Rob's Politics Blog

What is one to make of George Galloway's appearance before the Senate? A thunderous victory for opponents of the war? A damning indictment of the anti-war opposition and the UN?

Both, probably.

Lefties savoring Galloway's damn-the-torpedoes replies to Norm Coleman's inquisition can go to bed happy, not pausing to ask themselves who they just got into bed with (a contemptible blowhard who mourns the fall of Soviet communism, who offered his public support of Saddam throughout the 1990s, and who - when given the choice to target any MP in Britain - happened to run against one who is both black and Jewish). Some readers at Daily Kos seemed aware of this; others, too many, didn't. Atrios seems to rather like the man.

Righties may be shaken by the inevitably jarring consequence of putting a vitriolic, bombastic MP in an institution that prides itself on stodgy civility. But in the end, Coleman and the administration benefit from displaying the likes of Galloway before American audiences. A GOP that linked Lynne Stewart to Harry Reid will relish having yet another dodgy boogeyman. It won't hurt if the left is visibly gleeful about Galloway's predictable few minutes of fame. Whoops.

Meanwhile the real work goes on. The Senate isn't going to determine Galloway's future; the Volcker inquiry is the key one for getting to the bottom of the oil for food scandal. Galloway and Coleman just got to play off of each other for ratings - Gorgeous George can trumpet his latest explosion to supporters at home and Coleman can run for reelection as a proud American confronting devious foreign friends of terrorism. Win-win. Is it any wonder that Democrat Carl Levin looked to be the most irked guy in the room?

Last November, South Dakotans traded in a general for a lieutenant, replacing Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle with the oh-so-conservative John Thune, who pledged that he would carry more influence for his state in Washington than a hated Democrat. Especially in terms of keeping South Dakota's military bases open. Especially the very large Air Force base at Ellsworth.

See where I'm leading?

Ellsworth stands out prominently on the list of announced base closures proposed by the Pentagon. Whoops. Amazingly, sending a GOP yes-man to Washington hasn't enhanced South Dakota's political visibility. As a minority leader, Daschle could have had an array of sticks and carrots to wield against the Pentagon. As a senator who ran on the basic premise of being the administration's rubber stamp, Thune has none of that. Assuredly, he is now going through the motions to save the base and maybe the administration will take pity on him and remember a few half-uttered promises it may have made while recruiting him. At best, though, Thune may prolong the inevitable. The need to appease South Dakota is, at best, a fleeting impulse. The need to cut wasteful or unnecessary bases in an era of military revolutions will prove far more durable.

Ever the good guy, Tom Daschle has pledged his support in the fight for Ellsworth. Maybe Thune should give him a call.

Ron Brownstein makes some good points in this article - mainly that the next few censuses are likely to observe a demographic shift away from the Northeast and upper Midwest and toward the South and Southwest. The dire implications of this for Democrats are readily apparent. The fleeting fantasy of winning outside of the South will move further out of sight.

One question, though: how much of the demographic shift flows from migration? This isn't just a matter of red staters procreating more actively than blue staters - clearly people are picking up and moving. So, isn't this process part of the solution for the Democrats? A recent Time article chronicled the gradual blueing of Montana due to this kind of process.

Admittedly, this doesn't let the Dems off the hook. They need to reclaim their edge - particularly with Hispanic voters. Still, there's no cause for gloom and doom. The current map isn't set in stone.

There are two basic lessons to be learned from the recent episode of a now-withdrawn Newsweek story and the fatal riots it has sparked in Afghanistan and elsewhere:

#1: Newsweek is a shitty magazine. Clearly they rushed this to publication. At this point, I can't help but remember their shamelessly exploitative (and yet content-free) cover interview with Timothy McVeigh, or another cover feature: "In Defense of Teenage Girls." The latter was the most asinine thing I have read in a magazine this decade, for reasons I can't even begin to go into. Oh yes, and let us recall Newsweek's 1983 flirtation with publishing the fraudulent Hitler diaries - it pulled back but then declared that it "almost [didn't] matter" whether they were true or not. These little reminders of crappiness seem to come once or more per decade. It was fixing to be about time.

#2: However, it almost didn't matter (hah!) what the source of these reports were. If Al Jazeera had aired them with an even thinner factual base, there still would have been riots and bloody mayhem. To a considerable degree, we are collectively hostage to the rumors that are spread against us, and all the folks who try to reduce Islamist rage to a political agenda - a list of bullet-pointed items that, if solved, will end all this - miss this. Islamists work to ensure that Muslim populations are kept at a continual boil - they thrive by inspiring a lynch mob mentality. That puts an onus on us to, yes, avoid flushing the Koran down the toilet. But a quick survey of the bizarre things that are said about us by Islamists should remind us of the extent to which the sources of rage lie out of reach. Newsweek or not, Koran-flushing or not, we are going to be depicted as enemies of Islam. The extent of this can be reduced somewhat, but not eliminated.

I'm pleased at this opportunity to quote The Fixx.

The hold placed by Barbara Boxer on John Bolton's nomination is welcome news. It prolongs a debate that was never really concluded. Every additional week that Bolton (and Republican moderates) twist in the wind is a welcome one. Bolton is a disastrous nominee. Significantly more so than Rice or Gonzales

This may get to the filibuster stage. If it does, it may have an interesting impact on the nuclear option debate. GOP defenses of the nuclear option have limited themselves to denying the applicability of the filibuster on judicial nominees. Blocking Bolton thusly raises the possibility of the Republicans deploying this outside of its predefined operational radius. It would underscore just how unlimited the nuclear option is.

Bring it on.

Fred Kaplan astutely describes today's proceedings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Just a few weeks ago, that august body gave us cause to hope that sanity was prevailing in the Senate. Bolton's nomination - clearly the battiest of this inaugural year - seemed to be swirling around the bowl. Ohio's George Voinovich had uttered his now-famous words of doubt, tying the vote.

A lot has changed in a few weeks.

Voinovich deserves some credit. He clearly has no love for Bolton and held out for passing it to the floor without a recommendation. That, as the commentators say, will probably mean that Bolton will be approved, but it at least lets him stand his ground and vote against the nutcase on the Senate floor.

More pathetic is Lincoln Chafee. Kaplan rightly reams him for very clearly voting against his conscience. Weeks ago he was all set to swallow his principles and vote for Bolton until Voinovich bolted and gave him cover - he then expressed exhilaration at the newfound power of Senate moderates. Someone got to him in the meantime. Chafee's spine - never the most adamantine of backbones - was not apparent today. Rhode Island is assuredly taking notice. Chafee will assuredly have a tough race in 2006 and his visibly subdued support of Bolton makes him look less like an independent voice than a peon. RI is a likely pickup for the Dems.

To close, let's recall Senator Voinovich's response to Condi Rice's promise that, if confirmed, Bolton would be well-supervised: "Why in the world would you want to send somebody up to the U.N. that has to be supervised?"

To which the White House would probably say, "Why ask why?"

Once again, George Galloway has been accused of receiving bribes from Saddam Hussein. This time, the accuser is the U.S. Senate. The inherent problem with this new attack on Britain's most contemptible windbag is the source: the Senate is hardly in a position to seem an impartial investigator.

For this to bear any weight, the British government and press will need to pore over the Senate's findings, while awaiting those of the Volcker panel (which will certainly seem more definitive). If Volcker confirms the Senate, Galloway will be in serious trouble.

Maybe Galloway saw an opportunity to profit off of his support of Saddam. I've generally seen the man as being more of a whore than a prostititute, but I suppose being a whore for Saddam wouldn't preclude him from accepting a gratuity.

George Mitchell has contributed his own opinion to the debate over the nuclear option. He adds some facts that his successor, Bob Dole, somehow omitted:

Between 1968 and 2001, both parties used filibusters to oppose judicial nominees. In 2000, the last year of Bill Clinton's presidency, Republican senators filibustered two of his nominees to be circuit judges. They also prevented Senate votes on more than 60 of Mr. Clinton's judicial nominees by other means.

This is one of the best opinion pieces on the nuclear issue thus far. It's a reminder of why Mitchell has been a peace negotiator after his retirement, while Dole has largely been a lobbyist.

CNN's report that Labour MPs are calling for Blair's ouster is one of the less impressive pieces of reporting I've read recently.

Essentially, their article assesses the depth of exhaustion with Blair by talking to his enemies within Labour. It makes no effort to find MPs in the middle of debate, but instead settles for the people acting to undo him - most of them opponents of his over the Iraq war. These people would be demanding Blair's resignation no matter how large his parliamentary majority.

Politicians are often artists at creating self-fulfilling prophecies through media blitzes - witness Karl Rove's election efforts to create a premature victory narrative by dispatching Dubya to dark blue states like California or New Jersey - but this is all a little much. The fact of the matter is that Blair won, and he beat the worst case scenarios that people were holding out for him. I've read too many obituaries for Blair to find this one persuasive - especially in light of its transparently thin reporting.

For a brief moment, the Baltic states are in the news. Bush has just visited Riga, Latvia before heading to the Netherlands, Russia, and then Georgia. While in Latvia, he has spoken of both the terrors of the German occupation and the annexation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union. He has accepted the fundamental point made by the Baltic leaders, notably Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga (as stated in an op-ed piece in today's Post) that 1945 did not bring the liberation of the Baltic States. Instead, it substituted one oppressor for another.

Reviewing what happened to the Baltic states as the Soviet Union moved west - first in 1939-40 and again in 1944-45 - should make that apparent. Mass killings and deportations ensued - this was the Stalin era after all. An ongoing process of Russian settlement in the Baltic states brought the Baltic peoples to cusp of becoming minorities in their own national homelands, while they were crowded out of the professions and their national languages marginalized.

This is an easy point to remember. It's stunning how Russian leaders have been dancing around it. Vladimir Putin recently called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. He has rejected calls to do what the reformist Soviet leadership did in 1989 and denounce the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Instead, he has clung to the Soviet-era lie: that the Red Army was invited into the Baltic states and that their annexation was required by the imperatives of Soviet security. Putin is no Communist - his economic policies are proof enough of that - but he does seem to be actively exhuming Josef Stalin's view of things.

All of this escapes the feckless reporting of the BBC. This article labels Latvia "Russia's most troublesome neighbor," and highlights the Soviet contribution to the Nazi defeat in order to make the claims of the Baltic states seem petty. Seemingly ignoring the fact that the Baltic states are already in NATO, or American displeasure at Putin's continued suppression of the media in Russia, the report stresses America's desire to "play a role in a part of the world which used to be in Moscow's sphere of influence." Ah yes, spheres of influence. It was this kind of thinking that led to the division of Europe in the first place.

Implicit in the article are a few lurking tropes: arrogant American impositions and natural spheres of influence. Bear these in mind. Back in the fall, these same ideas were lurking behind whinging commentary from the British left about the pro-democracy protests in Ukraine. For the irked left, what was happening in Kiev wasn't a democratic revolution but a masked CIA plot to disturb Russia in its natural sphere of influence. Timothy Garton Ash rightfully called this view to account. The fact, back in December and now, is that Ukraine and the Baltic states have chosen a Western alignment and we do not live in an era where countries can be forcibly placed in one sphere or another, no matter how much it might tidy things up for disinterested observers. I'm inclined to hear the ghost of Neville Chamberlain's infamous remark that the dispute over Czechoslovakia represented "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing."

That's not to say that Russia is the boogeyman of old. Some Russian grievances here are quite justified. One understandable sore is that the Baltic states need to address their own record of collaboration with the Nazi invaders; a significant number of the Baltic peoples acted alongside the Germans, including in the execution of the Final Solution. Another issue is the treatment of ethnic Russians in the Baltic states today. Whatever the circumstances of their arrival, they need to be regarded as citizens; for many of them, citizenship and equal rights have been slow in arriving.

Still, this does not relieve Putin of the obligation of renouncing the Soviet past. Since he has decried the dissolution of the USSR, the onus to recognize what it did to the Baltic peoples falls doubly upon him. It doesn't bode well that finding accord on this issue is so difficult, sixty years after the fact.

The news from Northern Ireland is disheartening. The more moderate Ulster Unionist Party has lost 4 seats to the hardline Paisleyite Democratic Unionist Party. One of those MPs to lose his seat was the Nobel Prize-winning David Trimble, who did so much to get the peace process going seven years ago. Since only 18 seats were contested in Northern Ireland, this is a political earthquake, marking a continuing trend of polarization. On the other side of the fence, Sinn Fein has, thus far, netted one seat, with the moderate SDLP staying constant at 2. With the Trimble Unionists clearly on the wane and an unrepentant Sinn Fein still tied to a recalcitrant IRA, we could see some real trouble in future months. The Protestant marching season is once again upon us and one wonders if the Paisleyites are feeling feistier than usual.

If I had to name a party that reaped gains, it would be the Tories. And yet, it's clearly a sign of party disappointment when the leader resigns just after an election. Michael Howard's departure will usher in Tony Blair's fifth Tory sparring partner since he ascended to the leadership of Labour. Clearly the Tories did the most to both hurt Labour and constrain the Liberal Democrats. It would seem that no one is really happy with this result. Maybe Blair can claim some validation; no matter how much he stuck by Gordon Brown, it was still his name at the top of the ticket.

Well, it was a very mixed night for Blair and Co. The percentages are not yet in, but the basic forecast is a Labour majority just above 60 seats. The Tories have gained more than 30 seats, in large part due to strong performances in London and the East Midlands. Perhaps as surprisingly, they won 3 seats in Wales and 2 in Scotland, which puts them in their best position in either region since the 1997 blowout. That isn't saying very much, of course. They remain an English party with regional handicaps. Whatever the swing againt Labour, it didn't help the Tories make any headway in the Northeast or Northwest.

Indeed, what is striking about this election is how mixed its results are. No party experienced really sweeping gains. In Scotland, the SNP counted coup twice against Labour, gaining Dundee East and the Western Islands (now known as Na h-Eileanan an Iar). What is key about these gains is that they have occurred in districts the SNP lost to Labour in 1987. Fundamentally, the Scottish nationalists are retracing their old steps. Though they leave the election with 6 seats, they are not yet the opposition party they'd like to be. It bears mentioning that each of their two new seats was won with a fairly small margin.

Probably the most disappointing result was George Galloway's victory in Bethnal Green and Bow. He unseated Oona King, a longtime civil rights activist who had supported the Iraq war, with a bitterly divisive campaign. Galloway is the most contemptible individual in the British system. He declared in 2002 that " the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life." In 1994 he told Saddam Hussein "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability." He won by appealing to the far left and to Islamists in a heavily Muslim constituency, saying "if you make war against Muslims abroad you're going to end up making war against Muslims at home." He may just get his wish, though his election will not help race or interfaith relations in the United Kingdom. It may, in fact, strengthen the Tory claim that more immigration controls are needed to keep fundamentalists out of the UK. If there's a silver lining, it may be that his presence in Parliament serves as a galvanizing force for the emergence of a more rational left. His defeated opponent, Oona King, was a respected MP, and Galloway is seen as having run a viciously divisive campaign. One BBC interviewer on election night gave him a hard time - the video attached to this article is both funny and informative. "Gorgeous George" may yet regret his decision to return to the spotlight.

The Liberal Democrats must be a bit disappointed - there was undoubtedly a lot of shared hope that their unambiguously antiwar stance would have catapulted them further. Instead, they gained eleven seats. I'd think they were hoping for more. They did win some hard-fought contests, prying away a seat (Ceredigion) from the Welsh nationalists of Plaid Cymru, for example (PC had an unambiguously bad election, dropping from 4 to 3). I think the future offers abundant dilemmas for the Lib Dems. Labour's reduced majority and the undoubtedly complex politics of the impending Blair-to-Brown transition may force the government to seek Lib Dem support. The Lib Dems, who occupy roughly the same portion of the political spectrum as Labour, may find themselves pressed between the need to show results, and the need to distinguish themselves from Labour. Blair has run for office on a domestic platform; he will need to begin showing results if he wants to bolster himself and serve for the bulk of the next five years.

From an American perspective, it's hard to say how this will affect the special relationship. The Tories are not pro-Europe; Michael Howard largely avoided the issue, and supported the U.S. during the Iraq war. Blair will probably be more hesitant to go out on a limb for us, largely due to the changed balance within his own party. Still, there's no sign that Britain's course will change.

This is the last of the post-Iraq elections. While the Spanish conservatives were defeated, that had more to do with the Madrid bombings than the Iraq war. The victories of Labour and John Howard's Liberals in Australia signify the basic continuity of politics in spite of the war.

As a brief followup to the below post, let me list some of the advantages that the Brits have over our electoral system:

Question Time - There is no American equivalent to Question Time, which is why we import it and show it on C-SPAN. Question Time is a marvelous half hour of political entertainment -politics as smackdown. At its best, it offers the dramas of the parties confronting each other. To be sure, the Prime Minister has to field lesser inquiries, such as when the Honorable Gentleman from Lower Whappingswich inquires about the government's program to alleviate cattle languor, but much of it is genuine political entertainment. Moreover, Question Time sets a high bar for party leaders. It may select unfairly for glibness, but it does demand mental quickness and a broad command of issues - which are things one wants of one's leader/

A rigorous selection process - Question Time stands as one of several institutions that the British system has for selecting strong leaders. To get to the top you need to be able to forge alliances, appeal to broad numbers of people, and show real legislative and then ministerial ability. This seems a step up over plucking appealing governors out of relative obscurity. And a party leader has to continually maintain party loyalty. The system does not tolerate weak leaders and has no equivalent to a lame duck period.

Small districts - Each British parliamentary district has about 60,000 people, give or take a few thousand. This makes for a lot of banal questions at Question Time but it also offers legislators an ability to truly connect with constituents (though few originate in their elective constituency)

A strong sense of norms - As we await the nuclear option over here, it bears mentioning that the British system persists largely due to custom - what is referred to as an unwritten constitution. Holding elections within every five year span is a norm, not a law. The strong grip of custom helps to keep the system functional. In the US, that has been appallingly absent of late.

Constituencies with funny names - Braintree, Ynys Mons, Reading West, Scunthorpe, Skipton & Ripon, Bury St Edmunds. The British genius for naming things spices things up a bit.

# posted by Rob @ 9:11 AM

Only joking. It's time for another British election. I haven't followed the politics of Albion too terribly closely lately, but have been trying to get a sense of where this one is heading. It's a strange campaign, marked more by the weaknesses of the major candidates than their strengths. Let's see:

Tony Blair (Lab.) is still coping with the consequences of the Iraq war, which has soured much of his own party on him, to say nothing of the UK electorate.

Michael Howard (Con.) has been unsuccessful in capitalizing on this, as the Tories supported the war, themselves. Instead he's running a somewhat nativist campaign, focusing on immigration issues.

Charles Kennedy (Lib. Dem) would love to capitalize on Labour's credibility gap, but hasn't really managed to make great strides toward getting his party out of its niche role.

George Galloway, having been rejected by the Monster Raving Loony Party, founded his own with an Ali G. inspired name: the Respect Party. He's campaigning for placing statues of Saddam Hussein atop a golden calf in every British town center.

Actually, the Galloway-King race in Bethnal East and Bow constituency is probably the most dramatic (if distressing) race we'll see this time out. The level of violence there is quite high, with both Galloway and his Labour opponent, Oona King, having received threats. Galloway has been blatantly courting local Islamists, though with near-disastrous results on one occasion (for some reason, many of them don't want to vote in a secular election). News that Galloway's wife is filing for divorce may hurt his attempt to play the Aretha Franklin card.

Coming back to the main picture, polls generally favor (favour) Labour, and not by a little. The Thatcherite core of the Tories has been reduced to a pale Fourth Way platform, shorn of the radical appeals that the Iron Lady pitched so brilliantly. Blair has squarely grabbed the political center, and the Tories (who held it so strongly during the 80s) have been reduced to helpless spectators. Immigration is the one issue where they can claim some difference from Labour, but is it a winning one?

Labour is hardly out of the woods. In some regions, it may take a bath - the Daily Scotsman reports that Scotland may turn out as many as nine Labour MPs. Who fills that vacuum is anyone's guess - the Lib Dems, the SNP, or maybe even the Tories? I wouldn't expect a major resurgence of nationalism in Scotland, but Labour's strength there is one of the major factors holding back the SNP. If Scottish Labour gives ground, this may augur a somewhat brighter future for the moribund SNP.

Tony Blair's shaky public image seems the key factor here. It may cost Labour seats across the map. Some of this is due to the Iraq war; some to simple fatigue. The question is who is going to benefit. It seems a safe bet that Labour will lose seats, but I do think it will retain its majority and return Blair to office. Who will capitalize on Labour's weakening supermajority?

With no access to polling data, no time on the ground, no interviews, and (at heart) no real clue, I'd say that I suspect that we'll see a swing against Labour divided fairly evenly between the opposing parties: the Tories, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, and SNP will each gain somewhat, leaving Labour with a diminished but functional majority before intra-party squabbling is taken into account. Blair's supermajority of 1997 (achieved 8 years ago, today) was a remarkable feat, but a high water mark that seemed unlikely to be held in 2001. To some degree, history is catching up with Blair and New Labour, and balance is slowly returning to the British party system. The weakness of the other parties has been one factor delaying this event. Blair, who has signalled that this is his final campaign, will need to think about who is going to succeed him - and it would probably help to give his successor some time in office through the favor of an early resignation.

# posted by Rob @ 8:27 AM