Buying Bad Ideas

There are a lot of expressions for bad ideas, like shooting one’s self in the foot. A bad idea is simply one that does not work. The problem is that from time to time, both as ourselves and as a people, we do not recognize a bad idea when we encounter it. The danger comes when for whatever reason -- ignorance, stubbornness or hubris – we stick with a bad idea to our detriment. Unfortunately, bad ideas tend to compound themselves. We have been suffering from that effect.

Consider the candidacy of the former governor of Alaska for Vice President. At the outset it is with some reluctance that I acknowledge a grudging gratitude to Sarah Palin. Until she appeared on television as if a human bridge to nowhere, nothing compelled me to engage in a political debate that I considered both cyclical and one-sided. The cyclical part was the fact that the country was due to change political leadership after an eight year Republican run, which is something that the country does. The one-sided part was the fact that the Democratic Party had emerged from a climactic contest between two compelling and competent Senate candidates, one of whom destined to become a historic first as President of the United States.

An oblivious Palin seemed to take herself seriously, saying stupid things and celebrating such stupidity. It offended me. I minded and began saying so. I minded that Palin did not speak any American language I would expect to hear from a competent executive. It was not alright, folksy or cute. But I underestimated the “moose-hunting rube,” as columnist Charles Krauthammer referred to her in the National Review.

Palin reminded me of one of the most vapid students in my high school graduating class who was the vice president of student body and vice president of at least a half-a-dozen high school clubs. The girl had a mid-double-digit IQ and passable looks. She would have been rather doltish except that she knew how to glom. She would stick to and campaign for the more popular students, thereby elevating her status in the high school social pool. She was a person who was never troubled by an original thought, just like Sarah Palin. The difference is that the high school girl understood the limitations that make bliss of ignorance. Palin did not.

Palin wowed conservatives like the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, who told the New York Observer that Palin was “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.” Soon after, Palin brought self-aggrandizement to a new level as she energized the baseness of the Republican base – people who use racial epithets in private when they explain that they just don’t like blacks. She appealed to people of limited educational backgrounds as she championed anti-intellectualism with a wink and a nod. She became a darling of Fox News, the moral equivalent of a grocery store tabloid for people who do not read and who feel threatened by people who do.

People at Republican rallies began to shell out big bucks to hear her cheerlead and Palin noticed.

The Republican Party’s self-inflicted loss in 2008 is due as much to its selection of Sarah Palin for Vice President as the country’s guts being full of the Bush Presidency. A 2008 New York Times editorial said of her choice for VP, “It was either an act of incredible cynicism or appallingly bad judgment.” It was a bad idea. But having proved to be such a draw, the crowd pleasing Palin glommed on to the burgeoning Tea Party – another bad idea – and became an influential force.

With Palin on the payroll, Fox News aggressively promoted negativity and hostility, specifically towards the newly elected president. The Tea Party appeared to resuscitate the out-of-power GOP in the mid-term elections. Republicans believed it was important to take control of congress’ lower chamber more so than Democrats and they did, kind of. Reciting an edited version of the US Constitution, the GOP majority of the 112^th Congress had no idea that it had been infected by such a polarizing group. Its anti-government/anti-tax/anti-Obama negativity proved to sell to an electorate suffering from a deep, GOP induced repression.

However, the new Speaker of the House soon discovered that he only controlled a majority of the new Republican plurality. The Tea Party faction held it hostage. Compromise was futile. Government shutdowns and default threats became normal operating procedures.

As a result this bad idea, Gallup reported in September, “Majorities of Democrats (65%) and Republicans (92%) are dissatisfied with the nation's governance.” At present, “Congressional job approval remains at 13% in November, identical to October and tying the all-time Gallup low on this measure. The 2011 average is on track to be the lowest annual rating of Congress in Gallup's history.” What an accomplishment that is.

We are being bullied by the rhetoric of Tea Party acolytes in the Republican Party into thinking that the United States is not a prosperous country, despite evidence to the contrary. We are being coerced into thinking that taxation is too high, even though it is at its lowest point in 60 years. We are being fed a line that our economic policy needs to be austere and rife with cuts. Such contentious conjectures are bad ideas.

There are better ones. For example, here is what President Lyndon Johnson said in his January 28, 1965 message to Congress.

"The task of economic policy is to create a prosperous America. The unfinished task of prosperous Americans is to build a Great Society. Our accomplishments have been many; these tasks remain unfinished:

- to achieve full employment without inflation;

- to restore external equilibrium and defend the dollar;

- to enhance the efficiency and flexibility of our private and public economies;

- to widen the benefits of prosperity;

- to improve the quality of American life."

Palin and her gibberish have been replaced by other people every bit as unqualified for high public office as she who similarly say stupid things. Negativity and attack ads directed at the incumbent president remains the top Republican theme. Fox News is a beneficiary of the advertising revenue but the country is not. I am not convinced that the electorate will buy into more such negativity as a winning proposition as it did in 2010. It isn’t a winner. In its celebrated ignorance, it asks us to buy some more of a bad idea.

Originally published as Buying Bad Ideas on Blogcritics.

Fairness: the Fake Debate

Someone needs to explain why it is that conservatives continue to insist that liberals want to reinstitute the FCC’s 1949 Fairness Doctrine. While it is true that the old regulation is brought up from time to time, it has no traction in either the House of Senate. The administration is opposed to it. The Supreme Court would rule against it. Still, conservative talk radio continues to chant about the “Hush Rush Bill’ as if were a real threat with real backing. It isn’t, it doesn’t and it’s not going to happen. Nor will the sky fall.

Before you start to write your commentary about Nancy Pelosi, stop for a moment. The speaker of the House has been quoted as saying she supported the Fairness Doctrine by John Gizzi, Political Editor of Human Events, which calls itself the “Headquarters of the Conservative Underground.” He asked a yes-no question and she said yes at a Christian Science Monitor luncheon they both attended. She also said no, she didn’t think it would come to the floor for a vote. It is an issue for which the speaker does not express a majority opinion.

Perhaps someone can also explain how it is it that conservatives (“disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change”) use the word liberal as an adjective of derision as in the term liberal media or liberal socialist agenda such as “state aid for the betterment of the working classes.” That socialism is some kind of evil.

How could mainstream media be anything other than liberal (“favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties”)? Being liberal minded requires reporting both sides of any issue, which defines fairness in and of itself without any regulation to be fair.

The conservative mantra that their champion Ronald Reagan struck down the Fairness Doctrine is incorrect. His son Michael claims in his blog, Michigan Redneck II, “My dad, President Reagan, killed the ‘Fairness Doctrine.’ As a result, this rule change allowed Rush, Hannity, and me to have radio talk shows — that’s why the new proposal to bring it back is being called the ‘Hush Rush’ bill. Now the liberals are dying to shut us up.”

No, the president did not. The FCC overturned the regulation. What President Reagan did was to veto a congressional attempt to make the regulation a law. The Supreme Court set the stage for the FCC to dump the regulation in 1984 (FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364). The regulation came up again in 1993 and failed. Neither Congress nor the Clinton administration supported it.

There is a difference between a regulation and a law. Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1937 was federal law passed by Congress. It required broadcast stations to offer "equal opportunity" to all legally qualified political candidates for any office if they had allowed any person running in that office to use the station. The Fairness Doctrine was simply FCC policy, a regulation the FCC dumped as unconstitutional in 1987. After Meredith Corp. v. FCC, the Supreme Court declared that the Doctrine was not mandated by Congress and the FCC did not have to continue to enforce it.

For the record, as an independent regulatory agency, the FCC has the power to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine at anytime without action by either the executive or legislative branches. It should not be confused, but often is, with the Equal Time rule. The Fairness Doctrine deals with matters of public importance, not political opinion. The Equal Time rule only deals with political candidates.

Nonetheless a fake debate about the Fairness Doctrine continues. “In 1980 there were fewer than 100 radio talk shows nationwide. Today there are more than 1,400 stations entirely devoted to talk formats. Liberals, not satisfied with their domination of academia, Hollywood and most of the mainstream media, want to kill talk radio, where liberals have been unable to dent conservatives' dominance,” George Will wrote in the Washington Post.

Will’s colleague Michael Gerson wrote that “three hours of Rush Limbaugh on a radio station would have to be balanced by three hours of his liberal equivalent. This may sound fair and balanced. But it would destroy the profitability of conservative talk radio and lead other outlets to avoid political issues entirely -- actually reducing the public discussion of controversial issues.” They also both wrote that in 1987 President Reagan “eliminated” (Will) or “overturned” (Gerson) the 1949 FCC regulation.

While they are both wrong about Reagan, they do not demonstrate much knowledge about radio. If conservatives dominate talk radio, it is because it’s cheap. Talk radio doesn’t cost a radio station anything except electricity. Typically the air-time is brokered and the talker pays for the time. Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, for example, are not so much radio personalities as they are media companies. Their concern about the Fairness Doctrine is literally lip service.

They do have large audiences and wield influence. Sometimes their influence works against them. One of my former radio colleagues, Gary Nelson of WFOR TV4 Miami, recently wrote, “About the vitriol on talk radio, in doing a piece the day after the election, on Bush losing the Hispanic vote, I interviewed a Colombian-American voter who said he had been a Republican all his life and had never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. He said the ‘mean-spirited’ attacks on Obama changed him. ‘Rush Limbaugh cost John McCain my vote,’ he said.”

President Barack Obama is expected to appoint longtime friend Julius Genachowski as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Mr. Genachowski also has a Harvard background as a legal scholar and was a Supreme Court law clerk. That may lead him to play a stronger role in determining legal strategy on FCC court cases, normally a Justice Department task. When Genachowski does become FCC chairman, his biggest immediate task will be working on the digital TV transition. The Fairness Doctrine does not appear on his docket.

As to the conservative assertion that the White House will sign Fairness Doctrine legislation, that is far from likely. The President opposes it. As he said in his inaugural address, “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history.”

The broadcast media of 1949 has its own chapter in history, as will the Internet sixty years from now. Today we have right wing and left wing media. Some are even in the middle. There is one thing that Rush and both Lauras have to fear about being silenced: listeners changing stations. As to a new, improved, rebranded Fairness Doctrine, forget about it. It is not going to happen.

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Originally published in Blogcritics Magazine, February 1 2009

Waiting For It to Hit

I could have listened to my grandfather. He turned down the governorship of West Virginia in the 40s, retiring to Florida and to a second career in banking. He wanted me to go to Florida law school, marry one of his State Senate cronies’ granddaughters and become Governor of the Sunshine State. I went into broadcasting instead. Under the circumstances, I am beginning to think I really missed out on a lot – hookers, clothes and jail. Governors Eliot Spitzer, Sarah Palin and Rod Blagojevich, take a bow.

New York’s crime busting Spitzer at least had more class, if not gravitas, than to get busted in Trenton by undercover police busting “Johns” for soliciting sex from street walkers. It would have made better story. Right-wing radio ate it up anyway. A Democrat and a prostitute make a great daily double. Alaska’s “Bridge-to-Nowhere” Palin should be incarcerated for the attempted murder of a language. That she could not get her stories straight and helped John McCain lose the presidential election did not matter to right-wing radio. Being a Republican and a conservative babe made for another daily double.

However, Illinois’ crusading reformer Blagojevich (Bluh-GOY-uh-vich) succeeded Republican Governor George Ryan, who was sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for racketeering and fraud. Few people outside of the Prairie State (also known as the Sucker State) care. The Democrat governor having been arrested on federal corruption charges for attempting to sell the president-elect’s senate seat for which he can go to jail gives the right-wing a trifecta. Rush must be in heaven. What could be better than graft, corruption and Obama-by-implication?

The Washington Post’s George Will cannot quit chewing on the Fairness Doctrine rag that right-wing radio named the “Hush Rush Bill.” Now that Blagojevich has hit the news, Will and the rest of conservative center-right broadcast and print punditry have a new rag to chew. Wait until the inauguration is over.

It is doubtful that main stream media will go easy on this story, especially since its subject seems oblivious to the size of the dung heap he has built for himself. What is significant to the Premise Loft is how the conservatives respond to the case. Kristol, Will, Krauthammer, Gerson and even Brooks are doubtless word processing as I post. Doubtless they are looking up “Sucker State.” We will get to see how they prepare for the moments when the ubiquitous It hits the Obama administration. And It will.

This That and the Other Thing

Back in September in my posting titled Radio or Not, I took issue with the Post’s George Will over his assertion that a Democratic Presidency would mean the return of the so-called Fairness Doctrine. I wrote that such a notion is bunk since conservative talk radio is cheap to produce. Will’s colleague Michael Gerson has brought it up again. They probably share a new corner of the Post’s commissary and both wrote that in 1987 President Reagan “eliminated” (Will) or “overturned” (Gerson) the 1949 FCC regulation.

No the president did not. The FCC overturned the regulation. By the way, as an independent regulatory agency, the FCC has the power to reimpose the fairness doctrine at anytime without action by either the executive or legislative branches. What Reagan did was veto a congressional attempt to make the regulation a law. The Supreme Court set the stage for the FCC dumping the regulation in 1984 (FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364). The regulation has come up since then, but congress would not support it and nor did the Clinton administration.

The broadcast media of 1949 is a chapter of history, as will be the Internet. So who keeps coming up with the fairness doctrine (beware, brother, beware) with respect to the newly elected administration, other than Will and Gerson? I am going to guess they got it off of talk radio. Besides, other than the Palin worshipping Rush Limbaugh, who cares? That is unless Gerson and Will have information that the Obama administration plans to “pack” the FCC.

Anyway, there you have the “This” part. Now, here is the “That.” I have previously written that both “W and Cheney deserve a place in history – in a penitentiary.” I call on all US citizens to urge the president-elect to offer no blanket pardons to Misters Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or Rove. I urge their prosecution for “high crimes and misdemeanors” (Constitution, Art. II Sec. 4).

Here is another by the way. “High,” according to Jon Roland of the Constitution Society, “does not mean ‘more serious’. It refers to those punishable offenses that only apply to high persons,” more specifically public officials. I have posted a poll on that topic at http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=4143 You can vote and see the results for the next few weeks. I will be writing about what we find later.

And now, here is “the Other Thing,” also known as the Alaska Senatorial race. As of this posting, with 60% of the vote counted, Democratic challenger Mark Begich leads the incumbent Republican convicted felon Ted Stevens by 1022 votes. To check them, go to http://www.elections.alaska.gov/08general/data/results.htm .

Hail to the New Chief

In the Roosevelt Room of the White House, the horseback heroic Teddy Roosevelt portrait has been hanging over the fireplace since January 2001. As Michael Gerson wrote in his 11/05 Washington Post column, in January 2009, the portrait of “Franklin Roosevelt will be moved back to that place of honor.” The good news for WaPo’s Gerson and Krauthammer and NY Times William Kristol is that they no longer have to defend an incompetent Republican administration. Instead they can indulge in sniping at a competent Democratic administration.

Actually, Gerson’s sniping has already begun. “And as the result of a financial panic that unfairly undermined all Republicans, Obama has stumbled into the most dangerous kind of victory,” he wrote. “Unfairly” and “stumbled” indeed. What part of the United States becoming “the first majority-white democracy on this planet to anoint a black person as a national leader,” as noted by the NYU educator Jonathan Zimmerman did Michael miss? In his op-ed piece A Victory for America, and the World, Zimmerman wrote, “Consider that the United States did not abolish slavery until 1865. The British Empire beat us by a half-century, outlawing the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1834.”

The conservative pundits have their work cut out for them. It falls on them to articulate what the Republican Party is all about and that will take some time. The country repudiated it and its base of bigotry at the polls. That should be good news. As Republican Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona put it, “The party is finally untethered from the ill-fitting and unworkable big-government conservatism that defined the Bush Administration.”

Let me offer a clue to the Republicans as they figure out who they are. I would like to think that the election’s repudiation precludes any candidacy for Sarah Palin, who actually thinks she has a roll in the GOP on the national stage. Ignorance is not bliss, it is dangerous. One would think that an endorsement by Alaska’s felonious Senator Ted Stevens would be sufficient to disqualify her from any part of a GOP rehabilitation. Maybe it works in Alaska, but Palin’s stuff does not play in the lower 48 except to bigots.

Let me call on the Obama-Biden administration not to pardon Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney for the “deception and criminality,” Mr. Gerson dismisses as “lunatic theories.” Both W and Cheney deserve a place in history – in a penitentiary. Let us all look forward to the changing of the portraits in the Roosevelt Room.

Things That Could Happen

The NY Times Blog, Opinionator, ponders the use of the word “yet” in the most recent John McCain campaign ads. Here is the voice over line in question. “The fact is Barack Obama’s not ready … yet.” Columnist Tobin Harshaw goes on to quotes the New Republic’s Jason Zengerle. “Maybe McCain’s final Hail Mary is to pledge to serve one term … and then to pledge his support to Obama in 2012.”

That is not likely, but McCain could pledge to serve one term to be elected. It is just that the pledge business has not proven to be his long suit and the electorate knows it. That makes me wonder just what else could the aged former jet-jockey do to create an October surprise and “fool the pundits”?

He could dump the current running mate, for the ‘good of Alaska in its troubled time’, and replace her with Joe Lieberman so that they could both serve one term. That team would have been plausible had he gone with his esteemed colleague before his convention surprise, when he one-upped the Times’ Kristol and Post’s Gerson in their adoration of the divine Sarah. Of course such a move would allow her to replace Ted Stevens with herself, but that’s a separate matter.

McCain could himself withdraw and recommend Mitt Romney to replace him as the party’s standard bearer. There is nothing as sweet as the tinkling of a bell, unless it is made of lead (atomic number: 82). However, Romney would never agree to wearing sack cloth and ashes. Since McCain is in her way anyway, Palin would not blink at trying to finish the run by herself.

Actually, that’s not accurate. She would still have Kristol and Gerson.