Author: Andrew Sullivan

The Tories attack Labour:

Massie highlights a longer Cameron pitch and is underwhelmed:

These clips are neither one thing nor another, neither a fireside chat nor a fully-trumpeted stemwinder. Instead, he falls somewhere in between and the result is oddly discordant  – as though he aims for the full Lloyd George only to restrain himself for fear that it would sound and look ridiculous. The result is a delivery that, sometimes at least, is both passionless and lacking in reassurance.

My argument against proportional representation (PR) is here. David McKie's thoughts:

It is possible to envisage a system with a less proportional outcome, such as the Alternative Vote, which is not acceptable to strict adherents of PR as it by no means guarantees a proportional outcome, but is finding favour with Labour. But even the Alternative Vote would seriously diminish the chances of the Conservatives (or Labour) forming an outright government, even in years when they are stronger than they are now. Maybe the only prospect of a Cameron government after May 6 will be one with some form of Liberal Democrat backing. Yet to abandon all hope of another Conservative dawn such as the Lady achieved 31 years ago must amount to a…version of heresy [for certain Tories]– even a vision of hell.

Edward McMillan-Scott is for electoral reform:

I was leader of the Tory MEPs during the 1999 Euro-election and held a seminar at Central Office, at which Oxford academics Vernon Bogdanor and David Butler spoke of fairness and change. I couldn't get Professor John Curtice to come from Glasgow, but he told me that he had always been astonished by the Conservative reluctance to go for real PR for Westminster, since it would actually give them a significant lift because of their broadly-based support.

There is a need for a national debate about a genuinely fair electoral system, and this election must be the catalyst.

Julian Glover doesn't think PR is an option:

[T]here is no way Cameron, if he led a minority government, would be able to get his party to pass a bill allowing a referendum, even if he wanted it to do so and even if he then promised to campaign for a no vote. So the search is on for a compromise. Some Tories are dreaming up elaborate schemes in private to rebalance parliamentary voting, which would benefit the Lib Dems whilst leaving first the post intact. But they will get nowhere. More likely, I think, is a standoff, a minority government and probably a second election later this year.

Iain Martin is given some good advice from a friend:

The concept [Tory "Big Society" idea] is an attempt to explain how civic society might fill the gap when the state does less. This didn’t get much of a response. The Big Society sounds far too wimpish, said someone else. Like a song by U2, Then Jerico or Big Country from the 1980s. And it is so vague that it reinforces the widespread feeling in the country that Cameron and his ideas lack definition.

A friend, not involved in politics or journalism, then made a brilliantly clear point that stopped the discussion in its tracks. “Wouldn’t they have been better calling it The Strong Society? Much tougher and far less vague. Strong is a good word.”

Larison goes after Clegg's opposition to replacing Trident:

Just a month ago, Clegg was rightly railing against the major parties for having effectively ceded British sovereignty over matters of war, and yet he argues for a position that could very easily reinforce all of the worst habits of the British government in its relations with the United States concerning matters of war. If Clegg wants to repatriate British foreign policy, as he says he does, scrapping Britain’s nuclear deterrent does not make very much sense.

Peter Hoskin says some Tory MPs are warming to the idea of a hung parliament:

One corollary of the Lib Dem surge is that it seems to have made certain Tory MPs more accepting of a hung parliament in private.  They still don't like it, of course – and there's still plenty of anger being directed at the party leadership, that the Tories aren't miles ahead in the polls.  But they do regard Cleggmania as something of a freak occurrence, which could barely have been guarded against in any event, and which is slightly more excusable than being run close in a straight race with Labour.  Whether this will smooth any post-election deals and recriminations remains to be seen.

Dizzy sketches out arguments for and against a hung parliament. But will the public go for it? Anthony Wells digs into the Sunday YouGov poll:

YouGov also asked if various election results would delight or dismay respondents. 24% would be delighted by a Cameron majority government, the highest figure, but 47% would be dismayed. As you might expect, most Conservatives would be delighted, most Labour and a significant majority of Lib Dem supporters would be dismayed. Asked about a Brown majority goverment 17% would be delighted (since almost a third of Labour supporters said only they wouldn’t mind), 50% would be dismayed.

Now it gets interesting – asked about a Cameron led Con/LD coalition, it is less popular than a Conservative majority. Only 8% would be delighted, and 52% would be dismayed (the highest figure). The reason is 53% of Lib Dem supporters would still be dismayed by such a result, and only 6% delighted, while 33% of Conservative supporters would be dismayed by such a result. What about a Gordon Brown led Lab/LD coalition? This is slightly more popular, 10% would be delighted and 49% dismayed, but still less popular than a Labour majority. Contrast this with a Lab/LD coalition under a different Labour leader – 11% would be delighted (including 24% of Lib Dem voters), and only 43% dismayed.

Finally, a Lib Dem viral video (via Lansonboy):

Steve Chapman debunks one of the myths behind the new Arizona law, that illegal immigrants commit crimes in greater numbers than native born Americans. Krugman takes a look at how immigration splits both parties. Chait thinks immigration legislating will be a boon for Democrats:

The combined effect of the Arizona law plus Democrats pushing for immigration reform will probably be to cement Latino's political allegiance for a very long time. In the short term, the politics may not work for most Democrats — Harry Reid excepted — but in the long run it will be a bonanza.

He has a slightly more nuanced follow up. He continues to argue that immigration reform would be good for the Democrats but adds that the "only problem is that many of the beneficiaries are future office holders who don't get a vote right now." Reihan doesn't think immigration reform is likely to pass and wonders if the Democrats are acting for purely political reasons:

It's hardly a mystery that both major parties are motivated by a desire to win elections, and that they shape their agendas to that end. One could characterize this immigration push as a cynical effort to exploit the fears of Latino voters in a manner that won't actually lead to concrete reforms, thus exacerbating tension around an explosive issue to no discernible end other than political advantage. I wouldn't embrace that characterization necessarily, but it's clarifying.

Katie Roiphe reviews a new translation of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex:

In her essay on Beauvoir, Elizabeth Hardwick called The Second Sex "brilliantly confused." This is a pitch-perfect description of the massive tome, because confusion is precisely its strength: the ability to tolerate the contradictions, the nuances, the million tiny ambivalences and ambiguities of intimate life. This brilliant confusion has been all but lost by most of the great feminist books that came afterwards; it is, alas, at odds with causes and picket signs, with the more mundane ideological work of a political movement. We go in now, I am afraid, more for predictable simplicity.

De Beauvoir aficionado Freddie DeBoer wonders why de Beauvoir's other works aren't better known:

I do worry that there is a tendency to relegate women writers, and particularly women philosophers, to some cramped and reductive space called "Feminism." Search through many anthologies, of either literature or philosophy/criticism, and you will often find some sort of regimented (and thus segregated) division between non-feminist and feminist works. Feminism, in other words, becomes a chapter– an important chapter to the anthologists and editors, I'm sure– a discrete unit easily packaged and bundled separately from the rest of knowledge, echoing the movements that condemn women and women's interests into a narrow space defined by patriarchy.

Anyway, my point is merely that I think that it is strange that The Second Sex is the only work that many people know of de Beauvoir's at all, and I can't help but wonder if this isn't a product of a reductive view of feminism and women philosophers, one that confines each to the level of niche and segregated knowledge

A reader writes:

Your points about the weakness of the political party system, and the enabling behavior of the conservative media apparatus, are well taken. But the comparison of her and Obama as transformational political figures is off-base.

Palin has none of Obama's perseverance, none of his capacity to shrug off personal attacks, and none of his capacity for long-term strategic thinking. Fox News may give her a nice safe haven for softball interviews, but they can't shield her from the bruising, think-on-your-feet rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. Running for president is hard fucking work — especially when there's good money to be made doing something else.

I have no doubt she'd love to be president. But she has no stick. She'd dump the campaign the moment someone dangled a sufficiently tempting media gig. And her slavering followers would love her for it all the more.

A reader writes:

While I understand your opposition to changes to the British electoral system, I can't agree that changes to the system would put the Liberal Democrats into a position of permanent kingmaker.  While the current electoral inputs (i.e., votes) would create this scenario if the outputs (i.e., seats in Parliament) were changed, there is really no reason to believe that the inputs would stay the same if the electoral system were changed.  If a strictly proportional system were adopted, for instance, many more parties are likely to have some representation in Westminster. 

Look at the elections for the EU Parliament.

In 2009, the Lib Dems came in fourth behind the Tories, the UKIP, and Labour.  Four other parties also ended up with seats from Great Britain, plus three parties additional from Northern Ireland.  Assuming that the same results were transferred over to Parliament, the Conservatives could have formed government with the help of either the UKIP or of the Lib Dems and one of the smaller parties (probably the Ulster Unionist Party).

Even if something much less radical were implemented, such as an instant runoff voting system in which the voter ranks his or her preferences, the way that voters act will likely be substantially different.  Small parties would be benefit ted dramatically by the ability of voters to switch their support to the major parties in the event their preferred candidate does not have sufficient support.  Most current writing focuses on the ability of Conservative or Labour voters to list the Lib Dems as their second choice (or vice versa), but it is just as likely that voters will list the UKIP, the Greens, the SNP, the BNP, etc., as their first, second, or third choices.  The Tories and Labour may still dominate the system, but the "third party" vote is likely to disperse to other parties.

Ironically, this may mean that the Lib Dems are also best off with the current system.  They may be a perpetual third, but they have a lock on that position that other parties cannot break.  Plus, they are finally in a position where they may be able to either supplant Labour or at least because a functioning third.  Electoral reform may do nothing more than reduce the Lib Dems back to about 50-60 seats in Westminster.

Michael Bussee shares his story:

Stephen Hawking thinks we shouldn't try to contact aliens. Drezner calls Hawking simplistic:

Stephen Walt and others assume that the presence of aliens would cause humans to form a natural balancing coalition.   I'm not so sure.  My research into other apocalyptic scenarios suggests that some humans — that's right, I'm looking at you, Switzerland! — would bandwagon with the aliens.  Indeed, for all we know, some humans are already trying to welcome their future alien overlords.  Which begs the question –  wouldn't Hawking's isolationist policy allow the quislings to monopolize the galactic message emanating from Earth?

Daniel Engber pushes back against the anti-obesity campaign directed at children who could grow up to be servicemembers:

According to military guidelines, even someone who's fit as a fiddle can be drummed out of camp for having the wrong body dimensions. Consider that a young man who's 6 feet tall must weigh less than 195 pounds, or have a body fat percentage below 26, in order to serve in the Army. … That's true even if he excels on the U.S. Army's Physical Fitness Test. The regulations are very clear on this point: Athletic prowess does not make up for cottage-cheese thighs. In fact, it's listed as one of the "typical excuses" that fatso soldiers should avoid: "I can pass the APFT, so why lose weight?" When it comes to body fat, the regs declare that too much flab connotes, first of all, "a lack of personal discipline." Another document suggests that it "detracts from soldierly appearance." So excess weight isn't just a health problem—it's a personality flaw. Oh, and it makes you ugly.

Sven Birkerts describes the experience of reading a novel:

The question comes up for me insistently: Where am I when I am reading a novel? I am “in” the novel, of course, to the degree that it involves me. I may be absorbed, but I am never without some awareness of the world around me—where I am sitting, what else might be going on in the house. Sometimes I think—and this might be true of writing as well—that it is misleading to think of myself as hovering between two places: the conjured and the empirically real. That it is closer to the truth to say that I occupy a third state, one which somehow amalgamates two awarenesses, not unlike that short-lived liminal place I inhabit when I am not yet fully awake, when I am sentient but still riding on the momentum of my sleep. I experience both, at times, as a privileged kind of profundity, an enhancement.