Well adjusted

I take most presidents, even the good ones (maybe especially the goods ones), to be kinda messed up on a personal level. Lincoln was chronically depressed. Kennedy was a pill-popping philanderer. Clinton was a non-pill-popping philanderer. W was a dry drunk. Etc. Not that this is necessarily bad. The job itself is ridiculous in terms of its powers and responsibilities. We wouldn't expect sane people to take the job, nor to remain sane if they took it.

This is what makes Obama stand out. He seems almost disturbingly normal. Check out his little bit of self-analysis in Balz and Johnson's new book The Battle for America 2008 (via Ezra):

I'm pretty well adjusted. You know, you can psychoanalyze my father leaving and this and that, but a lot of those things I resolved a long time ago. I'm pretty happy with my life. So there's an element, I think, of being driven that might have operated a little differently with me than maybe some other candidates. The way I thought about it was more of a sense of duty, in this sense. I thought to myself: There aren't that many people put in the position I'm put in. Some of it's just dumb luck. Some of it maybe has to do with me embodying some characteristics that are interesting for the time that we're in. But when I made the decision to do this, it wasn't with the certainty that I was the right person for the job. It was more the sense of, given what's been given to me, I should probably just give it a shot and see whether in fact there's something real there.

But I went into it with some modesty, thinking to myself: It may be that this really is all hype, and once people get a sense of my ideas and what's going on there that they think I'm some callow youth or full of hot air, and if that turned out to be the case, that was okay. I think for me it was more of a sense of being willing to do this, understanding that the odds were probably -- I gave myself 25 percent odds, you know, maybe 30 -- which are pretty remarkable odds to be president of the United States, if you're a gambling man.

It's possible he's just a really good politician who does a great imitation of a well-adjusted person. But, of course, the easiest way to be thought of as well-adjusted is to actually be that.

Avoiding conflict in the European Parliament

Chapter 7 of Hix et al's Democratic Politics in the European Parliament is pretty interesting. The authors compare member's loyalties to their national parties to their loyalties to their European party groups. They find that, when there is a conflict between what a national party wants and what a European party wants, MEPs tend to vote with their national party. Not always, but usually. This isn't terribly shocking -- the national party actually has the power to re-nominate or de-nominate them. The European parties can't really exert much control over members' careers.

But what is particularly interesting is how infrequently these conflicts occur. As the authors write,

In almost 90 per cent of all MEP vote decisions in the fifth parliament [1999-2004], MEPs did not find themselves torn between the positions of their European and national parties, and so were free to vote with both parties' majorities.

Doesn't this seem like an awfully high figure? Particularly for the continent that was pretty much rife with internal warfare from the Renaissance until 1945? I'm really curious how this ends up working. One answer would be agenda control; the European parties manage to avoid taking on roll call votes that cross-pressure their members. But the EP has remarkably little agenda control. The bulk of their legislation is handed to them by the European Commission.

Another, I think more likely, answer is the organizing power of ideology. The left-right dimension in politics seems something close to universal across countries, at least from my limited reading on the subject. So a lefty in Romania will have a roughly similar set of views to a lefty in Denmark, and both will be able to join the Party of European Socialists with remarkably little internal dissent. Maybe this wouldn't work if you expanded the sphere somewhat more, but it is impressive how well it works considering the diversity of nations already in the EP.

Beer question

Which is the worse possibility: Obama got a Bud Light because it's his favorite beer, or because he thought that's what real Americans drink?

Meanwhile, if you were invited to the White House for a beer summit, what would you request? Would it be the same thing if you were president?

Me, I'd go with a Rogue Shakespeare Stout or a Dogfish Ale. (Maybe the latter since I'm guessing Biden would like to see a Delaware beer.) If I were president, Sam Adams or Miller Genuine.

You need to read Palin in the original Klingon...

William Shatner provides a dramatic reading of Sarah Palin's farewell speech:

(h/t Robert Farley)

EP

I'm trying to very quickly become an expert on the European Parliament? Why? Well, it turns out it's a pretty fascinating legislature, and I'm considering spending some of my sabbatical year in London and/or Amsterdam studying it. What makes it fascinating from my perspective is the intense partisanship: there are strong, ideologically-driven transnational parties that hold together on a broad range of issues. This occurs despite the facts that members of the EP enjoy little control over their legislature's agenda and that the parties contain members from very different geographic regions. If you want to read up on this, check out Democratic Politics in the European Parliament by Simon Hix, Abdul Noury, and Gérard Roland. It's quite good.

Another curious feature is that being a member of the European Parliament (MEP) is really not very prestigious, even though the EP's powers have been growing in recent years. It's actually a great deal of work, as MEPs must constantly shuttle between their home country, Brussels, and Strasbourg. Meanwhile, most voters don't really know who they are, so they enjoy very little glory for their efforts.

How lousy is an EP seat? Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tried to buy off a hooker by appointing her to the EP, and she felt that she'd been ripped off.

I really hope to meet some of these people.

Bad journalism, sure, but is it bias?

(h/t Media Matters)

The masses

Take six minutes and enjoy some testimony of citizens before the Santa Cruz City Council.

While we may tend to think of Santa Cruz as a tad out there, I'm pretty sure you that if you shaved these folks, you couldn't really distinguish them from petitioners before just about any city council in the country.