Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy has been blogging about Obama’s community service plan in what has so far been a three-part series — see post 1, post 2, and post 3 for details. The gist of it is that Obama plans to use the tools of government to mandate that middle school and high school students will be required to do 50 hours of community service per year. He will also create a volunteer service program for college students that will be nearly universal because of the way it will be tied to college aid, including the work-study program. And he will create numerous new government service programs to get non-collegeiate young people, middle-aged folks, and senior citizens to participate in community service.

There’s no reason not to call this what it is. It’s a social welfare program on par with FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. While it may have some benefits as those programs did, it will be the largest expansion of government in a long time and that’s one of the reasons I’m opposed to it. But there’s also a more fundamental reason.

I strongly believe in community service, but I think that by expanding government’s role in mandating, organizing, and ultimately regulating community service we would be dealing a blow to community service as it currently is. I think we’d be discouraging what Lindgren calls “individual volunteerism.” We’ll be taking what were previously private efforts to serve communities and we’ll basically be turning those efforts into government social services.

As a Christian, I’m alarmed that we’ll be taking away a choice made to selflessly serve one’s community and replacing it with either a requirement to do so, in the case of middle and high schoolers, or a very self-interested choice to do so in the case of college students. Let’s face it, most college students aren’t going to sign up for service programs like the ones Obama is proposing because they legitimately want to help their communities. They’ll sign up because they want the tax credit to help them pay for school. I don’t think replacing altruism with self-interest will be beneficial to college students or our culture and society in general.

I’m also concerned about another problem that Lindgren points out, that goverment will be deciding what does and doesn’t qualify as service. I hope he won’t mind if I offer a long quote from his post on Obama’s college program, but please go read the whole thing because there’s a lot more to it. Lindgren’s post reads, in part:

Commenters about existing mandatory service programs claim that public schools have too narrow a view of service, often excluding service by Boy Scouts and churches. Obama hasn’t yet said much about what doesn’t count as service, but he has said enough to cause me to worry.

Obama proposes to move from college work-study to “Serve-Study.” He plans to mandate that 25% of college work-study jobs be directed away from working on campus, “such as in libraries and dining halls,” to working in the community, eventually hoping to raise that proportion to 50% of all college work-study employment.

Thus, Obama wouldn’t count as “service” my wife’s college work-study job (years ago) as a weekend librarian in the University of Chicago’s School of Social Work, but if my wife had done one of Obama’s preferred tasks, picking up trash in the slum behind the School, Obama would count that as service.

Reasonable people may differ on whether aiding in the education of social work students is more valuable than picking up trash. Yet in my wife’s student days, picking up trash would probably have done little good in the long run because (as the Boston Globe revealed) the government-supported housing projects developed or managed by Obama’s clients, friends, and biggest contributors within 500 yards of the back of Chicago’s School of Social Work were allowed to deteriorate, pretty much destroying most of the improvements made in that neighborhood.

That’s a big part of the problem. What is and isn’t service, and why should government be deciding that? Maybe Lindgren’s wife chose her work-study job because she thought it would be a way of serving the University of Chicago community and, since it involved social workers, the community at large in the long run. I had a lot of work-study jobs to choose from, some of which were pretty cushy. I chose to work at my university’s health clinic because I thought maybe I’d at least be helping people that way. No, I’m not a doctor or a nurse or even an orderly. I work in an office. But office workers are instrumental in keeping our health clinic running, and I like to think that having someone in the office who is kind, courteous, and helpful to patients, other staff, nurses, and doctors because he wants to be there is a good thing.

But would my office work be counted as service under Obama’s plan? Probably not. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but I like to think that I’m trying to serve my university’s community in what I’m doing. I could have chosen a computer lab where I sit there and use Facebook all day. It would have been a lot easier, but I felt that if I was going to get help from the federal government to pay toward my education I ought to earn it by doing something that really matters.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think this program will have the completely wrong effect on American community service. Right now we’re a nation of volunteers. This plan threatens to turn us into a nation of social workers.

And then there are the practical matters that make a fiscal conservative like me cringe. Lindgren calculates that Obama’s college program alone — leaving aside the middle school, high school, extra-collegiate, and adult programs — will cost somewhere between $65-100 billion a year, and more than that if the program increases the number of college students as Obama hopes it will.

I think Lindgren missed one other consideration. Obama wants to eventually turn 50% of work-study jobs into off-campus community service jobs. But those on-campus jobs will still have to be filled. Instead of filling them with federal work-study dollars, they’ll have to be filled either by more state funding, which would mean higher state taxes, or more funding from the college in question, which would mean a boost in tuition or other fees. Either way, parents and students will have to pay to make up the difference when 50% of work-study jobs are moved off campus and turned into community service.

It’s so important for Americans to be involved in community service, and the President has a unique bully pulpit from which he can encourage the country to be more involved. Most Americans already want to serve their fellow man. But the Obama plan gets it wrong. It would replace altruistic volunteerism with self-interested social work, it would get government way too involved in community service, it would let government define what does and doesn’t qualify as service, and it would cost Americans way too much. Hopefully Congress will have the sense to oppose such a huge government expansion and governmental intrusion into already vibrant community service programs.

Vega:

1. Target Audience: Republican businessmen

Theme: “Palin – An irresponsible choice”

Narrative: Any 79 year old CEO of a major multinational corporation who appointed a successor who lacked any international experience at all would be judged by most businessmen to have acted in a terribly irresponsible way and possibly even be liable to legal action. McCain’s selection of Palin is actually a great deal more irresponsible and represents a profound and deeply disturbing failure of good judgment and thoughtful decision-making.

First off, McCain is 72, not 79. I’m sure Mr. Vega knows this so I’m not sure why he compared McCain’s choice of Palin to a 79-year-old retiring CEO’s choice, unless he’s trying to make McCain seem even older than he is. But that would be ageism and I’m sure that’s not the case.

If the Obama campaign still wants to run with the experience meme — I’ve cautioned against that here — then this is probably the best way to do it. Palin’s total lack of experience on foreign policy contrasts with Obama’s experience in the Senate and especially with Biden’s experience. But I still stand by my basic argument that it’s a bad idea to go for the experience factor at all. We’ve been saying all along that change, not experience, is what’s important in this election. Sen. Obama doesn’t have much more experience than Gov. Palin and no executive experience. Besides, do we really want a situation where our number one’s experience is compared with their number two’s? Think about it people.

Vega:

2. Target Audience: politically literate moderates and independents attracted to McCain by his past reputation for independence from the Republican “party line”.

Theme: “McCain to Moderates: Screw You”

Narrative: McCain’s final choice between Romney and Palin represented a clear choice between a relatively moderate, successful governor and businessman on the one hand and the candidate backed by both the religious right and the secular Rush Limbaugh right on the other.

If McCain’s fundamental political strategy were actually to win by earning the support of political moderates, then Romney was self-evidently the preferable candidate. McCain’s choice of Palin, in contrast, provides him with movement conservative foot soldiers for Election Day but represents a fundamental and irrevocable decision to ally his campaign with cultural conservatives rather than political moderates.

I actually think it would be better to make this about Palin vs. Lieberman than Palin vs. Romney. Like McCain, the Romney of today isn’t as moderate as the Romney of the past. He’s with the right on just about every issue, he’s to the right of McCain on some issues (like gay marriage), and the only reason he was rejected by the extremist right was the perception that he’s a flip-flopper and, regardless of what they say now, his Mormon religion. Besides, according to the New York Times it looks like it was more likely McCain would have picked Lieberman instead of Romney. But I won’t quibble. The point is that McCain picked a running mate from the extremist right instead of a moderate. If it really came down to Romney vs. Palin then McCain was deciding between two extreme ideologues.

I think this is probably the winning talking point against Palin. She thinks abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest, and even in her own daughter’s case, anathema even to a lot of pro-life conservatives like myself. Bush, Cheney, and McCain all think there should be exceptions for rape and incest, so Palin is to their right on this issue. She thinks creationism should be taught with evolution in our public school classrooms, which means that she either thinks creationism is science or that religion should be taught in our public schools — both of which are bad. She supports abstinence only education even though there’s evidence that it’s not working. And Democrats should demand to know whether she supports the Federal Marriage Amendment. If she does, and I suspect she does, that puts her to the right of Cheney and McCain and squarely in league with Bush. More of the same, in other words.

Vega:

3. Target Audience: “good government” voters who were appalled by Bush appointees like Harriet Miers and Monica Goodling

3. Theme: “Sarah Palin is John McCain’s version of Harriet Miers and Monica Goodling all in one”

Narrative: Sarah Palin resembles both Harriet Miers and Monica Goodling — Miers, because she was entirely unprepared for the post offered her and was primarily chosen for her presumed appeal to the Christian right; Monica Goodling because, like Palin, she conducted purges against political opponents.

First off, let’s make one thing clear: Harriet Miers wasn’t “primarily chosen for her presumed appeal to the Christian right.” She was chosen for her presumed undying loyalty to Bush and, let’s not forget, she was recommended and defended by Harry Reid — once, twice, three times. Arlen Specter and Pat Leahy recommended someone who wasn’t in the appellate system. Conservatives hated the Miers nomination and were the main force in getting her replaced with John Roberts, a guy who was chosen because he was experienced and had a record of strict constructionism.

I think there’s some risk in going after Palin on these grounds. Calling her another Harriet Miers in the way that Vega does is just another regurgitation of the experience argument, and have I mentioned that’s a bad idea? The Monica Goodling comparison isn’t a good idea either because Palin’s ties to corruption are sketchy, at least for now, and without firm evidence of corruption it will invite Republicans to go after Obama on Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers again.

I do think we can throw Harriet Miers into the fray though, but in a different context than the one Vega suggests. Harriet Miers is another example of Republicans appointing women only because they’re anatomically correct. Bush was under a lot of pressure to appoint another woman to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, and instead of appointing a woman with O’Connor’s conservative pragmatism he thought that appointing any woman would do and appointed a crony who he hoped would be a loyalist on the Supreme Court. Democrats should point out that Harriet Miers was no Sandra Day O’Connor and Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton.

Vega:

4. Target Audience: Latinos and other immigrant groups

Theme: Latinos Beware – John McCain’s new friends would like to see you in hand-cuffs

Narrative: The embrace of McCain’s candidacy by the “movement” conservatives poses a major threat to Latinos and other immigrants. “Movement” conservatives include a substantial number of advocates of a national policy that would elevate the increasingly frequent raids, “round-ups” and deportations of illegal aliens that have been occurring around the country in the last year into an organized and permanent, large-scale and nationwide “round-up” campaign.

I think this is an interesting angle, especially in light of Laura Ingraham’s comment back in March that “[Sarah Palin]‘s not for comprehensive immigration reform, I can tell you that. She’s sick to death of this immigration nonsense in the United States.” If that’s true, it would put Palin to the right of McCain and Bush on another issue and we could join it with the ones I already talked about above. But we need to pin her down on this issue and make sure she’s actually an immigration hardliner, otherwise it’s just guilt by association with “movement conservatives” and I don’t think that will work.

Vega:

5. Target Audience: The media

Theme: Palin is not an “ordinary hockey mom” — she is a full-time career woman with a 4 month old special needs child

Narrative: Whenever the press describes Palin as simultaneously an “ordinary hockey mom” who reflects very traditional values in her personal life and a also as a full-time career public servant who is fully prepared to meet the demands of the vice-presidency, they are presenting characterizations that are mutually incompatible. There are, in fact, a very substantial number of traditionalists — particularly among the religiously devout — who strongly disapprove of Palin’s decision not to stay at home with the newborn child. This concern is particularly notable in the discussions on many Christian web sites.

If the press is going to use the phrase “ordinary hockey mom” to describe Palin and to assert that she embodies traditional values in her personal life, the press has an obligation to also note that a very substantial number of traditionalists disapprove of her decision to accept McCain’s invitation to join his campaign rather than to remain at home with her very young child. Omitting this information significantly biases the coverage in Palin’s favor.

I think this is poison for the Democratic Party because it made my stomach turn and briefly made me want to rush right out and vote McCain-Palin. This argument is sexist and anti-religious. It also demonstrates that Vega knows nothing about the state of modern conservatism. Palin is a conservative feminist who, like many conservative feminists, manages to balance her strong commitment to family life with a career. Most conservatives have no problem with that and those who do are more sexist than conservative. Most faith and values voters have no problem with that and, again, those who do are more sexist than committed to faith and values.

Nothing will turn women off faster than for Democrats to get on TV and seem to side with sexists who think Sarah Palin should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Nothing will turn faith and values voters off faster than for Democrats to get on TV and argue that “the religiously devout” think women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Nothing will turn the Republicans and conservative independents that Democrats will have to reach out to if we want to win off faster than for Democrats to get on TV and conflate sexism with conservatism. And nothing is more likely to drive Hillary Clinton’s former supporters toward John McCain and Sarah Palin than to see the same Democratic faces on TV using the same sexist tactics that they used against Clinton.

This is the absolute worst strategy possible and we’ll use it at our own peril.

Vega:

6. Target Audience: All voters

Theme: “McCain – So desperate to win he has lost his moral compass”

Narrative: McCain’s choice of Palin provides additional evidence for the theme stated above and which is outlined in the article “How to Attack John McCain – What Rove Would Do.

I’m not sure I follow. I agree that McCain is desperate to win and has lost his moral compass, but I’m not sure how picking Palin as his running mate is an example of that. Was it an ideological choice that was meant to pander to social conservatives? Yeah. Was he dumb enough to think that picking any woman, no matter how ideologically different, would attract Hillary Clinton’s former supporters? Looks like he was. But I’m not sure I see how that’s an example of McCain losing his moral compass and I think this argument, at least as applied to Palin, is a non-starter.

I think in the long run our best bet is to go after Palin on the basis that she is to the right of a lot of Republicans, including McCain himself and even George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on some issues. She’s an extremist who thinks rape victims — hypothetically including her own daughter — should be forced to carry children of rape to term, who thinks creationism should be taught with evolution in our public schools, who thinks abstinence only education is the way to go, who might think that gay marriages and civil unions should be banned by the U.S. Constitution. If we can pin her down on a war of attrition against illegal immigrants, we can use that issue too.

But I think there are quite a few arguments here that are either non-starters, risky, or downright suicidal. The experience argument — with the possible exception of foreign policy — is at best a non-starter and at worst will draw parallels between our number one and their number two. The corruption argument is so far unproven and is a non-starter that could bring up Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers again. The Miers/Goodling comparison is risky because it relies on a combination of the experience and corruption arguments. A better Miers comparison would be the “McCain thinks just the plumbing is important”/”Harriet Miers was no Sandra Day O’Connor and Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton” meme I proposed. The moral compass argument is a vague non-starter. The worst is the sexist, anti-religious argument that conflates conservatism, family values, and faith with sexism and sides with the sexists on the matter. That’s political suicide right there.

I want to point out that all the arguments Vega proposed and I rejected were character-based. They go after Sarah Palin personally. The argument I agreed with, that Palin is ideologically extreme, is about issues rather than personal attacks and character assassination. Issue-based criticism is bound to resonate better with voters than character-based vitriol, and besides that it’s the best way for us to keep saying that Obama is the real agent of change in this election while McCain and Palin are more of the same (or in Palin’s case, even worse). That’s the winning message. The rest are losers and will either have no impact with voters or, even worse, have a negative impact.

I do think this is a good time to talk about abstinence only education though. Gov. Palin has been a consistent supporter of abstinence only education and has opposed distribution of condoms in public schools. This issue raises a question that all Americans should consider in this election: Is abstinence only working?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m for abstinence. I think Americans should tell their kids what their churches, synagogues, mosques, whatever teach about the nature of sex and point out that these are the values their families believe in. I think they should discourage their kids from having premarital sex, let them know that there will be severe consequences if they’re caught doing it, and let them know what could happen to them in terms of STDs and unplanned pregnancy.

But I also think it’s clear that kids are having premarital sex. Abstinence only education isn’t working because the message from the media that premarital sex is the thing to do is more powerful and more pervasive than the message from their religious traditions and families that they should wait. That’s not going to change anytime soon. In the meantime, what do we do? Do we keep stubbornly promoting abstinence only education at the expense of our kids’ futures, their health, maybe even their lives? Maybe that’s what the Republicans think the “conservative” thing to do is, but I think real family values mean protecting our kids — telling them that they should wait, yeah, but also letting public education tell them what will protect them from diseases and unplanned pregnancy if they don’t.

This is really an issue of public health and the common good. By promoting abstinence only education when there’s strong evidence that it doesn’t work, we’re not doing what we need to do to prevent the spread of STDs and especially HIV/AIDS. We’re not doing what we need to do to prevent unplanned pregnancy, and by extension we’re not doing what we need to do to prevent abortions, reliance on welfare services, etc. When conservatives insist on continuing with abstinence only education, they’re undermining efforts to fight HIV/AIDS and other STDs, to reduce the number of abortions, and to cut the number of people dependent on social services.

That’s not my idea of conservative values. John McCain will continue the Republican Party’s stubborn commitment to abstinence only education. On the other hand, Barack Obama promises a commitment to more comprehensive and realistic sex education that will protect our kids from STDs and unplanned pregnancy. Conservatives committed to real family values, conservatives who would rather protect our kids than sacrifice them on the altar of ideological purity should vote for Barack Obama and not John McCain this November.

If I actually get any readers today — a big if, I’m brand new — consider this an open thread.

That’s not to mention that it might not be exactly prudent to suggest that their vice presidential candidate is too inexperienced when she’s got about the same level of experience as our presidential candidate. She’s running for number two. If McCain’s judgment is bad because he picked her, what does Obama’s judgment look like for running for President at all? Let’s get back to what we’ve been saying. This campaign isn’t about how many years you’ve been in Washington, and we’ve had some great Presidents who were considered too inexperienced. This campaign is about who can bring the right kind of change to Washington: Barack Obama and Joe Biden, or John McCain and Sarah Palin?

That’s the stupid. Now let’s get to the insane.

The “Palin is too inexperienced” meme is tame compared to the attacks by some bloggers-turned-National Enquirer. The Anchoress has two pretty good round-ups of these doozies — here and here — and yeah, we really do look that bad. Of course there’s the sexist attack that because she’s a wife and mother she shouldn’t be running for Vice President. Yeah, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, right? Then there’s the speculation that she may have been pregnant before she was married. Right, because there’s tons of evidence for that. And unwed mothers are evil, right? That’s definitely the position of the Democratic Party. Definitely. And then there are the attacks on her mothering abilities. Because that will surely help with the women’s vote.

What else? Oh, she was in a beauty pageant. She was a sportscaster. All of this somehow adds up to the idea that she’s an idiot, because of course sportscasters like Keith Olbermann are also idiots and of course there’s nothing sexist about depicting her as an airhead just because she has natural beauty and takes care of her body. Isn’t physical fitness supposed to be smart?

But believe it or not, there’s still some left. There’s the Troopergate non-scandal. This is the one where bloggers and pundits come down squarely on the side of a state trooper who was abusing Sarah Palin’s sister and most certainly shouldn’t have been wearing a badge. But I think the most imaginative one yet it the suggestion that Sarah Palin’s youngest child, Trig, is actually her daughter’s child and that her daughter was a victim of incest — and now Palin is covering it up by claiming Trig as her own. Evidence for this? None. Bloggers promoting this libel? Daily Kos and Andrew Sullivan, among others.

That’s not even all of it. You’d think we were worried or something!

My take on Sarah Palin is that she’s a decent lady and she’s done quite a bit to clean up Alaska’s politics. She’s not perfect, but then who is? I think the experience argument is ridiculous, I think the other “arguments,” if they can be called that, are disgusting and morally offensive. I think Sarah Palin is as good a running mate as any McCain could have picked and better than some.

But she shouldn’t be Vice President of the United States of America.

Why not? For the same reason that John McCain can’t be President. McCain and Palin won’t bring the change America needs to Washington. Yeah, she claims to be a fiscal conservative. But did you know that Sarah Palin left Wasilla, Alaska, millions of dollars in debt because of a stupid legacy-building decision? Just like Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, Sarah Palin can’t manage a budget. She can’t even manage a budget for a city with a population of less than 10,000. That’s the kind of fiscal responsibility Republicans have always offered and it’s what America will get under John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Not to mention that she’s probably the most extreme, ideological person McCain could have chosen. I’m pro-life, George W. Bush is pro-life, Dick Cheney is pro-life, John McCain is pro-life, and Sarah Palin is pro-life — but only one of us thinks that rape victims shouldn’t be able to have abortions. Guess which one? She also thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution even though one is religion and the other science. She supported an Alaskan constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages and civil unions. Will she prove more extreme than McCain and Cheney by supporting an amendment like that to the U.S. Constitution?

There’s a case to be made against Sarah Palin and it’s the same case we’ve been making against John McCain all along. McCain and Palin won’t bring the kind of change America needs to Washington. They’ll bring the same orthodox extremism we’ve been getting for eight years. That’s the case we should be making against her. The experience case makes our own candidate look bad and the disgusting sexist attacks make our whole party look bad. So far there’s no evidence that Palin has any potential to drag women away from the Democratic Party. Let’s not push them away by basically attacking Palin based on her gender.