Ashby 2008

Would you have broken the law if the President had asked you to, after 9/11? To me, that is what happened with AT&T and the other telecommunications companies. I am curious about just how much information on how many people the Administration actually gathered without a court order, and I agree that legal action is probably the best way to force this to be disclosed. However, I do not think it is fair to hold the shareholders of AT&T financially liable for their management’s decision to do something that the President said was a matter national security. A limited immunity, protection against punitive damages and attorney’s fees, would allow the courts to be used to force disclosure of the extent of the requests without exposing the telecommunications companies to significant financial risk.

I have to say, I have been curious about how, and how much, communications the government actually collected from the telecommunications companies. People in IT can be lazy, and data storage space is cheap. All forms of communications are now turned into data packets – phone calls, emails, videos…Did the government actually receive just the phone calls of a small number of people? Or did the government have the telecommunications companies capture and turn over every data packet going though certain data exchange points, with the idea of sorting through it after the fact? Is it possible that the Bush Administration actually received captured phone conversations of millions or tens of millions of people, just because it was easier?

Wanting to know the answer is not a matter of wanting to embarrass the President. In the aftermath of 9/11, the President did what he thought best to protect the country – he did what he thought was right at the time. That is all we can ask of any President – that he or she do what they believe to be best for the country. Nevertheless, it is critical that we are able to know the President’s decisions, even after the fact. In the private sector, Edward Deming popularized the idea of continuous improvement, the idea that it is possible to continuously evaluate inputs and outcomes and thus continually find and implement improvements to processes. The key to continuous improvement is good information – an enterprise has to understand its process, collect meaningful information on each portion of the process, and tie outcomes both good and bad back to those processes.

The same holds true for government. Our democracy and bureaucracy work better if we continually collect good information on the actions of government and the outcomes of those actions. This includes monitoring and evaluating how true we are to the principles of democracy and our Constitution. It is important that our government be transparent so that we as citizens can be sure it is working properly and within the bounds of the law. Sometimes President’s do overstep the bounds of the Constitution. President Lincoln arbitrarily arrested northern opponents of the Civil War. After the fact, the Supreme Court eventually held those actions unconstitutional. If in fact President Bush overstepped the bounds of the Constitution, he is in good company.

It would be nice to think that the political process itself will bring to light any overstepping. However, the next President, regardless of the party, will have his or her hands full just running the country; there will be little incentive or upside to delving into possible mistakes made over eight years ago. The discovery process that is part of a civil action through the courts still seems like the most likely way of ensuring that the actions of the President are disclosed. Again, not to embarrass him, but just to make sure we know.

However, I also don’t think it’s fair that the shareholders of AT&T and the others should have financial exposure because the company’s management said yes to a request from the President. In retrospect, it might have been the wrong call for management to make, but it was a judgment call. If the President had asked me to break a law in October 2001, I probably would have done it too. I’m pretty sure I would have given the President the benefit of the doubt.

It’s hard for me to imagine there were any actual damages that resulted from the warrant-less wiretaps, that it actually cost anyone a job or caused them to lose their savings. From a liability standpoint, the concern is over the punitive damages and possible attorney’s fees, which can be disproportionate to the size of any actual harm caused. Offering AT&T limited immunity, protection against punitive damages and attorney’s fees, seems a reasonable compromise. Well-intentioned attorneys can still pursue civil action, pro bono, and we can know just what the President ordered. The shareholders of AT&T would not be financially penalized for the actions of management, who when all is said and done were just trying to be good Americans responding to the direction of the President.

As I read of the intense dislike that modern fiscal conservatives have for John McCain, I cannot help thinking back to his vote against the Bush Tax Cuts. Republican electoral success over the past two decades has been based on a fantasy of Supply Side Economics, the idea that budget deficits are justified because tax cuts pay for themselves. In support of this idea, modern fiscal conservatives have worked very diligently to change the very definition of the term “fiscal conservative”. John McCain, early on, to his credit, recognized that Supply Side Economics was a fantasy, providing great applause lines during an election but not actually based on the operation of our economy. Again, to his credit, he didn’t think we should risk the future of our country on a self-delusion. When he voted against the Bush Tax Cuts, he did so for the old reasons – it was bad for the economy and morally wrong. McCain acted as an actual old-school fiscal conservative, rejecting the silliness that somehow became Republican Doctrine, and in doing so undercut the fantasy world of the Supply Siders.

Some commentators have suggested that the selection of McCain as the nominee would be the end of the Reagan Revolution. If that is what it takes to get the Republican Party back to fiscal reality, then let’s hope it happens. However, it won’t be John McCain that will have killed supply side economics, it will be George Bush, because he actually tried it. Supply Side, like that other famous economic fantasy, socialism, will have been proven wrong by reality. Modern Fiscal Conservatives are likely to eventually be as bitter and disillusioned as the ex-Socialist. Except of course a lot wealthier. As I read of the State of the Union Address, I couldn’t help but think that this will be the President’s real legacy - the death of supply side economics, and a re-validation of the model for government that developed out of the Depression.

Reading the attacks made me think back to something I wrote in late 2003 about the change in the definition of fiscal conservatism. It is posted below.
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December 2003

THE IMPORTANCE OF A BALANCED BUDGET

I used to know what “Fiscal Conservatism” was. Other labels shifted over time with changing values and historical situations. A “Liberal” of the 1800s has only a passing connection to the Liberalism of today. “Moderate” has always had a fluid meaning. However, the one label I thought was constant was “Fiscal Conservative”, because it was tied first and foremost to one fixed idea: other than in wartime, government should not spend more money than it takes in. A fiscal conservative was a person who believed in a balanced budget, who believed that we should pay for all the government we use, when we use it.

Fiscal conservatives, certainly, preferred a constrained federal government. A balanced budget was the best and perhaps only way to insure that we bought only the level of government that we needed. Economist Arthur Laffer is given credit for making it glamorous, but the law of diminishing returns is an economic truism that applies to any activity, including government. At some point, an extra dollar of government defense spending doesn’t make us any safer. An extra dollar spent on education doesn’t make children any smarter. At some point, we stop benefiting from additional money spent on government. Fiscal conservatives believed that if we have to pay for all of the government we use each year, we are much more likely to only buy the government we need – we will be conscious of the diminishing returns of an ever-expanding government, and choose to deploy our additional resources elsewhere.

Without being too disparaging of the profession, politicians sometimes have a tendency to try to secure votes by promising new services or benefits. If the voters actually get charged for the government they are using, it is much harder for politicians to make promises – they have to convince the voters that the programs they are proposing are something voters actually want to pay government to do. This forces voters to decide if the goal is worth the money and if government is the best tool for achieving the goal, or if they would rather spend the money privately to achieve the goal.

The most compelling argument for a balanced budget was moral – other than in times of war, fiscal conservatives believed that running a budget deficit was morally wrong. A budget deficit forces future generations to pay for government services being used today. Taking a person’s possessions without their consent is theft - a budget deficit is a theft by one generation of the property of another. Children used to go to debtors prison for the debts of their parents. We recognized that practice as barbaric. Why is forcing our children to pay for the government services we are using any different? Why should my grandchildren have to pay for the cost of maintaining the highways I drive on, or pay so that I can go to a national park for free? A budget deficit is the very worst kind of redistributive politics – it is taking money from people who do not have the right to vote, people who are not even born yet.

I used to know what “Keynesianism” was as well. The economist John Maynard Keynes was one of the more prolific commentators on the evolution and development of democratic capitalism. His understanding of how government actions increase or decrease economic demand and impacts the economy is now recognized as a basic description of our economy. Social Security, insuring that people past the working age still have a steady income, helps maintain the level of demand. Unemployment insurance helps protect against drastic swings in demand during economic slowdowns. Government tends to run budget deficits during the slow times, pumping money into the economy to spur growth, and surpluses during the boom times, taking money out of the economy and protecting against inflation. Keynes was one of the first to enunciate this basic macroeconomic ebb and flow of the interaction between the government and the economy.

However, Keynesianism was something more than just acknowledging the government’s impact on the economy. In its mild form, it meant believing that sometimes the government is justified in running budget deficits even during peacetime, if doing so is necessary to soften the swings of the economic cycle and help the economy grow out of a recession. In its extreme form, Keynesianism suggested that unemployment was as great a threat to our country as invasion, and that government had a moral obligation to manage the economy toward full employment, even if it meant permanent budget deficits. Extreme Keynesianism, somewhere deep down, did not believe that the “hidden hand” of the market actually worked, and that it was the government alone that could manage our economy for the greatest good for the greatest number.

Ronald Reagan was the person who started muddling both of these definitions, and in a way, our political discourse still hasn’t recovered. As all good Republicans used to do, Ronald Reagan campaigned in 1980 as a balanced budget fiscal conservative. He also ran on what he described as a new economic theory, Supply Side economics, based on the writing of economist Arthur Laffer.

An economic policy can certainly be derived from the law of diminishing returns. If government has grown too large, then by definition it is spending resources unwisely; we are realizing diminished value for our dollar of expenditures. If we shrink the size of government, resources previously consumed by government will be redeployed to the private sector. The private sector will use these resources more efficiently than government had, resulting in more economic value for the same dollar of spending. This enhanced economic growth would in turn increase tax revenues, which could support additional government services, if appropriate.

The Supply Siders weren’t actually arguing for redeploying capital. Supply Side economists theorized that the stagnation of the 1970s was the result of excessive government spending. Government had grown to the point of diminishing returns, and it was taking resources that the private sector needed for growth. If more money were put in private hands through a tax cut, even if it resulted in the government running a budget deficit, then the economy would start to grow again. Tax revenue would increase, and we would grow out of our deficit.

In eight years, Reagan never once proposed a balanced budget. The Supply Side economics of the 1980s didn’t free up resources, which were being poorly utilized by government – we never actually bought less government, or shrank the size of government. Instead, we just stopped paying cash for the government we were using. Not paying for what you are consuming always picks up the economy. This is the exact same functional tool that Keynesians proposed, massive deficit spending, and it behaved in exactly the way that Keynes predicted it would – it increased demand and helped jump-started the economy. We don’t categorize economic policies by the hopes and dreams of politicians – we look at the tools, the functional level. One of the things that I have always liked about being a Republican is that we try not to lie to ourselves – we try not to talk ourselves into positions, which have no connection to the real world. Supply Side economics is a form of Keynesianism – it is the government using deficit spending to increase demand. It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck – it is a duck. Any person that tells you that supply side economics is somehow different from Keynesianism shouldn’t be trusted with money – they are either lying to themselves or don’t understand economics.

I understand that for political reasons, Reagan couldn’t say that his planned tax cuts were Keynesianism economics – that was the philosophy of the Democratic Party, in the extreme the exact opposite of the fiscal conservatism that has always characterized the Republican Party, and that Reagan himself had campaigned on. Ultimately, this is exactly what Reagan did – he used a bout of massive deficit spending as one of the government’s tools to jump-start the economy. When the first President Bush raised taxes, I was relieved in every possible way. If Keynesianism is to be used as a tool of economic manipulation, this is the critical second part of it – once the economy is jump-started, we needed to actually start paying for the government we are currently using and end the budget deficits. Most importantly, Bush seemed to be reclaiming the core of fiscal conservatism – it is wrong to burden our children and grandchildren with deficits, even if balancing the budget causes immediate political pain for office holders. Raising taxes might have cost Bush his presidency, but it was the right thing to do.

It is worth noting that Reagan’s tax cuts were effective only because they were one of many tools the government deployed. Reagan’s efforts at deregulation and lessening bureaucracy also had a significant impact on U.S. businesses and at a philosophic and spiritual level Reagan made it okay to make money again – he de-stigmatized capitalism. Reagan’s tax cuts worked because they were part of a reasonably coherent economic philosophy and overall approach to re-energizing the economy.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what the current President Bush economic beliefs are. As hard as I try, I cannot make anything he has done fit into any kind of coherent philosophy or strategy. He doubled farm subsidies. Why? He imposed tariffs on foreign steel. As much as I hate to say this about the candidate I voted for, he seems to jump from one political convenience to the next. Now he is talking about going back to the large, long-term deficits of the 1980’s. He is proposing adding over a trillion dollars to our national debt – a trillion. Moreover, this is before the cost of the war, or its aftermath is added on – the war will be more debt on top of the trillion. President Bush doesn’t seem to actually care about the long-term impact of any of his economic policies, or the terrible impact of the deficits he is proposing. Without being too harsh, sometimes it seems he is intent on buying votes now with our children and grandchildren’s money.

It is frightening to think about, but the economic and political situation of his tax cuts don’t remind me of Reagan’s – they remind me of the economic policy of the last president from Texas, Lyndon Johnson, who also cut taxes while paying for a war. The large deficits he created led to the economic malaise and stagflation of the seventies. I pray that this will not be the case, but everything points in this direction. Depression aside, the seventies were one of the worst economic periods of the 20th century for the U.S.

As much as Bush seems a moral person, and talks in moral language, he seems to be missing what I think should be one of the most basic moral principles – we shouldn’t steal from our children and grandchildren. Let us hope that he again remembers the fiscal conservatism that has been the core of the Republican Party for a century. Let us all hope that someone that the President trusts can get through to him that deficits are morally wrong. Running a deficit is morally wrong.

I have said that some portion of the Republican Party no longer believes in the equality of individuals, that they do not believe that all people do have the ability and right to choose the course of their own lives. The recent Indiana law increasing the identification requirements to vote is an example of this loss of faith in humanity. Explicit in the law is the thought that not all individuals have the right to help choose their own government, that there are some people that don’t have the level of integration into our society necessary to justify their participating in the electoral process. Even more so, the Indiana law passed by Republicans is a further example of the strange madness that has gripped the Republican Party and caused it to abandon every principle it had. The Indiana regulation solves a problem that doesn’t exist with a solution that wouldn’t work anyway, requires government to have a higher identification threshold than the private market, and shifts the cost of compliance with the regulation onto individuals. Think about it – the Republicans are pushing an unnecessary, ineffective, unfunded mandate onto private citizens. Newt Gingrich, where are you when we need you?

As background, the Republican Party has made a concerted effort at the state level over the last several years to change various voter registration and identification procedures to make it harder for some people to exercise their right to vote. Primarily people who might tend to vote for Democrats. This effort was part of Karl Rove’s push to show that the Republicans could be even better at gaming the system than the Democrats were. The effort has continued largely unchallenged because the Bush Administration has for all practical purposes shut down the part of the Justice Department that oversaw voting rights violations. A few of the state efforts have been outright silly, and were struck down by lower courts. Some of the efforts were less silly, and upheld by lower courts.

The Indiana case is an example – it was upheld by a judge in a lower court, actually by a very well respected, if conservative, judge. Indiana is now requiring a photo identification before a person is allowed to vote. Previously, people were able to bring two forms of non-photo ID. If someone now shows up at the voting station without a photo ID, they are allowed to vote provisionally, but must go to the local election commission within a period of time to prove who they are. The law was challenged on the basis that some portion of Indiana’s citizens do not have a photo ID, and thus the law infringes on their right to vote.

In the Indiana case, the lower court judge ruled that the law wasn’t unreasonable, because a photo ID is required for any number of private market activities. He noted, for instance, that it could be difficult to cash a check without a photo ID, or board an airplane. Essentially the judge was suggesting that a photo ID was already a requirement for participating in our modern economy, and thus not unreasonable for the state of Indiana to require this same level of documentation.

Except, of course, that a photo ID is not required to participate in the economy. The people who are the plaintiffs in the case, who lack photo IDs, have managed to live their lives just fine. They have managed to hold down jobs, get back and forth from those jobs and shop and live their lives, all without using a photo ID to prove to the private market that they were who they said they were. Unless I am mistaken, the state of Indiana does not require a photo ID to be presented before paying taxes. Yes, the state of Indiana will take a person’s money without a photo ID, but won’t let them vote without a photo ID. The state of Indiana is effectively requiring a higher level of documentation than the private market mandates. Who would have thought – the Republican Party deciding that the free market’s ID requirements were insufficient, and that the government needed to go beyond the free market to correct this insufficiency.

Republicans initially claimed that the laws were necessary because of voter impersonation fraud – one person pretending to be another person, and then using that person’s vote. They had to back off of this position because it is essentially a lie – to my knowledge there have not been any cases of voter impersonation filed in the state of Indiana. The fall-back position of the Republican’s has been that voter impersonation could happen, and the new law was a way of protecting against it before the fact. Yes, the Republicans are arguing that while it wasn’t a problem yet, it might be, and so government action was justified. Who would have thought - the Republican Party wanting government action to solve a problem that didn’t exist.

It’s worth noting that if the problem did exist, this law wouldn’t actually fix it. When Republicans viewed facts as allies, not enemies, they actually tried to imagine how laws would work in real world situations – they tried to compare their assumptions against reality. The Indiana law will certainly make it harder on the crackpot who forgot to register, and so decides at the last minute to try to vote under someone else’s name just so they can have their say in the system. However if a person or a group of people decides to actually steal an election through voter impersonation, it’s pretty safe to assume that they will go that little extra step of creating the fake IDs they need. It’s not that hard, and if someone is that committed to stealing the election, I’m betting that they won’t be deterred by the minimal effort it takes to use a laser printer and laminating machine to do the theft right.

If the Indiana Republican Party really did believe that voter impersonation was a material problem, then the logical solution would be for the state of Indiana to issue Photo ID voter identification cards to all residents, with some kind of built-in technology to protect against forged cards, and then put ID card verification systems at each voting station. However while effective, this solution would obviously cost the state government a fair amount of money. Instead, the state’s solution is to shift the compliance cost to individuals – to make each person have to pay a small sum of money to prove they are who they said they are. Not a large sum, mind you – I can’t imagine getting an Indiana official state identification card costs more than $10 or $20 dollars. Still, on principal, this is a Republican Administration passing a mandate and forcing the cost of the mandate to be paid by private citizens. Who would have thought – the Republican Party actively promoting unfunded mandates.

It is very possible that the Supreme Court will uphold the Indiana law. They might decide that it is nefarious, but not necessarily illegal, because the negative impact on people’s ability to vote can be remedied. The Democrats will have to work a little harder for a while – they will need to spend time before the elections making sure their supporters have a photo ID. The people who want to vote, with a bit more effort and forethought, will still be able to vote. However the case does shine a light on how far the Republican Party has strayed from its principles. There was a time Republicans viewed Democratic gaming of the system as something to be stopped, not topped. There was a time Republicans actually believed all people deserved the right to vote, and that taxation without representation was an affront to our belief in the equality of all men and women.

Nothing illustrates the mass delusion that has overtaken the Republican Party more than the Club for Growth. For those who don’t know, the Club for Growth is an organization of very wealthy people who promote the economic benefits of lower taxes. For some reason, the members of the Club for Growth seem to have concluded that budget deficits resulting from the Bush Tax Cuts do not prime the growth of government, don’t distort the economy, and won’t have to be repaid by their children and grandchildren. At some point, all delusions come to an end. At some point, the members of the Club for Growth, (or the member’s children), will likely look back on its positions and conclude that the Club for Growth was instrumental in a larger government and larger tax burden. Yes, the Club for Growth should be re-named the Club for Growth in Government.

A balanced budget has always been the linchpin of Republicanism and fiscal conservatism. A balanced budget was a key tool to control the size of government, limited the degree to which the government could distort the economy, and was morally the right thing to do – it protected the interests of future generations that would be asked to repay any deficit.

Socialism by revolution certainly is the most dramatic, but Republicans have historically recognized that socialism by evolution, a gradual and inexorable expansion of government responsibility, was in some ways a greater danger. We don’t talk about socialism much anymore, but fear of creeping socialism was a primary reason that Republicans were so adamantly against government deficit spending. Republicans recognized that one of the best ways to control the growth of government was to force voters to pay for it as they used it. If voters actually had to foot the bill for the government services being provided, they would be much more likely to examine each proposed service to insure it was worth the money coming out of their pockets. Decoupling government spending from taxes almost guaranteed that the amount of money government spends would grow, and thus the government’s intrusion into our economy and lives would grow as well. People just tend to spend more if they can put it on a credit card.

As importantly, budget deficits undermined belief in the free market. Explicit in a budget deficit is the idea that the free market won’t grow and prosper on its own, that government intervention and control of supply and demand are necessary for the health of our economy. Republicans were concerned that if voters came to accept the idea that the government needed to manipulate and control the economy by pumping money into it to insure growth, then any shortcomings in the economy would lead to demand for government to do more. Once this cycle was started, each swing in the business cycle would result in ever-greater government spending, ever-larger deficits and even greater intrusion into the economy. Who knew where this might lead—would government eventually lose confidence in people’s ability to decide which agricultural products to buy, or to oversee their children’s education?

Strangely enough, the Bush Tax Cuts have proven everything the Republicans always worried about. The deficits have distorted the economy, leading to speculation and instability, and facilitated growth in the size and expense of government. President Bush will go down in history as the Republican President who most increased the size of government and the tax burden on U.S. citizens. Who knew that it would be a Republican President that confirmed the worst fears of the Republican Party?

Republicans also used to recognize that at some point, deficit spending would have to come to an end—our country would actually have to pay for all of the services being provided by our government. Modern fiscal conservatives seem to have this fantasy that in this situation the government would largely collapse, unable to pay for everything it is doing. Beyond the craziness of the idea (“We had to bankrupt the country to get it to spend less money”), Republicans who had lived through the Depression realized that in a democracy the answer is far more likely to be confiscatory tax policy—government would simply increase its tax rates on those who controlled the means of production to pay for the services government provided to those who didn’t. Republicans used to worry that bankruptcy wouldn’t be the end of Big Government—it would be the practical end of private ownership of the means of production. Yes, that’s right – in accepting massive budget deficits the Club for Growth is pushing us down a path that wealthy people used to believe would result in socialism.

This, ultimately, is what’s so baffling about the Club for Growth and the support of the Bush Administration tax policy in general by the wealthy. Certainly, the Bush Tax cuts put more money in this generation’s pockets. However, wealthy people used to understand the difference between a tax cut and a tax deferral. Wealthy people used to know that the only way to actually cut taxes was to cut government spending; in theory people with money understand a balance sheet, and that liabilities eventually have to be repaid. Have the members of the Club for Growth really deluded themselves into believing that the government debt won’t have to be repaid, and that it won’t be their children and grandchildren paying it? Is this what is now considered prudent stewardship? Have the members for the “Club for Growth” really convinced themselves that they are doing their heirs a favor?

I was reminded yet again of some of the lasting effects of the Bush presidency as I read the paper today. An article in the NY Times on OPEC had the following paragraph in it:

“OPEC said the reason prices rose to nearly $100 a barrel in recent weeks had little to do with supply and demand but was a result of trading by commodity investors and hedge funds, as well as geopolitical instability.”

Beyond the obvious impact this Administration has had on geopolitical instability, it is also worth noting that this President has unwittingly increased the amount of speculation on our economy. I talked about this in my paper on sub-prime mortgages, but the tax cuts the President likes to talk about didn’t actually go to business investment or to new business startups. The government tracks those figures, and they did not appreciably change after the tax cuts went into effect. So where did the money go? A very large part of it went to hedge funds, they used it to speculate on things such as mortgages, oil and gas futures.

The bulk of the tax cuts went to the wealthy, or the very wealthy, people who already had everything developed in investment strategies, with a spread of risk. When these people then received their tax cuts, they didn’t put the money into low-risk investments – they put it into high-risk investments, because it was essentially found money. The government doesn’t actually track hedge funds (the subject of a future post…), but hedge fund industry sources suggest that close to a trillion dollars have gone into hedge funds during the Bush presidency. Moreover, the hedge funds had to find a place to put the money, bets to make. Again, no firm numbers are available, but anecdotally it seems probable that hundreds of billions of that money was used to speculate on energy futures. Hedge funds bet that oil prices would go up, and because there was suddenly more money chasing oil futures, they did go up. This is how bubbles work – too much speculative money chases a given economic activity or output, causing the prices to spike upward.

As a side note, I have nothing against speculation – this is an important part of our economy. However, Republicans used to believe that the economy was for all practical purposes a natural organism, with its own internal balance. Deficit spending broke this balance, and led to negative consequences. In this case, the deficit spending greatly increased the amount of speculative capital, which has had a range of negative consequences on our economy. Does anybody else remember the days when the Republican Party actually understood the inflows and outflows of economic activity…?

So if energy prices are in a bubble, they should come back down, right? Unfortunately, not likely. A few years ago, OPEC used to be concerned that if prices went too high, it would cause a global economic downturn, which would significantly reduce demand, and further would cause countries to ration their use and look for alternatives, which would also reduce demand. For this reason, OPEC tried to keep the price within a certain range. I remember when that price range was about $30 a barrel. Now, however, OPEC and the oil producers have had an epiphany – people will pay $100 a barrel, and demand won’t drop.

The Bush tax cuts and geopolitical instability are by no means the only factors driving oil price increases – the industrialization of the third world is also a large factor. However, there was a time when Republicans took the responsibilities of government seriously. They realized that actions of government often had unintended consequences, and they were cautious to protect against government actions which harmed our country. This Administration, surely the worst Republican Administration in history, seems to have the opposite goal – they are intent on having the government do as many stupid things as possible, just to prove that government is incompetent. The next time you fill up, thank the President for the prices you are paying.

I am continually baffled by this Administration’s seeming hatred of Iran. At least with Iraq, you could point to the fact that Iraq had invaded two countries in the previous twenty-five years. In addition, even North Korea invaded South Korea in the last sixty years. However, to my knowledge, the nation of Iran has not invaded another country in over two hundred years. Like it or not, Iran just has not been a threat to its neighbors. In addition, whether we care to admit it or not, Iran is the third most democratic country in the Middle East. This President, who claims to want to support democracy, seems to hate one of the few functioning democracies in that part of the world.

I know the President of Iran has said that he would like to see Israel wiped off the map. However, numerous Arab leaders have said the same thing, and we have not labeled them part of an “Axis of Evil”. It is worth noting that even if Iran had nuclear weapons, does anyone really think they are going to nuke Israel? How exactly would that benefit the Palestinians? Further, Israel is not really all that big – if it were nuked, think about what this would do to Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and a part of Egypt. If Iran develops the bomb, it will not be a modern Neutron Bomb that just kills people and leaves buildings – it will be a dirty old-school, lots of radiation bomb. Iran bombing Israel would make a sizable chunk of the Middle East uninhabitable, not to mention killing as many Arabs as Israelis. I am sorry, but this just does not make any sense.

Now the President is suggesting that the U.S. needs to go forward with the Missile Defense shield as protection for the U.S. against attack by Iran, and that Iran even getting the knowledge of how to build a nuclear bomb is the start of World War III. Does anyone actually believe that Iran is going to shoot a missile at the United States? Does the President really think that the leaders of Iran would risk actually having their country wiped off the map by the United State’s thousands of nuclear missiles? Again, the President’s statements baffle me. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the promise that if either side uses nuclear weapons the other will respond with nuclear weapons, worked for decades. Does the President really think that somehow this would not work with Iran?

I hear Republicans say something to the effect of “It just takes one crazy person with their finger on the trigger, and the President of Iran is just such a nut.” Then they inevitably make comparisons to the suicide bombers. It is worth noting that the suicide bombers have not been representatives of democratically elected governments – they have instead been members of groups not in power intent on taking power. Most of the suicide bombers of 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. The government of Saudi Arabia did not send the bombers. They attacked us in part because we support the non-democratic government of Saudi Arabia. Iran is an actual nation, with a functioning and vaguely democratic government. Elected leaders rarely do things that would cause the destruction of their country – they are far too focused on staying in power to risk starting World War III. The President of Iran is not going to order an attack on the U.S. because he wants there to be a nation of Iran for him to be the President of.

I also hear Republicans complain that Iran sponsors terrorist organization, in particular Hamas and Hezbollah. While I do not support their tactics, both of these groups are pushing for proportionate political representation for more of their members, a worthy goal for those of us that support democracy as a form of government. And I can pretty much guarantee you that Iran hasn’t done anything in the international arena that the U.S. hasn’t also done. We used to be against double standards in the United States, and this is absolutely a double standard.

For some strange reason, this President has committed to spending $75 million to “support the growth of democracy in Iran”. Here in the United States, it is illegal for candidates for office to accept donations from foreign countries. Why wouldn’t Iran be mad about this – we would be mad too, if Cuba, for instance, was trying to impact U.S. elections by funneling money to its preferred candidates. Again, it is clearly a double standard on the part of President Bush.

Over dinner last week, a moderately Conservative person suggested that the hatred of Iran was based in part on the Hostage Crisis. Are we really basing our foreign policy on something that happened almost thirty years ago, and that was not all that damaging to the U.S.? Further, if we are going to start cataloguing historical slights, its worth noting that the U.S. supported the overthrow of the democratically elected prime Minister of Iran in the fifties.

Unfortunately, I cannot help but thinking that the President’s focus on Iran is a political tactic. Focusing on Iran keeps people from thinking about what a disaster this administration has been – if everyone is concerned about keeping the President from starting the next ill-considered war, then they are paying less attention to the current disasters that are costing our country trillions of dollars. And conveniently, this issue flows through to the presidential election. It gives Republicans yet another way of suggesting the Democrats are soft on terrorism.

This is what is so maddening about this administration. If they are clever enough to realize the electoral uses of Iran as an enemy, then they should be clever enough to recognize that this position actually hurts U.S. interests, and further hurts the spread of democracy. Whether we care to admit it or not, Iran is the third most democratic country in the Middle East, even if it is a rough and developing democracy. That crazy president – he was elected as an economic populist, in part because the Iranian economy isn’t doing well. The Iranian economy still is not doing well, but Ahmadinejad has not been called to task for it, because instead attention is focused on the situation with the U.S. Just as President Bush is using confrontation with Iran to avoid the fallout from his many mistakes, the President of Iran is using the confrontation to avoid having to talk about his failures on economic issues. If President Bush really wants to push for expanded democracy in Iran, the best thing he could do would be to tone down the rhetoric, and give the Iranian press the room to focus on Ahmadinejad’s economic record. This of course, this would allow the U.S. press to focus on Bush’s economic record…

So there you have it – yet another example of this Administration both getting the problem wrong, and then proposing the wrong answer to the non-existent problem. Yet another example where the only logical reason for a position taken by the President is that it will help Republican electoral chances. This is yet another example of President Bush putting the well-being of the Republican Party ahead of the well-being of the United States of America.