A "news analysis" on the front page of this morning's Times discloses what issues the newspaper thinks should be given more prominence: "This year, neither convention is likely to tackle such important issues as drugs, campaign finance and the gulf between the rich and the poor." Well, it's unclear if by "drugs" the Times means illegal narcotics or legal prescription pharmaceuticals for senior citizens, so we'll leave that aside. But it may just be that the reason campaign finance reform isn't being tackled is that the American people realize that more campaign laws aren't the answer when we have politicians who don't obey the already-existing laws. And that the people also realize that money in politics is no guarantee of success (just ask Ross Perot or Steve Forbes). And that the people also realize that spending on campaigns is a sign of a vigorous public debate in a democracy, not an evil that needs to be outlawed. The "gulf between the rich and poor" is another issue that Americans for the most part aren't concerned about; there's enough mobility between income levels in American society that what most Americans are worried about isn't erasing the gulf but working hard to get themselves or their children higher up on the income ladder. Even those who believe poverty is an important political issue tend to be bothered not by the fact that some people are very rich but by the fact that some people are very poor. It's an absolute issue, not a relative one. Most Americans aren't bothered by the existence of rich people; they want to become rich people. The American Enterprise Institute has done some detailed work on the income inequality issue, bearing this out. In other words, what the Times calls "important issues" aren't really all that, and that may be why they aren't getting much play at the conventions.
What Are They Smoking? The "Public Lives" column in the metro section of this morning's New York Times contains an admiring profile of Ethan Nadelmann, a man who devotes his energy to repealing laws against narcotics. "I don't think adults should be punished for what they put into their bodies," he said. Neither, of course, does the Times, at least on the tobacco issue, where the newspaper thinks that the punishment shouldn't be directed at the cigarette users, but at the tobacco companies, and that the means shouldn't be criminalization of tobacco sales, but runaway civil jury verdicts. The one-source profile of Nadelmann naturally omits references to the public health consequences of drug use or its tendency to wreck families and promote crime, dwelling instead on matters such as the fact that Nadelmann is left-handed and the son of a Reconstructionist rabbi. And naturally, it doesn't consider complexities such as whether, if drugs are legalized as the Nadelmann types suggest, the consequence will be an array of tobacco-style lawsuits against narcotics smugglers. Come to think of it, the quickest way to win the drug war might just be to legalize the products and then let the tort lawyers loose.
Oh, That's The Reason: An article in the international section of this morning's Times about the political situation of Prime Minister Barak explains it as follows: "At the heart of Mr. Barak's political problem is a 1996 change in electoral procedures providing for with separate voting for prime minister and members of Parliament. Although Mr. Barak won a strong mandate in May, 1999, defeating Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud with 56 percent of the vote, Mr. Barak has had to deal with a fragmented, unwieldy Parliament with many small parties." Oh, so that's what's at the heart of Barak's political problem. Silly us. We thought it was that the Arabs didn't want to make peace with Israel and that Israelis think Barak is too willing to divide Jerusalem and give up the Golan Heights in exchange for mere promises from the Arabs. (Never mind that the first sentence of the Times' explanation is impenetrable from the standpoint of grammar.)
The same article refers to Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon as a "hawkish, hard-line Likud leader." This is wrong in three ways. First, the redundancy factor (somebody call William Safire's "squad squad"). Second, the one-sidedness: you never see Mr. Barak being described as the "dovish, soft-line Labor leader." Finally, as smartertimes.com noted yesterday, in the context of right-wing Israeli politics, General Sharon is a moderate pragmatist; for instance, he dismantled an Israeli settlement in the Sinai peninsula, despite right-wing opposition, as part of the implementation of the Camp David accord between Israel and Egypt.