Now I’ve represented this kid off and on for some time now.  I know that he does not like to be in custody.  Hates it.

All he had to do today was show up and likely as not that would have been the end of it.  No custody.

But he didn’t show up.

When I told the family that his not showing up would result in the issuance of a warrant, they said they knew, he knew and “it’s on him.”  They tried to convince him.  Even chased him around town trying to “catch him and bring him in.”

Did I mention that he hates to be in custody?  Did I mention that if he had only shown up, things would likely have been over?  Did I mention that a warrant would issue for his arrest?

David Brooks, a New York Times writer, would say that my client is a typical modern American.

In today’s Fresno Bee Brooks notes that

In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts.

After walking through America’s allegedly split personality which demands both that the government stay out of the business of running businesses and that it “take control,” Brooks says

At some point somebody’s going to have to reach a national consensus on the role of government.

The governmental problem has a simpler explanation than that America has a split personality.  The explanation is not a split personality, but a split electorate.  And politicians so fearful about upsetting the electorate that they no longer worry about actually doing their jobs.

In the old days of representative democracy, elected officials were counted on to study a situation — to learn what, if any, role government should play with respect to crime, business enterprises, the environment, etc. — and make a decision based upon sound information and reasoned compromise amongst conflicting forces rather than emotion and the allegedly shifting sands of public opinion.

Today, the concern is to keep one’s position — although I’m not entirely sure what the real benefit of the position is, if you can’t do your job.  One of the worst jobs I ever had paid me a bunch of money, but I was miserable because I was micro-managed.  In these days of a more “pure” democracy, with its referenda, polls and huge amounts of corporate money — now unlimited thanks to the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in the appropriately-misnamed Citizens United case — our politicians are subject to the same micro-management that drove me nuts.  But, if anything, they seem to revel in it.

It keeps them from having to take responsibility for their decisions; they’re just reacting to their “constituencies,” by which I think they often mean they’re remaining true to their pacts with their “PACs.”

At any rate, compromise is a dirty word these days.  Somehow, anyone who compromises is a sell-out.  A traitor.  After all, PACs are funded to achieve specific goals; they exist for one purpose and one alone.  If they can’t have what they want, then screw everyone, baby.  We’re going for this! FTW!

FTW.  It’s an interesting acronym, with an interesting history.  In 2010, the most common use of the term is to rally the troops.  For those appalled at Sarah Palin’s “don’t retreat, reload!,” it is a kinder, gentler rallying cry.  The acronym originally was used for a similar purpose, but the meaning then was “Fuck the world!”

And that is America’s larger problem.  For the majority of us — a much larger majority than can agree on anything else in America — “for the win” has not lost touch with its roots.  It’s all for one and “all or nothing.” We’re going for the win and — fuck the world! — we will settle for nothing less.

Unfortunately, what I’m saying is that Brooks has it wrong.  We apparently have reached a national consensus on the role of government.  It’s just the wrong one; one that is ultimately destructive rather than constructive.  With Americans being split very nearly down the middle on most issues — even the majority of United States Supreme Court decisions carry by a bare 5-4 majority these days — and unwilling to compromise, we can’t fund our social programs; we can’t build roads; we can’t agree on anything.  “Majority” itself these days simply means “one more than the other side gots.”

And my client, whose story opened this post, is probably the one.

Thus it is that there is one thing we seem to do quite well: rally the troops, FTW.  The problem is, when we’re constantly at war, with no ability to compromise, nobody really wins.

But there’s only one who is the most trusted man in America.

Recently, the Gropinator again put his foot in his mouth — in a small way — with comments that Cubans and Puerto Ricans are naturally feisty and temperamental because of the “black blood” and “Latino blood” coursing through their veins. Next, we’ll put him in charge of some genetics project for these deep insights on the metaphysics of blood.

Yet it really is something of a small gaffe. It’s almost certainly taken out of context, for one thing. And as the alleged “target” of the comment — to the extent that there was any “target” — stated, people often describe themselves this way. Perhaps if the Gropinator had said something like “Austrians are inherently stupid and would always be lower-class citizens deserving of little respect because of the Austrian blood coursing through their veins,” then people (Austrians, at least) would have some right to be up in arms.

But that’s not what happened.

And that brings us to the point of “How Politicians Screw Us.”

Phil Angelides — for whom I suppose I’ll be forced to vote, simply because I can no longer stomach how the Gropinator is using us and want to see if someone else might do less damage — wants to highlight Schwarzeneggar’s words. Angelides apparently hopes we’re going to vote for him because our current governor sometimes says stupid things without thinking.

“Once again, Governor Schwarzenegger has used language that is deeply offensive to all Californians and embarrassed our state,” Angelides said in a statement.— ” Schwarzenegger: Cubans, Puerto Ricans ‘all very hot’” (September 8, 2006) CNN.com.

Sadly, as I said, I already pretty much feel stuck voting for Angelides because there’s no viable alternative to continue allowing Schwarzeneggar to terminate the few good things left about California. But this approach to campaigning by Angelides is inimical to the development of a non-dysfunctional democratic process. While politicians are busy talking about what horrible people their opponents are, we’re always going to be stuck in the position of having to vote for the lesser of two evils.

This, in fact, is exactly what people like Angelides are saying: “Vote for me because the other guy is a bad person who says mean things.”

Mr. Angelides. Mr. Angelides. What we really need — even if we don’t know it’s what we want — are politicians who will focus on themselves. I don’t want to vote for you because you’re someone who won’t talk about the “black blood” and the “Latino blood” or any other kind of bloods. I want someone I can vote for because they’ve got a message about themselves and what they will do for our state if elected.

Remember, Mr. Angelides, when you sling mud, everybody just gets muddy. Perhaps if you leave the little missteps alone and focus on the big picture instead, you’ll find people will stay focused on the good you can do, rather than the silly thing someone else — someone many of them like anyway — said.

We don’t need your encouragement to dislike the Gropinator. We do need to know why we should like you.

Not long ago, the District Attorney, Elizabeth Egan was accused of firing at least one Deputy District Attorney because in the previous election, he supported her opponent. The only online story I could find about the verdict was terse, providing virtually no details to the interested reader. I was in the courtroom that day and it was a confusing verdict.

The jury had been asked to answer two questions. I’m sure I won’t remember them verbatim, but they essentially went like this:

1. Did Elizabeth Egan engage in political discrimination against Kenneth Hahus?
2. If you found that Egan did discriminate against Hahus, do you think she would have fired him anyway?

The verdict puzzled me, although a supporter of Egan who overheard me express my puzzlement to a friend in the elevator assured me that the jury did what the court instructed them to do. You see, the jury was polled individually by a show of hands. As to the first question, 10 people on the jury raised their hands; they agreed Egan fired Hahus for his politics. Two jurors on the back row, seated closest to the gallery, did not raise their hands. For the second question, 9 jurors raised their hands; they felt Hahus would have been fired anyway. Two of those 9 votes came from the two people who did not raise their hands the first time. So my puzzlement was over this: Since the second question was a subjunctive — that is, it assumed that the only people voting would be people who found that there was discrimination — why did the two jurors who did not find this discrimination raise their hands?

I suppose in the end it doesn’t matter much. The two who did not raise their hands the first time clearly thought there was no discrimination to start with. So in their minds, Hahus should lose. The 7 additional jurors who did think there was discrimination thought Hahus would have been fired anyway. So, ultimately, 9 people did, in fact, think he would be fired anyway. Still, I wonder what would have happened if the jury knew what many of the rest of us do: That some prosecutors were afraid to testify against Egan because they (so far) still have their jobs working in “her” department and one had left the department to become a private defense attorney after she believed Egan was trying to build a case to get rid of her for supporting Hamilton. (Lopez, ““DA office job suit goes to jury” Fresno Bee (November 18, 2005) (online).)

Of course, we’ll never really know. Hahus had already been punished for the things for which Egan supposedly fired him. But, you never know, Egan might have thought being punished once wasn’t enough. She is, after all, the same District Attorney whose office is busily trying to make a felony out of “making too much noise” during the shooting of a recent DVD called “Fresno Uncensored.” (As I pointed out yesterday, the judge and the prosecutor were both saddened to realize they could not legally send the accused person to jail otherwise. On recognizing that they were about to lose the case, three Deputy District Attorneys and one Assistant District Attorney showed up for the hearing to decide on the verdict. Thank goodness the law required that at least one attorney was there for the defendant!)

Today comes the news that a Fresno lawyer will probably lose his job for engaging in political speech on the job. (Ellis, “Fresno lawyer could lose job over activism” Fresno Bee (December 3, 2005) p. B5; also available online.)

Apparently, the real problem isn’t that he engaged in political speech on the job — numerous others had done so as well. In fact, the Bee reports that “U.S. Department of Agriculture officials made a presentation to dairy farmers in which they said a department goal was to increase voert turnout for the Bush administration in major dairy states.” (Ellis, supra.) Other employees had posted pro-Bush materials at work “in the months leading up to last November’s presidential election.” (Id.) But the employee in question is a member of the Green party, not the Republican party.

Ah, Fresno…. How I long for the days we belonged to a nation ruled by a constitutionally-limited government, in a nation that followed the rule of law, rather than the rule of man, where equal protection reigned and “with liberty and justice for all.”

How does Karl Rove and company get the message out to such a large portion of America?

The answer may surprise you since you’d normally associate it with the Democrats…

Technology.

Yup, the party that brought you Howard Dean’s Internet Grass Root Campaign is way behind the Grand Old Party at using technology to get a consistent message out to its followers.

For starters, according to Time Magazine (September 27, 2004 issue, “Blue Truth, Red Truth” by Nancy Gibbs):

In the past few weeks, as Bush moved into the lead for the first time in months, his home-field advantage became clear. Conservatives say that, of necessity, they learned long ago how to transmit their message below the radar of the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood. They became the masters of direct mail, which helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, and their next wave of messagemakers was much quicker to understand the power of talk radio, cable and blogs.

How effective are their new techniques? Well, it appears that you almost don’t even need a candidate.

Until the week of the Republican Convention, it had been three years since Bush had talked to the Washington Post or the New York Times. In his 3 1/2 years in office, he has given 15 press conferences, the fewest of any President in 50 years. But he has talked to Rush Limbaugh, and he’s scheduled to appear on the O’Reilly Factor this week. (Emphasis mine)

Lesson 1: Don’t have the message delivered via unbelievers. The traditional press may water down or even question the message. Better they never get the chance.

Lesson 2: Don’t put your candidate in potentially embarrassing situations. For this president, that’s public speaking. His mispronunciations are fodder for comedians. His confusion of names and facts is frustrating. Nope, better to not have him exposed — so limit the news conferences despite it being a time of war, despite terrorism, an unstable economy and an election year. Shelve the leadership to protect the message.

Lesson 3: Send the message through the channels that deliver it the most widely through voices that can inflame the faithful. Let Rush and O’Reilly speak, let our candidate be silent.

Here is a classic example of being “for us or against us”. If you’re suspected of questioning the message, if you’re not for us, we simply don’t speak to you. The power of a free press is dampened here by the press being used as a messenger, not a questioner.

Thus endeth the lesson.

So where does all this technology come into play? Here’s where the Republican Election Machine has really outpaced the Democrats. The message is not just passed, but parsed to single issue factions of the party via the web. Here they can speak to “Joe Lunchpail” about his hot button issue and create the image they want Mr. Lunchpail to have of the opposition.

While leery of the old media, this White House is expert at narrowcasting to the new. From the Amish to snowmobile users to stockcar-racing fans, the Bush coalitions are sliced like Bible leaves and addressed according to their specific priorities. Aiming to strengthen his socially conservative base, Bush in May sat down with a handful of journalists from religious media to discuss his opposition to abortion and gay marriage. The transcript of that long interview, even the fact that it was happening at all, was not released to the mainstream White House press corps. In May the campaign released a Web ad featuring Laura Bush talking about education, which ran on 60 sites, including cookinglight.com.

The campaign also keeps a close eye on the blogs, using them, just as it uses Limbaugh, to mainline information to the G.O.P. faithful. “Blogs are what talk radio was a few years ago,” says Bush campaign communications director Nicole Devenish. Her staff members regularly write, along with the message for the talk-radio circuit, the one that will go out to blogs and websites that link to the Bush campaign site. Bush staff members rely on technorati.com and truthlaidbear.com, which track political blogs and websites to see what items in local papers, on websites and in blogs are getting the most hits. “If a story moves up through the rankings and linking, we can know,” says one of the Bush staff members assigned to alert the rest of the team about which stories are moving through the blogosphere. “We can get indicators about stories before they break elsewhere. It’s like an early-warning system.”

…Unlike in February, when Kerry was less well known, by August the Bush team had constructed a cartoon narrative of Kerry as a phony, unprincipled opportunist. When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched its ads claiming that Kerry had embellished his war record, the accusations fell on fertile soil. (Emphasis mine)

So, to get back to the only question of this campaign, how do you change a Bush supporter’s mind?

Kerry can make potential headway in these upcoming debates but he cannot afford to come across as an intellectual out of touch with reality. He has to ackowledge and champion topics that apply to Joe Lunchpail’s life. And somehow, some way, the Democrats have to find every ounce of charisma in their candidate and have it all on display.

IF they can do that, is there really any hope for Kerry? According to Time Magazine:

In 2000, 14% of voters said they decided which presidential candidate to vote for only in the final two weeks of the campaign; 5%, enough to swing most elections, decided the day they voted.

Kerry has to appeal to the undecided voters and energize them into his message. He has to somehow light a fire in them that will lead them to the ballot box, just as the Republicans have.

While there are still those who call themselves independent, prefer their news straight and have not decided whom to vote for, they may not be the target audience in this race. If Rove is right, the race will turn on which campaign has done a better job of finding its true believers, inspiring them with a stirring message and getting every last one to the polls on Election Day.

To answer the only question of this campaign, “How do you change a Bush supporter’s mind?”, in my opinion, you can’t. You cannot recreate the Republican Election Machine in five weeks.

You can only hope to motivate enough of those who have not succumbed to it.