"Tag Line Could Alter Tone of Ads"
USA Today offers this
report.
Issacharoff on the Political Center
Sam Issacharoff has posted Collateral
Damage: The Endangered Center in American Politics on SSRN. Here's
the abstract:
Focusing on the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor
in California, this article examines the curious reemergence of direct
democracy. The article begins by tracing the disfavored status of any
direct democratic mechanism in the original constitutional design. In
addition, the use of recalls further violates the Framers' commitment
to fixed terms of office to insulate wise political leadership from
immediate accountability to the potentially inflamed desires of
political majorities. Despite this background, the Article argues that
a significant part of the current impulse toward plebiscitary forms of
governance owes to the increasing unaccountability of legislative
branches of government toward median preferences. As a result of
gerrymandering and other distortive features of modern districting,
there is a growing gulf between increasingly polarized and fractious
legislative delegations and the centrist preferences of the bulk of the
voting public. Schwarzenegger provides a striking example with a
candidate able to muster half the votes in a crowded field, yet running
on a platform that could not have prevailed in the primary of either
major party. This article was originally presented as the 2004 Cutler
Lecture at William and Mary.
"Political Groups Spend Millions to Take on Bush in
Ad Campaign"
The New York Times offers this
front-page article. Along similar lines, the Washington Post
offers Democrats
Forming Parallel Campaign: Interest Groups Draw GOP Fire.