greenpass

Incubation schemes

Abby Vigneron over at BOPnews has an interesting article about rearing the next generation of politically aware intellectuals, policy architects and politicoes.

I agree with her that something desperately needs to be done to get younger people involved and educated about politics. Judging from the students I know, the barrier is definitely money. I know it's hard to pay people to do things with politics because there's not all that much cash floating around, but unless there are stipends or salaries offered for internships, our political class will rapidly be composed of well-off kids who don't need the income from a summer job who can afford to do a 3 month research internship at interesting thinktanks for nothing (or possibly a free lunch), or write for The New Republic for $300 a week. Supplementing these will be amateurs who spent their summers working at other jobs while blogging or staying in touch with politics via the Internet or mainstream media, volunteering where they can. The next generation political workforce should be as representative of all walks of life as possible, but the lack of financial support on the left side of the political spectrum is a real problem. (For instance, the National Review would pay me $400/week for 12 weeks in the summer, while Mother Jones could pay me only $100/month). To ask recent college grads to work for these kinds of salaries when tuition is going up and most graduates leave school with crippling loans to pay back is a guarantee that you're not going to have the pick of the next generation, and also ensures that Democratic politicians will be seen as more and more out of touch with the "common man".

The other thing that I noticed (and then read again in this article) is that conservative foundations are not issue-specific. The Heritage Foundation is not specifically anti-abortion or anti-gay or anti-tax or anti-government regulation, it's all of these things and more - it aims to rear generalists, card-carrying conservatives on a whole range of issues. On the left, there are lots of niche environmental groups or homeless groups or women's rights groups but no generic "liberal" training ground. Democracy For America has started one-off training sessions, but as yet has no focused program like the one that Vigneron sketches in her article. They're the most likely candidate for a leadership program, although their focus on grassroots efforts may be a stumbling block.

When someone finally comes up with the money and starts a little incubation program for progressive leaders, tell them to drop me a line. I'm not looking forward to possibly getting horribly lucky and having to choose between sacks of money on Wall Street and $100 a week writing for something I believe in (although I'll probably end up living with my parents and blogging in my underwear.)

UPDATE: Matt Singer alerts us to a scheme in Montana that may be a good model. But see, this is the problem - although it's not issue specific, it's very state specific and as Matt notes, it's entirely volunteer run. This is great but it means that it's necessarily limited to small scale grassroots leadership training focused on state issues. We need something along these lines, but in Washington for young people from all over the US to focus on issues that transcend states and can only be dealt with at a federal level. And unfortunately it also needs enough money to really make a difference on a national scale.

Change from within?

My sophomore year in college, I read "Fast Food Nation" and promptly went through a brief vegan phase. The descriptions of huge lagoons of animal waste, chickens getting de-beaked and cows being milked while held up by slings because the hormones have destroyed their ability to stand up revolted me, and for a while I really couldn't imagine that I would ever put another animal product into my mouth again. If you want to gross yourself out, you can read some excerpts of the book here (interesting tidbit: the WSJ was the only newspaper out of 30 or 40 collated reviews to give this book a "D" rating - everyone else gave an A or high B), or visit Factory Farming to look at pictures and watch the horrible (and funny) "Meatrix".

The idea that there is something terribly wrong with the agricultural and animal husbandry systems in the world at the moment is one that is very appealing to me. Driving through the Carolinas and catching a whiff of the horrible smell of a huge pig waste lagoon was all I needed to proclaim my rejection of the consumption of anything with a central nervous system. We had a chicken as a pet when I was small, and she HATED being in her (very roomy) coop, let alone shut in a cage so small that she would have to be debeaked so as not to harm the other chickens next door. You get the idea.

Anyway, after much temptation from such things as brie, sushi and meatball subs, I started to seriously think about this veganism lark. What were my goals in this utter rejection of animal consumption, I asked myself. Easy - to reduce the pain and suffering of animals caught in the brutal cycle of economies of scale practiced by the likes of Tyco and Purdue. But then I came to the depressing conclusion that as long as people like me failed to discriminate between a free-range egg and a factory-farmed egg, between non rBGH milk and regular milk, and between pesticide laden grapes and organic ones, there was no incentive for these corporations to ever change their spots.

I put great faith in the greed and veniality of corporations to do what's best for their bottom line. If people like me - admittedly a college student, but even I have to eat - buy animal products but make a conscious decision to act as a kind of selective agent against factory farming, then even the most heartless conglomerate cannot fail to realize that it behooves them to serve me, the consumer, with the most pain and cruelty free products it can muster up.

I have this discussion with my boyfriend all the time - he's a vegan for health reasons but also because he says he doesn't know what level of consciousness animals are at, and doesn't want to be a party to anything that could be hurting a sentient being. My argument is that rejection of the system doesn't materially help the animals who are actually involved in this industry, and will never bring about long term change in the way companies do business.

I used this same line of reasoning when I met some friends for drinks the other night. One is running for a local office for the Green Party and the other is her campaign manager. I support her campaign strongly, and if I voted in Cambridge I would do my part to make sure she was elected. However, our mutual sense of feeling left out by the more centrist wing of the Democratic party manifested itself in very different ways - like my boyfriend's veganism, she rejects the Democrats completely, citing their corporate ties and their complicity in many policies seen by many on the far left as utterly appalling (Exhibit 1: Kerry voting for the war on Iraq).

I on the other hand see that as a self-defeating strategy - unlike European parlimentary systems, this country doesn't have the infrastructure for two-party coalition rule against a third party minority. The only people that could alter things like ballot access and governmental systems are those who have benefited and are in power specifically from the status quo, and therefore the idea that a third party will one day turf out either the Dems or the GOP rings a little hollow. In the case of the Democratic party needing to move more to the left, I sincerely believe that change can only come from within. If Carolina ran as a Dem, she might be sharing her party with people she didn't agree with. But her strong liberalism and committment to change would be a huge asset for the Democratic party and would be an infintesimal step forward for the ability of the Dems to more fully represent people like me.

Politics isn't a zero-sum game, with a candidate either fully representing or entirely opposing your personal views. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't work within the system to change it. Activism, whether with your pocket book or with your one little vote, can go a long way, but rejection of the system (attractively rebellious as it might appear) is never a constructive solution.

It's the Kerry and Edwards Show!

(That title works very well with the Itchy and Scratchy jingle. Try it right now.)

Matt Yglesias notes:

(T)he race for the presidency does seem to get orders of magnitude more attention than the others. The convention, in particular, was more like The John Kerry Show, Also Featuring Bill Clinton, Barak Obama, and John Edwards than The Democratic National Convention, Starring John Kerry.

I can't deny this, because it was absolutely true. The level of excitement and the feverish pitch of the cheering built up slowly over the four days, as more and more delegates and media deigned to show up to listen to the speakers. And everything - everything - was, quite understandably, about Kerry in the end.

This shouldn't be surprising. In today's political climate, where the personal touch trumps even the most brilliant speaker or rational mind, and where a politician's choice of tie or birthplace is treated as something to be revered or castigated, we should expect that politicians will be packaged not as decision makers but as stories or narratives. And it's hard to keep track of multiple narratives in all the cringingly gory detail that is often presented in the mainstream media (Kerry eats pb&j on the campaign trail made for him by his personal butler! Edwards' face looks funny when he speaks!). If every single politician was subject to this sort of mythologizing narration, media pipelines everywhere would explode and spew their pointless information sludge all over America. (Perhaps this is what Tom Ridge was referring to when he raised the terror alert.)

So, the media picks and chooses. Of course, the people with interesting stories, like Jack Ryan, get reams of newsprint, but otherwise only the most important candidates are singled out. Tom DeLay may be just as bad as President Bush, just as Obama may have all of Kerry's best characteristics and more. But concentrating on both to the extent that the media has been trained to do would fry the circuits, so to speak.

Unless TV networks decide either to tone down their personal coverage of all politicians equally, this situation must continue or risk confusing or overwhelming voters with far too much trivial information about far too many people. In the same way that too many characters in a film can result in an overall disorientation and probable dislike of the movie, a concentration on too many politicians in the party can also backfire. Most voters just want to know about their local Congressional races, and the Presidency - force-feeding them more than that will always be a losing strategy.

An Observation

I had dinner with an Italian journalist last night, and I must admit we got into a big fight about politics (surprise, surprise). I'll deal more substantively with some of the things he said when it's not so late, but one observation that he made that got me thinking.

In the midst of our discussion he mentioned that "the Democrats were playing the Republican game, it's all Hobbesian." I didn't understand what he meant when we were actually having dinner, but his words stuck in my mind and during a very long car ride today I had a chance to really think about this idea of Republican Hobbesian thought. I think I actually agree with my journalist friend on this point.

To wit: Republicans, or more generally people likely to support Republicans, believe that opponents of the United States are no better than beasts, and they have a desire to do anything that will hurt the United States. The right defense against their reckless and endangering actions is therefore to protect the country, and by extension oneself, as securely as possible - hence the historical Republican emphasis on national security and the military.

Another sort of people, on the other hand, believe that humans are inherently rational, and a reasonable cause can always be found for their actions. These people are more likely to support Democratic candidates.

I can hear you screaming for an example, and I can think of nothing better than the popular reaction to the causes of Sept. 11th. The first sort of people (the Republican leaning ones) immediately jumped on the morals and the "evil" nature of the terrorists - the "they hate us because they're evil" rationale. The second sort jumped on the causes of the action - the "they hate us because the US has done some pretty awful things, and any rational being would hate us too in that situation".

This would seem to be a deep psychological divide between these two outlooks on life. And that makes me rather depressed. A prize to the first person to cheer me up in the comments.