I wanted to talk a bit more about my proposal for a standard nationwide farecard system. The main objectives to this, interrelated, are that changing all the transit systems to have a new farecard system would be expensive and that the actual benefits of doing this would be rather modest.

I completely agree. I wasn’t really envisioning a massive outlay to totally change existing systems. But I do think that more uniformity would be better. What I would have in mind would be the creation of a new standard “federal system” that would be based on the existing system of some large city that was willing to cooperate. Then one would hope to see the new standard spread over time. Cities that don’t currently have rail systems but are building them could adopt the new standard, as could any city that for whatever reason is considering changes to its bus or rail network that would involve making the switch.

As I’ll happily concede, the benefits of doing this would be non-enormous. But I think there would be some benefits, and the cost would be low.

For the past 24 hours or so I’ve been annoyed by some inconveniently located construction that makes it hard to get into the Convention Center. But I looked closer and it turns out to serve me right — they seem to be laying track for a streetcar system.

The centerpiece of John McCain’s talking about education policy is the need for more “choice” (i.e., vouchers) but as voucher advocate Neal McCluskey is noting there’s really no there there:

All that McCain’s plan offers in terms of specifics is that he’d reapportion federal money slated for attracting, rewarding, and training teachers; somehow give principals more control over their budgets; and expand the use of online education. Oh, and importantly(though most voters, concerned primarily about their own kids, probably won’t care), McCain would increase funding for D.C.’s school-choice program.

This is just really odd. You can believe whatever you want about vouchers and still obviously a proposal for a modest increasing in funding for a pilot voucher program in the District of Columbia is neither here nor there in terms of really improving education in America. This basically reflects what I was saying the other day about Grand New Party — if you’re committed to the kind of tax and budget policies that McCain is committed to, it’s just not possible to put meaningful domestic policy reforms on the table. I don’t think vouchers are the solution to the problems in American schools, but whatever the solution is — even vouchers — would require some real fiscal muscle to actually change anything.

Photo by Flickr user lkbm used under a Creative Commons license

Michael Slackman notes that across the Middle East, European countries, Israel, and even the Bush administration are looking to engagement and diplomacy to try to resolve outstanding issues, rather than counting on futile policies of “isolation” and coercion.

Which is, in my view, all to the good. But it’s also a reminder of an important extent in which John McCain would not be merely an extension of the Bush administration. Bush, never one to admit an error, hasn’t made a big deal about it but since at least Israel’s failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006 the administration has substantially crawled back from its previous lunatic policies in favor of something more resembling a pragmatic approach to the Middle East (and of course North Korea). McCain, however, gives every indications of wanting to go back to an earlier, purer phase of Bushism when neocons were riding high and Robert Gates was nowhere to be seen in the halls of power.

Plausibly, the weird combination of McCain’s traditional dislike of and contempt for Bush, combined with their objectively similar opinions on policy matters, is making things worse here. On some level, the Bush administration has gotten less crazy because they’ve seen the results of their earlier blunders. But McCain seems to think poorly enough of Bush as a man and as a leader to believe that Bush rather than Bush’s ideas are to blame for these problems. Thus, in his view, if only we’d had John “I know how to win wars” McCain in the White House earlier, everything might have been fine. So if he’s president, we might go and try the whole thing over again, reliving the policies of 2002-2005 until McCain can prove to himself that, no, even the legendary Awesomeness of John McCain can’t make unworkable policies work.

Meanwhile, I’d say Sean-Paul Kelly is probably too optimistic that recent Iran-related developments mean there’s really going to be a Bush-era breakthough, but I hope he’s right.

I’m glad that armor piercing attacks against US forces in Iraq have declined but attributing this to the success of the Basra offensive which was supposed to have somehow — and nobody in the article explains any causal mechanism — to have crippled Iranian capabilities is a bit bizarre. It’s not clear how much of these attacks ever had anything to do with Iran, but insofar as Iran is playing a role the obvious cause of a decline in the tempo of attacks is efforts at “appeasement” like the Bush administration’s somewhat renewed interest in diplomacy with Teheran and so forth.