I Hate To Break This To You Texas, But Secession Isn’t Cost-Free

November 13, 2012 § Leave a comment

The last seven days are making my blogging hobby a lot easier, since between the election and the ensuing nuttiness, I am getting to throw out stuff that I routinely use when teaching political science classes. Today’s post is prompted by the news that a growing number of citizens are seeking to secede from the United States following President Obama’s reelection. Leading the charge is Texas, which is not surprising given Governor Rick Perry’s previous threats to secede. The White House has a policy of issuing an official response to any petition on its website garnering over 25,000 signatures, and the secession petition from Texas is at 35,000 and counting, meaning that the Obama administration is actually going to have waste its time and respond to this ludicrous request.

The would-be secessionists claim that because Texas “maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union,” which is an interesting statement to make. It represents a peculiar strain of thought arguing that there is very little use for the federal government and that the states making up the U.S. somehow operate in a vacuum, as if Texas’s balanced budget and large economy are self-sustaining enterprises that are not enhanced by having a centralized national government. When I read this petition, I couldn’t help but think of an exercise that I do with students when lecturing about the role of the state, which is to ask them how many times a day they interact with the government. Most students get the obvious ones, like taxes that get taken out of paychecks or seeing police patrolling the streets, but when it comes to the federal government, it goes much deeper than that. This will be obvious to many people, but it bears thinking about since an alarming number of Americans seem to think that their individual states have the capacity to be completely autonomous entities.

Everyone in this country enjoys benefits conferred from the federal government literally hundreds of times each day. I’ll take my morning as an illustrative example. I wake up every day around 6:15, and the reason I know this to be a fact rather than a random guess is because the federal government sets and maintains the official time in this country according to an atomic clock run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. When I brush my teeth and shower with clean water rather than sludge, it is because the federal government has taken upon itself to ensure that Americans have clean water. I once spent a summer in rural Ukraine, and I assure you that clean water coming out of faucets is not something that just happens. When I get breakfast for my kids and they don’t get violently ill, it’s because the federal government is in charge of food safety regulations and inspections. If I lived in China I might not be so lucky, particularly given that my daughter and I both put milk into our morning cereal and my son occasionally drinks infant formula during the day. You know what the best part of my morning is though? The fact that I don’t have foreign soldiers parachuting down from the sky Red Dawn-style and that I don’t have to worry about a missile taking out my house, because the federal government has kindly assumed the task of national defense, which is a public good that would be prohibitively costly for individual states to provide. I could go on, but you get the point.

The secessionist malcontents bragging about Texas’s balanced budget and large economy would instantly be bankrupted if they had to raise their own army, patrol their own border, maintain their own fleet of tanks and fighter jets and naval vessels, and conduct their own diplomacy with foreign countries. Keeping time isn’t such a big deal, but clean water, food safety, and hundreds of other similar things would quickly bury Texas under the weight of its commitments. There is a reason that the federal government assumes responsibility for this stuff, and it’s not because it has a desire to snuff out liberty or enslaves its citizens. I get it – a lot of people thought Mitt Romney was going to win, and now that he didn’t they are kind of bummed. But guess what? In a democracy, when the candidate you supported loses an election, you go home and hope that the next election goes your way rather than trying to secede from the country.

This also gives me the opportunity to publicize one of my favorite crackpot theories of all time (h/t to Professor Charles King for this one). There is a prominent and well-respected Russian political scientist named Igor Panarin who has been predicting since 1998 that the U.S. is going to break up into six different parts following a civil war – which, by the way, was supposed to start in 2010 – that is provoked by a secessionist movement led by certain wealthy states. According to Panarin’s map, while the East Coast is going to join the European Union and the West Coast will be controlled by China, Texas and much of the American South is going to end up part of Mexico. Somehow, I don’t think the secessionists in Texas would be too pleased with that outcome.

The Israel Calculus On Gaza

November 12, 2012 § 11 Comments

Israel has been dealing with a constant barrage of rockets and shelling from Gaza since last week, and despite Egyptian claims to have mediated a ceasefire yesterday, it has apparently had no effect as the rockets have continued unabated today. Bibi Netanyahu warned foreign ambassadors yesterday that Israel might have no choice but to launch a ground operation into Gaza, and the Israeli press is rife with speculation that Cast Lead redux is about to begin.

On the face of it this may seem like a risky move. A ground operation into Gaza is bound to lead to civilian casualties and international opprobrium, along with the inevitable resulting Israeli investigatory commission. Also factoring in is that this is the second day in a row that Israel has fired at Syria in response to Syrian shooting at Israeli positions in its attempt to hit rebel fighters – the same dynamic that has been occurring along the Turkish border. If Israel goes after Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza, the possibility always exists for Hizballah to seize on Israel’s preoccupation in the south and launch its own rockets in the north, and between Palestinian armed groups in Gaza and Hizballah, it is the latter that is the far graver danger and more serious threat. Looming in the background of all of this is Iran, and how a large scale operation in Gaza might danger Israel’s diplomatic efforts to keep the pressure on the regime in Tehran. And of course, with elections coming in January, Netanyahu might be loathe to undertake any big risks right now that will endanger his presumptive reelection, and any large operation into Gaza is undoubtedly a big risk.

Despite all this, unless Egypt is actually successful and the rockets stop in the next two or three days, I think we are going to see Israel go into Gaza with air strikes and ground forces. To begin with, Israel has never been hesitant to do what it must to establish deterrence against Hamas, and the IDF is probably concluding right now that any hint of deterrence it might have created following Cast Lead is gone. It is an open question as to whether such deterrence ever existed, but the rocket escalation leaves little doubt that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other armed groups in Gaza have zero qualms right now about targeting Israel civilians with rocket fire. No government can afford to let such attacks continue, and certainly the Israel government has not historically been shy about going after Hamas when it feels it is necessary.

The security angle is prominent, but there is a political angle as well. Netanyahu has been campaigning on security issues pretty much his entire political life, and the current campaign is no different. His focus on security is so strong that Kadima, in what can only be described as a last ditch effort amongst its death throes, has adopted as its campaign slogan “Bibi is endangering us” superimposed against a backdrop of a mushroom cloud. The irony of Netanyahu’s hawkish public persona is that he has never presided over a large military operation during either of his two tenures as prime minister, but as risky as it may be to send ground forces into Gaza right now, he cannot afford to just sit on his hands. A man running for prime minister whose primary rationale for reelection is that only he is prepared to do what is necessary to keep Israel safe cannot sit idly by as rockets rain down on southern Israeli towns and have any hope of winning the election. From an electoral standpoint, I don’t think Netanyahu has any choice but to respond with force and hope that the IDF is prepared for what it will encounter in the streets and warrens of Gaza City. If Netanyahu cannot deal with the threat emanating from his own backyard, he cannot credibly claim to be able to deal with the threat coming from Iran.

Compounding this situation is the fact that the other Israeli political parties are egging Netanyahu and Likud on. Kadima, Yisrael Beiteinu, Yesh Atid, and Habayit Hayehudi have all called for military operations hitting Hamas or the resumption of targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders, and even Labor has made a nebulous recommendation for “military and diplomatic pressure.” The only significant party urging a ceasefire is Meretz. This means that the longer Netanyahu waits to move on Gaza, the longer he will have to face calls from political rivals urging immediate actions, and every day this goes on endangers Netanyahu’s electoral prospects. It is one thing to take your time when the other parties are calling for calm, but quite another when elections are coming up and nearly every party across the political spectrum is calling for some form of action. As an aside, this also goes to show just how dead the peace camp is in Israel, and why Ehud Olmert’s apparent plan to reenter politics and campaign on the basis of reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians is going to be a disastrous miscalculation (more on that later this week).

As I noted yesterday on twitter, I think Israeli military action has crossed the threshold of being a lot more likely than not. As historically risk-averse as he might be, Netanyahu is not going to just wait this out. Security necessity and political calculations are both moving in the same direction here, and I think that we are about to see a Cast Lead-type incursion.

P.S. If this does indeed happen, I am going to be a busy man given what it will do to Turkish-Israeli relations in light of Erdoğan’s embrace of Hamas and imminent trip to Gaza.

The Week In Ridiculousness

November 9, 2012 § 1 Comment

I thought I’d use today’s post to highlight a couple of things going on this week that are so absurd that I had resolved to ignore them at all costs, but since they are burning a hole in my brain I am giving in. And no, I will still not be commenting on anything that Jennifer Rubin has written (which should be the new textbook definition of ridiculous) since I am hoping that if nobody pays any attention to her she will, like my 5 month old son, eventually cry herself to sleep and we will no longer have to listen to her.

Topic number one that I had resolved to ignore is the Kafkaesque exercise in propaganda trial of Israeli military officers, including former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, taking place right now in Turkey. The four IDF commanders are being tried in absentia for the deaths of nine Turkish citizens aboard the Mavi Marmara, and in case you are wondering if this trial is a genuine attempt to exercise justice or a political theater of the absurd, all you need to know is that the prosecution is asking for individual sentences of 18,000 years apiece. It might also interest you to hear that the government IHH (ed.. that was a sloppy mistake on my part), which sent the flotilla in 2010, has decided to run advertisements for the trial that are plastered around Istanbul, so you would not be mistaken in thinking that this is closer to a reality show than it is to an impartial judicial hearing. Despite the Turkish government’s best attempts to entice people to come out for its intricately planned modern day gladiator spectacle, the plaza in front of Çağlayan court house has been sparsely populated with only a couple of hundred people who have been competing for attention with Turkish pro-choice activists. The timing of the trial and the government’s efforts to use it to stir up nationalist sentiment are no doubt related to the fact that the AKP and Prime Minister Erdoğan himself are at the shakiest point in their decade-long rule, between the Syrian morass and intra-party tension between Erdoğan and President Gül. Rallying around the flag is the oldest trick in the book and this is a nakedly transparent move in that direction, but it remains to be seen whether it will work. There should be no doubt at all though that this is not a serious effort to get Israel to compromise, will have absolutely zero positive effect on Turkey’s campaign for an Israeli apology and compensation, and is purely and simply about domestic political gain. It is a political temper tantrum, beneath Turkey or any country that purports to take itself seriously. If Ankara were actually interested in a resolution to the dispute with Israel, rather than stage a show trial it would drop its demand for Israel to end the Gaza blockade – which it knows Israel will never agree to and which has nothing to do with Turkey anyway – and work out language on an apology and specific compensation, both of which Jerusalem has indicated it is open to accepting under the right circumstances. It might be too late now that Avigdor Lieberman’s power has been enhanced, but at least a good faith effort would put the ball in Israel’s court. What is going on now, however, is nothing short of an embarrassing and disgraceful spectacle.

Topic number two is the figurative self-immolation of Eric Dondero. For those unfamiliar with his work, Dondero is a former Ron Paul aide who is so upset at President Obama’s reelection that he has decided to personally boycott all Democrats for the rest of his life. What does this mean in practice, you might ask. The answer, in Dondero’s own oh so eloquent words:

All family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.

I strongly urge all other libertarians to do the same. Are you married to someone who voted for Obama, have a girlfriend who voted ‘O’. Divorce them. Break up with them without haste. Vow not to attend family functions, Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas for example, if there will be any family members in attendance who are Democrats.

Do you work for someone who voted for Obama? Quit your job. Co-workers who voted for Obama. Simply don’t talk to them in the workplace, unless your boss instructs you too for work-related only purposes. Have clients who voted Democrat? Call them up this morning and tell them to take their business elsewhere.

I read this yesterday, and assumed it had to be a joke. Nobody takes themselves this seriously, right? Not to mention that this is about as insane as it gets, even for a devoted Ron Paul employee who believes that the government is secretly planning to form a union with Canada and Mexico and probably carries Krugerrands with him to the supermarket to buy groceries. As it turns out based on Dondero’s interview in New York Magazine, not only is he not joking but he is more deranged than I could have ever imagined. Read the whole interview for a wonderful snapshot of the mental fever that has seized some folks in this country, but my two favorites snippets are Dondero’s answer to whether he would tap an unknown Republican to perform a complicated and risky brain surgery over a Democrat ranked as the top neurosurgeon in the country – “Simple: Avoid them both. Go to Mexico for your medical treatment. Avoid all the red tape and bureaucracy – and his demand that a Democratic neighbor drowning in a lake would have to yell “Obama sucks” before Dondero would jump into the water to rescue him. That people like this exist make me laugh until it hurts and curl up in a ball and cry at the same time.

Patriot Games

November 8, 2012 § 6 Comments

I was talking with my good friend and colleague Steven Cook about the news that Turkey was planning to request that NATO deploy Patriot missiles along the Syrian border, and since we both had nearly identical thoughts on the subject, we thought we’d link O&Z and From the Potomac to the Euphrates together and write a joint post. You can read it here or on Steven’s blog (where he has a cool picture of a Patriot missile battery up top).

Wednesday saw a strange confluence of events surrounding Turkey and its oft-stated determination to intervene in Syria with the help of its Western allies. It began with an unnamed Turkish Foreign Ministry official – presumably Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu –  revealing that there have been talks between Turkey and the United States about deploying Patriot missile batteries on the Syrian border. According to this report, the purpose of the Patriots would be to create a safe zone inside of Syria as a way of supporting a limited no-fly zone. This report would have been unusual by itself given that Patriot missiles are an odd vehicle to use for creating a no-fly zone, but it was particularly puzzling given Prime Minister Erdoğan’s statement the day before explicitly disavowing any Turkish intentions to buy Patriot missiles. More drama ensued after Davutoğlu was identified as the official claiming that a NATO deployment of Patriots was imminent, with the Foreign Ministry subsequently denying that Davutoğlu had ever made such a claim.

There are a couple of things here that don’t quite seem right. First, Patriot missiles are not what one would typically use to enforce or support a no-fly zone. Patriots are defensive weapons, designed to shoot down incoming missiles and not fix-winged aircraft or helicopters. Their deployment would only  make sense if Ankara were concerned about a barrage of Syria’s Scud missiles tipped with chemical weapons—a largely theoretical threat.   Second, despite the calls for intervention in Syria from some quarters of Washington, the Obama administration has been reluctant to get involved in Syria beyond technical support that may or may not include small arms. Anonymous reports coming out of Turkey the day after the election claiming that the U.S. and NATO are now about to prepare for staging a no-fly zone seem a little more than idle chatter. Neither the White House nor the State Department nor the Pentagon have demonstrated any appetite for getting involved in Syria, with its layers of political, sectarian, and regional complexities that could suck Washington into yet another long-term military and diplomatic commitment in the Muslim world.  Against this backdrop, the recent meeting that the United States orchestrated in Doha to broaden the Syrian opposition was an effort to preclude a greater American involvement in Syria’s civil war.

The deployment of the Patriots is likely a precursor to no new initiative, but rather has more to do with U.S. and NATO relations with Turkey.  Ankara, incapable of managing the Syrian crisis on its own, has continually sought  to involve Western powers in a greater way. For much of the past year, Prime Minister Erdoğan has been attempting to drum up support for outside intervention by threatening to unilaterally create a buffer zone inside Syria, making noise about invoking NATO Article 5, calling out the U.S. for dragging its feet while Assad butchers his own people, and implying that NATO is in danger of losing its credibility as the Syrian civil war drags on. Despite a combination of public and private cajoling, Erdoğan has made little headway, and Wednesday’s barrage of leaks and half-truths fits into the pattern of doing anything possible to pull the U.S. into Syria one way or another. By making it seem as if a no-fly zone is a fait accompli, Ankara is hoping to create enough momentum to spur some real action.  Yet rather than respond to the Turkish government’s posturing and efforts to shame the United States and NATO into taking Turkey’s preferred course, Ankara’s allies have sought to placate it with a symbolic dispatch of largely useless weapons.

Overall, the announcement that Patriots will be deployed to Turkey fits a pattern that has developed in Turkey’s relations with its traditional partners, who have sought to keep Ankara minimally satisfied without actually having to commit much of anything to Syria. If scattering Patriot missile batteries along the Turkish-Syrian border is the price of keeping Turkey temporarily happy, it’s a pretty small price to pay, and certainly nothing compared to the cost of actually intervening in Syria.

The Other Reason For Eliminating The Electoral College

November 8, 2012 § 4 Comments

I know this is very far afield from my usual area of focus, but Donald Trump’s twitter tirade against the Electoral College and exhorting people to start a revolution when he for some reason had it in his largely empty head that Mitt Romney was going to win the popular vote gave me a hankering to write today’s post. There is always a lot of hand-wringing this time of year about the Electoral College, which to many is the most mysterious and baffling aspect of American democracy. The problem that most people have with the Electoral College is that it can lead to a situation like we had in 2000, when a candidate can win the popular vote and still lose the presidency, which seems like a blatantly anti-democratic outcome. This is an enormous concern, but it overlooks the fact that the Electoral College was created because the framers wanted to mitigate some of the problems they saw with direct popular election. The question then to be asked is not necessarily whether the Electoral College was a bad idea, but whether it is now anachronistic; in other words, do the reasons for which it was created still apply today?

The first concern the framers had with direct popular election was that the people would be easily influenced by small groups with ulterior motives. The framers’ concern on this issue turned out to be unwarranted, but perhaps not in the way that they had anticipated. While small groups have not had a large effect on voting trends, extremely large groups have – namely the Republican and Democratic parties. The Federalist Papers’ warning against faction is well known, as is the founders’ early revulsion of political parties, but it is the two major parties that have exerted the greatest influence on voters. So in this sense, the first of the major concerns was not historically borne out, although the decision to create a body that meets only once and then disbands, and whose eligibility requirements work to exclude elected federal officials, was quite prescient. The small groups of influential men that the framers were worried about can easily be construed as today’s various political lobbies, who unquestionably exert a great deal of influence on both the executive and legislative branches, but not on individual voters. While voters being easily swayed might have been a legitimate concern in 1787, it is not one anymore.

If anything, the Electoral College has allowed small groups of voters to wield disproportionate power in influencing the outcome of a state’s electoral votes. The framers were worried not about this, but about people being easily influenced by small groups that had their own best interests at heart. This unintended consequence is in a similar vein, however, since it allows narrowly focused special interests to punch above their weight. This sounds quite similar to what the framers were trying to guard against, yet this type of behavior is facilitated by the Electoral College and would be negated by popular election.

The second large apprehension about popular election, which was that the country was too large for the people to be sufficiently informed about the presidential candidates, is most definitely no longer in force. Despite the expansion of the country from the Eastern seaboard west to the Pacific Ocean, and despite the enormous population growth that has taken place since the country’s founding, there has never been greater availability of information about those running for office than exists today. We live in the Information Age, and with the advent of the Internet, 24 hour news channels, the constant news cycle, and presidential campaigns that begin two years before the actual vote, it is a given that voters are as sufficiently informed as they’d like to be about those who choose to run for president.

There is also evidence that points to the fact that voters are better informed in a presidential election year than they are during midterm elections for their state’s congressmen. In 2000, 82% of respondents surveyed watched at least one television program about the campaign, as compared to 62% in 2002. In 2000, 76% indicated that they care who wins the presidential election, whereas only 61% indicated that they care who wins the Congressional elections. It is a given that most people know more about the presidential candidates (and can actually name them) than they know about those running for the seat in their Congressional district. In 1787, this could not have been anticipated, due to the fact that information about candidates was not nearly as widely disseminated, so there was a better chance that the people would know something about local politicians than ones from out of state. In addition, the framers might not have anticipated the president becoming the public face of the country to the extent that he is today. It is clear, however, that the ill-informed electorate which so concerned the framers no longer exists, removing the second major impediment to popular election.

The third fear of the framers was that the president would always come from a large state and a Northern state if popularly elected. In fact, even with the Electoral College, only two presidents have made their primary residences in small states (Franklin Pierce in New Hampshire, and Bill Clinton in Arkansas). However, the fear that large states would only vote for candidates from their own state or from other large states was unfounded. It is clear that the framers did not anticipate the two party system that emerged, hence the fear was that each state would vote for a favorite son candidate. Under the two party system, it is impossible for states to only vote for local presidential candidates since only two states get this opportunity. Even when the opportunity arises, it is never certain that a candidate will carry his own state, as demonstrated by Al Gore’s inability to carry Tennessee.

In addition, large states do not necessarily have a tendency today to vote for a large state candidate. The most recent example is the presidential election of 1992, when Bill Clinton ran from a small state and George H.W. Bush ran from Texas. Despite his Arkansas roots, Clinton carried large states such as California (54 electoral votes), Illinois (22 electoral votes), Michigan (18 electoral votes), New York (33 electoral votes), Ohio (21 electoral votes), and Pennsylvania (23 electoral votes). In fact, Clinton carried seven out of the ten most populous states in 1992, so the most recent election in which a small state candidate ran against a large state candidate indicates that the fear of large states only voting for large state candidates is no longer warranted, if indeed it ever was.

The North versus South concern was due to the disparity in eligible voters caused by slavery, but since slavery and the 3/5 rule no longer exist, this particular rationale for the Electoral College also no longer exists. Furthermore, the notion that Northerners would not vote for a Southern candidate is also no longer a political reality, to which the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton can attest. In 1976, the original Northern states of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island voted for Carter, and in 1992, Clinton carried the original Northern states of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. If anything, today’s political reality is that Northern candidates have trouble getting votes in the South, and not the other way around.

In short, the most compelling reason to do away with the Electoral College is that its outcomes and its operation subvert the very rationales for which it was put into place. The great fear of popular election was that it would never produce a national figure, since the residents of each state would only vote for candidates with whom they were familiar. The Electoral College was supposed to encourage candidates who were national figures in that they would appeal to people from all the states, which would let all states have a say in who became president. The current incentive structure has, of course, created the opposite effect, in which the only states that truly matter are the small number of battleground states. Were the Electoral College to be abandoned in favor of popular vote, the focus would shift back to all of the states instead of just some of them, and the framers’ intentions of candidates appealing to everyone rather than to targeted groups would be realized.

What Does Obama’s Win Mean For Bibi?

November 7, 2012 § 5 Comments

As it became clear last night that President Obama was headed for an easy victory, a bunch of people on my twitter feed began speculating – or more accurately, making jokes – about what this would mean for Bibi Netanyahu. The joking actually turned into a serious conversation about whether Obama will somehow punish Netanyahu for his perceived support of Romney and clashes with the president, with some going so far as to speculate that he will tell Netanyahu that no help on Iran is forthcoming. It seems that Netanyahu is worried himself, as he is already clamping down on Likud members who are expressing negative reactions to Obama’s reelection out of fear that it will damage his standing with the White House even further.

Despite what is obviously not a great relationship between the two men, I don’t quite see how Obama’s reelection is going to have much of a negative effect on Netanyahu or the U.S.-Israel relationship at large. This is true for a few reasons. First, as Steven Cook persuasively argued last month, the relationship is institutionalized to the point that personal animosity between the countries’ leaders is not going to have much of an effect, if any. Let’s assume that Obama decides this morning that he wants to put the screws on Netanyahu – what precisely is he going to do? Aid to Israel is controlled by Congress, the joint military and intelligence cooperation is so deeply ingrained that it would take a long time to reverse, and there are deep ties between the two countries at all levels of government, business, and society. There are smaller things that Obama could do on the margins, but the immediate consequences are close to zero.

Second, and I cannot stress this enough, if you think that the myriad of ways in which Obama supported Israel during his first term was just a feint to win an election, then you are falling victim to the same delusion that said Nate Silver and all of the polls predicting an Obama win were deliberately skewing the evidence. Quite simply, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that all of a sudden funding for Iron Dome, joint military exercises, vetoing of anti-Israel UN resolutions, and other similar actions are going to stop now that Obama doesn’t have to worry about senior citizens’ votes in Florida. I will bet any amount of money that there is no drop-off in the administration’s support of Israel in the security and diplomatic spheres, and the folks who think otherwise have a large burden of proof to overcome that cannot be swept away merely by shouting “but he didn’t visit Israel” or “he left Netanyahu waiting while he ate dinner with his family.”

Third, Obama is not very popular among Israelis, and so even if he wanted to punish Netanyahu by trying to interfere in the Israeli election, it just wouldn’t work. Bill Clinton might have been able to sway Israelis when he was president, but Obama does not have the popularity, credibility, or familiarity with Israeli voters to pull of such a move. The fact that Obama was reelected is not going to factor into Israelis’ calculations when they go to the polls, as Brent Sasley helpfully pointed out previously. The idea that Netanyahu now has to be running scared because his hopes to have Romney elected did not pan out is a pretty flimsy one.

Finally, the suggestion that Obama is now going to tell Netanyahu that the U.S. has no interest in confronting Iran makes little sense to me based on previous U.S. actions and Obama’s long record of statements indicating that he views an Iranian nuclear bomb as a real problem. Aside from Stuxnet, crippling sanctions, and an increased carrier presence in the Gulf, Obama has made clear that preventing nuclear proliferation is perhaps the foreign policy issue that he holds most dear. The disagreement between he and Netanyahu over the red line of nuclear capability vs. nuclear weapons is still going to be there, but Obama has held firm to his own timeline so far and he is not going to now somehow make it even more firm because he has been reelected. The bottom line here is that Obama is worried about an Iranian nuclear weapon as well, and he is not going to drop his concerns just because he and Netanyahu do not get along very well.

P.S. For another argument on why the Obama revenge meme is an ill-informed one that focuses on different variables than mine, check out Peter Beinart this morning.

Election Day – An Appreciation

November 6, 2012 § 8 Comments

Whenever I teach intro to comparative politics (or Comparative Political Systems as we call it at Georgetown), I always start the class off with the following anecdote. There was a leader of a country who was in power for over a decade and was forced out of office before he was ready to step down. The leader’s bitter rival, who had spent months painstakingly turning elites and the general population against the country’s ruler, took over power and embarked on a crusade to cement his own hold over the country. After nearly a decade marked by scandal and recriminations, the current leader was retiring and the first leader’s son, who had a severe alcohol problem, a string of failed business ventures to his name, and was chased by allegations of drug use, decided that he wanted to run the country. He challenged the current president’s hand-picked successor, accusing him of being involved in scandals and misusing the military and vowing to avenge his father’s loss. A vote was held that was marked by all sorts of irregularities and accusations of fraud, and when the dust cleared it turned out that the current president’s successor had won the most votes.

The challenger was not willing to accept his loss though, and being stymied by the results of the election, he approached the country’s constitutional court, a majority of whose judges were appointed by his father when he had been in power, and convinced the judges declare him the winner through a technicality and order the current president’s government to step down and cede power. Knowing that there was a genuine sense of anger among the former president’s powerful supporters and that he was facing a crisis of legitimacy that would hamper his rule, and perhaps even in an effort to make sure that he had the army on his side, he then appointed popular military officials from his father’s government, including the former commanding general of the country’s army and the former defense minister, to high ministerial posts in his own government. He then proceeded to organize a parade through the streets of the capital that literally brought him to the steps of the presidential palace, where he placed the outgoing president on a military helicopter and sent him away.

I then always ask my students what they think will happen next. Is this country going to be stable, or is it likely to go through years of repression and civil war? They invariably answer that the country is going to experience an outbreak of violence and that authoritarian rule will prevail, and when I tell them that this series of events actually occurred somewhere, they guess Iraq, China, or Saudi Arabia. Only once has a student immediately realized what probably all of you have already, which is that the country I am describing is the United States under Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Bush. Considered in a vacuum, the fact that the U.S. simply moved on in the aftermath of the 2000 election is mind-boggling, but it is not at all unusual when you stop to consider that this is the effect that democratic politics has on a state and a society. There was simply no question that once the Supreme Court ended the recount, effectively making Bush the president, there would be no violence or rioting, no military coup, no measures to prevent the new president from moving into the White House, and that the Clinton administration would stand aside for the Bush administration.

As Americans we take this for granted, because this is the way our country works and has always worked (save for that pesky Civil War), but in the grand sweep of history it is nothing short of remarkable. Not only do we get the opportunity every fourth year to decide who will be president, but when the incumbent is voted out or must step down after two terms, the most powerful person in the world and commander-in-chief of the most awesome fighting force in the history of mankind unfailingly vacates his post peacefully and makes no move to hang on to the trappings of absolute power. Just take a minute to reflect on how improbable this would be were it to happen once, let alone routinely as a matter of course for over two centuries. Take a minute to reflect on what an incredible country this is and how lucky we are to be living in it.

Something else to keep in mind on this Election Day is that as American citizens we get to select our leaders, but we are also voting in an election that for many countries is more consequential than their own election. The decisions taken by the president and the Congress directly impact the lives of billions of people across the globe and determine whether they will live in peace and security or whether they will live in an environment that is considerably worse. It is a solemn and awesome burden, and even if you are not thrilled with the choices that you are presented with on your ballot this year, please think about how those billions of people worldwide would jump at the chance that you have today, and make sure to vote. We talk about exercising our right to vote, and it is aptly described as a right, but it is also a privilege and a responsibility. The simple act of voting to elect our president and representatives reverberates around the entire world and such a thing should not be taken lightly or treated callously, and it is a right that under no circumstance should go discarded or unexercised. Go out and vote, reflect on how lucky we are to live in such an amazing place and time, and have a very happy Election Day.

A short Election Day programming note: I will be spending the evening at National Public Radio headquarters in DC, watching the returns and tweeting out my thoughts as we (hopefully) find out who our next president will be. I am really excited about it, so if you don’t already follow me on Twitter, my handle is @mkoplow and I’ll be tweeting all night.

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