Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Virginia always provides a test for a new President. Indeed, Virginia's Governorship may not run for a second term -- so there is never an incumbent advantage. As a consequence the race for the post often has a fascinatingly hot contest the year after the election of a new President to work out of the Oval office right across the river.   In 2005, a year after the clear victory of George W. Bush's re-election campaign (so much clearer than the way W ended up with his first term -- but we will speak naught of that) -- Democrat Tim Kaine (pictured) won the Governor's seat in Richmond.  In 2004, W had received 53.68% of the popular vote in the state, while Dem. John Kerry received just 45.48%.  Kaine's victory a year later indicated the political tides were shifting, and that Bush's post-9/11 momentum was spent.  Likewise, in 2021, a year after the victory of Joseph Biden over Donald Trump, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia gubernatorial contest. Th...

  No, this is not breaking news, (despite my choice of illustration), but it IS fascinating.  And if you missed it (as I would suppose many of you did, as I certainly did) last month, you might be willing to pick up on the matter now. https://www.rcfp.org/briefs-comments/commonwealth-of-virginia-v-sawye/ The Governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, has had the state take an appeal from a trial court order that ordered the disclosure of certain records relating to an emailed tip line.  What I've linked you to above is an amicus brief from the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press. The underlying lawsuit was brought by American Oversight by the law firm Ballard Spahr.  It concerns the issue of how state FOIA's ought to be interpreted. "As broadly as the language will bear" would seem a reasonable answer to that question: would it not?  If you believe so, then you should want the trial court decision in this matter upheld.  A little background -- the "tip...

I had high hopes for Glenn Youngkin as long ago as ... well, his victory in the primary election against the other (more Trumpian) Republicans in the field. He, like Mitt Romney before him, comes from the world of private equity, and the masterminds of that world are much-maligned, their work does have a disruptive effect that draws enmity. But they do much more good than harm -- amidst those disruptions there is a lot of productive innovation and the displacement of settled inefficiencies. Like Romney's Bain, Youngkin's Carlyle is the object of lurid stories about how it throws people out of work. There is some truth to it. And I feel sympathy, drawn from personal experience, for anyone who has been laid off. During the 2012 campaign, Romney made himself seem utterly unsympathetic toward those experiencing the downside of Bain-stoked disruption. He notoriously said "I like being able to fire people." He was trying to make a point about healthcare policy but this, com...

Terry McAuliffe won the Democratic Party's nomination for Governor earlier this month, setting up an autumnal show-down with Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin.  There was no suspense in the Dem primary, McAuliffe won with 62% of the vote, and the second-place finisher got only 19% . Nobody was biting nails.   McAuliffe is an old-school political hack, who guaranteed the loan that the Clinton's used to buy their nice new house in Westchester County (pictured above) when they were ready to  move out of their leased Pennsylvania Avenue place in DC. He almost immediately thereafter became the head of the DNC and is credited with valuable modernization of the fund-raising machinery there. He also had a big part in running HRC's campaign in 2012.   His opponent, Youngkin, is a former CEO of The Carlyle Group, one of the biggest private-equity management firms in the world. He played a big part in Carlyle's transformation from a partnership into a publicly traded ...