Professor Busch on the 2008 Election (with Audio)

Professor Busch gives his reactions to the 2008 presidential campaign to Peter Schramm, executive director of the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University.

He gives a run down of why the election isn't quite over for conservatives and John McCain. Palin fans will appreciate his remarks.

Here's the podcast.

Here are his remarks in a September 2008 editorial, "Expect Quiet Issues to Come to the Fore." He outlines all the issues we can expect in an October surprise. The future looks particularly promising for Republicans.

A number of under-examined or surprise issues also hold promise for Republicans:

• Having already made gains on the issue of oil exploration and drilling, McCain now has perfect cover in the form of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to shift his position toward allowing drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge if he wishes to do so. Such a shift would accentuate the contrast on energy between the two tickets.
• The Boumediene v. Bush case decided by the Supreme Court could easily become a major theme of the McCain campaign. In that case, decided by a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court declared that enemy combatants captured on the field of battle must be afforded habeas corpus protections like criminal defendants. McCain vehemently opposed the decision; Obama supported it. It has the potential to pay big dividends to McCain, since it allows him to make his constitutional argument (curtail the power of the out-of-control judiciary) and his national security argument (fight the terrorists with every tool) simultaneously.
• Obama has long run on his supposed capacity to bridge the "red state-blue state divide." Yet his position on abortion is even more uncompromising than John Kerry’s, Al Gore’s, and Bill Clinton’s. The extreme character of the current Democratic position on abortion is only starting to dawn on voters concerned with the issue. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi have infuriated Catholic Bishops with their recent mischaracterizations of the Church’s doctrine on life; Obama has pledged to seek repeal of the partial birth abortion ban, which is supported by about two-thirds of the American people; and the Democratic platform has now excised the Clinton-era language calling for abortion that is "safe, legal, and rare." McCain will not stress this issue, though he will point it out in debates. Others will make it an issue, and it will almost certainly hurt Obama.
• While Obama’s association with Bill Ayers has simmered beneath the surface for months, it may well blow into the open soon. Obama’s problem here may be twofold: the fact that he long associated with an unrepentant traitor and terrorist may be accentuated if it turns out, as it may, that he deceived reporters about how close that relationship was. Again, McCain’s campaign has already said it will not make Ayers a key issue in the race, but ongoing archival research by Stanley Kurtz and others may make it increasingly difficult for the mainstream media to continue downplaying the issue.
• Not least, Obama’s affinity for European sensibilities has already hurt him, but McCain has yet to close the loop on the argument. Given Obama’s social-democratic tendencies, McCain can plausibly argue that this election will go a long way toward answering this question: Will America remain a unique polity committed to individual liberty, limited government, and a large sphere for private civil society? Or will it become just another European democratic socialist state with confiscatory taxation, overweening government, and a dependent and enervated people? So far, McCain has used two themes, experience and reform. Raising people’s sights to the larger philosophical stakes in the race could be a third.

CMC Professor on the Economics of Coupledom

From The Intelligent Life, the quarterly magazine published by The Economist:

...how do couples divide these spoils? Economists once touchingly assumed that spouses wanted the same things and acted as one to achieve them. Households were "glued together" in Amartya Sen's phrase. Now economists think of marriage as a bargain in a second sense. Husbands and wives haggle over cash, chores, care and consideration. By one recent estimate, the split in Britain is 40:60 in favour of the man. But these deals are not set in stone. When the government started paying child benefit to wives not husbands, in the 1970s, Britain's unglued households began spending less on booze and home-cooked food and more on restaurants and takeaways, according to Jennifer Ward-Batts of Claremont McKenna College. They also spent £6 more a year on toys.

The idea of marriage as two parties "haggling" over essential household chores seems a bit like a radical application of R.H. Coase's theory of the firm. The logical extension of this view leads to outsourcing of chores around the house either to children or to companies that specialize.

Outsourcing will be costly however, requiring you to have more children or more disposable income to spend on laundry services or housecleaning. But often one party will be better at a task than another i.e. women will be better at cooking not because they are women but because their parents encouraged that behavior when they were children. In a way, the women have specialized and trade with their husbands.

Many of my libertarian friends make the argument that left-wing divorce laws that allow no fault divorce make marriages stronger, but the children produced in those single family homes tend to be less productive citizens and dependent on government.

The Rove Haters Arrive: The Real Progressives Stand Up and Intimidate Freedom of Speech on Campus

Some of our misguided progressive friends are planning to give Karl Rove a "welcome party" when he comes to Claremont McKenna on Monday.

The contrast between conservative and progressive students could not be more clear. Whereas we write in newspapers or on this blog, our progressive friends launch into a campaign of intimidation and thuggery to shut down respectful dialog in the Athenaeum.

Here's their invitation to the other far left nuts on Los Angeles's IndyMedia, a far left social networking site that doubles as a "news" place.

A GREAT EVIL WALKS AMONG US!

Karl Rove, a man almost uniquely dedicated to the exploitation of others and seizure of power through deception, is coming to the Claremont Colleges on Monday, September 15, to speak at the Claremont McKenna College Athenaeum.

Karl Rove is well known for his implicitly racist campaign tactics, his key involvement in selling the criminal war in Iraq, and his defense of atrocities ranging from torture to domestic spying. He is currently refusing to answer questions from Congress and the public about his many alleged crimes.

Students and community members are hastily organizing resistance to Rove\'s visit. Attempts are being made to satisfy as many levels of political and activist commitment as possible through the planning of many fun activities. Join!

FIGHT EVIL! BE SUPERHEROES!

Yes, they really do believe that they are "fight[ing] evil."

Protests from the other colleges on Claremont McKenna's campus aren't without their precedents, as a cursory reading of Ward Elliott's notes on the history of Claremont McKenna's ROTC program makes clear.

By 1968 CMC, the most conservative of the campuses, with the least militant students and the least permissive faculty and administration, had the most inviting targets for "liberation," ROTC and the military and corporate recruiters. The other colleges had most of the militants and the most pro-militant student bodies, faculties, and campus judiciaries, often called by some milder name, such as "community council" to underscore their repudiation of the scorned punitive, adversary traditions of their predecessors. Militants from CGS, Pitzer, and Pomona would march to CMC, liberate ROTC, and go home to get either a slap on the wrist or a high five on their home campus for doing their bit to shut down the Department of Mass Murder.

I have a suggestion for those at the Ath manning security. Turn on the sprinklers and wash away the detritus. Many of them could use a shower.