American Politics

The content of Cynthia Burton's "Ad Watch" (Oct. 19) and your Guest Opinion by Suleiman S. Bey Al Sharif (Oct. 20) seem to be pure idiocy in full cretinistic bloom. They state, in essence, that Lt. Gov. Mark Singel is not responsible for the future actions of a murderer for whom he recommended a pardon. Why not? Why should any murderer be pardoned? The man's past fully indicated his future potential. Now, Reginald McFadden, our liberal-driven "second chance baby," has raped and killed again.

"I envy those students in Tiananmen Square," a veteran of domestic political wars said the other night. "Why?" I said. "They want to be us. They want to think and speak and write without being afraid. " "But look at how big their dreams must be," she said. I think my friend was right. At the least, she was describing vividly the missing link in current American politics. I have never had much patience with political or cultural romantics. When a writer comes back from a totalitarian state and swoons over the passion he finds in the writings and paintings of oppressed artists, I find myself wanting to ask him whether he thinks his own work would benefit from a few months in the gulag.

Sometimes you have to wonder if politicians ever watch parodies of themselves on television - Saturday Night Live sketches, for instance. There they were Tuesday night, the losers trying real hard to be gracious and promising to work with the winner (yeah, like Serbia with Bosnia), and the winner pronouncing the start of yet another revolution. Government was once again being returned to the people and bureaucrats, special interests and liberals had been vanquished. Why does every election night seem to be a rerun of the last?

Liberal thinking has seldom seemed less relevant to the current moment. Seldom has it been more necessary. But with the need to press the reset button on American politics all too evident, liberalism finds itself moribund, befuddled by new challenges, dominated by backward and inward-looking groups. What is needed is not a liberalism that merely responds in dusty fashion, which is to say, the reactionary left. And not a liberalism that merely acquiesces as it looks to personal advancement by being a Clinton caboose.

When President Clinton and congressmen from both parties went to Kansas City last week to start a yearlong series of public forums on revamping Social Security, they defied two seemingly iron laws of American politics. The first holds that Social Security, which will send $380 billion in checks this year to 44 million Americans, is politics' "third rail" - as in, touch it and you die. The second is that democracies weren't built to tackle long-term problems until they reach crisis - a point that's still a good decade away for Social Security.

Amen. Jesse "The Body" Ventura, governor-elect of Minnesota, is the best thing to happen in American politics in 20 years. In fact, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, governor-elect of Minnesota, is the only thing to happen in American politics in 20 years. I loved Ventura when he was a wrestler. And I love him even more as a politician. His stunning upset over Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Hubert Humphrey 3d was a victory for reality in the midst of the idiotic fantasy that is the American political system.

AFTER PAT Robertson's resignation last week as president of the Christian Coalition, much of the commentary focused on the declining importance of the man and his movement. Critics note that the Christian Coalition has been losing members and financial support for years, and that Robertson lost credibility when, on his television show, "The 700 Club," he agreed with his fellow conservative religious leader Jerry Falwell that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 were God's punishment on America for tolerating feminists, gays and lesbians, libertarians and certain federal judges.

A Feb. 7 article contained a brief note that Richard A. Stokes of Carlisle, Pa., would run against Arlen Specter for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate and that Mr. Stokes would not solicit funds. I feel Mr. Stokes has a lot of courage and faces an impossible task, but I wish him success. I can think of nothing better than taking American politics out of the hands of the money-givers, fund-raisers, image-makers and media consultants. If politics is taken out of the control of these groups, then we take control of government away from them.

AFTER THE PARADES Now that we've had parades that lasted longer than the war did, would it be all right to notice that our banking system is in worse shape than Saddam Hussein's government? - ra. A BANKING NOTE Curing the problems of American banks by letting them make even more ridiculous investments is the same as eliminating bank robbery by taking out the alarms and cameras. - ra. THEM WHAT HAS . . . American politics is based on promising people who don't have very much that nobody else is going to have anything either.

The Czech novelist Milan Kundera has lamented that life is like a sketch without a painting, lived only once and never subject to revision or perfection. It goes to show that when it comes to creativity and optimism, the Czech novelist has nothing on the American politician. To the latter, life is more like an Etch A Sketch, subject to virtually infinite revision without regret. An aide to Mitt Romney, Eric Fehrnstrom, gave us this unfortunately brilliant metaphor last week - brilliant because it describes much of the trouble with American politics, and unfortunate (for Fehrnstrom and his boss)

Allegheny College has cursed the darkness, with its researchers documenting in a series of polls the decline of civility in American politics and the risk that rising nastiness poses to self-government. Tuesday, the college plans to light a candle. Pundits David Brooks and Mark Shields are to receive the inaugural Allegheny College Prize for Civility in Public Life in Washington, honoring them for the elevated tone of their regular debates on PBS's NewsHour . "People talk so much in America about those who are not civil.

By Steve Frank When he was awarded the 2011 Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center last week, former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates made some scathing observations about the state of our democracy. Gates' speech captured little attention outside Philadelphia, and it's a shame that it didn't. His comments about government dysfunction were remarkable for a high-ranking government official, even a former one. For a very long time, Gates has had a bird's-eye view of American politics.

If elective politics were a car, it might be a Pinto or a Yugo - one of those infamously bad vehicles that was trifled with until deemed dangerous, then unmarketable. The conduct in Washington and Philadelphia these days has been just as prone to explosions and breakdowns, irritating many citizens to the point of alienation. But what if politics, according to a more pristine definition, isn't inherently lousy? What if it is a good and necessary activity in a democracy? "I think politics has gotten a bum rap," says Temple University political science professor Barbara Ferman.

By Melissa Harris-Perry I have watched Herman Cain's presidential campaign video repeatedly. It's a four-minute glimpse into one of the least understood aspects of American political life: black conservatism. The initial impulse among many Democrats (and, frankly, most Republicans) is to dismiss Cain's bid as quixotic and incomprehensible. I understand that impulse. I do not think Cain will secure the GOP nomination for the presidency. And I understand why devoting media coverage to an unlikely campaign can seem wasteful and distracting.

IMMEDIATELY after quelling the birth-certificate controversy, President Obama created another scandal last week in the wake of the government-sanctioned assassination of Osama bin Laden. After successfully ordering and executing the hit, Obama insisted that bin Laden be buried at sea to honor the Islamic tradition of quick burial. With no physical body to offer as proof, conspiracy theorists quickly determined that bin Laden wasn't really dead, or that he'd been dead for a long time and the Obama administration was simply stealing credit.

On one hand, American politics needs a dose of civility: Mute the polarizing rhetoric, learn to respect the other side while disagreeing passionately, pack up the permanent campaigns that make it almost impossible to compromise. But on the other hand, civility would cost too much if it serves to stifle dissent and comfort the powerful. Those were two of the major themes that emerged Saturday as leading thinkers in politics, the media, and academia wrestled with what ails the political system during a conference on dissent and civility at the National Constitution Center.

Steven Levinson is a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins University who will teach English in Brazil starting in the fall In November 2008, amid the most disastrous economic catastrophe since the Depression and most perilous global times since the fall of the Soviet Union, Americans voted for change. The question was, could Barack Obama deliver? We had hope, as illustrated by those ubiquitous crimson and sea-blue "Hope" posters, but that was 18 months ago. Since then, amid fears of a failed stimulus, a "double dip" recession, and the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, President Obama's approval ratings are at their lowest levels to date.

WHEN IT COMES to electing women to political office, a growing number of states - even some of the reddest and most socially conservative - are aligning with Venus in 2010. Pennsylvania remains lost on Mars. With powerful echoes of 1992's "Year of the Woman" in American politics, the nation watched Tuesday as two female high-tech millionaires captured the top spots on California's GOP ticket, women won hotly contested primaries for U. S. Senate nods in Nevada and Arkansas and the statehouse in South Carolina.

WASHINGTON - The oil spill is reaching far beyond the Gulf Coast and deep into American politics in an important election year. It's calling into question President Obama's proposal to open new offshore areas to oil drilling. It's complicating already difficult efforts to pass a controversial bill aimed at curbing climate change. It's also all but certain to become a major issue in many of this fall's campaigns for control of Congress. Yet as the spill pushes the needle of public opinion toward the anti-offshore-drilling position - taking some politicians with it - longer-term politics and policy remain tempered by the fact that much of America's future domestic oil and natural gas reserves are out there in deep water, and a majority of Americans still want to tap them.