As rocks hit the bus windows, Tad Devine hit the floor.

While seeking footage of poverty for an advertisement in the 2002 Bolivian presidential election, Devine, one of the campaign’s media and political consultants, was on a campaign bus that strayed from the heart of the city of Cochabamba. After veering down a gang-ridden back road notorious for its violence, the bus driver approached a security officer to ask whether the road was safe enough to travel down.

“Listen. If you go down there, you’re going to get killed,” the security guard replied. As the bus began turning around, a group of young people saw the camera equipment inside – and began pelting the bus with rocks. A few windows shattered and Devine, wary of broken glass, hid underneath a seat.

“Most of the time (my job) isn’t like that, but, yeah, it’s part of the show,” Devine said.

Devine is bringing two decades of anecdotes and political insight to the Institute of Politics this semester as a Fall 2011 Resident Fellow. His study group – “An American Abroad: An Inside Look At How American Consultants Run High-Level Political Campaigns Around the World” – is centered around discussion of his experiences in international political consulting. It meets from 4-5:30 in the IOP, room L166, on Wednesdays.

Seventeen winning U.S. Senatorial campaigns and John Kerry and Al Gore’s presidential campaigns aside, the study group focuses on Devine’s international political expertise. Devine has crafted advertisements, written speeches, and conducted debate prep for ten winning presidential or prime minister campaigns across the globe – including one for Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in Bolivia, about which the documentary Our Brand is Crisis was made.

Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, a candidate in Afghanistan’s first presidential election in 2009, was one of Devine’s clientele. Ahmadzai placed fourth, but suspicions of election fraud cloud the experience for Devine.

“What I learned from a distance is that democracy hasn’t taken hold there yet,” said Devine, who worked on the campaign while in America. “There was this claim of democracy that particularly the Bush administration put out afterward… I did not observe what I would consider to be a democratic election in Afghanistan. The fix was in. There were real questions about whether the voting was rigged.”

Working for such high-level candidates has forced Devine to grow thick skin due to accusations that are, at best, unique – at worst, dangerous. While working as a senior advisor and strategist for the Kerry campaign in 2004, Devine opened an email from his brother with a surprising message.

“He said, ‘Gee, I didn’t know you were an Israeli spy.’ And he sent me a link to a right-wing website trying to smear people who worked for John Kerry,” Devine recalled. The website traced Devine back to his work on Ehud Barak’s winning Israeli presidential campaign in 1999, surmising that he was in cahoots with the Israeli military.

Other noteworthy attacks include a slew of insults from radio personality Rush Limbaugh and an accusation of being a CIA agent from Bolivian presidential candidate Evo Morales – who ran unsuccessfully against Devine’s candidate, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada – in 2002.

“My view is that I just ignore it,” Devine said. “I’ve never felt threatened physically – except for the time, you know, I was stoned in Cochabamba on the bus.”

For all his experience on the international stage and at the highest level of American politics, the campaign of which Devine is proudest happened within American borders in the city of Jacksonville, Florida. Nat Glover was elected sheriff in 1995 – an election remarkable not for its office, but for the fact that Glover was the first black sheriff in a city where, Devine said, race was initially viewed as a nearly insurmountable issue.

He remembered an incident shortly after Glover was elected: An older white woman approached Glover and said, “I’ve never voted for a black man before, but I voted for you.”

“That story encapsulated the feeling that we had done something small in scale in terms of political geography, but enormous in terms of its consequences… To be able to go into a small laboratory of democracy like Jacksonville, Florida, and to demonstrate that race could be overcome, I think is very important,” Devine said.

But if the Gore-Lieberman campaign – to which Devine was a senior strategist – had won in 2000, it would have been his proudest work. That it did not left Devine disappointed.

“If you ask what I’m proudest of, it’s the work for Nat Glover. If you say to me, ‘Gee, what do you think is the best work you’ve ever done in your career,’ I would say – and a lot of people wouldn’t agree with this – it’s coming into Gore’s campaign when he was 17 points behind at the end of May and helping to lead it to the point where we actually won more votes than the other guy, although we didn’t win the election. It was quite a comeback… but, because of the result, I’ve never been able to take the kind of satisfaction in it that I would have liked to.”

Though highly experienced from both his work in America and abroad, Devine is still learning. Success, he said, is about finding the right mixture of positive and negative ads, of anticipating the right questions for debates.

“You learn by doing. There’s a lot of back-and-forth in campaigns to come to that right place, strategically,” Devine said. “All these campaigns are unique. If you try to go in and take a model – positive, negative, whatever – and stick it on a race, you’re probably going to lose.”

Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.

General executive partners of long-term investment partnerships, including investments in real estate, venture capital, private equity, and other investments, are paid a management fee based on the assets they are managing, plus a share of the capital gains (typically 20 percent) earned on the investment. The management fee is taxed as traditional income, but the the limited (passive) partners pay the general partner a share of the profit—called “carried interest”—as an incentive for the general partner to maximize investment performance, which is taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate, much lower than the individual income tax rate.

This rate is already scheduled to increase to 20 percent in 2011, but the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act, which passed the House yesterday by a vote of 215 to 204, would tax three-fourths of carried interest profits at the regular individual income rate, up to 38.5 percent.

This proposal, as the Wall Street Journal’s John Rutledge points out, is the latest consequence of a Washington mentality that focuses on who is taxed rather than what activities are taxed. The rate hike would of course reduce income for investors; this includes both general and limited partners, since the latter would have to pay a greater share of their after-tax returns to compensate the general partners. But even if one accepts the political and moral legitimacy of a government playing the role of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, the policy would have adverse consequences for the economy as a whole, including poor and middle-class citizens.

Rutledge explains that the law would “discourage capital investment, increase the cost of money to start and grow a business, and depress real estate and stock prices.” Reduced after-tax returns on investment diminishes investors’ willingness to take risks, which is especially true in this case since long-term investments do not begin generating profits for years after the initial investment. This makes it more difficult for small businesses to acquire the capital needed to establish themselves and expand, which in turn means fewer jobs. The diminished value of after-tax returns on assets would drag down asset prices. As Rutledge notes, “The direction of these changes is not in question.” The only question pertains to their magnitude.

Given that partnerships are America’s “primary vehicle for funding long-term investments,” the decline in such investment is likely to be substantial. Rutledge cites the most recent Treasury Department data, which indicate that there were more than three million partnerships, representing 18.5 million investor partners, in 2007. Altogether, the 2.3 million partnerships required to report their asset balances to the IRS financed $20.5 trillion in investments that year.

There is reason to believe, moreover, that net revenues would actually decline as a result of investment reduction. As ABC’s Charlie Gibson noted in an April 2008 debate between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, President Clinton signed legislation in 1997 reducing the capital gains tax rate to 20 percent, and President Bush subsequently reduced it to 15 percent; in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. When the rate had been increased to 28 percent in the 1980s, revenues went down. In a sound bite that never ceases to amaze me, then-candidate Obama said he would “look at” raising the capital gains tax in spite of this “for purposes of fairness.” He then reverted to his usual class-warfare rhetoric, noting the unfairness of an economy that allows the top 50 hedge fund managers to earn $29 billion in 2007. The President and House Democrats are apparently so determined to punish the rich that they will do so even if it means less jobs and capital formation, and has resulted in reduced revenues in the past.

Incidentally, yesterday’s vote to raise taxes on carried interest was partly sold as a tax on wealthy hedge-fund managers, but Rutledge notes that such funds generate short-term capital gains, and their managers already pay taxes at ordinary income rates. The tax will instead affect those who make the long-term investments that generate long-term capital gains.

The ostensible purpose of this provision, other than to redistribute wealth, is to partially offset extensions of various tax credits (despite aforementioned evidence that this could reduce revenues, and despite the name of the bill itself). A few of the most egregious of these, the vast majority of which, as Tax Foundation president Scott A. Hodge has noted, amount to earmarked spending through the tax code, are catalogued on the Tax Foundation’s Tax Policy Weblog. The current Congress, of course, has already substantially increased spending, much of which is permanent and likely to easily outlast the current economic downturn. In the majority party’s mind, tax revenues must be vigorously maintained, but the same standard does not seem to apply to spending.

The good news is that the bill is unlikely to pass in its current form due to serious concerns in the Senate. Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), for example, has expressed strong reservations about the provision, likely because of the venture capital community in Massachusetts. Still, the fact that such a proposal is even being considered speaks volumes about the current Congress’s idea of fiscal policy.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

I suspect that this new twist will produce tax credits and incentives for nuclear power and “clean coal” even larger than the ones already agreed upon.  My reason: the ads in the last issue (April 29) of The New Republic.  One from an electric-company-funded climate-advocacy group, one from a nuclear advocacy group, one from a builder of nuclear power plants, and the back cover from the builder of a “clean coal” plant.  The coal and nuclear crowd’s lobbyists are putting the full-court press on the Democrats, while Kerry has already announced that the oil companies like his bill; it may be difficult for them to take that back.  With that in mind, I think that coal and nuclear will take much of the pork that was meant for offshore oil.  And I don’t think that Republicans will fight too hard for their supporters in the oil industry, just as they seemed to have given up the Wall Street fight.

Photo Credit: Flickr (wallyg)

case is a blow to democracy

The outcome of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission has rocked the political world by reframing the controversy over corporate influence in political campaigns. In the 5-4 ruling, a majority of the Supreme Court struck down provisions of the McCain–Feingold Act that forbade corporations and unions from directly supporting or opposing candidates for office. The decision leaves candidates more susceptible to corruption by tilting the balance of power in our democracy towards wealthy corporations and interest groups.

DIVERGENT INTERPRETATIONS

The majority opinion took a novel but somewhat expected approach to the monumental case, which saw its beginnings in the recent presidential campaign. In 2008, the Federal Election Commission banned the interest group Citizens United from airing its unflattering attack-documentary against Hillary Clinton on cable television, saying it violated campaign finance restrictions under the McCain–Feingold Act. Citizens United appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which heard two sets of oral arguments in the case. By asserting the inalienability of free speech while also extending it in an unprecedented way to corporations and other associations, the Court employed both a strict enforcement of the First Amendment and a loose broadening of its application. Justice Anthony Kennedy, speaking for the majority, wrote, “If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.” In effect, the court extended First Amendment protections to interest groups, completely overturning the restrictions permitted by the ruling in Austin vs. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in 1990. As John Samples of the Cato Institute explained to the HPR, “The Constitution doesn’t mention speakers,” only speech, and therefore distinctions between corporations and other speakers are impermissible. The McCain–Feingold law, according to Samples, restrained associations’ right to express their political views.

Dissenting justices, led by John Paul Stevens, emphasized their wariness about corporations’ influence on government. Stevens lambasted the majority’s “rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding,” and worried that the decision would “undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation.” Drawing on over a century’s worth of statutory and constitutional law restricting the sort of influence that the majority has now allowed, the dissenters made a case for favoring the intent or principle behind the First Amendment over a literal interpretation. Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet told the HPR that “the dissenters argue that constitutional law should leave more room for policy judgments by Congress than the majority’s doctrinal framing allows.”

DEMOCRACY DERAILED

Regardless of the constitutional merits, it seems unquestionable that the decision will have a negative impact on politicians’ susceptibility to corruption, or at least what most of us would call corruption. Corporations, unions, and other interest groups, using their treasuries as threats, will have substantial leverage over representatives. Nevertheless, supporters of the decision, such as Samples, argue that “it is easy to exaggerate the practical effects of this decision” and that “[corporate] speech is not the same thing as results or power.” Harvard Kennedy School professor Alexander Keyssar, drawing on recent history, countered that “anyone who’s witnessed elections in the past ten years will see the influence of money in elections. Big Pharma doesn’t donate to campaigns out of altruism.” This influence will expand at the expense of the millions of individuals lacking the means to conglomerate their funds to affect the electoral process. Brookings Institute senior fellow Thomas Mann warned the HPR that “the potential dangers to American democracy are great.”

THE FUTURE FOR REFORM

Cautiously working within the confines of the Court’s recent ruling, leaders on Capitol Hill are scrambling to mitigate the decision’s effects. While a handful of senators, including John Kerry (D-MA), have gone so far as to endorse a constitutional amendment to restrict corporate influence, Keyssar said that its success is “unlikely” and that “it’d take a crisis” for the movement to gain any traction. A more feasible path to some limited reform may be to enact legislation forbidding foreign-owned corporations from influencing American elections, a phenomenon about which policymakers of both parties have expressed concern, but which is of uncertain importance. Others are calling for requirements that corporate political expenditures be approved by shareholders. Indeed, Tushnet emphasized that “the real action should be to shift attention from campaign financing to corporation law, and figure out some ways to ensure that shareholders really do approve of corporate expenditures on political campaigns.” Still, the future of reform remains unclear. While Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) has promised legislation, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a long-time proponent of reform, has indicated that he “[doesn’t] think there’s much that can be done.”

As Keyssar noted, an implicit deal was once struck between government and corporations: the latter would be protected from antitrust suits in return for a promise that “the political arena would not reflect the imbalance of power represented in the economic arena.” The Supreme Court has upset this equilibrium, and it may also have taken away the tools necessary to restore it.

John He ’13 is a Staff Writer.

Photo Credit: Robert Palmer (Flickr), AMagill (Flickr)

In policy terms, this isn’t big news. The CBO estimates the bill will cost some $15 billion, a fortune to you and I, but a pittance in Washington terms. In any case, the moneys allocated pale in comparison to the $500-600 billion worth of stimulus which has yet to be spent. Moreover, it’s not clear that the legislation will do much to improve the overall unemployment picture. The centerpiece of the bill is a $1000 tax break for businesses for every  new hire. This sounds like reasonable policy, and will clearly effect hires at the margin, but the simple fact remains that a thousand dollars is not a great deal of money, all things considered. Considering that the average  income in 2009 was around $40,000 for a full-time worker, it’s hard to imagine that many new jobs will be created by what amounts to a “first six days free” promotion. At the same time, businesses potentially face many times these cost in under the Democratic agenda. This regulatory uncertainty fosters lower unemployment, as firms wait to see what the cost of labor will become. If Congress were really dedicated to reducing costs of hires, they’d drop health care, financial reform, and cap and trade.

Still, I’m not particularly interested in these partisan arguments. The more fascinating component of today’s vote was its lopsidedness. Over the past year, Democrats have struggled to attract Republican votes on just about every issue, be it health-care, financial regulation, even innocuous (though bloated) department appropriations. Yet the final vote picked up 13 Republicans, over a quarter of the caucus. Their motivation was strong polls–Quinnipac shows a support/oppose ratio of 72/22 for a $100 billion bill. The political calculations would  seem to mandate grudging Republican support, even if the ideological case is a little less clear.

Realty proves a little bit tricker. Just yesterday, the cloture vote passed on a narrower 62-30 margin. Six Republicans: Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Lamar Alexander (TN), James Inhofe (OK), George LeMieux (FL), and Lisa Murkowski (AK) all switched their votes from no on cloture to yes on final passage. In addition, Richard Burr (NC) and Orrin Hatch (UT) sat out the cloture  vote but gave their ayes to the bill.

Substantively, these positions are functionally incompatible. In the traditions of the modern senate, a vote for cloture is a vote for the underlying bill. Senate procedure is not always the easiest to explain–pace John Kerry–but the public seemed to be growing more aware of cloture’s effects on the legislative process. Indeed, the Republican strategy of uniformly obstructing cloture depended on their members not being able to vote for cloture, then against the underlying bill. That so many defected is sign that members still believe they can have it both ways: supporting the leadership on the vote that counts, and voting for the popular thing on the vote for the TV ads.

Even so, there’s a pretty major difference between can and should. Voting against cloture but for the bill may be politically convenient, and even a politically plausible contortion. Still, it’s not the tactic of a governing party–for at the end of the day, to govern, one has to pick a side and stick to it. Today’s vote may not be terrific for those who put faith in an informed electorate, increasingly savvy to political tricks. It’s worse for Republicans, if they are to retake the Senate this November.

Photo credit: Library of Congress flickr stream

Among the flurry of political maneuvering and intrigue surrounding the vacancy of Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat came the interesting proposition that a suitable placeholder might have been found in 75-year-old Michael Dukakis, a man The Boston Globe assured had “put his political ambitions behind him.”  What seemed strange about this idea is not that Dukakis was a poor choice – quite the contrary, he is a distinguished and passionate liberal who would have skillfully advanced Kennedy’s agenda- but rather that his name was mentioned at all.

For Michael Dukakis belongs to that unenviable collection of American politicians who so often sink from the limelight into the realm of mere trivia and nostalgia – the presidential might-have-been.  Since 1972, five Democrats and two Republicans have unsuccessfully sought the office of President of the United States.  Two – John Kerry and John McCain – still hold their seats in the Senate.  Another – Al Gore – managed to parlay his defeat in 2000 into a Nobel Prize and general high esteem.  But for George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Dukakis, and Bob Dole, all still living, such rehabilitation has been elusive.  Although in their respective election years they were among the most recognizable Americans, gracing the cover of Time and untold numbers of bumper stickers and yard signs, to succeeding generations their names are seldom mentioned and their exploits seldom discussed.  If they are remembered at all, it is because they lost.

However, to discard these men as historical anomalies, as unfortunate victims of circumstance, is to forget their enormous accomplishments and sacrifices.  It is no small thing to engage in the brutal contest that is a presidential election, and it is certainly no easier to emerge as the loser.  Kerry saw his heroism called into question, Dukakis his character.  McGovern and Mondale were victims of such lopsided electoral thrashings that it was the ignominious vote tallies have emerged as their lasting legacies.  All seven saw their values questioned in some form, and yet managed to persevere nevertheless. It must be remembered, therefore, that the fact that these men possessed the dedication and fortitude necessary to even mount an opposition is a testament to their genuine strength of character.

Furthermore, to remember each only within the context of a presidential election neglects the numerous professional and personal achievements that mark their lives.  McGovern as war hero and director of Food for Peace; Dole as well-respected and transactional Senate leader; Mondale as the last electoral gasp of the New Deal; and Dukakis as the patron of the Massachusetts Miracle.  These distinctions, while probably forgotten in hindsight, do far more justice to their careers and accomplishments than the simple epithet of has-been.

Perhaps it is most fitting to look at these men in light of what they all have in common.  They did not share policies, nor office, but all seven were career politicians in the finest sense of the term.  Their records as public servants attest to the idea, best illustrated by the life of the late Senator Kennedy, that a man need not be president to lead his country.

We might also make an example of their political conduct.  In these times of acute partisanship, it is natural to look back with longing to a time when politicians managed to work around political differences to achieve effective professional and personal relationships.  The two unsuccessful candidates of the 1960s, the venerable senators Hubert Humphrey and Barry Goldwater, maintained a very close friendship despite their markedly different views – a touching legacy that, given Washington’s current climate, should not be forgotten.  It might be said that to lose with honor is a far greater achievement than to win with animus.

In the end, that the vacant Massachusetts Senate seat did not provide Michael Dukakis with a fitting endnote to a lengthy career should not influence the legacy he ought to have.  For he, along with the all of the Democrats and Republicans whose presidential defeats forgo a library or a portrait in the White House, must still be honored as politicians of the highest caliber and dedication.  Policy disagreement aside, they are patriots who in their crusade for the nation’s highest office exemplified our deepest political tradition – the dogged pursuit of a better America.

Let us remember these men: losers for one day, but ultimately undefeated.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush made a sweeping commitment to global economic development.  In early 2002, he declared, “We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror. We fight against poverty because opportunity is a fundamental right to human dignity.” Development was to be a vital third pillar of national security policy alongside defense and diplomacy, a welcomed elevation after years of trimmed budgets and declining relevance.

Yet despite the enshrinement of international development in the U.S. National Security Strategy of 2002, and the reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. foreign aid policy has only grown more fragmented, limited, and incoherent in the last eight years. While the Obama administration scrutinizes status quo aid policy, fierce debate swirls among academia, the private sector, NGOs, and think tanks about how to correct U.S. aid’s institutional flaws. But there is little debate about one fact: America’s foreign aid policy is in need of repair.

Aid as We Know it

The framework that governs American foreign aid today was formulated during the Cold War, when aid was primarily used as a tool for supporting anti-communist regimes. President Kennedy pushed Congress to create a long-term foreign aid infrastructure, resulting in the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the establishment of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The next and last legislative overhaul came with the FAA of 1973, an effort to reduce reliance on large government-driven aid projects. Since then, however, the recommendations of successive presidential task forces have failed to garner support in Congress. In the 1990s, having lost its anti-communist rationale, American aid fell to its lowest levels.

Only after 9/11 did the Bush administration recognize the development of stable economies and effective democratic states as a key national security priority. Bush expanded the range of agencies dealing with development to include the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, while overseeing an increase in aid from $10 billion in 2000 to $22 billion in 2008.

Cold War Legislation in a Post-9/11 World

Yet the legislative foundation of America’s aid policy, the FAA, remains oriented around top-down Cold War objectives at a time when the newest actors in development are proliferating NGOs and microfinance initiatives. Noam Unger, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the HPR, “Legislation is a key piece of fundamental reform because the FAA of 1961 as amended … has many elements that are obsolete… and overlapping.”

In fact, much of the law deals not with strategies for poverty reduction but with Pentagon assistance to foreign militaries, fragmentary earmarks, and complex aid procurement rules.

Several pieces of legislation moving through Congress now seek to address these problems. Chief among them is the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act, championed by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN). The bill proposes to make USAID the focal point for aid decisions and create a body called the “Council on Research and Evaluation of Foreign Assistance” to evaluate the effectiveness of all U.S. aid policies.

The economic crisis, however, has made it difficult to obtain widespread support. Given “budget constraints and other concerns,” cautions the Congressional Research Service, “…some Members of Congress may prefer a continuation of the existing foreign aid structure.”

A Crippled USAID

At the same time, the Obama administration has failed to capitalize on early momentum to establish a new direction at USAID. As of the beginning of October, more than nine months after Obama’s inauguration, no one had been nominated to administer USAID.

This first year has presented an unparalleled opportunity for strong leadership to reshape a weak USAID and represent aid interests in major policy-making. The White House is in the midst of an aid policy review and the State Department is undergoing its own Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. But in the absence of an Obama-appointed administrator, there is no champion for a national aid strategy, much less an individual to revitalize USAID.

There is also a growing consensus that USAID is understaffed, having seen a large decline in personnel and capability in the last few decades. Joseph Nye, professor of international relations at Harvard, explained, “USAID as an institution has been decimated over the past decade and has now become something of a contracting agency… The number of skillful and experienced USAID officials has been cut dramatically.” In the 1990s, 37 percent of the agency’s workforce left without replacement, and between 2002 and 2005, direct hires working for USAID in the field fell 29 percent.

The organization has become dependent on private mega-contracting, leaving little room for institutional expertise. “The conventional wisdom is that USAID has become dysfunctional as an organization,” said Lant Pritchett, professor of international development at Harvard.

One Voice for Aid?

USAID’s capacity to formulate and guide a national aid strategy has also been sapped by the proliferation of aid bureaucracy. Unger explained, “Our foreign assistance is fragmented across a range of offices and bureaus and departments in the executive branch.” A recent Oxfam study found that the FAA had come to encompass 33 different goals, 75 priority areas, and 247 directives, stretched over 12 departments and 25 agencies.

Many development aid studies have called for the creation of a new cabinet-level agency to represent the United States in all aid discussion, establish coherent development policy, and balance short-term political and security priorities with long-term development goals. This reorganization would counter the rising “militarization of aid” in the Department of Defense as the military becomes the point organization for aid disbursement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.K. adopted this structure in 1997 with the creation of a minister-level Department for International Development. Yet due to the high political and financial cost that a U.K.-style transformation would entail, it is unlikely that the Obama administration will pursue a similar path.

In the near future, a more achievable goal may be to revitalize USAID. Unger advocated an “empowered USAID administrator” that would “represent development considerations in all foreign policy and national security discussions, whether at the National Economic Council or the National Security Council.” An empowered administrator would help to unify aid policy among various bureaucracies and simplify U.S. interaction with multilateral organizations and NGOs.

Today’s incoherent and fragmented American aid policy is the result of decades of neglect and politically driven aid disbursement. Even development’s newfound significance after 9/11 has not led to a sharpened aid strategy. Instead, more funds have been pushed through an increasingly hollow and complicated aid bureaucracy. In an era of failed states, faltering economies, and international terrorism, the development imperative is more pressing than ever. But before the world’s largest aid donor can hope to build effective institutions abroad, it must repair its own foreign assistance infrastructure.

The anniversary of Woodstock has come and gone, and with it scores of revitalized folk records and overused tie-dye designs. Many years have passed since the anti-Vietnam movement flooded the streets of America, and time has brought international conflict, economic downturns, and changes in the ideology of our political leaders. The question left in the wake of this anniversary is one that has gone relatively unnoticed in the post-Woodstock generation – where has all the protest music gone?

The radio, record stores, and even all-encompassing iTunes are missing the throngs of political protest music that used to hold such revolutionary impact. Of course, the fringe music still exists: loyal Kimya Dawson fans can still find anti-Iraq war messages in many of her songs, including “Loose Lips.” And artists outside the mainstream, like Saul Williams or Le Tigre among countless others, can be relied upon for controversy to appeal to a narrow base of fans. Yet mainstream, far-reaching artists are noticeably quiet on political issues. This strange silence of political music cannot be attributed to a lack of subject matter; political controversy is still vibrant in the military, economic, and social arenas. What has happened to protest music? Does it only exist in the shadows, cowering away from most big-name records? Or has it changed forms completely, and will it ever come back? Though musical expression of politics post-1980s may seem to have decreased, the tradition of politics in music continues to flourish, albeit not in the same manner.

Where has all the music gone?

Of course, this is not to say that political music has completely disappeared. Examples of political protest music have been well advertised, whether in support of politicians, against political leaders, or discussing ideological standpoints of artists. Further, though most music takes a liberal stand, songs with a conservative twinge exist as well. George W. Bush’s presidency was a catalyst for not only protest songs denouncing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (like the Beastie Boys’ “In a World Gone Wrong”) but also political music expressing patriotism and support (like Toby Keith’s “Proud to be an American”). The presidential election of 2008 led to a flourishing of pro-Obama songs, including the Black Eyed Peas artist Will.i.am’s “Yes We Can,” which uses the Obama campaign slogan to stress his call for change. Yet few would argue that the activist tradition of John Lennon, Sting, and Jimi Hendrix lives: rarely are songs released into the mainstream today explicitly political; those that are receive high press coverage solely because they are so unusual.

Political art or political artists?

Indeed, the main contribution of the music industry to politics today is not through songs, but rather through the direct positions of recording artists. Musicians now leave their political beliefs out of the recording studio, and instead project them on stage. During Coldplay’s recent concert tour, for example, lead vocalist Chris Martin made digs at Fox news anchor Bill O’Reilly in between belting nonpolitical hits like “Violet Hill” and “Viva la Vida.” How things have changed: in the 1984 presidential election, Bruce Springsteen and his band explicitly refused to endorse Ronald Reagan’s campaign, though their song “Born in the U.S.A.” caused quite a pro-conservative fervor. The band had previously avoided explicit partisan stances or making their views public, but after contributing to a New York Times article in 2004, they became active supporters of John Kerry and Barack Obama. Countless other examples exist – the Dixie Chicks and Green Day, among others – who have lent their fame and time to support their political opinions rather than writing songs to incite political interest.

Dynamic Forms and Creators

What encouraged this shift of musician interests? It could be the shift of political expression towards other forms of media. The influence of the Internet has expanded enormously since the 1980s, and the impact of communication media cannot be ignored. With the prolific number of political blogs existing today, as well as websites dedicated to political awareness, political music is another aspect of the general frenzy for communicating individual political opinions. But artists today may find political expression too risky for their careers.
This may be why the number of amateur political artists continues to grow as mainstream musicians tone down their activism: almost 60,000 results for individual songs pertaining to politics can be found on YouTube alone, and this does not include scores of independent artists broadcasting from other sites. As it becomes easier for amateurs to communicate their ideas on an expansive level, so has the need for political music from mainstream artists diminished. Further, the independent amateur artists can proclaim partisan ideas with much less risk than mainstream artists: most do not have music as their sole source of livelihood, and thus are freer to express political opinions without fear of the consequences.
A Different Kind of Attitude

Nor can one ignore the shift in the tone of political music: parody, whether earnest or tongue-in-cheek, has evolved to become a form of protest outside of the proverbial music box. During the 2008 election, voters were barraged with political music videos of a political nature. Obama Girl’s “I Got a Crush on Obama,” with over fifteen million views on YouTube, and McCain Girl’s “The Incredible McCain Girl” (three million views) exemplified some of the attempts to use humor and music for drawing support. Others, like “Whatever I Like” by Alphacat, parodied catchy songs in popular culture-and built entire reputations on playful Obama imitations.

But technology has affected protest music in more than just its distribution-the tools of creating music itself have changed. In”Two Minutes Fifty Seconds Silence for the USA,” Matt Rogalsky used “a distillation of George W. Bush’s address to the world on March 17, 2003, in which he gave Saddam Hussein forty eight hours to get out of town.” Rogalsky used software to “remove [Bush's] voice from the thirteen-plus minute speech,” leaving only thumping sounds to represent “the reverberations of Bush’s voice inside the White House.” Many have interpreted them to be the “drums of war” and thus have used the song as a symbol of protesting Bush and his connection to the Iraq War, but the ambiguous nature of the song makes assigning it to one narrow attitude impossible. With so many differing forms of musical communication for protest, there is no standard political song that rises above the rest to define the group; differing in genres, subjects, and forms of communication, there is no way to collectively define political protest music as collectively as in the past.

It’s Not Protest, it’s Social Commentary

Instead, the seeming lack of political music may be a problem of perception, and the definition must be rewritten to include more than the usual partisan or war topics. Perhaps today’s political music should be considered to include artists like Jay Brannan, whose song “Housewife” considers the perspective of a gay man who wants to fit into the “wife” role and questions how others criticize this desire. Maybe we need to include Ani diFranco, who speaks of gay rights, feminism, and other women’s issues, while John Rich protests the conditions confronting the working class under the impact of the economic crisis with his “Shuttin’ Detroit Down.” By moving away from the traditional subjects of political protest, artists of today are still commenting on the political climate, yet in a way more responsive to the social needs of a new generation.

It’s All on You, Really

Music is a source of free expression, of individual emotion and declaration. But the transition of music from the individual artist to the populace involves communicating a greater sense, or emotion, that strikes a chord in both parties. The music that reaches, impacts, and resounds with the masses is what reflects the emotions held by the people at that time; this has been true through all ages of musical communication. Thus, it is fundamentally the fans, not the artists, which decide what music will be produced and will represent the greater society.

Artists with political music respond to the desires of the fans, whether that is stating the partisan opinions held by a group, or by reflecting the emotions experienced in a time of changing political culture. The fans effectively shape the artist and overall political music climate by deciding which songs to listen to, to highlight, which to pass on to their friends and family. In this new age, where political music is less frequent, appearing in interludes and from a variety of sources, perhaps the needs of the people are changing; perhaps the rise of societal commentary in addition to traditional political protest music is a reflection of the increasing desire for multi-issue based thinking, or of the increased diversity in thought and culture.

As Sanford Kwinter, renowned American architectural writer and theorist, said in an interview with Johan Bettum, it is important to look also at “the convergence of communications with the automation power of computing.” “While we take these developments largely for granted today,” he claims, “they remain the most powerful engine driving the transformation of contemporary social and economic life.” Music may be a reflection of this idea. With a greater ability to communicate comes a greater need to represent a more diverse array of ideas, beliefs, and emotions. There is no standard anthem of musical protest today because there cannot be one. Though there are many songs that arise in popularity because they are evocative, powerful, and musically sophisticated, artists today cannot so easily articulate the needs of the people so universally.

Looking to the Future

Though it seems to have retreated to the shadows, protest music is still alive and well — just not in the traditional sense. It flourishes through the expressions of social commentators like U2 and Belle & Sebastian, but finds outlets in the off-stage voices of artists as well. These songs can be ambiguous, accompanied by video, or in parody form, and yet still be political; there is no longer a clear definition as to political protest music, nor is there a single source of media for its expression. Whether or not the political declarations of artists are beneficial to society, the relevance of political music itself will not decrease. By encapsulating the emotions of societal commentary and partisan opinion, music is a form of artistic connection whose ability to translate reason into emotion cannot be replaced by any other means. Even without tie-dye shirts.

“Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible,” warned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a 2007 report. This dire prophecy concerns the whole world; while developing nations are perhaps most at risk due to their limited adaptive capacities, all countries could suffer a lowered GDP, increased disease proliferation, and massive environmental refugee crises resulting from sudden climate shifts. Recognizing the threat to the United States and the rest of the world, the Obama Administration has called for domestic greenhouse gas reductions of 80 percent by 2050. To achieve this goal, however, developed and developing nations will have to collaborate to form a comprehensive successor to the Kyoto Protocol at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen this December. Thus far, despite the inherently international nature of climate change, developed and developing countries continue to look at the problem from nationalistic perspectives when determining who should be responsible for emissions cuts. In order to achieve any progress in combating climate change, the United States and other industrialized nations will have to lead with binding reduction targets and accept that participation from developing countries, while essential, will come on a dramatically smaller scale.

The international community must begin by learning from the failures of the Kyoto Protocol. This agreement failed to gain ratification by the U.S. Senate, exempted primary greenhouse gas emitters such as China and India, and essentially relied on voluntary targets. Due to these critical weaknesses, the Kyoto Protocol has thus far failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As John Ashton, the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change, told the HPR, Kyoto’s approach was “like trying to have voluntary speed limits on roads… they don’t work.” Many experts believe that, for a new agreement to achieve its determined targets, it must mandate some form of binding emissions cuts for all major emitters by implementing an economically sustainable global carbon market and encouraging technological advancement and transfer.

Impossible to Bind All?

As Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, commented to the HPR, “we must enlist the entire world to do more, and no country, not America and not China, can be exempt.” Yet binding emissions cuts in the near future for developing countries may not even be an option on the table at the U.N. climate conference this December. Jeffery Frankel, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, told the HPR, “It’s unreasonable to expect developing countries to make substantial cuts in the near term, given that these are poor countries growing rapidly… They will not want to talk about quantitative targets.” This aversion to immediate reduction also stems from the fact that, according to the World Research Institute, industrialized countries are responsible for about 80 percent of the man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Regardless of fairness, however, maintaining the status quo in developing countries for the next few years could push the earth’s climate past a critical tipping point.

The Reality of Compromise

According to Kerry’s frank appraisal, “The simple reality is: the Senate won’t ratify a treaty unless it includes meaningful pledges from India and China… The votes won’t be there for an unfair or one-sided deal.” Frankel agreed that without China’s involvement, the U.S. will not support an international treaty “for fear of leakage and lost competitiveness,” especially in the current economic climate. It may be that the international community needs to adopt a more nuanced approach whereby China and others “agree to emissions targets that are at ‘business as usual’ rates of growth right now,” focus on adopting new technology, and “agree to a framework where they would cut emissions in the future,” Frankel suggested.

James McCarthy, Harvard professor and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, identified to the HPR a “narrow window” for progress, during which Obama must take advantage of his political capital and his exceptional scientific advisors. As McCarthy insisted, there are “no winners or losers” in the current predicament. The Copenhagen climate change negotiations may be the last chance to prevent irreparable damage to the planet and its inhabitants. Developing nations must commit to future cuts and the industrialized world must lead by example.

By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876
by Michael F. Holt, University Press of Kansas, 2008, $34.95, 300 pg.

Rutherford Hayes, the nineteenth president of the United States, is best remembered for the unusual circumstances of his election. The election of 1876, in which Hayes campaigned against Democrat Samuel Tilden, was extremely close; fraud and voter intimidation in three Southern states put the election’s outcome in doubt.In a foreshadowing of the 2000 presidential election, the Democrat won the popular vote, as lawyers descended on Florida and Supreme Court justices swung the election to the Republican. Michael Holt’s By One Vote is an in-depth history of the 1876 election and the political atmosphere of the age. The author, a University of Virginia professor, invites readers to look back to a time at which American politics was a corrupt, machine-driven beast.

Hayes vs. Tilden

The government and the nature of political campaigns in the America of the 1870s resembled those of a Third World kleptocracy. While Holt’s narrative is sometimes bogged down in painful descriptions of obscure state elections and endless conventions, his vivid descriptions of endemic sleaze bring the minions of Tammany Hall to life. The Grant administration was infested with scandal and bribe-taking. Favor-seekers regularly passed money along to civil servants and elected officials. Though both Hayes and Tilden vaguely espoused “reform,” neither campaign offered tangible plans to fight corruption. Ballot boxes were brazenly stuffed on Election Day. (One county in South Carolina reported more votes than there were registered voters.)

Worse, Southern blacks were the victims of brutal voter intimidation at polling places. Here, Holt debunks the myth that the 1876 race was stolen from Tilden. It seems that if the votes had been properly counted, Tilden would have won. But if blacks had been able to vote freely, Hayes would have emerged as the victor. The reality is that both candidates, like most politicians of the day, were the beneficiaries of unethical campaign tactics.

Despite politics today being significantly cleaner and more transparent than in 1876, it would be premature for Americans to engage in self-congratulation. Readers will be amazed at how little progress has been made since Hayes’ day in curbing hyper-partisanship.

Both candidates’ surrogates dished out attacks that were nasty, petty, and false. A Republican newspaper editor wrote that Samuel Tilden was a “prim, little, withered-up, fidgety old bachelor…who never had a genuine impulse for man nor any affection for woman….” Tilden would not be the last Democrat slandered as a girly-man, as Michael Dukakis and John Kerry would later discover. “Waving the bloody shirt,” or slamming Democrats as ex-Confederates, was a favorite Republican campaign tactic. It was often effective since the Democratic Party’s strongest support was in the South. In a precursor to Democrats being labeled soft on communism and terrorism, Republicans intoned: “Not all Democrats were rebels, but every rebel was a Democrat.”

Tilden’s supporters were equally harsh in their rhetoric; the Maine Democratic platform argued that “There can be no reasonable hope of reform…under a Republican administration controlled by a ring of officeholders who are eating out the substance of the people to enrich themselves and their servile retainers.” Considering the long history of negative campaigning, By One Vote makes the reader skeptical that the rancor will somehow cease with Barack Obama in office.

…The More They Stay the Same

When Election Day came and went without a winner, the nation descended into constitutional crisis. Two sets of returns were tabulated in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida—one with Tilden winning, the other giving the presidency to Hayes. Since the Constitution does not contain provisions for arbitrating disputed elections, Congress formed an ad hoc committee of representatives, senators, and Supreme Court justices to decide which tally to accept. When the one independent justice resigned from the committee, a Republican replaced him. Predictably, the committee voted to accept the Republican returns, making Hayes president.

Unfortunately, the lessons of 1876 were quickly forgotten. Congress did not standardize state election procedures or take steps to fairly adjudicate close elections. Americans paid the price in 2000 with an eerily similar disputed election. Though real progress has been made since then, the possibility remains of another election thrown askew by butterfly ballots or hanging chads. This is the message that readers should take away from By One Vote; the history described in its pages is too disheartening for Americans to be condemned to repeat it.