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Former Prospecter Kate Shepphard has a good interview with Maryland Senator Ben Cardin on cap-and-trade bills, transit funding, and climate change. When I was talking about Senators needing to take a "profiles in courage" attitude to cap and trade, I meant something like this:
There were very few people who came from the Rust Belt on the Democratic side that voted "no" on the bill. Many senators -- including this senator -- represent large industrial states. There are many companies in Maryland that could take the position, since their product is made with a lot of carbon, that they would be opposed to this legislation. Yet that didn't turn into their United States senator voting "no.And to connect this back to the previous post, this sort of vote takes real courage. Not Cardin's vote, in particular, as Maryland is fairly safe for a Democrat. But take Sherrod Brown, who's from Ohio, and voted against the Liberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill. In his case, the political incentives are clear, and he's following them. Were he to break with his constituents in order to try and save the planet that would be an immensely courageous vote. But he probably wouldn't develop a reputation for legislative courage and independence. He'd still be thought of as a liberal, and since the stereotype is that only tree huggers worry about catastrophic climate change, his vote just shows how out of touch with his constituents he really is. So there's a sense here in which the media's narrow definition of courage -- which essentially translates into bipartisan deal-making mixed with the occasional unkind word about your party leadership -- is not only a bit incoherent, but actually sets up the wrong incentives. If courage is measured by how often you break with your ideology, then what happens when following your beliefs is the hard and courageous thing to do?
