Republican Hypocrisy and the Proposed Islamic Center →

Fighting jihadist terror and being at war with Islam are, of course, two different things that can remain distinct from each other. The Bush and Obama administrations both went to great efforts to try to make it possible to maintain this distinction. Nonetheless, official statements that the US is not fighting against all of Islam and even the reality that Muslims enjoy more religious freedom in the US than in almost any other country in the world, something which both Presidents Bush and Obama have pointed out while in office, will be very easily overshadowed if this Islamic Center is not allowed to be built now. It has become almost a cliché to point out that the current Republican Party would have rejected Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan for being too liberal, but the debate over the Islamic Center suggests that they would reject George W. Bush on these grounds as well.

Democrats and Democracy in New York →

The Democratic Party in New York, because it really is almost everything to almost everybody, has no ability to enforce party discipline in the senate, or to defeat candidates who do not represent the views of the party. Excessive ideological rigidity is not a great situation either, but without some discipline, parties are almost meaningless.

Caroline Kennedy and the U.S. Senate →

The most commonly used argument against Caroline Kennedy is that she hasn't earned it, which is another way of saying she hasn't worked her way up through the party structures. To this I would raise the question "So What?" Why should any voter care about whether or not a candidate has earned anything? Being appointed to the US Senate is not like receiving a scholarship to college or even a job promotion, although being a senator is a great job. In other words it is not a decision that should be based retrospectively on merit, but prospectively on what that candidate will do in the Senate, and the notion that great senators need to have years of experience in elected office should not be just taken at face value. If Paterson thinks Caroline Kennedy can do the most for New York and for our country than he should appoint her. Obviously, political considerations, a balanced ticket, future electability and the like are all important too, but nobody is saying Kennedy is a bad candidate because she will bring the party down in 2010.

Lincoln Mitchell