By Lucy Caplan, Joe Hodgkin, and Ian Kumekawa

Senator Edward Kennedy’s passing last month caused social and political shockwaves across America. Here in Massachusetts, amid the Senator’s wish that lawmakers grant Governor Deval Patrick the power to appoint Kennedy’s successor, a special election to fill the vacant seat has been scheduled for January of next year. With party primaries in December, Perspective takes a closer look at four likely contenders for the Democratic nomination.

Martha Coakley

Martha Coakley became the Attorney General of Massachusetts in 2007.  During her twenty-plus years of work in the public sector, she has distinguished herself by engaging with a variety of thorny issues, particularly child abuse and public safety.  And during her short tenure as Attorney General, she has already indicated a clear commitment to liberal values.

Coakley prosecuted and oversaw a number of noteworthy cases in Massachusetts, first as an Assistant District Attorney in Lowell District Court and later as District Attorney of Middlesex County, which includes Cambridge, Lowell and many of the north-of-Boston suburbs.  In 1991, she took charge of the DA’s Child Abuse Protection Unit.  In this capacity, she prosecuted, among other cases, the Commonwealth v. Louise Woodward, in which an au pair was convicted of second-degree murder after a baby died in her care.  As District Attorney, Coakley also oversaw several prominent cases dealing with sexual abuse among Catholic Church clergy.

The issue of public safety has been central to Coakley’s career – for example, she advocated for increased funding for the analysis of DNA evidence.  On September 16, she picked up a key endorsement from the 22,000-member Massachusetts Police Union.  The group’s executive director, Jim Machado, called her “a tireless advocate for safer communities and prosecuting criminals.”  On a funnier note, Coakley perhaps took this commitment to safety a bit too seriously when she defended the reaction to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force incident in 2007, during which police shut down traffic due to the presence of menacing-looking electronic advertising devices around the city.  “It had a very sinister appearance,” she claimed. “It had a battery behind it, and wires.”

But what would Coakley’s priorities be as a senator?  Her recent record as Attorney General provides some compelling clues with respect to the financial crisis, gay rights and health care.

Coakley was one of the first – and remains one of the only – law enforcement officials to investigate mortgage lenders and institute consumer protection measures.  Since taking office in 2007, she has worked to ensure that lenders are held responsible for predatory loans.  This past May, her office reached a $60 million settlement with Goldman Sachs after an investigation of their subprime lending practices.

With respect to gay rights, in July 2009, Coakley’s office filed a federal complaint challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. This was a bold and proactive move that sets her apart from the other candidates for Kennedy’s seat.  On the subject of health care, Coakley played a role in enacting the 2006 Massachusetts health care reform, which has resulted in nearly-universal health care statewide.  She created a Health Care Division within her office to focus on the new law and oversee Massachusetts hospitals, and also appointed delegates to health-care-related councils, including the Quality and Cost Council.  Coakley has also filed numerous lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies and health insurers who engaged in deceptive practices.  Coakley has indicated that as a senator, she would support an individual mandate and a public option.  Indeed, she has made health care a focal point of her campaign thus far, stating in an e-mail to supporters, “I am running for U.S. Senate to help fix our badly broken health care system once and for all.”

Stephen Pagliuca

Occupying the perennial “Massachusetts businessman” slot is Stephen Pagliuca, a venture capitalist who co-owns the Boston Celtics and is the managing director at Bain Capital.  On September 17, Pagliuca affirmed his interest in running for the seat, aided by Governor Deval Patrick’s former campaign manager Doug Rubin and whatever part of his $400 million net worth he plans to use on the campaign.  In his speech, Pagliuca linked himself to Senator Kennedy, saying, “I pledge to honor him with a campaign that focuses on making it possible for more and more of our fellow citizens to realize the American dream.”  But Pagliuca’s ties to businessmen-turned-politicians of Massachusetts may be more concrete than his ties to Senator Kennedy, as he contributed funding to Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful 1994 attempt to unseat the senator. Pagliuca’s businessman narrative and his personal resources are more likely to help him on the campaign than his political history.

Alan Khazei

Meanwhile, Alan Khazei, the co-founder of community service organization City Year, has announced his intention to run, in a statement thanking “the thousands of individuals who convened on Facebook” to push for his candidacy. Khazei is also the founder and CEO of Be the Change, Inc., an organization whose mission is to coordinate and support the political goals of nonprofit organizations. He will take a leave of absence from this post to run for Senator Kennedy’s seat. Khazei is likely to tie himself to both Senator Kennedy and President Obama’s outspoken support of community service organizations, including Americorps, of which City Year is a forerunner. Khazei says of his background, “I have dedicated myself to empowering people from all backgrounds to make a difference and strengthen our democracy.” Khazei’s campaign has already begun calling students connected to the Harvard Democrats, indicating an interest in riding the wave of youth support, which carried Obama forward last year. Some of his target audience may recognize Khazei from his appearance on the Colbert Report in February.

Michael Capuano

Congressman Mike Capuano currently serves as representative from the 8th district of Massachusetts, which includes Cambridge, Somerville, and the northern parts of Boston. Over the decade that Capuano has been in the House, he has developed a solid, if not remarkable, liberal voting record and is considered by many to be one of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trusted lieutenants. However, a recent article in the Boston Phoenix pointed to possible connections between Capuano and questionable activity involving the PMA group, a now-defunct Washington-based defense lobbying firm.

Before coming to Congress in 1998, Capuano served as mayor of Somerville for eight years. In the 1998 election, when running in New England’s most democratic electoral district, Capuano was able to mobilize his city’s political machine and squeak past a great number of primary opponents with a plurality that accounted for less than 30 percent of the Democratic vote.

In the House, Capuano has established himself as a solid supporter of the Democratic establishment and liberal values. Lauded for his efforts to increase international aid funding and for his commitment to the victims of the conflict in the Sudan, he also serves on the committees for Transportation and Infrastructure, House Administration, and Financial Services. The last saw Capuano absolutely shine in February during a hearing on the use of federal funds by the first beneficiaries of the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (TARP). In response to executives’ admission that their companies continued to engage in risky financial practices even after the bailout, Capuano launched into an impassioned diatribe. In a particularly inspired section, he likened the glum bankers to both Girl Scouts and bank robbers:

“You come to us today on your bicycles after buying Girl Scout cookies and helping out Mother Teresa, telling us, ‘We’re sorry, we didn’t mean it, we won’t do it again, trust us.’ Well, I have some people in my constituency that actually robbed some of your banks. And they say the same thing. They’re sorry, they didn’t mean it, just let them out.”

With evident distaste, Capuano continued, “I don’t have one single penny in any of your banks. Not one.”

In 2007, just months after the Democrats wrested control of the House from the Republicans, Capuano was handpicked by Nancy Pelosi as Chairman of the Speaker’s Task Force on Ethics. In this capacity, he has greatly increased standards for transparency within the House of Representatives.

However, that transparency may now come back to haunt him, as his campaign was recently reported to have been the recipient of tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the now-shuttered PMA defense lobbying group, which, by some metrics, was one of the ten largest in Washington. The group is at the center of a scandal involving Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha, who may be indicted soon on charges of corruption. Murtha, who was the chair of the subcommittee that writes the Defense Department’s budget, received huge contributions from PMA. While no direct link has been drawn between Capuano and any wrongdoing, his political rivals may well try to make hay out of the closeness of Capuano and Murtha as well as Capuano’s role as the Ethics Task Force Chair.

By Ian Kumekawa

In late August, Japanese voters staidly cast the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party out of power. The election was marked with few protests, and after the results were in and a landslide victory for the opposition secured, there was nothing resembling the jubilant celebration seen after Election Day in America. Yet this restrained demeanor hardly captures the landmark importance of the victory of the center-left Japan Democratic Party (JDP), which laid the groundwork for a revitalization of Japanese society.

In America, there is a tendency to idealize Japan. Indeed, there is often an assumption of economic prosperity, of modern convenience, of global partnership, of tried democratic procedures; in short, a well-oiled system that has been thriving and growing from the end of the Second World War.

Yet on closer inspection, things have not been rosy in Japan for much of the past two decades. It has been losing more and more of its revenue from exports to developing economies such as those of South Korea and China, its banking system has proved woefully inadequate to deal effectively with the challenges of the recent financial crisis, the country’s social welfare net has enormous holes, and its politics have been plagued with cronyism and corruption.

To a large extent, the nation’s progress has been impeded by a stifling bureaucracy and a knee-jerk resistance to change which must be linked to the five-decade long rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which steadily became increasingly conservative and unobligated to form coalitions or to initiate reform.

The ousted Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had exercised nearly complete control over Japanese politics since its inception in 1955. Because of the disproportionate electoral value of rural areas, the LDP was able to maintain control of the country by enacting tariffs and subsides in an effort to win the support of rice farmers. With the countryside as a base, the LDP won over big business by expanding their policies of protectionism to large firms which boomed during the sixties and seventies.

With both the rice farmers and national big business squarely satisfied, the LDP had neither the incentive nor the desire to change the status quo. It is little wonder that Japanese politics became increasingly ethically murky as well as top-heavy in recent decades. Eager political aspirants would have to be vetted by a system that rewarded loyalty, bureaucracy, and thinking well inside the established box.

August’s power shift has great potential to fundamentally change the way business is conducted in Japan. The overwhelming victory of JDP, which won 308 out of 480 seats in the Diet, Japan’s lower house, provides the new government under Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who currently enjoys a 71 percent approval rating, with a clear mandate for change. On the top of the list of priorities is to trim the enormous corps of civil servants, who along with the ousted LDP are seen as culpable for the country’s massive stagnation. This paring may also help reduce Japan’s herculean $9-trillion national debt.

Predictably and laudably, the new center-left government also has plans for a variety of social reforms. Hatoyama has spoken of revamping the social security network as well as creating incentives for raising children in an effort to counteract the dramatic aging of the Japanese population.

Additionally, Hatoyama is the first Prime Minister to have publically addressed the issue of Japanese atrocities committed against Koreans and Chinese in the first part of the 20^th century. Indeed these statements mark a shift in Japanese foreign policy that will likely be characterized by more open dialogues between Japan and its neighbors as well as an increased diplomatic independence from the United States. Japan is scheduled to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in next year, and may seek a leadership position among developed countries in the fight to reduce carbon emissions.

These characteristically leftist proposals can only be seen as a welcome change to the immobility that characterized the late LDP years. The results of last month’s election give credence to the notion that Japan is moving towards a political system characterized by legitimate competition. In any case, the potential for this scenario and the recent turn to the left have invigorated Japan profoundly.

By Dylan Matthews

As tens of thousands of conspiracy theorists, right wing survivalists, and revanchist malcontents of all varieties streamed into Washington, DC this past September 12 to protest…well, everything, it was all too easy (and fun!) to point and laugh at the various nuts parading through the nation’s capital. There was the requisite Confederate flag, and a bizarre Photoshop of Barack Obama as Francisco Franco that is even more bizarrely labeled “MARXIST.” My personal favorite was the sign accurately noting that the Obama administration has “more czars than the USSR.”

But the highlight of the occasion was not to be found in the streets, but on Fox News, where the 9/12 Project’s founder, Glenn Beck, had prepared a ten-minute video for the occasion. It is a masterpiece of passion, schmaltzy music, and irrepressible incoherence. It begins with Beck standing on a skyscraper in Times Square, directly in front of the Empire State Building, extolling various landmarks around him (Did you know that the Statue of Liberty is in New York? True fact!), before he dives head-first into a rant about how “America” has failed to rebuild the World Trade Centers. Why? Special interests, of course. How will we rebuild them? By marching on Washington. Because that, my friends, is how buildings are made.

To most liberals, Beck is a modern day Father Coughlin, another demagogue in the Fox mold peddling dangerous half-truths and lies for mass consumption. I do not disagree, and indeed think the work of groups like Think Progress and Media Matters is invaluable in attempting to marginalize him as a serious political force. But acknowledging that he is a dangerous force should not prevent us from recognizing the almost wholly unintentional brilliance of his program, his persona, his “projects,” and indeed his entire existence as a media force.

His show presents itself as comic brilliance. Beck once stood in front of the blackboard in his show’s set, writing down the names of various enemies—Obama, the Left, Internationalists, Graft, ACORN-style organizations, Revolutionaries, and Hidden Agendas—and posited that if we added one letter to this acronym (OLIGARH), we would see the true enemy facing America. That one letter? Y, of course. What, did you think Beck was talking about something other than the OLIGARHY?

Not all of the show’s “jokes” are so broad and farcical. Indeed, a careful viewer can appreciate Beck’s more subtle laugh lines. Shortly after railing against the dread OLIGARHY, Beck looked into the camera and forcefully promised his viewers, “I will tell you exactly the place to go, the way you can save your republic.” Then, as stock cable news transition music started to play, he switched into a hilariously cliché announcer voice and chirped, “That’s tomorrow! Don’t miss it!”

But beyond its irresistible humor, Beck’s show is densely peppered with literary, or at least middlebrow cinematic, allusion. Take the aforementioned blackboard, onto which he scrawls the names of the enemies who have failed him in ever-more-vaguely explained ways. As Beck himself has said, his frantic drawing of connections resembles the scenes of Russell Crowe clipping news articles in A Beautiful Mind. As Rick Perlstein noted after this admission of Beck’s, these were the scenes meant to establish that Crowe’s character, John Nash, was a paranoid schizophrenic.

Indeed, if Beck was focused on avoiding comparisons to mentally ill people, surely he never would have told a New York Times reporter that he views himself as a modern day Howard Beale. Beale is the main character of the 1970s news thriller Network, a suicidal news anchor who undergoes a complete mental breakdown and emerges as a demagogue ranting about the evils of the Arabs and corporations and bellowing slogans like, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” In fact, there is something refreshing about the self-awareness shown by Beck’s self-comparison to Beale, who throughout his career in Network is repeatedly manipulated by cynical TV executives desperate for ratings and willing to put a clearly deranged man on the air for the sake of viewership. Beck knows he’s being used, and he simply does not care.

No discussion of Beck would be complete without commenting on his brilliant evisceration of the rhetorical gymnastics employed by racists to disguise their bigotry. Beck, being a racist, knows intimately the subtlety needed to express one’s prejudices in polite company. For instance, when appearing on Fox & Friends in July he started off with a bang, accusing President Obama of a “deep-seated hatred of white people and the white culture.” When pressed on this by one of his hosts, he immediately backtracked, clarifying, “I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people,” before reestablishing his bigot bona fides by saying, “This guy is, I believe, a racist.” Beck does a brilliant job of exposing an all too familiar dance between social necessity and primal prejudice.

It can be somewhat frightening to remember to remember that Beck does not view his show as a farce or self-satire but rather as a serious news show. That said, a focus on his aesthetic qualities seems justified. Until Glenn Beck does become a marginalized force in broadcast media, it seems a waste to pass up on the opportunity to gaze into the frenzied psyche of right-wing America.

So let us appropriate its entertainment value, disregarding the intent and appreciating it for the brilliant self-satire it is. Almost limitless amusement will come of it.

By Oscar Zarate