Why was the little dust up between the Clinton and Obama camps the other day such a big story? Isn’t this the kind of thing that usually happens during a presidential campaign? Did we really think that everyone was going to make nice when the stakes were so high?
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Katha Pollitt, writing on TPM Cafe, adds to something I wrote last week about blogs, political campaigns and the world of journalism in the wake of the Edwards/blogger fiasco.
As I said then, the blogosphere is a schizophrenic place, with many bloggers trying to function as political and partisan activists, political journalists and media critics all at once. The problem, however, is that the journalist and critic must remain independent, while the partisan activist is by nature and definition partisan.
These worlds collided in the Edwards campaign when the candidate hired the authors behind two lefty/feminist blogs — Pandagon and Shakespeare’s Sister — that use some salty and extreme language to make their points about the Christian right. The blogs are often sarcastic and bombastic, but funny and provide the kind of hard-headed lefty analysis missing from too many op-ed pages and cable new programs.
The controversy, it would seem, was inevitable from the moment they were brought on board. Edwards, after all, “is running for president, not king of the blogosphere.”
He wants — he needs — the votes of people who have never looked at a blog in their lives, who are deeply religious, culturally staid, and easily offended in about a thousand ways. Would those unemployed mill workers Edwards likes to talk about see Amanda’s “vulgarity” as populist and fun? or as smartypants elitism? How many Catholic undecideds think that joke about the Virgin Mary was funny and/or a sly critique of sexism in the church versus how many see it as rude and insulting, or would think so, after they’d heard it a thousand times thanks to William Donohue? It’s all very well to dismiss as outmoded people who respond poorly to obscenities and dirty jokes about religion. Fact is, there are a lot of them. A candidate would be out of his mind to alienate them over a staffing matter.
That said, the ultimate importance of the controversy was not whether Edwards was strong enough to stand up to the right or whether the campaign dissed the blogs. It is that it highlighted the problems that are likely to crop up more and more as the blogosphere grows and matures, creating more and more tension between its journalist/critic side and its partisan/activist side.
The blogosphere resembles, in many ways, the early days of the newspaper, when they were all partisan and biased and scandalous and read by the kind of people with which the elite wanted nothing to do.
For now, however, I’ll end this with a comment from Pollitt’s TPM post, a bit of advice to bloggers who value their independence:
To me, being a writer and being a political operative are very different things, and ought to remain so. A writer should be free to say what she believes, and the reader should know that the writer has that freedom. That is where the honor of a writer lies.The converse is, you can’t expect a politician, or the voters, to disregard your paper (or electronic) trail. They don’t care about your honor, they just want to get elected.
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If an actuarial report issued today is accurate, the state is in far worse financial shape than anyone appears willing to acknowledge.
The annual actuarial report on the Public Employees Retirement System, the state’s second largest retirement program, shows the total amount of pension benefits for which no money has been salted away soared from $4.5 billion to $7.2 billion as of last June 30.
Filling the gap will cost taxpayers dearly.
According to the report, the state’s contribution in the budget Gov. Jon Corzine is scheduled to unveil tomorrow should be $459 million, compared with the $192 million the current state budget included for the fund.
Local governments, who are paying a total of $218 million into the fund this year, should pay $491 million in their upcoming budgets, the report shows.
The dire news should lend momentum and a sense of moral urgency to the tax reform debate, but is more likely to enflame the current anger directed at public employees over what is seen as extravagant benefits.
There is no doubt that state employees receive top-notch health and retirement plans, along with very generous vacation policies. In the current climate and given the current fiscal mess, it only seems right that employees contribute to the solution with changes in future benefits.
The pension obligation that has been racked up int eh past, however, should not be part of the discussion. It is part of a promise made to state and local employees in past contracts, a moral obligation if you will, and it is incumbent upon every elected official in the state to find a way to ensure that these payments are made.
That’s why tax reform is so crucial. We need to restructure both state and local government to reduce costs and find a better, fairer way to pay for it and one that will be recurring and protected from the kind of politically expedient decisions made by the Whitman and McGreevey administrations to balance their budgets without raising taxes.
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Sometimes the shortest analyses are the best. Bob Rixon deconstructs, in a few words, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s offhanded smear of an unnamed Democratic opponent:
“To underscore a point, some people may be running who tell you we don’t face a real threat from terrorism,” she said. “I’m not one of them. We have serious enemies who want to do us serious harm.”
Rixon’s critique:
That’s a Cheneyism, the vague, off-handed smearish comment that holds up a frame with no photo in it. Hmm, who could she mean? Who’s the mystery idiot?
Clinton, of course, has been a round a while and knows how to play this skunky game — her “vast right-wing conspiracy” comment during her husband’s presidency may have been based in a level of truth, but was a vast overstatement designed to undercut criticism.
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The Lawrence Township Council was supposed to introduce an ordinance tonight that would create a citizens committee that would explore publicly funded local elections in the Mercer County town. The committee would study the issue and make recommendations to the council, who would then decide whether to put a taxpayer-funded plan on the ballot.
It is a committee worth keeping an eye on, given the place that money plays in our electoral process.
As I wrote in an earlier column, campaign cash disparities in towns like Monroe and South Brunswick “amplif(ies) the major parties’ strength in both towns and mak(es) it easier for the major parties to attract donors and more difficult for the GOP — a double-whammy that perpetuates one-party politics.”
And the reliance on private donors distorts the lines of accountability, with money creating access and creating the impression — at the very least — that local politicians are on the take, leaving their decisions in question and diminishing our confidence in government.
Public financing — when combined with other reforms — can help break the link. Let’s see what Lawrence comes up with.
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Hank Kalet 