Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

France

The case for treating France as a strategic competitor rather than an ally has rarely been made more forcefully than in this Charles Krauthammer column:

It is easy to make fun of the French and their pompous pretense to the grandeur they shed a half-century ago when their loss of honor under Vichy, and then their loss of empire, relegated them to the rank of second-class power. But the fun is over. Before Sept. 11, France's Gaullist anti-Americanism as a form of ostentatious self-aggrandizement was an irritant. With a war on — three, in fact: Afghanistan, Iraq and the larger war on terrorism — France's willful obstructionism becomes dangerous and deadly. ...

Chirac wants not only to make France the champion of the oppressed in general against the great American hegemon but also to make it in particular the champion of Arab aspirations against American imperialism. Even the left-leaning French newspaper Le Monde criticized Chirac for acting the "killjoy" in Istanbul. But Chirac's behavior was no mere outburst. It is a strategy for a French future. Chirac is charting a course — a collision course with America.

Go read the whole thing.

Missing the Point

I think Glenn Reynolds is missing the point about John Trial Lawyers Edwards. He writes:

An influential segment of the Republican Party hates trial lawyers -- but not all Republicans, much less swing voters, feel the same way. Republicans who think that just calling someone a trial lawyer will swing voters against them are out of touch.

Ann Althouse does too: "the bare fact that he's a trial lawyer/personal injury lawyer is not good enough." Ditto Virginia Postrel:

John Edwards won't carry the South, or even North Carolina, for John Kerry, but he may cost the Republicans some votes, as they misunderestimate him--and wildly overestimate the unpopularity of his profession.

They're all right that constantly calling John Edwards a trial lawyer may not directly change a lot of votes; indeed, I'll concede that in some places (Madison County, Illinois?) it'll probably help the Dems. But here's what Reynolds et al. are missing: John Trial Lawyer Edwards is going to re-energize key segments of the GOP base who might otherwise have wavered. Doctors. Small business owners. The US Chamber of Commerce. The Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers. All part of Bush's base, but all wavering due to Bush's free spending ways, Iraq worries, the economy, etc. All of those folks, however, have a deep animosity towards trial lawyers. The prospect of having a trial lawyer one heart beat from the Presidency will re-energize them to contribute to Bush, the RNC, and the emerging pro-Bush 527s. If Bush makes real tort reform and class action litigation reform campaign issues, they'll do even more for Bush. Even the NY Times gets it (after all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day):

Mr. Edwards's background as a trial lawyer before he entered the Senate is already drawing fire from another group with even deeper pockets: business leaders and manufacturers. Few things are capable of uniting industry groups as much as their opposition to trial lawyers. And few politicians have been as adept at exploiting that hostility as President Bush, who, at the urging of his political adviser Karl Rove, has made attacks on trial lawyers a central part of his political strategy ever since his first run for Texas governor a decade ago.

"The selection of Edwards will significantly invigorate manufacturing and business, both large and small, to oppose the Kerry ticket," said Jerry Jasinowski, the president of the National Association of Manufacturers, an influential trade group in Washington. "Trial lawyers are the pariahs of the business community, which is more frightened by them than terrorists, China or higher energy prices."

Another top business group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which generally supports Republicans, may choose to actively support the Bush-Cheney ticket in light of the choice of Mr. Edwards.

This is key. Clinton won in large part because he didn't scare business. Sure the bulk of the business community supported the GOP in '92 and '96, but Clinton made in-roads and, more important, did nothing to energize the business community against him. The WSJ made this point the other day:

To be successful, a Democratic presidential candidate doesn't need the active support of America's CEOs, but he does need to keep them on the sidelines. Jimmy Carter lost his bid for re-election at least in part because business was determined to dump him. Bill Clinton won election and re-election at least in part because the business community, while not strongly supportive, wasn't threatened by him.

Kerry's choice of Edwards will threaten the business community as few other moves would have, which will mean that they will not be on the sidelines.

More on the estate tax

Brian Leiter responds here to my post on the estate tax, which in turn was a comment on an earlier Leiter post. Brian now agrees that, assuming the validity of the empirical assumptions made in my post, that his Marxist analysis of the estate tax would be improved by subdividing the "ruling class" in to discrete interest groups; otherwise, not. Once again, economics proves its power in bringing otherwise disparate points of view into agreement. (Or something like that! Heh.)

Edwards and the Chamber

Besides being a trial lawyer, which gives him two strikes on business to begin with in my book, John Edwards' record in the Senate on business issues has been deplorable. The US Chamber of Commerce gave him a voting score of just 15%. (Compared to Kerry, who scored a 0, of course, that almost makes Edwards seem kind of pro-business.) No wonder Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has made a public vow:

If John Edwards is chosen as John Kerry's running mate, the chamber will abandon its traditional stance of neutrality in the presidential race and work feverishly to defeat the Democratic ticket. "We'd get the best people and the greatest assets we can rally" to the cause, he says. ...

Should Democrats care? After all, big business is hardly their natural constituency. The Chamber of Commerce will never be a hotbed of Democratic support. And the number of chief executives in the elite Business Roundtable who will vote for Sen. Kerry, regardless of his running mate, can be counted on Fannie Mae CEO Frank Raines's right hand -- with digits to spare.

But party wisdom that's been passed down by former Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert Strauss, and now resides with Democratic economic guru Robert Rubin, is that big business does matter to Democrats. To be successful, a Democratic presidential candidate doesn't need the active support of America's CEOs, but he does need to keep them on the sidelines. Jimmy Carter lost his bid for re-election at least in part because business was determined to dump him. Bill Clinton won election and re-election at least in part because the business community, while not strongly supportive, wasn't threatened by him.

Sen. Kerry has accepted this wisdom and has worked since the end of the primary season to moderate the way he's viewed by business. The harsh talk of "Benedict Arnold corporations and CEOs that send jobs and profits overseas" -- a standard line in his stump speech back in January and February -- is gone. Instead, he talks coolly of eliminating tax breaks that encourage companies to send jobs outside the U.S. With Mr. Rubin at his side, he met with the leaders of the Business Roundtable. While there were no apparent converts, he did put the group at ease.

Indeed, Kerry has been claiming loudly that "I don't want to lead a party that loves jobs and hates the people who create them," a claim I found implausible. (Wouldn't his Chamber score have been a bit higher in that case?) Kerry's selection of John Trial Lawyer Edwards was a spit in the eye for all those business leaders to whom Kerry had been shopping that crock of [expletive deleted]. Hopefully, it will energize them - and all of us who care about American business - to go to the mat to beat Kerry.

AutoSpies’ Readers’ “Blog”

AutoSpies is a great car website, which often scoops new car developments long before the mainstream press. They've just added a "readers' forum blog" to their site. It's pretty weak. There's just one thread, with no common theme, so you get no real discussions going. At this point, it is a poor substitute for a bulletin board. If they really want to get a reader blog going, they should take a look at some of the political blogs. Between his huge common section and the diaries function, for example, Kos has a highly interactive site with lots of reader involvement. Autospies' "blog" isn't even in the same ballpark (heck, they aren't even in the same county). In a separate feature, AutoSpies allows its readers to post comments directly to articles. This is more like blogging: think of the article as a blog post and the comments as, well, comments. Unfortunately, the comments are mostly quite lame. Oh well, I just read AutoSpies for the articles anyway. (Hmmm. Now where have I heard that before?) On an essentially unrelated note, Dan Drezner collects some recent blogosphere developments concerning the demise of the comment feature.

John Trial Lawyer Edwards

James Joyner thinks "the Bush campaign will do it all to make “Trial Lawyer” part of Edward’s name." Of course they will. And they should. It is good politics, for one thing. Kerry has been trying to reach out to the business community of late. I found that tactic disingenuous, at best. Picking John Edwards as running mate will put the kibosh on any successful outreach to business, as the WSJ article Joyner cites explains:

Mr. Edwards is a trial lawyer. His campaign for the presidency was financed by trial lawyers. And there is nothing that makes America’s CEOs see red these days like America’s trial lawyers. “It’s visceral,” says one person who works with a group of chief executives. “You can feel it in a room.” The nation’s top executives view the plaintiff’s bar as modern-day mobsters, shaking down corporations by bringing endless lawsuits that are too costly and too dangerous to litigate and that result in settlements costing billions to the corporate bottom line. The antipathy, while not new, has never been greater.

There's nothing Kerry can offer business that is likely to overcome that antipathy. Nor should it. Making "trial lawyer" part of Edwards' name is not just good politics, it is also good public policy. As I wrote in my post, John Edwards versus Jobs: "If John Edwards wants to get serious about job creation, maybe he should get serious about tort reform." The same goes for John Kerry, but with Edwards as his running mate, how likely is serious tort reform in a Kerry administration? Not very.

Counter-Intuitive Fundraising Rankings

If you listen to the left and their media allies, you would assume that George Bush is the candidate of fat-cats and John Kerry is the candidate of the little guy. According to Fundrace, however, you would be wrong. Bush ranks #1 in both the Grassroots Index (who gets small contributions from all over America?) and the Devotion Index (who inspires repeat giving and financial sacrifice?), while Kerry ranks # 1 in the FatCats Index (who gets large contributions from the wealthiest Americans?).

John Edwards

With Kerry picking John Edwards for Veep, I thought I might flag a few of my old posts on Edwards for your reading pleasure:

• John Edwards versus Jobs: a critique of Edwards' old job as a trial lawyer and the deleterious effect of mass tort litigation on jobs and the economy.
• Presidential Politics and Corporate Governance: John Edwards and Shareholder Empowerment: a critique of Edwards' position on shareholder activism.
• John Edwards links to OverLawyered.com's critique of Edwards fundraising.