Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College

 

Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College by Jesse Wegman

Honest question: What do you really know about the electoral college?  How did it come into existence? Why was it formed? Why was it used to pick the president instead of the popular vote?  How many electors does each state get, and why? Has that number changed since the implementation of the U.S. Constitution?  Why and by how much?  You really don’t know do you?  All you know is that there are people, supposedly, who think it’s a good idea.  When your candidate benefits from the college even if they lose the popular vote, you defend it.  When your candidate loses the electoral college majority while winning the popular vote, you want it abolished.  That’s about it, isn’t it?

Ahhh.   I thought so.

Well, this book will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the electoral college and there is an awful lot to digest.  Author Jesse Wegman leaves no stone unturned.  He gives us a thorough history lesson as to why it began, and how it’s essentially failed throughout the country’s history.  Essentially, it all comes down to politics.  When politicians in power have something that works for their favor, they don’t want to give it up.  They know the public doesn’t “get it” (see my first paragraph) so they spew a lot of nonsense from soapboxes and the multitudes of minions gladly bow down at the altar of power as always.

The author is not a fan. Being a member of New York Times Editorial Board, critics of this book will cry that he’s biased towards the left, but I didn’t really feel that way while reading.  In fact, he gives examples of how conservatives have benefited over the years.  An example was the 2004 election. George W. Bush won the popular vote by several million votes but had the state of Ohio had just a few thousand votes go the other way, Bush would have been a one termer. 

He uses a lot of math in this book. I mean, a lot of math.  That’s necessary though, and if one has the patience to wiggle through the massive amounts of equations and examples, one really can’t make any excuse to keep this thing in place.  He also dispels a lot of myths. One common myth is that the Electoral College ensures that the smaller states have a say and ensures that the big states can’t dominate the attention of candidates.  Defenders make the mention that Los Angeles county has a larger population than 41 of the 50 states. Yikes.  Well, as the author explains, this phenomenon is due to the migration from rural areas to the urban areas and this didn’t occur until about 1910. So if the electoral college was put into place in 1787, we really can’t use this as an excuse.

We must also remember that when history was still very young for the country of The United States, “voting” was a privilege for very few.  If you weren’t a white protestant male who owned a substantial amount of property, well, you might as well forget it.  So all of the individual states were always bickering for more power.  They all (understandably) wanted the biggest piece of pie possible.  Many concessions and compromises were implemented when the constitution came to be, including the electoral college. Many of these compromises, Wegman argues, are hopelessly outdated; especially the college.

Sadly, I don’t see our present system changing anytime soon.  There are too many things going on behind the scenes and too many in power are always attempting (successfully sadly) to keep the public ignorant. It makes great reading, though, and it adds to the list the many things that happen within the borders of our country that should be changed, but probably won’t since so many people never bother to read history nor study the meticulous nature of how the government operates.

I should also point out that this book was written before the 2020 election.  I’m not even sure why I bring that up since the electoral college had absolutely no precedent in that clown circus at all.  If anything, 2020 proved that if a spoiled rich reality show turd screamed loud enough, his idiotic underlings would believe anything he told them.  So even though Trump lost both the college and the popular vote, all he had to do was spew nonsense that “the election was stolen” and multitudes of morons appeared out of all corners to march behind their satanic messiah.  Of course, Trump DID plot to “steal electors” etc. so I guess you could say that elements of the college can still cause harm if they’re bastardized in a particular fashion.   I’d love to read a postscript by the author concerning 2020.

A great book. I almost wish universities would devote entire semesters to study this subject.  Maybe, just maybe, things might slowly change for the better.

Threat Vector

 

Threat Vector – Tom Clancy

These days I tend to read Tom Clancy books more out of an obligation than a desire.  I’ve stated several times in several reviews that these Jack Ryan novels tend to blend and all seem about the same. This was the second to last Jack Ryan novel before Clancy passed away (I think) and I’m determined to read them all at some point.  Like James Bond, the character of Jack Ryan has now outlived its creator, and other authors have taken up the task of continuing to entertain the masses with Jack Ryan and the tales of American espionage.  Will I ever read those?  Possibly.  Let’s get finished with the Clancy ones first, and then I’ll tackle that question for another day.

The good news is that this one did seem a bit of a fresh idea.  It seemed liked the last several novels dealt with all of the regulars keeping America safe from the Mideastern fanatical terrorists.  Jack Ryan is now president, his protégé John Clark is even getting old, and the reins seem to have now passed on to Jack Jr.  The Mideastern angle is mostly absent this time, and China gets to play the role of chief  adversary.  Not the first time, mind you.  China was the bad guy in The Bear and the Dragon, which came out about 15 years prior I believe. There are only so many countries that make a legitimate antagonist when realism is a major focus.

The book is still fairly predictable and is quite thick. The chapters read quickly, though, and once one rads  a certain number of Clancy novels, they learn that there’s a lot of chapters that they can quickly scan instead of intensely digest. You read about one dogfight over the China seas, you’ve read them all.  There’s enough in the book, though, to keep the story mostly fresh.

It seems that Clancy has toned down the politics significantly for this novel. A good thing. Such sentiments wear thin after awhile.  I think the LAST Jack Ryan novel had him in a presidential race with one of those clueless opponents who stood for everything that Ryan and co. are against.  I can’t remember if that story byline ever came to a conclusion, but there’s no mention of it here.  In fact, Jack Ryan Sr. (along with John Clark) really don’t get a ton of page space here.  The baton is definitely being passed to the younger characters.

This novel was one of the better latter-day Clancy efforts.  I really don’t think Clancy’s later works come close to his prime in the 1980s and the 1990s, but these books are kind of a fun diversion. They’re always a tad scary since the fiction in these pages always seems to be considered closer to “fact” by some insiders, and it reminds us that the world is still a dangerous place.

Fortunately the good guys mostly win in these books.  Hopefully life will copy art.

Hue 1968

 

Hue 1968 – by Mark Bowden

If you only chose to read one book about the Vietnam War, Hue (pronounced “Hway”) 1968 might be the best choice available. No, the book doesn’t cover the whole war. As the title implies, it focuses on the location of the infamous Tet offensive initiated by Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese.  The event, however, does an accurate job of summarizing the entire war. The battle of Hue was what made most realize that Vietnam was a losing effort. It woke up even the majority of the most jingoistic supporters and turned the tide of, not only the conflict itself, but the public opinion.

What makes this book so endearing (yet depressing) is that Bowden tells the story (literally) down in the trenches. Most of this book doesn’t focus on the bigwigs in power making decisions. Yes, we do read about some of that, but what we mostly read about are personal stories of the young people who were sent to this war with no inkling of what it was even about, and experienced a literal hell on earth. This book cuts deep into one’s emotional core.  The author does such a great job in this aspect that the book would make an excellent movie if it wasn’t such a horrid, discouraging tale. There are so many anecdotes thrown in here that the reader can’t really keep track. That’s not really important though. Each story about each person resonates exactly how it should and make those who never had to experience such a horror be evermore thankful, and evermore appreciative of the hundreds of thousands of people who did have to suffer through so much.

A typical story begins with an American kid who drops out of high school in Anywhere, USA.  With no real prospects for any sort of meaningful future, the kid joins the army. Next thing you know, he’s fighting overseas in a country he couldn’t even find on a map with no knowledge of why the war is even being fought. He finds himself thrown into a company of soldiers that are basically scared kids just like himself.  The events of the war turn these kids into petrified, drug fueled, rabid animals who soon become immune to the senseless killings, death, and destruction that overpower their senses. It’s cliché to say that the lucky ones survived, but after seeing the many scars that would haunt these poor souls for their entire life, one almost feels as though the lucky ones were actually the ones who died. At least their soul could now be at peace.

All of these stories take place immediately before, and during, the Tet Offensive.  Hue was where the main battle took place so this is where all of the action is in this book. It must be said, though, that the main difference between Hue and the stereotypical Vietnam battle is that Hue is in actual city. The houses are actual houses. They have furniture, kitchens, and television sets.  Such accoutrements are a far cry from the typical battle scenes in the jungle surrounded by straw huts and rice paddies that we normally associate with when we think “Vietnam”.  The horrors, the mindset of the enemy, and the cluelessness of the American leaders though, remain consistent.

We read a lot of geography within the city, but the author provides his readers with well-detailed maps so we don’t get too lost when we hear all of the unfamiliar names and locations. Again, though, the “where” isn’t important in this book.  What is important is the “who” and also the “why” which, like the war itself, is never adequately answered.

So who won the battle of Hue?  Again, to adequately answer that question, we must also confess that like the war itself, the immediate answer isn’t really the obvious one; or in this case, the correct one.  Yes, the Americans “won” the battle in effect. After losing the city to the North Vietnamese, they recaptured the city, but what America would learn about this war is that “victory” doesn’t really happen until the enemy totally capitulates, and this is something that North Vietnam never did, nor would ever do.  No matter how many points on the map that one side takes, if the other side keeps throwing in more soldiers, and young American men keep dying, eventually the public back home gets sick and says “enough”. This is essentially what ended up happening.

This seems to be yet another hard lesson that the U.S.A. would have to learn during this conflict. Throughout most of the Vietnam war, we read that General William Westmorland insists that the U.S. is winning, and his main trump card seems to always revolve around casualties and fatalities.  He seems a slave to statistics, and as long as the enemy suffers more losses than his side does, he looks at this as a victory. We now know that such numbers don’t mean anything. Anytime you have over 50,000 soldiers die in a war that never seemed to make any sense nor have clear goals, it’s looked at as a colossal failure; regardless of how many enemy soldiers died in relation to ours.

So Hue was a wakeup call. It finally shifted the opinion of the majority. Before Hue, the opposition of the war was contained to a minority of hippies and left-leaning radicals. Once the story got out (there are a lot of stories in this book about journalists that covered the battle here as well, including Walter Cronkite) however, the tide began to turn.

This book was incredibly depressing, yet such stories are necessary if we truly don’t want to repeat the mistakes of our past. True, since Vietnam, The U.S. has become involved in other worthless conflicts that pretty much yielded the same results.  It’s sad that we haven’t learned from our mistakes, but if you can say anything at all positive about conflicts in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan, it would be that the body bag count wasn’t nearly as high as Vietnam. Small comfort to those who lost loved ones in battle, but we can only hope and pray that there are never again any Vietnams.