Frank’s Case Book

Oscar Wilde once claimed that “The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal.” No observation could be in greater error. The past provides a context to understand the present and the present is our only opportunity to change the future. This is what makes a recent article in the Washington Post about what Iraqi captives are saying about pre-war Iraq so interesting.

Apparently former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz has been spilling his guts to American interrogators now that the US has removed Aziz’s family from Iraq for protection. Of course, whatever Aziz says now must be carefully weighed against independent sources of information. He may still have reasons to not tell the entire truth. Nonetheless, what Aziz has been saying goes a long way toward helping to understand the thinking of the Iraqi regime before the war.

For example, given Bush’s obvious determination to resort, if necessary, to the military option in dealing with Iraq, why was Iraq not more forthcoming with respect to UN inspectors? Given how difficult it has proven to search out weapons of mass destruction after the war, Saddam Hussein could have averted a war by allowing unfettered inspections and by providing complete documentation of WMD programs. What ever happened to the anthrax that the Hussein regime acknowledged that it had?

One reason may be that Hussein did not take the prospect of military action from the US seriously enough. According to Aziz, the French and the Russians, through back channels, had assured the Iraqis that they could stop an US military action through the UN Security Council. At the same time that the French were assuring American Secretary of State Colin Powell they were serious about holding Iraq to its obligations under UN resolutions, the French were undermining both the UN and the US. We can only wonder how different Iraq may have behaved if instead the French and the Russians had consistently warned Hussein that this time he really had to fully comply with the UN resolutions. How differently would have Hussein acted if he realized that his back was truly against the wall? It is also possible that Hussein was so self-delusional that even if the French had provided better advice, he would have ignored it.

Even on the eve of the war, when US military action was imminent, Hussein was assured his regime could survive. According to Aziz, the French were certain that the US would begin the war, like Gulf War 1991, with a prolonged air campaign. If Hussein could just hold out against the air assault, the French and the Russians could broker a cease fire. Indeed, when the land assault began, Hussein was convinced that it was simply a diversionary tactic and did not commit troops from the north to the defense of Baghdad. It seems that both the US and the Iraqis were ill-served by the French.

It is also unclear from Aziz’s interrogations the quantities of WMD Iraq possessed before the war. However, Aziz did suggest that Hussein was less concerned about the chemical WMD stockpiles because he could always recreate them so long as he maintained the infrastructure to do so. This perspective is lent credence by the fact that laboratories suitable for this have been discovered by David Kay and his team of inspectors. Hussein was intent on acquiring what was, from his perspective, more difficult to obtain than WMD. Hussein wanted long range missiles. He was perhaps negotiating with the North Koreans for the appropriate technology. Kay investigators have found considerable evidence of Hussein’s efforts to obtain long range delivery systems.

Slowly the pieces of the Iraq puzzle are coming together. There are still large gaps. Indeed the unknown gaps in the puzzle are probably larger than the areas that have been fully fully assembled. Incrementally, day-by-day we can expect to learn what was going on in Iraq before the war. Learning about pre-war Iraq puts us one step closer to dealing with the Iraq of the present, an Iraq that is not yet freed from its tyrannical past.

The California recall of Davis and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger may prove to have significant political import. These events may mark the resurgence of a moribund California Republican Party after former Governor Peter Wilson led it to long-term minority status. Alternatively, they may mark only a temporary success for Schwarzenegger and prove that celebrity can prop the prospects of an individual, but it is not sufficient to buttress the structure of a political party. Part of the outcome will depend upon whether improved national economic performance in the next 18 months alleviates California’s particularly acute budget shortfalls. In the short term, we can find some heroes and villains.

Hero Nominee: Susan Estrich. No one can claim that Susan Estrich is not a political partisan. Certainly, as the national head of Governor Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign, she would not assert that claim. Estrich is now a self-described Liberal commentator on Fox News. Moreover, Estrich is a rape victim and this experience has motivated her to lobby for laws protecting rape victims and workplace protections of women. She has specialized in sex discrimination law for years. Estrich had every professional and political motivation to use for political advantage charges against Schwarzenegger for fondling and perhaps assaulting women. Instead, Estrich took the intellectually honest stance of agnosticism with respect to the charges until the evidence was better vetted and anger at the political exploitation of the issue by an obviously partisan Los Angeles Times.

If Schwarzenegger was indeed guilty of being a sexual predator and had perhaps even crossed the line to illegality, such information is a legitimate topic for news coverage. Estrich agrees, but believed that given that the Los Angeles Times had been working on the story for seven weeks, last minute revelations smacked of a political hack job. True or false, Schwarzenegger had no real chance to respond late in the campaign. Estrich explained:

“What this story [the L.A. Times expose] accomplishes is less an attack on Schwarzenegger than a smear on the press. It reaffirms everything that is wrong with the political process. Anonymous chargers from years ago made in the closing days of a campaign undermine fair politics.”

It is theoretically possible that the timing of the charges leveled in the L.A. Times, falling just days before the election, was a coincidence of the investigative process. But given the paper’s editorial stance and the tenor of coverage, that possibility strains credulity.

As it happened, the stench of unfairness wafting up from the L.A. Times articles repulsed those for whom the issue of womanizing might have been dispositive. The L. A. Times was too ham-handed and its last minute revelations backfired. Attack politics lost.

Hypocrite Nominee: California feminist groups. The same feminist groups who overlooked charges of groping and even rape against former president Bill Clinton by women who were willing to be identified, suddenly became indignant about the mostly anonymous charges of sexual harassment against Schwarzenegger. The California chapter of the National Organization of Women fumed against Schwarzenegger, “Your behavior was not playful, it was illegal, it was sexual harassment.”

When questioned about the difference between the behaviors of Clinton and Schwarzenegger, Patricia Foulkkrod of Codepink explained,

“The difference was that Clinton was so brilliant. If Arnold was a brilliant pol and had this thing about inappropriate behavior, we’d figure a way of getting around it. I think it’s to our detriment to go on too much about groping. But it’s our way in. This is really about the GOP trying to take California in 2004 and our trying to stop it.”

In other words, Schwarzenegger’s crime was his party affiliation. It is all about party and not about ideology. If Schwarzenegger had been a Democrat, any poor women who were groped or assaulted could be sacrificed in the higher interests of the sisterhood. Schwarzenegger’s pro-choice position, though he is against partial birth abortion and for parental notification, was not sufficient protection against verbal harangues by NOW and other feminists groups.

It is possible that had the campaign lasted longer, Republicans who had complained how Clinton’s behavior, setting aside for a moment his alleged crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice, might have defended Schwarzenegger out of political expediency. We don’t know. The campaign was too short. The charges were not fully vetted. Indeed, Schwarzenegger’s background might have prevented him from obtaining the Republican nomination had there been a primary. In addition, many of the more Conservative Republicans voted for Tom McClintok not for Schwarzenegger. Hence, the California feminist groups can put the trophy of hypocrisy on their mantel. It will likely be displayed there for at least a few election cycles.

Given they rapidly evolving and seemingly unpredictable recall election in California, it would not be surprising if the election results are close. Ever eager to yank sympathetic courts into the election process, Democrats are already raising funds for a potential legal challenge in California. Perhaps now, before the heat of the post-election recriminations, is a good time to examine the issue of election procedures in general. There are at least three features one would expect from voting procedures. In order of priority they are: auditability, user friendliness, and rapid availability of results.

It should always be possible to recount individual original ballots. The most common way to do this, of course, is to use hand-marked paper ballots that are hand counted. While it may be possible to make such ballots easy to fill out, there will always remain the issue of ballot interpretation. On a hand-completed ballot, some people will invariably select two candidates for the same office and save for the most rabid of Florida Democrats there is no fair way to intuit which candidate the person really intended to vote for. Others will select a single candidate, but make their marks (whether by checking a box or punching a hole in a card) so lightly that frail and sometimes biased human judgment will be required to interpret the ballot.

Some jurisdictions use mechanical voting machines or touch screen computers for balloting. However, most of these systems do not provide individual vote accountability. With voting machines, votes can only be tracked down to the voting machine level. It is difficult to determine if there is tampering and if there is, all the votes for a machine must be discarded. As for touch screen computers, Salon magazine has recently suggested that it is far too easy to hack into such systems and make untraceable changes to vote totals. Even if safeguards are improved, there is no individual vote traceability to confirm a result if a question of machine security arises. One popular system uses Microsoft Access as its database and Microsoft products have never been renowned for their airtight computer security.

On the other hand, mechanical voting machines and computer touch screens can be made very user friendly. The letters can be very large and voters can be warned against and stopped from voting for more than one candidate. Moreover, there is no ambiguity in any particular vote.

Americans are an impatient people and we want are election results now. Of course, a network of touch screen computer system offers the prospect of the most rapid election returns. If security could be guaranteed, networked touch screen computer systems could provide results almost instantaneously.

The following voting system would meet all three requirements we have imposed. First, use touch screen computer systems for their user friendliness and rapid reporting ability. Second, establish a non-partisan computer security authority that would certify the general security of such systems and their networking. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, have each voting machine produce a paper version of each ballot. The paper version would have a time-tagged human readable listing of an individual’s results so that it could be verify by the voter. In addition, this paper ballot would also include a computer readable (perhaps a bar code) listing of a voter’s selections so that votes could be unambiguously recounted in a timely manner. There should never be a need for a recount, but should a recount be ordered, each iteration should produce precisely the same count each time.

Bfore there was the Democratic Leadership Council trying to steer the Democratic Party to the center after twelve years of Republican presidents, it was an era dominated by Democratic Liberals like E. J. Dionne, Jr. This sort of Democrat was at once deeply patriotic and convinced the businesses were too self interested to care much about their workers. Labor unions were a key institution protecting workers. These Liberals came from an era when it was common for a hard working middle class father with a high school education to earn enough money in a union manufacturing job to raise a family.

This era traces itself back to President Franklin Roosevelt and the ordeal of the Great Depression. For Democratic polemists, the era was a comfortable one. They knew who the good guys and bad guys were. The titans of industry and the rich in general needed to be tamed by a powerful labor movement and a federal government properly populated by popular progressives. The comfort of familiar and long-held ideas sometimes is too alluring even after they have long since lost their saliency.

This week, out of respect to Labor Day, Dionne asks, “Do not jobs matter any more?” Dionne is convinced that the ascendancy of supply-side economics has reduced concern over unemployment. After all, Dionne writes sarcastically, “Productivity is growing, which means we’re more efficient.” From a political standpoint, Dionne need not worry. The unemployment rate remains a potent political statistic. Dionne can be certain that political operatives at the White House would very much like to drive that number down as far as possible.

Unfortunately, Dionne writes with a passion and poignancy best reserved for periods of economically crushing unemployment. Of course, for everyone who cannot find a job, the lack of labor demand can mean economic hardship and be acutely disheartening. However, the current rate of 6.3% is modest by historical standards. The mean unemployment rate since the statistic was first computed in 1948 is 5.6% with a standard deviation of 1.6%. This means that about 60% of the time the unemployment rate varies somewhere between 5.0% and 7.2%. The current rate is clearly well within the norm. Moreover, the rate seems to be retreating down from a high of 6.5% during the downturn we are recovering from. Typically, economic downturns find unemployment rates reaching 8% or even higher. The recession of 2000 and its aftermath, mark the shallowest downturn since the 1950s. If 6.5% is as bad as the unemployment rate gets, the economy is doing pretty well. Looking over the pass two decades, even with occasional oscillations associated with the business cycle, there has been a steady decline in unemployment. If unemployment seems to be less of a concern, perhaps it is because it is truly becoming less of a problem.

Dionne is worried about the loss of manufacturing jobs, and implies that supply-siders do not care about such losses. After all, “worrying about manufacturing is so Old Economy.” In a global economy, low skill manufacturing jobs will migrate to low wage countries. If trade barriers are erected to dam this flow, some manufacturing jobs will be saved, though jobs in other parts of the American economy will be lost. In addition, American consumers will suffer and many third-world countries will sink further into poverty. Americans simply cannot maintain their standard of living if the economy is supported primarily by low-skill manufacturing jobs any more than Americans at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution could have rapidly increased their standard of living if the economy remained agrarian.

Dionne represents an example of the new reactionaries, wistfully longing for the economic and political era that has past, much as city workers in the industrial era might have once romanticized about bucolic rural life. If we try to return to such a lost world, future Labor Days would likely find fewer people working. We would become another Europe, suffering from double-digit unemployment, yet secure in our progressive credentials. Nonetheless, it is hard to be angry with Dionne. It is hard to begrudge Dionne’s labor illusions on Labor Day. After Labor Day, he may awake from his stupor.

In the movie The Patriot, Mel Gibson plays a veteran of the French and Indian Wars, Benjamin Martin. The movie begins in the first years of the American Revolution. The South Carolina assembly is debating whether to join the war for independence. Wearied by his war experiences, Martin pleads with the assembly to attempt reconciliation with England yet again. When reminded of King George’s transgressions, Martin snaps back, “Why should I agree to swap one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away?” Actually, a similar remark has been attributed to Byles Mather, an 18th century Loyalist from Boston, but Gibson probably delivered the line better. What is interesting is how strange to a modern American’s ears the phrase rings. How can one enjoy a democracy and suffer a tyranny at the same time?

The United States and most Western democracies have managed to sustain liberal democracies, democracies that not only permit the populace to control the government, but also restrain democratic governments from limiting personal freedoms. It is sometimes hard to imagine that it is also possible to have illiberal democracies where the people are sovereign, but the people choose to use that sovereignty to limit personal freedoms. The idea that personal liberty and democracy can be in tension with one another is the theme of Fareed Zakaria’s new book, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. Americans rightly seek to promote democracies and as a John Kennedy promised “will bear any burden … to assure the survival and success of liberty.” It is incumbent upon us, especially now that we are reluctantly engaged in nation building in Iraq, to consider the consequences of the balance between democracy and freedom.

Zakaria begins by citing a question posed by American Diplomat Richard Holbrooke, “Suppose elections are free and fair and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists… That is the dilemma.” The question is not just theoretical. It is very likely that in some parts of the Middle East, if given a free choice, the people might very well elect to form a theocratic regime, not only hostile to American interests but eager to ignore freedoms of religion, speech, and association to enforce compliance with a certain vision of an Islamic society.

Zakaria traces the history of the notion of individual freedom to Constantine deciding in 324 to move the capital of his empire from Rome to Constantinople, so the empire would be centered nearer the growing centers of trade and wealth. The pope, however, remained in Rome. The move underscored separation of religious and political authority. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of capitalism all helped expand the personal zone of privacy and autonomy at the root of personal liberty.

Zakaria makes the important observation that though democracy and liberty may be compatible and ultimately necessary compliments to one another, democracy may not always prove to be the optimum route to a liberal democracy. A number of democracies that emerged after at the end of colonization, particularly in Africa have regressed into tyrannies that respect neither the sovereignty of the people nor individual liberties. On the other hand a number of formally autocratic regimes Greece, Spain, Portugal, South Korea and have evolved to more democratic and free countries. The question is why.

Zakaria argues, as have others, that wealth is a key component to successful liberal democracies. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi followed the history of every country from 1950 to 1990. They found that per capita income is highly correlated to the longevity of democracies. In countries with a per capita income of $1500 (in current dollars) or less, a democratic government lasts only eight years. Longevity increases with per capita income. The values between $3000 and $6000 appear to define a transition range. The chances of democracy in such a country devolving to tyranny at higher levels of income are small.

The reason that some, though certainly not all, authoritarian countries have succeeded in becoming liberal democracies is that their leadership has allowed the creation of an economic infrastructure of individual autonomy, contracts and independent courts important to wealth creation and free societies. These, in turn, helped to create a middle class, jealous of their personal liberty. A virtuous cycle is created. The wealthier a country is, the less able authoritarian regimes are able to make arbitrary decisions without negative political, and perhaps more importantly, economic impact.

The one important exception to the correlation between wealth and the creation of liberal democracies occurs when the source of the wealth is dominantly a single resource commodity like oil. A country rich in oil can achieve high levels of wealthy without the necessity of creating those institutions that create a middle class and encourage liberty. “Easy money means little economic or political modernization. The unearned income relieves the government of the need to tax its people — and in return provide something to them in the form of accountability, transparency, and even representation.” Saudi Arabia is an important example of this exception.

Zakaria, however, neglects to apply his thesis to Iraq. How wealthy is Iraq? Is there a sufficiently large and educated middle class? What fraction of Iraqi income is tied to oil? A quick check with the CIA World Factbook shows a per capita income of $2400. This is at the low end for successful democracies, but is reflective of the effect of economic sanctions that have since been lifted. Surprisingly, 81% of Iraq’s GDP comes from services. This suggests the presence of a significant middle class. It is disappointing that Zakaria did not investigate the prospects for a successful Iraqi democracy more thoroughly.

Zakaria ends with some important self criticism of the United States that has become prophetic. Arguing that there is such a thing a too much democracy, he points out as an important example the proliferation of referenda and ballot initiatives in California. These initiatives have effectively hamstrung the legislature by both limiting taxes and mandating services making California less governable. The “paradox” is that initiatives and referenda were implemented to reduce the influence of big money over government. However, to pass or defeat a referendum requires money for advertising returning power and influence to those institutions that can afford to economically support initiatives and referenda. Direct democracy increases rather than decreases the influence of money in politics. Zakaria concludes that to maintain both manageable government and insure freedom, what “we need in politics today is not more democracy but less.”

Conservatives are supposed to maintain steady hands on the tiller of the ship of state, maintaining a constant bearing despite the rapidly shifting winds of public sentiment. However, they too sometimes find it easy and temporarily rewarding to float easily along on popular breezes. Rather than being so unseemly excited by the opportunity offered by the potential recall of the unpopular California Governor Gray Davis, they should be soberly assessing the long term damage such recalls can inflict.

The whole idea under girding representative democracy is the assertion that the best governance arises from the deliberation of elected representatives. Proper governance often requires the acquisition of information and the weighing of choices that require more time and effort than most people can devote. People are rightly concerned with their own occupations and caring for the needs of their families. Assent of the governed comes in periodic elections allowing the polity to pass judgment on the effectiveness of their legislators and executives.

Progressives at the beginning of the last century found their agenda stymied by the political machines that often served mostly to enrich those in power. They believed if only there was more direct democracy, their agenda could be implemented. Progressives were responsible for the amending of many state constitutions allowing for referenda so that the people could, in effect, vote for legislation directly. The referendum movement really did not have much of an impact as the political machines began to atrophy.

After 1978, much of this changed. Up until then, referenda in California were not particularly successful. At the end of the 1970s, property values in California were rapidly increasing resulting in a windfall of state revenues. Rather than decreasing rates to offset this infusion of funds, California politicians preferred to increase spending. This increased tax burden walloped homeowners whose incomes did not increase as rapidly as the value of their homes. Elderly homeowners on fixed incomes were particularly hard hit. In this environment the public was angry and, to the surprise of conventional politicians Proposition 13 to limit taxes easily passed.

Despite the salutary effect of that proposition, there was one important unintended consequence: the embrace of ballot initiatives and referenda across the country and particularly in California. Californians have now been asked to legislate on hundreds of issues. The result is the implementation of so many mandates, that the California legislature is hamstrung. According to Fareed Sakaria, 85% of the California spending has been mandated and cannot be controlled by the legislative process. The occasional referendum or ballot initiatives may serve to instill healthy constraints on political leaders, but their routine use undermines the effectiveness of representative government. In what engineers call a “positive feedback loop,” the less effective government is the more appealing simple solutions in the form of referenda appear. The ugly irony is that it would take a referendum to undue the constraints previous referenda have imposed.

Both Conservatives and Liberals have been loath to constrain the use of referenda and initiatives in California. Besides that fact that is easy to caricaturize such a position as anti-democratic, the process allows both Conservatives and Liberals to win occasional victories that would be difficult to achieve within the checks and balances of the legislative process.

Now California promises to give another such gift to the country: recall elections. There seems to be a strong consensus that Governor Davis is doing a dreadful job. Davis can only manage a miserable approval rating of 24%, according to the California Field Poll. In 2006, they will be able to select a new governor that they can hope will be more successful. They should wait until then.

There have been charges that Davis essentially sells state political positions in exchange for campaign contributions. If that can be proved, then he should be impeached. Aside from impeachable activities or some clear severe medical or emotional incapacity, waiting for the normal election cycle remains an important public discipline. The length of a normal campaign allows for a fuller vetting of potential candidates. In California, the recall system is structured such that a candidate that garners only a small plurality can become governor. Can it really be said to serve democracy for a new governor to win with possibly a vote percentage even smaller than Governor Davis’s pathetically low approval rating?

Despite the prospect of a political victory over Davis, Conservatives and Republicans ought to be less than sanguine about disrupting the normal political process and yielding to populist impulses.