Political scenes we'd like to see

While reading the latest issue of The Economist this morning, a conspiracy theory occurred to me. For once, it’s the sort of conspiracy I’d like to have operating behind the scenes. Here’s how it works:

About the time that Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination, he and the Democratic National Committee meet to talk strategy. What they really need is a way to bring disaffected Republicans over to Kerry without alienating the Democrats. There’s an obvious VP candidate for doing this: John McCain.

So they meet secretly with McCain and make some plans.

While the speculation ramps up on who will be Kerry’s VP, agents provocateur start asking about McCain as a possibility, enough that other people take up the speculation. McCain hears enough of this that he puts his foot down and says “No.”

Despite this, speculation continues. McCain grows more curmudgeonly in his denials, until he declares he’ll go to the Democratic National Convention to tell them “No!” in person.

At the convention, the conversation goes something like:

Kerry: VP please?
McCain: No.
Kerry: Pretty please?
McCain: No!
Kerry: Pretty pretty please with sugar on top?
McCain: You’d never agree to my terms.
Kerry: Probably not... but just for the sake of argument, what are they?

At that point, McCain trots out a prearranged agenda of issues that appeal to conservatives and they retire to a back room to discuss things. They emerge an hour later with a Kerry-McCain ticket. and some announcements of changes to the platform that include some traditional Republican values like fiscal conservativism.

At that point, Democrats will feel good because they’ve got a maverick Republican on their side, and disaffected Republicans can feel good voting for Kerry-McCain because they’ve strongarmed the Democrats into following the policies they’ve espoused all along.

Any time during the Kerry-McCain administration they have to do something for the good of the country that would cause either party to set up a huge whine, the candidate from that party can go to his people and say, “I’m terribly sorry, but we had to make some compromises to build the ticket...” This makes it possible for the administration to get some useful things done without having their parties turn on them.

After Kerry’s terms are up, McCain runs for President (on either the Republican or Democratic ticket) with Hillary Clinton as his VP, and the cycle continues.

Speculation

Terrorists in Iraq and Saudi Arabia are making foreign experts more reluctant to show up in person and risk their necks. This is a strategy that could backfire on the terrorists in a big way.

Consider: if you need expertise, and the experts are reluctant to show up in a violent area, it may become cheaper to provide telepresence than it would be to provide enough security to make them feel safe, or enough hazard pay to make them willing to take the risk.

Telepresence requires that you improve the network infrastructure in the on-site location, and that you have people on site capable of carrying out the recommendations of the telepresent experts. This means that you have an incentive to get your locals to upgrade their networks and their personal skills.

So you have all this bandwidth in use eight hours a day while the experts provide their talent... but the rest of the time, you’ve got all that network capacity going idle, and a bunch of locals who are going to be in the same “let’s explore this nifty new technology” mindset that we’ve all experienced.

It won’t be long before they discover eBay and find some ways to make a little money, and start purchasing outdated used computing hardware, far behind the times for the first world cutting edge, but perfectly adequate for dragging a society into the information age. (Though they’ll still need to get more fundamental basics like food distribution, sanitation, and electricity supply working before anything serious can happen. But it’s in the area of getting those working that these experts will be needed.) Opportunities for education suddenly grow, and for bypassing any communications barriers imposed by the current regime.

Empowering individual entrepeneurs will create more demand for a stable business climate, which will generate more opposition to the terrorists. Overall, a win for sense and stability.

I’m hoping that the people installing networking equipment in Iraq and Saudi Arabia encourage web surfing after working hours.