Autocracy is relative, a tale of two leaders

Name this world leader:

Having secured office, the task of the [leader] is to polarize the political system. This maneuver deflates the political center and maintains unity within one’s ranks. Reducing the size of the political center is crucial for the [leader]. In most societies, the ideological center is numerically strong, a problem for aspiring authoritarians because moderate voters seldom go for extremists—unless, of course, the other side becomes immoderate as well.

The solution is to provoke one’s opponents into extreme positions. The rise of two extreme poles splits the center: The moderate left becomes appalled by the right and gravitates toward the radical left, and vice versa. The center never disappears entirely, but it melts down to a manageable size. Now, our aspiring [leader] stands a chance of winning more than a third of the vote in every election, maybe even the majority.

Hugo Chavez. Sounds a lot like our own George W, does it not?

I receive this magazine, Foreign Policy, I think it is a 'perk' of being a member of the World Affairs Council. I don't usually read it but for whatever reason I made an exception this month. While reading the cover feature entitled "Hugo Boss," I couldn't help but see many parallels between Hugo and W.

For the purposes of this article they have created the term "competitive autocrat" (which was substituted for 'leader' in the first quote block for purposes of suspense and the guessing game). The author claims that the Competitive Autocrat operates in many of the same ways as yesterday's dictator but does so in today's political climate where fleggling democracies are not weak enough to fall to an old fashioned strong man but democratic institutions aren't strong enough to be completely pure.

As I stated, the more I read of this article, the more it sounded like my president. Now, I don't think this article is very well written at all, it seems to be based on some poor assumptions. First, it continually ridicules the support Chavez receives from the poor, as if they deserve less of a voice in democracy. It also assumes that Chavez is (at least somewhat) illegitimate and his presidency illegal and the general tone is that it was written from high atop an ivory tower. I'll be the first to admit that I probably know more about Fernando Valenzuela than I do about the country of Venezuela but this article seemed to start from the conclusion that Chavez is dirty and that is not something that I'm convinced of yet.

Consider this quote and see if it doesn't also fit King George:

He has concentrated power, harassed opponents, punished reporters, persecuted civic organizations, and increased state control of the economy....In Venezuela, one can still find an active and vociferous opposition, elections, a feisty press and a vibrant and organized civil society. Venezuela, in other words, appears almost democratic. But when it comes to accountability and limits on presidential power, the picture grows dark

Does this sound familiar?

As important, Chavez commands the institute that supervises elections...a Chavez controlled election body ensures that voting irregularities committed by the state are overlooked

The article lays out a five-pronged plan for the modern 'competitive autocrat' - starting with an overview:

A competitive autocrat has enough support to compete in elections, but not enough to overwhelm the opposition...Chavez's opposition is too strong to be overtly repressed...So Chavez maintains a semblance of democracy, which requires him to out-smart the opposition. His solution is to antagonize, rather than ban...He has discovered that he can concentrate power more easily in the presence of a virulent opposition than with a banned opposition

#1 Attack Political Parties: Admittedly, this does not fit with Bush. The article describes how Chavez portrayed political parties as evil in order to undermine those currently in power and endear him to the common man. It could be argued that Bush instead demonized the politicians in Washington and portrayed himself as an outsider while retaining his Republican identity and base.

#2 Polarize Society: This is the part that really caught my eye and got me thinking about Bush. The opening two paragraphs came from this entry. I've long recognized that a lot of Bush's (and the GOP at large) power comes from his ability to polorize the electorate. Choose one side or the other; you either want your children to be gay or you are a Republican, you either kill babies or you are a Republican, you are either with Osama or you are a Republican. The divisive politics of fear is Karl Rove's trademark, I can't say for sure that Hugo Chavez engages in this but I know Bush does.

#3 Spread Wealth Selectively: Do I even need to go into this? Bush took the surplus of the 90s and gave it straight to the richest Americans, the ones who supported him most and needed it least.

Chavez’s populism is grandiose, but selective. His supporters will receive unimaginable favors, and detractors are paid in insults. Denying the opposition spoils while lavishing supporters with booty has the added benefit of enraging those not in his camp and fueling the polarization that the competitive autocrat needs.

"Detractors paid in insults" - Whether it's Swiftboating Kerry or Cheney telling Patrick Leahy to "fuck off," BushCo has this one nailed. Unimaginable favors? Whether it's letting oil industry executives set energy policy or putting Brownie in charge of FEMA, Bush loves those that have been good to him, country be damned.

#4 Allow the Bureaucracy to Decay, Almost:

Some autocracies, such as Burma’s, seek to become legitimate by establishing order; others, like the Chinese Communist Party, by delivering economic prosperity. Both types of autocracies need a top-notch bureaucracy. A competitive autocrat like Chávez doesn’t require such competence. He can allow the bureaucracy to decline—with one exception: the offices that count votes.

Bush and the GOP don't believe the government can work, this is an extension and corruption of the 'small government' pillar of conservatism. Bush is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because he believes government can't work, when he allows it to decay he can turn around and say that it is not because of his poor administration of government but because it is inherently broken. Where this article claims Chavez lets everything fall to pieces except the elections department is one issue; Bush spreads his out over two distinct angles; allowing government to rot from the inside out and the separate issue of stacking the deck in the favor of the Republicans:

This task requires a deep understanding of the intricacies of electoral systems, effective manipulation of electoral districting, mobilization of new voters, detailed knowledge about the political proclivities of different districts, and, of course, a dash of chicanery.

If this isn't page 1 of the GOP handbook I don't know what is. Getting the evangelical crowd out to vote, gerrymandering Texas, and having Diebold in your pocket are the Bush manifestations of the accusations leveled at Chavez above.

In the August 2005 elections for local office, for instance, Chavez’s party secured 77 percent of the seats with only 37 percent of the votes in the city of Valencia.

Not quite as bad as gerrymandering Texas but a manipulation of voters interests none the less. Michigan voted for both Gore and Kerry, both Senators and the Governor are Democrats yet it's representation in the House is 9 Republican and 6 Democrat - go figure.

"The legality of many of the government’s strategies is questionable. And that is where controlling the National Electoral Council and the Supreme Court proves useful. To this day, neither body has found fault with any of the government’s electoral strategies." Can you say "Bush v. Gore"? A lack of oversight by other branches of government? Bush hasn't had a real check on his power since he has been in office.

#5 Antagonize the Superpower: Since Bush controls the superpower he instead falls back to antagonizing less-powerful countries in the form of war. You can tell from Bush's swagger that he relishes the role of "war president" - he wears his hubris on his sleeve. Chavez antagonizes the United States to endear him to the leftists in his country and abroad and has an added bonus of pissing off his political opponents. Bush (in part) started the Iraq war to endear him to the far-right in the US and abroad and has an added bonus of pissing off the far-left.

Ultimately, all authoritarian regimes seek power by following the same principle. They raise society’s tolerance for state intervention. [PATRIOT Act?] The more insecurity that citizens face—the closer they come to living in the brutish state of nature—the more they will welcome state power. He knows that citizens who see a world collapsing will appreciate state interventions. Chávez therefore has no incentive to address Venezuela’s assorted crises.

emphasis added

As long as the American people are afraid and believe that the only person (or party) that can protect them is Bush (and the Republicans) no one will question his consolidation of power.

Now, I realize that these quotes are taken out of context and the article as a whole has nothing to do with Bush, but that doesn't change the fact that these passages used to describe and criticize Chavez could also apply to Bush. I encourage you to read the entire article to gain the proper perspective on these quotes. My main purpose is to point out the irony of demonizing Chavez when Bush uses many of the same tactics, for the gain of the right instead of the left.

Nancy Pelosi proves she has brass ones

(I've been thinking about starting to write a blog for a while and after seeing democracy in action, I finally got inspired. I hope to continue to get inspired a couple times a week)

George Bush could take a page out of Nancy Pelosi's book and learn what a real town hall meeting looks like. It ain't pretty but it is real democracy.

I attended Nancy Pelosi's Town Hall Meeting on Saturday morning and I have to admit, I had a ho-hum opinion of Nancy going in there, but I had a huge bowl of respect for her by the time it was all over. I go back and forth between knowing that she has to maintain some moderate ideals so she can lead the Democrats in the House and wishing that we were represented by a fire-brand liberal that doesn't pull any punches (see Bernie Sanders, Matt Gonzalez, or Mark Leno). I got to watch the event while sitting next to the next Congressman from California's 4th district, Charles Brown and his wife and campaign manager. Charlie was in the US Air Force for over 25+ years, has his teaching credential, and was even on the board of his credit union. He is the kind of leader we need in Washington, a leader with integrity who isn't bogged down in Washington-style politics. He is going to make John Doolittle wish he never got his wife that job working for Jack Abramoff

The middle school auditorium had about 1000 people in it and there was apparently an overflow room with more people. It began at 10am with just a moderator (some guy from the local AirAmerica affiliate) and Nancy on stage. The theme of the event was Iraq and national security, she began with about 25 minutes of comments discussing mostly those two topics and also touching on civil liberties and the illegal NSA phone-tapping. Toward the end of her comments there appeared about 20 people lining the side aisle of the auditorium holding signs that said "Bring the troops home NOW!" and "Nancy, stop funding the war!" They were silent and respectful but certainly took some attention away from what was going on at the front of the room.

Then another group popped up, this time it was women dressed in pink holding signs and wearing shirts issuing similar sentiments, they were standing in the middle aisle. During this time, Congresswoman Pelosi started taking questions and she wasn't offered a softball that I can remember. Since the format was that questions would be written down then given to staff walking through the audience, I was worried that they would be sanitized Bush-style ("I just want to tell you that I thank God every day that you are our Congresswoman") but they most certainly were not. Most questions were asked after the name at the top of the card had been read and the first question came from a local activist, Medea Benjamin. She wanted to know why Congresswoman Pelosi was supporting the war by not voting 'no' on the war appropriation bills that came before the House, and additionally why she would not lead the Democratic caucus in that same direction. Pelosi said she wasn't ready to not fund the troops and that the caucus didn't have a position on it. Now, I can assume that she meant that it was not politically viable to vote 'no' on war appropriations and that she couldn't get the Democrats to agree on this thing if they were starving in the desert and she happened to be driving the ice cream truck through their neighborhood; but that is my take on what she meant. And, I think she is right in that answer. It would be giving George Bush a chocolate covered sundae to vote 'no' on a war appropriations bill that is going to pass in a GOP house anyway and it is pretty obvious to me why she can't get the Dems to agree on this issue - we have as many views as there are Dems in the House.

It wasn't long after she started taking questions that some of the people holding signs started chanting and yelling, they were picking their spots, when there was a silence or a chance to be heard, it was effective. Other people started yelling stuff too and it was the first of many times that it got kind of out of hand. Eventually, Pelosi's aides brought the two groups of sign-holders down to the front of the auditorium. I couldn't understand this at first, but in hindsight it was a great thing to do, she acknowledged that they were there and that she understood where they were coming from. (Try to imagine George Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom Delay acknowledging people they disagreed with at a public forum? Bush would have had them hauled away by the secret service)

After the main group of protesters were at the front of the room, she was able to answer more questions but every couple minutes or so people would start yelling random things at her, telling her to support impeachment or stop supporting the war. I think I heard a "free Mumia" in there too. She was sometimes a little distracted by the crowd, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, it is hard to talk to a room of 1000 people when 100 of them are yelling different things at you. I think she handled herself very well. Sometimes she would answer one of the shouts directly, if they caught her at a moment when she could hear it clearly, other times she raised her mic-aided voice over them, but she was never disrespectful and unfortunately, there were many people in the audience that were disrespectful.

She answered a question on impeachment, and she simply said that she wanted to handle it 'electorally' and that if people were fired up about impeachment they should work to win back the House this November so she would have the votes to impeach. I agree with her 100% on this but for different reasons. I think you need a certain amount of general public support to do some drastic things in government, like start a war or impeach the president. I think 70% of the US public should be in favor of these things before the government should take it up, it's just too important to not have some kind of super majority. Just because the Republicans didn't pay attention to these rules when they impeached Clinton or when they started the Iraq war, doesn't mean the rules don't exist. A 40% approval rating does not give the Democrats license to impeach, even if they did have a majority in either chamber, which, if you've been paying attention you might know, they don't.

It went on with her answering questions and getting interrupted every couple minutes or so. There was a funny moment when the moderator was handed a card from a staffer and he said it was from the overflow room and he was going to ask the question sight-unseen. The questioner wanted to know why Pelosi voted against putting a fence up along the entire US-Mexico boarder, even going so far as to quote Robert Frost in saying "good fences make good neighbors." This could have been the moment when the room was closest to consensus. Obviously a wall along the boarder is a horrible idea and I thought it funny that someone with those views had even shown up! It seemed like the far left had taken over but I guess there was at least on conservative, even if he was in the overflow room.

The craziest person of the day has to be a Katrina advocate. Pelosi took a question on hurricane rebuilding and talked in broad terms about how the most important thing is that the people of the community need to make the decisions, not the people in Washington or even Baton Rouge, she was right. Then a woman in the front row just about blew an o-ring trying to get Pelosi's attention, yelling "stop the bulldozers! stop the bulldozers!" She was a little bit out there. She was going on and on and staffers and Pelosi herself was trying to calm her down and get her to quiet down to no avail. She was just yelling and screaming about stopping the bulldozers, at one point she turned around to the audience and I could hear her say something like "we need to stand up to this NOW, we need to stop the bulldozers" As if the entire room was going to walk out of there and follow her Forrest Gump-style to New Orleans and lay down in front of the bulldozers. She was eventually booed by the entire crowd until she shut up - another moment of consensus on this very disagreeable day.

Nancy held her own and more throughout the day, offering more courtesy back than she was given and never calling for the secret service that was on both sides of the stage or the SFPD that was loafing around the entrances. And at the end of the day, I learned two things: just how far out there some people in San Francisco really are and how tough a lady Nancy Pelosi is. Just because we know Bush is a criminal doesn't mean the rest of the country does and doing things like moving to impeach or voting 'no' on war appropriations funding doesn't get us any closer to winning back a majority with which we can initiate change, it just moves us further out into the margins. Maybe it is because I'm from Michigan, but I realize that we certainly don't represent the thoughts of the entire country here in San Francisco, and we need to appreciate that when we ask our leaders to stand up in front of the entire nation. I'm glad these people were heard by Pelosi but at the end of the day I agree with what she has done and is doing - and she proved to me that I have a strong leader as my representative in congress.