Category: Politics

We watched a bit of the vice-presidential debates. It remains the case that John Edwards looks almost old enough to legally drink, and that Vice President Cheney looks like he might explode at any moment. We were most unimpressed by the evasiveness displayed by both candidates. However, actual policy seems to take second fiddle in this election to how people deliver their policy. Which, of course, is disheartening.

What we find most interesting is the recent report that from weapons inspectors (ours this time) that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That seems to have gone over most people’s heads here, given that they believed that already anyway. Here’s an issue: going after Iraq because it was the “most probable nexus” of terror and WsMD (says the grammar nazi) presumes that you actually thought that Iraq was sponsoring terror as well as having WsMD. OK, I’ll admit that I was fooled, I thought that Iraq probably had loads of chemical and biological weapons too, just like the rest of you. However, I never believed that Iraq was any international Islamic jihadist terror threat. Ever ever ever. And despite the statements of College Republicans at the Yale Daily News that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” I’m going to need a tad bit more evidence than a platitude from Pierson College, fourth floor. Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Wolfie, Condie, you were dead wrong.

There is a more unsettling possibility. Instead of the White House failing to think logically about the fact that secular militantly dictators do not get along with millenialist religious fanatics, maybe the White House didn’t really believe there was a difference. Maybe they thought that all Muslims really are terrorists. I’ve been giving this White House the benefit of the doubt about this. Who knows if I’m dead wrong too?

It’s official: Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) has beaten the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri (Bu Mega), in Indonesia’s first direct presidential election. The final score is 61% to 39%, which is a pretty sound drubbing by any political standard. Rationally, any candidate like Bu Mega facing bad poll numbers should moderate her policies towards those of her opponent, thereby capturing a larger share of the electorate. However, this assumes that the candidates actually campaign on policies, and that these policies map to a single dimension. These assumptions did not bear out in this election.

As a further note, SBY (pronounced “EHS BEH YEH”) has just received his doctorate in agroeconomics from Bogor Institute of Agriculture. He managed to complete this impressive degree in just three years, while simultaneously holding a cabinet-level position in Mega’s government, planning his takeover, and running for president. His dissertation title was “Agricultural and Rural Developmet as a Means to Overcome Poverty and Unemployment: An Economic and Political Analysis of Fiscal Politics,” which sounds to us suspiciously like a book report. Look out, Bill Clinton, there’s a new brain in town!