Today is the Midterm Elections here in the United States. If the pre-election day polls are to be believed, it looks like good news for the Democrats and bad news for the Republicans. The big question is whether the news is good/bad enough for Democrats to take control of one or both houses of Congress. I guess we’ll know by tonight.

But this post isn’t about the midterms. Don’t get me wrong, I hope the Democrats take back both houses of congress. But whoever ends up controlling Congress will have a thin majority at best, which will limit their ability to accomplish much. Frankly, the only area that I would expect to see much traction is on issues where moderate Republicans can reach across the aisle and vote with the Democrats in order to distance themselves from President Bush’s abysmal approval ratings.

I’m much more interested in the 2008 presidential campaign. For the first time in over 50 years, it will be a wide open race for both parties. Neither the sitting president nor the vice president will be running for president in 2008. The last time this happened was in 1952. President Harry Truman (D) dropped out of the race after losing the New Hampshire primary and Vice President Alben Barkley never had enough support to win the nomination. The Democratic nomination went to Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson who lost to General Eisenhower in a landslide. Since then, the incumbent president or vice president has always been his party’s nominee for president.

Until now. Well, until two years from now at any rate. So while not completely unprecedented, this is the first time we’ve had a completely wide open race since the start of the Information Age. In other words, it’s the first time we’ve had a wide open race since the advent of cable TV, personal computers, 24 news networks, Rush Limbaugh, the Internet, weblogs, Wikipedia and YouTube. I’m sure some have already started calling this Politics 2.0. And while I’m tired of the “2.0″ moniker, certainly big changes is underway in the political arena.

So what happens when you combine the harsh sunlight of a decentralized and demassivied media with a wide open race with no clear favorite from either party? I’m guessing a very ugly race, especially from the Republicans. Both parties do negative ads, but they have become a “key strategy in the Republican political arsenal“. (The NRCC apparently spent “more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget” on negative ads this year.) I expect 2008 will be even worse. And not just the presidential race itself, but also the race for each party’s nomination. In some ways, the nomination race will be worse, since you expect politicians to have bad things to say about candidates from the opposing party.

If the next two years are filled with party infighting with every detail chronicled in the blogosphere and/or the mainstream media – and I fully expect that’s what will happen – we are in for a very ugly campaign ahead. Brace yourselves.

My wife Julie has a degree in sociology. Furthermore, she has a knack for sociology, the way I have a knack for computers. It’s part of what makes her such a great mom and teacher. Anyway, Julie once told me that sociology is easy because everything you need to know about a given theory is in the title. Not sure how true that is in sociology in general, but it certainly is true of my own personal sociological theory, the aptly named “Harry Pierson’s Numero Uno Theory of Sociology”, which states:

Everyone Looks Out For Numero Uno.

This applies not only to individuals, but also to organizations. When forced to choose between what is “right” (as defined by the organization’s core principles) and what will protect the organization’s long-term survival, the organization will always choose to protect itself and sacrifice its core principles.

I first came up with this theory several years ago, when the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal was in full swing. The Catholic Church – like pretty much all religions – has very rigid definitions of what is right in the way of values and morality. Yet when their own priests violated these very principles and acted immorally, the representatives of the church chose to “look out for numero uno” and protect the organization by suppressing the evidence rather than doing what is right by their own definition.

Now we’re embroiled in a similar scandal, this time in politics. Last week, Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla) resigned when it came to light that he had sent sexually explicit emails and IM’s to underage male Congressional pages. While criminal, what makes this a Numero Uno scandal is that Republican leadership has known these messages since late last year but decided to “look out for numero uno” and try to cover it up. Even as late as last week, Congressman Tom Reynolds’ (R-NY) chief of staff Kirk Fordham tried to cut a deal with ABC “not to publish the raw, sexually explicit messages“.

The fallout from this scandal has already been massive. Liberals and conservatives alike are appalled by both Foley’s predatory behavior and Republican leadership’s attempt to sweep it under the rug. While other recent scandals on Capital Hill – such as those involving Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham – have been further reaching, Foley’s scandal is more likely to be covered at length by the mainstream media. To quote Kevin Drum, “It involves sex, it involves coverups, it involves powerful players turning on each other to protect their own skins, and it involves lots of documentary evidence.” Like it or not, that’s the kind of scandal that gets eyeballs and ratings.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Republicans, as this comes barely a month before the mid-term elections. Most political analysts give the Democrats a decent chance to take back the majority in one or both houses of Congress, and that was before this scandal broke. We won’t know how big an impact the Foley scandal will have until after the mid term elections.

However, if Republican leadership had dealt with it last fall or even last spring, the election impact would have been drastically reduced. Of course, it would have gotten wall-to-wall media coverage, but it would have lacked the coverup angle and it wouldn’t be taking up so much pre-election airtime now. Foley wouldn’t be on the ballot in Florida. And I wonder what this will do to Republican voter turnout across the board, given that a significant percentage of conservative voters are anti-homosexual.

But that’s the thing about Numero Uno, you’re always looking out for it, regardless of the potential consequences down the road.

Long term readers know my liberal political leanings. So it should come as no surprise to them that I read liberal blogs like Washington Monthly. But this isn’t a post about politics, it’s a post about planning:

This kind of long-term planning — in politics, in business, in nearly every walk of life — is something that nearly everyone says they support, but when push comes to shove very few people are willing to back it up. There’s always something this week, or this month, or this year that seems uniquely crucial and demands our attention. Next year there will be something else, and the year after that something else again. The long-term stuff simply never gets done unless someone like Dean is willing to go to the mat for it.
[Building a Better Movement – Kevin Drum]

I don’t have much to add to this, except that planning is a big part of architecture, especially architecture in the enterprise (which may or may not be “Enterprise Architecture”). Who “goes to the mat” for the long-term stuff at your company? Or does the long-term stuff simply never get done?

(Quick reminder, this is my personal blog. Standard disclaimer applies.)

I’m guessing the White House Correspondents’ Association didn’t run their choice of dinner entertainment past the actual White House. Last year, Stephen Colbert had this hilarious bit on Laura Bush’s “after hours” show @ last year’s dinner.

I wonder who thought “Let’s get the guy that made the joke about President Bush bathing in a bucket of horse semen last year to appear at this year’s Correspondent’s dinner.” Actually, I don’t have to wonder. It was Mark Smith from AP Radio, the President of WHCA, who admitted to being responsible for signing Colbert while introducing him Saturday night. This guy considered “Colbert: AP is America’s #1 threat” a “pit-in-my-stomach, career-in-flames moment”. I’m guessing he’s in full barf-o-rama mode after Colbert’s stunning performance. This administration isn’t exactly known for forgiving and forgetting. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark Smith could get to the White House in the future was the online tour.

You can get the transcript from Daily Kos and the video from Vast Moderate Conspiracy. The video is also up on YouTube (in parts). Check out Thank You Stephen Colbert for links. And while you’re there, you can join the nearly 14,000 people who have said thanks in just under 24 hours.

A few people took issue with me calling Dennis Miller a partisan hack while also expressing relief that the new season of Real Time with Bill Maher was starting. I finally got to watch last Friday’s episode. Sure, they made fun of Dick Cheney’s hunting accident and had a round of negative things to say about this administrations handling of Iraq (one of the guests was Dan Senor, Advisor to the U.S. Presidential Envoy in Iraq) but he also grilled Democratic Senator Russ Feingold on the effectiveness of campain finance reform and came out as pro-wiretapping:

[I]f they need to listen to keep a dirty bomb from going off in Long Beach, then I say, “Listen away.”

<snip>

Oh, please, Americans don’t want privacy. They want attention! They’ll put a camera in their shower and show it on the Internet! To get on television, they’ll marry strangers and eat a cow’s rectum, and ice dance with Todd Bridges. They’re trying to get on a show called “Big Brother”!

We are a nation of exhibitionists from “me” to shining “me.” And what we really fear isn’t that someone’s listening; it’s that no one’s listening. This whole country is one big desperate cry for somebody to listen to “listen to me, photograph me, Google me, read my blog! Read my diary; read my memoir. It’s not interesting enough? I’ll make shit up!”

<snip>

I tell you, this country gave the finger to privacy a long time ago.

[Bill Maher’s New Rules for 2/17/2006]

Seems like quite a difference to Dennis Miller calling out John Kerry and Howard Dean a year after the election and having nothing at all negative to say about the Bush administration.

Out of curiosity, I’m wondering what people think of Jon Stewart of The Daily Show fame. Partisan Hack or Not?