On the 2008 Election and State-Federal Relations

by Karl Kurtz

How will this fall's presidential election affect federalism?  Here are three recent pieces on the subject from Stateline.org:

• A comparison of Sen. John McCain's position to Pres. George W. Bush's on key federal issues by Daniel C. Vock, "Bush, McCain view issues similarly."  The story quotes NCSL's federal affairs counsel Michael Bird as saying that he was optimistic about working with a possible McCain administration because: "'It’s been so bad, it couldn’t possibly get worse,' Bird said of states' relationships with the Bush administration."
• "What would an Obama win mean for states?" by Pamela M. Prah and Daniel C. Fehr.  The normally reliable Stateline.org stumbled on this one, since all of the quotes in the story are from Democratic governors who are, of course, admiring of Obama.  Neither Republicans nor independent observers provide any balance to the story.  Nonetheless, the article contains a useful short summary of Sen. Obama's positions on issues that matter to the states.
  
• In an earlier commentary from July that I had not previously read, Ray Sheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association, asks, "Will the 2008 election improve state-federal relations?"  His (non-) answer is that the relationship will improve only if the new president and Congress undertake a partnership with the states.  Along the way, he has a nice, concise history of "cooperative" and "coercive" forms of federalism over the last 30 years.

NCSL's deputy executive director Carl Tubbesing says that he had been planning to write his own piece comparing the presidential candidates on federalism issues based upon their public positions. But after reviewing the record of the two candidates' speeches and writings, he lamented, "Neither one of them is talking about the relationship between state and federal government.  Since I didn't have time to conduct the interviews with policy people in both campaigns that would have been necessary to produce a story, I had to give the project up."

No surprise there.  The state-federal relationship may be vital to America's governance, but there aren't many votes to be found in arcane matters like which levels of government should assume respoonsibility for which programs and services.

Comments

[Dan Vock]

The last installment of this batch is up today. We tackled the Democratic ticket first, then the Republican. Today we compare John McCain and Barack Obama on the issues. There's even a handy graphic to go along with it. http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=339254