Two heuristics that swing elections

Quico says: Political scientists have a dirty little secret. It's not really polite to say it in mixed company, but it's a fact: casting a smart vote is just not worth the effort.

To cast a fully informed vote, a voter would have to conduct an exhaustive search. In the case of the current Constitutional Reform Referendum, this would involve carrying out a full review of the juridical implications of each of the 70-odd articles up to be reformed, and then formulating a fully informed, perfectly rational judgment about it. Even assuming that's possible in principle (which some philosophers will tell you it isn't), it's surely not worth it.

The cost in time and effort is wildly out of proportion to the 'benefit': the negligible chance that your one measly vote will swing the election. Coldly considered casting an informed vote just doesn't make sense.

Note that this isn't an attack on regular people for being ignorant; just the opposite. It's an acknowledgment that, in trying to decide how to vote, ignorance is rational.

So rational voters do what they can to cut the costs of voting. They look for quick and easy solutions to the problem of making a decision. Academic types call them heuristics: rules of thumb designed to save time and effort. Heuristics are, by their nature, not fully rational: the whole reason they exist is to meet the need for shortcuts to full rationality.

A couple of heuristics seem to play a particularly important role in voters' behavior:

1. The nature of the times heuristic: When times are good, you vote for continuity. When times are bad, you vote for change.

2. The identification heuristic: You are more likely to vote for people you identify emotionally with, with people who, you sense, "get you."

It's due to the power of these two heuristics that so many surveys ask those familiar questions: "is the country on the right track or on the wrong track?" and "does X understand the problems of people like you?" Depressingly, those questions seem to predict voting outcomes almost as well as asking people straight out who they plan to vote for.

So how are these two heuristics likely to pan out next Sunday?

1. Sporadic shortages notwithstanding, the times are definitely good. With a massive oil bonanza fueling a 70s style consumption boom, people will tend to vote for continuity. But does that mean voting SI or NO? That's not so clear. Continuity with the government means discontinuity with the constitution, and vice versa.

The Nature of the Times heuristic explains why both campaigns have struggled to define themselves as standard bearers of continuity.

Chávez has implied that voting "No" would introduce a radical discontinuity (musing publicly about quitting his job if the No wins), and using the unambiguously continuista slogan: "SIgue con Chávez".

The opposition has stressed just how radical the proposed changes are (e.g. "it's not a reform, it's a new constitution"), and saying it would be better to start respecting the constitution we already have than to change it. And the "No" side is aided by the fact that it is the "No" side - an advantage when voters want no change.

2. The Identification heuristic has always worked brilliantly for Chávez. He's a charismatic guy, and has long had a knack for convincing regular folks that he's just like them and, like them, totally unlike the fat cat opposition.

But think how long it's been since we've heard him ask "MariPili, ¿a cuánto está el pollo?" With time, Chávez has morphed from garrulous populist to sectarian socialist. Certainly, Chávez in 2007 is a far more ideologically oriented speaker than he was even a year ago.

But here's the rub: it was always Populist Chávez that folks identified with. Socialist Chávez vaguely scares people: he's too strident, too rigid. His speeches are too abstract to tug at the old identification heuristic heartstrings like populist Chávez could. If there's one point that all Venezuelan pollsters agree on, it's that Chávez is popular despite his ideological agenda, not because of it.

For a long time, people were smitten with him because they felt that he cared about their individual, personal problems; so much so that many went to great lengths to write those problems on a slip of paper and put them - literally - in his hands. But the more esoteric and strident his discourse gets, the more detached from the mundane problems of day to day life in a poor country, the less people feel his government is all about their problems.

Chávez doesn't seem wise to these trends. Instead of realizing he's in a tight race and focusing, the guy spent the last month traveling all around the world, picking big fights with everyone in sight, spending all his time worrying about FARC's hostages or an American attack on Iran, and generally not paying any attention at all to "the problems of people like you."

All of which helps explain why polls show a big majority think constitutional reform is about what's in Chávez's interest, not about what's in the people's interests. And why Datanalisis has NiNis trending No by a bone crushing 5-to-1 margin. Which is huge.

Comando Zamora is fighting the last war. The basic flaw in the its "SIgue con Chávez" strategy is that personalizing the campaign, in 2007, means personalizing it around a figure people identify with considerably less than they once did. In fact, it means centering the campaign on a guy people suspect is doing this for his benefit, not theirs.

It's going to be an interesting week.

The times they are a'changin'...

Quico says: A couple of months ago, my feeling was that if there was any way for the oppo old guard to blow their survey lead ahead of the constitutional reform referendum, they would find it. So far, my expectations have been confounded by a highly unusual outbreak of oppo good sense. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles: the old guard seems to be sitting this one out.

Leopoldo Puchi? MIA. Antonio Ledezma? AWOL. Ramos Allup? May or may not have emigrated.

These people are not the public face of the opposition in the run up to December 2nd, and what a difference it makes.

For years, Chavismo invested tons of money and thousands of cadena hours on a concerted effort to drive up the opposition's negatives. They were shooting on an open goal, and they succeeded: tarnishing the opposition "brand" so badly that, by the start of this year, not even 10% of Venezuelans wanted to describe themselves as "opositores." That old guard's image was buried completely by the immense amount of mud slung at it, as well as the ineptitude of its own attempts at a fightback. It reached a point where simply exiting the political scene was the only viable option they had left.

Today, the public face of the opposition is the Student Movement. It may not be fair to put adolescents in this position, or wise. Katy may not like it, student leaders themselves may not want it, but it's not really up to them.

Como dijo el filósofo de cuyo nombre no me quiero acordar, "men make their own history, but not under conditions they choose." Ready or not, history has thrust these kids into the position they're in, and they just have to run with it.

One thing is clear: these chamos have learned the lessons from the failures of the leadership they've replaced. Where the old oppo was maximalist, the Student Movement makes a point of not calling for Chávez to step down before his term is up. Where the old oppo played into the government's hands by personalizing the debate, ceaselessly "Chaveztizing it", the students center their message on civil rights. Whereas the old oppo never saw a red rag it didn't want to charge, the student movement isn't scared to step away from confrontations that can only play to the government's advantage.

Gloriously, they've left Chávez without a credible target, without a reasonably demonizable enemy. His attempts to lump the kids in with the old guard are vaguely pathetic. It's just not credible to slam people who hadn't reached adolescence when Chávez first came to power as "widows of puntofijismo." There's palpable confusion as chavistas realize tried and tested polarization techniques have stopped working somehow.

And so, for the first time in the Chávez era, the government is approaching a vote it seems likely to lose. According to Datanalisis' José Antonio Gil Yépez, Datanalisis, Mercanalisis, Datos and Ivad are all showing the NO side 12 to 16 points ahead, and rising. Crucially, unaligned voters ("NiNis") are trending against the reform by as much as 5 to 1. No chavista proposal can survive a NiNi rout on that scale.

Of course, none of that matters if people don't turn out to vote. The interesting thing is that, as people become increasingly aware that the YES side is way behind, an air of excitement seems to be building about voting. There's a buzz in the air in oppo circles, a feeling that we're facing a whole new ballgame here. And that excitement takes the oxygen out of the abstention movement. Refusing to vote when, deep down, you know you're about to get drubbed is easy: electoral sour grapes mascarading as political strategy. Abstaining when, deep down, you know you're about to win is something else altogether.

We've never been in a situation like this before. This time it's for real: if chavismo wants this election, it's going to have to steal it. And it won't be able to steal it subtly: the gap between the sides is too large for electronic fraud to be concealable, given the existing hot audit procedures. With half the votes being hand counted, everyone (Venezuelan and foreigner, chavista and oppo, civilian and military) is going to be able to tell.

Terra incognita, folks. How will Chávez react?

Well...how does a semi-delusional narcissist react to a massive, very public ego blow?

Badly, is my guess. Very badly.

Lies and Consequences

Lucia says: Two quotes in recent wire stories neatly encapsulate the Chávez strategy for December 2nd.

The first comes from a 32-year old mother of four, interviewed by the Associated Press after she'd waited in line for four hours for milk:

Bastida said she still believes in Chavez and plans to vote in favor of his reforms "so that things will get better." Plus, she said, if "everyone votes 'NO' they're going to take the Megamercal away from us."

The second is a quote from Chávez himself, from a Reuters article about recent polls:

"My message to everyone (on my team) is that we try to translate the very high level of support for the president...into support for the constitutional reform," he said.

"Anyone voting 'No' is voting against Chavez, anyone voting 'Yes' is voting for Chavez," he added.


In other words, Chávez knows that trying to run a campaign on the merits of the reforms is a lost cause.

His pollsters have told him that many of the individual reforms simply do not have majority support.

But that troubles him not in the least. He's willing to change his nation's constitution based on lies ("they're going to take Mercal away") and his current personal popularity -- in other words, to re-write the major political and economic rules of his nation without creating anything resembling a real consensus.

The consequences of a Chávez victory on December 2nd would be felt for many years to come in Venezuela. But let me posit that Chávez himself will lose, if Chávez wins. He's building a revolution on lies and misunderstanding and fear. It's not a healthy foundation.

Also worth a look

Katy says: My apologies for not posting much recently. Quico has a deadline, Lucia is MIA, and I'm tied up with child-care issues and with my hard drive having some sort of nervous breakdown.

In the meantime, have fun in the comments section, and check out this uncommonly lucid interview with Causa R Secretary General Alfredo Ramos.

Worth a look

Quico says: Reporters Without Borders' letter to President Sarkozy on the eve of his meeting with Chávez is here.

The Economist's quite positive take on the student movement is here.

The BBC's story on Spain's hit ring tone of the season is here.

Chávez the Inevitable

[Quico says: About a year ago, we had a funny little incident in the comments section. Readers accused me of using a Sockpuppet by the name of "Lucía" to back up my opinions! Of course, Lucía wasn't an alter ego at all, just a reader who happened to agree with Katy and me most of the time. She's a stylish writer as well, and I'm very glad to say she's agreed to contribute to the site sporadically, starting with:]

---

Lucía says: Have you noticed how many of the foreign journalists covering Venezuela are treating a Chávez victory on December 2nd as a foregone conclusion? They’re not predicting trouble at the polls, or government fraud, or even a close race – they’re simply saying more people will vote YES than NO.

Polls showing most Venezuelans do not support the reforms have not dented this conventional wisdom, repeated in article after article, even a bit.

This is not about bias. The student movement and the Baduel defection, for instance, have received generous coverage from these same reporters.

So what’s happening here? I have a couple of ideas:

Journalists Use the Last Election as a Template for the Next One. Not entirely unreasonably, how the last election played out influences how the next one is covered. In the last election, foreign journalists saw massive rallies staged against Chávez. The opposition was mobilized and united behind Rosales. And the opposition lost.

And this made sense, too. Double-digit economic growth + billions in social spending + massively outspending your opponent -- politicians don’t tend to lose with this formula. Petrocrats worldwide are basking in strong approval ratings and consolidating power, and Chávez is no exception.

Journalists look at the current campaign and see that many of the disadvantages faced by the opposition last time around are still in place – or have gotten worse. The Venezuelan economy grew at an impressive clip in the third quarter of 2007. Billions more are being poured into misiones (with new misiones created, it seems, every time Chávez thinks up a dead ideologue he wants to honor). The opposition will again be absurdly outspent in the campaign.

If anything, the opposition's position is even worse this time around. No RCTV. Even harsher restrictions on advertising space. And an abstention problem in their own camp.

Too Many Bad Polls. Another reason journalists are skeptical about a possible No victory is that the primary evidence one could be brewing comes from the polls. And as everyone who follows Venezuelan politics knows, polls have been a major source of controversy over the last few years. There are, in fact, ways to tell good polls from bad (the composition of the sample [hint: make sure rural Venezuela is represented] and the track record of the pollster are good places to start), but most journalists aren’t going to sift through piles of data and ask tough questions about methodology. They’re going to do what makes sense when facing a deadline: they’ll print some survey results, discard most, and treat all with a healthy dose of skepticism.

And with Venezuela’s recent history littered with polls off by ten or more points, it’s hard to argue that the skepticism isn’t warranted.

The Opposition. The opposition is not, for the most part, press-savvy. To be sure, opposition leaders can be counted on to provide a quote or two to fill out an article. But opposition leaders don’t regularly cultivate foreign journalists, or share news-breaking material, or do much at all to try to combat the notion that they’re the gang who can’t shoot straight. Which is too bad. Because while some opposition figures are nothing more than Globovisión windbags, others could offer a valuable perspective, and access to grassroots sources. (You don’t think courting the foreign press is important? The Venezuelan government does: they spend your money on some very fancy lobby and PR firms.)

So that’s how many journalists genuinely view this election – some interesting developments, but still an impossible climb for the opposition.

But could the conventional wisdom be wrong?

Maybe.

This December is not last December. Standing in line for milk makes voters cranky. And Chávez is not on the ballot. This is important, because some moderate Chavistas may be willing to vote against the reforms even though they’re not entirely ready to give up on him yet. Chávez’s support outside his hard-core base is due to the misiones. But moderate Chavistas are very wary of extreme Chavismo: they don’t like the divisive rhetoric, the Fidel and Mahmoud love affairs, the spending abroad, the RCTV license cancellation, the violence against the students, the insults to the church. And they don’t like many of the reform proposals, either. The very vocal defections of Baduel and Podemos may underline what they themselves are feeling – this revolution is getting out of control.

We may have reached a tipping point for this key segment of voters.

If so, I hope reporters pick up on it and start writing about it.

Because what they write matters. If, in the final days before the vote, the LatAm cognoscenti around the world believe a Chávez victory is inevitable, there will be little scrutiny of the electoral process or outcome. But if the conventional wisdom shifts, and the “NO” momentum is acknowledged, we could be looking at a whole new ball game.

Abstentionists in their ink

Katy says: There was an interesting development yesterday in the CNE, one that plays a not-so-minor role in the abstention vs. voting debate. The indelible ink to be used on December 2nd was audited in the presence of the "No" camp.

This issue is not a minor one. As I have said before, the use of indelible ink is a valuable step in the direction of holding fair electoral processes. Of course, it doesn't fix everything, but it certainly takes away some of the arguments for abstaining.

One of these arguments has to do with the Electoral Registry (REP). The story is that the Registry contains too many people who are dead, people who appear several times, have weird information or are suspicious for other reasons. The rationale is that the Registry is screwed up so that chavistas are allowed to vote many times, and that therefore we should not vote because voting would legitimize the fraud being perpetrated.

There is no doubt the REP could use some work. But with indelible ink, this argument becomes moot since nobody physically present in the country the day of the election would, in theory, be able to vote twice. And while there is an issue with votes being tallied without anyone having actually cast them, it would be clear whenever this happened. After all, electoral notebooks and opposition witnesses would be able to tell how many people physically showed up and compare that number to the number of votes being spit out by the machine.

One of the complaints from the last election was that the ink was not indelible after all, and that this allowed chavistas to vote twice. Yet the enormous effort it would require to ship thousands of chavistas to their voting centers, have them erase the evidence of their vote, and then take them to their secondary or tertiary voting center so they could vote with their supplemental identities, repeating the process in between, made this scenario highly unlikely.

Ink also serves as a psychological weapon. There is something about the use of indelible ink that makes people trust the system a little bit more, and make them a tad more confident that the chavistas around them have not double- or triple-dipped their fingers and cast multiple votes.

The ink has now been audited, and the process will continue, with the CNE having apparently agreed to allow for random audits of different samples while the electoral material is being put together. The CNE even allowed the UCV to participate, and it was all controversy-free.

Add to this the fact that the fingerprint machines will not be connected to CNE headquarters, that electronic voting notebooks will not be used, that half the boxes will be audited, and it seems to me that conditions this time around are decent. Obviously, one would want more electoral transparency - the issue of the use of government funds for campaigning is a non-starter - but I find the arguments for abstention becoming thinner and thinner every day.

Sort of like the ink that was used last December.

The Public Sphere is like a Garden

Quico says: Habermas understands the public sphere as that realm of social life where private individuals come together to discuss public matters collectively. The public sphere is actualized every single day on the pages of newspapers, at university cafeterias, around kitchen tables, in union halls and political party meetings as well as on blogs - whenever and wherever private individuals come together to talk about public affairs.

At its best, deliberation in the public sphere is reasoned, focused on arguments rather than personalities, open to all, and geared towards building common understanding. The health of the public sphere is vital to the viability of democracy. The opinion of the majority is democratically legitimate only to the degree that discussion in the public sphere operates as it's supposed to. Only then does "public opinion" embody a process of collective deliberation that honors our nature as thinking beings: and that, deep down, is the whole point of democracy.

But there's no a priori reason to believe the Public Sphere will work properly all or even most of the time. Just the opposite: the habits of mind necessary to sustain critical debate in a democratic public sphere are always fragile, always precarious, always in need of attention. They can't be mandated or legislated or imposed. They need to be fostered and protected.

I've been trying to think of an image, a metaphor to capture what's happened to our public sphere over the last few years. The other day I tried Alzheimer's. But maybe this one works better:

A democratic public sphere is like a garden. It needs tending. It needs attention, care, fussing over. It needs somebody to protect it from all kinds of threats: insects, fungi, storms, frosts, rabbits and weeds. Left to its own devices, it will be slowly overrun. It can't be taken for granted.

Venezuela's public sphere was never particularly tidy. Since 1958, it was always a bit ramshackle, overgrown here and there, encroached on by the surrounding, wild tropical vegetation and besieged by all kinds of plagues - petrostate clientelism, the mantuano discourse, general ignorance, pervasive disdain. Nobody took the job of tending it very seriously - we treated more like a Conuco, really - but neither did it quite turn back into jungle.

Eight years ago, Hugo Chavez sized up our public sphere and took a flamethrower to it. It's a heap of smoldering debris by now, just totally wrecked. Worse yet, many in the opposition figured that the way to fight back was to get flamethrowers of their own. They ended up scorching the parts of the garden that had somehow survived the initial onslaught.

Others (a minority) realized all along the need to try to save what could be saved of the garden, to protect it, to shield it from the devastation all around. But it's a losing battle. Gardening takes time, effort, perseverance. Flamethrowing doesn't. What takes the gardener a year to build takes the flamethrower a minute to burn down. Does it really make sense to try to garden while we're surrounded by people determined to burn down whatever we manage to grow?

One thing is clear to me: if we're going to build a democratic public sphere, winning in December isn't enough. Even getting Chavez out of Miraflores isn't enough, because he can keep wrecking any attempt to build a democratic public sphere just as easily from the opposition as he can from the government. We need to wrestle the flamethrower away from him...as well as from the hotheads on "our" side. And then we need to start gardening.

We need to reinvent the way we talk about ourselves to ourselves. We need to craft a new consensus about what is and what isn't acceptable in public deliberation. We need to enshrine the kind of standards Zapatero was trying (in vain) to explain to Chavez when the King lost his cool ("Se puede estar en las antípodas de una posición ideológica - no seré yo el que esté cerca de las ideas de Aznar - pero el ex presidente Aznar fue elegido por los españoles y exijo ese respeto. Se puede discrepar radicalmente sin irrespetar.") In Venezuela, getting everyone to accept those norms would require a whole new conception of what it means to "do politics." It'll be the work of a generation, or more.

One glimmer of hope: when farmers are looking to clear a field for cultivation, probably the oldest technique to prepare it is to slash-and-burn. It's just imaginable that if one day, somehow, we manage to get the flamethrowers out of our public sphere, we'll find the ground is readier for cultivation than now seems quite imaginable.

Got milk?

Katy says: We maracuchas have our own little brands that we like to buy and promote. All else things equal, a true zuliano will always choose the local brand over the national one.

For example, for many years in Maracaibo a "newspaper" was called a "Panorama" because of the now-infamous chavista daily that, at least in our city, outsold all national papers combined; Banco de Maracaibo was the top bank in the city far and away, a title now claimed by BOD; Regional Beer and Cerveza Zulia outsold Polar; and so on...

It turns out that we also have our own supermarket chains in Maracaibo. Two of the most popular ones are Víveres de Candido and EnnE - yes, you've never heard of them, but any maracucho/a has, and they're pretty big.

Today I got a picture my sister took two days ago. Turns out the EnnE closest to her house was selling milk! Shows you what you have to go through to get milk in Venezuela, if you're lucky...

Comments are back...

Quico says: ...sanity isn't.

I've been trying to think of stuff to post recently (no, really, I have) but drawing a string of blanks. The country's too far gone.

Sitting down to blog about Venezuela these days reminds me of going to visit my grandmother during the last years of her life. She had Alzheimer's, poor thing.

If you've ever seen someone battle Alzheimer's you know how gradual and drawn out the descent can be. At first it was just a vague feeling that something wasn't quite right with grandma. Then, as the disease became clearer and deeper, an increasing desperation to communicate, coupled with a growing awareness of the difficulties involved. And then, at some point - years after it had all started, but still years before she finally passed away - that hideous certainty that the line between us had been cut, that she would never again recognize me, that the possibility of communion between us had gone for good. She was still alive but, for me, the process of mourning had already begun.

That's more or less how I see Venezuela's democratic public sphere these days. It's still "going," in some sense, but has reached such an advanced level of dementia that you can no longer interact with it in any meaningful sense. Like my grandmother, it becomes less coherent and more repetitive each and every day. Words that may once, long ago, have made sense are repeated mindlessly, devoid of any context, appearing more and more like symptoms of pathology and less and less like meaningful utterances. Fears that may, arguably, have once been rooted in reality get decontextualized, blown out of all proportion and repeated endlessly.

The process has been slow, cruelly gradual, and it could go on for many years to come. By now, the most we can hope for is a crude imitation of democratic deliberation. And we know it can go on like this, getting a very little bit worse day after day after day until, eventually, there's nothing left to get worse and the patient passes away physically, as well as mentally.

And that, I fear, is what's really original about the Venezuelan Path to Totalitarianism. If the German and Russian and Cuban roads were like massive strokes, ending all free political debate in one violent convulsion, our path is degenerative, gradual, and all the more cruel for it.

The cruelest moment - or, given the nature of the disease, the cruellest string of identical moments - in an Alzheimer's patient's progression is when he reaches a panicked insight into the nature of his own condition. When the terrifying clarity of what is happening strikes him, along with the awareness that there's simply nothing he can do to stop or even slow it. For those who have witnessed it from the outside, it's a moment of indescribable pathos.

As I see it, that's more or less where Venezuela is now. In any case, it's certainly where I am.

Just a matter of opinion

Katy says: Yesterday, crackpot Chavista lawmaker Iris Varela threatened to take over private TV station Globovisión. Her complaint is that the station is "conspiring" against the revolution, more or less. No specifics were given.

I've come down hard on Globovisión before. I believe, as I have for a while, that Globovisión's pro-opposition editorial line is damaging to our side because it borders on media manipulation and it does nothing to convince swing voters.

However, Ms. Varela's complaint this time around rings demential, to put it lightly. While Globovisión's coverage is surely biased, the channel is continually used by pro-Chavez figures to broadcast their points of view, something that cannot be said of state TV station VTV.

One of the interesting things I receive in my inbox every day is a summary of all the morning's opinion programs. It lists the guests and what they talked about, and it gives you a glimpse of the type of "balance" Ms. Varela has in mind when calling for "the people" (i.e. chavistas) to take over a private TV station so that it stops conspiring (i.e. airing different points of view).

What follows is a guest-list from morning shows in Globovisión and VTV that have aired in the past three weeks.

Chavista guests on Globovision morning opinion programs included chavistas like Saúl Ortega, Sandra Oblitas, Elvis Amoroso, Alberto Castellar, Robert Serra, Juan José Molina (several times) and Aurora Morales, among others. Their point of view is certainly biased toward the opposition, but I was surprised to see how many chavistas usually go to Globovisión to air their views.

On the other hand, the guest-list on VTV's programs was made up of Luis Bilbao, Jorge Alvarado (Bolivian Ambassador to Venezuela), Vladimir Acosta, Jose Manuel Iglesias (Avila TV), Nestor Lopez (Avila TV), Darío Vivas, Erika Farías, Tibisay Lucena, Jessica Blanco, Cristóbal Jiménez, Andreína Tarazón, Osly Hernández, Rony Prieto, Diosdado Cabello, Carlos Acosta Pérez, José Agustín Campos, José Julián Villalba, Luis Acuña, Zenayda Tahhán, Rafael Isea, Patricia Villegas, Diana Gómez, Hugo Oramas and Jesse Chacón.

If you're wondering what this last list of people have in common, your first guess is right: they are all chavistas. Opposition points of view have been completely been absent from VTV's airwaves in the past three weeks. Let me repeat that: VTV has not aired a single opposition point of view in its morning shows in the past three weeks.

When faced with evidence like this, a blogger is tempted to end the post with a coherent argument about how Ms. Varela needs to look at state-funded VTV and make sure its programming is fair and balanced before complaining about allegedly biased coverage of a privately-owned TV station. But that would be too rational for these people, whose idea of a debate typically involves foaming at the mouth and long firearms.

So I'll lower myself to their level just this once and simply say: Hugo, put your ho on a leash!

Baduel hints at ...

Katy says: ... violence?

Ret.Gen. Raúl Baduel gave a press conference this afternoon and read a strange statement. Although at first glance there is not much in the statement one can argue with - aside from all the BS about the oath at the Güere tree - upon a closer inspection, something mildly creepy reared its head.

He says the reform will guarantee "violence", and that the only way to prevent violence is to either withdraw the reform or call for a Constituent Assembly. He says that this is the only way to ensure some form of consensus or democracy in Venezuela.

Sugarcoating the possibility of consensus in the country at this stage of the game certainly raises an eyebrow, but there was one particular paragraph that freaked me out. He says:

"As soldiers we've been professionally prepared to administer the State's legal and legitimate violence, and therefore, we are experts in the topic of violence and what it entails. Our duty, specially during times like these, is to avoid the unleashing of violent processes and come forward as generators of calm and guides so the country can embark on a true path of development and as promoters and maintainers of peace, remembering the peaceful nature of the Venezuelan people which is expressed in Article 13 of the Constitution."

So - if the Reform causes violence, and it is the duty of the Armed Forces to prevent violence and restore peace, what is he getting at? Is it just me, or is Baduel ever-so-subtly calling his comrades to take up arms against the Reform?

Top ten things we learned at the Iberoamerican Summit

Katy says:

10. This year's Summit was on "Social Cohesion", yet more proof that our leaders still have a sense of humor.

9. Today's fortune cookie: If you invite a crazy man to dinner, don't get mad when he takes a dump on your china.

8. New on DVD... European Royals Gone Wild!

7. Daniel Ortega proves once more that Nicaragua is the land where time stopped.

6. Chavista diplomacy: if we're not gonna talk about what I want, I'm gonna piss all over you.

5. You say Fascist, I say Chavist...

4. Had Angela Merkel been hostess, she would have hosed off the little punks.

3. The King can say goodbye to hanging with Naomi, Sean, Eva and the rest of the posse.

2. The reason he won't shut up is Tourette's Syndrome.

and... (drumroll)

1. The only country in IberoAmerica Chavez has not yet insulted is... Andorra!

Saudi Brazil

Quico says: While we weren't paying attention, South America's energy map changed.

Brazil has discovered somewhere north of 5 billion barrels of recoverable, light oil just off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The Tupi find could boost Brazil total reserves by 50%, turning the country into a net exporter. They could be pumping a million barrels a day outta there for a decade and a half or more to come.

It's one of those transcendent but slow burn events whose importance the press isn't very good at conveying. You won't notice the implications this week, or this year. But the strategic calculus in the region just changed.

Brazil's reserves are still a small fraction of Venezuela's but, today, the regional power is much less energy dependent on its northern neighbor than it was last week. It won't be the sexiest piece of news you'll read this week, but it's probably the most important.

Be the reconciliation you preach

Katy says: The violence we are currently seeing on the streets of Venezuela should surprise no one. Last Sunday, Pres. Chavez ordered his followers to crack down on student protesters, and that is exactly what they are doing. To accomplish this goal, they are ensured a fresh supply of weapons and full immunity from all levels of the State.

Obviously, protesting in Venezuela is becoming an increasingly dangerous proposition. However, there is another imminent danger - that we fall into the same cycle of violence. Few things work better for chavismo than forcing our side to radicalize, and it seems as if the government is following the same script we have seen dozens of times before.

At this stage in the game, though, we need to be very careful with the message we convey. We are less than a month away from a crucial election, and adopting a radical position would simply turn away the moderate swing-voters that hold the key to winning.

I realize that right now might seem like the least appropriate moment to be talking about reconciliation, what with our young people getting shot at. However, it's in times like these when our true mettle is tested, when our true nature comes to the surface. It's important that people in the opposition as well as moderate chavistas see that our nature is peaceful, just like we say it is.

Of all groups, moderate chavistas who dislike the Constitutional reform figure as they key constituency right now. According to recent polls, these are people who are not yet convinced of voting against Chavez because they like some of the things the government does.

So while we contemplate with horror how students are attacked, let's keep our heads cool and remember a few key ideas:

1. We offer reconciliation and peace, chavismo offers violence. This idea may sound like a cliché, but it should be the core of our message, and this has practical implications. Restraint is the key here. If we defend ourselves using violence, we can no longer confidently say that we are for reconciliation. And if we are dishonest about reconciliation, we have very little message left. In other words, one of the single most important reasons in our arsenal to convince people to vote "No" hinges on taking it like flower-eating pacifists and turning the other cheek.

The developments so far are promising. Not only did UCV students yesterday show remarkable judgment in not responding to violence, they also canceled a march today to cool things off a bit. This prevents further skirmishes where we may have a lot to lose in the eyes of public opinion.

2. Recognize that some chavistas are honest idealists fighting real injustice. It is not enough to simply back off from responding to chavistas. We need to continue reaching out to moderate chavistas who are just as horrified as we are about the current events, who may oppose the reform but still feel they would not vote against it because it would amount to voting against Chavez.

In order to get their attention, we must recognize that many of these people are honest in their beliefs, and that we can live with, tolerate and even respect them. We must struggle to find common ground. For example, neither them nor us want to go back to what we had before. Both of us can agree there was, and still is, a tremendous amount of injustice and exclusion in our society. Until you believe these things, until you are able to see past the gunmen and discover the moderates, you cannot become an instrument of reconciliation, and any promises to be one will come off as dishonest.

3. Nobody who hates Chavez and chavistas can preach reconciliation honestly. I thought about this one for a while, but I believe it is true. If you hate, you cannot reconcile. The reason is simple: reconciliation will require in the future an arrangement where chavistas and us can coexist, where the possibility of civilized interactions between Chavez and our leaders is still possible. Yet hatred gets in the way of that, making it extremely difficult and unlikely.

Imagine for a moment a future where you are President and Chavez is no longer in office but still a relevant political figure. Is your first inclination to extract revenge for all that has happened? Is it your goal to wipe chavismo off the political face of the nation? Or do you seek to find a way to coexist with chavismo, its legacy and its followers without sacrificing your own ideas? Do you look for a middle ground, or would you see that as a betrayal to our cause?

I think everyone who participates in our struggle must ask themselves these questions. The answer to them will say a lot about how honest we are as agents of reconciliation, a key element in becoming a majority and saving our country.

Go the extra mile to be the peace that you preach, but don't take it from me, take it from one of my heroes.

A picture summarizes what a "Si" victory would mean

Katy says: Really says it all, doesn't it?

PS.- Quico is traveling, and I'll be out of contact starting tonight for the weekend. Later today, I will post something, and then it's lights out until Monday. Have a safe weekend.

Are you in an abusive political relationship?

Katy says: Does the President you have supported in the past:

1. Embarrass you with put-downs and call you a traitor for not thinking like him?

2. Say things or act in ways that scare you?

3. Want to control what you do, what you see on TV, what education your kids get, what you buy or where you go?

4. Harm your relationship with your friends, coworkers or family members?

5. Take your money, make you ask for money or refuse to give you money

6. Make all of the decisions?

7. Tell you that your values are wrong or threaten to take away your freedoms?

8. Prevent you from finding a job or learning according to your choice?

9. Act like verbal abuse or violence is no big deal, it’s your fault, or even deny doing it?

10. Destroy or take away people's property in an unfair manner?

11. Intimidate you with purchases of guns, airplanes, boats or other weapons?

12. Hit you with laws that came out of nowhere, on which you had no input?

13. Force you to go to marches and wear a red shirt?

14. Say that all good things he has done will end if he does not get what he wants?

15. Threaten to never leave office or bury politically anybody who disagrees with him?

If you answered 'yes' to even one of these questions, you may be in an abusive political relationship.

For help in how to deal with this, VOTE NO December 2nd.

PS.- This one is dedicated to my moderate chavista friends.
PS2.- I trust I have not come across as insensitive toward the plight of victims of domestic violence the world over, but this questionnaire is adapted from this one.

School shootings in Finland, and Caracas

Katy says: The peaceful march to the Supreme Tribunal is tainted in blood, as previous marches were. There are reports that an armed group has entered the campus of Central University in Caracas and has opened fir on students coming back from the march. They have apparently taken over the School of Social Work and set fire to a bus. Four kids have gunshot wounds, but the number is sure to mount. Read the breaking news in Spanish here.

There was a school shooting in Finland today as well. I'm sure the UCV shooting will not make the headlines in the same way as the Finland shooting. After all, when students are shot in Finland, it's news. When it happens in Caracas, it's just another day in the red, very red revolution.

What can we do but hope this ends without further bloodshed.

Tomorrow's headlines, today

Loyal reader lucia say: A glimpse at the possible headlines on December 3, 2007

Chávez Wins Once More, Despite Opposition to Reforms

Caracas. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez won approval from Venezuelan voters yesterday on a slate of constitutional changes that considerably consolidates his hold over power, altering substantially the political and legal framework in this nation of 26 million. Approval for the reform reached 52% of valid votes, versus 45% for the "No" option.

Although polls leading up the election had shown growing opposition to the reforms, and a number of prominent supporters of the President had defected from his camp in recent weeks, Venezuela's divided opposition was unable to turn these advantages into a victory, as a substantial portion of "No" voters stayed away from the polls out of mistrust for the process and electoral authorities. Abstention reached 60% of eligible voters.

Objecting to what they called unfair conditions, some opposition leaders had called for abstention, a strategy which appears to have provided the President with the margin needed for victory. Polls leading up the elections had shown majorities in Venezuela against the reform’s central propositions, which included the removal of term limits for the President and new restrictions on private property.

President Chávez has easily won electoral contests in the past, but faced new challenges in this referendum. General Raúl Baduel, long a Chávez loyalist, was a vocal critic of the reforms. Podemos, one of the policital parties that supports the President, openly called people to vote "No." Escalating food shortages have cut into the President’s once sky-high approval ratings. University students across the nation had led demonstrations against the reforms in the weeks leading up to the vote and repeatedly called on voters to vote "No." And although support for the President’s social spending remains high, there were clear indications that the new reforms were considered too radical for most Venezuelans.

Nonetheless, today it appears as if the President has the tools he needs to transform his nation into a socialist state. Some anticipate an increase in media censorship and political repression along with the broad changes to the nation’s economic underpinnings.

“There’s no doubt about it,” said Lance Freeman of the Inter-American Dialogue, “Venezuela’s opposition scored another own-goal.”

Pablo Cabrera, 54, a taxi driver, was one of the opposition’s supporters who did vote yesterday. "Of course, we have to vote, no matter what,” he said, standing in line at a voting center in Catia, a barrio in Caracas, “or these reforms will kill our country.”

One thing I am forced to admit...

Quico says: ...the electoral dynamic is not what it was.

Top ten reasons you should vote December 2

Katy and loyal reader lucia say: Well, it's election time again, and even though the rightful owner of this blog is kind of sick of the voting vs. abstaining debate, most pollsters think it's the most relevant issue. Personally, I believe we should engage those who believe in abstention - chavistas and non alike - and try and convince them to vote come December 2.

What follows are the Top Ten reasons why you should vote on December 2 - I thought of using "abstain from abstaining", but that was going to be way too confusing. Credit for this post goes to lucia, who egged me on and wrote most of it.

TOP TEN REASONS TO VOTE ON DECEMBER 2

Imagine your sister tells you she's not going to vote, period. How would you convince her? What would you tell her? Here are a few hints.

1. Vote because it is the right thing to do. If the Sí vote wins, things will get worse, a lot worse. And one day, historians will point to this moment as the key, the moment when Chávez went from wannabe dictator to the real thing.

Voting is a sacred right, a privilege. Many Venezuelans died so you could have the right to vote. To this day, people all over the world continue to die because they don't have the right to vote. Do you think the Burmese monks who are in the streets protesting would boycott an election if the military junta held one? Probably not.

2. Vote because your vote does not legitimize anything, just like abstaining does not take away legitimacy from anything. A vote does not equal an endorsement of the CNE, nor does it equal an endorsement of the way the reforms have been introduced. It is possible to vote and protest at the same time. In fact, that day, voting is the only form of protest that will be allowed.

3. Vote to show we are democratic. If we want to show fellow Venezuelans and the world that our movement is democratic, we must participate in elections. Look at how others see our track record: the Carmona debacle, a strike, a boycott of Asamblea elections. If we're honest, we acknowledge that our own democratic credentials could use a boost.

People in Venezuela find it hard to grasp exactly how much respect our side has lost in the eyes of foreign observers. It's very, very hard to explain to sympathetic foreign audiences that abstaining or boycotting elections is the way to get rid of Chávez. Yes, we're fighting an un-democratic regime. But unless we fight it democratically, why are we any better? And how can abstaining or waiting for guarimbas or a coup to topple the government be considered democratic?

4. Vote because, for the first time since before the Recall Referendum, we may actually win. Surveys show voters do not support indefinite re-election. Among all voters, the Sí vote loses! But among likely voters, the Sí vote wins.

Why? Abstention in the No camp. If we vote, we put pressure on the CNE and the government. We force them to either recognize our triumph, or steal the election.

5. Vote because boycotts don't work. Look at what happened the last time the opposition tried a boycott: the result was zero representation of a huge chunk of the population in the Asamblea. Opposition Asamblea members would have had more standing and status to make their case to the world. When we walked out of the Asamblea, we lost a forum for dissent. No one outside the opposition (certainly nobody overseas) agreed that the low participation in the election reduced the legitimacy of the Asamblea.

Furthermore, many opposition voters (especially in the D and E classes) were disgusted with the opposition decision to deny them a chance to participate. They wanted to vote, even if they distrusted the process, just to be able to express their opposition.

That time, there was a full boycott backed by the entire opposition. This time around, key opposition leaders will promote the No vote. Boycotting a vote doesn’t usually work, and it definitely won’t this time with only a portion on board.

6. Vote to be counted, to say that we are here. A vote is the only way the government knows it has an opposition. If you don't vote, your opposition to the reforms will remain forever unknown. Whatever you think of the outcome of December's election, we can point to it and say that at least 40% of the electorate opposes Chávez.

7. Vote because a lot of people want us to vote. The students. The church. Business groups. Advocates for freedom around the world. Even chavistas such as Podemos and General Baduel. All have worked and spoken out against the reforms. All have called out to vote for the No. They've all gone out on a limb and stuck their necks out. What about you – are you going to do your part?

8. Vote because it may be the last time we're allowed to do so. Vote now, while you still can.

9. Vote to stop evil. These reforms are evil. When confronted with evil, you fight with everything you have, including your ballot.

10. Vote, so you can look at yourself in the mirror on December 3rd. When your children ask where you were on December 2, 2007, what will you tell them? That you stayed at home out of disgust for the process? That you didn't want to "legitimize" the CNE? That you considered putting a little paper ballot inside a box was equivalent to "going to the slaughterhouse"?

Instead, be able to tell them that you voted despite the obstacles, despite not believing in the CNE and having no guarantees that the outcome would be respected no matter what.

Tell them you did what you could and you stood up for what was right in spite of the circumstances. Just like Chileans did in 1988. Just like Aung San Suu Kyi did in 1990. Just like Nelson Mandela did in 1994. Just like Ukrainians did in 2004. Voting is what democrats do.

John Reed, father of all PSFs

Katy says: If John Reed were alive today, he would surely be in Caracas reporting the glories of Chavez's revolution. Say what you will about Reed, at least he packed his bags and went to live in revolutionary Russia: the guy walked the walk.

Today's brand of PSF, the likes of Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell and countless other nincompoops, prefer the quickie, in-and-out approach. Which doesn't stop them from acting like they're entitled to opine on Venezuela just because they once posed in front of a Canaima waterfall in a thong.

Over at Slate.com, Anne Appelbaum has their number. Don't miss this delicious spanking of PSFs everywhere.

Baduel drops a bombshell...

Quico says: Not much of the day-to-day political give-and-take in Caracas interests me enough to blog about anymore. That said, today's statement by General Baduel was a no-kidding bombshell. The guy who undid the April 2002 coup says the proposed constitutional reform would amount to a coup d'état and notes the armed forces' obligations as "guarantors of the rule of law". Yowza.

When Baduel takes a stand against a coup, people sit up and take notice.

Update: The government's reflexes aren't letting it down. It took about a third of a second for the Official knee to jerk and label Baduel a traitor. A pajarito put this comment in my inbox:

Can there ever have been, in the history of world politics, a leader with such extraordinarily bad judgment when it comes to choosing his closest collaborators? It would be different, perhaps, if they simply parted company on a matter of principle, but that - we are assured - is not the case. They were born traitors, just waiting for the right moment to stab the great leader in the back...

Luis Miquilena - traitor

Jesus Urdaneta - traitor

Raul Baduel - traitor

Alfredo Peña - traitor

Francisco Usón - traitor

Luis Velásquez Alvaray - traitor

Ismael García - traitor

Francisco Arias Cárdenas - reformed (?) traitor

Jorge Olavarría - traitor

Hermann Escarrá - traitor

Herma Marksman - traitor

Nedo Paniz - traitor

Pablo Medina - traitor

Manuel Rosendo - traitor

Efraín Vásquez Velasco - traitor

etc. etc....

How extraordinary that a man so astute in so many ways should have been so comprehensively - and repeatedly - deceived as to the moral fibre of his comrades.

And a happy birthday to you!

Katy says: How will folks like these assimilate into XXIst Century Socialism?

One wonders what planet these people live in. Sometimes I think *they* are the real enemy.

Required reading

Quico says: These days, "required reading" is just an empty cliché, a phrase drained of meaning by decades of lazy overuse. Normally, I avoid it.

I have to make an exception for Tina Rosenberg's New York Times Magazine cover story on the Perils of Petrocracy, though. Covering an immense amount of material fairly, honestly, and engagingly, her piece illuminates the petrostate disease with exceptional clarity. Remarkable stuff from start to finish.

After all these years, I still don't have a clear understanding of why Venezuelans are incapable of producing journalism of this caliber.

Let them grow up

Katy says: Two kids are dead in my hometown of Maracaibo, shot down by the violence that is rapidly creeping into our nation’s soul and changing things forever. Their only mistake was protesting for their rights in a country where protesting is hardly a safe thing to do. The dead students are part of a nationwide movement that has captured the country’s airwaves and imagination in the past few weeks. But before casualties continue to mount, we need to ask what the nature of the student movement is, and what our role as spectators is and should be.

It’s hard for me to look at the current student movement and not feel, in some ways, identified. Fifteen years ago I was an elected student leader myself in my alma mater, the UCAB. I was active in student politics out of a sense of duty, of wanting to participate in bigger ideas and issues. But before I come across as some altruistic public servant, let me clarify that these feelings were part of a morass of feelings and motivations that included a sense of pride and a want of self-promotion, a longing to be popular.

Back then I was not wise enough to recognize that my inclination to participate in student politics had its share of unhealthy egomania. That lack of wisdom is reflected in some of the mistakes I made during my tenure. My lack of judgment during those times makes me grateful today that the country was not clamoring student leaders to be anything but that.

One specific incident comes to mind. When time came to elect my successors, I came down with a bad case of the flu. I went to the voting process sick, and I was in charge of counting the ballots. This led me to proclaim at the beginning the vote count, that I was happy because “por fin se acabó esta vaina…” (at last, this crap is over).

Obviously, the student newspaper skewered me for it, deservedly so. It took me a while to recognize this experience as a valuable and humbling one rather than an embarrassing moment that made an instant enemy of the author of my first negative press.

The reason I bring this up is because the current student movement’s mistakes remind me of my own and make me wish they, too, had some space in which to make them. For example, I think that wearing T-shirts with provocative messages in a hostile environment is looking for trouble, something that will lead to violence. Chaining yourself to the steps of the CNE when they have just listened to what you have to say is uncalled for and hurts your objectives. All these situations engender violence and beg the question – what do the students seek to accomplish? If they want to be heard, provoking violence is not the way to do it. But if what they want is to provoke the government, they will end up losing. Is there a "student movement" as such, or are we placing our hopes on a ragtag group of young people with wildly different agendas?

Due to the extraordinary times we are living in, and the unheralded focus being placed on them, the student movement is over-reaching. While the movement’s leaders may not have wanted it this way, they seem to be encouraging attention and enjoy basking in the limelight. Yet they must remember that while they are definitely helping in the general move to stop Chavez from cementing himself in power, they cannot accomplish this on their own.

The fault, however, does not lie with the students. The fault lies with us, who applaud and encourage them and are ready to christen them in glorious accolades. The fault lies with the media that makes people like Yon Goicoechea and Stalin Gonzalez national leaders when they are clearly not prepared to assume such a role.

Mr. Goicoechea, Mr. González and the others are certainly smart, courageous and media-savvy. They are filled with the innocence of those who think ideas can change the world, and with the hubris of those who have not yet tasted life’s defeats. Yet these attributes we find so attractive and refreshing are precisely the ones that handicap their chances of effecting change.

The students cannot lead the way. They have no concrete proposal for the country, and they have not lived enough to find one. They will be slaughtered – both politically and, God forbid, literally. Their lives may be ruined and the hopes of their generation could be shattered. Who are we to place this burden on them? And why should the country as a whole suffer through their juvenile mistakes?

So as we sit by the TV, enthralled by the latest act of bravado from these original characters, let’s ask ourselves whether we are implicitly applauding while children do our dirty work for us. By cheering them on and placing them at the front of our struggles, we may be inadvertently leading these kids to their doom while they enjoy their newfound recognition.

We should know better, because they do not.

Primero Justicia: an inside peek

Katy says: Eighteen months ago, some friends who work for Primero Justicia called me up and asked me if I would like to help edit the document containing the party's platform. Seeing as though Julio Borges had been working on a comprehensive proposal of his own for his presidential campaign, they didn't want the document to die along with his candidacy and they decided they wanted to turn it into the party's platform.

I jumped at the opportunity, and I've been working on it since. Three weeks ago, I took part in the party's ideological congress, where the document would be discussed and approved. Here's my eyewitness account.

First off, I should make it clear that I don't consider myself a party insider. Although I do belong to Primero Justicia, I'm not really active in it since, for starters, I don't live in Venezuela. My main motivation was out of loyalty, yes, but I was also driven by the challenge of writing a document that was comprehensive yet accessible, something that any middle-class Venezuelan with some education would be able to understand but, at the same time, something that public policy experts would think was more than rhetorical wish-wash.

The congress itself had its share of the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: The event, held in the Eurobuilding's tent, was well-organized and filled to the rims with four thousand people from all over the country. Every state was represented, and there were even representatives of Venezuela's indigenous communities. I was expecting to find a lot of middle-class kids from Caracas' eastern neighborhoods, but I found a portrait of the country: young and old, men and women, union members and housewives, yuppies and workers. The crowd was a sight to see - all enthusiastic, ready to rock. (I even met fellow blogger Daniel Duquenal that day, go here for his account.)

International visitors included former Bolivian president Jorge Quiroga and PAN (Mexico) congressman Rodrigo Cortés. Both spoke eloquently, Quiroga in particular impressed me with his ability to connect with the audience, telling us his country's experience as a warning that what happens in Venezuela affects the entire continent. (On a side note, Pres. Quiroga warned me about José Miguel Insulza, saying he and Chávez had a pact to get him elected to the OAS and that he would be Chávez's man in Chile in the next election.)

The Congress itself had many hurdles to overcome. The climate of intimidation in Caracas has reached the point where none of the capital's hotels were willing to hire out space to an opposition political party. Originally, it was supposed to take place on the campus of the Universidad Nueva Esparta, but they bailed two weeks before due to the government's pressure. It was a miracle that the Eurobuilding Hotel finally relented and allowed the event to be held there. Even then, just a day before the Congress, the guy in charge of supplying the podium flaked on account of government pressure, so the podium they ended up using was pretty makeshift.

One of the most positive aspects of the meeting was that everybody there understood the importance of the vote. Some of the loudest cheers came whenever a speaker warned against abstanining, saying this was tantamount to handing the country over to Chávez.

The other important aspect was the sense that this is not a "caudillo" party but a cohesive group where everybody understands the importance of team-play. While all the party's leaders spoke, none stood out above the other and they all had more or less the same message. It didn't strike me as a party that revolved around a single person's personality.

Perhaps this is a consequence of the split that happened earlier this year, when Leopoldo López, Gerardo Blyde, Liliana Hernández and others left to join Manuel Rosales's UNT. Everyone I asked lamented their departure, but told me that the problem was that they were simply not team players, they did not believe in the organization or in its goals. While the party may have suffered through this split, it still looks healthy and, in a way, more coherent.

Truth is, Blyde, Lopez and Hernandez have seen their credibility suffer - after all, they said they left PJ because it had no internal democracy and no ideology. The irony is that now Primero Justicia is the only one of the country's two main opposition parties to have held internal elections and an ideological congress. Also worth noting is the fact that many of the people who left Primero Justicia have now joined UNT's top ranks without having been elected to any of their posts, which suggests to me their vehement pleas for internal party democracy were grandstanding.

The bad: If there is one thing lacking in this group is P.R. savvy. Media coverage of the event was a disaster, and even now, the party's ideological platform, its proposals to the country are not on the Internet.

I was shocked to find Venezuela's major newspapers gave us minimal coverage, and most of them focused on Quiroga's speech blasting the Chávez administration. There simply was no mention of the party's main proposals, including strengthening of Misiones, the pledge to raise oil output, the promise to provide Venezuelans with shares of PDVSA so they can use it as collateral for credit or as a pension fund and the firm stance regarding civilian control over the military.

While there is a bias against Primero Justicia in the Venezuelan press, the blame here goes both ways. If the media is against you, you hire an expert to get them to talk about you. If you want them to talk about you, you have to find a way to make it interesting for them to do so. I didn't see any of that.

Even internal communications are error-prone. For example, I'm stunned that the party's website was not functioning that day and, in fact, still isn't. An Ideological Congress is not something to be taken lightly, and independents and sympathizers may have wanted to take a peek at what exactly was being proposed. But if you go to the party's websites, you will find next to nothing about it. (Please email me if you'd like to read the party's proposals, I can send you the PDF.)

This kind of thing left me feeling that the party is not quite ready for prime time, and this is something that has to be seriously addressed, as I told some of the party leaders I spoke to.

It was depressing for me to return to Chile and find that the Christian Democrats - a party that usually gets around 20% of the vote in Chile, in the same ball park as Primero Justicia's 11% - held its Ideological Congress that same weekend and made the headlines in all the major newspapers here. There was even a thorough discussion of the outcome, since many felt the party was veering to the left. Instead, in Venezuela, Sunday's paper had a small corner story that talked about the Congress, and a two-page spread discussing Che Guevara and his legacy.

The ugly: I guess it would be snobbish of me to criticize the fact that the event was scheduled for 10 but began at 11:45. This is Venezuela, after all, and the party in a way reflects the country as a whole.

However, I can't get past the idea that Venezuelans, young and old alike, are hard-wired to think that giving a good political speech is the same as shouting. While none of the speakers were terrible, nobody stood out. The rhetorical style may be suited for Venezuela, but personally, it doesn't do much for me.

Julio Borges's speech was very good, but the guy is distant. He needs to tell a story, to connect with the crowd emotionally. While his comparisons of Primero Justicia's proposals vis-a-vis Socialism was on the mark on an intellectual level, it doesn't really resonate.

Carlos Ocaríz did a little better in terms of connecting, but a little worse in terms of content. Henrique Capriles was simply awful, although he seemed to have the crowd going nuts which was surprising to me. The other guys were OK, but it was the people from the grassroots, from the "interior" of the country (Vargas or Portuguesa) who showed more promise and more preparation.

This is a young party, with lots accomplished so far but still a lot to learn. I was happy to put in my two-cents, and I sincerely wish them well. I hope they work out the kinks in the operation- if and when they do, they may just be a force to be reckoned with.

PS.- I feel terrible. As I write this, Primero Justicia is busy getting their asses kicked on the streets of Caracas and, in the process, trying to drive up Chavez's negatives. And here I am pontificating from my office...

Decision Makers

Here's one more ingredient for my conceptual stew. In this post-2004 election piece for The New Republic, Christopher Hayes describes what it was like volunteering to knock on doors on behalf of John Kerry's campaign in Wisconsin that year. You should really read the whole thing - Hayes is a great writer - but I'll just cite some especially interesting passages:

For those who follow politics, there are few things more mysterious, more inscrutable, more maddening than the mind of the undecided voter. In this year's [2004] election, when the choice was so stark and the differences between the candidates were so obvious, how could any halfway intelligent human remain undecided for long? "These people," Jonah Goldberg once wrote of undecided voters, on a rare occasion when he probably spoke for the entire political class, "can't make up their minds, in all likelihood, because either they don't care or they don't know anything."

[...]

Undecided voters aren't as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We're giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man's house, she still couldn't make sense of his decision. Then there was the woman who called our office a few weeks before the election to tell us that though she had signed up to volunteer for Kerry she had now decided to back Bush. Why? Because the president supported stem cell research. The office became quiet as we all stopped what we were doing to listen to one of our fellow organizers try, nobly, to disabuse her of this notion. Despite having the facts on her side, the organizer didn't have much luck.

Undecided voters do care about politics; they just don't enjoy politics. Political junkies tend to assume that undecided voters are undecided because they don't care enough to make up their minds. But while I found that most undecided voters are, as one Kerry aide put it to The New York Times, "relatively low-information, relatively disengaged," the lack of engagement wasn't a sign that they didn't care. After all, if they truly didn't care, they wouldn't have been planning to vote. The undecided voters I talked to did care about politics, or at least judged it to be important; they just didn't enjoy politics.

The mere fact that you're reading this article right now suggests that you not only think politics is important, but you actually like it. You read the paper and listen to political radio and talk about politics at parties. In other words, you view politics the way a lot of people view cooking or sports or opera: as a hobby. Most undecided voters, by contrast, seem to view politics the way I view laundry. While I understand that to be a functioning member of society I have to do my laundry, and I always eventually get it done, I'll never do it before every last piece of clean clothing is dirty, as I find the entire business to be a chore. A significant number of undecided voters, I think, view politics in exactly this way: as a chore, a duty, something that must be done but is altogether unpleasant, and therefore something best put off for as long as possible.

[...]

Undecided voters don't think in terms of issues. Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the "issues." That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured--a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example--but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number.

The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn't name a single issue that was important to them. This was shocking to me. Think about it: The "issue" is the basic unit of political analysis for campaigns, candidates, journalists, and other members of the chattering classes. It's what makes up the subheadings on a candidate's website, it's what sober, serious people wish election outcomes hinged on, it's what every candidate pledges to run his campaign on, and it's what we always complain we don't see enough coverage of.

But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to. (This was also true of a number of committed voters in both camps--though I'll risk being partisan here and say that Kerry voters, in my experience, were more likely to name specific issues they cared about than Bush supporters.) At first I thought this was a problem of simple semantics--maybe, I thought, "issue" is a term of art that sounds wonky and intimidating, causing voters to react as if they're being quizzed on a topic they haven't studied. So I tried other ways of asking the same question: "Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what's been happening in the country in the last four years?"

These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." The undecideds I spoke to didn't seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances. Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief--not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.

In this context, Bush's victory, particularly on the strength of those voters who listed "values" as their number one issue, makes perfect sense. Kerry ran a campaign that was about politics: He parsed the world into political categories and offered political solutions. Bush did this too, but it wasn't the main thrust of his campaign. Instead, the president ran on broad themes, like "character" and "morals." Everyone feels an immediate and intuitive expertise on morals and values--we all know what's right and wrong. But how can undecided voters evaluate a candidate on issues if they don't even grasp what issues are?

Liberals like to point out that majorities of Americans agree with the Democratic Party on the issues, so Republicans are forced to run on character and values in order to win. But polls that ask people about issues presuppose a basic familiarity with the concept of issues--a familiarity that may not exist.

Quico says: I suppose readers must think I’ve finally cracked: posting 40 year old public opinion research and papal encyclicals and such. Actually, there’s a bit of method to the madness…these random (seeming) posts are related, at least in my mind, and build together into what (I think) is a coherent argument. (OK, well, maybe not the Japanese one, that one was just random.) But, trust me, the other ones actually hang together. They’re going somewhere. I’m just not “there” yet.

Anyway, you can add this one to the mix:

The Threat to American Democracy
Wednesday 05 October 2005

Remarks delivered by Al Gore to a conference organized by "We Media" in New York.

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse ... I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe?"

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?

On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?"

The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William Odom, said, "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in US history."

But whether you agree with his assessment or not, Senator Byrd's question is like the others that I have just posed here: he was saying, in effect, this is strange, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to have full and vigorous debates about questions as important as the choice between war and peace?

Those of us who have served in the Senate and watched it change over time, could volunteer an answer to Senator Byrd's two questions: the Senate was silent on the eve of war because Senators don't feel that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much any more. And the chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere else: they were in fundraisers collecting money from special interests in order to buy 30-second TV commercials for their next re-election campaign.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.

In fact there was a time when America's public discourse was consistently much more vivid, focused and clear. Our Founders, probably the most literate generation in all of history, used words with astonishing precision and believed in the Rule of Reason.

Their faith in the viability of Representative Democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry. But they placed particular emphasis on insuring that the public could be well-informed. And they took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas in order to ensure the free-flow of knowledge.

The values that Americans had brought from Europe to the New World had grown out of the sudden explosion of literacy and knowledge after Gutenberg's disruptive invention broke up the stagnant medieval information monopoly and triggered the Reformation, Humanism, and the Enlightenment and enshrined a new sovereign: the "Rule of Reason."

Indeed, the self-governing republic they had the audacity to establish was later named by the historian Henry Steele Commager as "the Empire of Reason."

Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in the presence of others - but more commonly by communicating with their fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of the printing press.

Their world was dominated by the printed word. Just as the proverbial fish doesn't know it lives in water, the United States in its first half century knew nothing but the world of print: the Bible, Thomas Paine's fiery call to revolution, the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our laws, the Congressional Record, newspapers and books.

Though they feared that a government might try to censor the printing press - as King George had done - they could not imagine that America's public discourse would ever consist mainly of something other than words in print.

And yet, as we meet here this morning, more than 40 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television.

Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for our attention - but it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America. In fact, according to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of four hours and 28 minutes every day - 90 minutes more than the world average.

When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time that the average American has. And for younger Americans, the average is even higher.

The internet is a formidable new medium of communication, but it is important to note that it still doesn't hold a candle to television. Indeed, studies show that the majority of Internet users are actually simultaneously watching television while they are online. There is an important reason why television maintains such a hold on its viewers in a way that the internet does not, but I'll get to that in a few minutes.

Television first overtook newsprint to become the dominant source of information in America in 1963. But for the next two decades, the television networks mimicked the nation's leading newspapers by faithfully following the standards of the journalism profession. Indeed, men like Edward R. Murrow led the profession in raising the bar.

But all the while, television's share of the total audience for news and information continued to grow - and its lead over newsprint continued to expand. And then one day, a smart young political consultant turned to an older elected official and succinctly described a new reality in America's public discourse: "If it's not on television, it doesn't exist."

But some extremely important elements of American Democracy have been pushed to the sidelines ... And the most prominent casualty has been the "marketplace of ideas" that was so beloved and so carefully protected by our Founders. It effectively no longer exists.

It is not that we no longer share ideas with one another about public matters; of course we do. But the "Public Forum" in which our Founders searched for general agreement and applied the Rule of Reason has been grossly distorted and "restructured" beyond all recognition.

And here is my point: it is the destruction of that marketplace of ideas that accounts for the "strangeness" that now continually haunts our efforts to reason together about the choices we must make as a nation.

Whether it is called a Public Forum, or a "Public Sphere," or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America's earliest decades.

In fact, our first self-expression as a nation - "We the People" - made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay. It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government.

The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were:

* 1) It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry, save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also to the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all.

* 2) The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent Meritocracy of Ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them.

* 3) The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a "Conversation of Democracy" is all about.

What resulted from this shared democratic enterprise was a startling new development in human history: for the first time, knowledge regularly mediated between wealth and power.

The liberating force of this new American reality was thrilling to all humankind. Thomas Jefferson declared, "I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

It ennobled the individual and unleashed the creativity of the human spirit. It inspired people everywhere to dream of what they could yet become. And it emboldened Americans to bravely explore the farther frontiers of freedom - for African Americans, for women, and eventually, we still dream, for all.

And just as knowledge now mediated between wealth and power, self-government was understood to be the instrument with which the people embodied their reasoned judgments into law. The Rule of Reason under-girded and strengthened the rule of law.

But to an extent seldom appreciated, all of this - including especially the ability of the American people to exercise the reasoned collective judgments presumed in our Founders' design - depended on the particular characteristics of the marketplace of ideas as it operated during the Age of Print.

Consider the rules by which our present "public forum" now operates, and how different they are from the forum our Founders knew. Instead of the easy and free access individuals had to participate in the national conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation today.

Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset essays, pamphlets, books or flyers.

Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens.

Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation.

The number of cables connecting to homes is limited in each community and usually forms a natural monopoly. The broadcast and satellite spectrum is likewise a scarce and limited resource controlled by a few. The production of programming has been centralized and has usually required a massive capital investment. So for these and other reasons, an ever-smaller number of large corporations control virtually all of the television programming in America.

Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the "demonstration." This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.

So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in television's domain. My partner Joel Hyatt and I are trying to change that - at least where Current TV is concerned. Perhaps not coincidentally, we are the only independently owned news and information network in all of American television.

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."

As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the US - including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.

And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie "Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.

The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.

For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.

Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."

The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the "horse race" and little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television news is "if it bleeds, it leads." (To which some disheartened journalists add, "If it thinks, it stinks.")

In fact, one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America agree on is that they don't trust the news media anymore.

Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to "glue eyeballs to the screen" in order to build ratings and sell advertising. If you have any doubt, just look at what's on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings, and on and on and on.

And more importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, the nation's fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America's industrial base, and a long list of other serious public questions that need to be addressed by the American people.

One morning not long ago, I flipped on one of the news programs in hopes of seeing information about an important world event that had happened earlier that day. But the lead story was about a young man who had been hiccupping for three years. And I must say, it was interesting; he had trouble getting dates. But what I didn't see was news.

This was the point made by Jon Stewart, the brilliant host of "The Daily Show," when he visited CNN's "Crossfire": there should be a distinction between news and entertainment.

And it really matters because the subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: it leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.

One of the only avenues left for the expression of public or political ideas on television is through the purchase of advertising, usually in 30-second chunks. These short commercials are now the principal form of communication between candidates and voters. As a result, our elected officials now spend all of their time raising money to purchase these ads.

That is why the House and Senate campaign committees now search for candidates who are multi-millionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources. As one consequence, the halls of Congress are now filling up with the wealthy.

Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.

And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that.

MoveOn.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were told "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, one of the networks that had refused the MoveOn ad began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So MoveOn complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the MoveOn ad.

The advertising of products, of course, is the real purpose of television. And it is difficult to overstate the extent to which modern pervasive electronic advertising has reshaped our society. In the 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith first described the way in which advertising has altered the classical relationship by which supply and demand are balanced over time by the invisible hand of the marketplace. According to Galbraith, modern advertising campaigns were beginning to create high levels of demand for products that consumers never knew they wanted, much less needed.

The same phenomenon Galbraith noticed in the commercial marketplace is now the dominant fact of life in what used to be America's marketplace for ideas. The inherent value or validity of political propositions put forward by candidates for office is now largely irrelevant compared to the advertising campaigns that shape the perceptions of voters.

Our democracy has been hallowed out. The opinions of the voters are, in effect, purchased, just as demand for new products is artificially created. Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of consent ... was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy ... but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique ... under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy."

Like you, I recoil at Lippman's cynical dismissal of America's gift to human history. But in order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum and create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the Rule of Reason. We must, for example, stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth.

I don't know all the answers, but along with my partner, Joel Hyatt, I am trying to work within the medium of television to recreate a multi-way conversation that includes individuals and operates according to a meritocracy of ideas. If you would like to know more, we are having a press conference on Friday morning at the Regency Hotel.

We are learning some fascinating lessons about the way decisions are made in the television industry, and it may well be that the public would be well served by some changes in law and policy to stimulate more diversity of viewpoints and a higher regard for the public interest. But we are succeeding within the marketplace by reaching out to individuals and asking them to co-create our network.

The greatest source of hope for reestablishing a vigorous and accessible marketplace for ideas is the Internet. Indeed, Current TV relies on video streaming over the Internet as the means by which individuals send us what we call viewer-created content or VC squared. We also rely on the Internet for the two-way conversation that we have every day with our viewers enabling them to participate in the decisions on programming our network.

I know that many of you attending this conference are also working on creative ways to use the Internet as a means for bringing more voices into America's ongoing conversation. I salute you as kindred spirits and wish you every success.

I want to close with the two things I've learned about the Internet that are most directly relevant to the conference that you are having here today.

First, as exciting as the Internet is, it still lacks the single most powerful characteristic of the television medium; because of its packet-switching architecture, and its continued reliance on a wide variety of bandwidth connections (including the so-called "last mile" to the home), it does not support the real-time mass distribution of full-motion video.

Make no mistake, full-motion video is what makes television such a powerful medium. Our brains - like the brains of all vertebrates - are hard-wired to immediately notice sudden movement in our field of vision. We not only notice, we are compelled to look. When our evolutionary predecessors gathered on the African savanna a million years ago and the leaves next to them moved, the ones who didn't look are not our ancestors. The ones who did look passed on to us the genetic trait that neuroscientists call "the establishing reflex." And that is the brain syndrome activated by television continuously - sometimes as frequently as once per second. That is the reason why the industry phrase, "glue eyeballs to the screen," is actually more than a glib and idle boast. It is also a major part of the reason why Americans watch the TV screen an average of four and a half hours a day.

It is true that video streaming is becoming more common over the Internet, and true as well that cheap storage of streamed video is making it possible for many young television viewers to engage in what the industry calls "time shifting" and personalize their television watching habits. Moreover, as higher bandwidth connections continue to replace smaller information pipelines, the Internet's capacity for carrying television will continue to dramatically improve. But in spite of these developments, it is television delivered over cable and satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that America's democracy is at grave risk.

The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.

We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy's future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom.