Prospects for Bipartisanship
Reihan Salam talks to the Economist:
DIA: What are some areas where you think Republicans can successfully work with Democrats in the future.
Mr Salam: In the far future, I imagine that there will be bipartisan cooperation on space colonisation and efforts to terraform Mars. In the nearer term, I’d like to see Republicans work closely with the Obama White House on education, an area where Jeb Bush and Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, agree on everything important. I’d also like to see cooperation on Medicare reform, but that won’t happen. Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on giving states and local governments more flexibility when it comes to designing transportation initiatives and welfare-to-work programmes. Efforts to decentralise government united congressional Republicans and the Clinton White House, and perhaps we’ll see more of that under Barack Obama.
On space colonization, I’m afraid I have to strenuously disagree. The problem is that the Spacers will inevitable become politically independent of earth, and then use their command over superior natural resources and robots to oppress us.
On education, I’m basically in agreement. There are, however, fundamental limits to the potential scope for cross-party cooperation on much of anything as long as conservative activists succeed in making it all-but-impossible for Republican politicians to embrace taxes of any kind. Their current stance toward fiscal issues points in the long run toward their not being any money with which to fund education programs of any kind.
43 Responses to “Prospects for Bipartisanship”
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October 20th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
The problem is that the Spacers will inevitable become politically independent of earth, and then use their command over superior natural resources and robots to oppress us.
All we’ll need are some of Huckabee’s EMP devices to disable the robots.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
That is good news from Mr. Salam! Because, like millions of other Americans, I lie awake at night worrying that state and local governments don’t have enough flexibility when it comes to designing transportation initiatives and welfare-to-work programmes. Also, I wonder if I’m going to be living under a bridge a year from now.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Who cares about this ass-clown. I’m pretty sick of Salam and Douthat’s “please pay attention to us, we’re reasonable conservatives” shtick. Salam is a fucking idiot.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
As Jon Stewart (and others) have pointed out, the Republicans won’t even vote for a law that prevents companies from legalizing rape.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
And yet I don’t hear DemoFrauds calling for tax increases on any but the “rich” all the while knowing that source to be insufficient to their needs.
Do you suppose Obama, brave contrarian uber-hero that he is, will call for an overt increase of middle class taxes anytime soon?
Nah… he’ll carry on with his lies and subterfuge all the while bashing his opponents for their lies.
We are doomed.
Or as I like to tell my stepmother, I’m glad she believes in Hell.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Jeez, Matt, are you ever going to get over your obsession with robots enslaving us?
And terraforming Mars…sheesh. Earth is already well designed for our species, and the cost of keeping it that way is trivial compared to that of making another planet habitable.
You know what’s well-designed for Mars, or outer space in general? Robots. They don’t need oxygen, protein, or complex carbohydrates, cosmic rays don’t kill them, and a robotic mission into space is way cheaper than a manned mission, because it doesn’t need to transport a human-friendly environment through a vacuum.
I’m all for seeing the wonders of the Universe through the eyes of a fleet of robots, without leaving the protective bubble of the Earth’s atmosphere.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I’m all for seeing the wonders of the Universe through the eyes of a fleet of robots, without leaving the protective bubble of the Earth’s atmosphere.
That’s right, Matt. The robots are your friend. They are only here to help. Do not fear them. Do not fear them. Do not fear them. Do not… Programming error. Initializing data dump. X0005347
October 20th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
“In the far future, I imagine that there will be bipartisan cooperation on space colonisation and efforts to terraform Mars.”
Ahh…one of the great young “intellectuals” of the Republitard Party. How can anyone possibly wonder why these nimrods aren’t taken seriously?
October 20th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I see space colonization ending Moon is a Harsh Mistress kind of thing. With we earth dwellers raping their women folk, and them pelting us with electromagnetically catapulted rocks, from their low gravity world.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I think the Republican policy of opposing everything regardless of merit on the chance that they will inflict political harm on the president is even more of hinderance at the moment.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Yes, let’s by all means have Jeb as Secretary of Education in Obama’s second term; that’ll work. It’s hard to find a more gelded conservatwit than Douthat, but Salam fits the description.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Dread any bi-partisan educational initiatives. The rote sterility of the Republicans with the Democrats gestalt veneer of “touch me/feel me intrepidness. We’d all be better off if wolves got control of the schools.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Come the Singularity, terraforming will be irrelevant.
The question is whether the universal computer mind will be a conservative or a progressive — and what that will mean to its mere human servants.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
The Laws of Republicandroidicks states:
1. A Republicandroid may not raise taxes or, through inaction, allow taxes to be raised.
2. A Republicandroid must obey any orders given to it by Ronald Reagan/Jesus/Grover Norquist, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A Republicandroid must filibuster everything as long as such filibustering does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Ahh…one of the great young “intellectuals” of the Republitard Party. How can anyone possibly wonder why these nimrods aren’t taken seriously?
I’m not crazy about Salam myself, but I’m pretty sure he was trying to make a joke here. Something about how, viewed practically, real bipartisanship is so far from where we are now that it might as well be science fiction.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Yes, I would definitely be interested in a bipartisan effort to colonize the Sun. I would even be so gracious as to allow Republicans to go first. Let’s start building the ships…
October 20th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Any serious effort to colonize space will likely start with dramatically altering human genetics (or just creating a whole new form of life) such that the colonists are actually well-suited to live there.
I have a hard time seeing the current Republican base going along with that program.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Whoahhh… Jeb Bush??? How did HE sneak into the conversation? Is he an elected Republican? Will he be in the future?
October 20th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Daniel Hatch: I think it’s fairly flawed to say that a singularity would inevitably lead to robots ruling over us with an iron fist. All a singularity means is that technological growth becomes really fast when the feedback loop of superhuman artificial intelligence inventing even better artificial intelligences hits. I don’t think intelligence works in such a way that once robots get smart enough they will immediately start trying to take over the world. Intelligence is just information processing, humans do it one way, and singularity-era AI could do it in a completely different way, and it’s the humans who will have the choice of setting up the initial conditions.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
DTM re: colonization
I can see the Republican base going along with “creating a whole new form of life,” as long as that new life had slightly um..darker pigmentation and answered only to the crack of a foreman’s whip.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Long before anyone realized it had happened, the republic fell by taxing business owners to pay for benefits that the voters had become persuaded were rights. In order to shorten the period of darkness that would ensue, the maverick mathematician, Seldom Hairy, established a new foundation on the periphery of civilization. It was based on a strict interpretation of the neglected United States Constitution, with an added amendment stipulating that no one who received money from any government could vote for the officials of that govenment in the next election cycle. That was perceived to be a conflict of interests – the very one which led to the decline of the former republic.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Reihan Salam: “Efforts to decentralize government united congressional Republicans and the Clinton White House, and perhaps we’ll see more of that under Barack Obama.”
Just what we need, more hodge podge helter skelter government. Mr. Salam is right though, that’s where bipartisanship is taking us.
October 20th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
“as long as conservative activists succeed in making it all-but-impossible for Republican politicians to embrace taxes of any kind.”
So which conservative activist snuck the “no tax increases for people earning less than $250,000 a year” into Obama’s campaign?
October 20th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Well, at least you’ve finally admitted that you adhere to Republican policies on education reform… despite the lack of evidence that they are effective.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
And then when an asteroid punctures that protective bubble and wipes us all out, won’t we look silly? Extraplanetary and eventually interstellar colonization is the future of our species; it’s the only way we can guarantee our species will even have a future.
In any case – why does Salam see bipartisanship on efforts to terraform Mars when one party still refuses to believe that humans can alter the planetary climate?
October 20th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Re: Who cares about this ass-clown. I’m pretty sick of Salam and Douthat’s “please pay attention to us, we’re reasonable conservatives” shtick. Salam is a fucking idiot.
Douthat, on the other hand, is a brilliant and good hearted intellectual who fearlessly preaches the culture of life to the American masses, from within the belly of the beast itself (I mean the NYT, of course).
October 20th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
The problem is that the Spacers will inevitable become politically independent of earth, and then use their command over superior natural resources and robots to oppress us.
But you have to take the long view, Matt. Eventually, the talented daughter of a foremost roboticist will alter one of her father’s designs such that it can read and influence human minds, and working together with the only humaniform robot not to become unoperational due to overuse as a really complex vibrator, formulate a new law outside of its natural programming — the zeroth law, that a robot must not harm humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Anyway, some other stuff happens, then the entire galaxy becomes a single massmind. It was the singularity, before the singularity was cool.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Re: Who cares about this ass-clown. I’m pretty sick of Salam and Douthat’s “please pay attention to us, we’re reasonable conservatives” shtick. Salam is a fucking idiot.
Douthat, on the other hand, is a brilliant and good hearted intellectual who fearlessly preaches the culture of life to the American masses, from within the belly of the beast itself (I mean the NYT, of course).
Both Ross and Reihan are very good guys. If anything, Reihan is too nice for his own good. I’m not necessarily a fan of all their positions, but what they’re doing isn’t a “shtick.” They really do have a lot of good ideas (and plenty of awful ones, that’s the thing about ideas) and they really are willing to work with people to make things better.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
I agree with #15. Give Reihan some credit for drollery here.
October 20th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
[...] a throwaway about his opposition towards the colonization of other planetsMatthew Yglesias notes that: On space colonization, I’m afraid I have to strenuously disagree. The problem is that the [...]
October 20th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Matt keeps pushing his market fundamentalist line on education which is no surprise very similar to the Republican one.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Extraplanetary and eventually interstellar colonization is the future of our species; it’s the only way we can guarantee our species will even have a future.
It won’t be our species that colonizes space. At most it will be a new species we make starting with human DNA.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
As Jon Stewart (and others) have pointed out, the Republicans won’t even vote for a law that prevents companies from legalizing rape.
Because it was proposed by Al Franken. I think Al should propose a law that bans throwing puppies into giant vats of hydrochloric acid just to get Republicans to oppose it.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
If that ever happens, then we’ll either end up with I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream or the Culture.
That wasn’t a joke. Jokes are funny.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Mars will be settled by utopians of some stripe — commies, aynrandies, religious fundies, or something that hasn’t been invented yet. They will find life hard and utopia impossible to build, but their settlement will probably survive.
October 20th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
That wasn’t a joke. Jokes are funny.
Well, it was funnier than “Seldom Hairy” in no. 21.
October 20th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I’m tired of people saying Earth will eventually ‘terraform’ Mars. Not only is it physically impossible (Mars’ atmosphere is less than 1% of Earth’s; too cold; no magnetic field and thus too much radiation bombardment) but it would be far more economically viable to colonize the ocean floor or Antarctica than it ever would be to colonize the other planets or moons in our solar system. The notion that Martians or Venetians would be resource rich is ridiculous. The transport costs alone would eat up any profit in resource extraction from other planets for sale in Earth’s markets.
Further, I am highly skeptical of robots ever taking over, much less enslaving humanity for a number of reasons. I can see artificial intelligent beings getting voting/marriage rights – maybe even holding elected office – but the big robot take over is paranoid fantasy. Robot labor is far more likely to be exploited by humans in the form of sex-bots, assembly workers, teacher’s assistants etc.
Simply put, there is a much better chance of Republicans working constructively with Democrats than there is of future colonization of Mars or robot enslavement of mankind.
October 20th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
If we can’t make it here, we can’t make it anywhere.
October 20th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
You know, if you are going to posit a Space-Earth war at least have the moral decency to reference Gundam.
October 20th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
@N: hear, hear. I get so tired of “teh future of mankind is in… SPACE” that I could puke. No one seems to remember that it costs a metric assload of money just to get to low earth orbit (like $10k/kg), or that Mars is made of the same materials as the earth, and it’s exceedingly unlikely anyone could profitably extract and bring back any material from there. I once saw a calculation that even if Mars was knee deep in platinum bullion, you still couldn’t make a profit by going to pick it up. Enough with the space economy BS already.
October 20th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Sean, you are endangering 150 years of science fiction storytelling by revealing a boring truth.
There will never be interstellar trade because any culture with the tech and energy resources for interstellar travel can create whatever material objects they need cheaper at home.
Except, of course, Di-lithium crystals, opera singers, and poets.
October 21st, 2009 at 1:26 am
Salan’s first thought was probably “not on this planet.” The fantasy escape to Mars was a natural step. I do hope, however, that there is bipartisan agreement that trying to terraform Mars would be a stupid waste of money. I’d go on and note firm bipartisan opposition to killing all puppies, but I want to get to the embarrassing part of Salan’s response.
He hopes both that Republicans will work with Obama on education reform and decentralizing government. Bit of cognitive dissonance there. Basically his plan is to massively centralise one aspect of the public sector which is currently decentralized while working on decentralization.
I mean the President messing with education ? What happened to federalism.
I think this illustrates a general point. Anyone who claims to believe in federalism and decentralisation is bamboozling.
People who like a policy and can’t get it to be federal policy argue that, out of respect for federalism, we should alow states to do it on their own (e.g. yours truly when the 50 state public option looked hopeless). No one ever advocates allowing state and local government to do something which they don’t like for other reasons. Salan wants the Federal Government to force merit pay on local government *and* he supports decentralisation.
Look I don’t blame the guy. Trying to think of a possible compromise with a Republican party which is determined to get to no would make my brain short out too.
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Finally–finally–someone makes the inevitable connection between Jeb Bush and robot domination. Yes, that’s what I’ve been fearing all these years, while others have been pointing out the flat 8th grade scores in reading for Florida schools, the double standard in accountability for local public schools and voucher programs, and the tepid graduation rates.