Rational Philosophy

On testing in.

Anya Kamenetz today makes a case for lowering the voting age to 16. This initially struck me as a ridiculous idea. But that was before Anya set out the details of her plan: “16-year-olds who want to start voting should be able to obtain an “early voting permit” from their high schools upon passing a simple civics course similar to the citizenship test.” She likens this to a driving permit granted to a young person after they’ve demonstrated that they are qualified.

In this season of political fervour, my daughter’s high school engaged the children in a voting exercise: The result? All (100%) of the children voted Democrat, and the vast majority chose Obama over Clinton. So, while my heart wants me to embrace Anya’s proposal, bless those little idealists, my head says that 16 is too young for the vote, even after getting a passing grade on a civics test.

On the other hand, requiring that voters are qualified to vote strikes me as a wonderful idea. (It reminds me of the conviction of a particularly misanthropic friend of mine that only after passing a parenting test should people be allowed to have children.) To purloin Anya’s parallel, people of all ages need to pass a driving test if they’re going to drive, so why not a voting test if they’re going to vote?  Yes, yes, I know it goes against the very premise of a democratic society, but can you argue with the logic?

The Times Editorial today makes the reverse argument. The editorial complains that the current political contest isn’t helping fix the country’s state of polarization. Obama fans are saying they won’t bother voting if he doesn’t win the nomination. Republicans miffed at McCain’s unamerican brand of conservatism are saying that they’d rather see a Democrat in the White House than see McCain there. “That is not the way democracy is supposed to work,” the Times laments.

Frankly, if Obama fans aren’t engaged enough to vote for Clinton, let them stay at home. It’s the job of the Democratic party to convince them to come out and vote (which is I think one of the points the editorial is trying to make). If Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter want a candidate who passes all their litmus tests, let them want. I for one won’t be unhappy if Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and their ilk are disenfranchised. Democracy as it exists in America today is a ramshackle, unfair, unrepresentative, incredibly flawed system for selecting leaders. If fewer people vote but those who do are less passionately partisan and better-informed, it can only improve matters.

At the risk of being helpful, I noticed something about yesterday’s voting maps. (Democratic map to the left with Obama in green; Republican map to the right with McCain in orange.) The support for Obama is pretty much the mirror image of the support for McCain. Here’s my theory: McCain will likely win the Republican nomination. Ironically, McCain’s support is strongest in traditionally Democratic strongholds (the east and west coasts) and weakest in traditionally Conservative strongholds (the middle and lower states). I would assume that Obama could hold off McCain in the Democratic strongholds if he edged out Clinton for the nomination. And he has a much better chance of picking up votes in the middle states than Clinton does. Judged by the demographics of the primary support so far, Obama then has a better chance than Clinton does of beating McCain.

Of course, if you’re a Republican you can apply the reverse logic and determine that the best way to beat Obama would be to vote for Romney. In which case, I guess you’re pretty much screwed…

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On the FDAs approval of cloned animal products, Bush’s approval of Mubarak, and the NY Times’ disapproval of electronic voting.

A few days ago I wrote about the danger of messing with nature. Nature has taken millions upon millions of years to produce the world we live in, and its only guiding principle has been to constantly winnow out loose ends and poor choices. Evolution ensures that nature’s mistakes either become successes or are self-healing. When humans get involved in rejiggering nature we risk unforseen consequences.

It’s hard to blame the FDA for approving the sale of food products from the progeny of cloned livestock. The FDA’s job is not to play moral judge, nor to philosophize over the rightness of second-guessing nature. Instead it had to judge whether the food seemed safe. Whether the food industry leaps to sell the products and whether consumers want to buy them will play a part in how quickly and pervasively products derived from cloned animals make it to our tables, but it can only be a matter of time. One thing seems clear: We can’t rely on the FDA, nor farmers, nor food suppliers to prevent the inevitable. Which leaves us with consumers and, nature forbid, regulators.

While evidence of the administration’s destruction of evidence piles up at home, the inscrutable George Bush has been making an unprecedented (for him) tour of the middle east. We’re so worn down after suffering seven years of his bewildering ability to ignore the obvious that even his gravest acts of ethical side-stepping don’t surprise us any more. In Egypt Bush had this to say to the ruthless Mubarak: “I appreciate the example that your nation is setting.” Now, if he meant that with Egypt’s terrible record on free elections and human rights Mubarak has been making even the Bush Administration look good, that would be one thing, but I don’t think that’s what Bush had in mind. What he did have in mind, I believe, was Egypt’s support in the Bush administration’s war on terror; a dubiously relative merit if ever there was one.

The NY Times today called for an upgrade to electronic voting systems across the land… by entering a plea for jurisdictions to maintain parallel paper ballots. Quite rightly, the editorial focuses on what needs to be done to improve the chances that we’ll have a fair and reliable election result this year. What it doesn’t focus on is how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place. When in doubt, blame Bush. In large part fault does lie with Bush. The administration’s zeal for free markets and state independence has led to the current electronic voting fiasco. Surely when we’re dealing with the election of a president of the nation the federal government should shape and vet the introduction of a consistent and reliable electronic voting system. The demand for quality far outweighs the demand for the process to rest on free market forces. And surely since the election of a president demands consistency in process and accuracy from state to state, the matter of voting mechanisms shouldn’t be left to state control.

As in so many areas, these three examples demonstrate in very different ways that our process of government is very far from rational. To leave to the FDA the task of stemming the tide of animal cloning for food makes no rational sense. To twice elect a president of such passive incompetence and active contempt for what’s right and good makes even less rational sense. As does the reliance on decentralized muddle in devising a good scheme for capturing votes.

 

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On voting in Iowa (and elsewhere).

As has been vividly demonstrated in Kenya in recent days, and as we experienced directly here in the US at the closing stages of the last presidential election, voting often produces more losers than winners. Today is caucus and primary day in Iowa. The presidential voting process begins. But what are we voting for, and why?

In some democratic systems, such as in the UK, people vote for a party rather than a person. Of course, a strong, popular and capable party leader can make a great deal of difference in which party people vote for, but it’s not quite the same as throwing the choice of party leader out to the popular vote. I focus on this difference to help illustrate the point that in a democracy our vote counts toward a particular result — the future government of the nation — and that rationally we should use our vote to try to help bring about the future government that we believe we prefer.

This may seem obvious, but I think it’s not.

Political pundits, the media, political campaign managers and even candidates get confused during the voting process. They become obsessed by the process itself, on what needs to be done to get elected. But getting elected and running a successful government require two very different sets of skills.

The particular skills required to govern the country don’t change much over time: Without integrity, effectiveness and vision things will go awry.

Whether a candidate (or party) claims to have the answer to fixing health care, or saving social security, or countering terrorism really makes no difference if they can’t demonstrate a track record of integrity, effectiveness and vision. Conversely, if a candidate honestly admits that they don’t currently have definite and convincing answers to such issues (how could any one candidate possibly have all the answers?) this demonstrates integrity without necessarily proving them ineffective and lacking in vision.

The pundits, the media, the campaign machine and the candidate make the voter’s task inordinately more difficult by masking the candidate’s key qualities behind a screen of distracting and tear-inducing smoke.

The other part of the voter’s task is to ask himself or herself what kind of government he or she prefers. Again, this seems obvious, but again I would claim it isn’t. If we focus on particular issues we risk losing sight of the big picture. Issues shift. New issues arise. The kind of government we prefer really doesn’t change much over time. That’s why political systems the world over tend to polarize to a greater or lesser degree into the opposing camps of conservative and liberal, republican and democrat, right wing and left wing, fascist and socialist.

The kind of government we prefer tends to fall somewhere along this spectrum. If the party we would normally vote for has swung too far one way, perhaps we feel a swing back in the other direction is called for. But fundamentally we tend to prefer a government that aligns better with our ideological bent.

To those in Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida and across the country I say, forget the hoopla, look past the mud that’s been slung, dig into the record of the candidates on matters of integrity, effectiveness and vision, and vote for a leader who lacks none of these and for a government whose ideology promises to set the country on a course that you will feel happy about four years from now.

I make no apology for belaboring the point that George Bush, who so clearly lacks integrity and effectiveness and who’s vision has been so muddled and ill-founded that it’s mired the country in a dire war, set back international relations thirty years, hobbled the country’s finances, and introduced a deplorable set of incursions on basic human rights, was elected to the highest office in the country not once but twice. We can only hope that this year’s voting process turns the tide.

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