US Candidates: The Issues

Doing the rounds of the internet at the moment: a political compass test for US presidential candidates. See how you compare!

Here are my results:

Rather comforting, actually. After all the commentary I've read about John Edwards being the true progressive in the race, I was beginning to worry that my Obama/Clinton leanings were informed by white liberal guilt, or feminist overcompensation, or misplaced nostalgia for the Clinton era, or the fact that Obama looks good behind a lecturn. Well, they probably are, but at least now I can claim 81% policy convergence with Obama, and 78% with Clinton. John Edwards is just behind; Bill Richardson, whose staffer emails I have unaccountably received all campaign, is my least favourite Dem (but he dropped out this morning, so that's ok). And I detest everything Fred Thompson stands for, which is fine by me.

New Hampshire Intrigue

For those of us who just can't get enough of politics, US primary season is already up and running. (And we complain about our six-week election campaigns.) The commentariat was abuzz on the weekend with the twin surprise out of Iowa: Huckabee over Romney, Obama over Clinton. Now we're in New Hampshire, where John McCain has won in a big way, and Clinton has reversed the tide yet again with a narrowish win over Obama, just as people were beginning to predict an Obama domino effect. Isn't politics fun when you have no vested interest in the outcome?

Conventional wisdom in much of the non-US world has it that Barack Obama does not stand a chance: the American electorate is just not ready to elect an African-American president, especially not a Democrat. Obama, though, is a uniquely appealing candidate for people who might otherwise be subconsciously wary of electing a non-white. He's young. He's nonthreateningly handsome. His rhetoric is cerebral rather than muscular. He speaks not with the populist outrage of John Edwards – that would be a bridge too far – but inspiringly, optimistically. He loves to invoke lofty ideals like unity and "post-partisan politics". He makes people feel good about voting for him.

And perhaps as a result, moderate Republicans don't hate him; at least, not nearly as much as they hate Senator Clinton. Obama's big achievement in Iowa was to mobilise self-identified independent and even Republican voters. Pretty good for a guy who voted against the Iraq war from the outset. Of course, the campaign hasn't been entirely free of nastiness - the 'rumour' doing the rounds that Obama is a 'secret Muslim' comes to mind - and one can certainly expect an escalation of this kind of thing should Obama win the nomination. But so far, so good, at least as far as race-baiting goes.

Now Obama's problem, such as it is, appears to take a somewhat different form: people – certain people - don’t take him seriously. I'm calling this phenomenon Obama's Jonathan Franzen problem. Franzen, you may remember, was none too pleased when Oprah endorsed his critically-acclaimed novel The Corrections as part of her book club. The author felt this cheapened him as an artist, robbed him of his intellectual credibility among the elites he felt to be his natural readership.

Famously, Oprah has now endorsed Obama for President, providing him with a useful injection of popular support. Oprah is staggeringly influential, and when she says Vote Obama, people - certain people - listen. (The cultural implications of this I will leave for a later discussion.) But it's also had the effect of tagging Obama the Oprah Candidate, which, while not particularly damaging in itself, manages to encapsulate a lot of the arguments of the anti-Obama camp: too young, too inexperienced, style over substance, celebrity over policy.

Much of this criticism is valid; 46 is young for a President, and one term in the US Senate is not exactly a substantial resume. But Obama is no fresh-off-the-turnip-truck naif, either. Besides, as job descriptions go, being POTUS is utterly unique. Every other 'experience' up to this point can hardly be expected to prepare the candidate for the actual presidency - even, dare I say, the experience of being married to a two-term prez.

At any rate, given the New Hampshire result, the race for the Democratic nomination is looking suddenly more interesting. Meanwhile, those crazy Republicans vacillate between McCain and Huckabee… it's nice to see the conservatives riven by internal conflict for a change.

Following the US is the New Multilateralism

What with the election and being employed full-time, I haven't been paying much attention to the US/India/Australia uranium dealings. For shame: I missed this important development in the story. Basically, the India-US uranium deal is now on hold, and Australia, never one to be out of lockstep with our great friends across the Pacific, is also reviewing our recently-announced intention to carve out our own uranium trading arrangement with India.


Nuclear power is a complicated issue, and I'm not inclined to indulge in kneejerk leftism on the subject. I don't remember the MAD tensions of the Cold War, and I'm not the kind of greenie who thinks the nuclear power option should be out of the question. But two things seems clear to me: selling uranium to India, which refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, was a poor idea from the outset; and not selling uranium to India on the US say-so is an extraordinary admission of our guiding foreign policy principles.


Nuclear proliferation is one of those international policy arenas in which multilateralism is nothing short of vital. By that I mean true multilateralism, of the UN-respecting, treaty-abiding, hippie peacenik variety, rather than multilateralism of you-scratch-India's-back-I'll-scratch-yours variety our leaders seem to prefer. One of the chief offences of the Bush administration – and it's a crowded field – is his trashing of internationalist principles at every opportunity: refusing to ratify Kyoto, invading Iraq without a Security Council mandate, appointing a UN-hating cowboy as the US ambassador to the UN. Each of these was a mistake. And every step of the way – save the Bolton appointment, which wasn't really a replicable act – Deputy Sheriff Howard has been right there behind him.


The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is, to be sure, an inequitable instrument, entrenching as it does the nuclear weaponry rights of the recognised states while prohibiting other countries from being allowed the same. But it's an inequitable instrument to which we are nevertheless signatory, in much the same way as the UN is a flawed institution of which we are nevertheless part; and whatever we may think of the terms of the NPT, we can surely agree that less nukes are better than more. India's case against the NPT probably has some merit, but the fact of the matter is that an India testing nuclear weapons close to the Pakistani border is not an India that should receive the imprimatur of international recognition for its nuclear program.


Which brings us to the question of respect for international law. The NPT states quite clearly that signatory nations should not supply uranium to non-signatory nations. There are very good reasons for this provision, not least a general interest in the continuation of life on earth. As the World's Only Superpower, the US is acting irresponsibly when it flies in the fact of international institutions. As a small nation with limited capacity to defend itself, Australia is acting stupidly. The US alliance is indisputably important, but the rule of international law is even more so. If the terms of the NPT didn't stop us from wanting to sell uranium to India, stopping because the US has suddenly developed cold feet is just plain embarrassing. It's tantamount to saying that the current policy of the US government is more important than longstanding multilateral treaties. Which would be a terrible precedent, except that it's not new: it's just an extension of the policy the Howard government has been following all along.

So we might not sell uranium to India after all. But we've lost much of the moral suasion that is the basis for multilateral agreements like the NPT, and in doing so, undermined the entire system. It's not like we weren't willing to bend the rules for the sake of making some extra cash - it's just that it didn't turn out to be convenient after all. How willing do you think the non-signatory nations will be to submit to NPT controls now?

Those Poor, Poor Huddled Masses

Next time you hear someone complain that the Australian election campaign is getting "too American", remind the complainer of one of these stories.

Via Ezra Klein:

With so many candidates for President from both parties ...it might be hard for even dedicated political junkies to know, moment by moment, just how much each candidate is saying about God. Well, thank somebody for Beliefnet and Time, because they've created the God-o-Meter (pronounced "gah-DOM-meter).

With the God-o-Meter, we have a scientific tool that scientifically measures the just how much each candidate is Godding up his or her campaign. For example, Obama, Richardson, Huckabee, Romney and McCain all top the rating at 8 apiece, with Dodd and Giuliani occupying the bottom rung at 3 apiece.

Meanwhile, controversy on the campaign trail: Barack Obama refuses to wear an American flag pin on his lapel, probably because he is a yellow-bellied, America-hating liberal with a suspiciously Muslim-sounding middle name. Naturally, this has spawned all kinds of commentary on which candidate wears what on his or her lapel, as well as a fresh round of why-do-liberals-hate-their-own-country-so handwringing. This particular beatup has been aided immensely - one might say engineered - by Rupert Murdoch's Fox network, which is deeply gratifying to my own inner patriot. AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE.

So you see, we're not quite in land-of-the-free territory yet, Kevin-Oh-Seven t-shirts notwithstanding.