It’s a little later than promised, but here is the first of what I hope to be a new series of Bolingbroke-related posts.

Bolingbroke had argued that Whig and Tory had been replaced by Court and Country parties, and that the only true enemies to the principles of the Revolution [of 1688] were Walpole and his supporters.  All that remained for him, in his first series of letters, was to provide a criterion for judging political behaviour in the new era of Country consensus.  To this end, he proposed a major conceptual distinction between ‘government’ and ‘constitution’.  He defined government as the instrumental activity of administration, an evaluatively neutral activity that could be used to describe the conduct of any ‘chief magistrate, and inferior magistrates under his direction and influence’….Attachment to the principles of the constitution, however, provided the means to judge whether a government was good or bad, and hence whether it fostered a spirit of liberty or the practice of tyranny.  ‘By constitution’, he argued in a classic definition, ‘we mean…the assemblage of laws, institutions and customs, derived from certain fixed principles of reason, directed to certain fixed objects of public good, that compose the general system, according to which the community hath agreed to be governed’.  Any government that acted against the common good, or that went against the original contracts which formed the basis of the constitution, could be accused of being ‘unconstitutional’, a term coined by Bolingbroke himself. ~Introduction to Bolingbroke: Political Writings

It is this basic distinction that permits us to define when a government has usurped powers that it does not lawfully possess, and it is this basic distinction that modern states have worked hard to eliminate.  When members of the government are given final authority over the limits of their own power, the game is, of course, completely rigged and the constitution is quickly obliterated in practice, if not in outward forms.

You may have heard that John McCain delivered some sort of irenic, “moderate” foreign policy speech, but this would be wrong.  Nestled in the middle of the speech are remarkably dangerous statements.  Where “mutual respect and trust” are good for how America treats every other nation, including the Chinese, the Russians are singled out as the villains:

The future of the transatlantic relationship lies in confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century worldwide: developing a common energy policy, creating a transatlantic common market tying our economies more closely together, addressing the dangers posed by a revanchist Russia, and institutionalizing our cooperation on issues such as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.

We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia.  Rather than tolerate Russia’s nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization’s doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.

In other words, restart the Cold War for no good reason.  His entire view of Russia is negative, reactive and confrontational.  He describes Russia as “revanchist,” a label that mostly Russophobes like to throw around because of its militant connotations, but even if that were accurate that description implies that there is something that Russia believes needs to be avenged.  If Russia did not have a reason to feel revanchist before now, McCain seems intent on still more provocations and insults directed towards Moscow.  Added to his very bad idea of creating a League of Democracies, which necessarily excludes two of the largest powers on earth by McCain’s definition of who should belong, this is a recipe for increased international tension, military build-ups and possibly even proxy wars.

This is brilliant.  I am forced to say: “I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theater, conferring on all who sat there, perfect absolution. God was singing through this little man to all the world, unstoppable, making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar.”

But in Slovakia, where relations with the former imperial power, Hungary, have deteriorated sharply since 2006, the mood has swung the other way. The education minister, from the Slovak National Party, has sidelined plans for a joint history textbook. That follows a decision by Slovakia’s parliament last year to endorse the Benes decrees, which legalised brutal measures against the country’s supposedly Hitlerite German and Hungarian populations in 1945-48.

Shortly afterwards, Hungary’s president, Laszlo Solyom, paid a “private” visit to Komarno, a majority Hungarian town in Slovakia. That infuriated the Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, who said that “Slovaks cannot allow political representatives of Hungary to behave in southern Slovakia as if they were in northern Hungary”. The two countries have not spoken at a high level since. ~The Economist

Central and eastern Europe is one part of the world where the arbitrary and contradictory borders of post-WWI treaties, supposedly serving the principle of “self-determination,” have not been challenged by demands for political change.  It is hardly a secret that Hungarian minorities in Slovakia and Romania suffer from discrimination and poor treatment by the majorities of the countries that they were thrust into long ago, and it is not so hard to imagine a desire on the part of Hungarians throughout the old Transleithania turning into a demand for partition and annexation.  If it is good enough for the Albanians, who is to say that it must be denied to Hungarians or any other nationality in Europe?  This is the insanity that policies centered around self-determination encourages, and it is the kind of thing that ought to command our attention much more, since we have been in an era of resurgent nationalism since the end of the Cold War.

Some Western diplomats fret that Armenia’s strife might tempt a bellicose Azerbaijan to try and regain control of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azeris are said to be spooked by Kosovo’s successful campaign for independence and fear that Nagorno-Karabakh might win international recognition. Ominously, Azerbaijan threatened to pull out of international peace talks after America, Russia and France voted against a UN resolution calling for the withdrawal of Armenian forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding region. This follows some of the deadliest border skirmishes between Azeri and Armenian forces in years. ~The Economist

That’s not surprising to me, since I have argued here many times before and again in my column a few weeks ago that recognising Kosovo would embolden separatists, and so long as other governments around the world believe this the political consequences may well be the same regardless of what the separatists do.  I would add that the mere fear that separatists might be emboldened and might succeed in gaining international recognition is likely to create backlashes by some states against enclaves that they fear may be stripped from them.  Legally, Karabakh is in a similar position as Kosovo: officially part of Azerbaijan, but in the hands of the majority Armenians (who also drove out the Azeris living there), seeking nominal independence with the understanding on the part of everyone involved that the neighbouring mother country will effectively be propping it up and will probably eventually annex it.  An important difference is that the assignment of Karabakh to the old Azerbaijan S.S.R. was a deliberate Stalinist effort to divide and rule the two Caucasian peoples by putting an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azeri territory, while the Albanians in Kosovo owe whatever claim to autonomy that they ever had to the Titoist system.  In both cases you have a Muslim state or would-be state trying to exploit the structures of defunct communist regimes to justify their goals, and in the case of Kosovo you have a mostly credulous West willing to help out.  It remains to be seen whether Westerners are as gullible and short-sighted when it comes to Armenia.

There is something more than a little rich about thepeople whose magazine endorsed Mitt Romney and treated Giuliani very amicably acting like clear-eyed defenders of conservative philosophical coherence when it comes to criticising pro-Obama conservatives, such as Doug Kmiec.  I have alsocriticised Prof. Kmiec for his pro-Obama arguments, but I cannot fault him for his disgust with the Bush administration and his desire to support someone who does not promise to replicate virtually every flaw and error of the administration.  Though I did not share this judgement of Romney, there were some, including some very smart conservatives, who once believed they saw some possibility of salvaging the country’s reputation and getting out of Iraq under a Romney administration.  In broad strokes, both Romney and Obama took the stance of the transformational outsider, the reformer who would change the way things are done in Washington and fix what was broken.  Despite the fact that pro-Bush voters tended to back Romney, while anti-Bush voters usually rallied to McCain, I know that some on the right believed that Romney represented something different.  Where McCain represented obvious continuity, Romney was perceived by some to represent change (and not in the mocking sense that I and others often applied to him).  So there is some slender thread connecting the two that might make sense of a Romney backer switching to Obama. 

The NRO mockery is pretty remarkable.  Romney’s credentials as a conservative were very freshly-minted and entirely unconvincing to a great many of us, but that didn’t stop a number of people on NRO from boosting him endlessly.  Conservatives were allowed to use very flexible, low standards to justify their support of both Romney and Giuliani, despite the fact that both were far to the left of the rest of the field on life issues within very recent memory (and Giuliani still was throughout).  Backing Giuliani was absurdly considered to be a perfectly respectable position to take, because his social liberalism and pro-immigration views were supposed to be offset by his willingness to attack foreign countries concern about national security, but there was nothing demonstrably conservative about his foreign policy agenda, either.  There were more than a few people at NRO who were not only willing to accept Giuliani if necessary, but who were openly backing him and deriding other, more obviously conservative candidates, including Huckabee and Paul.  The only thing consistent and coherent about any of this was that their preferred candidates were nominally or, in Giuliani’s case, vociferously pro-war. 

Now suppose that you had been persuaded to support one of the other Republicans who was not nominated, and you were then faced with the prospect of backing a nominee who basically called your preferred candidate a liar and a defeatist to clinch the nomination.  Why would you give that nominee your support?  When you get right down to it, the reason for backing Obama becomes clear: he isn’t McCain, and such a person would resent McCain for what he did to his candidate.  Perhaps anti-McCain conservatives can find some things about Obama as a man that they find attractive, but fundamentally they are taking their position as a way to thwart McCain’s ambitions.  This is something Levin, of all people, should be able to understand.  Indeed, if more pro-Obama conservatives put their case in this kind of visceral, “McCain must be defeated at any cost” way, I might almost be inclined to join them.  Almost.

Jim Antle passes on some depressing news: Alan Keyes will be joining the Constitution Party and possibly running for its nomination.  Where do I turn in my (non-existent) membership card? 

To the extent that I have ever been a partisan, I have been registered with the New Mexico Taxpayers’ Party (as the national party used to be known) when I started voting, so I suppose I am still technically a member of that party, and I did cast my vote for Peroutka in 2004.  I will go on record right now and say that if they nominate Keyes I won’t ever vote for a Constitution Party nominee again.  More or less pointless protest candidacies based in principle are one thing.  Tying yourself to a ludicrous fraud in the process is something else all together.  I say this as someone who once bought what Keyes was selling.  Happily, I am done with that phase. 

Jim is right that “he would still be the biggest name candidate the Constitution Party has ever attracted,” but in this case that is definitely not a good thing.  Most people have no idea what the Constitution Party is.  With a Keyes candidacy it will become known as “the vehicle for the looney’s latest ego trip and money-making scheme.”  If he wins the Libertarian nomination Mike Gravel has to be hoping that Keyes gets the CP nod, since it will easily make Gravel the one considered credible and sane among the third party candidates.

Mike Gravel, apparently without irony, said this in his announcement of his Libertarian bid for President:

The fact is, the Democratic Party today is no longer the party of FDR. It is a party that continues to sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism — all of which I find anathema to my views.

Sure!  The Democratic Party continues to “sustain war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism” because it is no longer the party of FDR.  Think about that one for a moment.  Gravel won’t get any argument from me if he wants to run against “war, the military-industrial complex and imperialism,” but you have to wonder what he thinks FDR’s policies ultimately created.  

Update: Anthony Gregory had the same reaction.

Steven Stark makes an important point that I have oversimplified in the past.  Where I had cited the polling from past presidential races as evidence that the Democratic candidate consistently ran better early in the year, the reality is that the challenger against the incumbent party’s candidate is the one who should normally poll better at this point.  Stark explains:

At this point in the election cycle — before any fear of the unknown has set in — challengers are often running much better against their incumbent-party opponents. In 1988, Michael Dukakis had about a 10-point lead over George Bush (the senior and then-vice-president), only to lose by around eight — an 18-point swing.

Ditto in 2000. George Bush (the younger) had about a similar 10-point lead over Al Gore at this stage, only to see the lead shrink to nothing by Election Day.

In fact, that’s been the usual pattern. In 1976, Carter led Gerald Ford by 10 points in the spring, and even McGovern in the spring of 1972 found himself running roughly even with Richard Nixon (albeit with a potential George Wallace third-party candidacy in the mix). By November, the incumbent had surged considerably in both cases.

Even in 2004, John Kerry ended up doing worse in November than he had in the spring, at least according to the CNN/Gallup poll that gave him a five-point lead in April.

The only modern exceptions to this involved Bill Clinton, in 1992, and Ronald Reagan, in 1980. In both elections, the insurgents came from behind. But both faced notably different circumstances than Obama does.

You will say that there is no real incumbent this time.  So, does it matter that this is the first open election in over fifty years?  Even though McCain is not an incumbent, he is closely identified with the errors of the current administration and the incumbent party, which means that he may have all the disadvantages of incumbency and none of its strengths.  However, Stark suggests that McCain is helped by the fact that he is not the incumbent:

First, Clinton and Reagan got to run against unpopular incumbents. McCain is not George Bush — no matter how much Obama may try to tie the two together.

True enough.  McCain is much more reckless in foreign affairs and even more committed to amnesty.  His is a more refined, potent GOP-destroying agenda.  But that doesn’t seem to be the way many people perceive him, and the constant emphasis on how “moderate” he is supposed to be has clearly separated him from the damaged public image of mainstream conservatism.  Thanks to the reputation McCain has gained in the media, he will never receive the same scorn or criticism for taking positions identical to those of the current administration, and the one major domestic policy view he has that alienates conservatives is the one that wins him admiration from most journalists.  Journalists treat McCain the way some supporters treat Obama when he says something they don’t like. “Oh, he doesn’t really believe that–he’s just saying that to satisfy the rubes.”  (They might say the same thing about other Republicans, but they usually say it in an accusatory, rather than exculpatory, way.)  That will certainly be a difference with previous elections.  It is difficult to recall a case where the mainstream media was more devoted to building up the Republican nominee, but that seems to be happening this time.  He is their candidate, and they are his people. 

It’s worth noting that Obama was running at Dukakis and Kerry-like levels ahead of McCain in February, and has been losing ground ever since.  According to Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll, Obama now trails by 10 nationally, and their Missouri polling confirms the large McCain lead (53-38) that SUSA found earlier this month.  Even if the weak Obama state polling in a number of Democratic and swing states is a function of party infighting and will change once the nomination is determined, that simply drives home the point that a continued nomination fight on the Democratic side can only work to their disadvantage.  The ongoing contest is obviously driving up Obama’s unfav rating and reducing Clinton’s fav rating, so that whichever one the superdelegates select will be badly damaged come autumn.  There will be less time for the eventual nominee to shore up Democratic support, since the general election campaign will be starting within weeks of the convention in Denver.  Even if this is concluded in June, that means another two months of strife that benefit McCain.  Meanwhile, starting next week, McCain will have effectively been the nominee for two months, which does give the impression of being in the position of an incumbent.  Unlike Mr. Bush, however, McCain is not unpopular.  He is well-liked and viewed more positively than either of his would-be opponents.  After the last month, Obama may well unify the GOP against him more effectively than Clinton, and according to the current polls he fails to unite more than 75% of Democrats in many states.

The result from a poll from last week’s CBS poll was initially very depressing, since it meant that four out of ten people either still believed the garbage that Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks or didn’t know one way or the other.  Then I realised that the dense cloud of ignorance and propaganda that the jingoes have been spreading for years has actually been gradually lifting.  At the very start of the war, more than half the country believed this nonsense, and that number has been cut almost in half.  You have to wonder what would happen to support for the war in Iraq if that 28% knew the truth.  As it is, 68% want us out within two years.  6% are willing to have a large American presence in Iraq for 5+ years.