Sarkozy Wins
by neolibertarian
Sarkozy has won the second round in the French election for President. He won 53-47 in the runoff. He had a strong current of opposition, including being opposed in round two by most of the first round candidates. It may have been the one and only debate that helped push him over the top when he kept relatively cool against Royal.
The first round of the 2007 election had a few marked differences from the 2002 election. First, anti-globalization rightist Le Pen dropped from nearly 17% and second place to less than 11% and fourth place. Second, the self-appointed moderate candidate Bayrou climbed from less than 7% and fourth place to over 18% and third place. Bayrou will be starting a moderate party that would be considered Third Way or center-left in the US.
In 2002, the top four candidates (Chirac, Le Pen, Jospin and Bayrou) polled less than 60% of the total vote, with the rest going to a collection of minor parties (mostly communist or socialist). In 2007, the top four (Sarkozy, Royal, Bayrou, Le Pen) polled a combined 86%, drawing votes from the smaller parties who had generally weaker returns. A similar pattern emerged in the last New Zealand election (likely not for the same reasons, of course).
The conventional wisdom in the US is that Sarkozy is pro-American. US news generally reports the opinion of new foreign leaders towards the US in the simplest terms, which is a rather provincial way to look at a foreign election. Royal, though, was not that much less favorable to the US opinion, but as a Socialist she is more inclined to follow European opinion than Sarkozy. We'll see if Sarkozy's election has much of an effect on US-French relations.
The good news is that Sarkozy is hopefully going to shake up the French economy and loosen up their strictly-regulated commerce. France is something of a drag on Europe and the world economy with its backwards labor laws and economic restrictions. Royal was more inclined to work on the margins of economic rules than Sarkozy, who seems likely to wade right into the thick of things and try to mix it up. His ability to effect change is dependent on the upcoming legislative elections this June.
Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty
by neolibertarian
European nationalists have successfully assembled a new (seventh) block in the EU Parliament. The name "Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty" is similar to previous EU-group names like "Europe of Democracies and Diversities" (defunct) or "Independence and Democracy." Unlike those two examples, however, this group (ITS) is quite nationalist in its character. Previous suggested incarnations of the name were supposedly "Identity, Sovereignty, Transparency" -which I guess sounded too liberal and reasonable- and "Europe of the Fatherlands" -which hopefully some of the cooler shaved heads in the crowd recognized as a little too overtly fascistic.
Unfortunately, calling these folks fascist is not really an exaggeration. There are twenty MEPs (Members of European Parliament) from seven countries and eight different parties. They make the name sound quite moderate.
From Italy, the two MEPs each represent a neofascist party. Tricolor Flame is a neofascist party dedicated to a welfare-laden version of Mussolini's Social Republic. Social Alternative is a neofascist party, partly a personal vehicle for Il Duce's granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini. Yeah.
We also have the classics, of course: the National Front from France and the Freedom Party from Austria. Le Pen's National Front is the plurality of the ITS group, with seven MEPs (including Le Pen himself and his daughter). They aren't fascist per se, but they have been connected with antisemitic, Holocaust denying, anti-gay, anti-Muslim and anti-globalization comments and causes. Naturally, Le Pen's FN rails on immigrants at every turn, especially since a lot of immigrants in France are not just immigrants but also black and Muslim (being North African).
The Freedom Party of Austria, of course, is infamous for incurring a European boycott when leader Jörg Haider entered their legislature in a coalition with mainstream partner parties; the party had used a Nazi-coined word in the campaign to convey a sense of Austria being swarmed with a sea of immigrants. FPÖ has one member in the ITS group.
The Vlaams Blok from Belgium is a little less well known and is also now defunct. But its successor Vlaams Belang, meaning Flemish Interest, has three members in the ITS group. They're somewhat more reputable next to others in ITS. The VB wants the Dutch (northern) half of Belgium to secede and form closer ties to The Netherlands. and short of that to protect the Dutch language and promote its usage in government education and administration to the partial detriment of French and other languages. They are quite anti-immigrant, as well as anti-Muslim, with a particular bent towards defending traditional European culture against 'Islamization' (including encouraging higher birth rate among non-Muslims). In Belgium, the VB and its predecessor party were essentially quarantined from any cooperation with the mainstream parties, and has had its state election funds challenged on grounds of anti-democratic or racist positions (the best argument against publicly funded elections). Not as scary as Mussolini's granddaughter, maybe, but still less than respectable. However, several lead members have been accused of fascistic or Nazi sympathies, including a close call with the Holocaust denial laws in Belgium. Anti-Islamist leader Hirsi Ali called the VB racist, antisemitic and chauvinistic, and even the late Pim Fortuyn, known for being anti-Muslim immigration, called the VB fascist.
The British National Party, with some rumored connections to neofascism and some clear connections to groups like the National Front, is not in the ITS (or in the EU Parliament at all). A former member of the UK Independence Party, however, is sitting as an Independent MEP affiliated with the ITS group. The UKIPs are a fringe party in Britain, but are more of a free-market, anti-government bent, which is why the actual UKIP members are in the Independence and Democracy group. ID still has quite a bit of the usual anti-Muslim, anti-gay and anti-globalization bits, but in some members euroskepticism comes from a more liberal and pro-capitalist place (though ID does have more than its share of anti-capitalists; it is Europe, after all).
Bulgaria's MEP in ITS comes from the unfortunately-named National Union Attack. Yes, the party's name is Attack. Attack is a hyper-nationalist party, advocating all sorts of laws and punishments against national traitors, including: a criminal charge of national betrayal, punishments for insulting Bulgarian national sacraments, sanctions for demeaning Bulgaria, and making Bulgarian orthodox the state church, with official powers in lawmaking and a special place in education. It's also a racist and anti-gay party, including attacks on ethnic minorities in Bulgaria for being coddled and wealthy, verbal attacks on Jews, on Roma ('gypsies' to use the slur) and of course on Turks. It's a little hard to classify the party, since it's pro-Russia, anti-West, anti-US, anti-Iraq War, which are all left-wing positions in Bulgaria. Its stalwart defense of the church and attacks on national minorities would make it far-right in most other European countries, however.
The Greater Romania Party gives ITS its last five members. GRM is not just nationalist, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, anti-Turk and anti-gay. It's also anti-Hungarian and irredentist. Some Romanians want to regain cultural prestige through reacquiring territory lost to Moldova and the Ukraine after WWII. Hungarians still get flak in some parts of Eastern Europe for the historical injustices wrought by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in conquering and subduing many Slavic ethnicities in Eastern Europe (the Germanic Austrians were the rulers of the kingdom, but through a complex deal, the ethnic Hungarians/Magyars became something like 'first among slaves' and sometimes oppressed the remaining ethnicities in the Empire). This is quite a creepy party.
In principle or in practice, all the parties of the ITS group are opposed to Turkish membership in the EU and opposed to the Constitution Treaty in particular and EU centralization in general. The group can also likely be counted on as generally anti-US and opposed to the Iraq War. Globalization, already low on Europe's favorites list, is in especially low esteem among most of the ITS group.
It's probably in part due to my familiarity with European politics that I have so very little stomach when it comes to anti-immigration politics in the US. I can say that even the more racist and nationalistic comments from US politicians are not half as bad as some of these ITS boys. But that's no reason to feel safe. If anything, those on the US right against immigrants and immigration and those on the US left against commerce and globalization should look to Europe and see how common it is to see both positions together and quite often combined with antisemitism and Holocaust denial, as well as America-bashing.
I also know that in some otherwise-decent and well-trafficked corners of the blogosphere it's in vogue to chide Europe for losing its identity to Muslims and Islamization. Just watch out for a growing alternative evil: neofascism and nationalism. It's not that Europe needs to avoids Islam; Europe needs to avoid those without respect for the freedom and dignity of others, whether we're talking about Islamist thugs in the Netherlands or Latin neofascists in Southern and Eastern Europe.
PivotTable Politics
by neolibertarian
In the process of applying for jobs and spiffing up my resume, I found that my MS Office skills were under-utilized; they needed to be more prominent, given the importance of MS Office to so many industries and applications. The technical competence they convey is probably more critical than anything else.
I was therefore morally compelled by mild guilt to refresh myself on some of the programs I listed under my skills (Word, Outlook, Excel, Access, FrontPage). I know the programs, but for some reason I felt the need to reassert my dominance over them. I was re-learning Excel, even though I just used it very extensively in a recently concluded campaign. Since I'm good with the fun stuff like Mail Merge (with Word), data sort, etc., I decided to play around with PivotTable. I hadn't had cause to ever use it professionally, but I have read the Excel help files on it and took a 'course' on it through the MS website. It's really a fun tool.
Like MS Access, PivotTable is a way to analyze and compare data, especially larger amounts of data divided into many different columns. I cooked up a fun little example to re-teach myself PivotTable.
First, I made this spreadsheet:
I made a scenario that involved five political parties (each with the surname "Democrats," which is roughly akin to the Swiss political landscape). The idea is that the memberships of all five were tested for their political beliefs, which were categorized into broad headings (I made seven ideological headings). The third column is Thousands of Members. This would be useful to see the spread of beliefs within each party.
I went to the menu bar Data, then PivotTable option and clicked Finish in the window that popped up. It gave me a PivotTable fields list and a blank template like this:
I first put Score in the row fields and Party in the column fields, with Members as the Data items. I added a ready-made graphical theme and it looked like this:
Party Table
Then I changed the field assignments, switching Party into the rows and Score into the columns. The same graphic theme gave me this:
Score Table
So the first is good for seeing the divisions within each Party. The second is good for seeing the cross-party strength of each ideological Score. PivotTables are much more advanced, of course, allowing for multiple-variable axes. I just wanted to practice the fundamentals (it also makes this a simpler tutorial).
I turned the two PivotTables into PivotCharts. I proceeded from the second PivotTable, with Score in the columns and Party in the rows. The first chart was a stacked bar chart, good for seeing the proportionality within each party. I reassigned the ideological colors (it's my pet peeve that Socialist be red) and this is what I got:
But I want something that looks a little neater. There are tons of ways to graphically represent this data, but I'd like to see each ideological Score side-by-side, but then grouped within parties. That led me to choose this graphic, which I find more satisfactory:
Party Chart
This one tells me about the ideological loyalties of each party. Looks like the Social Democrats have a lot more members scoring Socialist than Left-Liberal, while the People's Democrats have a more haphazard, awkward spread among conservatives, authoritarians and centrists. If I proceed from the first PivotTable with Party in the columns and Score in the rows, I can view the information from a different approach:
Score Chart
Besides having a very basic 3-D tilt, this graph tells me something new. While the previous PivotChart started from parties and told us which Score dominated each one, this PivotChart shows us which party predominates among each outlook Score.
While every Socialist is a Social Democrat, not every Conservative is a National Democrat. Maybe the Conservatives in the Christian Democrats and People's Democrats should consider joining (or merging into) the National Democrats, thus consolidating their ideological roots into one vehicle. The Centrists outside the Christian Democrats might similarly consider joining the party that a majority of Centrists support.
The last two charts can provide conflicting advice. The Score Chart should tell Right-Liberals that twice as many of them chose the National Democrats as the Free Democrats. It would consolidate their power, then, to all join the National Democrats, right? Well, yes, but the Party Chart tells a different story. It should show the Right-Liberals that even with all of them joining the National Democrats, they'd be outnumbered in that party 2 to 1 by Conservatives (plus a much smaller number of Centrists). Conversely, the Right-Liberals could squeak past Libertarians for a majority of the Free Democrat membership It might prove more valuable to employ a medium-sized party they at least half-control than a larger party they do not.
The Score Chart and the Party Chart, then, give us different ways to process the information we started with in the spreadsheet. Of course, a lot of politics is personalities, money and current events; reducing it to numbers may be fun or intriguing, but it's only one part of the picture. Even so, it's nice to learn a little PivotTable Politics.
Mexican Election
by neolibertarian
Tomorrow there will be a general election for President of the United Mexican States. It's a single-round, direct, nationwide vote.
Fox's successor (and more or less the only candidate that can be characterized as conservative, or as center-right, or as free market) is Felipe Calderon, of PAN. He basically promises to continue what Fox started, including some market and political reforms.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is occasionally characterized as the Chavista candidate, the one preferred by Hugo Chavez (Venezuela's demagogue). While it's clear he's a left-wing candidate and something of a populist, he hasn't resorted to bashing the US or consorting openly with the likes of infamous tyrants. That could be a front or maybe he's genuinely in more of a Lula vein than a Morales one. He's the candidate for the PRD, the center-left democratic opposition to the PRI.
The candidate for the PRI and the PVEM (the Greens) is Roberto Madrazo. It would be bad if Madrazo won if only because the PRI for so long kept Mexico poor and oppressed under an authoritarian socialist regime. Fortunately he's been in third for a while and probably won't win. A handful of other candidates are also-rans for a collection of leftish causes.
Naturally I'm rooting for Calderon, because Mexico needs market reforms if it's to improve systemic poverty, joblessness and corruption that plague the country. Mexico shouldn't have to be so reliant on remittances and tourists. Mexico needn't cling to the economic characteristics of a developing country.
Serbia and Montenegro
by neolibertarian
Following the May referendum in Montenegro, both countries have now formally declared their independence from the collapsing union of Serbia and Montenegro.
Alone, Montenegro is smaller than Kuwait, East Timor or The Bahamas, and it doesn't even have its own currency. Instead, they use the Euro even though they aren't in the EU or the Eurozone. This is similar to some smaller Western Hemisphere economies relying heavily on the dollar for currency transactions; using a nearby currency that's respected, valued and guarded from inflation helps struggling economies even as it takes away their oft-desired tools for manipulating the economy (and hands those tools over to much more powerful foreign governments). Before using the Euro they used the Mark. Montenegro is done hitching its wagon to Serbia, but is firmly attached to the direction of the EU. Their real advantage over Serbia is having sea and ocean access, while Serbia is landlocked (though Serbia has the Danube and access to the Black Sea through Romania and Bulgaria).
Anyway, good for them. Their union wasn't really working anyway and had been effectively doomed for a while. The intervention into Kosovo really pushed this along, but it started before then.
Miserable Taxes
by neolibertarian
France Has Definitely Jumped The Shark
by neolibertarian
Because a leading French lobbyist for European business spoke to an EU meeting in English instead of French, President Chirac and his ministers left the meeting. He said that he spoke in English because it is the language of business. (tip to VC)
This is coming on the heels of Chirac's comments insulting British cuisine a few months ago.
Of course, France is also the country known for the French Academy, which sets the linguistic standards of French - including the creation of more French-like replacement words for new terms. These are the people who take words like DNA, walkman, software and so forth and create French-derived terms. Even in science, it's the French who oppose the accepted notation AU for astronomical units and instead use UA.
Leave it to the President of France to be a role model for his countrymen: a mess of overcompensating, possessive, xenophobic babies.
Harper Dismantling Canadian Gun Registry
by neolibertarian
Stephen Harper is preparing to eliminate the gun registry in Canada (tip to Instapundit). Considering criminals don't register their guns, that move makes sense. Harper promised in the campaign that he'd redirect the registry funds to public safety, and more cops seems like a far better investment than a gun registry.
I'll be honest, I don't entirely understand the difference between licensing and a registry. I'm sure there is a difference, but once the government asserts or implies some power to restrict weapons of self-defense, it crosses a line.
The issue I see here is the same one Harper stresses; every dollar spent on a registry (that criminals don't have to follow) is a dollar not spent on actual police manpower and equipment. Almost certainly more convictions could be achieved through more investigators, more forensic technology, or better facilities.
Liberals Lose In Canada
by neolibertarian
The Canadian election closed yesterday with Stephen Harper and the Tories pulling down a minority government. The Tories have ended with 124 seats won (155 is a majority), or a gain of 25 seats over their 2004 result. The Liberals dropped thirty seats to 103 and the BQ fell several seats to 51. The NDP made a strong ten seat gain to 29.
The biggest trend from the election is that the Liberals lost more than their opponents won. The scandals and corruption definitely hurt the Liberals, but I also think the impression that they didn't stand for much inevitably hurt them. Ultimately they were vulnerable on the left to fears they would legalize more private health care (in general, most private health care in Canada is illegal, as in Cuba and North Korea). On the right, they were vulnerable to the ethics charges and to tax cutting.
The first result, then, is that the Liberals lost more than others won. That means the coming government is not likely to be a revolutionary government heralding major changes in the days ahead. Any major changes to the Canadian political layout will come slowly or from other factors.
That's unfortunate, because it means Harper will have a tough time governing. He doesn't have a majority, and in Canada the government can be tossed out for losing important votes. He's going to have to go slowly and find allies in the Liberals and the BQ (and sometimes the NDP). And if he can't govern well then he won't have much of a record to go on at the next election, and won't be able to improve the Canadian economy to the point where he could coast on prosperity into a safe reelection.
Conversely, he did offer real ideas - more than the Liberals did, anyway. He promised to cut taxes, fight crime, and pay more attention to the needs of provinces outside Ontario. It's his appeal to Quebec and the West that is perhaps important politically. In the last election the Conservatives were routed in Quebec, and the BQ took a supermajority of seats (though less than half the votes). This time around the Tories took ten seats in Quebec and exceeded the Liberals' vote percentage, while the BQ slipped several seats after Duceppe spoke publicly of the importance of his party gettting half the vote in Quebec.
While a large factor in the Tory victories in Quebec was the corruption of the Liberals and fears about BQ overdominance, the fact that Harper could again appeal to Quebec might bear some importance on the future. It also could have important effects on the work between the Tories and BQ if the Tories follow through on Harper's platform for Quebec.
The election also saw the NDP making strong gains on the corruption and wishywashiness of the Liberals. The NDP might be able to make some hay out of these gains if they stay public and act like a second Opposition to the Tories. However, since the Liberals are in Opposition, they're not likely to give the NDP an opening by being wimpy about criticizing the Tories.
At the next election, as things are going now, the NDP will probably drop back down as the Liberals start to recover. The Tories will either show some successes with crime reforms, 'open federalism,' and a tax cut, or more likely they'll have been stalled on most of their efforts and robbed of the credit for the ones that the other parties allow to pass. I'm rooting for the Tories to succeed if only because they have more and better ideas about government than the Liberals.
This is a rebuilding session, and it's going to be difficult for any of the parties to do much of any value besides prepare for the future. The problem for the Tories is that the government can't be a placeholder or a caretaker for four years and expect to be returned based on that record. If the Tories don't get their stuff passed then they'll have a far rougher night next election.
Conservatives Take the Lead in Canada?
by neolibertarian
The Canada election is coming at the end of January, and for the first time in months the Conservatives may be strongly ahead of the Liberals. Michael Barone brought up the results here. In the new poll, the Tories have an estimated lead of 39 to 27; the Liberals won the last election 37 to 30. In Ontario, the most populous province and the province bringing in by far the most seats for the Liberals, the Tories are ahead by over ten points, 44 to 33 and a half.
The Tories were ahead amidst the scandals afflicting the Liberals, but then it appeared to even out back to the levels of the last election - held in late June of '04. If this poll is accurate, then the election might be shifting to the Tories, allowing them to form the government (probably a minority government, with shaky support from the BQ and occasionally the NDP).
Of course, ultimately the Liberals are pretty close to the center of Canadian politics, so the conventional wisdom of yet another Liberal minority government is still probably a decent bet.
Canadian Liberal Government Falls
by neolibertarian
Without the support of the New Democrats, Martin's Liberals couldn't defend against a vote of no-confidence. The Conservatives and BQ stuck together and with the NDP defeated the minority-government Liberals. The huge scandal that prompted the fall looks like it won't be enough to turn the voters away from their preferences of June 2004.
The economy's doing well, the Conservatives tend to be a little off-putting to a lot of the population of Ontario and the Maritime Provinces, and as a result it's likely that we'll get much the same results this time around. The BQ will sweep Quebec again, the NDP will win maybe 20 seats, and the Liberals will win a minority government with a good 20-40 seat margin over the conservatives. The Liberals will count on the NDP for votes, but the NDP will have a lot more power this time around after showing its willingness to drop out when it thinks the Liberals won't listen to their demands.
I'd imagine that the Liberals will probably see a drop-off in their MPs, as happened between 2000 and 2004, but still enough to forge a minority government. The BQ will stay quite safe and the Conservatives and NDP might be able to pick up some seats formerly on the fence due to unhappiness with Liberal corruption. But ultimately the Liberals fit pretty well with enough Canadians, and things have changed so little from 17 months ago, that a real change in government looks unlikely.
Rioting French Muslims
by neolibertarian
The days-long rioting of French Muslims had a lot of people searching for causes and solutions. Here's my take.
First of all, Michael Savage and some other talk radio types are idiots. France is not 'liberal.' The collective French standpoint on immigration is that it's not a good thing. They don't even like the "Polish plumber" coming under EU rules, let alone Muslims and blacks coming in for welfare. They have relatively draconian immigration rules, including a plethora of detention centers for migrants to wait while being processed.
They do not like immigrants. Virtually every French party has had major politicians insult immigrants. The National Front under Le Pen is of course known for essentially racist opinions on foreigners, and the FN splitoff under Bruno Megret (though he's not a racist, with a Greek-Jewish wife) is very anti-Muslim. The French Communist Party has also used anti-immigrant literature and propaganda, as have the mainstream parties (Chirac himself once said something to the effect that immigrant slums were filthy, the blacks themselves foul-smelling, and that they had lots of kids living on welfare).
In America, citizenship is a legal concept, and a political ideal. A person born anywhere can become an American, legally and socially. In Germany and other European countries, nationality is tied at least somewhat to heritage and ethnicity; Turkic migrant workers have difficulty being considered Muslims. France is even worse, having a hyper-nationalist sense of pride in their country (just because Frenchmen hate Bush doesn't make them 'liberal'). Even being Jewish can often interfere with being considered fully Jewish, and Jews were never officially French until the Revolution changed the laws.
So it's VERY hard to assimilate into a culture that does not like flexibility, does not like change, and does not accept your ethnic heritage as compatible with Frenchness. That's not to say all French are racist, but it's very hard to consider yourself French when most French people would consider you a resident alien.
Laura Ingraham was in the right direction here, when she criticized the non-assimilationist French tendencies. The French don't assimilate their immigrants. However, that's not due to multiculturalism,as she suggested - quite the opposite. It's due to a sense of cultural elitism and that foreigners aren't suited to their ways.
So here's what I think. By excluding Africans from even a reasonable possibility of becoming legitimately French, it greatly alienates them from loyalty to the country or their neighbors. Instead, they seek identity elsewhere, with their fellow African-extracted Frenchmen, with people from their country of origin, and with their religion. They are going to tend to exaggerate their identification with these areas, as when European-born Muslims being far more zealous and violent in their religion than many Muslims in Arab countries.
Unemployment has to be a contributing factor, since an employed person is less likely to waste time rioting, less likely to feel so disaffected, and more likely to have something to look forward to. But I think it's really the sense of identity and rejectiont hat propels this problem, and if the French could simply accept non-white people as potential Frenchmen, this sort of problem would be greatly diminished.
Of course, capitalism is also a big factor here. A closed and anemic economy is not going to provide a lot of opportunities for immigrants, especially unskilled or semi-killed ones. In contrast, the US economy has loads of jobs and opportunities for those willing to work - construction, hospitality, agriculture, and more. Hell, here in Southwest Florida we wouldn't be half as far along rebuilding from Charley last year if it weren't for Hispanic migrants (generally Guatemalan or Central American). Simply giving the French Muslims and Africans jobs, though, is a horribly incomplete solution.
They're being treated as less than full citizens, less than full human beings. When people feel they're being abused, neglected or isolated, they often resort to strange, violent or counter-productive activities in reaction. I believe that feelings of inferiority factored greatly into the rise of German Nazism, and the rise of Arab Islamism, and that the same situation is a factor in the French riots.
There's no doubt that the rioters need to be dealth with swiftly and decisively - there's no excuse for the violence they've perpetrated on their neighbors. But the lack of justification is not the lack of an explanation. French socialism, elitism, racism and xenophobia have to be recognized as contributing factors to the situation, even though the moral and legal fault for the actual rioting must fall without a doubt on the rioters themselves.
Merkel Wins
by neolibertarian
After a month of claiming he deserved to stay Chancellor despite losing ground in the MMP elections, Schroeder has stepped aside amidst criticism over his vain and undemocratic defiance. Angela Merkel will be the first East German since reunification to be Chancellor, and the first woman ever.
Unfortunately, the Social Democrats have managed to win a spot as the Christian Democrats' coalition partner in a Grand Coalition that isn't. The SPD will take eight of the cabinet spots (half the cabinet) including the coveted Foreign Minister spot. The Greens are kicked out of government and the Free Democrats are out for the third time in a row.
Well, darn. Merkel was already awfully constricted by various forces. The CSU and other German conservatives were never all that thrilled with an Eastern Kanzler. The (largely Catholic) conservatives in general weren't too happy with openly gay Westerwelle, leader of the FDP, running as Merkel's de facto Foreign Minister candidate. And she was constrained especially by the denial of the German people, unwilling to realize that their bureaucracy-obsessed, regulation-laden system doesn't work.
Germans as a group haven't accepted that they need more than the timid Schroeder-led enactments of the Hartz reforms. They don't want to lose their exorbitant welfare and for some reason they credit their insanely-restrictive labor laws with their post-WWII economic recovery.
The fact is, Germany has risen to one of the world's most powerrful economies because they're educated and hard-working, and in spite of the innumerable centralizations and regulations placed on them. The guild-style regulations they put on their economy hamper them, just as the longstanding cartelization of the Japanese economy inhibits that country's performance (causing them to stagnate since the end of the Cold War).
Merkel won't be 'Germany's Thatcher;' the Germans aren't ready yet - neither are the French ready for Sarkozy to be the 'French Reagan.'
NZ Election; Labor/National Tie, Hide Wins Epsom
by neolibertarian
In the New Zealand election, Labor and National won 50 and 49 MPs, respectively. The distribution of the minor parties, all of whom (except the Maori Party) took hits in the election, is such that the field favors Labor. Helen Clark (Labor PM) is likely to go for a minority government with the Progressives and maybe Greens, but relying on support from United Future, Maori and New Zealand First. In other words, she's shooting for an anti-National, anti-ACT governance style.
National gained 22 seats to make it to 49 total and took nearly 40% of the vote. Labor dropped one seat to 50 total and took a little over 40% of the vote. Except for the Maori Party, which gained 3 seats for a total of 4, all the parties but National lost seats this time around. Only 4 parties broke the 5% hurdle for list representation, but 8 parties will be represented after successfully electing district candidates.
The surprise of the night was ACT leader Rodney Hide's amazing victory in Epsom. The electorate is known as one of the wealthier parts of New Zealand and was formerly a National stronghold. National decided not to back Hide's campaign, even though it meant securing ACT as an ally in Parliament. The Labor candidate, doomed to lose the election but likely to become an MP based on the party list vote anyway, voted for the incumbent National candidate and told Labor voters to do likewise. Hide campaigned around Epsom with billboards, walking campaigns and so forth, meeting virtually every voter in Epsom. He won by several thousand votes and secured ACT a placed in the parliament.
Unfortunately, the party vote for ACT was 1.5%, so they brought only one other MP to parliament. The stellar lineup of ACT MPs, pound for pound the most exceptional MPs in the New Zealand parliament, has been largely benched. They can still participate from the sidelines, but their perspectives and views were important in keeping the Labor government in check. Here's hoping Rodney can help bring them back in 2008.
Prediction: plurality Labor government based on non-coalition deals with everybody but ACT and National. Clark has the momentum from already being Prime Minister, plus ACT and New Zealand First don't get along, but Brash (National leader) would need NZ1 to get close enough to become PM. Further predictions: National is wimpy and limp-wristed in using its gains and squanders most of its momentum; Hide continues to ask tough questions of the PM and doesn't let her dodge scandals so easily.
German Election; CDU Slump, FDP Boost
by neolibertarian
The German election results are in. The CDU/CSU had a rather disappointing showing, with incumbent-Kanzler Schroeder's SPD pulling to almost within a one-point margin. Both Schroeder (SPD) and Merkel (CDU) are claiming the Chancellor slot; Schroeder says the close results and his position ahead of Merkel in head-to-head polls make him the better choice.
The FDP did better than expected, likely from CDU voters that switched from black (CDU) to yellow (FDP). Merkel wasn't really energizing the base. Aside from issues of being a woman and being from East German, she's just so wishy-washy. But in the last few months Westerwelle (FDP leader) had been really sticking it to the Social Democrats on issues of xenophobia and capitalism.
The left grouping did decently, at least enough to bring back former PDS members to the Bundestag. The Party of Democratic Socialism, formerly the Soviet-era Communist Party that brutally tyrannized East Germans for decades, was unable to make the hurdle in 2002 and thus was limited to district candidates (no party list candidates allowed in). Of course, they still managed to join the coalition city government in Berlin and to tear down the Checkpoint Charlie museum, but coming back to the Parliament on the list is a win for them.
Long term, it will be interesting to see how successful the Greens, Linke and Social Democrats are at carving out separate electoral niches and bases. They will also have to figure out whether they are willing to work together or what.
The SPD could use two or three of the minors to make a government. It's unlikely that the FDP will go into coalition with the SPD; historically the FDP sided with either the SPD or CDU depending on who had more voters, but Westerwelle's FDP is more classically liberal, more ideological and more loyal to the CDU. An SPD-Left-Green government, unlikely given personality issues, would hold a relatively narrow majority of the Bundestag.
The CDU-FDP coalition would not hold a majority of the seats, and bringing in the Greens seems like a pretty big stretch. Honestly, though, I like Fischer (Greens leader) better than Schroeder. He seems smarter and more open to compromise.
There's a good chance of a "grand coalition" between the Christian and Social Democrats, and possibly the Free Democrats. This arrangement would have difficulty doing much of anything.
Whatever happens, I'm glad the FDP pulled down a respectable third place. They're not perfect, but they've got some of the best ideas in Germany at this point.
German Elections
by neolibertarian
Pejman is scared that Merkel is dropping the ball and that Schroeder will outmaneuver her in the election. Unfortunately, it's looking like he may be right. Just like in 2002, Schroeder's shooting for a last-minute surge from behind to save him.
It's very possible at this point that a red-black coalition will emerge again in order to forge a majority. That's really unfortunate, because Schroeder has very little backbone for important measures if they're unpopular. He's little more than a demagogue at this point, trading on isolationism, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism.
All the best to Merkel, but right now she's looking a little like Stoiber II. I guess "Germany's Thatcher" was a little premature.
Norwegian Elections
by neolibertarian
The Bondevik government in Norway is on its way out. After antagonizing the non-coalition ally Progress Party into running an anti-Bondevik campaign, the governing coalition appears to have lost.
The coalition was made of the Conservative Party, the Christian People's Party (Bondevik's group) and the Liberal Left, with outside support from the Progress Party (with whom the mainstream parties have agreed not to coalition). The Conservatives saw a big drop in seats, and the Christian People's also fell. The Liberal left saw its best result since the 60s, but it's still only the seventh largest party in the Storting.
The Progress Party, a self-described libertarian party but with anti-immigrant credentials, was the night's big winner. It jumped to second largest party.
The likely new government, the so-called red-green coalition, is comprised of the Labor Party, Socialist Left, and Center. The Labor Party saw a jump to the largest party. The Socialist Left had a disappointing election, and not only did they fall short of polling expectations, but they lost seats versus the previous election. Center gained a single seat this election.
Interestingly, neither the Red Electoral Alliance (no seats) nor the tiny Green Party (virtually no votes) is represented in the "red-green" coalition. Naturally, they each complain that their color is not really represented.
LDP Victory in Japanese Election
by neolibertarian
The Liberal Democratic Party strengthened its majority in the elections for the lower house from 249 to 296. The majority needed is 241. Along with the Komeito Party, their centrist-Buddhist partner, the LDP's ruling coalition is up to over two-thirds of the lower house. The head of the Democratic Party, the presumptive opposition party, admitted defeat and resigned.
Results?
Well, Japan isn't really a two-party or multi-party state at this point. Of course, that's a very narrow, Western-focused way of looking at the situation since the LDP itself is split into at least half a dozen major factions and the views of minority parties are regularly taken into account. People are free to vote as they wish and elections are fair, it's just that the LDP has won all but a few elections since the 1950s. It lost in the 1990s a few times and it looked like Japan would have several competitive parties but the multi-party factionalism outside the LDP was less capable of ruling than the single-party factionalism inside the LDP. It's also important to remember that Japanese politics is incredibly non-ideological compared to other liberal democracies, and except for Ichiro Ozawa (in the most superficial comparison, he's Japan's Reagan or Thatcher). I'd say Japan's democracy is just fine, if - like all things Japan - different from everyone else.
Beyond that, this is another validation of Koizumi. One of Japan's most charismatic politicians, possibly their most charismatic Prime Minister ever, his popularity is still strong. This is a vbalidation of him because the election was a fight between Koizumi and his internal LDP opponents. He ran candidates against some LDP rebels and Koizumi's candidates all won. Koizumi is still going strong.
Policy-wise, this was a victory for Koizumi's fight to privatize Japan Post. He lost a vote to privatize the world's largest financial institution when members of the LDP went against it. He revoked LDP support for these party members (even in the upper house) and called a snap election for the lower house. A month later, he gets a big win and against the rebels. The meaning is clear: voters support his plan to privatize the postal finances.
Of course, it would be nice if he could go further in liberalizing the economy, which is still a structural mess with most of the burdens of state socialism - inefficiencies everywhere, weak companies and weak business models protected, bad loans forgiven or covered, and good businesses and hard workers forced to prop up the bad ones through the economic design. Beyond that, the government exercises enormous influence, de facto and de jure, on the economy. Still, at least privatizing Japan Post is something.
A lot of analysts in the US are looking at it from the US foreign policy standpoint and what it means for Bush and Iraq. That's fair for US media to drive it back home, but the election wasn't really about that. Just like with the UK and Australia, a good US ally and supporter of the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan was reelected because he was a good politician who was good on the other issues. Iraq was not what won this for Koizumi and it probably wouldn't have lost it for him. Iraq just wasn't an issue in this election, and if Iraq were a defining moment of these elections then we'd probably see PM Kennedy (UK), PM Latham (Australia) and a Koizumi defeat today.
It's a good thing for Bush and his Iraq policy that his allies are reelected (save Aznar in Spain) but let's not confuse that with any sort of specific mandate for the policy. If anything, it's simply a message that foreign feelings about Iraq are insufficient to shoot down an otherwise decent PM.
But the best part of the Japanese election is that a difficult reform is being pursued to help the Japanese economy, and that reform is being met openly by the voters. Best of luck to Japan in liberalizing with the LDP government.
September Elections and the Free Liberals
by neolibertarian
The German and New Zealand elections are both coming this September, and the situations are roughly similar. Both are social democratic incumbents seeking third terms despite rocky terms in office and both electoral systems are mixtures of proportional representation (PR) and member districts (MDs). The German Christan Democrats and Free Democrats are essentially populist conservatives and free liberals, roughly akin to the New Zealand National and ACT parties. Of course, the German CDU is more conservative than the the Nationals, and the New Zealand ACT is pro-Iraq war while the German FDP isn't so much.
Germany will probably see Angela Merkel as Prime Minister in September, hopefully leading a coalition with the FDP. The Free Democrats aren't my personal favorite for foreign policy (no German party has anything like a foreign policy platform befitting a would-be permanent member of the UN Security Council) but they are the only ones backing anything remotely like an American-style free-market system. Were I German, I'd send my party vote to the FDP. It's been considered that a grand coalition of the CDU and SPD might come out of the election, with the Greens, Left and Free Democrats left to the side. Here's rooting for another CDU-FDP government.
New Zealand is looking like Labor ("Labour" they call it) will win anothe term. Things could change, of course, and it's quite doubtful Labor could pick up an outright majority. More likely, Helen Clark will work together a makeshift coalition like she has now, with support of variuous fringers like the Progressives, Greens, United Future (formerly a Christian-centrist party) and New Zealand First. It's possible she'll enter into an alliance with Winston Peters' political self-indulgence the New Zealand First party, in the process giving him all sorts of concessions about spending, welfare, nationalization and of course limiting foreign influence (it's a sort of centristy nationalist grouping with awkward appeal, since Peters himself is a native Maori). That would greatly suck. It's also possible that National might pull ahead enough to get NZ1 to side with them, but that'd take a pretty decent electoral showing.
ACT is looking, as usual, like it won't even win seats in parliament at all. Of course, it's looked that way every year then it bumps up right at the end. They're making a hard push to win an electorate so that they're not totally subject to meeting the 5% party hurdle for entrance to Parliament. Were I a Kiwi, I would party-vote ACT as well as support whatever candidate they ran in the local electorate.
Person for person, ACT probably has the best MPs in New Zealand. It would be a shame to lose the lot of them, given the work they do both in keeping the government honest and in influencing the issues up for debate. They've been so successful at the latter that the ACT positions on welfare, taxes, Waitangi and so forth that were almost obscure a few years ago are parroted by most of the other parties. And unlike the german FDP, ACT is a force for a more deployable, more effective New Zealand military and would be a more reliable ally with Australia and the US (though bear in mind Clark eventually sort of sided with the US by sending very few soldiers to Iraq, at one point limited to a single Kiwi).
Even if the CDU and FDP win, I don't see the US endorsing a German permanent seat on the UNSC. Aside from the politics of adding along India, Brazil and Mexico along with Germany, I think the Germans really shot themselves in the foot by going gaga over obstructionism in 2002. They are not as reliable an ally as they ought to be given our otherwise close connections (trade, military and otherwise). It would really suck having to deal with China, France and germany as permanent members, threatening to veto everything we ever did. The one thing Germany would bring is being one of the least anti-Semitic countries in the world.
If National makes it to government with ACT, we could see a few things. One, no more Kyoto in NZ. It's already unpopular after an unexpected economic boom turned NZ from an anticipated net gain under Kyoto to an anticipated net-loss under it. Not enough Kiwis believe in the cause of Kyoto to spend money on it, because it only passed with the assumption that it would give the government a nice big check for having more carbon sinks (forests) than carbon production. Two, the nuclear ban on ships in NZ harbor would be lifted. It's already been shown that AUckland hospital is FAR more of a radiological hazard than ships at dock in NZ, and a Cold War-era protest makes no sense after the Cold War's ended, so the only reason left is to spite the US and France. The prospect of reactivating the ANZUS alliance (Australia, New Zealand, United States) is more valuable than petty spite, but so is the free trade deal to follow; the nuke ban is the single largest obstacle preventing New Zealand from getting free trade with the US like Australia has, and the US isn't going to move on an NZ-FTA until the ban is lifted.
Germany and New Zealand have been stuck with selfish, conniving, manipulative opportunists of the social democratic persuasion. It won't be a shoo-in, but here's hoping that united center-right parties can bring some common sense back to both of these countries.
Berlin At It Again
by neolibertarian
The Checkpoint Charlie memorial in Berlin was torn down right after the Fourth of July. Now left-wingers in the Berlin city government have a second outrageous tourism goal: bring back a Soviet-era statue of Lenin that stood in East Berlin. The Medienkritik story that brought this to my attention included a Reuters segment quoting a German tourism expert. The expert called Berlin's Communist period the most asked-after by tourists. Well, then, why the hell did they knock down the Checkpoint Charlie memorial without setting up a replacement? Surely they don't think that tourists are interested in glorifying the Communist period.
