In the wake of the reaction to my previous post, I want to re-state and clarify what I wrote. I am well aware that the previous post was way too long and ranty, and when you blog like that it is easy to lose focus. Hopefully this will be short.

Snapesbabe reckons that my post yesterday said that “all people who are complaining about people who voted for Boris are stupid”. I don’t think that’s what I said and it certainly wasn’t my intention.

My point wasn’t to say that people complaining about Boris voters are stupid. My point, as I noted in my comment there, was to say that many of the most prominent people who complained about Boris Johnson’s voters were using arguments that were either irrelevant, invalid or could equally be levelled at Ken Livingstone’s voters.

Snapesbabe presented a post by Mitch Benn as a counterbalance to mine. I think Mitch Benn’s post demonstrates rather well what I was talking about. I know that Mitch Benn is a comedian, so you can’t expect him to play it straight. At the same time, it is very similar to just about everything I have read complaining about Boris Johnson over the past few weeks.

Here is Mitch Benn’s argument, summarised by me:

I don’t understand. How can over a million Londoners be such morons? Do they not see that Boris Johnson cannot be taken seriously? I can only conclude that they voted for him because of his appearances on Have I Got News For You. Otherwise people would see him for the Tory toff he really is.

Is there anything about Boris Johnson’s policies or record? Only this: “[Boris Johnson is] a man who has thus far struggled to demonstrate his ability to find his arse with both hands.”

This is what I’m talking about.

I will now look at the comments to another post, one which was favourable to my post yesterday. I think the comments thread demonstrates rather nicely exactly what I was saying. And these are people who have, I presume (given that they are commenting about it and all), read my post. Many of them have committed the same offences that I spent the best part of 3,000 words arguing against.

(NB. I should point out that I don’t know any of these people, so I may be misrepresenting their views. But I am assuming that they are opposed to Boris Johnson’s victory (this part is obvious from their comments) and are left-liberals who are disappointed in the current Labour government (this part I have inferred). Please accept my sincerest apologies if this is inaccurate.)

randwolf said:

This is what they said about the Democrats…and then we “elected” Bush II. …come to think about it, it was also, “…and then we elected Nixon.” The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

“The enemy of my enemy is not my friend” was precisely what I was saying in my post yesterday. It applies equally to Ken Livingstone as it does to Boris Johnson. My point was that the campaign from the left was mainly a negative one against Boris Johnson rather than a positive one in favour of Ken Livingstone. Saying that you should vote against someone just because they are a Tory does not cut it. And if you carry on voting for Labour no matter how bad their policies become, don’t be surprised when they start adopting more terrible policies.

juggzy has the most sensible comment in the thread, although still misses the target in my view. It starts off by pointing out that Ken Livingstone has more experience. That’s a fair point, although once upon a time Ken Livingstone was just as inexperienced as Boris Johnson, so this can’t be the whole story.

Plus, as I noted in my post yesterday, if anyone stays in power too long it’s practically inviting corruption (and there were already signs of this in Ken Livingstone’s second term). So this is a tradeoff rather than a straightforward decision, and it depends on how seriously you view each potential weakness.

ffutures says:

Labour’s record on civil liberties does not excuse Boris Johnson. Two wrongs don’t make a right…

This was pretty much the point I made yesterday in reverse. The Conservatives’ policies from the Thatcher era do not excuse Ken Livingstone or any other current Labour politicians. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

rozk says:

…as with Cameron, he was in the Bullingdon - that speaks volumes.

So we’re back to “booo, he’s a toff!” As purplecthulhu replied,

College clubs? It’s easy to make veiled comments about what someone did in their teens and 20s…

I think most people would be relieved that they are judged on their character and opinions as they stand today rather than whatever they did as a youngster.

There are some people who, when pressed, were and are able to articulate genuine reasons why they genuinely think Boris Johnson should not have been voted London Mayor. This is fine, and I do not have a problem with that.

But these people are outnumbered by a factor of one hundred by arguments that basically amount to, “You shouldn’t vote for Boris Johnson because he is a clown and a Tory toff, and those people who do vote for him are idiots.” I am sorry, but if you write in The Guardian or the New Statesman or your left-wing blog something as lazy as that, you are not engaging in a debate — you are engaging in groupthink.

And if you spend the whole campaign just pointing out irrelevant stuff about Boris Johnson being a Tory toff rather than actually talking about policies, don’t be surprised if he goes on to win the election. Believe it or not, there is more to politics than the colour of the rosette. Evidently enough over a million Londoners simply do not care that Boris Johnson is a Tory toff.

And when, after Boris Johnson has won the election, you raise your arms and say, “the only possible explanation is that those voters are morons,” you are just making the situation worse. Because “those voters” will start to increase in number as they get turned off the left by their childish arguments, and one day the left will wake up to find that they are just talking among themselves. Perhaps that has already happened.

You must understand that I am not making any pro-Conservative, pro-Boris Johnson or anti-Ken Livingstone points. But I beg those good liberals and people of the left — for the sake of their cause — to start debating politicians on the basis of their merits rather than their background. After all, are not left-liberals supposed to be against judging people on the basis of their background?

It was my turn to write this week’s Scottish Roundup (nominations always welcome of course, even if it’s nothing to do with politics). I keep an eye on the Scottish blogs throughout the week in preparation, and towards the end of the week it became pretty clear that one particular wee stooshie had to be covered.

Labour blogger Kezia Dugdale has been involved in a campaign called Scotland for Obama. SNP blogger Calum Cashley was none too impressed. Then a number of other bloggers — SNP supporters among them — decided to take Calum Cashley to task.

I have to confess that I’m not a great fan of Calum Cashley’s blog. To me, it seems unnecessarily confrontational, negative, sarcastic and maybe even a bit boorish. It’s certainly not the sort of thing that would persuade me to vote for him come election time. But despite the response to his most recent post, in this instance I’m probably more inclined to agree with Cashley.

Maybe it’s just a reflection of my increasingly anti-political or apolitical (certainly in terms of party politics) viewpoint (I will consider the roots of this in a future post if I can get round to it). But there is something about the amount of attention that the US Presidential election receives that rubs me up the wrong way a bit. It’s not that I don’t recognise that the position of US President isn’t an incredibly powerful one. But political campaigns in general are starting to really get my goat.

Mostly, it is the implication that a campaign like Scotland for Obama will make a difference. It just comes across as a bit attention seeking. “Look at me and look at how much I care!”

I am pretty sceptical of most political campaigning. Of course, I have my views. But I have never joined a club, I’ve never gone on a demonstration and I’ve never worn any political t-shirts. This is because I know it will make next to no difference.

Come election time, of course, I love it. I stay up all night to watch the results. It’s great fun to cheer on the good guys and boo the baddies. As Jeff says in the tagline to his blog, “Elections - Probably the Best Spectator Sport in the World”. But beyond that, what does political campaigning mean?

Do I need to go on a rally to prove how much I care? Not really. Will the Scotland for Obama campaign make a jot of difference to the outcome of the election? I hardly think so. In fact, as Calum Cashley rightly points out, if enough Americans find out that those pinko Europeans are campaigning in Obama’s favour, if anything it will probably have a negative effect.

I am not sure it’s my position to tell Americans how to vote anyway. I know it has been pointed out in the posts I have linked to above that Scotland for Obama is not intended to tell Americans how to vote. But the point still stands.

Imagine if the boot was on another foot. What if somewhere in America a group of people gathered to express their support for, say, David Cameron. What would you think of it? I would think they were the most enormous fools. I would roll my eyes. I might ignore them. But it would more likely make me even less inclined to vote for Cameron.

The thing is that our viewpoint is unquestionably altered by the fact that we don’t live in America. The issues, the agenda and the political climate are completely different over there.

I know that whenever I have heard visiting foreign students express an opinion about Scottish politics (there is no shortage of this in the Edinburgh Uni politics department) it has often been the most ill-informed bum drizzle. You can’t blame them for that. They cannot possibly have as good a feel for the issues as someone like me who has barely set foot out of Scotland. They are projecting their views on American (or whatever) politics onto a map of Scotland. But it’s a square peg in a round hole.

I recognise that the same phenomenon would occur in reverse. In deference to this, I mostly keep my viewpoints on other countries’ politics to myself. I have my own opinions, of course. I do care what goes on in other countries. But you wouldn’t find me going around the place wearing an Obama badge or anything like that.

I have done a few of those online quizzes that tell you which candidate you should vote for. The results are here and here. When I did those quizzes though, there were a number of questions that I didn’t have the first clue about. In some cases I had not even heard of the issues and I couldn’t possibly have an opinion on them.

The same even applies when you’re in the same country. When I tried out Vote Match London about a quarter of the questions were about issues that I had never heard of, and half of the questions I had no opinion on whatsoever. For what it’s worth, it told me that I should vote for Boris Johnson. Would I vote for Boris Johnson if I was an actual Londoner? I simply don’t know because I’m not a Londoner.

And here is the thing. I am sure that London does not need my help to elect their Mayor. Equally, the USA does not need to hear my views on the Presidential campaign. An argument against this has been put forward by Political Dissuasion:

Would you criticise me for organising a rally against Robert Mugabe’s treatment of the people of Zimbabwe, where people are dying, starving and being jailed for actions and rights that you and I take take for granted?

There is quite a noticeable difference between the USA and Zimbabwe. One of them is democratic and the other is not. For all of its faults, at least in the USA there is a reasonable expectation of free speech, a reasonably free press, reasonably free markets and so on. None of this exists in Zimbabwe. So the people of Zimbabwe need international support so much more. Even then, I would limit myself to saying that I think Zimbabwe should be freer. Once they have the “rights that you and I take for granted”, I am sure they will be able to conduct their own affairs without the help of the likes of me.

The USA needs no help in this regard. They have their freedoms that they take for granted. If I were to stick my nose in, I would most likely be batted away. And if an American sticks his nose into my country’s politics, I would bat him away as well.

There is the other argument that US politics affects us all, which I suppose is true to an extent. But does it really affect us? I have my doubts. The likely winners of the election are much of a muchness. People like to pluck out the Iraq War as an example of how much American politics affects us, but these people forget that most Democrats were all for invading Iraq at the time as well!

Incidentally, I do have an opinion on the US Presidential candidates. As it happens, I favour Barack Obama. But I don’t pretend that this is based on any nuanced policy view. It is based on the fact that John McCain is a baad, baad Republican and that Hilary Clinton is a screeching maniac. Honestly, Clinton drives me nuts. She is like that teacher you could hear giving someone a row from the opposite end of the corridor.

There are other reasons, which I covered here. I really dislike the tone of Clinton’s campaign. You can just tell that she came into the campaign thinking she had a divine right to be President. The message of experience is total bunk. Her sumtotal of experience is limited to being married to a former President. Big wow.

At least Obama’s message is more positive. But here is another area where I agree with Calum Cashley. If the American public buys into all of the hope rhetoric, it is lining itself up for disappointment. We have seen this in Britain in the 1990s. Labour pulled off the exact same trick. “I’m here to save you from those awful conservatives!” Well we all know how that turned out.

The truth is harsher. No matter who you vote for, the government gets in. I’d love to see Barack Obama usher in a new era of hope for America. But if he actually does it I’ll eat my hat.

All of that said, I don’t criticise Kezia Dugdale or anyone else for getting involved in Scotland for Obama. It is a harmless campaign and if the people involved get a buzz out of participating then that is all good. We are all adults living in a democracy. By the same token, Calum Cashley is perfectly entitled to chip in, and I don’t think the points he made were as awful as some people are making out.

There is a row in the USA at the moment between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama camps. Sadly, someone somewhere along the line has played the race card. Hillary Clinton’s comments about the Civil Rights Act have been called into question.

I doubt Hillary Clinton intended to belittle Martin Luther King’s role. But Hillary Clinton’s comments nevertheless piss me off.

Cassilis says Clinton was making a fair point. But to say “it took a President” to pass the Civil Rights Act is banal. It isn’t exactly headline news that you need a President to pass legislation in the USA. I hardly believe Barack Obama — or any of the other Democratic candidates — dispute it. So what was the point of her saying it?

Well, I am assuming this is yet another angle in her crusade to persuade everyone how experienced she is. She keeps on banging on and on about her experience as if she is in the running to become leader of the Chinese Communist Party rather than President of the United States.

But what experience does she have? Well, she has been a Senator since 2001 — for years longer than Obama. But Obama has also been a member of the Illinois State Senate for seven years prior to that. So it looks to me as though Barack Obama has roughly equal (if we decide to give a higher weight to the US Senate) or slightly more experience at actually being a politician, as opposed to just being married to one.

But I presume it is her famous husband whom Hillary Clinton is evoking whenever she refers to “her” “experience”. This is what really annoys me about Clinton. She comes across as though she thinks she has a right to be President because of her surname. But is it really wise to elect someone on the basis of whom they are married to?

If voters buy into the Clinton mantra of experience, it may mean that really people want Bill Clinton to become President through the back door. In this case it makes a mockery of the constitution, and the maximum of two terms that Presidents can have. No doubt Putin will be trying this trick soon.

Let us assume that Hillary Clinton goes all the way, becomes President and serves two terms. By the end of that, it will have been almost three entire decades since the US had known a President who wasn’t either a Bush or a Clinton.

It does amuse me. Some Americans like to go on about how they are proud that they don’t have a Royal Family because they believe that power should not run through the family. But then they go ahead and elect people from the same families anyway. The difference is that Britain’s Royal family doesn’t actually have any real power.

And I have got through this entire post without even mentioning the Kennedy family yet.

For this reason, I find Barack Obama’s main message of ‘change’ much more appealing than Clinton’s message of ‘experience’. On the basis of the slogans and the simplified, dumbed-down political debates, Barack Obama ought to win this campaign hands down.

A few months back I wrote about a quiz that tells you which US Presidential candidate to vote for. Obviously I don’t have a vote, but it is still fun to try it out and see what comes up.

The election has been in the news this week, so it’s worth taking a look at another of these quizzes, from GoToQuiz (via Amused Cynicism).

67% Chris Dodd
67% Mike Gravel
65% Dennis Kucinich
63% Bill Richardson
62% Barack Obama
62% Rudy Giuliani
61% Hillary Clinton
58% John Edwards
56% Joe Biden
53% Ron Paul
51% John McCain
44% Mitt Romney
43% Mike Huckabee
34% Tom Tancredo
34% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Fairly similar results to the other one. Once again, it’s the Democrats you’ve never heard of who have come out top. This time around, a Republican — Rudy Giuliani — appears above some Democrats.

I came across another of those political quizzes. This one matches you up with the US Presidential candidates. It’s quite smart.

You can choose which topics you’re interested in by distributing 20 points among 14 categories. I gave one point to each category then bumped up a few areas where I feel strongest. It then gives you a set of questions based on those topics.

Once you’ve answered them, it ranks the Presidential candidates in order of similarity. You can go right into each question and see how each of the candidates would answer each question, with all kinds of quotes, voting records and suchlike to back it up.

Of course, it’s not very fair for me to be waxing lyrical about American politics. I have never set foot in the country, and chances are I could have different views on American political issues if I actually lived there. A lot of these are very US-centric questions rather than the big ideological picture.

Still, it is interesting to learn a bit more about the candidates. The names we all see are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani. Sometimes John McCain. It’s not often you hear of any of the others. But it’s important to learn about them.

I remember at around this stage of the last US Presidential election we were discussing the Democratic candidates in our modern studies class. Trying to work out which of the candidates were the most important, our teacher immediately scored off John Kerry because he was a no-hoper! (In retrospect, she was actually probably right.)

Anyway, the quiz. The candidate who comes out as most similar to me is someone I’ve never heard of before — Mike Gravel. We are 81% similar, with very similar views on drugs, civil liberties, gay rights, crime and punishment, abortion, environment and immigration. But we have dissimilar views on social security and economics.

Second is someone else I’ve never heard of — Christopher Dodd, with 75%. We are different on social security and very different on economics. Dennis Kucinich also has 75%, but we disagree on taxes and budget, social security and economics.

Of the big guns, Barack Obama is fourth with 74% (different on taxes and budget, social security and very different on crime and punishment (Obama supports the death penalty)). Hillary Clinton is 66% similar (different views on taxes and budget, drugs, social security and very different on crime and punishment).

All of the Democratic candidates score more highly than the Republican candidates. The top Republican candidate for me is Ron Paul — 9^th with 61%. We have very similar views on drugs, civil liberties and crime and punishment, but very different views on immigration, health care and abortion.

Rudy Giuliani only comes out 13^th with 47%. We have very similar views on environment and gun control, but very different views on gay rights, Iraq and foreign policy, health care, civil liberties, drugs and crime and punishment.

My least similar is my namesake, Duncan Hunter. We are only 30% similar, with similar views on social security (and even that is only because neither of us has an opinion on it).

Via Blah Blah Flowers.