Recent polls are showing something rare in the American political environment--despite the efforts of the President to use the bully pulpit of the Presidency to push through a major domestic change, the polls show that his effort is resulting in a reduction of support for his proposed change in Social Security.

Figuring out why this is happening is difficult.  Conventional wisdom has it that a re-elected President, for a brief time stands at the height of his power, as the power of incumbency peaks.  Yet Bush has failed to capitalize on his status as a re-elected President.

However, a good portion of why this has happened involves the disconnect between the President's behavior and his carefully-constructed image.  Indeed it is the widening disconnect between the two which is leading to high levels of distrust in the President and the increasing free-fall in the poll numbers.

Since September 11, 2001, the President's team has carefully cultivated his image as a resolute executive, who stakes out bold positions, holds them and leads others to support them.  But the President's actions on Social Security demonstrate a personality who wants things done but does not want to take responsibility for getting them done.

Take Bush's plan on the issue.  There is none:

Fixing Social Security permanently will require an open, candid review of the options. Some have suggested limiting benefits for wealthy retirees. Former Congressman Tim Penny has raised the possibility of indexing benefits to prices rather than wages. During the 1990s, my predecessor, President Clinton, spoke of increasing the retirement age. Former Senator John Breaux suggested discouraging early collection of Social Security benefits. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recommended changing the way benefits are calculated. All these ideas are on the table.

From the beginning of this process, Bush has made it clear that he was not going to advance a plan of his own, but try and get anyone and everyone else to carry the load.  This is a far cry from a decisive leader who stakes out a position and then forces others to come to it.

This position has put Bush in some rather comical rhetorical situations where the President famously decried attempts to get him "to negotiate with myself in public."  Indeed, Bush saw expectations that he would lead on this issue as a positive conspiracy:  "It is all part of trying to get me to set the parameters apart from the Congress."

As Bush attempts to change the single largest and most popular government program, the public is becoming more and more accustomed to seeing the reality of this President and the way he makes decisions (or fails to make them).  They don't like what they see:  A USA Today poll showed support for the President down 8 percent to 35 percent in a mere three weeks.  Other polls were even less favorable: CBS News showed only 31 percent of Americans were confident in George W. Bush's ability to make the right decisions about Social Security.

These numbers are critical to the President and the success of his second term.  Trust, once lost, is gone forever.  An image, once destroyed, cannot be restored to where it once was.  The President has to start getting out front on this issue with his own program and be seen as taking his own risks if he is to save his own skin.  The smart money says he won't.

And I can prove it by linking to Little Green Footballs: Blog Regulations Greatly Overblown.

According to National Journal: (Subscription Required!)

Ellen Weintraub, another Democratic appointee, was more emphatic. “The notion that the FEC is going to go out there and shut down blogs is preposterous,” she said. “Not going to happen.” She also said nobody at the agency, including her, “is interested in regulating bloggers.”

Democratic Rep. Martin Meehan of Massachusetts, a key supporter of the campaign-finance law, chastised Smith. “The idea that the FEC would be forced to regulate individual bloggers or people’s private e-mail lists is about as believable as the ‘Bill 602P’ hoax about Congress imposing a 5-cent tax on every e-mail,” he said in an e-mailed statement. “It’s regrettable that this kind of misinformation is being spread by those whose job is to enforce the campaign laws.”

While Smith said in a telephone interview that he did not intend to be “overly alarmist” and believes the FEC “is sensitive to these issues,” he questioned Weintraub’s contention. “I think there are clearly people who want to regulate bloggers,” he said.

Like I said.  He's full of it.

There will be no crackdown on blogging, despite what Bradley Smith says.  Even if rules which strike at the heart of political blogging are drafted, there are things that we can do to shape those rules. 

As many of you already know, Bradley Smith, former FEC Chair and current FEC Commissioner gave an interview to Declan McCullagh over at CNET News.  CNET's editors provocatively titled the piece "The Coming Crackdown on Blogging."  After "A" list blogger Atrios posted a link to the article, the blogs exploded.  Unlikely alliances sprouted into being as rightists over at RedState.org and Kossacks from DailyKos joined hands to protest the new "rules." 

But there are no "new rules."  Smith, a single member of the Commission, was arguing that the decision by Judge Kathleen Kollar-Kotelly in the case of Shays v. Meehan would essentially tie the hands of the Commission and force them to regulate the blogs tightly. According to Smith, 

The FEC in the late 1990s (in the Leo Smith case) that I don't think we'd hold to today, saying that if you owned a computer, you'd have to calculate what percentage of the computer cost and electricity went to political advocacy.

It seems absurd, but that's what the commission did. And that's the direction Judge Kollar-Kotelly would have us move in.

But that is expressly NOT what the opinion of Kollar-Kotelly said.  Kollar-Kotelly's 157 page opinion deals with the Internet exclusion issue on pp. 48-58.  The analysis involves the application of the Supreme Court's Chevron analysis of challenges of Agency regulations. Kollar-Kotelly held that Congress did not include the Internet as a definition of public communication, but that there was no evidence that Congress intended to exclude the Internet from “any other form of general public political advertising” as defined in the BCRA. See 2 U.S.C.§ 431(22). Thus, Congress intended all other forms of “general public political advertising” to be covered by the term “public communication.”  p. 55-57.

The question then is whether links to candidate's pages on blogs, advocating for candidates on blogs or ads on blogs are "general public political advertising."  According to Kollar-Kotelly, “[w]hile not all Internet communications do not fall within this descriptive phrase, some clearly do.”  at 52.  So who is to decide what falls under that umbrella?  Kollar-Kotelly indicates that "[w]hat constitutes "general public political advertising" in the world of the Internet is a matter for the FEC to determine.  p. 56-57.  (Emphasis added).

Thus, Bradley Smith is pushing the truth a long way when he says that the judge is pushing the FEC to start going after every single link in every blog directing to a candidate's website.  Whether or not that is the case is up to Mr. Smith and his cohorts, not Judge Kollar-Kotelly.  I think it is highly unlikely that the FEC is going to come up with a huge scheme to monitor blogs for links to a candidate's web pages.  The FEC could create a definition of "general public political advertising" that would only include obvious canned political ads provided by the candidate or third party which linked to a candidate's website.  Mere advocacy and linking would not count as advertising.  This would not prevent bloggers from advocating for whomever they wanted. 

So then why did Smith attempt to paint his hands as tied in this matter?  Simple--he wanted to discredit the McCain-Feingold bill as a whole.  If he can get left-wing bloggers to start up a "united front" with the rest of the denizens of the Internet, pressure might build for the repeal of the law.

As I said earlier, the constitutionality of measures to control speech on blogs is dubious.  The vast majority of them, like this one, are privately maintained journals not under the control of any organization or group.  Second, the regulations against such speech must pass a legal test known as "strict scrutiny," the highest form of constitutional review.  The regulation must be narrowly tailored to meet an overriding state interest.    Furthermore, the least restrictive means must be used to effect the regulation's mandate.  Here, banning of blog links or mandatory reporting of linking by bloggers would cover almost every type of non-journalistic internet political posting which linked to a candidate's website and would be extremely restrictive, because it would require reporting on a massive scale, along with fines.  Chilling effect indeed.

Of course enforcement would also be a huge problem.  An army of monitors would be required to follow up on leads regarding ads.  The FEC's budget would have to grow by multiples just to hire the persons necessary to monitor and prosecute violations.

So what should bloggers do?  Simple.  Wait for the proposed regulations to come out.  A comment period will follow.  Someone should be in charge of monitoring rulemaking over at FEC.  When the regulations come down, individual bloggers and committees should get together to flood the General Counsel of the FEC with plenty of suggestions regarding the regulations to ensure that regular advocacy blogging is treated like it should be--the man on the street saying his piece.

Update, Friday 1:49  As if you needed more proof, here's Instapundit citing Ed Morrisey:

McCain and Feingold have managed to foster real bipartisanship -- they've gotten liberal and conservative bloggers alike to detest them. Jerome Armstrong at MyDD, Atrios, and DailyKos all agree -- this legislation has become a serious threat to political speech, and John McCain and Russ Feingold have become two of the most dangerous politicians to American liberty since Huey Long. Jerome makes the point that the problem at the moment are the three Democratic FEC commissioners who appear intent on enforcing the law as McCain and Feingold insist, but both parties had a hand in creating this fiasco.

Morrisey has no idea what the Commissioners are going to do.  Just because they voted not to appeal the decision, does not mean they will then vote to "crack down on blogging."  The only person suggesting this is one Bradley Smith.

Bush-appointed FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith is not a big fan of McCain-Feingold.  He would love to have everyone believe that free speech equals the right of any anonymous donor to funnel millions into any campaign they want. 

But the left loves McCain-Feingold.  So how to get them to hate McCain-Feingold?  Imply that you are going to start to try to shut down free speech and bloggers on the Internet because you are being forced to do so by those hateful Democrats on the Federal Election Commission.  The best way to do that?  How about an interview at CNET entitled "The Coming Crackdown On Blogging." And people ranging from Atrios at Eschaton, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, and Armando at Daily Kos seem to be falling all over themselves trying to make alliances with right-wing bloggers to try and stop the "new law."

People, this is a transparent power play.  There is no new law.  Its just a few off-hand comments one Commissioner made to a reporter at CNET.  Just because Bradley Smith implies the Commission is going to go that way doesn't make it so.  Even the smallest drop of knowledge about First Amendment law would tell you that such an interpretation has probably one of the steepest climbs in all of jurisprudence.  Smith wants to make an end-run around the other members of the committee by undercutting their support.  But they don't need support.  They don't take orders from anyone.  Why would Brad Smith think this?  Because he does.

So before you go and submit a torrent of E-mails to the Democratic members of the FEC, stop and think.  Am I really doing the right thing by reflexively doing the will of the Republican chair of the FEC?

This husband and wife team from The Amazing Race won't win this year's contest. Why?  Bad luck.  He worked for Enron and she worked for WorldCom.

What Americans hunger for now is leadership.  Bush claims to provide this by taking strong stances on issues.  Indeed much of the conservative gains of the last quarter century amongst White males can be seen not as a steady move rightward by that segment of the electorate, but an emotional reaction to uncertainty by moving towards the party with the more strident, unequivocal, and black-and-white position.

Essentially it isn't about issues or even personality, but about tone.  We need to build our confidence in ourselves and keep to whatever message we choose relentlessly.

This also explains the failure of the Lieberman faction.  As long as they appear as mere "me-tooers" they cannot win the respect or votes of those who long to see those at the top of this country provide real direction.  Thus, you can't just put a soft face on rightist positions and hope to garner the votes of the electorate.

I think we have begun to take the right steps in this direction.  Both the newly-confident tone of the grassroots of this party and the break-the-mold maverick style of Howard Dean appeal to those who seek real leadership from those who would aspire to reach the highest offices in the land.  We need to become more "Brand Democrat" as Oliver Willis would say.

Once upon a time, young and forceful leaders such as the Kennedys and old powerplayers like LBJ inspired the respect of those who wished to be led.   The more our leaders take real stands and fight for what the party thinks is right, the more people will be drawn to our standard.  American needs leadership today more than ever.  The Democratic party is poised to provide that leadership.  All we must do is roll up our sleeves.

This Google search for "Dennis Rader" wichita comes up with quite a few hits.  Church President, Supervisor of Park City Kansas.  But all the pages are inaccessible.  Maybe this is why.

A Bush voter jumps ship.

 

p.s. don't ask me how all of these "punk" people could be "punk" and for Bush, the preppie, frat-boy son of a U.S. President.  You need to sit down with Ian.

DO NOT DRINK LIQUIDS AND VIEW THIS LINK--LAUGHTER WILL CAUSE THEM TO COME OUT YOUR NOSE.

Sean Hannity has a dating service.  Republicans--they always overreach.  WARNING--NOT A PARODY.

A feud is brewing between wingnut heavies Powerline blog, and young upstart Pharyngula.  PZ Meyers, the blogger behind Pharyngula argues that Powerline is out of the mainstream because they believe in creationism.  Powerline counters:

[T]his is the state of so much of today's left -- unwilling and/or unable to argue political issues (or scientific ones, as far as appears) on the merits. Under leftist logic, the fact that one of us doesn't believe a piece of scientific orthodoxy demonstrates, what, that our attacks on liberal political orthodoxies, falsehoods, and forgeries shouldn't be taken seriously?

Naturally, the Iron Mouth editors were compelled to respond via E-mail:

Big Trunk, I see that you assert ("Call Me Stupid"), that the Left is "unwilling and/or unable to argue political issues (or scientific ones, as far as appears) on the merits." I beg to differ.

First, since the efforts of religious conservatives to discredit the theory of evolution in school text books is certainly a political issue, discussion of it definitely has a place in the poltical discourse. Furthermore, I think its safe to assume that a professor of biology like the blogger you mention, who spends a huge amount of time on his blog discussing evolution, (indeed the very name of the blog indicates that evolution v. Creationism is the main topic of the blog), isn't going to go into the details of his position on the subject in a single post on the blog.

Indeed, the post which prompted Prof. Meyers to post on the subject is simply conclusory--there is no evidence to back up the assertions about evolution other than: "I think that Darwin’s theory of macroevolution is plainly wrong, on strictly scientific grounds." Much like the post of Prof. Meyers which you singled out for criticism, the statement on evolution in your post was conclusory.

Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to support evolution. First, it is clear that evolution does occur in the natural world now. There is a reason the doctor tells everyone to take all of the antibiotics which they are prescribed--because otherwise, a resistant strain of bacteria will evolve out of the non-resistant strain the patient is infected with.

The only question is whether or not that process also created the forms of life we see today. It is clear that there are fossil records of extinct life forms almost everywhere on Earth, some of which can be dated using objective scientific methods--dated to millions of years in the past. These forms are different from our own.

Creationists like those on www.Powerlineblog.com would have us believe that a process proven to occur in the world today to result in changes to the forms and genetic code of living beings simply did not work in the past. This statement is hard to swallow for most people with science backgrounds, as well as for much of the general public. It seems to go counter to Occam's Razor, which calls for the most parsiminous explanation to be credited.

The fact that bloggers on your site support creationism without providing any real evidence for it does call their judgment into question. It seems to indicate that they do not do their homework and operate on belief rather than reasoning. Rob W

We await a response.

Hunter S. Thompson, dead at 67.