they acted in political self-interest

nu? I thought that our system was supposed to be based on (enlightened) self interest ... especially in terms of politicians.

I feel like a broken record here for pointing this out over and over again, but don't they make people read the Federalist Papers (especially #10) in school? Politicians acting in their political self-interest is not -- pace the pearl clutching media wankers who are trying to will this country into being an aristrocracy rather than a democratic republic -- dooming our nation, it's how the system is supposed to work.

The problem is not political ambition -- no matter how unseemly ambition might seem (and how much the media hates upity folk like the Clintons) to the media wankers -- but that ambition is not being made to counteract ambition.

And why not? Could it have anything to do with the way the media continues to frame the issues? As well as how ambition itself is framed as unseemly?

The "Southern Strategy" of getting racists to vote for the GOP is only a part of the "Southernization" of American politics. The larger part is the very discrediting of the Madisonian system of checks and balances and its replacement with a pearl-clutching, aristocratic hatred, among the chattering classes and the hoi polloi, of "ambition" rather than a realization that ambition must be channeled for good (c.f. the premillenialist Christian view of sin in comparison to the Jewish view of channeling the "evil urge" toward good).

Politicians acting in their political self-interest is not -- pace the pearl clutching media wankers who are trying to will this country into being an aristrocracy rather than a democratic republic -- dooming our nation, it's how the system is supposed to work.

The failure to recognize this incredibly important point has infected much of the discourse among liberals/progressives this campaign season. Instead of evaluating candidates on wholly functional grounds, we instead were subjected to an endless and pointless debate about which candidate was "really," in their heart of hearts, the most progressive.

And so people condemn a candidate like Edwards, not based on his current platform or the policies he would advance once elected, but rather because of the discrepancy between his current positions and those he held while he was a Senator. The idea, I guess, is that he wasn't "really" as progressive as he claimed to be, which for some reason is supposed to matter.

If I were a conservative Republican, I would be a hard-core Romney supporter. But many conservatives feel that he is "inauthentic." They see him blatantly pandering to them, and they use that as a reason to reject his candidacy! Dumb dumb dumb.

Chafee is a bizarre figure. He roundly condemns the GOP, and blames his fate on them. Which is accurate, but the thing is, he could have avoided this fate. What was stopping him from abandoning the party he holds in such contempt? I imagine he addresses this question in his book, but it's hard to imagine a reasonable answer. I mean, it doesn't really matter to me, but it's just strange.

What was stopping him from abandoning the party he holds in such contempt? - Jason C.

There is a huge element of tribal identity in party politics.

The Republican party started to abandon the sort of Republicanism practiced by the GOP branch of my family, but it took them a bit to switch parties. And they didn't even have a large part of their career and identity based on being Sen. X (R-ZW) to deal with.

They knew it could go terribly wrong; they also knew it could go terribly right. Which did they fear more?"

If Hillary and McCain win nomination, Hillary will only need to be for a slightly shorter Iraq occupation than McCain!

99 years anyone?

BTW there are still American soldiers in Germany and Japan! To me that is an outrage.

What was stopping him from abandoning the party he holds in such contempt?

The fact that he inherited his seat, more or less, from his father? So you had a family loyalty to that Rockefeller Republican model, even as the party's new tribalism had no place for him.

You can sympathise with Chafee, and regard him as a decent man, but with Sheldon Whitehouse now in the Senate, you can't really bemoan his absence.

I guess what seems incongruent about Chafee is that he seems to have thoroughly turned on his party. I understand the basic idea of refusing to switch parties out of some sense of loyalty or whatever. But Chafee's been pretty aggressive in trashing the GOP to anyone who would ask. So I just wonder, if you're willing to go that far, why not just leap, especially when it's going to cost you your job?

Hell, he wouldn't have had to even become a Democrat; he could have just pulled a Jeffords.

At any rate, I'm not sad to see him gone.

I think Chafee had the idea that he was the real Republican and all the other crazies were the ones who should have to leave. I'm reminded of the famous exchange from Office Space:

Samir: No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It's not that hard: Samir Na-gheen-an-a-jar. Nagheenanajar. Michael: Yeah, well at least your name isn't Michael Bolton. Samir: You know there's nothing wrong with that name. Michael: There was nothing wrong with it... until I was about twelve years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys. Samir: Hmm... well why don't you just go by Mike instead of Michael? Michael: No way. Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.

Also, I think he made a promise to his father on his deathbed or something.

Crap. I meant:

Samir: No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It's not that hard: Samir Na-gheen-an-a-jar. Nagheenanajar. Michael: Yeah, well at least your name isn't Michael Bolton. Samir: You know there's nothing wrong with that name. Michael: There was nothing wrong with it... until I was about twelve years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys. Samir: Hmm... well why don't you just go by Mike instead of Michael? Michael: No way. Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.

I give up.

Actually, Anonymous, Linc didn't make a promise to his father on his death bead since John Chafee passed away very suddenly and very unexpectedly. One does have to look at Rhode Island politics though to somewhat understand Linc Chafee- the family is incredibly connected (one of the "five families of Rhode Island"), and they've been active in politics for a very long time. I think it is hard to break away from that. When he first came to the Senate, he seemed to be a bit of a light weight ("I'm a bricks and mortar environmentalist"), and now seems to be seeing the errors of his ways through the eyes of the converted. John Chafee would have been considered a Democrat anywhere out side of New England, and I wonder if the Chafee family isn't figuring this out en masse, or if it's just the youngest son rebelling (finally).

Acting in political self interest.

This is why the Clinton vote for AUMF remains such a sticking point. She put her own self interest ahead of the good of the country.

Chafee sounds like a fascinating person. I'm not sure I'll buy his book, but someone should do a lengthy story on him, or something.

People above capture the weird things about him: Republican, but violently disloyal. But not disloyal enough to change parties. Maybe keeping his senate seat just wasn't that important to him given that he had no respect for the Dems, either? Or maybe realizing the correct path a little too late. But at the very least we can't ask, "where was this complaining when it could have made a difference?" B/c he did vote against the AUMF.

I feel like a broken record here for pointing this out over and over again, but don't they make people read the Federalist Papers (especially #10) in school? Politicians acting in their political self-interest is not -- pace the pearl clutching media wankers who are trying to will this country into being an aristrocracy rather than a democratic republic -- dooming our nation, it's how the system is supposed to work.

I think this is more complicated than you're acknowledging. The problem here is that we would like politicians to have some integrity and so we try and make it in their political self-interest to behave with integrity. But this gets filtered through a process and a political media industry and distorted. And it changes the language of political discourse. I don't think you can complain if someone criticizes politicians for following their political self-interest, b/c you could easily attribute a far more defensible meaning to their claims. In Chafee's case you could interpret him as follows:

Instead of cravenly pandering to the criticisms of their opponents, the Dem leadership should have figured out what the right thing to do was and attempted to advance their political self-interest by vigorously advocating for it. That takes more personal bravery and vision, but they political pay-offs could be quite large if you can meaningfully shift the terms of the debate.

You could imagine him criticizing the Dems as politicans and as persons lacking integrity. Either way, I would be sympathetic, but the former also fits into the question of 'what politicans should be doing'.

In the ProJo article, Chafee says he saw what the Republicans did to the Dairy Compact to punish Jeffords and didn't want that to happen to R.I.'s defense industry.

Also, Rhode Island has a string of notoriously corrupt democrats and Chafee has said he stayed a Republican as long as he did since in his opinion the R's were the reformers on the state and local level.

Looking forward to his new book. He is really a wonderful person! I've met him, he has to be one of the nicest politicians i've ever known. Please buy his book, he'll love you for it.

Dans le ProJo article, Chafee dit qu'il a vu ce que les Républicains ont fait au Dairy Compact Jeffords de punir et ne voulait pas que cela se produise à RI industrie de la défense.

Aussi, le Rhode Island a une chaîne de démocrates notoirement corrompus et Chafee a dit il est resté un républicain aussi longtemps comme il l'a fait car, à son avis, le R sont les réformateurs sur l'état et local.

Dans le ProJo article, Chafee dit qu'il a vu ce que les Républicains ont fait au Dairy Compact Jeffords de punir et ne voulait pas que cela se produise à RI industrie de la défense.

Aussi, le Rhode Island a une chaîne de démocrates notoirement corrompus et Chafee a dit il est resté un républicain aussi longtemps comme il l'a fait car, à son avis, le R sont les réformateurs sur l'état et local.

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goood thankss