Embracing the right to human dignity

Kicking the can: Misplaced blame: Michaud’s supporters wrongly scapegoat Cutler

During the 2014 election season in Maine, one of the most oft-repeated messages from the Maine Democratic Party was that Eliot Cutler, an independent candidate in the state’s gubernatorial race, was only siphoning liberal votes away from Representative Mike Michaud, the Democratic candidate.
That position seemed to be validated on November 4, at least in the minds of many die-hard Democrats: Michaud lost his race in a blue(ish) state against a Republican rival who, just as in 2010, won with less than 50 percent of the vote.
Unfortunately, this excuse for electoral failure does not stand up to examination, and Democrats should instead look inward to explain just how Maine got stuck with another four years under Governor Paul LePage.
First, let’s think about the pure results. Somehow, incredibly, one of the least popular governors in the United States was re-elected with more than a ten percentage point improvement over his 2010 performance.
In 2010, LePage received 38 percent of the vote and won by under two points, defeating Cutler. In 2014, with an underwater approval rating, LePage received over 48 percent of the vote, topping Michaud by five points and falling just shy of a majority in the three-way race. Not only failing to defeat such a vulnerable candidate, but also seeing him win by a wider margin than before is simply embarrassing.
This campaign cycle, the most common question I was asked was “How could you support Eliot Cutler when he’s just taking votes away from Mike Michaud? Do you want LePage to win?”
My answer? Easily—because he wasn’t, and because Michaud couldn’t have won even with Cutler out of the race. Polls asked Cutler supporters who they would vote for in a head-to-head race between Michaud and LePage, and the results varied greatly.
Even the most Michaud-friendly poll I found showed just over a 2:1 advantage for Michaud among Cutler’s supporters, far less than would have been required for Michaud to seal the deal. In fact, if all of Cutler’s voters had gone to the polls without his name on the ballot, about 80 percent would have had to cast their ballots for Michaud to make up for his 30,000-vote deficit.
The fact is that in this most recent campaign, Michaud wasn’t the best candidate for the job. Given that a significant part of his campaign was dedicated to telling Cutler supporters to vote for him because Cutler couldn’t win, I’m not entirely convinced that Michaud thought Michaud was the best candidate for the job.
Unfortunately, the biggest blunder of the entire campaign came before it even started: when Eliot Cutler declined to run as a Democrat. Clearly, he had reasons for not doing so: namely, he’s not a Democrat, and did not want to be beholden in any way to the Democratic Party while in the Blaine House.
However, it’s fairly clear that if he ran as a Democrat, he would now be the governor-elect of Maine. Pollsters consistently found that in a Cutler-LePage race, Cutler would steamroll LePage.
That miscalculation, whether intentional or not, cost him the governorship and cost the people of Maine a governor who wouldn’t punctuate his political attacks with rape jokes.Michaud is an incredibly run-of-the-mill Democrat who sought office in a state that tends to be unreceptive to that type of candidate.
He’s a nice guy; he has populist positions; he’s socially liberal, and he wants to increase the minimum wage. Boring. He brought very little to the table that signaled an active improvement in policy.
Maine seemed to be full of people who really wanted Cutler, perhaps convinced by his property tax plan or his ideas for the economic rejuvenation of Maine’s mill towns or his unwavering support of reproductive rights.
But they ended up supporting Michaud because they believed the Democratic narrative that Cutler, running outside the two-party system, couldn’t win.
Looking at Maine’s electoral history, it is clear what brand of leader Mainers usually elect. Successful and remembered Maine politicians tend to be those that can reach out to both sides of an argument, develop real ideas and work across party lines to reach a mutually agreeable conclusion. Leaders like former senators George Mitchell and Olympia Snowe, Angus King and Susan Collins come to mind. It is a pity that we will not now be able to add Eliot Cutler to that list.

Kicking the can: State of the Union offers hope for next two years

With the midterm elections far behind us and the new Congress in session, there is reason to hope that President Obama’s last two years in office may be his two most productive. The last four years under a divided government have been bleak, to say the least.
Obstructionist Republicans have bitterly fought nearly everything the president and his party have wanted, including must-pass bills such as continuing resolutions and debt ceiling increases, leading frustrated Democrats to all but shut out Republicans in the Senate.
Meanwhile, conservatives demonize the President and the Democratic Party, sometimes with bizarre theories. Former Sen. Scott Brown, for example, claimed that terrorists would take advantage of the “porous” border to infect Americans with Ebola (which is actually the exact plot of a Tom Clancy novel), and then-Rep. Tom Cotton asserted that ISIL and Mexican drug cartels would team up to kill innocent Americans.
Both are smart enough to know that those claims are patently ridiculous. One of the two was elected, partially thanks to such fear-mongering. But now that Republicans have more than achieved their midterm goals and attained large (but not filibuster- or veto-proof) majorities in both houses, it seems possible to move beyond such childish stunts and get on to legislating.
In his State of the Union address to the new Congress on Tuesday, President Obama laid out one policy that many Republicans wholeheartedly support. He asked Congress to give him fast-track authority on trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that would open many Asian markets to American business and strengthen intellectual property rights around the world.
Fast-tracking would essentially give the President the power to negotiate trade deals independently of Congress, then submit the finished product to Congress for a quick, amendment-less, up-or-down vote.
Predictably, many Democrats and their allies are none too pleased with the president’s intentions, claiming that the deals will cost innumerable American jobs. They’re probably wrong, but that’s not really the point here. Rather, the point is that the president and a Republican-controlled Congress agree on something. It’s really just a cherry on top that the bill in question will help ensure American competitiveness in the 21st century global economy.
What else can the president and Congress do to cooperate and get things done? The approval of the Keystone XL pipeline comes to mind. The unfortunate thing about the pipeline is that it has become a symbol in the fight over climate change.
Its approval should have been routine, and experts (such as, you know, the U.S. Department of State) have found that its environmental impact would be negligible. Of course, the pro-pipeline jobs argument is ridiculous as well—perhaps a double-digit number (!) of permanent jobs would actually be created by its construction.
In fact, oil companies don’t particularly care about the pipeline anymore. They’re transporting the fuel they extract via rail, rendering the pipeline superfluous for their purposes. If anything, the pipeline would reduce the environmental impact of the tar sands oil extraction in question, as a pipeline is much less prone to spillage than a train.
Ultimately, it’s just an empty fight between conservative firebreathers and environmentalists opposed on principle. In the past, the president has signaled that he might not be opposed to the pipeline’s approval, and it is likely that his recent veto threat is no more than posturing. The president wants Congressional Republicans to know that he won’t just swallow whatever bill comes before him. He should use the pipeline as a bargaining chip, perhaps in exchange for the closure of a major tax loophole or a part of the his ambitious community college plan. He and the minority Democrats will get something they want, and Republicans will be able to claim a major victory that really doesn’t cost anything. The best part? It’s even more than win-win: such a deal will set the stage for future cooperation.
Perhaps the clearest signal that congressional Republicans are ready to get down to the business of governing comes from what they’re not saying. It’s been a while since I’ve heard the oft-repeated campaign promises to repeal Obamacare and tear down the president’s health care policies.
The official Republican response to the State of the Union, delivered by Sen. Joni Ernst, only contained three sentences about the law, and although she used the word “repeal” once, she was much less confrontational than during her campaign, when she promised to “make ’em squeal” in Washington.
Republican leadership knows that repealing the law is unfeasible and appears to be backing off and focusing on more practical targets.
Enacting fast-track authority for trade deals could be one of the first steps in building a productive relationship between President Obama and a Congress that sounded awfully bloodthirsty during campaign season.
If the legislative and executive branches can get off to a good start, perhaps Obama’s last two years can resemble President Bush’s last two years. Bush and the Democratically-crontrolled 110th Congress took steps to save the American automobile industry and passed legislation to bail out the U.S. financial system. Republicans may be willing to govern with the help of the president and Democrats, but after a sweeping victory they will want to claim some of the spoils if they are going to sit down at the negotiating table and do business.

Kicking the can

Embracing the right to human dignity

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

December 5, 2014

Lately, Bowdoin has been full of events that point to one question. What do freedom of speech and critical inquiry mean on our campus, particularly in relation to each other?

Undiscussed is a student group that has brought speakers with opposing viewpoints on abortion to campus to spark conversation and thought.

Much of the campus recently participated in Yellow Shirt Day, an annual event inspired by a protest of an anti-gay marriage speaker who visited Bowdoin in 2005.

Last year, two student group advisors were booted from their positions for failing to sign a non-discrimination agreement that they felt ran contrary to their faith.

In an inappropriate letter to the editor, a trustee condescendingly chastised a student for his pro-Palestine views and accused him of not understanding the First Amendment. As a campus, we tend to be very progressive and are often loudly proud of that fact. But we also had all seen the Offer of the College innumerable times prior to signing the matriculation book and began our first years at Bowdoin ready to gain a standard for the criticism of our work and views.

Can Bowdoin have a specific viewpoint and still claim to be an institution of critical inquiry, or does the College’s adoption of an idea preclude it from fairly weighing different viewpoints?

First, let us dispense with the idea that this is a First Amendment debate. It’s not. The First Amendment prevents the government from restricting freedom of speech, not private institutions like Bowdoin. However, Bowdoin does exhort the importance of free speech and states that it is the “cornerstone of intellectual life” at the College. Thus, it is our own standards, not those of the government, to which we must hold ourselves.

In the Faculty Handbook, immediately after the lionization of free speech, there is a passage that in some interpretations may serve to limit it.

In it, the College affirms its responsibility to protect its community from discrimination and intimidation, and says that “[E]very student and faculty member at Bowdoin must maintain toward every other student and faculty member an unqualified respect for those rights that transcend differences of race, sex, or any other distinctions irrelevant to human dignity.”

Now, first, let me say that that is a fantastic sentence. Were I in a lazier mood, I would leave the discussion right there because there is absolutely nothing that can follow the message and construction of that phrase, which came from a book with possibly the dullest title ever.

It is easy to dismiss a person whose ideas, routines, preferences or culture do not fit into your ideal. But differing opinions and the experiences that shape them can challenge our own opinions and experiences, and we should not shy away from that.

Learning about a different view might add nuance to our own opinions, even if they are changed very little or not at all. It seems that if we are serious about our inquiries and our desire to sharpen our minds and our arguments, we must not ignore our critics.

Perhaps the most cherished idea at Bowdoin—and indeed in the entire American experiment—is that human beings are equal at their core. This does not mean that differences in characteristics that lead to success do not exist. Clearly, some people are better equipped to succeed in today’s world than others. Others get lucky.

But we are all afforded an equal measure of human dignity, and a right that is given to one of us should not be withheld from another. We have tried to build a society on that idea, and we will continue to progress with that principle squarely in our sights.

Bowdoin has consistently affirmed its commitment to the common good and its unequivocal stance on political equality, and it has no obligation to give a platform to speakers with views contrary to that mission.

If a certain political statement cannot be made without “unqualified respect for those rights that transcend…distinctions irrelevant to human dignity,” then it has no place in a pluralistic society or an intellectual tradition like Bowdoin’s, and we do not need to give it the time of day.

Even keeping in mind, that we should constantly be engaging in self-criticism and questioning whether or not our views are correct, there are certain things that we can take as given. Human dignity is one of those things.

If an argument does not begin under the assumption that humans must have political equality, there is no reason for Bowdoin to provide a purveyor of that argument with a soapbox.

While Bowdoin should not be in the business of rejecting an argument’s conclusion, it can and should be in the business of rejecting premises that deny human dignity.

All too often, the first people to complain that their freedom of speech is being trampled are the ones with arguments that relegate an entire subsection of humanity to a second-class position. Along with freedom of speech comes a marketplace of ideas. Time and space are valuable, and we should not expend such scarce resources giving a platform to valueless positions.

Bowdoin, as both a buyer and seller in that marketplace, has no obligation to use its resources to further arguments that are contrary to its pluralistic worldview. If you are losing in the marketplace of ideas, you should perhaps re-evaluate your position.

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