Why Character Matters

Morals, or "values" as they have come to be known, has become a touchy subject when it comes to elections. When morality comes up, many, politicians especially, take umbrage.Sometimes it is in the open such as when one candidate accuses another of lying or ducking his obligations. Other times it is hinted at when one politician challenges another to come clean or an innuendo is made. Frequently, when the issue is brought up the person or group bringing it up is criticized for seeking to divert the race from substantive issues either through desperation or lack of substance.  This is frequently true, but not always. Whatever else they are, "values", and the willingness to adhere to them, are the measure of a man. Betrayal, defects in honesty and unwillingness to live up to one's obligations are moral defects. A man who cheats on his wife is disloyal. A woman who makes a claim she knows to be spurious or untrue is a liar. A person who fails to live up to his promises is unreliable. A person who puts personal gain over public obligation is untrustworthy. Such traits might not matter very much in your neighbor but they do matter in your president. 

Yes character matters. It matters very much. Character is about more than isolated acts, whether they be praiseworthy or contemptible. It is the measure of the entire man. It is not about particular decisions. It is about how decisions are arrived at. Being president is about making decisions. It is important what factors are considered and how they are weighed in a person's decision making. Politicians who arrive at decisions based on ambition or personal calculations should not be relied upon. They are not acting in the best interests of their constituents but out of expediency and hope of gain.

Character is not tangential to decision making. It is essential. Politics is about making decisions. Making decisions is a personal act. What a man thinks and does in private reflects his true character. When a politician seeks to hide his real character behind a public mask he is a dangerous man because he will go to great lengths to hide that character. He will lie, he will betray, he will coerce, he will bribe to keep his true nature from the public eye. The more ambitious the politician, the greater the lengths he will go to to keep his moral failures hidden and consequently the more distorted his decision making will become.

You can say that politics is less about morality than it is about virtue and you would be correct. Virtue is not about a man's inclinations and tendencies but how he meets his obligations and conducts himself regarding others. But virtue is a difficult thing to achieve in the absence of morality. It will rarely be achieved and hard to maintain for it requires great diligence, greater than most men are capable of. Moreover, it will be constantly under siege. It will always be one temptation, one opportunity, one weak moment away from buckling.

A gap between a politician's private behavior and his public persona make that politician vulnerable. Should that gap be discovered, many politicians (and nearly all public figures for that matter), will expend a great deal of energy to ensure it is not made public. What politician wants to be brought down by a dalliance with an employee or an illegitimate deal? A distinction can, and should be made between a lapse in judgement and a pattern of behavior. A one time tryst is a different thing than a series of trysts or an affair. A single special deal to help an important constituent is different than a pattern of granting favor for gain. A single lapse can be excused because all men are imperfect. All men at one time or another make a bad decision or act out of weakness or self interest. It is the pattern of a man's behavior that reveals his nature, not an isolated act. It is the pattern of a man's decisions that reveal his character. Patterns are only revealed over time. To single out one bad act or one moral lapse and use it to tar a man's career is unfair. To ignore a pattern of questionable judgment and morale lapses is reckless.

You cannot know how a person will conduct himself the future. The best you can do is know how he has conducted himself in the past . To know that you have to know a person's history. You can trust an honest man to continue to act honestly. You can trust a brave man to continue to act courageously. You can trust a faithful man to continue to act faithfully. You can rely on a man who has lived his life selfishly to continue being selfish. You can never be sure how a man lacking character will act. For him, everything relies on circumstance and calculation.

Ultimately, what a person says or does in public matters less than what he says and does in private because in private he reveals his true self. Yes it matters if a politician had an affair. If a man will betray his wife chances are he will betray the public, if only to keep it secret. Yes it matters what maneuvers and special deals a politician made to achieve office for it can reveal an overpowering ambition that will continue to entice dishonesty in order to keep that office or achieve greater office. No one knows the future. No one knows what challenges will emerge. No one knows what decisions a politician will make in the face of those challenges. You can know what sort of person will make those decisions. If you want to know what sort of person a politician is you have to look at how he lives up to his obligations and observes his word. In order to know that you have to know what he has said and what he has done over time.

You can, indeed you should, overlook the small things. There is a difference between getting a friend who is down on his luck a job and rewarding favored constituents with lucrative contracts. If a candidate says he is happy to be in Cleveland chances are he is just being polite. That is politics. By the same token, a single poor decision or dishonest action in a politician's past should be considered in context of time and place. But the large things: was he faithful to his wife? Did he take advantage of his position for personal gain? Did he step on others in his ambition? Those things matter, even more so if there is a pattern. Men do not shed their character once they achieve office. They might become prudent. They might exercise restraint. But they will not change. Because of that you have to pay attention to their character. A man with suspect character should be scrutinized, especially if that man would be president. You cannot know the future. The best you can do is know the man.

The failure to live up to one's "values" is human. Who among us has not failed at times to live up to his own standards? But there is a difference between falling short of one's "values" and abandoning them (or never holding them in the first place). To profess or champion "values" not sincerely held is dishonest. The willingness to abandon one's "values" when they become inconvenient indicates a weakness of character or an ambition that knows no limits. How can we know what sort of president a man would make if we don't know the man? How can we know the man if we don't know his character? How can we know a man's character if we don't know what is important to him? How can we know what is important to him if we don't look at what he has done?

Does it matter if a man who would be president is selfish? Does it matter if he is lazy? Does it matter if he is prone to yield to desire? Of course it does. No one can say otherwise. But how can you know such things unless you examine the man? Character is the sum of a man's actions over time. A man can claim any value he pleases (he cannot, however, claim to be loyal to his values since loyalty is itself a "value" and one value cannot support another), but his nature will be revealed by his actions over time. If a man has succumb to desire ten times you can be confident he will succumb again. If he has shirked his responsibility to his family, why wouldn't he shirk his responsibility to the public?

Olympic Porn

There is a growing backlash against NBC's recent video collage titled "Bodies in Motion". In the video, female Olympians are shown in slow motion as they jump, dive, run, and leap in tight and revealing "uniforms". Care is taken to ensure that none of the more delicate and personal aspects of the female anatomy are neglected. The video has been described as tasteless and offensive, even soft core porn. Female athletes, critics assert, should not be treated, or viewed, as sexual objects. (Well, not exclusively as sexual objects. Let's be realistic here). It is contended that is precisely what the video sets out to do.

The condemnation of the video is undeserved. Athletes are not required to wear the smallest and tightest uniforms available. They choose to. Many female tennis players wear the shortest of dresses knowing full well that those dresses hide nothing. Women's field hockey, another favorite in the video, is another a sport that has attracted the male eye with its short dresses and frequent tumbles in which those dresses fly upwards. Men have also displayed an interest in watching women's soccer no doubt due in part to the willingness displayed by some players to remove their tops to celebrate. In tennis, though it is becoming more fashionable for female players to wear shorts under their dresses, it is by no means universal. Dresses have all but disappeared in female skating. Only the cold of the ice keeps them in stockings. It is difficult to believe that swimsuits cut to 3 or 4 inches below the belly button make swimmers any faster in the water. For their own reasons, many athletes, male and female, choose to wear apparel better designed to titillate than serve any competitive purpose. If athletes want to compete in uniforms that look as if they might have been painted on, viewers should not be blamed if they take up the invitation to look.

Whatever the video's producers claim concerning its intent, the video has served to save many male viewers hours of time. Why sit through boring footage of swimmers warming up in their sweats if you can go straight to wet swimsuit shots? Why put up with large, overweight shot putters and hairy weight lifters if you can zip straight to pubescent girls in waist high tights prancing and bouncing about? Why waste time watching a whole gymnastic routine if you can cut to the crotch shots?

Whatever pretext or defense NBC might offer on their behalf, they knew exactly what they were doing when they created the video. NBC was not trying to create a new porn niche. The movement to sexualize athletes has been going on for some time (think of Michael Jordon's Hanes underwear ads). I am sure there is nothing on the video that has not already found its proper place in the world of porn. NBC was hoping to cash in by meeting a demand. In doing so they simply called attention to something that was already in plain sight. No, don't blame NBC for sexualizing the Olympics. It is the Olympics that sets the rules on uniforms, not NBC. NBC is just trying to make some money. If the NBA can get by with shorts extending to the knees and below, the Olympics ought to be able to get by without athletes competing in mini skirts, bikinis, bras, glorified jock straps, and hot pants. Needless to say, it won't even try.

Does it Really Matter What the U.S. Thinks?

On the issue of Iran, Israel is adamant. Under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to progress towards the capability of making a nuclear weapon. Israel has already made plans to take military action in order to ensure a nuclear armed Iran does not come into existence. Wheels in Israel have been set in motion. They have served notice. The U.S., however, is still calling for patience. It too will not tolerate a nuclear Iran but it believes more time, not much but more than Israel is comfortable with, is needed for sanctions to work. Harsh sanctions already applied to Iran are being felt in that country. More severe sanctions are in the wings. Nevertheless, Israel is not persuaded that time is on its side. It is prepared to act.

When it comes to Israel's decision to attack Iran, does it really matter what the U.S. thinks? What are we going to do if Israel acts against our wishes, brushes off international calls for dialogue, and bombs Iran? Will we chastise Israel? Will we call for a U.N resolution condemning the attack? Will we take the matter to the U.N. Security Council? Will we apply sanctions on Israel? Will we cut off or curtail aide? What if the U.N. does take action and proposes condemnation of Israel, or worse, calls for sanctions? Will the U.S. support that action? If your answer to all of these questions is no, you are correct. The U.S. will do nothing. It might seek to preserve a fig leaf of neutrality by wringing its hands and calling for calm. It might urge dialogue but it will not punish Israel. Despite relying heavily on the U.N. to support its geo-political strategy over the last decade, the U.S. is quite prepared to abandon it if it doesn't act in our interests. In the case of an Israeli attack, the U.S. likely would urge calm and call for a cessation of hostilities, (no doubt only after Israel's military objectives are achieved), but it will not rebuke Israel. Neither will it allow Israel to be rebuked if there is anything it can do abut it.

At risk is years of U.S. effort in the region. After decades of striving to achieve some small measure of objectivity in the Middle East, the U.S. will be placed in the spotlight. It will have to make a choice, Israel or the international community. The choice will be an easy one for the U.S. It will also be a costly one. In those countries where autocratic rulers have been overthrown and the new governments are seeking to establish themselves a choice will have to be made as well. How will they respond to an attack on another Muslim nation? Do they remain silent? Do they simply issue statements condemning it? Whatever the political and religious complexities in the region, the fact would remain that another Muslim nation was bombed in the dead of night.

It has been argued that a U.S. attack on Iran, despite public condemnations, would likely gain the secret approval of many Arab nations in the region fearful of a powerful and aggressive Iran. That may be so. But after years of undermining the authority and legitimacy of centralized governments in the region and working hard to give the "Arab street" a voice in public affairs, we cannot disregard how an attack on Iran will be viewed in that same "Arab street." It has to be considered that there is a distinct possibility that the rank and file in the Arab street will not have the same nuanced view of regional politics that their leaders do. An attack on yet another Muslim nation could easily unify a region in turmoil. It would be difficult for movements and governments, many of which are extraordinarily fragile and dependent on U.S. aid and support or their existence, to continue accepting that aid without appearing to be pawns in some larger U.S. plan. The nascent Arab Spring movement might have to push back against the West lest they be construed as part of some broader U.S. policy serving Israel's interests. Even worse would be if an Israeli hand is perceived to be involved. No Arab movement would likely succeed if it was suspected to be, even in the smallest and most indirect of ways, in cahoots with Israel or working to its advantage.

If the Middle East awakes one morning to the news that bombs are falling on Iran there will be turmoil. You can be sure there are many groups in the region that would move quickly to take advantage of that turmoil. The U.S. has many complex relationships and interests throughout the Middle East that must be weighed in any attack on Iran. The U.S. must consider the broader ramifications of an attack on Iran on its long term interests in the region. Israel does not. Israel has only its survival as a Jewish state on its mind. Moreover, it has time and again demonstrated that it is willing to go to any length to continue its existence as a Jewish state no matter what the U.S. might say or do. Whatever decision Israel comes to regarding its security, the U.S. will have to adapt in order to take that decision into account. It is unimaginable that the U.S. will abandon Israel if Israel comes to a different conclusion regarding Iran's capabilities and launches an attack. Because of that, it really doesn't matter what the U.S. thinks about what must be done regarding Iran. It only matters what Israel thinks.

If Israel attacks Iran it will be able retreat to its fortress afterward, confident in its ability to fend off the consequences of their attack and secure in continued U.S. support, political, military, and otherwise. The U.S. cannot retreat. It must remain engaged. Because of that it will have to pick up the pieces. Even if Iran is defeated, and it will be, life in the Middle East will be no easier for the U.S. If the government in Iran survives the attack we will find in them an even more determined and implacable foe. If the government does not survive the attack we will have another Middle Eastern nation in turmoil. But this time it will be a large, strategically and economically important nation. It will also be a nation more likely to turn east to rebuild than turn west into the arms of the nation that defeated it.

Yes, it matters what the U.S. thinks when it comes to Iran. But, at the bottom, it matters what Israel thinks even more.

Viva la Revolution

When it comes to the nation's children, parents are not pulling their weight. Numerous studies have shown how important it is for parents to be involved in raising their children. Whether it is the dietary habits of their children, the physical fitness of their children, or the academic achievement of their children, statistics show that parents are failing not just their children, they are failing the nation as well. As we have been told repeatedly, children are a national resource. The economy, and by extension the nation requires an abundance of educated and industrious citizens. We cannot have educated and industrious citizens if our schools do not produce them. Schools cannot produce them if parents do not provide the raw material, i.e. healthy, inquisitive, well motivated children. Too many parents are shirking their responsibility and failing to produce such children.

A break through study done by the Harvard Family Research Project determined that parents play an important role in their child's academic performance. Too many parents, however, are not performing well in that role. What can be done? How can we as a nation change the way parents raise their children? This is the problem vexing the modern progressive. We cannot yet intrude on a parent's right to raise their child as they see fit. Another way has to be found. The solution is to make children a communal resource. If children are a communal resource, the community has an interest in how they are raised and educated. Parents have a duty to the community to raise their children correctly. An uneducated, maladjusted child is every one's problem, or so we are told. Therefore the community is obliged to act when individuals fail in meeting their obligation to raise their children properly.

The advent of economic and social casuistry made possible by the modern obsession with statistics has made even the most personal behavior a matter of public concern. While lip service is paid to the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, in practice there is no such right. A parent who neglects to monitor their child's diet or make sure their child not only attends school, but does her schoolwork diligently is failing society. Society cannot be expected to stand idly by while parents neglect their children. Our nation and its economy is at stake.

In an editorial this morning in the Dallas Morning News, Florencia Velasco Fortner, CEO of The Council of Spanish Speaking Organizations (Concilio) argues that the solution is to "revolutionize what is happening at home." We need to change how parents are tending to their children. To avoid the morass of social issues and the argument over the reach of government, she resorts to the modern method of objectivity by framing the issue in terms of economics. We are urged to "invest" in children, and in so doing we are offered the promise of economic reward. But no matter how the subject is framed, we are dealing with perhaps the most personal of all issues, the raising of our children.

Many parents are not good parents. Some are downright bad parents. This has always been the case. What is new is that how you raise your children is no longer your business. It has become society's business. Because it has become society's business, it has become the government's business. Fortner and her colleagues cannot tell you how to raise your children. Society cannot tell you how to raise your children. But the government can. And that is what this is all about. To the progressive mind, all issues are social issues and all social issues are ultimately political issues. Fortner cannot tell you how to raise your child, so she would have the government do it.

The issue of children can be couched in terms of society but without the ability to compel, society is a poor tool to affect change. Sure, you can talk about educating parents and getting them involved. You can talk about changing the way society approaches the issue.  But what if that is not enough? What if parents don't respond  to your coaxing and encouragement? What if nothing changes? Do you walk away? Or do you try and push parents aside to clear the road for progress?

Fortner and those like her belabor the obvious when they assert that parents need to be involved in the education of their children. But how do we get parents to become involved? The answer Fortner gives it that we need to "revolutionize what is happening at home". We need to overthrow the parents and install a new regime that will actively work with children from the bedroom to the school room. Those parents sympathetic, or at least indifferent to the revolution will be "engaged" in the education process. Parents who do not pass muster will be relieved of duty.

Seventy percent of a school aged child's time is spent outside of the classroom. In too many cases, it is argued that that time is spent unproductively due to negligent or downright poor parenting. To the progressive mind, this must not be allowed to continue. If parents are unable or unwilling to see to their child's educational development, then society must step in.

As society moves ever forward there is less and less space left to the individual. Health, hygiene, diet, even thoughts have become matters of public concern. It was inevitable that some would conclude that the raising of the next generation of Americans cannot be left to the haphazard care of parents. There is too much at stake. The dominion of parents over their children's development must be replaced and a new order ushered in where society's needs, whatever they may happen to be at the moment, take precedent.The future cannot be left to chance.

Civil War is Hell

There has been a great deal of press regarding the now official civil war in Syria. Harrowing reports emerge daily of the mounting casualties and horrific destruction taking place in that country. The U.S., its allies, and any other nation that can be roped into the conflict by the West are decrying the violence and calling for an end to hostilities. The onus for ending the war has been placed firmly on the government in Damascus but Syrian President Bashar Assad has so far rebuffed international calls for a cease fire. He has also rejected the idea of negotiating an end to the fighting. He is determined to end the conflict on his own terms. To that end he continues to pound rebel strongholds, indifferent to the mounting destruction and growing number of civilian casualties.

To contemporary Western sensibilities, the violence in Syria is appalling. Most in the West have become accustomed to the clockwork warfare made possible by advances in science. State of the art technology allows intelligence to be gathered  and targets to be selected in real time. Precision munitions allow those targets to be carefully destroyed with minimal collateral damage. For the U.S. anyway, massive artillery barrages, aerial bombardment, and large scale assaults are no longer necessary. In their stead we have a carefully plotted and tightly focused approach to war. Indeed, it is almost sterile. We did not need to carpet bomb Baghdad to achieve our objectives. Laser guided munitions and cruise missiles were quite enough. Easy as it is to be distracted by the technological wizardry available to the U.S., it is understandable if the modern spectator has come to view the siege and bombardment of cities as border line barbarism.

Civil war is hell. The U.S. of all nations should know that. The Civil War was the costliest and bloodiest war the U.S. ever fought. In one day at the Battle of Antietam, 23,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were injured and killed. It was the bitterest battle in the bitterest war in U.S. history. At the time of the Civil War, the population of the U.S. stood at little over thirty million. Most of those, 22 million, lived in Union states. By the time the war ended in 1865, it has been estimated that over 618,000 soldiers on both sides perished. There is no accurate count of civilian deaths directly attributable to combat, but the number was substantial. Conservative estimates put the number at around 50,000. The fact that most of the civilian deaths during the war were due to disease and hardship rather than the direct result of fighting should be of no solace.

The economic costs of the war were staggering, especially for the rebels. Cities were laid waste. Harbors and factories were destroyed. Rail road track were ripped up. Crops were burned. General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea alone resulted in over $1.3 billion in economic damage to the Confederacy by today's dollar. It was the birth of total war. What are the odds that the Union would have let U.N. inspectors, had the U.N. existed at the time, into Andersonville? How do you suppose the North would have responded to U.N. demands that it lift the siege of Richmond to allow in humanitarian supplies? Indeed, what is the point of a siege if you are going to let supplies in?

There was no television or internet in 1862. If there had been you can be sure that the carnage taking place in the Civil War would have been met with international outcry and urgent calls to end the violence. There was no U.N in 1862. Had there been there would have been resolutions passed calling for the suspension of hostilities and a negotiated end to the conflict. There might even have been economic sanctions placed on the Union. Perhaps there might have even been motions put forward to aid the Confederacy in order to "level the playing field". After all, the world's most powerful nation at the time, Great Britain, stood to gain considerably if the war ended with the Confederacy intact. Naturally, the Union rebuffed all calls for a suspension of hostilities or a negotiated settlement to the war. A government is not obliged to negotiate with rebels. For the Union, there was only one acceptable outcome to the war: total victory. It was willing to kill civilians and burn cities to the ground to obtain it.

After burning his way through the agricultural heartland of Virginia, Union General Phillip Sheridan surveyed the devastation caused by his troops and boasted that so thorough was his campaign that, to fly across the Shenandoah valley, a crow would have to carry its own lunch. The thought of hungry and homeless Confederate women and children only added relish to his victory. Many Union officers and soldiers no doubt looked on in delight as they watched the city of Richmond burn. General William Tecumseh Sherman, a hard drinking and notoriously violent Union commander who, after the war, earned additional laurels for his ethnic cleansing campaigns in the West, famously said "war is hell". That is a notion increasingly foreign to the comfortable Western mind. We forget that to our own peril. The West needs to remember that wars are not always cool, calculated events unfolding along carefully laid out lines. War, especially civil war, is nasty business. It always has been and it always will be.

Should We Give Him Another Chance?

Four years ago when Obama was running for election, the economy was at the forefront.  In 2008, Obama ran on hope. Hope for a better economy. Hope for less animosity in Washington. Hope for a better future for all Americans. How has that turned out? Not as well as many Americans expected. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, when Obama took office in January, 2009, unemployment was at 4.9%. Nearly four years later, unemployment is at 8.2%. For many Americans. the near future holds little promise. As for partisanship and animosity in Washington, it is as prevalent as ever and shows no sign of abating.

With a moribund economy and stubborn unemployment, Obama had his work cut out for him. After a year of hard work and massive spending, unemployment had risen to 9.6% and the economy remained flat. It was only in 2011 that President Obama's efforts began to bear fruit. Trillions of dollars and near historical government intervention in the economy had succeeded in bringing unemployment down to 8.2%. Obama recently pointed to the addition of 4.4 million new jobs over the last 28 months, curiously omitting the first 13 months of his tenure in which there was a net loss in jobs. That might seem like an impressive number but if you consider that in the midst of the "Great Recession" of 1981-82, 9.5 million new jobs were created, the number doesn't seem like much to boast about. Under Obama, we have run three straight years of trillion dollar deficits. The national debt has increased by over $5 trillion. That is a lot of money to pay for 4.4 million new jobs.

In 2008, Obama ran on the economy. He vowed to get America back on its feet. Four years later, President Obama is once again promising to fix the economy. He has boasted that the economy has improved, if only statistically. He asserts that the improvement in employment figures are a "step in the right direction". Four years and trillions of dollars have obtained only a few steps. Not really a bargain.  Three and a half years after he was elected deficits have increased, he debt has increased, unemployment still hovers at around  10%, the economy is treading water, the world is no safer, and the American public is more polarized than ever. Obama can't run on hope. He can't run on achievement. He certainly cannot run against government spending. Obama has to run against Romney. He has to run on fear. That is why he continually states his case in terms of how things will be even worse if Romney is elected.

Four years ago, Obama pledged to get the economy running. Many Americans were willing to look past Obama's liberalism and accept his promise of a better economic future. But instead of an economic recovery, what we got was gays in the military, social turmoil, massive debt, and a health care fiasco that is likely to cost trillions down the road. Instead of comity in Washington, we have discord. By championing the causes of gay rights and universal health care Obama has injected the government into areas that guaranty political struggle for generations to come. Instead of fiscal sobriety we are $4 trillion dollars deeper into debt. All of this was done with an eye towards being reelected. We have gone from "hope", to "things could be worse". Imagine what another four years will bring.

What if We Had to Vote?

Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration, recently wrote an editorial in which he advanced the idea of making voting compulsory. Like many forward thinking commentators, Orszag laments the low voter turnout in the U.S. and sees it as diminishing democracy. The fewer the people who vote, the fewer the people who decide the direction of government and and the narrower policy becomes. To remedy the low turnout rates, averaging below 60 percent, (lower for state and local elections) Orszag advances the idea of making voting mandatory in the U.S. Orszag is one of those who see voting as not a right or a privilege, but a duty, and too many Americans are shirking their duty.

Those chagrined by the low voter turnout in the U.S. see it as undermining our democracy by leaving elections in the hands of a small slice of the American population. To the extent that elections are typically dominated by an unrepresentative segment of those eligible to vote, i.e. the White middle class, policy is often skewed in their favor. For those who perceive politics in the United States as a struggle of class, race, and gender, the scales have to be balanced, even tipped.

Orszag and others are correct. The more people who vote, the better our system works, but how do you get people who are disinclined to vote to go to the polls? You cannot throw people in jail for not voting. Pressure must be applied through other means. One method advanced by Orszag is to fine voters who shirk their duty. That is the stick. To soften the burden of mandatory voting some have floated the idea of adding a lottery funded by the fines placed on those who did not show up at the polls. By casting a vote voters would make themselves eligible to win a pot of money. That is the carrot. He suggests that the idea recently put forward by others that a cash incentive in the form of a lottery is worth consideration. Naturally the pot would be filled with the fines placed upon those who refuse to carry out their duty.

The flaw in this theory is that the quantity of votes cast is given greater importance than the quality of votes cast. Driving millions of unmotivated and uninformed voters to the polls will do nothing to improve government. Many would vote by lists given to them by special interests with little or no thought to the issues. Some would likely vote straight tickets out of reflex or simply to save time with little thought given to the candidates or understanding of the issues and only the vaguest understanding of policy. Free health care is good. Candidate Smith supports free health care. So a vote is cast

Orszag asserts that by compelling people to vote we can achieve two laudable objectives: it would decrease the influence of money on elections and ensure that winners would elected by a true majority. Secondly, any money spent to discourage voters from showing up at the polls to support your opponent would be wasted. Obliging people to vote would greatly reduce the effect of special interest groups in getting people to the polls. Since everyone would have to vote there would be no point in spending millions to get sympathetic citizens to turn out on election day. Any weight added by the increase of numbers would be problematic. It would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to sift the informed and motivated votes from the random and coerced ones. 

There is absolutely no reason to believe that our republic would be better off if people were driven and enticed to the polls. Padding elections with millions of uninformed and unmotivated votes would amount to giving winners a blank check. Politicians would claim that their positions were vindicated by the thousands and millions that cast votes for them when in truth it would be nothing of the sort.

Coercing people to the polls will not make our country or our government any better. More than likely it would make things worse. Who would they vote for? On what basis would they choose one candidate over another? Adding millions of uniformed, thoughtless, and reflexive votes would have the effect of writing government a blank check. There would be no additional scrutiny of politicians' actions or examination of policy. There would be no increase in voter awareness. There would simply be more votes cast.

Orszag concludes by stating that compulsory voting would "make our democracy work better" because it would be "more reflective of the population at large." It is unclear what he means by that. If he means ethnically, racially, and sexually his argument is based on a disturbing assumption. Such an argument presumes that each demographic has a peculiar and exclusive interest that can only be represented by politicians who share that distinction. If he means to ensure that the electorate be accurately represented by class and economic interest, he is flirting with a Marxist concept of class struggle except that, unlike Marx, he believes that some sort of compromise between competing interests can be found. That compromise might be construed as a "common interest", but it might also be little more than a demarcation line. Once the balance of power shifted, the struggle would begin anew.

There is a great deal of rhetoric about voting being a solemn duty. The fact is, it is not. It is a right and a privilege. As such, people are free to choose whether they want to claim their privilege and exercise that right. The choice is theirs.

Compelling and bribing people to cast a vote will not make our democracy work better. It would only make it look better.