DKG, The Economist Jump the "Make 'Em Filibuster" Bandwagon!

PHUTATORIUS
The Economist observes that the filibuster is too easy, if you don't actually have to do it:

In the Senate the filibuster is used too often, in part because it is too easy. Senators who want to talk out a bill ought to be obliged to do just that, not rely on a simple procedural vote: voters could then see exactly who was obstructing what.

This comes on the heels of Doris Kearns Goodwin's interview on The Daily Show, in which she, too, argued that Dems should call the GOP's filibuster bluff.

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Doris Kearns Goodwin
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Of course, we opined on this matter weeks ago. Now that not just one but two august publication and an esteemed Presidential scholar have weighed in on the question, can't you see, Democrats, that the answer is right in front of you?

Oh, and you heard it here first.

"American Identity" Politics

PHUTATORIUS
Michelle Bachmann really got under my skin with her dollar-mongering constitutional amendment. I know I should just laugh it off as stupid and inane, then move on, but it's still bugging me, and I'd like to know why. So I've spent a day or so working through my thoughts, and this is what I've come up with:
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We've all heard the phrase "identity politics" thrown around a lot — generally as conservatives (see, e.g., here, here and here) fault liberals for what they regard as strategic exploitation of a voter's identification with an historically disempowered minority group. Yeah, fine — certainly cynical, probably divisive. I don't think I like it.

But I think it's time right now to spend some time talking tough about a preferred tactic of the right, which is — to coin a term, right here at FO — "American identity" politics. Note the placement of the quote marks, for purposes of clarity: I'm talking about the "politics" of "American identity," and not an "American" brand of "identity politics." When I speak of AIP, I am referring to the poisonous practice by which folks like Michelle Bachmann endeavor to construct and promote a particularized American identity for purely political purposes — usually to score political points against an opponent by casting his/her policies (or, very often, the opponent personally) as a threat to some enduring "American" value or symbol:

It's not enough that Barack Obama is trying to turn us into EUROPE with his socialist budget and his plan for a National Health Service — he's making plans to get rid of the U.S. DOLLAR!

I regard this kind of politics as lousy and poisonous for a number of reasons. First and foremost, our public officials should not subordinate practical, tangible concerns like economic policy to an abstract proposition like the preservation of an "American identity." Policies should be assessed and judged on their merits: will they make the nation stronger? Its people safer? Better off? If a global supercurrency for national reserves would, on the whole, have the practical effect of improving the lot of the American people (and I must confess that I have no clue whether or not it would), we should not let concerns like Bachmann's — that the dollar is an American institution, and to turn away from it would be profoundly un-American — color our judgment. When confronted with a policy question, we should look for the right answer, not the American answer. Indeed, I should have thought that it was experimentation and risk-taking, trial-and-error and utilitarian "cleverness" that made America great, such that it would be most "American" to chase the "right" answer after all.

And with that last bit of rhetorical prestidigitation I've illustrated my second point: anyone's construction of what is "American" is always going to be self-serving. The Christian right declares that "America is a Christian nation." Go figure. We're told by an opponent of the TARP plan that bailouts are "un-American," apparently because they're a form of "socialism." If small-town folk rally to your cause and big-city folk jeer and fear you, then surely it's the small-town folk who are the "real Americans." It's all too easy, isn't it, to gerrymander a space and plant an American flag in it?

Anyone with half a brain knows that America is far too complex and multifaceted a place to submit to these reductive descriptions. I'm living the American Dream without a white picket fence. Henry James and Thomas Pynchon have written The Great American Novel.

Third, "American identity" politics is at least as divisive as straight-up identity politics, if in a different way. It doesn't appeal — not directly, at least — to considerations of race, ethnicity, or gender. But the cynical invocation of "American-ness" to add argumentative weight to one's position or policy preference has the effect of treating anyone who disagrees as by definition un-American — and often, anti-American. Although you may have had the groundwork in place for a vigorous, possibly insightful policy debate — or maybe you didn't, and that's the problem — you've chosen instead to pick a snit-fight. Then the left blunders back with its "Special Comments" and DISSENT IS AMERICAN bumper stickers, and all hope of a constructive debate on the underlying policy issue is lost.

Of course, the master practitioners of AIP aren't fighting issue battles: they're manufacturing issues and trumping up threats to our jointly-revered "American-ness" to bring the fight to their opponents. Michelle Bachmann wasn't even playing the "American" card to support more serious and principled concerns about the supercurrency proposition: she only saw an occasion to develop her thesis that Barack Obama is anti-American, that he'll destroy America As We Know And Treasure It. So much the worse.

Bachmann-Geithner Overdrive

PHUTATORIUS
If you aren't closely following Michelle Bachmann's political career, you're missing great comedy. (Think Sarah Palin, crossed with Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction.) Ms. Bachmann (R-MN), seen here in "Hiya Sailor" mode with President Bush, and here calling for an inquiry into anti-American sentiment in the United States Congress, proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution yesterday. That amendment provides:
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The President may not enter into a treaty or other international agreement that would provide for the United States to adopt as legal tender in the United States a currency issued by an entity other than the United States.

This in response to testimony over the past few days from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who apparently did not react emphatically enough to the suggestion of a Chinese treasury official that the international community adopt a global "supercurrency" for reserves. Bachmann doesn't think Geithner gives a damn about a Greenback Dollar, so she proposes that we amend the Constitution to calm her nerves.

(You see, as we've noted before, the Framers of the Constitution, in their considerable wisdom, withheld from the House of Representatives any role in negotiating (the Executive's job) or ratifying (the Senate's) treaties. So this was Bachmann's only angle: the "nuclear option," to be sure, but the circumstances clearly call for it. By tomorrow we all could be speaking Chinese.)

Putting aside the question whether we should treat our currency as a point of cultural pride alongside, say, fried chicken, a man on the moon, or the cure for polio — all right, all right: I didn't really put that question aside — is the dollar really in such great immediate danger? The answer is no. And that makes Bachmann either completely off her rocker in her assessment of the situation or cynically determined to misassess the situation to Americans with her treatment of it. I.e., either she's really stupid, or she's evil and manipulative and thinks we're all really stupid.

Do I have to choose?

Oh, and see also George Packer's recent commentary in The New Yorker about paranoia and populism in politics. On point, and good stuff.

Cantor Calls the Stem-Cell Funding Reversal a "Distraction"

PHUTATORIUS
Earlier today House minority whip Eric Cantor described President Obama's expected reversal of the ban on federal funding for stem-cell research as a "distraction." Cantor's words:

Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job No. 1. Let's focus on what needs to be done.

Where to start here? Surely we should expect House members to say stupid things, House whips to say stupider things, minority whips to exceed even that level of stupid, and Republican minority whips to plumb the very depths of stupidity. But still — wow.
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Let's put aside the fact that scientific research is an issue that goes to the very core of this nation's long-term competitiveness (big shout-out to M'dates on this point), and that embryonic stem-cell research harbors the kind of promise that can give birth to an entire industry. Think dot-com boom, Cantor, except with diseases cured and lives saved. This does have to do with the economy, Congressman. One thing Obama has on your feeble congressional mind is the ability to recognize the interconnectedness of issues, to see opportunities for synergy, and to act on multiple fronts simultaneously.

Is Cantor really faulting President Obama for giving attention to issues other than the economic crisis? It's called multitasking, Cantor, and even Congress does it. How else do the folks on Capitol Hill manage to enact multi-billion dollar economic stimulus bills and pass the Civil War Battlefield Act and consider resolutions honoring Sam Bradford for winning the Heisman Trophy? Those last two bits are classic cases of eyes-off-the-prize, Congressman, and it was your party's reps that sponsored them. It seems a bit unfair to begrudge President Obama a moment or two to sign an executive order that will actually confer benefits on the American people.

And as for you personally, Congressman, what were you doing fiddling around in Iraq last month while Wall Street was burning? Where are your priorities?

Maybe we should cut Cantor a break: stem-cell research is a lousy issue for Republicans. They've fought valiantly into the teeth of public opinion on this issue for eight years now, and with Monday's announcement they'll finally have lost the battle. You can see why the guy would want to change the subject, right? Uh, no. No break for you, Cantor. Your President butchered policy on so many issues for eight years. The fact that he managed to squeeze in a crippling once-in-three-generations economic crisis at the end doesn't mean his successor can't address any of the Bush Administration's myriad other failures. Nice try, but no.

Processing Jindal

PHUTATORIUS
I'm still stuck on this, almost a week now after Bobby Jindal delivered the Republican rebuttal. Jindal said Americans can do anything. Then he said America's government is terrible and can't be expected to play a role in solving any of our problems. I'm having a hard time reconciling these two theses, so I thought I'd take a minute to think all this through.

Our government is comprised of — and created and renewed and refreshed by — Americans. How is it that Americans outside of government have infinite potential, but Americans inside of government are feckless and impotent? Unlike certain of his party colleagues, Jindal puts forward a fair-minded, monolithic view of Americans. He did not attempt to carve out a class of "real," make-this-country-great Americans from people who live in cities — we're all real make-this-country-great Americans, regardless of where we dwell. Presumably, then, Americans-in-government are (or rather were) just like us, before something wrenched away their talent, their courage, their can-do spirit and transformed them into a ruinous horde of buzz-killing potential-crushers.
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OK. I'll buy that. But what exactly is it about government that singularly snuffs out that spark of potential — that glorious, distinctive American-ness — that resides within us? Is it power? Is there some weakness in our character (even though we're Americans) that causes us to compromise our values, to pursue destructive, short-sighted and inefficient courses of conduct in government, in order to accrue and maintain power for ourselves?

Power seems the obvious candidate, and I'll run with it, but only so far. There are all sorts of power, other than what you find in Washington. Just to take one example, there's the power that comes with the responsibility of managing the many private institutions that are (we're told) as important to our society's survival as government itself. Why aren't the all-capable Americans who run these organizations susceptible to the sort of destructive, short-sighted, and inefficient courses of conduct that rule out government as a solution to any of America's problems? These people have a great deal of power, but it's not government power, and as a result their institutions continue to flourish in that great American way — their very example is a testament to what Americans can do, if they're simply left alone to be Americans.

Since private institutions remain uncorrupted by power, but government institutions continue to put their foot on the throat of the all-powerful American people, perhaps we should isolate what it is about government power that ruins a perfectly good American. What's different — what's unique — about government power? That's Poli Sci 101, people: governments have a monopoly of force. Clearly it's this toxic ingredient — access to the monopoly of force — that turns otherwise competent and talented Americans into worthless, obstructionist Americans-in-government. I know I've hit on something here. With this I feel like I've tapped right into the mainline philosophy of Jindal and the Republicans, because, as everyone knows, the instruments of the federal government that conservatives trust the least are the two most coercive: the armed forces and the federal law enforcement agencies. It's all coming together.

It took a little work, Governor, but I got there. I finally get you guys. With that seemingly self-evident contradiction in terms, you planted a rhetorical seed. You encouraged me to wind through the logic, and now that I'm done, I've not only learned a great deal, but I'm feeling the true exhilaration that comes from unraveling a conundrum. You're a regular Socrates, Governor Jindal (but of course better, because you're American)!

The House GOP: Rhetoric and Realpolitik

PHUTATORIUS
We've had two votes in the House on the stimulus now, and not one GOP rep has broken rank to support the bill. Cue rhetoric from the Democrats about obstructionism and partisan politicking in a time of crisis. That rhetoric has its appeal, but can we really blame the Republicans? The writing was on the wall, after all: this bill was going to pass.
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If your vote isn't actually going to have an effect on the outcome, it's not unreasonable (I don't think) to vote your self-interest, and Realpolitik says GOP representatives should vote no. That way, if the stimulus fails to stimulate, the GOP can sing the "We Told You So" song. If it provides the expected modest boost to the economy, the House Republicans can hammer home what they'd have done to make it better. And even if the stimulus proves to be a Just What We Needed Cure-All — and the percentages point against this possibility — it won't be the worst thing in the world to have opposed it. The electorate doesn't always preoccupy itself with who was on the wrong side of a question that proves to be one-sided in retrospect: consider the case of isolationist Republicans who wanted no part of World War II.

(And given this electorate, which self-sorting and crafty gerrymandering has calcified into party-identifiable districts, it's typically the case that an in-party primary battle poses more of a threat to a rep's reelection prospects than the November vote. This gives a Republican every incentive to look more Republican, if he wants to hold his seat. So they embrace the tax-cut ideology, even if "we all [ought to be] Keynesians now.")

It's no coincidence that the GOPers were so stridently opposed to the stimulus bill in the House, and that they held the line so staunchly — whereas Senate Republicans worked within the system, labored to improve the bill, proposed amendments, and mustered three moderate GOP ayes to reach the 60 votes required of a deficit spending measure. The Republicans can only be obstructionist up to the point of actual obstruction. The party couldn't gamble on the bill not passing — and in the end, they didn't. I see that it's fashionable these days for the right-wing bloggers to excoriate Senators Collins, Snowe, and Specter: but of course it's these three Senators who have empowered the party ideologues to carp and criticize without actually having to answer for their opinions. The far better play here for Republicans is to take a dive and appear to go down fighting.

It would be interesting to know how our esteemed Congressmen would vote if we created a situation in which they couldn't know the ideological composition of the two houses and had no clue in advance where any of their colleagues stood on the legislation — say, if we locked each of them up in a storage facility cubicle (climate-controlled, of course) with nothing inside but a flashlight and a copy of the bill. Blinded as to self-interest, these 535 could well be in a position to vote their consciences, for once.

How do you suppose it would shake out? Would these GOPers still be convinced that we're better positioned to inject cash into the economy in the short term by giving it to people who are terrified of losing their jobs, their homes, their health insurance right now? Do they truly believe it's a better investment in the economy if the stimulus money is ultimately spent on Big Mouth Billy Bass, Tickle Me Elmo, and other novelty baubles, rather than on roads, high-speed rail, broadband, medical records digitization, weatherization, and other infrastructure? I'm guessing they wouldn't, but that's all water under the corroded bridge. House Republicans voted no on Friday because they could. So hooray for them — and hooray for the three Senate "traitors" who enabled them to do it.

Mathturbation

MITHRIDATES
A recent Slate article documents attempts by mathematicians to solve the problem of Gerrymandering. There are jokes about circles not tessellating well and talk of algorithms to measure compactness, competitiveness, fairness, county integrity . . . the list goes on. And, in my humble opinion, every single one of the yahoos involved misses the point.

As you no doubt recall, we tackled the issue several weeks ago, but the so-called experts haven't learned a thing. The problem isn't that these guys aren't good at math, it's that they've sacrificed what should be the one overarching goal of a redistricting scheme in favor of algorithmic showboating and myriad minor (and/or dubious) goals.
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Let's be clear about that one primary goal. Currently some political party in power can Gerrymander the districts to favor their party — e.g., lump all the Republicans in one district and get small Democratic majorities in the others. We want to prevent this from happening. Period. The following other goals are comparatively inconsequential:

• The idea of compactness is simple. Try to make the districts so that the people in it are as close to the center as possible. Back in the day this was hugely important. No one wanted to travel too far by mule to go hear some blowhards debate about taxes and tariffs and so there was some merit in making the district look more like a circle than a square. But now this is a nice-to-have provided we don't do anything too bizarre. Internet advertising and organizing have made compactness even less relevant.
  
• Competitiveness and fairness are dubious goals. If it happens naturally that one party does better than its proportion of registered voters in the state suggests it should, well good for them. Let's not go out of our way to impose some sort of penalty on popular representatives. And all the fairness proposals have to do with making sure the Democrats and Republicans are evenly dispersed. We want to prevent the parties from making things uneven on purpose, but it's debatable if we want to codify the importance of these two parties in particular by mandating their proportions in congressional districts.
  
• The idea behind county integrity is to match the districts as closely as possible to county line. Really? Who gives a shit? Does anyone even care what county they're in anymore? We shouldn't give one iota of thought to this absurd metric.

The metrics are wrong; but so is the general approach. One of the ideas is to let someone propose a redistricting scheme and then evaluate how "Gerrymandered" it is based on their scoring system. But the party in charge will no doubt still find some way to manipulate the districts in their favor and get a high "score" under the new fancy algorithm — but this time they'll have the cover of a good score. And all that these other metrics accomplish is to make any scheme and evaluation method more complex and therefore less transparent.

Far better to generate the districts according to an objective procedure. We can easily secure our primary goal with a simple, transparent scheme that can't be manipulated by the party in power.

If those involved were more interested in solving the problem and less concerned with showing off their algorithmic creativity, they'd adopt a system that was simpler, not more complicated. But no one likes the simple answer. It's harder to show off how smart you are with a simple answer.

Besides, Mithriblocks are compact enough and tessellate as well as anything. Of course, it doesn't really matter in the end. Those in power don't want the problem solved. They're better off adopting a fancy algorithm that they can manipulate, even if we're not . . .

Good Times Never Seemed So Good

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK
CNN reports that Caroline Kennedy is withdrawing her name from consideration for New York's vacant senate seat, because of her concern about Ted Kennedy's poor health.

I would like to announce that I am withdrawing my name from consideration for the Baltimore Orioles starting rotation, because of my concern about Ted Kennedy's poor health.

If you want to criticize either of us, the worst thing you can say is that we care too much about Uncle Ted.

Enough Already about Hillary and the Clinton Foundation

PHUTATORIUS
The Wall Street Journal's editors want to know why more hasn't been made of the potential conflicts of interest between Hillary's business as Secretary of State and Bill's as fundraiser for the Clinton Foundation:
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Here is the spectacle of a former President circling the globe to raise at least $492 million over 10 years for his foundation — much of it from assorted rogues, dictators and favor-seekers. We are supposed to believe that none of this — and none of his future fund-raising — will have any influence on Mrs. Clinton's conduct as Secretary of State.

The silence over this is . . . remarkable.

Oh, Wall Street Journalists — is this the best you can do? Think through the problem here, people. The Clinton Foundation isn't a for-profit operation. It's a voluntary, charitable undertaking by Bill Clinton. I might be concerned if the tens of millions of dollars from the Saudis (among others) were going directly into Bill's pocket, but he doesn't keep the money.

The conflicts question reduces to this: is it at all likely that Hillary Clinton will trade U.S. foreign policy favors to foreign interests as gratuity/in exchange for past/future contributions they have made to her husband's charitable foundation? There is a short answer to this. It's no. And as to even "the appearance of impropriety" that is so often the preoccupation of lawyers — again, no.

Think, Journal, think! You're coming off like a bunch of AM radio hacks.

MITHRIDATES
Of course I went to the first mainstream media source I could find and found The Boston Globe's silence on the matter to be "remarkable" as the front page of their website screamed:

CLINTON FOUNDATION DONATIONS QUESTIONED

PHUTATORIUS
There's that, and there's the fact that no less a left-wing media sop than The New York Times complained on Saturday that the proposed annual disclosure of Clinton Foundation donors would be too infrequent to protect the American People against these apocalyptic conflicts. Whatever.

I know these newspapers have to find whatever controversies they can, and the Obama-Blagojevich connection has pretty much tapped out. So they set up their base camps around molehills like this. I suppose it says something about the relative calm we're experiencing in our national politics.

Still, you half-wish the papers would do what we do when there's nothing to write about: go buy some LPs, chill out, maybe slap something together about Duran Duran.

Caroline, No

PHUTATORIUS
Caroline Kennedy wants the vacated New York Senate seat. Why should she get it? What makes her a better candidate than, say, Fran Drescher?

I'm sure I'm only the 500,000th blogger to take this position. After all, if you're out there blogging, you're the type who still believes that The Little Guy ought to have some say in the world. You're the type to toil away in obscurity, to compose thoughtful messages — each of them carrying just a little bit of yourself — and send them off into The Internet Void, where they'll never be seen again by anyone except yourself and maybe a friend (two, if you're lucky). But you commit yourself to this, without reward or recognition, because you think what you think matters, even if you're at best a Low-Level Internet Personality. Whereas other people are handed the opportunity to publish mass-circulation political magazines — you know, because their dad was John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

So you'll have to pardon me if I momentarily slip into a bit of populism here. Caroline, no. NO NO NO NO NO. You don't get to hold a Senate seat once occupied by the likes of Aaron Burr, Robert Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Hillary Clinton, just because you're derivatively famous and you feel restless and need something to do.

Here's Wikipedia's blurb on Caroline Kennedy's "Professional Life."

Kennedy is an attorney, editor, writer and member of the New York and Washington, D.C. bar associations. She is one of the founders of the Profiles in Courage Award, given annually since 1990 to a person who exemplifies the type of courage examined in her father's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name. The award is generally given to elected officials who, acting in accord with their conscience, risk their careers by pursuing a larger vision of the national, state or local interest in opposition to popular opinion or powerful pressures from their constituents. In May 2002, she presented an unprecedented Profiles in Courage Award to representatives of the NYPD, the New York City Fire Department, and the military as representatives of all of the people who acted to save the lives of others during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

For 22 months from 2002 through 2004, Kennedy worked as director of strategic partnerships for the the New York City Department of Education. The three-day-a week job paid her a salary of $1 and had the goal of raising private money [for] the New York City public schools. In her capacity, she helped raise more than $65 million for the city’s public schools, according to her biography at the Kennedy Library. She currently serves as the Vice Chair of The Fund for Public Schools, a public-private partnership founded in 2002 to attract private funding for public schools in New York City.

In addition, Kennedy is currently President of the Kennedy Library Foundation, a director of both the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Honorary Chairman of the American Ballet Theatre. She is also an adviser to the Harvard Institute of Politics, a living memorial to her father.

Kennedy has represented her family at the funeral services of former Presidents Ronald Reagan in 2004 and Gerald Ford in 2007, and at the funeral service of former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson in 2007. She also represented her family at the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Arkansas in November 2004.

I'll concede that Ms. Kennedy is not your typical dissolute heiress. There is evidence of community engagement here. But let's look at the nature of her work. She administers an award based on a book her father wrote. This is not something that, say, Mithridates could do, because his father didn't write a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about "courage" (no offense to Mo).

But Phutatorius, you write, she has worked as a volunteer for the New York City Department of Education! This sounds admirable, but consider what her role was. Her job was to cultivate "strategic partnerships" and raise "private money" for the DOE. That is, she called the wealthy and powerful people she knew and invited them to posh fundraisers. What she offered the DOE were her connections to elite donors — not policy expertise, not any tireless commitment to grassroots educational reform.

The third block-quoted paragraph describes Ms. Kennedy's service on the boards of various non-profit organization. Geez, you'll have to pardon me if I'm a bit too cynically dismissive of these resume bullets. I realize I don't know the precise circumstances of these appointments, but I'm going to go with "let's get ourselves a Kennedy on the board" over "have you heard of this extraordinary woman — Caroline something? I bet she'd just do some terrific work for us."

Finally, there is this paragraph that describes Ms. Kennedy's several appearances "representing her family" at funerals and library dedications. I don't think anyone — not even Elton John — would regard "funeral attendance" as a professional obligation. It may simply be a quirk of Wikipedia that this business is described as an element of Ms. Kennedy's "professional life," but I think it's telling, for two reasons. First, the writers are obviously straining to fill this segment of the entry. Second, it's actually not that far off to say that Ms. Kennedy's "profession" has been to serve as her father's daughter.

She's a professional daughter. She's good at it — plenty better than, say, Paris Hilton is for her family. And maybe the world needs to have a "daughter of John F. Kennedy" going around doing her "daughter thing," serving on boards, cutting ribbons with gigantic scissors, tasting various caterers' hors d'oeuvres in anticipation of a Casino Night party to raise money for cerebral palsy research. That doesn't mean Caroline Kennedy is entitled to follow her father's footsteps into the United States Senate. That's a place (ostensibly) for serious, accomplished people.

David Paterson needs to take Ms. Kennedy by the hand and say, "Caroline, no."

UPDATE: I got wrapped up in Ms. Kennedy's qualifications earlier, and I neglected to cover another important point, which is that in any other year, Caroline Kennedy would have to prove her mettle in an election. She'd have to endure an extended campaign, work hard, and win the hearts of voters. While it's true that many of these voters — suckers that they are — would favor her based on the name recognition, a successful campaign for higher office requires at least a modicum of effort from the candidate (hello, Fred Thompson). She would have had to show us something in the weeks leading up to the vote.

This is, no doubt, what makes a New York Senate seat suddenly so appealing to Caroline Kennedy now. This sort of "campaign" is right in her wheelhouse. The notion that someone like Ms. Kennedy gets to dial the direct line of the Governor of New York, drop the K-bomb, and jump to the Head of the Senatorial Class should be offensive to every one of us who still believes in meritocracy. If you're a Democrat, and you cried like I did on Election Night, you should want no part of this.

UPDATE: I want the record reflect that I was the first person to post any kind of writing online on this subject, with the title "Caroline, No." (I did a Google search.) Now it's popping up all over the place. I write this because that was probably the best thing about this post, and I want some credit for it.

Mithrimander

MITHRIDATES
In 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry took a step toward immortality by signing into law a redistricting bill that favored his Democratic-Republican party. Yeah, go figure that the [pick one]s did it first! The Boston Gazette coined the term and published the cartoon and long after the man lost his hard G we're still scratching our heads about how to get rid of Gerrymandering and reinstate impartial and sensible congressional districts.

The problem is two-fold:

1. Find a sensible, simple, objective, non-partisan way to draw congressional districts with each new census
2. Convince the powers that be to relinquish control of redistricting and put it in the hands of someone who will implement the above

Let's deal with problem 1 first. There are numerous pseudo-objective proposals out there that seem nice at first, but in reality favor one party over another.

For example, building the districts around population centers seems like a good, simple way to do things. But who tends to live in the middle of population centers? Well, Democrats. So the first district centered around Philadelphia might very well contain 80% Democrats — the Republicans might gladly concede this district to get several 60% Republican districts in return.

So it has to be simpler than that — moreover, we might want to lose the notion that keeping things like cities in one district is necessarily a good thing. In fact, objectivity should be the main goal so that no one party gets a systematic advantage over another and any imbalances would be small and only come by chance and therefore most likely even out over the course of 435 districts. After objectivity, the only thing we're going to care about at this point is convenience. As much as possible, we'll try to make the districts connected sets.

But enough background and theory for now, here's the proposed Mithrimander:

1. Determine n, the number of congressional districts given to a state after the new census
2. If n is even, draw a horizontal line with exactly half the population on either side and apportion n/2 seats to each half; if n is odd, draw a horizontal line with (n-1)/2n (of the total seats and population) above and (n+1)/2n below
3. Repeat step 2, treating each half as a "state", switching horizontal/vertical at each step, until each block has only 1 seat

In the above, we could flip a coin for horizontal/vertical at the beginning in case anyone thinks a north/south split instead of an east/west split favors one party over the other.

The only problem we have — given the regular shape of most of our states — is with a few islands and peninsulas. Basically Hawaii, New York, Massachusetts, and maybe Florida. Some simple adjustment to treat islands as blocks, for example, ought to do the trick, but we can work out the minor details later.

The Mithrimander is perfectly objective, simple to implement, and creates mostly connected districts. It doesn't go out of its way to attain questionable goals (e.g., creating "competitive" districts or keeping cities/counties together). The only worthwhile goal is to ensure that the people are fairly represented in Congress.

Problem #1 solved!

That leaves us with problem #2. How to get the powers that be to adopt this simple, objective proposal. We'll have to leave that one for tomorrow.

PHUTATORIUS
I like it, for all the reasons you've supplied in your antepenultimate paragraph (except for the last sentence, which I'll get to in a minute).

The barriers to getting it done are, of course, considerable. The most obvious is the two parties' shared interest in preserving the districts as they are, given that they've been drawn to carve out such comfortable incumbencies that even vapid personalities like Michele Bachmann can win reelection. And of course the task of district-drawing is assigned to the several states, so you'll have to undertake 50 separate efforts at heroic persuasion rather than just getting it done once.

Here's what I think is more interesting, and maybe it's something you can address in your plan (or your defense of it). Given how info-laden and sophisticated these parties are, they'll both have a strong read on the sort of outcomes this sort of partitioning would generate. As a result, even though to you and me this seems reasonable, neutral, and fair, in any given state we can expect that one party might wholly support Mithrimandering, whereas the other will regard it as a Trojan Horse — based entirely on their reading of the demogeography.

Indeed, I can imagine a situation in which one party would make considerable gains on the other if the first state-slice were made longitudinally. You've arbitrarily (I assume) decided to go with a first latitudinal cut. There's room for argument on this point, and argument there will be, if the facts call for it.

You can politicize anything: consider what I've written in the past about "strict constructionism." One side loves it, because (1) it leads to the outcomes they like and (2) they're able to rationalize away these outcomes as the result of a "neutral" interpretative tool. The other side hates it, because it's a Trojan Horse. To be fair, the Mithrimander proposal is a lot more transparent and a lot less susceptible to perversion than the application of strict constructionism. But the point about politicization still stands. Note that this isn't an critique of what you've proposed per se — it's more of a critique of everything else in the world. So take it as such.

I do have a critique of what you've proposed, and it has to do with arbitrariness. Why all the concern for right angles and north-south and east-west axes? Just because they're simpler and prettier? That would be a fine reason, in your view, because it's so abstracted from what we generally agree ought to be impermissible bases for making district-drawing decisions. But I don't agree that "the only worthwhile goal" is to ensure fair representation. We want our congressmen and -women to go to Washington to represent our local interests. Surely the case can be made that if one of your lines splits a city in half, such that there are two districts, each with half the city and a big chunk of surrounding suburban and rural areas, local interests aren't as well-represented as they might be if one district drew entirely from the city center, and the other from the 'burbs-and-sticks.

Why wouldn't a system that drew concentric circles outward from the city centers be at least as attractive? It would be more complicated to resolve, but potentially more responsive to local interest.

Or am I taking us right down the slippery slope to gerrymandering?

MITHRIDATES
The latitudinal cut is arbitrary. That's why I suggest flipping a coin. You could even flip a coin at each step. One set of coin flip outcomes might favor the Dems, but by putting in the randomness, it's very hard to rig and very hard to complain (well, easy to complain, but harder to convince anyone reasonable that your complaint is legitimate). The expected absolute benefit to either party would be smaller if the outcome were the result of several independent coin flips. Just have Ernst and Young preside over the coin flips or something like that.

The problem is — as you mentioned — going from a system gerrymandered to favor one party to a system that is objective. If you go from a system that gives the Republicans one more seat than they would get under a fair system, well then the Republicans are going to complain.

I do not think rectangles are inherently prettier than circles, and they are certainly not simpler (a circle needs one parameter; a rectangle two). But you can't cover a state with disjoint circles the way you can with the rectangle-like (the parts on the boundary will of course not be straight and right-angled) Mithriblocks.

Your idea about circles starting at city center was addressed above in my example of "pseudo-objective" solutions. That first circle might very well be 90% Democrat because it's all inner city. That's why we want to avoid anything that picks out certain features and focuses on them — this makes it too easy to manipulate for partisan gain.

Moreover, if you really did concentric circles, that second district would be a ring, which I don't think is ideal in terms of convenience (more convenient than, say, randomly assigning each individual to a district, sure, but still not very convenient).

You say splitting up a city makes city interests potentially less represented. I don't know about that. They'd have less representation in each district they were in, but in more districts. I don't know that it's inherently better to have a "city" district and a "country" district. You'd have one representative voting "city" interests and one "country" interests with no reason to ever compromise. It might be better to have two moderate representatives who have to appeal to broader interests. I don't know for sure that splitting interests is a better outcome for the world, but I don't see that it's obviously not — and I prefer a system that ignores these types of things in favor of objectivity anyway.

PHUTATORIUS
Geez. Did I even read your post? You anticipated and accounted for half of what I wrote — and I wrote it all anyway, like I'd had some great revelation. I did read the post: I swear. I just didn't go back and read it again two days later when I wrote the comment.

But to your last points — I think there is something to the view that the more uniform the interests are, the better represented they will be. This is the underlying rationale for having congressional districts (indeed, a Congress) in the first place. And you have accepted a certain amount of this, by choosing to work within the district framework. After all, why hang on to districts, if we're going to radically overhaul the system?

The district framework is not constitutionally mandated: Article I, § 4 simply leaves matters to the states, while vesting Congress with the authority to override the states' judgments on how to elect their representatives. (It's a federal statute that inflicts the district framework on us.) So it might well be possible, notwithstanding what I wrote earlier, to implement the Mithrimander fix in a single federal statute.

If you were interested in abandoning local interest entirely (and I don't think you are), you could dispense with the districts and simply have all the voters in a given state vote for all that states' representatives — subject, I suppose, to the caveat that this approach might overempower voters in, say, California, because they're electing 53 representatives, whereas in Alaska it's just one (although I don't think that system would raise any constitutional issues — it would just piss people off).

But I suppose your approach does the job of optimizing local interest representation under 'mander-pure conditions.

MITHRIDATES
I'm not interested in abandoning local interests. I think districts are good for that — and better obviously than just everyone in the state voting for everyone. You will get at least local interest from the Mithriblocks (yes, I like typing that word) — you just might not get specific group interests such as city or merchant (from back in the day). But it will certainly be local.

I'm glad that this could all be done by federal statute. We'd have to do some analysis, but as long as the near-term impact didn't change the expected breakdown by much, there's hope. And of course, you make this take effect ten years down the road so no one needs to vote their self-interest by voting against.

One more thought on shape. An advantage of Mithriblocks is that they will all be rectangularesque. The way you can tell a Gerrymandered district is by its odd shape. So it will even look fair and objective to a casual observer — this might not be true for some complex arrangement involving several circles around different population centers. There is something to be said for transparency, I think.