This is the last in the Whigs and Federalist series of posts, though I'll make reference to this all off and on because of the ways that these two parties in this fictional world where super powers exist and we're at war against South America matter to me in the world of Republicans and Democrats.

The little quiz I wrote says that I'm a Moderate Whig. The way I wrote it made it have to say I was something (I didn't have an "independent" option). The truth is that I am actually neither. In the world that I wrote, I am absolutely, 100%, in between.

This provides me a great deal of insight to real political issues (or at least I'd like to think I have the insight that I believe this mental trick provides me). It allows me a greater degree of objectivity because if I find myself in a purely partisan dispute, I can usually transfer the argument to Whigs and Federalists and get a whole new look on things.

Lex Alexander sometimes refers to The Hillary Test, in which you take an action of President Bush's and apply it to President Hillary Clinton and see if you approve of it or not.

In one sense, such tests are helpful. If you don't support a member of the opposite party having a particular power, then you shouldn't support a member of your own having it. There are, in my experience, two problems with this method:

1) Antagonism towards the opposition: Republicans often shriek at the thought of Hillary Clinton having any power. It is in some ways not rational. The Republican view of Hillary is in itself not rational. I know because I harbor a deep dislike for the woman, but I'll be damned if I can give a good reason for feeling the way that I do. That's just it, it's a feeling, not an objective analysis. As such, I would not be willing to give her powers that she needs to carry her office effectively.

The same applies with Democrats towards Bush. The belief that Bush is a moron is belied by his MBA. Yet they believe it anyway. It's more than just that Bush disagrees with them, but it's a feeling that they have towards the person. The same goes for various postings I've seen by liberals where Bush is an evil entity or, as I've seen in a couple places, a psychopath.

Being a Republican, I am not in any position to make an objective analysis of either President Bush or Senator Clinton. Because Bush supports most of the views that I do, I am naturally inclined to look at him more favorably not only from a political standpoint (I agree with him on the issues) but from a personal one, too (I believe that he is a good person). Because Clinton opposes most of the views that I do, I view her unfavorably professional (she supports things I don't) but personally as well (she's opportunistic and shallow).

None of this is to say that my views are inherently invalid and when I take knocks at a Democrat you should just shrug it off. There are liberals that I admire (I like Russ Feingold) despite our disagreements.

But often the personal creeps in to the political. It's difficult for anyone, no matter how well-intentioned, to completely seperate the two.

So, for me, the Hillary test would likely result in my not giving any president any power. Libertarians would undoubtedly view that as a good thing, and as a libertarian-minded Republican I'm sympathetic to it, but sometimes powers must be given to protect the state from enemies outside and in.

2) Some views are not transferrable. If someone is afraid of John Ashcroft using powers for nefarious ends, it does not necessarily follow that they should fear Janet Reno using powers for similarly nefarious ends. Ashcroft is a social conservative with antipathy towards moral licenciousness, homosexuality, abortion, and a host of other topics.

If there are laws in place making homosexuality and abortion legal, which there are, there is somewhat less reason to fear Ashcroft than if the law was ambiguous or against such things.

A similar argument could be made in regards to Janet Reno and guns. If there are numerous laws in place restricting gun ownership rights, and Reno is very much a gun opponent, there is more reason to fear a certain right that she could use against the private ownership of guns than there would be by John Ashcroft, who is in favor of private gun ownership.

Both of these apply to broader principles as well. It's not a very easy thing to do to say "What if the situation in Florida in 2000 had been reversed? What if it was Bush that had the voters that had voted wrongly and thus costed him the election? What if it were Gore that was saying that the election is over and therefore we should accept him as the winner?"

It's a difficult scenario for a couple of reasons. First of all, while it could happen, an aspect that would be newsworthy would be how the two sides were reversed. Instead of the stereotypical conservative disinfranchising the minority, it would be the liberals doing it. Take it a step further, and it's less likely that Republicans would vote technically improperly to begin with.

Elderly voters are, in general, Democratic. So are first-time voters. So are uneducated voters. Republican voters, in general, are wealthier (more educated) and in rural areas (where there are less voters and they can get more attention if they are confused). So the question of "what if the roles had been reversed" is a difficult one to imagine.

As it was, it was an easy conclusion for both sides to come to. The Republicans, being less tolerant of error and more skeptical of "pro-democratic" laws (such as instant voter registration) that allow a greater chance of abuse or mischief, quite easily came to the conclusion that if you undervoted or overvoted, you should pay more attention next time.

The Democrats, believing that democracy is only democracy if everyone participates, quite easily came to the opposite conclusion: Every vote should count.

I'm oversimplifying it in a number of areas, including the overseas ballots, but in some ways that underscores my point. That was struck as odd by me and a number of other people because not only were both sides arguing against what they were saying a day earlier, but they seemed to be running contrary to their philosophical instincts.

Incoincidentally, throughout all this, there is the matter that low turnout (ie ones where we make sure everyone votes properly, registered six months in advance, etc.) helps Republicans and high turnout (ie ones with spontenous or inspired voters) helps Democrats. This dovetails nicely with each of their position.

Many of the very same issues were at work in the last New Jersey senatorial election, where Democrats felt that the laws are there to provide a choice and if the laws don't account for a choice, democracy trumps legalism and the Republicans felt that no, no do-overs here.

In many ways, it all folds in together. We view politics in general as a left-right continuoum with the well-to-do (and all that entails) voting Republican and the poor voting Democratic. Therefore, on any given issue, you're going to run in to the party that supports second chances, safety nets, and so on and the party of strict rules.

Both sides run contrary to this on occasion on issues (the vouchers issue, for instance) and specific cases (a Republican governor's kid caught using drugs), but these issues and the invariable shouts of "hypocrisy" make them the exceptions that proves the rule.

So if the personal and the political fold together, and if expediency and ideology fold together, it's often very difficult to seperate your personal views and partisan expediency from political ideas.

That's where the Whigs and Federalists come in.

Just about any issue I can imagine that exists between Republicans and Democrats can also exist between Federalists and Whigs. The educated generally vote Whig and the uneducated Federalist. The wealthy splits their vote, allowing me even more flexibility.

So take the New Jersey 2002 senatorial election situation and put it in W/F terms. It is likely that the "everybody-should-participate" Whigs would be of the mind that democracy trumps law while the "democracy-doesn't-exist-without-law" Federalists would say that's not the case.

So I can then look at the 2002 election with Torricelli, Lautenberg, and Forrester without looking at the people involved and without looking at the parties involved.

In the case between Whigs and Federalists, where I don't have a dog in the hunt, I can say that I agree completely with the Federalists. In turn, my agreement with the Republicans in NJ'02 was not a partisan issue.

To take it to Florida is a more complicated issue. In a similar situation between the Whigs and the Federalists, my view was that the race for Florida is indeterminantly close and within the margin of error. I could see both sides of the issue and I'll be darned if I couldn't decide which one was right.

Thus, in the real world, I was relatively neutral during the recount. I obviously wanted Bush to win, but I was hard-pressed to be too critical of Gore. On the other hand, once the Florida State Supreme Court made what I considered a liberal partisan decision, I became fiercely partisan and supporting a Supreme Court ruling I otherwise wouldn't have, viewing that two wrongs in that case do make a right.

In other words, there came a point where, for both sides, partisanship was all that matters. Since (with the help of the W/F continuoum!) I had initially tried to approach the situation fairly, I hold no regrets for believing what I did and do.

(Note: This post is not a platform to rehash the 2000 elections. I chose it as an example of a highly partisan dispute. Any comments that focus solely on this tangental issue will be ignored.)


The other great advantage of the W/F continuoum for me is the ability to see how provisional politics really is. We have in this country what we view as conservative and liberal. In some ways, they make a lot of sense, and in others they make little.

Neither is pro-government or anti-government in any consistent way. Both support using government in ways that advance their agenda and oppose it in ways that set their agenda back. Republicans wear the banner of federalism except when it comes to drug policy, partial-birth abortions, gay marriage, and so on. Democrats are establishmentarian as long as that establishment is the government and not corporations or a church.

The long and short of it is that they stand for what they need to stand for in order to satisfy their bases. As Dr. Lutz said, the purpose of a political party is to get elected.

Some of their base is demographic. Democrats have to satisfy the black community and Republicans their religious one. A lot of it is ideological with socialist Democrats and puritanical Republicans.

What I found most interesting was when I was trying to put real life politicians in the W/F continuoum. One would expect most of them come into the center, as the Republicans and Democrats distribute relatively equally among the Whigs and Federalists.

The more I looked at it, the more I realized that's not necessarily the case. A lot of what our politicians purport to believe they do so out of expediency. That's one reason why so many of their views change with their demographics. Al Gore and Dick Gephardt used to be pro-life and then, magically, as the Democratic Party became nigh prohibitively pro-choice, they had changes of hearts.

I do not believe that means that Gore and Gephardt are without beliefs anymore than formerly pro-choice George H. Bush is by becoming pro-life. There has been a lot of talk of Condaleeza Rice running for the presidency and in Republican circles such as The Corner a debate (that I'd find if I had time) occured on whether or not they would accept her "becoming" pro-life (at the moment she was not on the record on that issue, whether she is now I do not know).

The argument broke down between those that felt if she took it opportunistically and those that felt as long as she took it and remained steadfast, it didn't matter as much.

The latter happens a lot more than we recognize, I believe.

While running through the politicians and their views, I stumbled on the realization that most of us have a core set of beliefs. We believe in an economically aggressive government or we oppose it. Perhaps we're somewhere in between viewing aggressive as being good as long as it is incentive-based or socially egalitarian-based, but not simply the redistribution of wealth.

We also have certain social beliefs. We are pro-life or pro-choice, we view abortion as good, neutral, or bad. We view homosexuality as something to be prohibited, tolerated, or embraced.

The more I thought about it, the less confident I was that politicians had any more than a small number of broad strokes in their personal platform and the rest of the positions they take, they often do out of expediency or, more likely, clustering.

Take "New York Governor" Jack Kemp. The real Jack Kemp is a supply-side capitalist. It's my personal belief that the rest of Kemp's beliefs spring from that. Holding the economic position that he does, I suspect that he "goes along" with Republicans a great deal because they support his supply-side agenda. More than that, I believe he takes a lot of these positions because if they're smart enough to take the right position on supply-side economics, they're probably right on drug policy, foreign policy, and so on.

The left-right continuoum has a tendency to pull everyone in. The libertarians like their four-dimensional map, but from a practical standpoint it isn't particularly useful. It's only the X-axis that matters. Once it's flattened into two dimensions, it is somewhat difficult for a person to remain out of the fray when neither party is talking to them or speaking their language with any consistency.

That's how I moved from staid libertarianism to being a Republican. My views have changed, though not so much in a specific direction. What's changed is my understanding that I was not "in between" and that for all of my views, one party represented them more than the other.

Once I accepted that I was a Republican, I noticed that my approach to new issues tended to be the Republican one. That's not to say I reflexively agree with Republicans on every issue that comes down the pike, but rather I find myself with a more open ear towards a Republican's argument than a Democrat's.

If I am ambivalent or seriously conflicted about an issue, I will more often than not (at least tentatively) side with the party that sides with me on all of these other issues. I don't do it consciously, but I look at my rightward shift on affirmative action, for instance, and I can see that it's there.

I believe that most of us do this to an extent or another and that's why even self-professed independents will, if pushed against a wall, lean one way or the other. Even if they don't particularly care for the party that better represents their beliefs, you'll hear it in their hostility towards the other party.

There's a reason that 57/43 is considered a landslide in a country where a third of the electorate professes to be moderate or independent.

Which brings me back to Whigs and Federalists. Most likely, if I existed in their world, I'd lean in one direction or another. Since I don't, however, I can have the objectivity that I lack in the here and now and allow the partisan drift to become minimized.