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

To: John Carragher who wrote (13304)	10/21/2003 3:54:16 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793711

N.H. voter preparation holds promise for nation By Peter Canellos, Boston Globe Staff, 10/21/2003 MANCHESTER, N.H. -- John Williams moved to New Hampshire four months ago, and already this Holiday Inn clerk has caught the local spirit: He's preparing for next January's presidential primary as if the future of the country rests on it. It's well known that New Hampshire takes its role in the presidential selection process seriously, fighting to maintain its "first in the nation" position. But few outside the state realize what a top-to-bottom commitment the primary is: For a year before the primary, people rush home from work or carve hours out of their weekends to attend speeches and town meetings. The state's many small and midsize newspapers assign teams of reporters to cover politics. Some of the excitement comes from political stargazing. But mostly, it's a pure exercise of civic engagement, with voters, politicians, and the media reinforcing one another's high standards. Williams proudly points out that both the president and vice president have been at the Manchester Holiday Inn this year and that Democrat Howard B. Dean even checked himself in at the front desk. But Williams has boned up on the issues, as well. Of President Bush's doctrine of preemption, he says, "The whole belief behind that seems flawed on a theoretical level." America could use more New Hampshires. In some years, voters can get away with choosing based on loosely defined perceptions. In 2004, they will be delivering a mandate based on President Bush's ambitious policies. That will put them under unusual pressure to understand such basics as how a deficit gets paid (through borrowing) or why some European allies wanted to wait to attack Iraq (to give weapons inspections more time). So far, the national electorate is flunking worse than the lowest-performing school under Bush's No Child Left Behind law. In May, when the hunt for weapons of mass destruction began in the newly liberated Iraq, 34 percent of respondents to a University of Maryland poll declared that such weapons had already been found. A full 22 percent said Iraq used them on US troops this year. No such weapons have been used or found. Last month, a Washington Post poll suggested 69 percent believe that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was probably behind the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Few policy makers have suggested that he was, and even those who did said it was no more than a possibility. It's an unwritten rule in American politics that voters are never wrong. Apparently, that rule is also observed by academics, who go to tortured extremes to blame the media or the president, rather than the voters themselves. In an American Journalism Review article on lingering "Iraq myths," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, suggested that voters were probably recalling how Gulf War Syndrome may have been caused by chemicals when they said Hussein had used chemical weapons in this war. The only problem is: No one has established that Hussein used chemical weapons in the 1991 Gulf War, either. The same article quotes Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offering this excuse for voters' ignorance: "If you're cooking dinner, and the lead story is the weapons of mass destruction search, and then you start the blender," the next thing you hear might be that a US soldier is killed in Iraq. It's likely, he said, that a person might therefore associate American deaths with weapons of mass destruction. In Washington, blaming voters for their lack of comprehension is anathema, except in private conversations with political strategists. They are scrambling to find ways to sell their candidates' positions that are simplistic enough to stick in voters' minds, presumably in the empty place where facts are supposed to be stored. So don't be surprised if the Iraq debate gets reduced to "We made the world safe," versus "We're stuck in a quagmire." Against this trend stands New Hampshire, where tens of thousands of voters have turned off the blender long enough to parse the positions of nine Democrats. Is it unreasonable to assume that voters in other states could do the same? Politicians and the media can help them along. Studies have shown that midsize papers are increasingly cutting political coverage to answer readers' demands for news that reaches them personally, like school lunch menus. But if The Telegraph of Nashua and Concord Monitor can cover politics closely, so can their counterparts in, say, Arizona, which will have a strategically important primary this year. This year, for once, the election could turn on issues more than strategy. Voters need to know what they're choosing. boston.com

To: John Carragher who wrote (13304)	10/22/2003 7:11:06 PM
From: NickSE	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 793711

I'm not sure boycotting oil will change anything in SA or the rest of the ME. The oil would just find its way to another buyer. The solution to reform lies in the ability of the US to engage and challenge the leadership of the ME to transform their societies before they become completely radicalized and end up overthrowing them. ....btw, protests breaking out all over the ME.... Challenge to Saudi leaders with call for more protests news.ft.com A week after a rare protest backed by Saudi dissidents was put down by police in Riyadh, the London-based Islamist opposition group is promising a new challenge by calling on supporters to take to the streets on Thursday in large numbers and in several cities. The demonstrations, designed to call for reforms and the release of prisoners, will be seen as a test of the influence of Islah, the group that surprised many Saudis last week with its ability to mobilise support. Many had not expected the demonstration to take place at all so the attempt to gather became the talk of Riyadh. Though numbers of protesters were difficult to gauge, that some responded to the call reflected a willingness to take bold action in a country where protests are banned - and virtually non-existent - but anger and resentment have been mounting. The Saudi regime sought to play down the scale of the protest and said it had arrested at least 150 people. The country's highest religious authority declared the protesters a "deviant" and marginal group. Yet several political analysts said the crackdown on demonstrators had boosted interest in Islah, which spreads a non-violent message through a radio show captured on satellite television. Callers to the station sometimes give their names their addresses, challenging the authorities to find them. The repression of the protest last week was meant to send a signal that the regime will not tolerate popular expressions of dissent, not least when it is fighting an anti-terror campaign against al-Qaeda cells. Since suspected members of the network in May bombed three residential compounds for expatriates the regime has pursued a harsh crackdown. "They don't think we have people who will demonstrate peacefully and they think that if they open this avenue you never know where it leads," said a member of the country's advisory consultative council. Saudi Arabia has won praise in the west for moving forcefully against al-Qaeda. But a key demand in the demonstration was the release of detainees that are held without trial. Lawyers in Riyadh say the widening crackdown and the lack of fair treatment are deepening anger among Islamist opponents of the regime and threaten to backfire. Analysts said allowing peaceful expression of dissent should be part of the strategy against terrorism. "The government has to get used to this - this is the best way to express yourself rather than resort to violence," said Ali al-Doumaini, a Saudi writer and poet who is active among liberals in the kingdom and disagrees with Islah's Islamist approach. The protest followed another unusual move in the kingdom - last week's announcement of a vote next year to elect half the members of municipal councils. But it also raised questions about how a vote will take place without the ability to organise and mobilise support. "An election has to go hand in hand with giving people the right to speak. Political participation has tools and protests are part of it," said Daoud al-Shiryan, another liberal writer. "The election is going to raise lots of questions, you'll have to have political campaigns."