Avuncular American

Freedom from Fear: Roosevelt, Updated

Prepare yourselves for another great Obama speech, whether he delivers it on Inauguration Day January 20 or at his first State of the Union address - maybe he'll do both.

TIME Magazine, which portrayed the President-Elect in a FDR pose, drew the parallels between Roosevelt's rescue of Depression-era America after Hoover and Obama's hoped-for bailout after the Bush years.  Other than sharing party affiliation and having to clean up after Republican economic meltdowns, Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama were both endowed with a secret weapon - their mighty oratorical skills.

Roosevelt's first inauguration speech - "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" - was so apt for the moment and so full of memorable lines that I recommend that you read it (you can also listen to an excerpt) on the "History Matters" website.  Oh, and if you are frustrated (and fearful) that you've had to wait until January 20 to say goodbye to Bush, remember that Roosevelt only took over from Hoover on March 4, 1933 - a full four months after the 1932 election.

Read today's Paul Krugman Op-Ed in the New York Times and you'll see that the Nobel laureate is concerned about the D-word.  Krugman fears a downward spiral where "businesses and consumers start to base their spending plans on the expectation of a permanently depressed economy."  Fear begets fear.

Oratory, of course, is just a vehicle, and in the wrong hands - Hitler comes to mind - can become demagoguery.  But skilled oration of the kind that Obama practices, like Roosevelt's stirring words in the depths of the Depression, can get people to focus on the solutions, now that the problems are associated with the bad old days of Dick and Dubya.

January 6 marks the anniversary of another memorable Roosevelt speech, which he gave in 1941, when the United States was still at peace.  It became known as the "Four Freedoms" speech (see 1946 stamp issued in Roosevelt's honor after his death in office).  Returning to a familiar theme, Roosevelt's Fourth Freedom was "freedom from fear."  FDR identified Axis use of "a new one-way international law, which lacks mutuality in its observance."  Sound familiar?

Franklin Roosevelt knew, and Paul Krugman and Barack Obama know the deadening power of fear.  Fear has been one of the tools of the Bush Administration.  Fear can be used to convince people what they should be against; it is much less useful a tool to solve problems, and is useless if you want to harness good will and make it work for the commonweal.

Roosevelt gets the last word (Inauguration, 1933)

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

Financial-Judicial-Governmental Crisis: Belgium's Vacuum

Last summer I wrote of "Belgium's Lost Year," marking twelve months of political confusion after inconclusive national elections in June 2007.  Now that the very tenuous government formed by Yves Leterme has submitted its resignation (its fourth), the country will apparently spend Christmas and New Year's consumed with the never-ending political drama.  Or perhaps not.  Crisis or not, there are feasts to be consumed and parties to be thrown.  And politics really is the last thing that Belgium needs more of.

The proximate cause of Leterme's fall is government interference in the judicial process over the resolution of the Fortis Bank crisis, violating the separation of power.  But Leterme's fall could also be seen as the first governmental casualty in the worldwide financial crisis.  It is his government's eagerness to get its way in the bailout of Fortis that led to tinkering with the judicial process.

Belgium's Leterme and his coalition government may be the first direct political casualties of the financial crisis, but indirectly, we know that John McCain paid the price for being in the same party as George W. Bush.  The financial crisis, metastasizing into an economic crisis, may claim other governments before it is over.

At the very time that the private sector is increasingly dependent on bailouts from governments, public coffers are denied tax income from a constricting private sector.  Where is the bailout money going to come from when governments like those in Belgium and the U.S. run out of money?  The printing press?  China?  But then who gets to bail out China when its industry feels the pinch from shrunken Western demand?

Belgium usually muddles through, and the King will have his work cut out for him to deal with this latest resignation.  He refused to accept Leterme's previous ones, though, as wags have noted, the PM's political lives are dwindling.  Even cats have only nine lives.

With this, I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, and survival in 2009.  It will be a good New Year, because it won't be 2008 any longer.  I'll be in places with intermittent internet connections over the next ten days or so, so please stand by for full Avuncular production in 2009.

Gotta Change: The American Way to High Office

Short of the Blagojevich Reform Revolution (in addition to wanting an ambassadorship or some other plum post, he actually promised to “change fundamentally the way campaign dollars are raised in the state of Illinois”), it would really just help to recognize that the function of Personnel is a largely professional, as opposed to political, function.

Two articles this week point us in the right direction, and both touch on the staffing of the State Department.  I don't mean the Foreign Service, which has a highly competitive, non-partisan process for entry.

No, it's the spoils system of political appointments, which, as Pat Kushlis reminds us in Whirled View, has resulted in "burrowers" left behind by the Bush Administration in the future Hillary Clinton State Department:

Does she realize how shrunken the State Department has become and will she be willing to spend the capital to turn the situation around? Does she understand how demoralized its professional staff is?

How does she plan to handle that new category of employees created by the Bush administration called Schedule B – created to place W loyalists in positions they can hold onto for life – unless the individual position itself is abolished in its entirety? Talk about W’s Trojan Horses and the expansion of the political spoils system, once again, at the expense of professionalism.

We're not talking about the usual Ambassadorial political appointees, who must submit their resignations as a matter of course whenever there is a change of President.  No, these burrowers are, as Pat says, "Trojan Horses" who try their best to blend into the woodwork and pretend they are career civil servants.

And for a look at how the Bush White House Office of Presidential Personnel dealt with sensitive appointments to foreign affairs positions, here's Thomas Sweich in yesterday's New York Times:

[The] interviewer was part of a large corps of 20-somethings — some were in their early 30s — who ran the Office of Presidential Personnel. Many of them were sons or daughters of supporters of President George W. Bush. Others had connections through congressmen. With few exceptions, they had one thing in common: very little experience and a very big attitude.

Another top foreign service officer called me after his interview to be ambassador to a volatile African country. “The problem was,” he told me, “the kid interviewing me could not pronounce the name of the country I was being interviewed for. It made for an awkward interview until he just started saying ‘the country we are considering you for.’”

We've seen this before: it was the Green Zone Way, the CPA career path, from RNC to Baghdad.  Those 20-somethings who had the right attitude on abortion, and no experience in the Middle East.

The Obama Transition team has so much on its plate, and there are those 300,000 applicants for a couple of thousand jobs.  But as it sifts through the CVs, I suggest they heed Sweich's cautionary tale, and bring a bit of adult supervision back to government.

African Reputations: Ghana & Zimbabwe

There was never a better time to prove the point - Governor Palin, are you paying attention? - that Africa is a continent and not a country.  The news coming from two widely separated corners shows the contrast:

Ghana: the country's fifth democratic, contested presidential elections are taking place today, and the country is debating how best to manage an oil bonanza due to start in the next two years

Zimbabwe: starvation has exacerbated the cholera epidemic, which is added to the endemic hyper-inflation and political violence.  Now even some African leaders are calling for armed international intervention to save the country from Robert Mugabe's calamitous rule.

If you are looking for the latest information on Ghana's elections, check this wonderful page from the BBC World Service, which provides audio and text background and results starting 1830 GMT on Sunday.  For local flavor and minute-by-minute updates, read "Think Ghana" and its Decision '08 blog, by three enterprising young Ghanaians.

Personally, I want Ghana's winning streak to continue, for it is a very impressive country.  Airports tell you something about a country, and Accra's international airport is clean and calm - extremely reassuring in a region where air travel is sporadically deadly.  Ghana - even before the discovery of oil - was fast on its way to becoming a regional center; French is increasingly overheard, thanks to francophone businessmen seeking a safe place to do business near sometimes war torn Ivory Coast.

But it was not always so.  I returned from a series of trips to Ghana a couple of years ago, and was enthusing about the country's progress with a friend who had served in the Peace Corps in the French-speaking Sahel in the Eighties.  She was surprised at the change from her time in the region, as Ghana's reputation then was one of military coups, corruption, instability, and firing squads.  Today, an interested visitor might see the seaside firing ranges that the very professional Ghanaian Army now only uses for target practice.  In 1979, that's where they carried out the execution of the losers in a military coup.

This oscillation in the reputation of African countries is nowhere more evident than in Zimbabwe, which was known as the "jewel of Africa" in better days.  Before its 231 million percent annual inflation rate and $200 million Zimbabwe Dollar note (AFP photo at left from yesterday is already outdated).  For an idea of the extent of the paradise that was lost, read "How To Kill a Country" in the December 2003 Atlantic by (current Obama State Department Transition Team adviser) Samantha Power:

The country's economy in 1997 was the fastest growing in all of Africa; now it is the fastest shrinking. A onetime net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco, roses, and sugarcane now exports only its educated professionals, who are fleeing by the tens of thousands. Although Zimbabwe has some of the richest farmland in Africa, children with distended bellies have begun arriving at school looking like miniature pregnant women. How could the breadbasket of Africa have deteriorated so quickly into the continent's basket case? The answer is Robert Mugabe... who by his actions has compiled something of a "how-to" manual for national destruction.

Dr. Power likely thought that five years ago Zimbabwe had reached its nadir; today it's impossible to say just how much lower the country can go.  And unless Mugabe himself contracts the rampant cholera, it's hard to imagine what - short of his army turning on him - can put an end to the misery.

"Nation branding," or the cultivation of a country's reputation, requires more than a marketing effort for African countries.  No PR campaign on CNN International or BBC World can erase the total failure of governance and the evident misery of Zimbabwe's population.  But Ghana, which returned from the precipice of failed statehood, offers hope to a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.  The question is: what will be left to govern?

Thankful and Hopeful

Just a short word to wish Americans and those who celebrate with them a happy Thanksgiving Day.

Thanks to the sacrifice (literal) of millions of turkeys, Americans will be reminded of the early days when their cold, hungry and needy forebears were introduced to the delicacy by the First Americans.  Well, maybe not the cold part: we now know that the first "Thanksgiving" by Europeans in America was French, and was celebrated in Florida.

President-Elect Obama brought his family yesterday to a Chicago food distribution center, where he noted that the number of people showing up for food has increased 33% this year.  The slide show and video in this Huffington Post article are worth watching - check the look of pure joy on the faces of the little kids lining up to touch Obama, and the handwritten sign in the school window "We love our Prez."

It's good that Obama took his daughters there "to learn the importance of how fortunate they are, and to make sure they're giving back."  Good that he's putting the accent on the original sharing part of Thanksgiving, in these times when millions of Americans are spending first Thanksgiving in homeless shelters, or camping out with the in laws ... or God knows where after losing their homes.

Next year, he will have to perform the usual Presidential charade of pardoning a turkey.  It's almost certain that he will visit the remaining troops in Iraq, or perhaps the reinforced contingent in Afghanistan.  Hopefully, this time next year, things will be looking better for Americans - and all the others touched by the economic crisis Made-in-USA - after 11 months of an Obama Administration.

And thankfully, we have that to look forward to.

(photo source: Politics & Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C.)

Obama - Left, Right, or Centrist?

Apologies to KCRW's radio program "Left, Right & Center," but the question has been on the minds of our European friends since November 4: where does Barack Obama fit on the ideological spectrum?

On a Belgian TV talk show last Sunday, I tried to put him in The Center.  Partly it was because there were both free market and socialist party representatives on the panel, both vying for the "we're closest to Obama" seat by categorizing him as either right or left of center.

The Socialist - a former minister who knows European trade union socialism and who would laugh at McCain-Palin attempts to paint Obama as a socialist or even a Marxist - knows that in the American firmament, the Democratic Party is about as left as it goes in the American mainstream.  And that's not left enough for him.

The "liberal" official (in Europe, "liberal" translates best as "free market") was comforted by President-elect Obama's inclusion of lots of Wall Street financiers and assorted capitalists in his team of economic advisers, on display at his first press conference a few days prior.  He too would snicker at the notion of Obama-as-Socialist.

Bill Clinton, in his rousing speech for Barack Obama in Florida days before the election, poured scorn on Republican attempts to create a "redistributionist" myth:

They just presided over the biggest redistribution of wealth upward since the 1920s and we all know how that ended. In the last eight years 90 percent of the gains went to 10 percent of the people over 40 percent to one percent. Can you run a great democracy that way? I don't think so. So don't tell me about redistribution.

But on TV last week, I insisted on situating Obama in the Center mainly because my Republican colleague was still fighting the election (we'd been in campaign debate mode so long it's no surprise that he had trouble adjusting to the new reality).  Here are my sound bites:

• The Republicans, especially in the Bush era, brought America so far to the Right that now we have to tack Left to bring the ship of state back to the Center;
• When you're looking from extreme Right field, even the Center is to your Left.

These might sound cute rendered into French for TV or radio audiences, but do they describe the Obama reality?  I consulted my wise Democrats Abroad Belgium colleague and fellow blogger, JP Bernbach, and tried out my "Centrist," even "Moderate" labels.  To which JP replied, "Barack Obama is above all a Pragmatist."

Which I like, I must say.  Americans are not really used to Left and Right, to the everlasting frustration of many on either wing.  Many Americans despair over the supposed sameness (which I don't really buy) of Republican and Democratic Parties, and many foreigners have to search hard to situate the two main US parties on the political spectrum.  A pragmatist, if that's what Obama is, searches for solutions to problems, and is less concerned with who has crafted the strategy than "can it work?"

Over the next weeks, the fight for Barack Obama's soul - well, maybe just his ear - will continue apace, between those who want him to hew a basically minimalist, business-as-usual course and those who want him to seize the historic moment and craft a new New Deal, 21st century-style.

So depending on your vantage point - from the Left, from the Right, or from overseas - when pondering how the future US president will govern, it should be comforting to most that he will do so from a "what works?" mind set.  After years of ideological governance, principled pragmatism looks like a beautiful thing.

Avuncular American's First Anniversary

With all the excitement over the elections in the States, I almost let the anniversary of my first year of blogging slip by.  Looking back at my first posts in November 2007, I see that I wrote a good deal more about Iraq than I have done recently (that is likely to change once Barack Obama is inaugurated).  There were several posts on the complicated Belgian political situation, which though it has calmed somewhat, remains complicated and never-ending.  It's the national sport.

One topic - torture, as in US practice of - is one that I would much prefer never having had to write about.  If today's article by Mark Benjamin in Salon is right - "Obama's Plans For Probing Bush Torture" - we may all be learning more about the truth behind Bush's assertion that "This government does not torture people."  In the past year of blogging, I've noticed that whenever I do a post about torture, much of my readership seems to fade away.  Denial?

During this strange post-election, lame duck, transition, phony war period, there will be plenty to write about.  Like many others who supported the candidacy of Barack Obama, I will be scrutinizing the news coming out of Transition HQ, to make sure that realpolitik does not trump the wishes of real people who elected the next president.

But the advent of a new, popularly elected administration, one which has to undo so much that harmed the very foundations of the United States, should account for a slight change of tone in the months ahead.  After all, "avuncular" is in my URL: "In the manner of an uncle, pertaining to an uncle, hence, kind, genial, benevolent or tolerant" according to Wiktionary.

I think Barack Obama should bring out the avuncular in me.

Obama and the Vote of New Americans

In the US, legal immigrants can, after a waiting period of 5 years, apply for "naturalization" to become US citizens.  Like the people at left (photo source: US Citizenship and Immigration Services), they take the oath and become citizens like their neighbors born in the United States.  But do they vote like their native-born fellow citizens?

Think of the choice this year: Senator Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan and a Kansan, first generation American who looks like, well, many of the people taking the oath, versus Senator John McCain, third generation military brat.  Beyond complexion, you have compelling stories: former POW in Vietnam versus son of single mother raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, with family members as far afield as Kenya.  With increasing numbers of hyphenated-Americans, Obama's story is very familiar.  In California alone, close to 300,000 people were sworn in this year.

Much has been said about how Barack Obama's stunning victory has been due to the black vote, the youth vote, the women's vote - all undoubtedly true.  But when the tallies are finalized and broken down, I'd be very interested in seeing the analysis of the vote of new Americans.  Naturalized Americans, along with Latino and Asian voters, have been estimated at some 15 million by the Center for Community Change.

"Change" means many things to many people, but to these new Americans from places as far apart as Azerbaijan and Zambia, Barack Obama's election is the best illustration of the hope that America still represents to the world. 

90 Years After Armistice, Europe Ponders "Force Noire"

Only a week ago, Americans by the millions were lining up to elect Barack Obama President of the United States.  Naturally, Europeans have been searching their souls ever since, asking if they too would be able to elect one of their millions of citizens of color to the highest office.  So today, 11 November 2008, 90 years after the Armistice that ended the First World War, my focus is on the millions of Commonwealth, Congolese, and French African soldiers who fought for their respective British, Belgian, and French colonial powers.

In Brussels, with its large Congolese community, today's gathering at "Riga Square Afrique" (poster on left) was symbolic: there is no "monument to the unknown Congolese soldier," though there probably should be.  Not only did soldiers from Belgium's largest African colony serve in both world wars, but Congo's huge mineral wealth (copper for shells and bullets, rubber for tires, etc.) served the Allied war effort.

Today we went to northern France, where hundreds of Muslim soldiers from regiments with romantic Beau Geste names like Tirailleurs Algériens and Régiment Mixte de Zouaves et Tirailleurs are buried in a hilltop cemetery at Notre Dame de Lorette, along with close to 40,000 of their Christian and Jewish comrades.  Why Notre Dame de Lorette?  We wanted to see this massive cemetery, where in April 2008 vandals had desecrated the Muslim soldiers' graves.  Thankfully, they have been restored to their pristine simplicity.  The inscription at right (click to enlarge) reads "Mohamed.  Mort pour la France."

For years, the contributions of soldiers from Europe's colonies had been, if not forgotten, relegated to annual commemorations like 11 November, when dwindling numbers of citizens visited the monuments of wars fought by their fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers ... the links are becoming more tenuous.  For the Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian veterans of World War II, it took the Cannes success of French-Algerian film Indigènes ("Days of Glory") in 2006 to shame then-French President Jacques Chirac into extending benefits theretofore reserved for "Metropolitan" veterans.

It was always easier to honor the "colonials" (the "white" dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, as well as those "cousins" from US) for their sacrifices for Mother Europe in the Great War and in World War II.  Today we also took in Vimy Ridge (click on photo below), hallowed Canadian soil overlooking France's coal mining basin near Arras.

Vimy is an amazing site, and generations of Canadians have flocked there to pay homage to their fallen, each one of whom is honored with a tree planted in the pock-marked soil.  There is also a discreet monument near the entrance to the Moroccan Division's dead.  As if to illustrate the magnet that it was for the disparate elements who came to France's defense, the Moroccan monument has plaques honoring Jewish, Armenian, Czech, Swedish volunteers.

Though their numbers were relatively small in the overall Great War scheme of things, France's black African troops - especially the Tirailleurs Senegalais - were considered shock troops, called by General Charles Mangin "la Force Noire."  Francophones might enjoy listening to a special radio broadcast from earlier today on France Inter on General Mangin and the use of black troops in World War One (I suggest skipping the first 15 minutes on the MP3 link, but the rest of the hour-long program has a very good discussion between two historians).  In which "cannon fodder" for some was simply, for Mangin and others, Africa's chance to repay France for having enjoyed the benefits of colonization.

In a way, it's unfortunate that the U.S. has transformed its commemoration of Armistice Day into Veterans Day, thereby losing the direct connection with the First World War (after all, we have Memorial Day in May for generic war remembrance).  For many African-Americans, WW I was transformational too: some 350,000 served in uniform, and many stayed on in Europe after the war, escaping from the still-virulent racism back home.

But whether in the US or Europe, much has changed since the days when

"Negroes or people of colour must not exercise any actual command or power"

... according to British Army manuals.  The BBC recently screened a documentary on Walter Tull, the first British officer of color, killed on the Somme in the Great War.

Today, "Force Noire" means much more than the capacity of black soldiers to scare the living daylights out of the Germans on the other side of No Man's Land.  We already have a French junior minister, Rama Yade, toying with the notion of becoming a "French Obama."  If black, Arab, and Muslim soldiers could shed their blood for their colonial masters, then it's perhaps more than overdue for their great grandchildren to get the votes of their fellow citizens.  Oui, on peut.

Enfranchising Americans: Yes, We Can Do Much Better

The joy throughout the United States and much of the world (with the exception, perhaps, of the Kremlin and parts of North Waziristan) at the election of Barack Obama was accompanied by this: relief.  Relief that Sarah Palin would not have to get trained on use of the nuclear codes.  Relief that voters clearly gave the Republican Party a collective boot after eight years of disastrous rule.  And relief that despite widespread lack of confidence in the machinery of US elections, a Democrat was able to rally a large enough turnout to make it to the White House.

President-Elect Barack Obama's victory - and that of House and Senate Democrats riding his "coattails" - was impressive, there is no doubt about it.  But how much bigger could it have been?  With a turnout of 62.8%, how many of the 37.2% who did not vote did so because they were simply lazy, completely apolitical, or were turned off by the choices on hand?  And how many of the tens of millions of non-voters would have voted, had they not been discouraged or disenfranchised?

Consider:

• At least 5.3 million citizens with felony convictions (with the exception of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens) lost their vote.  According to Demos, "The United States is the only democracy in the world that takes the vote away from citizens who have completed their sentences."
• In states like Indiana, where voters must produce a driver's license, 673,926 or 14.7% of the potential electorate have no license.  Though Obama won Indiana by 0.9% (some 25,000 votes), how much wider could his margin have been had this requirement not been in effect?  See Andrew Hacker's discussion of the 2005 law's "disparate racial impact" in his New York Review of Books article, "Obama: The Price of Being Black."
• Sheer confusion.  From London's Daily Mail on November 5: Some became so tired of waiting that they simply gave up and went home, while others left because they had to return to work or to care for their families. For many who reached the ballot box, the process of voting was so bewildering that they took an eternity to make their choice from a hefty ballot sheet that included votes for, as well as the president, congressional lawmakers, local officials and a myriad of legislative proposals.
  
• Sheer confusion, cont'd: Alternet has a minute-by-minute nationwide catalog of voting snafus, which they updated as voting continued into the night of November 4.

Right to vote, "convenience voting," or obligation to vote?

A couple of days before the election, I received from John McCain an email starting off "My friend" (it's a long story, but somebody put me on his mailing list, and it was impossible to take myself off).  Anyway, Senator McCain said this: "I ask that you never forget that much has been sacrificed to protect our right to vote."

The sentence is in bold letters in his email, so it must be important to him.  But does Senator McCain's party share his commitment to Americans' right to vote?  The contrary appears to be true.

Think of the Bush Administration's politically-driven Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales.  Wrote Scott Horton, prophetically, in Harper's September 2007:

The G.O.P./DOJ plan is simple: the fewer voters the better. In particular they would like to see voter rolls purged where Democratic registration is strong and Republican registration is weak. This process will eliminate some duplicate or improper registrations. It will also disenfranchise thousands of legitimate, properly registered voters who will show up on Election Day to vote and discover that their names no longer appear on the rolls. And a disproportionate portion of these voters will be Black, Latino, or residents of precincts which have a suspicious habit of supporting Democrats. The G.O.P./DOJ view is apparently that these voters are the enemy.

"The enemy."  If they mean that the majority of Americans - if they were truly encouraged to vote and allowed to vote - would vote Democratic, then maybe the GOP is right to consider "the real America" enemy territory.  That's why voter registration efforts are often condemned as leading to "voter fraud," and why voter suppression efforts are almost always linked to the Republican Party.  Check the nonprofit research group Issue Lab for a series of reports on how voter suppression has become the modus operandi of the Republican Party.

This basic dichotomy in American democracy - "Voters: the more the better" vs. "Voters: but only those you can trust to vote your way" - plays out in so many different ways at the local level (the nation's 3,000 plus counties who get to set the rules and establish the voting systems in their jurisdiction).

Eric Black, writing recently in MinnPost and quoting Curtis Gans of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate (CSAE), questioned the efficacy of "convenience voting systems" in increasing voter turnout. Gans slightly underestimated the turnout for last Tuesday's election, but his analysis of the impact of convenience voting ("no-excuse absentee voting," early voting, and "Same Day Registration") is worth consideration as we look to increasing voter turnout beyond the respectable - but not historically high - 2008 figures.

For my money, I like recent proposals floated in the blogosphere by Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, and Rick Hasen.  Federalize Federal elections, put registration in the hands of the government, and issue Federal I.D. cards.  And I would add: making voting mandatory, like it is in many European democracies, and scheduling election day on a weekend, not Tuesday, when millions of employees dare not take any time off for their civic duty.

I had to beg to get my ballot this year, and I'm not even sure my vote was recorded.  I would gladly surrender the right to have my registration transferred out of the hands of Broward County Florida, which, after hanging chads of 2000, missing absentee ballots of 2002, managed this year to jeopardize 60,000 absentee ballots by labeling the outer envelope with the voter's party affiliation.  As the local rag put it:  this was "the election equivalent of a “Kick Me” sign that some mischievous kid tapes to your back."  Jesus wept.

Give Presidential elections to the Feds.  They're too important to entrust to the locals.

(free Obama "Yes We Did" sticker: MoveOn.org)