Ch 02: American Citizens & Political Culture (RSS)

Immigration and Presidential Leaking – 4/10/06

Yesterday and today, thousands of Hispanics are marching in major cities around the country to encourage Congress to loosen restrictions on immigration. Members of Congress, however, stalled out last week on their effort to get a bill passed, and have gone home for spring recess. (Robert D. McFadden, Across the U.S., Growing Rallies for Immigration, NYT, 4/10/06.) At issue in the debate over the immigration bill is whether the U.S. should have a guest worker program allowing people form other countries to come here to work, and whether people who have already crossed the border illegally should be given some sort of amnesty. Democrats generally want a more expansive policy making citizenship easier to obtain, Republicans want more restrictive laws, especially when it comes to what they see as condoning illegal immigration.

As Republicans try harder to get the Hispanic vote, this becomes a divisive issue. Moderates or those who are more tactical (President Bush and Arizona Senator and presidential candidate John McCain, for instance) are willing to relax restrictions in order to court that growing voter base, but core conservatives like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist fight hard against it, making it a wedge issue for the party. Agreement right now is made more difficult because Democrats want to deprive Republicans of a victory so that they can point to their inability to get a law passed in the November election.

As we explain in Chapter 2, what is often at stake in immigration issues is the question of what vision of America we hold: crazy salad or melting pot. That is partly what is going on now, but there is also a real reluctance on the part of some conservatives to approve what they see as violations of law and order, and there are clearly also considerations that are less ideological and more political.

The bill being crafted in the Senate was more generous than the harsher House bill but it stalled out at the last minute at the end of last week. There are different takes on the politics involved. The Wall Street Journal says this is due to lack of leadership on the Republican side (Frist) and cunning politics on the part of Democratic leadership (Harry Reid) as Reid seeks to ensure that Republicans do not have an immigration victory to run on. (David Rogers, Dual Display of Politics Delays Senate Vote on Immigration Bill, 4/8/06, subscription required.) The LAT argues that each side is suspicious of the other, leading to deadlock. (Ron Brownstein, Immigration Bill Snared in Web of Suspicion, 4/8/06.)

An enormously interesting segment on All Things Considered on Thursday (National Public Radio) suggested that all the focus on Mexico is misplaced. As relatively highly paid workers at home, Mexicans won’t be the chief beneficiary of a guest worker program but rather Arabs and Asians, which would have the effect of making the U.S. more like Europe, with a large number of poor Islamic immigrants. The commentator, Mark Kirkorian, did a nice job of outlining the economic, assimilation, and security issues that would be likely to follow. (The Guest Worker Idea, A Non-starter in Debate, 4/6/06.)

Meanwhile, Hispanic activists hope to parlay this issue into a coherent civil rights movement (N.C. Aizenman, From Latino’s Rally, Hopes for a Movement, WaPo 4/9/06), hence the coordinated marches today. As we discuss in Ch. 5, characteristics like diversity, low socio-economic status, etc., have kept Hispanics from converting their considerable and growing numbers into political power.

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The second major issue in the news over the weekend is the revelation in the testimony of Lewis Libby that Bush gave Cheney the go-ahead to reveal classified info to counter claims that he sent the U.S. to war on faulty grounds. Bush on record against leakers (see, for one compilation of the administration’s remarks on leaking, andrewsullivan.com) but the White House position now is that it is not leaking if the president does it since he has the power to declassify anything he wants and this was done in the public interest. (Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, White House Does Not Deny Leak Claims, LAT, 4/9/06.)

Critics counter that even if the leaking was not illegal it is hypocritical and unethical to use classified info for political purposes. Although Bush is already low in polls (Richard Morin, Bush’s Job Approval Rating Continues to Swoon, WaPo, 4/10/06), the most stalwart conservatives are not likely to abandon him on this one so it is not clear it will send him down much lower. But as revelations continue to emerge from Libby pretrial process, it will make it hard for the White House to recover its equilibrium and get moving on its agenda. (E.g., Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer, A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story, WaPo, 4/9/06.)

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A few other things worth reading in the Sunday Papers.

The LAT puts leaking into context with a piece on how it is used in Washington – when and how it works. (Richard T. Cooper and Faye Fiore, In Politics, Leaking Stories is a Fine Art,  4/9/06.)

Also, a good summary piece on the Republicans’ falling fortunes. (Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Washington’s First and Last Lesson: Power is Fleeting, NYT 4/9/06.)

posted Monday, April 10, 2006 10:05 AM by cbarbour (Comments Off)

Civil Liberties: Moussaoui's, Al Qaeda's and Ours -- 3/16/06

Good morning, everyone.  Spring Break here at I.U. – hope yours is good wherever it finds you.

A couple of stories to follow this week. 

First, there is the curious story about the FAA lawyer in the Moussaoui sentencing trial. The lawyer, Carla Martin, seems to have single-handedly undermined the federal government’s effort to get the death penalty for 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. In opposition to the expressed orders of the judge in the case that the witnesses should not be exposed to the trial proceedings so that they could not alter their testimony, Martin sent emails to seven witnesses, strategizing about what they were going to say on the stand. (Adam Liptak, Crossing a Fine Line on Witness Coaching, NYT, 3/16/06.) The judge called her behavior “egregious,” and  said that the federal case against Moussaoui had to proceed without the testimony from the witnesses. Prosecutors say this deals their case a death blow, and have asked the judge to reconsider. (Jerry Markon, Prosecutors Scramble to Salvage 9/11 Case After Ruling, WaPo, 3/16/06.)

Since Moussaoui has pled guilty, it is hard to see what the fuss is about here. What is at stake is not whether he gets off free (he won’t) but whether he faces the death penalty or life imprisonment. It will help to understand what is happening here if we apply the procedural/substantive distinction we lay out in Chapters 1 and 2 of KTR (pp. 10-11, 47-48). We explain that often in procedural cultures (like ours) it is more important to ensure that the rules are followed properly than to achieve some particular substantive outcome. We put our faith in procedural due process, to be sure that the rules treat everyone fairly and impartially, and trust that fair results will follow. We could of course say, “Well, we know Moussaoui is guilty, he has confessed after all, so what difference does it make if we ignore this witness tampering at the sentencing stage. What the judge in the case has to grapple with is the fact that because our system guarantees fair rules to everyone, to deny Moussaoui his rights will jeopardize the rights of all of us. If they can be waived for him, they can be waived for anyone.

This issue throws into relief the ongoing scandal of the American treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay. Some have tried to claim that because the stakes are so huge here (preventing a future terrorist attack) or because these prisoners are not on American soil or are not American citizens, that American procedural guarantees do not apply. Others argue that we are bound by the Geneva Convention and by our own standards of morals and decency to protect the human rights of those we take prisoner. Perhaps the most compelling reason against the torture, offered by critics such as Senator John McCain, himself a former prisoner of war of the Vietnamese, is that to treat the captives as we fear they would treat us sinks us to their level and endangers the American democratic ethic which is what we want above all to protect. The online journal Salon.com has excellent in depth coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal and has just put up on its site an archive of 279 photos and 19 videos of the abuse, obtained form the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. (Joan Walsh, The Abu Ghraib Files, salon.com.) 

Take a look at those photos and ask yourself what difference it makes if the United States engages in torture of its prisoners. Is this kind of substantive behavior (treating people as if they are guilty without a trial and taking an “ends justify the means” approach) ever justified? In the Abu Ghraib case, who is responsible for maintaining American standards of behavior – the people on the ground or the people in charge? Does the Abu Ghraib situation shed any like on the judge’s ruling in the Moussaoui trial?

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Other stories to follow this week. President Bush is issuing a document today reaffirming the “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive war that we discuss in Chapter 18 (pp. 811-812). (Peter Baker, Bush to Restate Terror Strategy, WaPo, 3/16/06.) Essentially, the document will recommit the U.S. to the strategy we embarked on with the war against Iraq in 2002. Should that commitment be tempered by any of the events of the last three years?

Finally, take a look at the NYT article about how Republicans are seizing on Senator Russ Feingold’s efforts to censure President Bush over the NSA spying issue. With Bush’s approval ratings at new lows in the polls, Republicans need to rally their base to get them to turn out in the November congressional elections. Declaring that it is necessary to vote Republican in order to hold off censure or even impeachment proceedings gives them a way to excite voters who are frustrated with the previously popular president’s performance since he was reelected. (David D. Kirkpatrick, Call for Censure is Rallying Cry to Bush’s Base, NYT 3/16/06.) Feingold’s efforts have not been met with any marked success – far more senators voted to censure President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal than have stepped forward to support Feingold on this civil liberties issue. Why?

posted Thursday, March 16, 2006 7:39 AM by cbarbour (Comments Off)

Cartoons, Hunting and U.S. Port Security -- 2/22/06

Sorry for the long time between posts. We were traveling and then dealing with a very sick dog.

While a number of events have taken place in the last two weeks, the three that have gotten the most air time by far are the worldwide protests about the Danish printing of cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad, the Cheney hunting accident and, most recently, the hullabaloo over the transfer of the control of six American ports from a British owned company to a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates.

The Danish cartoon story is a complex one, and it doesn’t really have to do with American domestic politics so I won’t cover it in any depth. It’s a good way to understand the concept of political culture we discuss in Chapter 2, however, (especially the clash between procedural societies in the west and more substantive cultures in the Arab world) and it illuminates some of what’s at stake in the melting pot versus crazy salad controversy. It also may help us think about a few issues that arise in Chapter 5 on civil liberties. One is freedom of religion. We see in the chapter (pp. 165-172) how Americans have struggled to find a balance between allowing religious freedom, but not permitting the state to establish or endorse a religion. A variation of that conundrum arises in the Danish cartoon case. Does religious freedom, with the toleration and respect that that implies, require all people to observe the strongly held religious norms and proscriptions of each religion? Another issue is freedom of the press. Does the fact that the press can print what it likes mean there are no limits on what it should print? This may not be a constitutional question, but an ethical one, that is, it raises issues not of what is legal, but of what is right. This ties into a third civil liberties issue that the Danish cartoon story raises – what is the role of self censorship in a democratic world? Revisit the discussion of free speech on campus (pp. 180-181) and ask yourself if there are any parallels between the political correctness issues raised there and the issues being debated with respect to the Danish cartoons.

About Cheney, I want to say only this. What is interesting to me from a political scientist’s perspective is the way the story developed “legs” and refused to go away despite the Vice President’s best efforts to make it do so. Lots of important stories fizzle for lack of public and media interest, and lots of trivial ones stick around forever. How come? The best analyses of this I have seen argue that it is not because what happened was of such earth-shaking importance (except, of course, to the people involved) but rather that it fit so well with the views many people already held about the Vice President, what political scientist Larry Sabato, who has studied the anatomy of such scandals, calls playing into the “subtext.” People already thought that Cheney was secretive and that he set his own rules, so his behavior over the hunting accident only reinforced that. Other than to weaken his own popularity ratings, however, there is probably minimal fallout from what Sabato calls the “feeding frenzy.”

Finally, this morning all the papers are abuzz with Bush’s declaration that he would veto any congressional legislation to halt the deal his administration has made to turn over control of 6 U.S. ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. (David E. Sanger and Eric Lipton, NYT Bush Would Veto Any Bill Halting Dubai Port Deal, 2/22/06.)

Not only Democrats but many Republicans including House Speaker Denny Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist are calling on Bush to stop the deal since they fear it will endanger U.S. security to have our ports out of our control. Bush, who has not yet vetoed a bill (KTR, pp. 334-335) says he will veto one interfering with this deal and argues that Congress and the American people should trust him.

An editorial in the Washington Post (Port Security Humbug, 2/22/06) takes Bush’s side here, pointing out that the ports are already managed by a foreign-owned company (in Great Britain), that the UAE are allies, and that port security is currently and will continue to be controlled by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Nonetheless, Bush is getting clobbered by liberals and conservatives alike on this one, and in that sense he is probably reaping what he has sown. Since 9/11 he has emphasized that national security should take precedence over even such essentials to the American system as civil liberties and checks and balances. His detractors are simply using the same issue frame (a term borrowed from the media chapter, KTR p. 659) that the administration has polished over the years. He has yet to make a convincing case to the public that the port control issue does not present a case of “business as usual” trumping security concerns.

posted Wednesday, February 22, 2006 8:31 AM by cbarbour (Comments Off)

Religious Protests, Congressional Elections, and Presidential Power -- 2/6/06

Good morning. No big events over the weekend but a couple of good pieces to think about.

One, from Sunday's NY Times, (Craig Smith, Adding Newsprint to the Fire, 2/5/06) does a fine job of outlining some of the issues at stake in the demonstrations by Muslims against a Danish newspaper's printing of cartoonists' images of the Prophet Muhammed (Islamic law forbids any imagery of him whatsoever). Consider the issues involved from the point of view of the political culture discussion in Chapter 2 (especially along the procedural/substantive political dimension) and the discussion of religious freedom and toleration in Chapter 5.

This morning's Washington Post has an article about the upcoming congressional elections in November (Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza, Handful of Races May Tip Control of Congress, 2/6/06). While it is way too early to make predictions (and the article doesn’t, in fact, make any) it does do a good job of laying out what are the electoral stakes in the 2006 midterm elections (which seats are vulnerable, what it will take to switch party control in each house, etc.) and putting them into recent historical context. For a close examination of the issues involved in the upcoming elections, (and a spiffy elections map) see CQPolitics.com.

Finally, see the LA Times for a good discussion of what's at stake in Bush's claim to inherent powers to act during wartime as the Senate begins hearings into the latest concrete instance of that claim -- Bush's order authorizing the NSA to eavesdrop on domestic phone calls (David G. Savage, The Power of the President, 2/6/06).  I've posted on the issues involved here, here, and here several times in the last month or so. Remember to refer to the What's at Stake in Chapter 8, and to consider how Bush's views of presidential power affect the checks and balances in the Constitution.

posted Monday, February 06, 2006 8:06 AM by cbarbour (Comments Off)