the
Kenyon Observer December 5, 2012
Republicans in the Wilderness Andrew Gabel | page 8
Kenyon’s Oldest Undergraduate Political and Cultural Magazine
Kenyon Observer the
December 5, 2012
The Kenyon Observer December 5, 2012
5 From the Editors Cover Story andrew gabel
8 Republicans in the Wilderness richard pera
6 TKO Exclusive
An Interview with Bill McInturff jacob fass
10 Jumping Off the Ledge
Why the Nation Needs the Fiscal Cliff jonathan green
13 Head, Meet Sand
When a Bent Frame Breaks stewart pollock
14 The Golden Dawn
A New, Dark Day for Greece ryan mach
The Mach Accords A 7-Step Plan to Peace in the Middle East
Cover Art by Peter Falls
Editors-in-Chief Gabriel Rom and Sarah Kahwash Managing Editor Yoni Wilkenfeld Featured Contributors Jacob Fass, Andrew Gabel, Jonathan Green, Richard Pera and Stewart Pollock Content Editors Sarah Kahwash, Sofia Mandel, Gabriel Rom and Yoni Wilkenfeld Layout/Design Sofia Mandel Illustrations Peter Falls, Nick Nazmi and Ethan Primason Coordinator Megan Shaw Faculty Advisor Professor Fred Baumann The Kenyon Observer is a student-run publication that is distributed biweekly on the campus of Kenyon College. The opinions expressed within this publication belong only to the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Observer staff or that of Kenyon College. The Kenyon Observer will accept submissions and lettersto-the-editor, but reserves the right to edit for length and clarity. All submissions must be received at least a week prior to publication. Submit to Sarah Kahwash (kahwashs@kenyon.edu) or Gabriel Rom (romg@kenyon. edu).
Quotes Compiled by Megan Shaw
5
FROM THE EDITORS
Dear Prospective Reader, The Kenyon Observer is proud to present our final issue of the semester. We begin with Richard Pera’s interview with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, followed by Andrew Gabel’s skeptical take on Republican doomsayers. Jacob Fass then questions conventional wisdom about the looming fiscal cliff, and the Observer’s editor-in-leave Jonathan Green rejoins us with a critique of GOP electoral tactics. Finally, Stewart Pollock charts the disturbing rise of far-right extremism in Greece. We invite all members of the Kenyon community to consider the opinions here expressed, which we hope will provoke contemplation and conversation beyond these pages. As always, we welcome letters and fulllength submissions, both in response to content and on other topics of interest. Gabriel Rom and Sarah Kahwash Editors-in-Chief
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RICHARD PERA
TKO Exclusive AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL McINTURFF Bill McInturff is a partner and co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, a national political and public affairs survey research firm. For the past decade, he has been the lead pollster for the NBC News/Wall Street Journal polling series. In 2008, he was the lead pollster for Senator John McCain’s Presidential campaign. McInturff’s firm currently represents 19 United States senators, six governors, and over 70 members of Congress. The Kenyon Observer’s Richard Pera interviewed him. TKO: Why did President Obama win and Governor Romney lose? BM: First of all, credit has to be given to the quality of the campaign that President Obama ran. Campaigns make a difference. [Obama] had no primary opponent and an extraordinary amount of money, but [campaign staff] did their jobs very well. They did something that is very difficult to do in politics, which is to change the composition of the electorate. The fact that the 18 to 29-year-old turnout was [higher] compared to four years ago surprised me. Also, the percentage of the vote that is non-white increased to 28. And when the President is winning non-whites to an aggregate total of 81 percent, that shift is very different. Number two, the President created a rationale for his reelection. Given how difficult things were four years ago, [Republicans] needed more time to finish the job. And [number] three, we need to recognize that they disqualified Governor Romney and made him not an
acceptable option. In the exit poll, Governor Romney ended up with a negative image, and that is certainly a consequence of the campaign. TKO: You were the lead pollster for Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid. Were there any distinct parallels or differences in the strategies of the McCain and Romney campaigns? BM: There were some things in common. When you win a Republican Party nomination, you’re essentially broke. You wake up in April or May and have to reassemble an election campaign. In a Republican primary, there aren’t large numbers of Latino voters or voters ages 18 to 29, so you’ve been spending two years of your life communicating with a very narrow slice of the electorate that are not the swing voter groups or elastic voter groups where margins matter to who wins the general election. You’re now down to a few months to communicate that message without many resources. You’d read these stories in July about how Romney has $100 million in the bank. The point is that that money isn’t money he can spend before he is the official nominee, meaning that he had to wait until after the convention. And I think the [Romney campaign] was relatively cash-poor, and so during that period when Obama was starting his negative campaign assault, the Romney folks did not have the adequate resources to defend and define Romney, and I think that
“Politics is the art of controlling your environment.” Hunter S. Thompson
7
had consequences in this election. There were things that were different as well. In McCain’s case, it was after eight years of a Republican President. You talk about a terrible confluence: you’re trying to run for what is essentially another Republican term when you have Iraq, consumer confidence dropping to recession levels in April of 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September and then the enormous disparity in resources between the two campaigns because McCain took public financing. So McCain was representing the functional incumbent party. And there’s no question that Romney had significant assets in that Obama’s been President for four years and had high unemployment [and] a difficult economy. All of that gave Romney a status in terms of people hearing a message that was very different from the Obama campaign. I think on balance, the differences [between the McCain and Romney] campaigns outweigh their similarities. TKO: The nature of the electorate has greatly shifted over the past eight years. How did these changes affect the Republican Party and how must it adapt in the future? BM: It’s demography. The majority of kids under two [years old] in America are African-American, Hispanic or Asian. The country is changing at a very large [rate]. It means that the Republican Party has to be more inclusive and must do a radically different job in
communicating to people across ethnicity. My own guess is that in 2016, I would be very surprised if the Republican ticket includes two white guys. I think as America is changing, the Republican Party will change. We have a female Latino governor in New Mexico, a female governor in South Carolina, [an Indian Governor] in Louisiana and [a Hispanic Senator in Florida in] Marco Rubio. Our party has terrific candidates to break the stereotypical “old white guy” mode, and it’s that generation of candidates that are going to be the face of the Republican Party in 2016. Now it’s not just the face of the party. There has to be an openness, inclusion, and some recognition that people believe they are a part of that party’s coalition. That’s a lot of work, but my guess is that if we are going to be successful on a national level in 2016, then our nominee and ticket is going to have to be [different] because these trends are going to continue. The white vote will drop again in four years. I’m a Republican because I believe in the power of markets, and the market is that the Republicans have lost the popular vote in four out of five of the last Presidential campaigns. We’ve now had almost five cycles in a row where the Democrats have essentially won 230 to 240 electoral votes worth of states. It’s very, very hard to win elections when you open the campaign doors and the other [candidate] is sitting on 230 to 240 electoral votes. If you believe in the power of markets, then you presume that, over time, Republicans will shift to keep up with those changes.TKO
Comments? Complaints? Differing opinions? Get your voice in print by submitting a Letter to the Editors or full-length article to TKO@kenyon.edu TKO
“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” H.L. Mencken
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ANDREW GABEL
Republicans in the Wilderness Elections have a way of making the present seem perennial and the future inevitable. Who can forget the President Bush’s “permanent Republican majority” predicted after his 2004 victory, only to be followed by the “permanent Democratic majority” theory used to help explain Democratic gains in 2006 and 2008? Of course this “emerging Democratic majority” contention of 2008 was then promptly disproved in the 2010 midterm elections, according to many pundits at the time, but now has fallen back in light of Obama’s 2012 victory. Simply put, every election cycle since 2004 has been used by the victorious party as proof of an impending and everlasting dominance. Unsurprisingly, Governor Romney had barely finished his concession speech on election night when these same pundits already begin writing the epitaph of the Republican Party: too old, too white and too outof-touch. This past election has indeed exposed key vulnerabilities for the GOP. For example, Romney won independents by 10 points in critical Ohio only to lose the state due to minority turnout. Across the country, the picture was similar: losing youth (60 to 37 percent overall) and minorities (Blacks 93 to 7 percent, Hispanics 71 to 29 percent) by margins even winning independents cannot overcome. Furthermore, in consideration of the fact that Romney surpassed McCain in the final vote tally, the myth of “the missing Republican voter” (a theory that pinned Romney’s loss on Republicans’ purported absence at the polls) can finally be shattered once and for all. The bottom line is that President Obama received significantly fewer votes than he did in 2008; Romney received more than McCain did in 2008 and the Republicans still lost (and lost handily). That signals structural weakness. Perhaps more disconcerting for the GOP is the fact
that Romney actually ran ahead of many Republican senatorial candidates. Lest anyone rush to blame the Tea Party and Todd Akin, so-called “establishment” candidates ran campaigns equally futile to those of their Tea Party counterparts with both losing big on election night. The monumental failure of Republicans across the board suggests the problem goes beyond a single candidate, campaign strategy or even policy. Any time a party is chucked into the wilderness as the GOP was on Nov. 6, it is incumbent upon that party to engage in a healthy bout of soul-searching. That is the job of Republicans right now as a marginalized opposition party with little power or influence: to figure out went wrong, fix it and come roaring back in 2014 and 2016. The good news is that, perhaps surprisingly, the GOP has a lot going for it. Unlike the Democratic Party, the Republicans have an exceptionally strong bench. Young, dynamic leaders such as Representative Paul Ryan (WI), Senator Marco Rubio (FL) and Governor Bobby Jindal (LA) have shown themselves to be strikingly effective agents of change in their respective positions. All are articulate, knowledgeable and, importantly, untainted by the Bush years (Ryan has served in the House since 1998 but was essentially a backbencher until 2008). In some ways, it is remarkable the party coalesced around Romney the way it did considering how long, bloody and unsatisfying the Republican primary saga proved to be. On the trail, Romney showed himself to be a clunky campaigner who spoke conservatism as a second language (once referring to himself as “severely” conservative) and who never was quite able to make the philosophical case for free-markets, personal responsibility and a strong national defense. The GOP’s 2016 presidential candidate, whoever it may be, will have no such problem. If the 2016 candidate — who may very
“Here’s a very good rule of thumb in politics: losing begets losing.” John Podhoretz
9
well be a Hispanic or Indian-American — can make even a small dent in Romney’s 2012 minority and youth numbers, it will have enormous significance. Essentially, Republicans don’t need to win these demographics and they likely never will; all they need is to do a little better than Romney did and they suddenly become competitive as a party again. Additionally, Republicans ran an antiquated and at times incompetent (see: Project ORCA and the Republican National Convention) campaign this past cycle. This was in stark contrast to the Obama campaign, which took full advantage of cutting-edge information technology and used it to run an unprecedented datadriven effort. Do not expect such a strong discrepancy going forward. A new crop of young GOP consultants is waiting in the wings, who are frustrated with the Romney campaign’s television-oriented strategic backwardness and who understand that times have changed since 2004. By 2016, they will be more fully established and, in all likelihood, running the show. Yet perhaps the greatest advantage Republicans have relative to Democrats over the next few years is on substance. Politically, nothing is inevitable. The same cannot be said for America’s perilous fiscal situation. The fact of the matter is that, whether politicians want to acknowledge it or not, the United States is accelerating towards a sovereign debt crisis. In layman’s terms, because of America’s reckless spending, there is doubt about the government’s ability to pay back its debt and as such investors will eventually stop buying American bonds because they will be considered such risky assets. When this happens, the Federal Reserve will likely make up the difference by printing money. This eventually leads to inflation or hyperinflation, rendering all dollar-denominated assets greatly diminished in value. Such a scenario would wreak havoc on the United States economy, wiping out life savings and making everyday necessities skyrocket in price. Simply put, if nothing is done to change the current U.S. fiscal trajectory, these things will result. America is rapidly approaching a tipping point and only the Republican Party has taken this issue seriously. For all its problems politically and otherwise, Republicans have been the only party to sound the alarm and offer serious policy solutions that address the true drivers of the national debt — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security; these three programs along with welfare and interest on the compromise roughly 60 percent of expenditures and are projected rise significantly beyond that in the coming years. Thus far, all President Obama and Democrats have offered in return is demagoguery. Raising taxes on the “rich” would solve nothing; even
confiscating every penny of those making over $250,000 a year would only generate a one-time $938 billion in revenue, against a yearly deficit that is $1.5 trillion and a debt that stands at $16 trillion. Likewise, cutting defense is no solution; defense spending comprises less than 20 percent of our budget and, as a percentage of
“T he monumental failure of R epublicans across the board suggests the problem goes beyond a single candi date , campaign strategy or even policy .” our economic output, is at near-historic lows hovering steadily at around four percent. In addition to having no meaningful impact on our debt or deficit and potentially leaving us weakened and vulnerable, such policies could cripple an already fragile recovery and simply not serious solutions. Also of note is the fact that interest rates are essentially at zero percent right now. Even a small increase can explode an already-unaffordable debt. What this means is that the U.S. government, in addition to living off of borrowed money, is also living on borrowed time. Barring an unexpected fiscal “grand bargain” that, in D.C.’s current polarized political climate, seems frankly fanciful, there appears to be little reason for optimism. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has called the coming fiscal storm, “the most predictable economic crisis in history.” He is right, and when the looming debt crisis becomes the actual debt crisis the party of profligacy and denial — in this case the Democrats — will instantly lose their credibility. Republicans must therefore continue to hold the line on fiscal discipline, not only because it represents the only hope to avoid an economic meltdown, but because it also serves their long term political interest. Like Churchill in 1940, they may very well be swept into power by the calamity they sought to prevent. The GOP took a drubbing this November. The status quo is a losing hand for them and absent reform they will continue to lose. But four years is an eternity in Washington. Republicans have plenty of time reinvent themselves and, once again, become competitive on a national scale. Is it possible that the Grand Old Party is in terminal, irreversible decline? Yes, but color me skeptical.TKO
“Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.” Ronald Reagan
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JACOB FASS
Jumping Off the Ledge WHY THE NATION NEEDS THE FISCAL CLIFF
If the media and some politicians are to be be- fiery anger of the Tea Party, the Obama administralieved, Jan. 1, 2013 will bring with it the much-dread- tion made the unfortunate decision to negotiate with ed “fiscal cliff.” This will result in massive spending the Republican accuses over raising the debt ceiling. cuts and onerous tax increases, grabbing hold of the This was a procedural act that had been once been acfloundering economy and dragging it, kicking and companied by grandstanding and posturing, but now screaming, into a cataclysmic recession. There seems the House Republicans were using it to force large to be a cottage industry of sorts designed to elicit spending cuts in the middle of a tepid recovery. Failfear about the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and ing to raise the debt ceiling would force the Treasury the large-scale sequester cuts to military and domestic to default on America’s debt, a move that likely would spending, with the hope that have actually had devastatit will push Congress toward ow that the election is ing and irrevocable consea grand bargain in the four quences. weeks before the deadline. Was it a good idea to reover the same players have But the only thing we duce spending in the midst ashington of a fledgling economic rehave to fear is fear itself. It’s returned to true that the full implemencovery with rock bottom ut the policy and politi tation of the “cliff” would interest rates and declining lead to a significant drag cal contours of the battle public employment? Probon the economy, but this is ably not. But having agreed based on an unrealistic as- have shifted to engage in these hostage sessment of the situation. negotiations, the President The fiscal cliff will undenirequested that large cuts in ably be resolved in one way or another. The question spending, which would fall mainly on middle class and is whether the cliff will be resolved in the interests of poorer Americans, would be accompanied by some President Obama and the slim but tangible majority of revenue increases that would hit the wealthiest Amerivoters who elected him, or instead in the interests of cans. The agreed-upon ratio was three dollars in cuts the party that was rejected on Nov. 6. to every one dollar in revenue, an agreement heavily First, some background: in the summer of 2011, tilted toward the priorities of House Republicans. It with a newly installed Republican majority in the called for far less revenue than the vaunted SimpsonHouse of Representatives propelled to office by the Bowles commission did, but it remained unacceptable
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“The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession.” Ben Bernanke
11
to large swaths of the Republican caucus. The President and Congressional Republicans were unable to reach a Grand Bargain on the order of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, but they did agree to raise the debt ceiling. They kicked the proverbial can down the road and set up automatic spending cuts of over $1 trillion in domestic and military programs set to launch in 2013 if Congress were unable to finish the $4 trillion dollar deal. The sequester cuts, though particularly brutal to many domestic and defense programs, exempted entitlements and was designed to spare the most vulnerable Americans. Still, the sequester was particularly unpleasant to the interests of both parties in order to push a more comprehensive deal before the budget axe fell. Congress and the President completed the deal knowing that nothing would be resolved until after 2012. Now that the election is over, the same players have returned to Washington. But the policy and political contours of the battle have shifted. With the expiration of the Bush tax cuts scheduled to occur as the same time as the sequester cuts, the revenue and spending sides of the equation have been melded together politically as well as policy-wise. If the 2012 election was about anything substantive, it was about ending the Bush tax cuts for the top two percent of earners. The President focused almost myopically on the issue, and down-ballot Democrats in blue states and red states alike echoed his creed of repealing tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Obama’s victory on Election Day sealed the public mandate for this approach. Republicans and Democrats realize that if Congress does nothing, everyone’s tax rates will increase, from waiters’ to private equity investors’. Both parties will strongly agree that taxes should be lower for the vast majority of the population and will move quickly to pass taxes for those citizens, to avoid the wrath of angry middle class voters and to spare the country from the brunt of recession if those higher middle class taxes are allowed to stay in place, just as consumer spending and the deleveraging of debt begins to pick up across the country. This will leave President Obama in a commanding position. He will be able to determine the size and scope of those middle tax cuts. Congress will also want to reverse some of the immediate spending cuts while focusing more on long term entitlement reform. Again the President will be able to take the lead, pressing for entitlement changes that stem the rising cost of health care, as the Affordable Care Act has begun to do, instead of the arbitrary benefit caps pushed by House Republicans. Most of the tax increases and spending cuts, especially
the defense cuts unacceptable to Republicans, will be quickly reversed. While allowing all these changes to take effect would eventually have devastating impact on the economy, a deal in January will relieve almost all of the fiscal drag. So while groups like Fix the Debt and financial leaders like Ben Bernanke fret about the impact of the
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fiscal cliff, it is obvious that the cliff will never actually be fully implemented. By January 2013, the deficit will be in the unusual position of being too low, and both parties will have been able to reach a deal to raise deficit, which is always a more politically appetizing prospect. But the terms on which the deal would be reached would be very different. They would be far more favorable to the interests of President Obama and Senate Democrats. Why, as talks have taken on the air of Kabuki theater, do House Republicans seem sanguine about the failure of talks? Why aren’t they rushing to negotiate with the President knowing full well they will be in a better position now than after the ball drops in Time Square? It seems to me that House Republicans and the President realize that they will get different things from the failure to produce a grand bargain before Christmas. The President will able to achieve many of his policy objectives that he campaigned on so vigorously. The House Republicans will have a political issue; they will be able to campaign on lower taxes without having voted to raise them. Even the much despised anti-tax activist Grover Norquist seems to recognize this reality; in a recent speech, he claimed that Republicans would be fine as long as they didn’t have “their fingerprints on the murder weapon,” or the act of voting for higher rates. The only people who seem to desperately want such a quick deal are the moderates who supported Simpson-Bowles, the Republican Senators who seem to care more about the policy implications than the political consequences, and the processions of so-called “gangs” who want the parties
“The economy is like a supertanker. It doesn’t move on a dime.” Greg Mankiw
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to come together and make the tough choices on fiscal issues. To them, the failure of the talks would be diametrically opposed to their interests. But they are mistaken. If you want comprehensive and serious reform of entitlements and a tax code that is more pro-growth and raises far more revenue, if you worshipped the Simpson-Bowles plan and were disappointed when President Obama did not vigorously campaign on it despite quietly supporting many of its provisions, then you have to be willing to go over the fiscal cliff. When all the taxes rise on Jan. 1, Congress will have a new baseline to work with, a baseline much friendlier to the kind of innovations that would be far superior to our current ill fangled tax code. Otherwise, the math simply does not work. Mitt Romney tried fruitlessly to make it work during the campaign. Even Simpson-Bowles assumed that all the Bush tax cuts would expire before changes to the code could be made. Sometimes the focus of much the Washington policy establishment on the debt, as the equivalent of our fight with Nazi Germany or the dissolution of the Union, seems to be misguided. Our high short-term deficit is largely a consequence of low tax revenue from the vicious recession we just experienced and the costs of the largely successful if insufficient efforts to pull the economy out of
this ditch. Despite the investor class’s hand-wringing, its members seem perfectly content buy to buy United States treasury bonds. Interest rates, the worst economic consequence of high deficits, have never been lower. But in the medium term, our low tax burden and the ever-rising costs of health services will begin to become problematic, crowding out the more productive activities of both the public and private sector. Taxes will need to go up and the rate of spending on entitlement programs will need to go down. Fortunately, we do not need a poorly convinced grand bargain in the next couple of weeks that relies on ultra-conservative House of Representatives to act heroically against type. Despite their clashing, politicians of both parties have inadvertently ensured that incentives line up perfectly to deal with some of our revenue and spending problems early next year. President Obama is fond of saying that the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice. At times it seems that the system in Washington is actually constructed to lead to senseless and unjust outcomes, but sometimes things turn out differently. Even as commentators warn of catastrophe as the deadline approaches, in a few weeks the country can bend the arc of history toward some measure of economic and fiscal sanity. That sanity, more than the illusion of bipartisan consensus, would truly make for a sweet new year.TKO
“In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.� Paul Krugman
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JONATHAN GREEN
Head, Meet Sand WHEN A BENT FRAME BREAKS Mainstream Republicans around this country, and by extension the Republican Party itself, took it on the chin last month. Not only did they lose the election, but they were also presented with a new reality that they had previously been able to ignore. In this new reality, negative $5 trillion plus “we’ll see” does not equal zero; pregnancy resulting from rape is neither impossible nor the divine will of God; socialism, fascism and communism are three different things (none of which accurately describe a progressive tax code); and pollsters, reporters and the Bureau of Labor Statistics are not joining forces in a mass liberal conspiracy to make George Soros feel better. Perhaps it was predictable that the Republican Party would so readily latch on to conspiracy theories surrounding the polls in the recent election cycle. They have found it so easy to deny basic facts about national issues recently that denying relatively trivial facts like poll data seems like a piece of cake. But the fact that the party’s fantasies surrounding skewed polls were so thoroughly disproven should serve as a wakeup call for them on a host of other, far more serious issues. The Republican Party’s big takeaway from this election should be that you cannot make up numbers to make yourself feel better, as Megyn Kelly lacerated Karl Rove for doing during her election night coverage on Fox News. So before President Obama is inaugurated for the second time, America needs to get a few things straight. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, he is not a Muslim and he did call the attacks in Benghazi an act of terror. Evolution is not a lie “straight from the pit of hell.” Wind is not “God’s way of balancing heat.” ACORN does not even exist anymore, so it is not stealing elections. Cutting employee hours because of supposed increased costs while simultaneously giving away millions of dollars worth of promotional material does not make you a shrewd businessman; it makes you a jerk. And, most importantly, drastic cuts to public services that make life harder for middle and lower-income Americans do not boost the economy.
In a healthy American political system, the two major political parties present competing sets of ideas to tackle the challenges the country faces. Cynics call this “bringing your own set of facts to the table,” sets of facts that combine to solve problems through debate and eventual compromise. But this system only works if both sides bring sets of facts to the table. This campaign season, the Republican Party brought a set of fantasies to the table and tried to convince the rest of us to go along for the ride. When real issues like climate change, electoral reform and national defense are turned into fantastical playthings by Republican candidates and elected officials who refuse to accept the premise of the debate in the first place, the whole country is worse off. Not only is it impossible to have a serious conversation when, as Barney Frank would say, the conversation is “like arguing with a kitchen table,” but the fact that such a conversation is possible causes the public to lose faith in the system. Why should we trust Washington to get anything done when half of our leaders refuse to acknowledge that assault weapons kill people? America is responsible for 25 percent of the world’s oil consumption, yet it controls four percent of the world’s oil reserves; it’s hard to blame the public for not trusting Washington to solve energy issues when half of our elected officials believe that we can drill our way to energy independence. Americans voted for facts this election, which was good for liberals, but more importantly, great for the country. Forcing the Republican Party to accept the electoral reality that running against the real world is a losing proposition will restore Americans’ confidence in our political system and produce more effective government on the whole. We are already seeing serious discussion in Washington of taking a balanced approach to reducing the debt, reforming our immigration system and streamlining the process by which Americans vote—discussions that would have been impossible mere months ago. In 2008 Americans voted for hope and change. In 2012, they may finally get them.TKO
“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” Albert Einstein
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STEWART POLLOCK
The Golden Dawn A NEW, DARK DAY FOR GREECE
Nowhere has the Eurozone crisis been felt more deeply than in Greece. The Hellenic republic’s rising debt and weak economy have turned what used to be one of the region’s most lively nations into an austerity-ravaged wreck, where riots are a daily occurrence and faith in the government is all but nonexistent. In economically and socially tumultuous times like these, inspirational leaders often emerge to reinvigorate their nations’ spirit. It is abundantly clear that these figures — the FDRs and Nehrus of the world — have little in common with Greece’s current f lailing leadership under President Karolos Papoulias and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. With its f lagging economy and apparent inability to stabilize a soaring debt, Greece’s leadership could be more accurately compared to Herbert Hoover at his worst — impotent, uninspired and unable to motivate its coalition governments. Recent events, however, inspired a much darker parallel from the depression era: Paul Von Hindenburg. The reason for such an alarming comparison to the notorious final leader of Weimar Germany is simple: the growing clout of the People’s Association party, more commonly known as the Golden Dawn. This far right political party, now the third most powerful in Greece’s parliament after it won seven percent of the vote in this year’s election, has become an emblem of what is wrong with Greece and an ominous sign of what will come if Greece remains unable to right its listing economy. As Greece has fallen, the party has risen, capitalizing on growing social tension to spread its message of nativism and xenopho-
bia. Although it once confined itself to spouting anti-immigrant vitriol, the Golden Dawn has become increasingly violent in action as well as speech, attacking immigrants, women, liberals, anarchists and others who oppose it. The Golden Dawn has its origins in the murky years following the Balkan Wars, during which many Greeks fought for the Serbs as mercenaries. Its leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, was a former Commando who was dishonorably discharged from the Greek
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“If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Abraham Lincoln
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party, its actions tell another story; one telling example is its emblem, the Maender, an ancient Greek symbol that resembles a modified swastika. Last month, an Egyptian man in Athens was nearly beaten to death by Golden Dawn supporters armed with clubs when they found him sleeping behind a building. In another incident, a Pakistani shopkeeper was attacked and beaten by a mob shouting Golden Dawn slogans after they heard about an unrelated mugging involving an allegedly black perpetrator. Furthermore, the Golden Dawn routinely passes through slums, demanding that dark-skinned shopkeepers present their immigration papers or else have their wares destroyed. It is bad enough that the police have been unable to stop the country’s rising tide of anti-immigrant violence. Worse, there is a great deal of evidence that both the police and the powerful Greek Orthodox Church are aligned with the party, whose support was recently gauged at close to 22 percent nationwide. Greece’s justice minister, Antonis Roupakiotis, warned that the group was creating “conditions for the growth on neo-fascist practices.” In October, a senior police official told The Guardian in confidence that the Golden Dawn had infiltrated the Greek police “at the highest levels” and was using the party to wage a proxy war against anarchists, who they view as a greater threat. On the individual level, many police are sympathetic to the group for purely practical reasons: “These policemen feel unappreciated and isolated. They are badly paid, they work under the worst conditions and they look for support,” added the anonymous source. Unfortunately, they often find this support in the Golden Dawn. Indeed, the real threat of the Golden Dawn may be its skillfulness in providing an alternative to the increasingly scant public services offered by the government. According to the Washington Post, the Golden Dawn has set up several “pure” blood banks that only accept ethnically Greek donors. Golden Dawn activists can often be seen providing food and other goods to Greeks on the street while other party members hand out pamphlets about the organization. This strategy of using panem et circenses to appeal to the masses has paid off. The bulk of those who support the Golden Dawn do not subscribe to its neo-Fascist ideology, or even its strong anti-immigrant stance, but instead see the Dawn as the only group providing effective leadership and fulfilling basic needs. The alleged involvement of the Greek Orthodox Church with the Golden Dawn is as bad, if not worse than that of the police. In a country where approximately 95 percent of the population is nominally Or-
thodox, the Golden Dawn has effectively instilled its events with pseudo-Christian overtones. New regional offices are typically blessed by priests and the Golden Dawn is pressing for more stringent enforcement of Greece’s rarely-used blasphemy laws. Like the police, the church’s support is in part due to a fear of anarchism, which it sees as threatening the entirety of Greek society. In fact, many in the church disagree with the Golden Dawn and some prominent leaders have spoken out against the party. One such critic is Metropolitan Pavlos of Siatista, who in an interview told the Greek Reporter that “[The Golden Dawn] have nothing to do with ancient Greek civilization nor the Gospel…We all have to take a clear stand on the Golden Dawn issue…We have to preach the word of God, which has nothing to do with the acts committed by members of Golden Dawn.” The Golden Dawn is unfortunately not unique amongst European parties. Nationalist, far-right parties like the United Kingdom’s British National Party or France’s Front Nationale have been around for decades, usually confined to the fringes of society and denied access to the legislature. However, with its not-insignificant electoral successes, the Golden Dawn is harder to dismiss as a fringe group. The crisis facing Greece is severe, and in desperate times, people are often driven to desperate measures. If the Greek economy rights itself, or more likely is righted by foreign intervention, then the Golden Dawn’s fall may be more meteoric than its rise. Their electoral victories do not ref lect a real support for most of their extreme policies, but instead are indicative of right-wing Greek voters f leeing the sinking ship that is the ruling New Democracy party. The support of many within the Church and police force are also tied to the economic crisis. Like so many other movements founded on animosity and chaos, the Golden Dawn’s greatest enemies are time and progress. This does not mean the party should be dismissed out of hand: if Greece continues a downward spiral into debt and is forced to exit the Eurozone, the Golden Dawn may continue to gnaw at the country, distracting Greeks from their problems whilst using immigrants and foreigners as scapegoats. Perhaps the worst case scenario — a Greek republic resembling the German Weimar republic — is unlikely. At the very least, Greece’s democratic neighbors would probably be unwilling to work with a Golden Dawnled Greek government. But while it continues to draw misguided support from Greeks more concerned with their next meal than their country’s future, the Golden Dawn is a fundamental threat to the people and leaders of the world’s oldest democracy. TKO
“In Greece, wise men speak and fools decide.” George Santayana
RYAN MACH
The Mach Accords A 7-STEP PLAN TO PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST On Nov. 21, 2012, an eight-day stretch of death and violence was ended by a truce between the Israeli government and the Palestinian militant organization. The truce, brokered by the recently formed Islamist Egyptian government, resulted in a tentative agreement to end both the rocket attacks that threaten much of Israel’s population as well as the Israeli military’s campaign in Gaza to stop said attacks. Though this agreement has forestalled a full-scale ground invasion of the region, civilian deaths on either side have continued and there is little public confidence in both populations that the truce will last. Indeed, the most contentious issues of the conflict were left unsettled by the armistice, including the Israeli embargo. With the total death toll having risen past 100 by the end of negotiations, the potential dangers of this military rivalry have never been more apparent. In the wake of this horrific violence, I again found myself wondering why the New York Times has refused any and all of my op-ed submissions regarding my bold, insightful suggestions for returning eternal peace to this war-torn region. In my frustration, I submitted the following ideas to this publication instead. 1. Have we tried putting Israel somewhere else? I think maybe it would be better if the Jewish homeland were somewhere more hospitable. The climate is so dry out there, anyway. 2. Have we tried putting Palestine somewhere else? They’re not even recognized as a sovereign nation yet; I’m sure there’s still time for them to set up shop elsewhere. Again, so dry. 3. Has anyone suggested just getting rid of religion? It’s the source of pretty much all warfare in history, dude. Think about it. 4. Two words: timeshare. It’s affordable, it’s practical and everybody gets a reasonable slice of the holy land pie. No pets. 5. Maybe if we start funding and arming Palestine with tax dollars it won’t look like we’re playing favorites. Perfect way to wipe our hands clean of the whole thing, if you ask me. 6. Stipulate that each and every member of the Palestinian community be bar mitzvahed. They won’t have such a negative opinion of the Jewish faith when that fat $36 check from grandpa is sitting in the pocket of their blazer.
Illustration by Ethan Primason
7. Let’s just send Jimmy Carter over there and let him be King of Hamas, if he thinks he knows so much.TKO
“The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.” Wallace Stevens