Word: socialistic
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Where does representative democracy end and populism begin? The question has been posed high and low in France for the last couple of days since S?gol?ne Royal, the clear frontrunner to be the Socialist candidate in next spring's presidential election, proposed tossing a new wrench in the already dysfunctional French mode of governance. Her idea is to establish "citizens' juries," drawn by random lot, to assess the work of representatives between elections. Such "popular surveillance" of deputies and other elected officials, she said, would help bridge France's chronic gulf between the elected and the electorate...
...Still, the idea seemed to jeopardize the apparently impregnable lead Royal maintains over her Socialist rivals, former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. They both gleefully attacked the juries this week in the second of four televised debates scheduled before Socialists select their candidate in mid-November. Strauss-Kahn noted that a just society can't be "built on the general suspicion" invoked by subjecting elected officials to juries. Fabius suggested the idea was "a kind of populism that would end up serving the far right...
...process they managed only to drive home the fact that Royal is setting the agenda for the Socialist race, to the consternation of her more experienced and older rivals. The jury concept fits neatly into her broad emphasis on"participative democracy" and "citizen experts." Few political experts beyond Royal know exactly how those ideas are supposed to be applied, and she's been deliberately vague on the details. But what do they know? As so often in the past, the polls came to her rescue. One commissioned by the daily Le Parisien after the debate found that...
...government has tried various non-conventional and socialist-style solutions to the housing dilemma. Earlier this year, Caracas officials began seizing apartments considered "idle" to give shelter to those who had none. They moved 51 firefighters who needed housing into one apartment building in the upper-middle class neighborhood of El Rosal. Some residents of the building said they didn't object to their new neighbors, noting that the local government paid a fair price for the units and that people needed help allaying the financial shock of skyrocketing apartment prices...
Yikes. But then Obama is nothing if not candid about his uncertainties and imperfections. In Dreams from My Father, which was written before he became a politician, he admits to cocaine and marijuana use and also to attending socialist meetings. In The Audacity of Hope, I counted 28 impolitic or self-deprecating admissions. Immediately, on page 3, he admits to political "restlessness," which is another way of saying he's ambitious. He flays himself for enjoying private jets, which eliminate the cramped frustrations of commercial flying but--on the other hand!--isolate him from the problems of average folks...