limitations of the Dean model

Apparently, Gov. Howard Dean’s extraordinary fundraising success

is due to the Internet. In a broadcast email (read

full text here), Mike Weiksner, Chairman of e-thePeople,

writes, "It started out last December when a small cabal of online pundits

started posting supportive commentary about a relatively unknown candidate, Dr.

Howard Dean. These pundits posted their commentary on ‘blogs’." The next

step was Dean’s launch of a campaign website,

which described his positions and requested donations. "Then, www.meetup.com

got involved. Meetup.com hosts informal get-togethers for like-minded individuals,

and offered to help Dean to link supporters together." Finally, MoveOn

held its unofficial online Democratic "primary," which Dean won. Mainly

as a result of these events, he is first in fundraising, having raised $10.1 million

in 2003. He is a leading candidate instead of a protest vote.

Whenever

someone scores a political success by using an unconventional tactic, it is natural

to ask whether the change will last and whether it will benefit or harm the political

system overall. But it is important not to generalize hastily from the first candidate

who uses the new methods. For instance, an insurgent leftist candidate could invent

a tactic that is ultimately used most effectively by mainstream conservatives.

Furthermore, novel tactics may play out very differently once they’ve become routine.

Thus I think we should be cautious about predicting the effects of a new tactic

or technology on the political system over the long haul. But I’ll risk some guesses:

  • Campaigns that successfully exploit peer-to-peer networks and advanced technology

    will have highly educated, youthful, reasonably affluent constituencies. I do

    not know the demographics of Dean supporters, but it stands to reason that young

    urban techies would gravitate to a politician who is socially liberal, fiscally

    conservative, anti-war, and conspicuously educated. ("Dr. Dean," the

    newspapers call him.) It wasn’t Al Sharpton who won the "blog primary."

  • If

    these tactics work, they will benefit independent candidates who have little or

    no institutional base but who take unconventional positions—to the disadvantage

    of organized movements such as unions, churches, and parties. Dean is a quirky

    guy from a small and quirky state; his success contrasts starkly with the troubles

    now facing Rep. Dick Gephardt, an urban midwesterner who gradually built support

    in unions, his state and national party, and Congress. As a general matter, I

    think that average people (those without special skills or capital) desperately

    need such organized institutions to represent them. Therefore, it may not be a

    good thing if someone like Howard Dean can easily beat someone like Dick Gephardt

    by using new technologies. (And I say this as someone who would probably vote

    for Dean over Gephardt on the issues.)

  • These tactics will work best in

    multi-person competitions with small numbers of voters. In such races, a candidate

    can stake out an unusual position, capture a small but energetic constituency,

    and come in first. In contrast, two-person races, especially at the national level,

    require mass mobilization. Blogs and peer-to-peer networks don’t have the necessary

    reach. Imagine that Dean won the Democratic nomination on the strength of the

    Internet. I believe he would be crushed by George Bush, who has a party and other

    organized political movements behind him. In fact, Bush has raised three times

    more than Dean this year, relying on just a few fundraisers. One could argue that

    blogs and peer-to-peer networks will grow until they are truly mass phenomena.

    I doubt it. Their growth will be limited by shortages of education, background

    knowledge, and motivation.

soft support for Iraq

My Maryland colleagues at the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) recently released a national survey concerning Americans’ attitudes toward Iraq. I thought these were the highlights:

62 percent of Americans think that the US government was at least somewhat misleading about weapons of mass destruction. But 58 percent still believe that Saddam had wmd’s before we invaded.

71 percent think that before the war, the US government implied that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

52 percent think that we have found evidence of an Iraq-al Qaeda link, and 23 percent believe that we have found wmd’s in Iraq. The latter figure has fallen, however, since May.

53 percent think that the post-war process is not going well.

80 percent think we have a responsibility to stay in Iraq and reconstruct the country.

It seems to me that if no wmd’s are found, no link to al Qaeda is discovered, and the postwar reconstruction process remains troubled, then public support for the war will likely erode.

strategy issues for civic ed

As I’ve noted before,

people in the civic education world are now seriously discussing a national

campaign to revive "civic ed" in schools. But there are interesting

debates about strategy. It seems to me that people variously believe:

1)

All the action is at the state level, where standards, assessment methods, and

textbooks are chosen. So we have to intervene there, and right away. Any federal

legislation that actually passes will be small potatoes.
2) A new campaign

should focus at the federal level, since others are advocating in the states.

Federal legislation is significant because it can generate national interest and

leverage resources, and it needs to be good.
3) We need a public relations

campaign to get people concerned about civic education and to raise the public

salience of the issue.
4) Public relations is irrelevant, because policymakers

are going to make decisions about standards and assessment too soon to be influenced

by popular opinion. Besides, it would be far too expensive to raise public concern

sufficiently.
5) We need to develop grassroots-level campaigns in favor of

civic education, involving various local stakeholders and young people themselves.

6) We should tailor messages for select decision-makers, especially officials

in state departments of education, stressing ways that they can improve civics

without huge financial costs and without risking lower test scores in reading,

writing, and math.

I have views on these matters (leaning toward 1 and 4,

and 5 and/or 6), but I’m by no means sure that I’m right.

DC blog map

It’s been a bad day for blogging—many long meetings. One meeting

concerned the possibility of creating a blog for the geographical community of

Prince George’s County, with many hand-picked regular contributors who would generate

frequent postings about the local arts scene. In the process of investigating

this idea, a colleague discovered the DC

Metro Blog Map.

have we lost public liberty?

Even living under the USA Patriots Act and in a state of semi-permanent war, I am not worried about what Benjamin Constant called the “liberty of the moderns.” Indeed, after last week’s expansion of privacy rights by the Supreme Court, I think that this form of freedom continues to expand as a result of deep cultural trends. I am, however, concerned about what Constant called the “liberty of the ancients.”

I’m referring to his De la liberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes (1819), in which Constant defines the “liberty of the moderns” as: “for each, the right to be subjected to nothing but laws, to have no possibility of being arrested, detained, executed, or maltreated in any way as a result of the arbitrary will of one or many individuals: It is for each the right to state his opinion, to choose his business and work in it, to dispose of his property, to take advantage of the same; to come and go without obtaining permission, and without explaining his reasons and itinerary. It is, for each, the right to associate with other individuals, whether to confer about their own interests, to profess the religion that he and his associates prefer, or simply to pass days or hours in a manner that fits his inclinations, his fantasies. Finally, it is the right, for each one, to influence the administration of the Government, whether via the nomination of some or all officials, or via representations, petitions, demands that the authority is more or less obligated to take into consideration.

“Compare now the liberty of the ancients. That consists of exercising collectively, but directly, many parts of absolute sovereignty, [and the right] to deliberate, in a public space, about war and peace, to ratify treaties of alliance with foreigners, to vote laws, pronounce decisions, examine the accounts, actions, and management of officials, to compel them to appear before the whole people, to accuse them, to condemn or acquit them.”

[This is my hasty translation; double-check it before you use it.]

It is the liberty of the ancients that appears threatened—that

we seem to hold cheap—when we ignore charges that the Bush Administration

misled American citizens about its reasons for the Iraq war. According to the

New

York Times, Bush aides are not worried about complaints that they lied

or misled the public, “because people understand that the world is better

off without Saddam Hussein.” The world is better off (so far, at least).

However, if the public is willing to be misled, then we citizens have forfeited

our right to exercise our national sovereignty collectively, because we have refused

to “deliberate, in a public space, about war and peace.” To borrow Constant’s

language, it is time for us to “examine the accounts, actions, and management

of officials, to compel them to appear before the whole people, to accuse them,

to condemn or acquit them.” Otherwise, we may be free as individuals, but

we are not a free people.