On: Our two party system -- Let’s keep it simple

by: Joshua Howell

“When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” -- Oscar Wilde

In concluding his remarks for the evening, Gary Johnson decided to take a risk. He would, at once, wax philosophic about the nature of voting, show his penchant for humor, and hope for the best. What resulted was one of the more platitudinous yet intriguing statements of the year: “Wasting your vote is voting for somebody you don’t believe in,” he proclaimed. “That’s wasting your vote. I’m asking everybody here, I’m asking everybody watching this nationwide, to waste your vote on me.”

If the success of a third party candidate is to be determined in proportion to the number of electoral votes he receives, then only a smattering of third parties in American history have been “successful.” But such a definition is limiting, if not misleading.

Better would be a mechanism in which we consider the short and long terms effects these parties have on American jurisprudence. The most successful third parties don’t simply vanish, as if they were but a whim of the public. Instead, they are incorporated into the extant political structure.

Staples of American policy such as the abdication of the gold standard and farm subsidies didn’t originate from within our two party system, but with the short-lived Populist Party. After losing the election of 1900, the Populists were absorbed by the Democrats, who proceeded in instituting much of what the Populists desired.

Modern day liberalism, as first practiced by Woodrow Wilson, was introduced to the American public by Theodore Roosevelt and his newly formed Progressive Party. In the 1912 election, Wilson won 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt’s 88, but Wilson adopted so many of the Progressive Party’s reforms that claiming Roosevelt “lost” is over-simplistic. One can thank “Progressives” (which now denotes many Democrats) for legitimizing pushes for women’s suffrage, the direct election of Senators, the Sixteenth Amendment, the inheritance tax, limited government interference in strikes, and other important aspects of current American government.

Third parties, it seems, have been quite successful through our years. All that was required was patience, a paradoxical catalyst in the slow moving game of politics.

But suppose those who feel our two party structure suffocates democracy had their prayers answered, and tomorrow, by some strange magic, Americans were bequeathed a third option likely to receive a significant proportion of popular and electoral votes. This would, perhaps, be more trouble than it’s worth.

Unfortunately for third party activists, the structure of our government might impose a de facto two party limitation. Given the impediments to government action inherent to Washington -- a Constitution, an electoral college, supermajorities in the Senate, a presidential veto, and a Supreme Court -- there is a floor to the political power required to pass legislation. Any further subdivision of political power may remove from our parties the capacity to make any laws whatsoever, which would be disastrous.

In addition, having three parties would make it impossible for a presidential candidate to win the requisite 270 electoral votes. Constitutionally, the problem would then be solved by the House of Representatives, who are under no obligation to select the person with the plurality. (Such was the state of affairs in 1824, when neither Andrew Johnson nor John Quincy Adams received a majority of electoral votes. Johnson received approximately 38,000 more popular votes than Adams, but Adams became our sixth president.)

America could expect this political mess every four years.

But again, suppose the candidate with the plurality automatically won. With as little as 34 percent of electoral votes, Americans would be subjected to a president who could command the military, negotiate treaties, veto laws, and oversee a vast governmental apparatus allocated to him by Congress. Nor would the president be encumbered by reelection prospects, because only a plurality of supporters is required, and a plurality is easily attained.

Earlier this year, some Americans caviled over the Obama Administration’s mandate that employers provide birth control to their workers. Even if one finds the decision distasteful, our president won 68 percent of electoral votes and 53 percent of popular votes in 2008, which provides the decision a certain measure of legitimacy, if not any sense of deference. This would be untrue if President Obama had merely won 34 percent of electoral votes at the conclusion of his campaign.

True, America would no doubt survive more than two political parties; the country is home to a stubborn people who will make work what they can. Yet such ruminations illustrate a political corollary to the paradox of choice: Increasing our supposed options decreases the viability of the state. 

Vote third party if one must, but our two party system is here to stay, as it should be.

Reading Guide: Where Romney and Obama Stand on the Supreme Court

by Suevon Lee ProPublica, Oct. 26, 2012, 10:48 a.m.

The Supreme Court has remained a largely unspoken topic on the campaign trail u2014 even though the Court plays a critical function in Americans' lives. (This past June's Affordable Care Act ruling, anyone?)

The next president could very well appoint one or two new justices. And who steps down first could also depend on who's elected.

Mitt Romney hasn't said much about the Supreme Court, apart from expressing disagreement with the Court's ruling on Obamacare. But his website states the candidate would nominate judges "in the mold of" the Court's conservatives u2014 Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts (the last two of whom a then-Sen. Obama voted against confirming). It also says Romney would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

President Obama, of course, has appointed two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, the nation's first Hispanic justice. His past remarks indicate a preference for nominees who bring "common sense" and "pragmatism" to the table, who'd blend constitutional analysis with "a sense of what real-world folks are going through."

Legal challenges to such key social issues as same-sex marriage, gun rights, immigration and separation of church and state are likely to be heard by the Supreme Court in the coming years. One justice is all it may take to tip the scale in these cases.

So what exactly have the candidates said, and why hasn't the Supreme Court been a bigger issue? Let's take a look.

Mitt Romney

Romney has spoken out against the president's first-term Supreme Court picks.

In April, Romney told the National Rifle Association that he's opposed to judges "who view the Constitution as living and evolving, not timeless and defining."

"In his first term, we've seen the president try to browbeat the Supreme Court. In a second term, he would remake it," Romney said. "Our freedoms would be in the hands of an Obama Court, not just for four years, but for the next 40. That must not happen."

Romney has occasionally embraced recent Supreme Court decisions. He praised the Court's unanimous January 2012 ruling in a religious liberty case that allowed for a "ministerial exception" to employment discrimination laws. He favorably cited another unanimous March 2012 ruling that made it easier for property owners to challenge compliance orders from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The candidate has been vocal about abortion. In June 2011, Romney wrote that he felt Roe v. Wade was a "misguided ruling that was a result of a small group of activist federal judges legislating from the bench." Early this year, Romney repeated that position, and again in April during an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer.

His running mate, Paul Ryan, also touched on the Court's role when it comes to abortion. "We don't think that unelected judges should make this decision; that people, through their elected representatives and reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process, should make this determination," Ryan said in the vice-presidential debate.

As Vice President Joe Biden pointed out during this debate, one of the people heading Romney's panel of advisers on judicial appointments is Robert Bork, a Reagan Supreme Court nominee who failed to win Senate confirmation in 1987 over fears he would vote to strike down a range of issues, including Roe v. Wade.

(Biden, then the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helped lead the opposition. The vacancy to which Bork was nominated eventually went to Justice Anthony Kennedy, typically the Court's swing vote.)

On another note, Romney would have a deep bench from which to select judicial nominees, given Republicans' vigorous focus on this area. (CNN has compiled a list of likely nominees, including former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement u2014 who argued the Affordable Care Act challenge u2014 and an assortment of conservative federal appellate judges.)

"Romney would appoint people with a more conservative judicial philosophy, who are not transforming the Constitution, not sticking up for the rights of any particular group and are very neutrally interpreting the law," said Curt Levey, president of Committee for Justice, an organization that promotes conservative judicial candidates.

President Obama

If Obama is reelected, there is strong speculation that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court's oldest member at 79, will retire to make room for a replacement. In that event, argue some, the president would likely nominate another woman (two other justices are also approaching their late 70s: Scalia and Kennedy are both 76.)

"[Obama] would place value on racial and ethnic diversity, but it wouldn't be determinative," said Tom Goldstein, co-founder and regular contributor to SCOTUSBlog, which provides news and analysis of the Court's decisions. "President Obama hasn't really pushed for very liberal nominees."

Back in 2008, Obama shed light on his thoughts about the subject.

In remarks to the Detroit Free Press, then-Sen. Obama said he would seek Supreme Court nominees who recognize "that one of the roles of the courts is to protect people who don't have a voice," for instance, "the vulnerable, the minority, the outcast, the person with the unpopular idea, the journalist who is shaking things up."

That same year, Obama, who taught constitutional law at University of Chicago Law School, praised former Justice David Souter and current Justice Stephen Breyer u2014 both considered liberal votes u2014 as "very sensible judges."

"They believe in fidelity to the text of the Constitution, but they also think you have to look at what is going on around you and not just ignore real life," he said.

Obama has made clear he supports Roe v. Wade, which has been narrowed in the face of new challenges.

In 2010, shortly after Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement, Obama told Senate lawmakers he'd apply no "litmus test" to potential nominees.

"But I will say that I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women's rights," the president said, eventually nominating Kagan for the vacancy.

In February 2011, Obama spoke out against the Defense of Marriage Act, which seeks to impose a definition of marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman, and instructed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court. (A second federal appeals court recently struck down the law as unconstitutional; some predict the issue could next be headed to the Supreme Court.)

Although the president has been criticized for taking his time with judicial appointments in the lower federal courts u2014 a gateway to the Supreme Court u2014 he's also named more ethnic minorities to the bench than any of his predecessors.

More Discussion?

So, why hasn't there been more discussion about the Supreme Court on the campaign trail? It's a question that's been raised again and again, especially since justices, who are appointed for life, serve on average about 30 years.

One possible explanation is that the Supreme Court strategically took itself out of the political calculus earlier this year when it narrowly upheld the health care law.

"[The issue] would have played out a little differently if the Supreme Court had struck down the health care act," SCOTUSBlog's Goldstein said. "It's really hard for the president to run against the Court that has just upheld his signature legislative achievement by a whisker."

But the silence could also just convey a perceived lack of interest among the public.

"I think the candidates realize that the Supreme Court doesn't move independent voters," said Goldstein, even though "the president makes a radical difference in the composition of the judiciary."

On: Binders full of Women and the Libya Attack

In her column today, Kathleen Parker correctly gauges the reaction to Mitt Romney's "binders full of women" remark. She argues that the reaction to the comment has been "ridiculous," while also pointing to the more substantive complaint that Mr. Romney's tale of events is more than a little sketchy.

Read more from The Washington Post

Meanwhile, in a wonderful meld of column writing and journalism, Ms. Parker's colleague, David Ignatius, shows that the confusion regarding the attacks on the Libyan embassy, stems from conflicting intelligence reports (which happens all too frequently in our complicated world, and is therefore to be expected), rather than an attempt to deceive the American public by the President and Vice President of the United States.

Read Mr. Ignatius' column here.

Big Bird Debate: How Much Does Federal Funding Matter to Public Broadcasting?

by Suevon Lee ProPublica, Oct. 11, 2012, 12:36 p.m.

Are Big Bird's 15 minutes up yet? Last week, Mitt Romney pulled public broadcasting into the presidential campaign when he said he would "stop the subsidy" to PBS, despite his love for the furry yellow Muppet.

The remark launched endless Internet memes, fueled late night television jokes and spawned a satirical Obama campaign ad (which the Sesame Workshop, a private, non-partisan charitable organization, has requested the campaign pull). Given the recent flurry of attention, we thought it would be helpful to examine how much federal funding actually affects public broadcasting.

How large is the federal subsidy to public broadcasting?

It's not exactly breaking the bank. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity created by Congress in 1967 to disperse funds to nonprofit broadcast outlets like PBS and NPR, is set to receive $445 million over the next two years. Per a statutory formula, public television gets about 75 percent of this appropriation while public radio receives 25 percent.

This amounts to roughly .012 percent of the $3.8 trillion federal budget u2013 or about $1.35 per person per year. (Some global perspective: elsewhere in the world, Canada spends $22.48 per citizen, Japan $58.86 per citizen, the United Kingdom $80.36 per citizen, and Denmark, $101 per citizen.)

This sounds like a drop in the bucket. Why would Romney focus on such a small figure?

Because Romney's approach is to target every government program he thinks is "not essential." The candidate's current spending plan not only calls for eliminating Obamacare and privatizing Amtrak, but deep reductions in subsidies to CPB and cultural agencies such as the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities u2013 expenditures he says are "things the American people can't afford."

Public broadcasting also happens to be a popular target among conservatives, who've long portrayed it as an example of wasteful government spending (in the mid-90s, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich proposed pulling federal funding from the CPB altogether).

Romney's no exception on the campaign trail. As ABC News' The Note reports, last week's debate wasn't the first time Romney has suggested Sesame Street seek outside advertisers to earn its keep. At a campaign stop last December, Romney told voters, "we're not going to kill Big Bird, but Big Bird's going to have to have advertisements, all right?"

How crucial is federal funding to public broadcasting?

Sesame Workshop's executive vice president told CNN last week that the company receives "very, very little funding from PBS." Indeed, the nonprofit generated nearly two-thirds of its $133 million revenue in 2010 from royalties and product licensing alone, according to its website. Its executives are also handsomely compensated: former CEO and president Gary Knell (who now runs NPR) earned $718,456 in executive pay plus $270,000 in bonuses in 2010. So, as the Washington Post points out, Big Bird doesn't exactly depend on the federal government for survival.

PBS draws roughly 15 percent of its revenue from the CPB. NPR's revenue mostly comes from member station dues and fees, with 2 percent coming from CPB-issued grants. Member stations, in turn, receive about 11 percent in federal grants. According to this CPB report, most revenue to both public radio and television (about 59 percent) consists of donations from individuals, corporate underwriters and private grants, followed by state and local support (roughly 20 percent).

But from a leverage standpoint, PBS says it's pretty important. Each federal dollar local stations receive generates roughly six dollars from local sources as a type of bargaining chip, according to a coalition of public broadcasting stations, producers and viewers.

Are there downsides to scaling back federal funding?

Yes. While shows like "Sesame Street" may remain safe under Romney's plan, its viewers in remote areas wouldn't fare as well. Public television and radio stations in poor, rural areas depend the most on federal support to survive. So while large public television markets producing more than $10 million in annual revenue require just 10 percent of federal funds to get by, its counterparts in small towns like Bethel, Ala., or Odessa, Texas, may very well need up to four times that much to operate.

How many markets could be at risk today?

A CPB-commissioned study released earlier this year estimated 54 public television stations (31 in rural areas) in 19 states at "high risk" of going dark if stripped of federal funding. The study also found 76 public radio stations (47 in rural areas) in 38 states at "high risk" of going silent without federal funding.

Aren't there other sources of news, culture and entertainment over the airwaves?

Yes, but public broadcasting has a specific mission of bringing a distinct brand of educational and cultural programming u2013 free of commercial trappings u2013 to a broad swath of the American public.

In establishing the CPB 45 years ago, Congress envisioned a broadcasting service that would encourage development of programming to address "the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities," and which could be made "available to all citizens of the United States."

In some areas of the country, public broadcasting still remains the only option, commercial or otherwise: at least 10 public radio stations around the country offer the only broadcast service, radio or television included, to their community.

Have there been prior attempts to defund public broadcasting?

Yes. In 2010, a flap over the firing of former NPR contributor Juan Williams (now a Fox News contributor) for comments he made about Muslims heightened the cries to cut NPR off from federal grants. Last year, Republican lawmakers introduced legislation to block NPR from receiving such grants.

Today, conservatives also argue that the smorgasbord of media offerings renders the form of public television obsolete. As the National Review recently put it, "If PBS doesn't do it, 10 million others will." Others, like Time's Michael Grunwald, arguethat the right to watch commercial-free TV "does not strike me as a basic human right" and that if "private funders feel it's important for South Dakotans to watch Big Bird, they can make that happen with their own tax-deductible contributions."

Can public broadcasting turn to alternate forms of funding?

Yes, but with varying degrees of success. In recent years, budget cuts have forced states to decrease funding for public broadcasting, the New York Times reported early this year. CPB also notes that revenue from individual donations went from $373 million in 1999 to $349 million in 2005.

CPB claims private advertising isn't a solution u2014 and at least one independent analysis estimated it could even lead to net losses by raising operating costs and diminishing support from corporate underwriters or private foundations. According to the report, "a shift to a commercial advertising model would lead to a chase for ratings and move public broadcasters off their fundamental role in lifting the educational and informational boat for all Americans."

What's the Obama administration's stance?

In 2010, the president's bipartisan deficit budget commission proposed cutting funding to CPB to reduce the federal deficit. But the campaign was quick to seize on the issue with its Big Bird ad. First lady Michelle Obama followed suit, telling Virginia voters this week, "We all know good and well that cutting Sesame Street is no way to balance a budget."

The candidates aside, what does the public think?

A March 2011 poll shows that more than two-thirds of the public opposes eliminating government funding for public broadcasting. A more recent poll indicates that 55 percent of voters oppose such cuts to public television.

On: The Economy

September's job report shows that the economy has improved marginally, with unemployment falling from 8.1% to 7.8%. David  Fahrenthold and Philip Rucker of The Washington Post ague that this deprives Governor Romney of one his central arguments.

Read more from The Washington Post.