aimed at removing discretionary spending earmarks on totally unrelated items.

Some highlights from the Senate, where 15 anti-pork measures came to a vote:

• Only three senators received a perfect score of 100% (and were present for a majority of the votes). All three are Republicans. A fourth, John McCain (R-AZ), was only present for two votes.
• Thirty-six senators scored below 10%. Of those, two are independents, the other 34 are Democrats.
• Next lowest on the list, at 11%, is the junior senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, who voted for one anti-pork amendments out of the nine for which she was present. Barack Obama scored 33%, or two out of six.
• Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) scored a 53%; Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) scored a 7%, voting for only one amendment.
• The average Republican score was 59%; the average Democratic score was 12%.
• Thanks to this dismal voting record, only two amendments were successful: one to cut funding for spinach growers from the Iraq Supplemental Bill, the other not to spend $1 million on a museum dedicated to the Woodstock Festival. Those that failed included funding a visitors’ center in Louisiana instead of providing shelter for victims of Hurricane Katrina (and they bash Bush over Katrina?), millions of dollars for bicycle paths instead of using the funds to improve bridge safety, and $100 million for the 2008 Republican and Democratic nominating conventions (go figure).

In Congress, where 50 anti-pork amendments were considered, these figures stood out:

• Sixteen members scored 100%. All of them are Republicans.
• The average Republican score was 43%. The average Democratic score was 2% — on average, Democrats voted for one anti-pork measure out of 50!
• The only Democrat to score over 20% was Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) who received an admirable 98% grade.
• 105 congressmen scored a round zero, voting against every single amendment. The “Pork Hall of Shame” includes 81 Democrats and 24 Republicans.
• The Democratic Freshmen — the new blood that was going to restore fiscal responsibility to Congress — scored an abysmal average of 2%. Their Republican counterparts scored 78% on average.

Let nobody ever again tell me (a) to support a Democrat for their spending restraint, and (b) to believe Democrats when they promise to clean up Congress. The only positive from this report is that Americans can hold their representatives accountable for their wasteful spending. Let’s hope they do so.