It almost seems like a loyalty thing with you – remaining independent allows you to criticize more freely in your own mind. But that’s not actually true for partisans either, many of them are highly critical as well.

I’ll also say that a distaste for “disarray and incoherence” suggests to me a worship of power and efficiency that is also distasteful.

As to what this Congress has done – let’s see: Rumsfeld and Gonzales out, numerous other flunkies at Justice out, people who refuse to protect voting rights out at Justice, numerous other resignations of Bush Administration apparatchiks. Blackwater and other contractors in Iraq under investigation, etc. None of this would have happened if the Democrats had failed to take power.

And right now, the Democrats are holding up the FISA bill and preventing the telecoms from getting immunity. Now, is this enough? No. But is it better than what we had? Yes.

I’ll also mention to me how distasteful this is when you proffer emotional attachments to “authentic” people like John McCain who will continue all the current policies you hate and maybe invade Iran in the bargain, while simultaneously complaining about the Democrats. I can’t take you very seriously as someone who is extremely concerned about the state of the country and the policies it is pursuing if you continue to make political decisions based on emotional appeals and authenticity. The fact that you take refuge in such things suggest to me that you aren’t actually that concerned about the state of the country or you would be doing things differently.

I don’t really think I would ever have actually voted for McCain, for some of the reasons I indicated above. Mostly, I’m just saying that I liked what I thought I saw in him at first in ’99 (as he was a guy I didn’t know much about initially). Sort of the same way that I have some appreciation for Goldwater’s consistency of viewpoint even though the guy was a gazillion miles away from me on most points. I think that’s part of it: I feel able to break bread with someone authentic, even someone very very much unlike myself. That’s part of what I’d identify as my stubborn attachment to being an independent: a belief that a candidate or official who has convictions opposite to my own might nevertheless be someone whose presence in the total system of political power I appreciate if I think they’re heartfelt, consistent, and return my appreciation towards their opponents. That’s the last and key thing that I see as part of what I’d say was authentic, and it’s lacking in almost every major figure of the contemporary Republican Party: a faith in a shared system, a commitment to common trust in institutions, and an appreciation for the value of political diversity. But somehow I want to remain open to the possibility of that appearing in any individual or leader.

(1) The piece really runs off the rails at the end. Your reasons for staying an independent versus joining one of the political parties aren’t convincing.

“Not just because the party-line candidate is business as usual in a time where we need something else (don’t we always need something else)?” How is this true this year? If anything, the leading contenders in the political races promise in general to be quite different from the current occupant in many ways. The Democratic candidates are further to the left than they were in 2000 or 2004, and the Republican candidates have in many ways gone further to the right of Bush, implicitly considering him a failed conservative and promising a more orthodox and stronger conservative tilt in this race.

“But also because the party-line candidate can’t even be counted on to deliver business as usual as a function of their superior ideological discipline or specificity. How much has a Democratic Congress delivered in the last two years in terms of Democratic positions? (Assuming there is such a thing amid the contradictions of the contemporary Democratic Party.)”

First off, it hasn’t been two years since January 2007, and the fact that you can even make this error suggests a problem to me. Secondly, there are two ways to judge the Democratic Congress: in things it has done and in things it has prevented from happening. You’re not making any effort to discuss the second class of things, but the oversight power is potentially very important, especially since the Republicans and the retrograde elements in the Democratic party have decided to support many of the Bush administration’s policies.

“I keep hearing that building a big tent is a fool’s errand, that persuasion is for chumps, and that all we need is a leader with the correct checklist and the will to fight without compromise or hesitation for it. If that were sufficient, things would already be far different than they are. Independents have one set of illusions, party loyalists and activists another.”

But this inarguably worked for Bush for six years. He didn’t use persuasion, but he got his tax cuts, his war with Iraq, his Supreme Court justices (after the Harriet Miers debacle), etc. Now it hasn’t worked terrifically, but in terms of being able to ram through an unpopular agenda, it has worked, at least in the short term. And it worked for FDR also.

Your points just aren’t convincing here.

(2) What is the value of being an Independent for you? I don’t really understand it – is it to stay above the fray? Is it to allow yourself to consider people as opposed to issues? The fact that you were willing to vote for McCain suggests an emotional response that I can’t figure out how you would justify.

As far as I can tell, you define being Independent as being apart from and somehow between the Democratic and Republican parties. (I don’t think you are choosing between the Green and the Democratic parties or between the Republican and the Libertarian parties.) So what is attractive to you about the Republican party? Seriously, what policy or approach or emotional pitch do you find more persuasive in their approach?

Annual polls taken by Gallup on the question of whether the national government should see to it that all citizens have health insurance coverage, have found the People in favor of the proposition by a healthy majority. The average in favor has been 62.2% over that period. So the public wish has been strong and sustained. But this public wish did not become a public policy.

Instead Congress passed the Medicare Drug act that helped the major drug companies, some insurance companies, and some Medicare recipients, but it did not provide health coverage for any new persons. The passing of Medicare HMO’s legislation helped the HMO’s raid the public treasury, but it did not provide coverage for any new persons. The childish arguments between the White House and Congress over the SCHIP, has resulted in fewer persons being covered, and these are children. So direct action by the national government has been in defiance of a clear public wish.

The absolutely disgusting performance by both parties in this primary season shows that personality, race, gender, corruption (who is the more corrupt, Obama or Clinton for example) and the like have taken us far away from the pressing issues of our day, issues that are long overdue for real action. And all of this is directly caused by the two-party system, whose ingenious development of earmarks has enabled the party out of office to still demand “contributions” in exchange for a cash bonanza for the giver.

Most citizens think, I’ll wager, that the two-party system is actually part of the Constitution. Some scholars, Bruce Ackerman, Larry Sabato, Samuel Kernell, Gary C. Jacobson, Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, and even former President Woodrow Wilson assert the essentiality of the two-party system.

And the quintessential example of two-party system failure is the infamous Compromise of 1877 that resulted in nearly a century of Jim Crow laws spawned by off-the-books agreements between political parties in the name of getting and keeping political power.

The Framers imagined a United States without political parties. It is still not too late, and it would be easy to make the change. All we have to do is change the way we select our political representatives. We have the proven technology, new since the Constitutional Convention, and we have proven procedures that precede the Constitution.

In that party-free world, personality, gender, race, corruption, ideology, religion all would disappear as political elements to be replaced by focus on issues of importance and ideas for dealing with them. The native genius of the People would give us an example of speed, forthrightness, and equality not yet seen on this globe. Public wishes would become public policies, and that is all anybody should ever need or want.

My experience with Dar: 3 months lead-time via email meant nothing. Basically one month of in-country running around and badgering both government and university officials (a couple of professors very helpful) to get the right stamps. Lots of “try back tomorrow” and one instance of circular exclusion that necessitated an intervention by one of the U’s professors (A required to get B; B required to get A).

Then again, I don’t have Dr. in front of my name yet…