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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (8282)	9/16/2003 8:30:56 PM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793834

globalspecops.com

To: carranza2 who wrote (8282)	9/17/2003 12:06:07 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793834

James Q Wilson is quite good, been around a very long time, and is a notable academic conservative. He's reasonably honest with the date but frames it from conservative agendas. Conservative here, meaning something to the right of Chuck Hagel and to the left of George Bush. It's an interesting argument much of which is incontestable in terms of the data. One can argue with several items, however. 1. David Brooks, among others, in his NYTimes op ed piece, yesterday noted that there is a very strong counter argument to the argument that the middle of the electorate determines national election results. That argument is that as politics polarizes, the middle shrinks and thus the argument that each side must get its base to the polls grows stronger. 2. Wilson and his co-author focus their work on the left of contemporary Am. politics. Much the same could be written about the right. And that will become particularly salient since Bush has elected to govern from the right. A part of the general election will be about whether his Orwellian strategy will work. The most recent example is the business of calling bills which will obviously increase pollution as environmental bills. 3. Clinton, much to my regret, governed from the center for much of his presidency. The welfare bill is only the most obvious. But I will grant you the argument that he was a past master at stealing the reps issues from them. 4. This article conflates the peace party argument with dem liberals, anti-war with opposition to this invasion, etc. much too much for my tastes. There is a strong component of what anyone would call the liberal base of the Dem party that either opposed the war on pragmatic grounds or opposed it on procedural grounds (failure to get the UNSC on board and thus the alienation of much of global public opinion). Interesting article. Thanks for posting it.