It Picqued My Interest--Did It Yours?

I was speaking via email today with Patrice McDermott of the organization Open the Government regarding Bush's recent signing statements. Since last Thursday, Bush has issued three new signing statements, yet even for seasoned "signing statement" watchers, they were not easy to catch, which I suspect is deliberate. Here is why.

If you check out the News site at the webpage for the White House, you can see why. If you look at the most recent signing statement, which occurred yesterday the 9th, there are more than a dozen hyperlinks on that news day alone. So you go looking for the signing statement, you look at what should be the most obvious link to the signing statement--"President Bush Signs into Law S. 1099," yet clicking it, all you get is the following:

On Thursday, August 9, 2007 the President signed into law:
S. 1099, which extends Federal Employee Health Benefits to United States citizen employees of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission.

If you make it a habit of checking the "News" page each day, you will find that the press office at the White House put one of these links whenever the presidents signs a bill into law. They are not a signing statement, but rather a signing "announcement." So for the seasoned veteran, he or she may have clicked the link above, saw that it was an announcement, and then moved on. Even if that doesn't get you, on the news page for the 9th, there are two links titled "President Bush Signs America COMPETES Act (the clever acronym for the bill). There are also two links for "Fact Sheet: America Competes Act (without the All Caps), a link for a bill that renames a post office, and some other miscellanea mumbo jumbo. If you click the link for "President Bush Signs America COMPETES Act," you find a similar announcement for the link to signing S. 1099. Only if you click the second link, which only slightly alters the first, will you find the actual signing statement. Seems like a lot of stuff crammed around the bill signing statement to be attributable to mere chance, don't you think? And if you continue in earnest to find the actual signing statement, you will find that it is of the garden variety rhetorical statement and not of the challenges which Bush is so famous for. So you may simply just give up looking, which of course is precisely what the administration wants you to do. Stop looking so they can go back to ostentatious challenges in bills of all sizes and sorts (of course we have not gotten to the big appropriations bills yet). So if you want to aggravate the administration, then continue clicking all the links of every page that mentions the fact that a bill has been.

Now the rhetorical signing statements. The three signing statements issued since last week have all been rhetorical signing statements. Remember that a rhetorical signing statement is designed to catch the attention of a particular audience--press, Congress, interest group, and/or the public. Rhetorical signing statements generally say something about the bill and then say good/bad things about Congress. And these three did not disappoint. In the bill under scrutiny here, President Bush throws in a phrase that always gets Americans humming--Bipartisan: "This bipartisan spirit of cooperation continues with the legislation I signed." But a paragraph later, he uses the rhetorical portion as it was intended:

I am, however, disappointed that Congress failed to authorize my Adjunct Teacher Corps program to encourage math and science professionals to teach in our schools. I am also disappointed that the legislation includes excessive authorizations and expansion of government. In total, the bill creates over 30 new programs that are mostly duplicative or counterproductive -- including a new Department of Energy agency to fund late-stage technology development more appropriately left to the private sector -- and also provides excessive authorizations for existing programs. These new programs, additional requirements and reports, and excessive authorizations will divert resources and focus from priority activities aimed at strengthening the basic research that has given our Nation such a competitive advantage in the world economy. Accordingly, I will request funding in my 2009 Budget for those authorizations that support the focused priorities of the ACI, but will not propose excessive or duplicative funding based on authorizations in this bill.

In one paragraph he jabs at Congress for cutting funding that would help American children to be more competitive in math and science--two areas where our children lag way behind other advanced industrialized nations--and secondly he throws that right hook about costly and unnecessary additions that stem from Congress's love of pork (and something he rarely if never complained about when he signed a number of pork laden bills passed by the Republican majority). And don't think that these are jabs that go unnoticed. Not long after President Bush signed the bill did an organization in support of it send out a press release of its own declaring victory for their members.

An organization known as the "Council on Competitiveness" (which shares the name of a White House entity in the Bush I administration that was chaired by VP Quayle) sent out a press release titled "President Signs America COMPETES Act, Major Step Toward National Innovation Agenda." This warms the heart of political operatives inside the Administration who can feel safe in the knowledge that their statement hit a target.

So in conclusion, the theme of this post is as follows: Nothing this White House--or any recent White House--is done for no reason. The decision over what type of message cast as part of the signing statement is the subject of intense inter-office deliberations (in fact, in 1985 it was because someone inside the White House removed a DoJ signing statement that the Reagan administration actually discovered its importance), which is why the president is so aggressive in protecting these inter-office memos. And the decision to provide cover for the signing statement is also a calculated decision designed to throw the scent off the signing statement.

Is This Any Way To Choose A President?

You may have heard that the 2008 primary campaign season has just gotten sillier. It all started awhile back when a number of states--more than 20 in all--moved their primary election date to February 5, 2008.

Today, South Carolina announced that it will move its presidential primary to January 19--ostensibly to preserve its "First in the South" title. We have also heard from Iowa and New Hampshire, who are only trying to preserve their "First in..." titles. This move by South Carolina is set to cause New Hampshire and Iowa to hold their primaries in early January (even possibly on New Years Day) or after Xmas--the chance that we will have a primary to select delegates in a different year than the actual presidential election.

I have argued elsewhere that this is the worst possible way to select a president. The primaries happen so fast that it keeps most Americans from registering their vote. Why? The typical voter needs a particular informational level to head to the polling place and cast their vote. The reason why more Americans vote in the presidential general election than any other election in the United States is because of the massive and sustained information blast leading up to the November vote. This is why the real general election begins following Labor Day--it is close enough to the general election to allow the typical voter to satisfy his or her informational needs. The reason why few people vote in a primary election is because it happens so far in advance of the general election and is largely over before March that most are turned off to the process. This is why primaries are dominated by the wings of the Democrat and Republican Parties. Holding a primary after Xmas or on New Years Day will not induce the typical American voter out of his or her house.

This "First in the Nation" nonsense has nothing to do with preserving an historic place in presidential elections. Like nearly everything else in American politics, it has everything to do with money. The amount of money poured into the first states is enormous--so much that Iowa and New Hampshire factor it into their budget come a presidential election year. Thus all states want a slice of that pie--hence this rush to be first.

The national political parties (DNC and RNC) have threated to block any delegate from a state that moves their date forward. For instance, the Washington Post notes that the "RNC can block half of a state's delegates to the national convention" for moving their primary date. The DNC has made a similar threat. This apparently has not struck fear in the states that are moving their date forward. Most do not believe that, come Convention time and the need to heal wounds, the national party will follow through on its threat.

Not all believe the compressed primary/long general election season is a bad thing.

Jonathan Rauch, the superb reporter/columnist at The Atlantic Monthly (as well as the National Journal) argues (sub. req.) that the compressed 08 primary season may be in the best interest of all Americans, and not in the worst interest.

Rauch suggests it works in our interest in the following ways: First, it allows more time to get to know the nominee in the general election. He uses Barack Obama as his example. Obama "entered the race with a record of inexperience no other serious contender could match." If Obama wins the nomination, he would have nearly 3/4 a year to get to know him, "an insurance policy that the country's most recent experiments with inexperience--Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush--suggest is wise."

This only holds true assuming that the average voter is already following the election, recording the positions of the candidates, and then sifting through the pros and cons to come to a rational decision. Thus in Rauch's analysis, more time would make perfect sense. The problem is that this is not the typical voter.

The larger reason that Rauch likes the compressed primary/long general election model is that it comes in close proximity to "British-style parliamentary politics: the shadow government." As he notes, in parliamentary systems like Britain, the elections happen over the span of weeks, yet candidates announce their intentions to lead years in advance. And these leaders also select "the men and women who would ascend to ministerial" positions should their party win the majority in an election. Thus in this type of system, the public gets to know the incumbent, the challenger, and knows what type of government would be in place since the inferior officers are already selected. To borrow an English phrase: Bullocks! Britain has a strong party system which makes sure that voter interest is kept high. We have nothing that works in a similar way.

Rauch is overly optimistic about the long general election season and its ability to give us a better president. He argues that in the long general election, the candidates will have more time to put in place the people who would fill the top positions. As it is now, once the candidate wins the general election, there is a mad scramble over an 11 week period to staff the Executive Branch. The fact of the matter is, the nominee already, quietly, picks who would fill the top positions. He just doesn't make that information public. In 1992, the Bush campaign cause the Clinton campaign to briefly spin out of control when Bush charged that Clinton was already "measuring the curtains" in the White House. The underlying message was the Clintons were drunk on hubris and were cock-sure they had it wrapped up, which they hadn't. Americans like a race, and they like an underdog. If a candidate assumes he or she has won, there is the prospect that some voters (and in close elections "some voters" matter a lot) will throw their support to the underdog. Hence the Clinton campaign changed strategy to make sure Americans understood that they--and not the incumbent Bush--were the underdogs.

I continue to hold hope that one day we rid ourselves of the primary and allow the political parties to make the nominee decision for us. This seems autocratic to most Americans, but in the end the party--recognizing the importance of the Independent--will produce a nominee that is more a centrist than an extremist. It also does away with the general election advertising that uses primary campaign rhetoric against the opposition. And it undermines the importance that the press has in this decision--and for my money, that is reason enough to do away with the primary.