Posts Tagged politics
An unlikely pair of Texas presidents
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2001, Newspaper Columns on January 9, 2001
AUSTIN, Texas — This city of nearly half a million straddles the Colorado River in Central Texas and is home to two distinctly different presidential flavors: Democratic and Republican. I realized this as I stepped out of The Hideout, a coffeehouse located just off Austin’s Sixth Street (akin to Kirkwood Avenue in Bloomington), and waited for two motorcades to pass by.
That was my first Presidential Encounter in Austin last week: I got to watch President-elect George W. Bush speed down the street, complete with a motorcycle escort and a bonus traffic jam for unsuspecting motorists. I was merely an inconvenienced pedestrian trying to go shopping. I couldn’t attempt to keep walking for another 10 minutes while I waited for Vice President-elect Dick Cheney’s motorcade to depart the Driskill Hotel. Bush was waving out the window; Cheney appeared to be using a cell phone.
My second Presidential Encounter of the week was by choice: I visited the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum at the University of Texas at Austin. I also visited the Johnson Settlement located 50 miles west of Austin in the Hill Country, to see where our 36th president grew up.
I was swept away by both: taking a break in the Hill Country, I sat down and looked at the landscape that surrounded me. It was by no means a lush environment, but it was a hearty environment, one that develops character in people — Rugged American Individualism at its best — and an understanding that government serves a purpose in the life of people.
At the LBJ museum, one gains an appreciation for the former president and his momentous works. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act, the Clean Air Act and Head Start are examples of LBJ’s impressive legacy.
Although Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, it was LBJ who gave their great-great grandchildren the freedom to participate in our democracy.
Without a doubt, LBJ was a president who desired to do good for his country. He drew upon his experience growing up in poverty to become a more compassionate and decent man whose chief domestic policy goals were to eliminate poverty and raise the standard of living for all. A war he inherited — one that right wing anti-Communists wanted escalated and one that the left wing wanted finished — hampered him. It could be said Vietnam ended up costing LBJ his job.
But the basic facts remain: LBJ was a decent man. He wanted to do the right thing for the people of the United States, something that appears to stand in stark contrast to the aspirations of the latest president-elect to come from the state of Texas.
Bush was born rich, stayed rich and only as an adult realized he was interested in politics. He wants to give the rich a tax break under the assumption that since they pay the most they deserve the biggest break — there’s nothing like a regressive tax scheme that punishes the poor for being poor. Two of the most important components of life in America face reversal under Bush’s administration: civil rights and environmental protection.
First, with former Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft as attorney general, protection of key civil rights, such as the right to an abortion, will fall by the wayside. I also suspect a full investigation into the voting rights abuses that occurred in Florida will never take place — something LBJ was active in trying to prevent.
Second, with Bush announcing he is interested in drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness, we have a threatened environment. Regulatory powers will be shifted to the states and the ensuing race to the bottom will be sickening
Bush’s agenda, if he can successfully carry it out, appears to be in direct opposition to the LBJ legacy.
I’m not sure, but I imagine that the people of Austin will be glad to be rid of Bush, just to get him out of their town. It’s unfortunate that we have been saddled with him instead.
A Naderite for Bush
Posted by Adam in Newspaper Columns, Student Discourse Columns on November 20, 2000
A Bush victory will revitalize liberal support for the environment, abortion rights and civil liberties
By Adam Lederer | Indiana University
See original IDS Column
Trust me when I say, this was not a happy election for me. When it came to the presidency, I faced a decision on the ballot between the lesser of three evils. Ultimately, I held my nose as I pressed the button that recorded my decisions at the Monroe County Courthouse in Bloomington, Indiana, on Election Day.
To be honest, neither Gore nor Bush are particularly appealing prospects to be president, and looking into my crystal ball, I doubt either one has the ability to last more than one term in office.
With that thought, I actually want Bush to be president of the United States for the next four years, and not because I am a Republican. I’m not. I voted for Ralph Nader this year because I am, for the most part, a left wing liberal with a few odd conservative streaks in me and I thought it was high time that the political dialogue in the United States needs a broader spectrum, particularly toward the left end. It also didn’t hurt that I live in Indiana, a state Bush was expected to, and indeed did, win handily.
Bush as president is a strategic thought—with the House and the Senate so closely divided, whoever is president will not be able to get much done, and we will have the ultimate “do nothing” Congress—hamstrung by the close split and the constant threat of Senate filibusters. This “do-nothing” Congress will probably not pass a lot of laws, which might be a minor blessing in disguise — considering Congress’s past record.
The truth is that liberals need to be out of power—the past eight years have been eight years of triumph with Bill Clinton ascending to the throne in 1992 defeating a sitting president and four years later thumping a well respected Republican in the form of Bob Dole. As such, liberal causes have advanced somewhat, but liberals themselves have become soft—losing that fire in the belly that coaches use to motivate people and motivate causes.
Take, for example, the environmental movement, a movement that has grown soft and weak with a “supporter” in the oval office. The environmental movement’s brightest days in the public spot light were when James G. Watt was Secretary of the Interior Department in the early 1980s. The environmental movement was able to effectively focus attention on the environment by using his name and actions in order to rally support. Today, Bruce Babbitt’s name effectively raises a collective yawn from the environmental movement—but doesn’t do a single thing to put fire in the belly of environmentalists and increase activism.
Liberals also need to effectively counter the Religious Right—and the Religious Right has rallied against Bill Clinton while liberals haven’t done much to counter the Religious Right. Four years of a Religious Right friendly president will help the ACLU and other liberal organizations focus attention on issues that matter: separation of church and state, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Liberals also need to focus on countering the effort to pass a constitutional amendment to ban the burning of the American Flag, an effort that continues to exist despite the fact that a burning flag is something that ought to be celebrated because it represents the freedom to do what we want to do, a freedom that does not exist in too many other countries. Trust me, I’ve never had the urge to burn the American flag, but when they take my right to do so away, I will suddenly have the urge.
Clearly an offensive needs to be launched to support a woman’s right to choose. There has been a gradual creep over the past eight years to restrict the of women—creeping restrictions forcing parental notification, attempting waiting periods, and attempting to restrict partial birth abortions, a form that is rarely used and used only when the life of the woman is threatened. These “minor” restrictions threaten to blossom into full-blown restrictions that will lead to another era of back alley coat-hanger abortions. A Bush presidency will give the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) a focal point for their cause, as well as means the raise funds and increase activism.
And yes, this point reminds me of one of the most serious problems with a Bush presidency, and that is the Supreme Court. Bush has threatened to make appointments to the Supreme Court that will take the United States back in time to a period when women had no right to choose, when prayer in school was state-sanctioned and when free speech was restricted. However, it’s not likely to happen, since it takes a two-thirds majority of senators to confirm judicial appointments and only 50 or 51 senators will be Republicans. Just as Gore would be forced to compromise and moderate his choices if he is our president, Bush will be forced to moderate his nominees in the hopes that they are confirmed. Either way, we probably won’t be seeing extreme appointments to the courts for the next four years.
Which leads us to a history lesson: Usually the party of the incumbent president loses seats in the House at mid-term elections, with the only modern exception being the Republican losses in 1998. This suggestion from history means that the Democrats might be able to control the House and the Senate after the 2002 elections. If Gore is elected, Democrats will probably lose House and Senate seats in 2002, and that’s not really desirable in my book. If we can continue to tilt the board in favor of liberals in Congress that helps sets us up for a liberal president to be elected in 2004, assuming the Democrats learned the correct lesson from these elections.
And to close, a Bush presidency would also bring us one major victory when Rush Limbaugh is put out of business. Limbaugh has thrived on the Clinton presidency, and if Clinton had not been elected in 1992 and re-elected in 1996, he wouldn’t have had anything to complain about for the past eight years. Limbaugh really wants Gore to win so he can spend the next four years complaining about Gore and how Gore stole the presidency from Bush on his radio talk show, thus making money. Nobody wants to listen to him praise Bush for four years — people only want to listen to complainers.
Adam Lederer is a graduate student in Public Affairs at Indiana University. Like Dick Cheney, he earned his bachelors and master’s degree in political science at the University of Wyoming.
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Comments about this column:
This was based upon an earlier column in the IDS.
I think is a fairly successful adaptation. I was constrained by space–there are a number of interesting points to make.
What’s also interesting is that it turns out I was echoing something that Peggy Noonan, a Reagan and Bush speechwriter, said in her 1994 book, Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Of course she was saying that the conservatives needed to be out of power having grown lax while in power during the Reagan/Bush years. She also said that Clinton was going to be a one-term president.
She was wrong, but I hope that I’m not.
A win for the Democrats
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2000, Newspaper Columns on November 10, 2000
See Student Discourse Version:
A Naderite for Bush
Trust me when I say, this was a watershed election for me. Every which way I turned, I faced decisions on the ballot between the lesser of two or three evils. Ultimately, I held my nose as I pressed the button that recorded my decisions at the Monroe County Court House Tuesday.
To be honest, neither Gore nor Bush are particularly appealing presidential candidates, and looking into my crystal ball, I doubt either one has the ability to last more than one term in office.
With that thought, I actually would prefer Bush to be president of the United States for the next four years, and not because I am a Republican. I’m not. I voted for Ralph Nader this year, and I am, for the most part, a left wing liberal with a few odd conservative streaks in me.
Bush as president is a strategic thought — with the House and the Senate so closely divided, whoever is president will not be able to get much done, and we will have the ultimate “do nothing” Congress — hamstrung by the close split and the constant threats of filibusters in the Senate. This “do-nothing” Congress will probably not pass a lot of laws, which might be a blessing in disguise — considering Congress’s past record.
The one downside to a Bush presidency is the Supreme Court. Bush has threatened to make appointments to the Supreme Court that will take the United States back in time to a period when women had no right to choose, when prayer in school was state-sanctioned and when free speech was restricted. Realistically, that’s not likely to happen, since it takes a two-thirds majority of senators to confirm judicial appointments and only 50 or 51 senators are Republicans. Bush will be forced to moderate his nominees in the hopes that they are confirmed.
The advantages of a Bush presidency are too numerous to tally, but I shall take a shot:
- Usually the party of the incumbent president loses seats in the House at mid-term elections, which means Democrats might control the House that is currently controlled by Republicans after the 2002 elections. If Gore is elected, Democrats will probably lose seats in 2002, and that’s not really desirable in my book.
- Environmentalists have had allies in power for too long and have grown soft. By having a Bush appointee at the Interior Department, one who is certain to be in favor of mining and drilling on federal lands, environmentalists will again have a cause to rally around. Remember that Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt in the early 1980s was a rallying cry for environmentalists; invoking his name and actions helped the environmental movement grow both in stature and fiscally.
- Rush Limbaugh will be put out of business. Limbaugh has thrived on the Clinton presidency, and if Clinton had not been elected in 1992 and re-elected in 1996, he wouldn’t have had anything to complain about for the past eight years. Limbaugh really wants Gore to win so he can spend the next four years complaining about Gore on his radio talk show, thus making money. Nobody will want to listen to him praise Bush for the next four years — people only want to listen to whiners (thus explaining the success of weirdos like “dr.” Laura who does nothing but whine about what she thinks is the immorality of society).
If Bush is president for the next four years, all of this sets us up for a Democratic president starting in 2004, and that is something to look forward to.
Campus activism refreshing
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2000, Newspaper Columns on April 17, 2000
I will admit I am not an especially active activist. In fact, most people would be hard pressed to call me an activist. I tend to get wrapped up in my own work and achieve a type of tunnel vision that guides me from my computer at home to my computer at the office and the classrooms in between.
Which is one thing that’s caught my attention of late: the number of protesters around Bloomington. It is, in a word, refreshing.
Refreshing is probably not the word you expected me to say, but the presence of protesters outside Starbucks reminds me that politics are an important part of our life. You see, I might not actually agree with the protesters, but it is invigorating to me to witness people using their First Amendment rights to speak out.
Take, for example, the Protect Griffy Alliance. I actually agreed with them — once. I wasn’t in favor of the golf course, and I was pleased to see the golf course stopped. But since their slam-dunk victory, and what a victory it was, the group has insisted upon pounding IU’s administration into the ground. I thought it was enough to embarrass the trustees into taking the issue off the table before a vote could be taken, but the group continues to pursue the issue.
While I do not agree with their goal, this development is refreshing because the leaders of the group did not disband the organization once victory was achieved; they continued to focus and refocus on other related issues. That they are doing this forces me to continue to question what I think.
Another group that has been protesting a lot is the group outside of Starbucks. I never quite understood this group, but at least they made me question my coffee-drinking habits. Did I want to enjoy the overstuffed chairs and pretentious environment of Starbucks, thus dooming 12-year-olds to picking more coffee beans, or did I want to continue to enjoy SOMA with its quirky and charming environment? I don’t know where SOMA gets its coffee, so I don’t know if any child labor is involved.
The Education for a Sustainable Future group that protested outside Starbucks, McDonald’s, Ben and Jerry’s, Taco Bell and Subway, this past week almost convinced me single-handedly to shop at each one of the five stores. The group complained about the union-busting record of McDonald’s, along with usual (and unusual) complaints about the other businesses.
McDonald’s has a union-busting record? I didn’t know about it, but perhaps I should shop there more often. While some unions are good, many unions want businesses to be unionized just so they can get their greedy hands on the employees’ wages. I know this sounds bad coming from a liberal, but not every business is out to screw its employees over, and, believe it or not, some employees actually think that their wages and benefits are great, without a union “negotiating” for them. That said, I think a union for IU’s Associate Instructors might actually be a good idea.
This activist period in Bloomington has been extremely refreshing, and it mirrors, to some extent, what is going on nationally. The WTO protests in Seattle, which some IU students and Bloomington residents are taking part in, have led to protests in Washington D.C., with 600 people getting arrested Saturday outside the World Bank headquarters.
Regardless of whether you agree with these protesters, they have managed to put on the table a number of topics that previously had been overlooked. When I chat with my friends we are just as likely to talk about the protesters outside Starbucks as we are to talk about the weather. That in and of itself is a remarkable victory for the protesters.
The dynamic marketplace of ideas is hard at work in Bloomington, and we are all better off because of it. Discussion about all of these issues (and non-issues) encourages the democratic process and when really important issues arise, it means that we are more likely to discuss them. I-69 is a good example of an issue more important than Subway’s marketing techniques, which is what the Education for a Sustainable Future was protesting against. I can only assume they don’t like Subway’s exploitation of Jared Fogle, the senior who lost weight using his “Subway Diet.”
The star power of the military
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2000, Newspaper Columns on February 2, 2000
Without a doubt, the U.S. military is in the worst shape in recent memory. Because of the booming economy and skimpy pay for those in uniform, the military is unable to find enough young men and women to protect our nation.
The military solution to this tricky problem: Stars.
No, not the celestial bodies several light years away that populate our night sky, but those celestial beings that populate our movie and television shows.
Tom Cruise, star of 1986’s “Top Gun,” a film about a Navy pilot, has been approached to make a public service announcement according to The Associated Press. Other luminaries include Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg and James Brolin, who, for those ignorant individuals amongst us, are stars on “Pensacola: Wings of Gold.”
Traditionally, celebrities have been used to boost moral for our troops abroad — during World War II when Bob Hope entertained the troops in Europe (or the Korean War, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War). Today, even Christie Brinkley has made the trip to Kosovo to entertain our troops.
This notion to use celebrities as a tool to recruit hasn’t been used recently, if ever. As such, I have a few other suggestions for Defense Secretary William Cohen, who has been recruiting these stars. John Travolta and Christian Slater, co-stars of “Broken Arrow” quickly come to mind. In my humble opinion, Jack Nicholson, as star of “A Few Good Men,” would also make an excellent recruiter.
The problem with using celebrities is that they can have mixed messages. Sure Tom Cruise was a hero in “Top Gun,” a shining example in “A Few Good Men,” but downright awful in “The Firm.”
Obviously this is not the optimal solution to this problem. I would hope a few individuals would decide to join the military because they saw Julia Roberts tell them that serving in the military was cool. I would be worried about any individual who decided to join the military because a celebrity told them it was cool. Imagine what our military would look like if Urkel started recruiting for the military.
But I don’t actually think that celebrity recruiters are going to work, especially if somebody gets around to investigating their military background.
The next best thing is for the military to change its advertising ways. The Army has used “Be all that you can be” for as long as I can remember, and, as a kid, I thought it actually meant, “Eat all that you can eat.” The Navy, Marines and Air Force have similar problems. I’m not sure how to fix the actual advertising problem because they could easily make the job look and sound more glamorous than it really is. That could have some undesirable consequences.
Just wait until Little Johnny signs up and discovers he’s spending the next two years slinging hash for the residents of a military prison, then we’ll have a really happy recruit.
The optimal solution is for Congress to raise the pay for servicemen and servicewomen who stay in the military. That, of course, will be extremely difficult to accomplish considering the Democrats’ unwillingness to support the military and the Republicans’ tightfistedness that stops them from spending money on anything except high-technology gizmos that fail when tested by the military. As such, we are left at an impasse.
Can eight minds think alike?
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 1999, Newspaper Columns on October 27, 1999
In just under a week, I, like thousands of other Bloomington residents, will head to the polls to decide the fate of the Bloomington City Council and the school system. This election has already been one of the most interesting elections I have witnessed in years due to a controversial referendum involving the schools. There is also, within the city, a city council election that has proved to be amusing.
In terms of the city council elections, I have really only given it substantial thought twice: once about a month ago when I had a strange revelation and this past weekend when I had a complete reversal in my thinking.
About a month ago while I was driving across Bloomington from one place to another, it occurred to me that until that point I had only heard from the Republican candidates. At the time I thought to myself that it was really neat. Imagine, a political party being unified enough to get nine candidates to run for office as a block, in the hopes that they would prevail and control city council. They also had given up on the mayor’s office, opting to let the incumbent Democrat retain the seat unchallenged.
Ironically, shortly after I returned home, Pam Service, the incumbent Democrat City Council member from my district (District 6) who is not running for reelection, rang my doorbell and encouraged me to vote for the Democrat running in my council district, thus shattering my brief notion that the Democrats were not going to be visible at all this election season.
I was still impressed enough with the Republicans that I continued to ponder whom I would actually vote for. Neither of the candidates running in my district are so inspired that I feel compelled to run out and vote for them early, nor so dastardly as to have caused me to run out and campaign against them.
I pretty much stopped thinking about the issue until late last week when I viewed the results of a City Council candidate survey in the Bloomington Independent and quickly realized that I was in the presence of something strange and improbable: Eight of the nine Republicans on the City Council ticket answered the questions as a group.
The odds that two people will ever agree on every issue 100 percent of the time is somewhere near zero, even if both people are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians or (even) members of the Reform Party. So if I wasn’t actually witnessing this event, then I must have been witnessing the world’s first eight-headed body that is not completely physically connected. Think of it as a new type of Siamese twin, if you wish.
Naturally, that is improbable as well, so there’s something fishy going on with the Republican side of the City Council ticket. This running as a group thing has gone too far: the last time I witnessed a group of people running together, at least they had the decency to admit that they didn’t completely agree on every subject. Of course, it was a marathon.
It is true that there have been a couple of occasions when the Indiana Daily Student and Herald-Times have cornered the candidates separately and interviewed them separately from the groupthink approach that they as Republicans seem to have undertaken this year. My impression at the time was that the individual candidates acted more like deer caught in headlights than individuals. Of course that held for the Democrats as well: the inane profiles published by the IDS and the H-T are exactly that: inane profiles.
This impressive show of “groupthink” has managed to turn me off. I still do not have any strong opinions one way or another about the two candidates running for office in my district. But since I have strong doubts about the ability of eight men and women to agree on every issue, I am disinclined to believe the Republican ticket’s unified answers to all the questions. Which means that by default, the Republican in my district is facing an uphill battle to get my vote during this last week.
Which presents another problem: I never vote a straight ticket. As such, I have to find at least one non-Democrat to vote for. I can either vote for Michael Schitt, the Libertarian running for City Council At Large, or one of the other two non-party mayoral candidates.
That decision is one I’ll be mulling over between now and Election Day. I hope that those of you registered to vote in Bloomington will do the same and remember to get out to the polls next week as well. It is important that students are involved in the city as residents, not just be visitors passing through.
Oh yes, and about that other vote I’ll be casting: I already know that I support quality education in public schools and I will vote accordingly.