Sheridan: Con-Law

VICE-PRESIDENT PALIN FROM ALASKA?

It strikes me as odd, constitutionally speaking, that to be elected 
president one must go through a vetting process that takes at least 
two years in order to win the nomination of one of the two major 
parties, followed by another two months of intense electioneering 
before the plebiscite on the first Tuesday in November, only to have 
the vice-presidential candidate chosen last-minute at the party 
convention followed by the same two months of following the leader.

Since it has, unfortunately, been too often the case that the VP has 
succeeded to the presidency, not by election, which gives him, and 
potentially her, a built in weakness, see, e.g. Gerald Ford who 
succeeded RMN following the resignation, unless and until elected in 
his, or her, own right, see, e.g. HST, LBJ, then why do we require, 
not to say suffer, such intensity for the presidency and so little 
intensity for the Vice-presidency.

Perhaps the irony is not so much constitutional as such, as much as it 
is in democratic theory, which I presume has something to do with the 
Constitution.

Just a thought, inspired by the nomination of a little known governor 
from Alaska by the GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain, as his running 
mate.  Let's say she's terrific.  Why weren't we alerted to her as a 
potential candidate two years ago?  Because then she was not a 
governor but only the mayor of a small suburban town near Anchorage?

If you want McCain, you have to accept that his running-mate may well 
have to lead the country during one of his potential terms.

If two months is good enough to vet her, I suppose that opens the door 
for many others whose domestic (nationally), international, and 
military experience is as great, or little.

She does meet the minimum age (35) and natural born in the U.S. 
qualifications (about which there's been a question regarding the 
senator, born in the Great State of the Panama Canal Zone), however, 
those being the prime qualifications in the founding document.

Lincoln was from the sticks, but had been in public life for decades 
before taking on Douglas, whom he debated up and down Illinois, to 
national attention, on the great issue of the day, slavery.  He'd been 
vetted nationally for ample time, longer than 60 days, before his 
election.  The nation lucked out with Lincoln.

What over-riding national issues are the two competing candidates, and 
their running mates, addressing?

America's proper role and place in the world?  The proper use of force?

***
I submitted the above to the Conlawprofs listserv.  Among the reactions was one observing that while the only two constitutional duties of the vice-president were to preside over the Senate to break a tie vote, and to wait and be ready in case of a vacancy upstairs, which, I guess, involves checking the obituaries in the Washington Post every morning, the current incumbent has allowed VP Dick Cheney to run  his own foreign policy operation out of the White House, or wherever he hides, w/o being confirmed by the Senate.  The writer thinks this an unwise departure and suggestst that if the VP is going to take over functions of the cabinet, that he get himself confirmed by the Senate just as they must.

Seems like he's got a point, I should think.

DEMOCRACY AIN'T FREE

This just in, via email, from a friend:

July 25, 2008

Re: Senator Barack Obama

I am a co-chair of a cocktail reception and dinner in honor of Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois), the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States.  The cocktail reception will be held on Sunday, August 17, 2008 in the late afternoon followed by dinner.  Both events will be held at either the Masonic Hall or the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.

The cost of the event is $2,300 per person for the cocktail party and $14,250 per person for the dinner.

For those who have not exceeded the allowable contribution to the Obama campaign, you can contribute up to $2,300 for the primary, $2,300 for the general election and $28,500 to the Obama Victory Fund.

Please make all checks payable to the Obama Victory Fund and mail them to me at nnn Montgomery Street, Suite nnn, San Francisco, CA 94104.  Thank you for your help for this great candidate.

Sincerely,

Don't forget to bring along a few bucks for the parking attendant...

 

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS

The Iron Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, is quoted to the effect that there are two things you don't want to watch being made, sausages and legislation.

Winston Churchill, the Iron Prime Minister who stood up to Hitler's Nazis when he didn't have much to lean against, except us, said, of democracy, that it is the worst system, except for all the others.

Check out Speaker Pelosi's dilemma in opposing the war in Iraq, which is costing life after American life each day that passes, yet not having enough Democratic votes to override a presidential veto. Thus she cannot withdraw the troops legislatively and must continue to feed, arm, and equip them for as long as we have a president who attacked Al Qaeda, which attacked us on 9-11, but who also attacked Iraq, which didn't attack us, for good measure. Teach those Ay-rabs who don't like us a lesson, or something, is what I get out of it.

So now they're picking us off with suicide bombers whenever they get a clear shot, which is often, as we need to keep sending out convoys to supply the troops. It's like the wolfpacks of the sea-lanes in WWII, and just as terrifying for the troops.

Can Pelosi refuse to support the bill that provides the funds to support the troops?

Of course not.

She has to support the troops, just as Congress had to supply the funds to Theodore Roosevelt to bring the Great White Fleet home after he sent it half-way around the world despite the lack of appropriated funds to bring it home. What was Congress going to do? Strand the navy in Antarctica?

You get the point.

So Pelosi has to vote against a bill she's shepherding through. She wants to put a deadline on how long the troops can stay in Baghdad and continue to get picked off, blown up, sniped at, and otherwise killed, piecemeal.

But Bush promises to veto any bill with a deadline as this gives the enemy a date to hold out for which Bush regards as a surrender date.

Okay, I see his point and accept it.

Congress meanwhile, says, okay, how 'bout if we just have you report back on progress made and things to do, Pres. Bush? This seems to be where we're at, at the moment.

We're going to have to wait and see how Bush conducts his war, which he said today in a Rose Garden press conference was justified in part because
we don't want to have to fight the terrorists here in America.

Bush has created more terrorists in four years than Osama Bin Laden was able to recruit in twenty. Had we put all the troops we've been wasting in Baghdad into the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, we might have found Osama and his confederates. Whether we did or didn't, he's made himself into a martyr either way, and whether he lives or dies, his image will be spread all over the landscape. His or someone else's.

The last thing we're about to accomplish is to eliminate sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia, not to mention the Kurds. Was Britain able to eliminate the sectarian violence between the Protestants and the Catholics in Northern Ireland? How long did it take? How many murders were there, all told?

Since the war in Iraq isn't going so swimmingly, and we can't leave in a hurry if we all wanted to (the more troops you pull out before an Iraqi replacement force replaces them, the more danger for the reduced force; if you pull them all out prematurely, the place is in a bigger mess than anything we've seen so far and Iran comes in and picks up the pieces), George W needs a diversion. Not for the insurgents, but for us.

The other day he staged a demonstration of naval force in the PG (Persian Gulf). Carriers, escort vessels, etc., steaming in formation. Sending a message to Iran's Pres. Ahmadinejad, who never quite seems impressed with our sabre rattling. He's embarked on a nuclear weapons industry that's driving us nuts. We're trying to put a defense system in Eastern Europe on Russia's doorstep that's driving them nuts, to protect against Iran.

The big fear here is that Bush and his fans in the military and intelligence communities want him to invade Iran "so we don't have to fight them here," with is the Bush mantra of the day, kinda like Saddam is a bad man who has to go because he's got WMD and we've got to get him before he gets us.

It's Osama, buddy, who attacked us, not Saddam or Ahmadinejad.

Osama brought down the twin towers, not everyone else who hates us. The others are simply flocking to Osama while we continue kicking in doors in Iraq.

Our greatest power is soft power, not kicking in doors, in case anyone hasn't mentioned this lately. Sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, and computers. That's us. That's why those who hate us love to hate us so dearly. That and the lack of jobs in their home dictatorships. They are hopeless and in distress. Of course some of them are going to commit suicide and take our people with them. Muslim kamikazes, diving into our ships.

My guess is that we'll attack Iran in order to have to avoid leaving Iraq, or better put, to keep our new presence in the Middle East, we'll refocus our attention to the neighboring states of Iran and Syria to give the Muslim dictatorships and their anti-American populations something really to think about.

In the meantime, we'll energize a billion Muslims even more against us.

This way we'll be safer and not have to fight them in Kansas City, if I have the Bush-Cheney logic down right.

Right.

How come I don't feel a lot safer, I wonder.

Perhaps it would be better to reflect on the attack on the Trade Center.

Was that the beginning of a war?

I don't think so.

I think it was a terrible crime.

You bring criminals to justice. Not people you make war against. Bush keeps saying he needs to bring Osama to justice, but he makes war on Iraq. We needed to bring Al Capone to justice, but we didn't make war on Canada to do so.

But there I go, talking crazy again. Been listening to Bush to long. He says he perceives the threat very clearly and can't understand why some people, meaning the likes of me, can't see the threat the way he does.

I was appointed to represent a client who was arrested as she bought drugs on the street. She told me during an interview at the jail that she worked for the police, the sheriff, the FBI, and the Secret Service, at the same time, like now, as in being a sworn uniformed officer.

Somehow I had trouble seeing things her way. Nor did the judge after she testified in an ability-to-cooperate-with-counsel hearing. Off to the farm until feeling better was the result, not that the folks over there were able to help out a lot, but that's a different story.

Some folks think this country is being led by a madman and the rest of the country is powerless to stop him, such as Speaker Pelosi.

"They're a threat to your children, David," Pres. Bush said to a newsman who asked him a question about why we were fighting in Iraq.

"Bullshit, you are," is what David was too polite to reply.

Check out the legislative gymnastics, below:

THERE'S HOPE

Despite fears of either creeping or rampant fascism rearing its ugly head in America, there is hope.

In the midterm elections last November, the American people voted strongly to repudiate Pres. Bush's war policy. Now George W may not like what he heard (he said something about the roof falling in) and may not want to change course, except to increase the speed and force (the "surge" of additional troops), and he may veto the new bill putting a time limit on the war, but eventually his string will run out, if only because he's only got until Jan. 20, 2009 before his successor is sworn in, replacing him, as he's term limited out.

With the Democrats now in control of Congress, which means Democrats chair the committees and now have the power to issue subpenas for the first time in six-and-a-half years, the Bush administration is being called to account for a number of sins, starting with the Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, and the White House effort to fire the eight federal prosecutors, allegedly for failing to play politics with justice, sufficiently.

As a result, the people seem to have grabbed ahold of the reins of their government again. See the remarks of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada last week, below, who tells it like it is, speaks truth to power, and other good things.

It may look to some as though the Bush Administration has concocted a recipe for fascism, see the posts below, but that is not to say that the American people will drink the resulting Kool-Ade.

YOU HUNG UP ON WHOM???!!

Tonight I got calls from the California Nurses Association, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and just now, from Al Gore.

I hung up on all of 'em.

I expect to hear from Hillary and my friend Bill later in the week.

Bush hasn't called.  I wouldn't hang up on him.  I'd like to give him a piece of my mind, but not tooo much, of course.  Not that much to go around.

I wouldn't mind if they called me in person, mind you, but they don't.

"Hi, this is Al Gore..."

"Hi, Al, you so-and-so.  I remember you from 2000.  Are you going to have your buddy Kerry call me next?  You know, from 2004?  The man with combat boots in his mouth? Why not just have Jane Fonda call and be done with it?"

I'm talking to a machine that doesn't care what you say back to it, for it ain't listening, just like our government.

***

Nov. 3, 2006

Damn!  Just got off the phone with my good friend Bill Clinton.  He asked me to support John Garamendi, who's someone running for something.  I said, "Okay, Bill," and hung up.  I didn't want to take up too much of his time.  I figured he's busy calling millions of other California voters this evening and couldn't stop to chat.

Not that chatting was very likely under the circumstances.

Those calling machines, you know, are strictly one way.

When Bill calls to ask my views, on the other hand, then I'll really have something to post here.

THE ADVANCE OF DEMOCRACY

The president was on the radio this afternoon, and I caught a part of what he was saying as I was driving.

Apparently there was a White House press conference and Pres. George W. Bush was discussing the difficulty in opening negotiations with Iran over its threat to enrich uranium which can be used not only for power plants and medical research, but to build A-bombs.  This frightens us, as well it should.  Apparently before you can have a discussion with a nation as difficult to deal with as Iran, which calls us the Great Satan, you have to get past the preliminary questions such as where the talks should be held, which countries should be present, and the size and shape of the table, so that a country like Iran is not presented as being less worthy or due proper respect than it deems it should.

Pres. Bush was saying that he's prepared to meet Iran at any table at any time provided only that the terrorists get out of the way.

"You see," he explained in the manner of a teacher addressing a very slow student, with a plaintive tone suggesting that he's speaking slower than usual for those who are a bit slow on the pick-up, "the advance of Democracy is being opposed by terrorists."  And so forth.

We are the good guys who want only to advance Democracy.  I'm foursquare in favor of advancing democracy.  We can cram it down the terrorists' throats and make them eat it and like it, as far as I'm concerned.

It may, however, be the case that the terrorists don't like it.

I think Democracy is our religion.  It seems to be our "ultimate concern," as the theologian Paul Tillich described it.  Tillich had been a Lutheran minister in Germany before the war until he got on Hitler's nerves and the U.S. took him in.  He was oft-quoted on my Wagner College, Staten Island, N.Y., campus because it had begun as a Lutheran theological seminary fourscore years or so before I attended and it had become a non-sectarian college open to all including this Staten Islander.

We will go to war over democracy, or Democracy, or the Advance of Democracy.  I'm not sure what that is, exactly, but if you need to go to war, this is as good a reason as any.  We used to go to war to Christianize the natives, like the Filipinos, regardless of the fact that they were way more Christian than we are.  My wife is Filipino-American by birth in Manila to Phil-Am parents and family who took refuge here after a bad war there.  Something about the Japanese occupation and the invasion that flattened the city when the Americans liberated the place and the Japanese went on a rampage of atrocities.

We don't go to war over Christianity any more, I don't think.  We're not freeing the poor benighted dark skinned people for the missionaries to enter and convert.  Not the Christian missionaries.  Maybe the business missionaries.  We want to trade with you.  We did send armed naval ships to open up Japan in the mid-19th Century under Adm. Perry, as I recall.  We needed our sailors to be able to take refuge on Japanese islands when in distress, and to be able to re-coal when steam technology was coming in.  We didn't much care whether Japan ever became Christian or not, I don't think, as long as they didn't mess with our ships.  At least we were honest about whatever it was that we were doing.

I'm not so sure we're as honest today about what we do in the world.  We like to dress mundane exercises, such as protecting the oil supply, in high principle.  For me, protecting the oil supply is a fully worthy goal.  Saddam invades Kuwait, threatening the world oil supply, we're there, and I support that.  Oil, like oxygen, is worth protecting with money and lives.  The system runs on oil and I happen to live in the country that heads up the current system that benefits me and my family.  I don't see that we have to harm a lot of people in keeping this system going.  We could distribute the benefits better so more share in the pie, but we can do that as we go along, I suppose.

But Pres. Bush doesn't say that he's just trying to protect the oil supply and improve the network of trading relationships on which the world economy depends.  He says he's trying to advance Democracy and the Terrorists are opposing him, shame on them.

Please, Pres. Bush, don't tell me we're advancing Democracy.  I teach the subject and I'd be hard pressed to tell you what it is.  What I think it is is a system of government that derives its legitimacy from the just consent of the governed.  To do this we need to inform "the governed."  This means a lot more freedom of mind than the world seems to enjoy at present.

I don't see the world rushing to adopt our system.  Some countries do, and more power to them.  I hope they succeed.  But the fact is that an awful lot of the world doesn't want to see free and fair elections that may throw the ruling clique out.  Lord knows we've supported a lot of undemocratic ruling cliques.  How long did we support the Shah of Iran after we threw out the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1954 in a CIA caper that formed the mold?  How long did we support the dictator Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines?  How long is this list?  See Stephen Kinzer's "Overthrow, America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq" (H. Holt, 2006) for the big ones.

Okay, we've got a system; we're the head of it; we're in undisputed leadership of the world, a far cry from when I was a boy.  The Soviet Union is gone.  Russia is nothing, except it's holding all the leftover nuclear weapons it had during the Cold War, so we treat it the way we treat rattlesnakes.  We gave up on Democracy for the former Soviet Union.  When your adversary holds nuclear stock, you soft-pedal the talk of Democracy.

With Iran, however, we're shouting Democracy.  They have elections in Iran.  Hitler was democratically elected.  Being democratically elected doesn't mean that you are good or smart.  We don't really care how you got to the top of your national heap.  If you're there and we need you, we'll deal with you.  Otherwise, if we don't need you, we won't sit down with you, which is our mistake.

We want diplomats to talk to bad guys.  Our cops and detectives talk to bad guys all the time, trying to get them to surrender, confess, reveal the location of the body, the weapons, the dope, their confederates, turn on each other, etc.  Constabulary diplomacy, it might be called.

Our diplomats are like our prosecutors, dealing with the bad guys, after our detectives, the CIA, gets through revealing what the bad guys are up to.

Israel talked to Arafat.  We talk to Syria. France talks to Lebanon.  Nixon and Kissinger spoke to Red China, the PRC.  Established diplomatic relations.  They shoot our planes down.  We still talk.  It's better than fighting.

We might like to see Democracy advance in China.  We could offer all sorts of reasons why this might be good for China, the Chinese people, and the world.  But it won't be good for the folks in charge right now, the Communist Party of China.  They would lose out, big time, if China ever really went democratic.

We export Democracy selectively.

I'd like to see us import some.

Are you impressed with our democracy?  Does your vote count?  For what?  If you live in California or New York, you get two senators.  So does Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, and North and South Dakota. Want to multiply the value of your vote many times over?  Move to South Dakota.  You'll be a big shot.  Your vote will be worth about ten of mine.

One man, one vote, we proclaim.  We've never enjoyed that.  For decades it was one white man, one vote.  That let out blacks and women.  Was that Democracy?  We thought so.  We never let facts interfere with what we believe in religiously.

Now we allow more people to vote, including blacks and women. 

Now we have Democracy, right? 

Not so fast!

We don't pick our legislators.

Our legislators pick us.

That's right.  Every ten years we have a national census that tells who lives where.  We also know, down to the street address of the individual voter, how each household votes, Democratic, Republican, or other.  We also have a requirement that each ten years, in light of the census, we have to redraw the voting districts. 

Do you think the incumbent for the district wants to lose his chance for re-election by losing votes through the process of line drawing? 

Don't be silly.  What your incumbent representative wants is for some other incumbent to lose his seat through redistricting.  Your incumbent wants to head the new line-drawing committee so he can include as many supporters as possible.  And they do, all the time.  Well isn't this terrible?  Political gerrymandering?  Racial gerrymandering is against the law, isn't it?  It is.  Gomillion v. Lightfoot is the equal protection of law case.  But not political gerrymandering.  The Supreme Court cannot, for the life of it, figure out a way to prohibit political gerrymandering without canceling the democratic program of using elections to select representatives.

We live in an imperfect world, and imperfect democracy is one of its features.  We also have imperfect monarchies, dictators, and tyrants, but that's another story. 

We export Democracy, such as it is.

I don't mind serving as an example to the world.  If the world wants to adopt Democracy, well and good.  We'll cheer and clap.  Might even lend a hand.

But to say that we're Advancing Democracy into Iran, when Iran didn't ask us for the favor, seems like asking for trouble, to me.  If Iran tells us to stay home and tend to our own knitting, what do we tell the Iranians?  Adopt our system or else?

All the president says we want is for Iran to cut out playing with nuclear fire-crackers.  We don't care whether they're a democracy or a theocracy.  The Iranians may care, but not us.  We just want them to stop.

Maybe if we acted more responsibly we'd have more people admire us.  Maybe if, instead of cramming our beliefs down others throats, we served as a shining example of all that was good, we'd have voluntary followers, not forced.  Our agreements might last longer, too.

Enough.

Advance of Democracy.  Opposed by terrorists.

Tell it to someone, but not to me, please. 

I'm not swallowing it myself and I'm a big believer.

Who is writing our propaganda?

Rumsfeld?  Cheney?  I know it isn't Bush.  He's just trying to sell it in his own inarticulate way.

"Ya see, the Terrorists are trying to stop the Advance of Democracy."

Got it; thanks so much for the clarification.

Only three more years.

THE PRINCIPLE OF AN ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE

How do you keep thousands of people, millions even, in line?

You can't, at least not without an organizing principle.

In the military it's called doing ones duty to ones country.

What's the organizing principle of France?  I'm not sure.  There was a France before there was democracy.  Before democracy was monarchy.  Before that were various geographic and ethnic principalities, provinces, regions, etc.

While it's nice to have an organizing principle that is humanitarian and enlightened, the history of the world shows that enlightenment and humanitarianism are icing on the cake.  Underneath it all is the need for an organizing principle of some sort, good, bad, or indifferent.

With us, it's democracy.  It's the one idea  most of us can agree on in principle, theory, and in the abstract, no matter that our efforts fall short of the goal.  Attainable goals aren't all that interesting anyway, are they.

So we go to war in Iraq based on the organizing principle that Saddam is a bad actor who won't cooperate with the international community of nations and acts as though he's hiding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) beyond our ability to find them.  We go to war and find there are no WMD.   Well, that's a shame, but we've gotten rid of the bad guy, so there. 

As for democracy, Iraq is having trouble coming up with an organizing principle on which to base their new constitution in the making.  It's like drafting a pre-nuptial agreement where two people, in Iraq's case three, find themselves in a bed not of their making and they don't want to be there together, but they're stuck.  So they're going to slap together an agreement to cooperate in running a nation that each partner thinks should not include the others.  This is not an easy task.  So they argue over whether there should be a right to secede, or whether Islamic law should control, and whether women can emerge from a position of subservience to men and have rights.

Somewhat more democratic nations such as our own are not entirely happy about this because the Iraqis are not adopting our views.  Well, what did we expect?

The organizing principle we want is different than the Iraqis want.

Before we became a democracy our organizing principle was the British divine right of kings.  Parliament overthrew that beginning 1628, with the Petition of Right in favor of a parliamentary democracy.  The organizing principle is that Parliament has the final say on how the country is to be set up and run, not the king.  In the name of the rights of the people, Parliament is now sovereign in Britain.  They don't have a written constitution, which saves them a lot of grief in trying to conform to it.  They have an unwritten constitution and make it up as they go along, the same as we do, without seeming to get into quite as many constitutional crises, although they've certainly had their share.

In the U.S. we claim to be a constitutional democracy in which sovereignty resides in the people, an abstract bunch of people, but not in government.  There may be a certain amount of bluster going on here.  Cooper v. Aaron (1957) is the case in which the Court proclaims its power and  your duty to obey.  How much you want to believe of that is up to you, but it seems pretty much decided that we will continue along the Marbury path for the foreseeable future.

It was John Locke, I believe, who proclaimed the organizing principle of Britain, hence us, to be a social contract.  If by contract one means that we agree to behave within certain constraints according to certain ideals, then I suppose we've got a de facto contract.  I don't ever recall being asked whether I assented to it, or not, since it's not written and not even oral, but tacit, implied from behavior, and not necessarily my own behavior but others who came before me.

But I play along, not having any other choice.  I just hope that as long as we say we're going to behave according to some ideals that we do so better than we have been doing.

If you want to call this a social contract, it's fine with me.  Either way, it's an organizing principle that allows us to function as a society whether we love each other or not.

We've been conducting families this way for a long time, without any written constitution or other agreement.  People simply pair off and function according to the dictates of their culture influenced of course by the dictates of nation and religion, which, I suppose are part of their culture.  Some families are more enlightened and humanitarian than others.

One of the difficult challenges for a political leader, or a wannabe political leader, is to put into words a new statement of the organizing principle he, or she, wishes to use to get people behind his, or her, program for election, movement, reform, retrenchment, or whatever.

Effective political leaders produce one word slogans, such as Hitler's "Lebensraum," program, meaning to create room to live, or living-room, for the audience of Germans he was addressing.  This accounted for the invasion of Austria and its annexation into Germany (the "anschluss"), his invasion of surrounding countries, and the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, gays, socialists, and anyone else who got in the way.

The doctrine promoted cleaning out the undesirables to make way for the desirables.  Lebensraum.  An organizing principle that worked.

John F. Kennedy needed to jump start the country after the Russians put up Sputnik in 1957 during the Cold War.  Elected president in 1960, JFK set a challenge to the country, to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.  He established NASA and the plan of setting a goal succeeded with a man on the moon in 1069.  The country was told this was a great idea and a lot of people aligned themselves in support.  "A man on the moon by the end of the decade" was an organizing principle.

The organizing principle for Iraq has turned out to be hollow, so I hope that there was a deeper one that the president and the administration can't talk about, such as important geopolitical strategic considerations that justify the sacrifice.

Such as what for example?

How about clearing out a fundamentalist clog in the worlds sewer, make that geopolitical and strategic channel for the distribution of energy, as in oil, without which the developed world can not long survive.  We feed six billion people, up from four, based on energy driven technology that has produced a green revolution that extracts nitrogen from air which is used to grow plants that we and our food animals eat.

That may be a little hard to work into a sound bite, but that's what we have repackagers and spinmeisters for, to make palatable in a few words, such as lebensraum and man-on-moon, complex ideas. 

An organizing principle is a usable over-simplification.  It may mean many things to many people, but that makes it more usable, not less.  It  makes some difference that we don't always act as we say we believe.  We just have to try harder when we fall short.

And what happens when our organizing principle comes up short, or is attained, such as putting a man on the moon in 1969?

We simply come up with a new organizing principle.

That, is seems to me, is what Pres. Bush tries to do when he says, well, forget about WMD, we got rid of a bad guy and the Iraqis had their first election.   I don't really care all that much about whether the Iraqis have free and fair elections, not when I wasn't too impressed with Bush v. Gore in Florida in 2000.

Our goal stands, not entirely reachable, but certainly worth discussing until we come up with a better goal.

In the meantime, we organize ourselves in the service of the organizing principle.

I suppose that if the result of a shipwreck was that a bunch of disparate people found themselves stranded on an uninhabited island, they'd have to agree on how to live on that island.

They'd have to organize themselves into some sort of mutual survival society, if they didn't fight and kill each other until the last man survived.

That's the position in which Iraq finds itself today, trying to obtain the cooperation of three disparate groups, Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias, to work together toward some common goal, such as surviving in a rough neighborhood.  Women's rights take a back seat to this.

Organizing principle, that's what a constitution is, or more accurately, reflects or is based on, even if it is unstated, or remains to be worked out or articulated.

It's not always easy coming  up with an organizing principle, which may be why there are so many kings and chiefs in history.  We can understand kings and chiefs, and organize our hopes and emotions around them so easily.

Why do you think the Brits are so sensitive about their monarch?  It's who they've agreed to organize themselves around, a replaceable king or queen who plays the role of organizing principle, dressing the part of leader, playing the role of leader, speaking the language of a leader, even though Parliament leads.  This is quite a magic show, a slight of hand trick, in which a new reality is created because of the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the consumer, because the consumer, the public, needs to consume in the service of greater goals, functioning as a nation in the world.  On the British island, they organize around a monarch but make law in Parliament. 

It works, for them.

***

Well, now, the president, in Salt Lake City, Utah, has replied to his Iraq-war critics.  We will stay the course, he says, because 1800+ servicepeople have died in Iraq and 280 more in Afghanistan and they have died in a noble cause to protect America and to bring democracy to millions abroad.  To honor their legacy, the war must continue to be fought.

There's got to be a better reason than that, although it may not be politic to spell it out.  When the president speaks to his base, however, he must feel confident that they will respond to this emotional appeal.

One does not continue to fight a losing proposition simply to honor those whose lives were lost in the service of a losing proposition.  Wars would never end, that way.  This is why we left Vietnam, and the Soviets Afghanistan.  There comes a point when the population says, the price is too high for the organizating principle.  We need a better organizing principle.  This is why presidents lose elections, when they cannot come up with a better flag to rally around.  It's why this president's father, George H.W. Bush, or Bush-41, failed of re-election; he was unable to state a better vision worth sacrificing for while the economy tumbled and he broke his promise not to raise taxes.

WE CALL IT DEMOCRACY

Democracy?

You couldn't handle democracy!

That's a paraphrase of Jack Nicholson as the Marine general at Guantanamo in "A Few Good Men," where he tells the Tom Cruise character, a Navy JAG attorney, "The truth?  You couldn't handle the truth!"

***

When this country was founded, the Framers made sure that we didn't get too much democracy.  They didn't think we could handle it.

They left voting laws up to the states, even for the election of federal office-holders such as the president and House of Representatives.

Did I leave one out?

The Senate. Members of the state legislature for each state elected the two state senators, per Article I, Sec. 3, not the citizens.  This changed with the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913. 

Was this a big deal? 

Yes; here's why.  Before the 17th Amendment, Senators didn't have to campaign to the public seeking votes and promising to do good things.  The state legislature picked the senators based on what the senator would do for them, not the citizenry.

When you and I got to vote for our senator, he, or she, had to pay attention to us.  We had the power of removal after the term expired in six years.  Now the senator had to pay more attention to us, as opposed to the state legislature or the state.

We got a democracy injection with the 17th Amendment; more direct democracy was the result.

Another way the Framers indicated their distrust of you and me was by establishing the so-called Electoral College, a body that meets only every four years when we elect a president.  You may think you voted for Bush or Gore in 2000, or Bush or Kerry in 2004, but although that's what it said on your ballot, your vote was recast, effectively, by a member of the electoral college, except in 2000 when it was recast by a five person majority of the Supreme Court.  There was no risk of democracy breaking out in the 2000 election. 

The Court-appointed president was able to ride to victory a second time in his own right with the help of incumbency awarded by the Court.  Democracy took a beating. Nevertheless, the president wishes to export democracy to Iraq and is willing to see American soldiers fight and die for Iraqi democracy.  Let's hope that the new Iraqi Constitution, which is supposed to be completed on August 22, 2005 will bear some resemblance to a democratic process in the making and the follow through.

It does little good to say that we have less democracy because our Supreme Court has the final say in matters of constitutional interpretation while the president and Congress don't.  In order to measure how much democracy we actually have, one must take an overall view of all three branches of the federal government, and the states, as the Constitution reigns supreme over the three federal branches, which includes all of the federal departments and agencies plus the state and local governments.  Local governments such as cities, counties, and various districts are considered parts of the state they are in.

That adds up to a lot of democracy but nowhere near a perfect democracy.  What could that be?  I suppose a perfect democracy was one in which the citizens constantly voted on everything through the medium of a portable voting machine which I call a v-Pod, for voting pod, a transmitter of votes to a central voting machine, in effect.

This would drive us nuts.  We'd be too distracted to do our work.  Our legislators, whom we trust to come up to speed on technical and policy issues so that we don't have to, would be out of work.

Things would happen too fast.

We need people to tell us no, that would be stupid or unfair, to slow us down.  We need to be tied to the mast, like Ulysses, to use an analogy from Erwin Chemerinsky's book in Constitutional Law.

Allowing the Supreme Court to have the final say, through the exercise of the power of judicial review, may have produced a decision upholding slavery (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857), but it also broke the deadlock represented by the Southern Bloc of senators who killed all Civil Rights Bills between Reconstruction (just after the Civil War until 1876) and 1957 when LBJ twisted many arms to get the first modern civil rights bill passed, by deciding Brown v. Board in 1954 providing for public school integration in theory and often in practice.. 

While it may not seem very democratic to permit the least democratic branch to ride herd on the more democratic branches, what can one say except to note the good and to reason that in a democracy we are subject to doing foolish, ill-considered things that violate basic constitutional rights.  So we rely on the Court to be our sea anchor.  A sea anchor is not the iron hook on the bow of a ship that is lowered and grabs the sea-bed.  A sea anchor is made of fabric, cloth generally, or it could be made of trailing hawser of sufficient length.  It is used in storms to keep the bow of the ship pointed into the wind when tied to the bow, or the stern when tied to the stern.  The purpose is to keep the ship into the wind so the wind doesn't capsize the vessel by knocking it over sideways.  Metaphorically, as in real life, the sea anchor helps you weather storms.  You may be blown some distance, but you remain on the surface with a sea anchor which drags along.  It's a drag chute, in effect, deployed into the sea water.

Democracy is where we have our hand on the tiller, setting course and direction of travel in order to get to our goal.

The Supreme Court as sea anchor helps us from being blown too far off course in buffeting winds.

We trade democracy for survival.

To complain about the Court having the power of judicial review, final say in constitutional matters, is to have to state where else you would want the final say to rest.

The outfit I trust least is the White House. Next is Congress. And finally the Court.  Each of them is quite capable of messing up big time.  President Nixon.  Bush v. Gore (2000),  Congressional pork.

We live in a country run by human beings.

We do the best we can.

We tend to believe that insistence on a platonic ideal is not apt to work, in most cases.

So we settle for an approximation and hope things will work out.

It's "good enough for government work" is our watchword.