Washington Times: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she voted to ban last year." So much for reforming the way Washington does business.
« August 2008 | Main | October 2008 »
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Geoffrey Wheatcroft Channels for Neville Chamberlain
Lots of intelligent people have an uncharitable view of George W. Bush, for all sorts of intelligent reasons. The Atlantic's Geoffrey Wheatcroft, writing for the Washington Post, shows the kind of noxious numbskullery that only an intelligent, well-informed person is capable of. His article bears the title "'Munich' shouldn't be a dirty word."
"Munich" here refers to Neville Chamberlain's famous capitulation to Adolf Hitler 1938. Chamberlain agreed to give Hitler a pass for the German occupation of the "Sudeten Land," in Czechoslovakia, in return for a promise from the Fuehrer that he wouldn't eat anyone else. That is what has since been branded "appeasement." Chamberlain landed in London and declared to reporters that he had achieved "peace in our time."
Wheatcroft writes about what he sees as the frequent misuse of the "rhetoric of Munich" by a range of leaders, including British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, President Eisenhower, and of course, George W. Wheatcroft complains that every time a President or PM wants to use military action, he always claims that to do otherwise would be another Munich. But often the cause is unjust, and the leader is not prepared to back up his rhetoric. Fair enough. Unfortunately, Wheatcroft has the bad judgment to tell us what he thinks about the real Munich event.
Quite apart from their unhappy consequences, all these invocations of Munich begin by rewriting history. Chamberlain was a democratic leader who knew that most of his people understandably did not want to go to war in 1938, only 20 years after another terrible war in which about three-quarters of a million British men had been killed.
Besides which, Chamberlain was far from alone in thinking that he was addressing a real grievance… While it's lamentably true that German resentment at "the slave treaty of Versailles" following World War I helped bring Hitler to power, there is another inconvenient truth: Between the wars, British and American liberals almost universally believed that the post-1918 settlement had been unjust. H.N. Brailsford, the leading leftist English commentator on foreign affairs, had written in 1920 that, of all the Versailles treaty's redrawing of borders, "the worst offence was the subjection of over three million Germans to Czech rule." Experience seemed to show that nationalism was the great force of the age and that it needed to be assuaged -- or appeased, a word first used, it should be remembered, by those who advocated doing so.
Now this is rather breathtaking. It is certainly true that Chamberlain was a democratic leader, and that the British people didn't want to go to war. Neither did the Americans. Chamberlain's naïve belief that he could negotiate with Hitler helped to make sure that neither peoples would have any choice. Moreover, the foolish tardiness in preparing for war in both England and America resulted in terrible costs and near disaster. Besides, who started that "terrible war" in which so many Brits were killed? Let me give you a clue: it was the Germans.
So it's rather remarkable that Wheatcroft mentions, almost in praise, those "British and American liberals" who thought that Germany was the victim. It is certainly true that a lot of Germans living in the Sudetenland didn't want to be part of Czechoslovakia, nor did the Germans living in Germany want to let go of that territory. But when you start a war of aggression against nearly everybody, and lose, it usually costs you some of what you want.
Wheatcroft obviously thinks that Chamberlain and all those North Atlantic liberals had it right: Hitler needed to be appeased. Strange that that didn't work out.
It's easy to see why Wheatcroft likes Neville Chamberlain. He is Neville Chamberlain. There is a certain strain of liberal (not the whole part, or even the larger part, to be sure) that blames people who resist tyranny for all the horrors inflicted by the tyrants. Chamberlain was not, I'm sure, fond of Hitler. But he hated Churchill. I would not suggest that George W. Bush bears a comparison with Winston Churchill. But Wheatcroft seems determined to make Bush look like Churchill. Conservatives have their own Wheatcrofts to be sure. Pat Buchanan comes to mind. Conservatives should have nothing to do with them. Liberals who do not share Wheatcroft's views would do well to recognize that they have a snake in their midst.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Oil’s Well that Ends Well
An election year usually doesn't see a lot of significant Congressional action. The side that thinks it's going to win wants to wait until next year, and so will constipate one house or both so that Congress can't pass anything.
This fall looks to be different, if only because two pieces of major action can be accomplished by Congress not acting. One piece is, of course, the financial bailout. In this case, both parties seem loath to President what he wants. Maybe something is going to happen, but it really looks like the financial market is going to have to sort this out for itself, and that's probably for the best. I would add, though, that a period of turmoil right now can't be good for the Republicans.
The other thing that is happening, largely behind the smokescreen of the financial crisis, is that the Democrats are about to let the ban on offshore drilling and shale oil development lapse. It's unclear how much that will mean. The removal of major legal impediments doesn't mean that Democrats will not find some other way to prevent the development of these resources next year, and they are certainly going to try. But this is progress.
There is no doubt that the U.S. should work on energy conservation. Likewise, there is good reason to invest a little in alternative energy sources like wind and biofuels. But so far the latter are soaking up energy rather than giving it back, and there is no prospect that that will change in the near future. On the other hand, the U.S. apparently has more oil locked in shale than Saudi Arabia has underground. Shale oil is more expensive to get at, but it is the pattern of American industrial development that what is prohibitively expensive eventually becomes cheap. And of course, the oil offshore is still cheap. For the rest of my life and yours, the world will be powered by petroleum and uranium. We had probably better get used to that idea, and deal with it.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Where the Race Stands Now
Dead even, for all practical purposes. The Real Clear Politics average gives Obama a lead of 2.3 points, nationally. That figure, which is of dubious value except that it is frequently reported in the national news, is based on six polls, four of which show a small Obama advantage, one a small McCain advantage, and one a tie. But the polls that favor the Democrat are mostly polls of registered voters, and one has a very small sample size. The polls more favorable to McCain show likely voters, which is a better indicator of outcomes. The CBS poll, giving Obama a five point advantage, has a reasonable sample size of about 1100 voters, but it includes 404 Democrats v. 305 Republicans. That is probably based on recent voter ID stats, but the Republican brand has recovered substantially since the convention, and that kind of weighting may not be justified anymore. All this suggests that the race is pretty much tied nationally.
Of course the President is not elected by national vote, but by the several states through their Electoral College votes. Polls in the battle ground states are the only way to get a direct read on this. The RCP gives Obama/Biden 219 votes, McCain/Palin 189, with 130 toss up states. It is pretty clear that, if Obama wins all the states where he has any lead at all, he wins more than the 270 he needs to be elected. How do we game this?
There are really only two ways. The national polls, despite their legal irrelevance, have usually been the best indicator of the outcome. A candidate who is ahead by more than five percentage points in most polls will probably win all the states where the local polls are close. But here, obviously, the national polls are too close to give an indication. The other way is to look at how the battleground states have gone in recent elections. According to that kind of analysis, you'd expect Ohio and Florida to go Republican, Pennsylvania and New Mexico to go the other way. But the map is rather confused on that score. Florida, Ohio, Indiana, and Virginia are in the toss-up category. That bodes ill for McCain. But if the election remains close nationally, I expect that McCain will win all of these. He had better, if he wants to win. On the other hand, Minnesota and Wisconsin are also toss-up states, and Obama should be well ahead in both places.
So right now it is hard to get a good read by any of the traditional methods. If it's another squeaker, I won't be getting much sleep on election night.
But there is one more consideration that is probably disturbing the sleep of a lot of Obama's court soothsayers right now. It's the Bradley Effect. In 1982, Tom Bradley, an African American candidate for Governor of California, was well ahead of George Deukmejian in the polls. But Deukmejian won the election. Pollsters offered this explanation for their failure: a lot of voters said they were voting for Bradley but instead voted for Deukmejian. Why would an unusual number of respondents lie to pollsters?
It is frequently said that the motive was racism. Respondents didn't want to admit that they were voting against Bradley just because he was Black, but they knew in their hearts that they were going to do just that. But that confuses two questions: why they lied when polled, if that is what they did, and why they voted the way they did. It may well be that a lot of California voters felt that they should say they were voting for Bradley. That would reflect a consciousness of the racial issue that is problematic, but nothing to be ashamed of. But the Bradley Effect tells us nothing about what their motives were for voting as they did, once they were alone in the booth. No doubt race was a factor, but there is no way to tell how much of a factor it was.
So what if the Bradley Effect is working now. A lot of voters nationally are telling the voice on the phone that they are voting Obama, but they really won't? Some analysts believe that Obama can't win unless he is a good five points or more ahead in the polls. That would give him a cushion to make up for the Bradley Effect voters. If that is right, then Obama needs to gain some ground fast.
If Obama loses, Democrats will cry far and wide that it was racism that defeated him. That will make good political sense, as it will undercut the legitimacy of McCain's election. But it will be nonsense. Racism will no doubt be a factor in the election. But so will doubts about McCain's age, contempt for Governor Palin's Christianity, women who like Palin because she is one of them, etc.
I have no idea whose ahead at this moment, and that is a novel experience for me at this stage in an election. Isn't this exciting?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Obama Tells Lies
My esteemed Keloland colleague, David Newquist, reminds us once again of the mendacity of the McCain campaign.
In the election campaign of 2008, we have what columnist Paul Krugman has termed "a blizzard of lies." Numerous stories in The New York Times, The Columbia Journalism Review, and other newspapers and magazines have noted that despite the many stories from fact checkers that assertions by the McCain campaign are proven to be untrue, the campaign just keeps making them.
David frequently relies on FactCheck.Org to make his points. See this post at his home blog.
Now I don't exactly disagree with my colleague on this matter. It might be unrealistic to expect politicians to tell us the truth when what we really demand, and pay for, is that they tell us what we want to hear. Democracy is when you get the government you deserve. But even if we demand lies, we might at least want to know when they are telling us lies.
David doesn't seem to notice that FactCheck.Org also monitors the Obama campaign. Ruth Marcus gives us an example of what journalistic integrity looks like.
The symmetry of sin is suddenly looking more equal. Last week, I flayed John McCain for dishonesty -- flagrant and repeated dishonesty -- about Barack Obama's proposals. Obama was by no means blameless, I argued, but his lapses were nowhere near as egregious as his opponent's. I stand by everything I wrote.
But a series of new Obama attacks requires a rebalancing of the scales: Obama has descended to similarly scurrilous tactics on the stump and on the air.
Now I think that the mendacity of the Obama campaign was evident in many ways all along. When Obama tore apart NAFTA on the stump, while dispatching an advisor to assure the Canadians that it was all for show, that was deliberate deceit. But recently, no doubt spurred by his temporary dip in the polls, Obama has moused all scruple into recycle bin.
On immigration, Obama is running a Spanish-language ad that unfairly lumps McCain together with Rush Limbaugh -- and quotes Limbaugh out of context. On health care, Obama misleadingly accuses McCain of wanting to impose a $3.6 trillion tax hike on employer-provided insurance.
Obama has been furthest out of line, however, on Social Security, stooping to the kind of scare tactics he once derided.
"If my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would have had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week," Obama said Saturday as he campaigned in that retiree-heavy state. "Millions of families would've been scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, the secure retirement that every American deserves."
This is simply false -- even leaving aside the incendiary language about "privatizing" Social Security. As the invaluable FactCheck.org noted, the private account plan suggested by President Bush and backed by McCain would not have applied to anyone born before 1950. It would not have changed benefits by a single penny for current retirees like the nice Florida folks that Obama was trying to rile up. The sensible notion was that workers at or near retirement age should be able to rely on promised benefits and should not be subject to the vicissitudes of short-term market fluctuations.
And then there is this:
Obama's ads on Social Security are equally misleading. "Cutting benefits in half, risking Social Security on the stock market," it warns. "The Bush-McCain privatization plan. Can you really afford more of the same?"
Cutting benefits in half? As FactCheck notes, "this is a rank misrepresentation." No one at or near retirement age would have been affected. Those retiring in the future would not have received benefits as big as what they have been promised under current law -- but those promises cannot be paid for under the current system or even through the payroll tax increase on the wealthy that Obama has proposed.
So FactCheck, FactCheck, Dave! says that Obama's ads are a "rank misrepresentation." So explain this to me: do we have two big brothers, peddling their 1984 newspeak?
Well, maybe. But two Orwellian Big Brother's, working their techno-totalitarianism against each other, with the voters getting to decide who gets to run the telescreens for the next four years. At the risk of disagreeing with an English professor about a famous novel, that ain't exactly what Orwell had in mind.
Maybe we should demand that our presidential candidates be scrupulously honest. We ain't gonna, for reasons I have mentioned, but maybe we should. And maybe McCain has been plenty dishonest in some of his ads. But if anyone votes for Obama because he or she thinks Obama is honest, that person is a fool.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
BHL’s Apology for the Left
American Conservative thought, defined as a marriage of libertarian economic positions with a traditionalist stance on social issues, is relatively new. It probably doesn't exist before the 1950's, and begins to emerge only with the publication of such works as William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale. Perhaps for that reason alone, Conservatives have had fewer opportunities to embarrass themselves by embracing foreign monsters than have their counterparts on the left. There just haven't been a lot of conservative revolutions around the world in the last 70 years. But there were plenty of radical leftist revolutions, and the American Left fell in love with each and every one of them in turn. This always turned out badly.
"My favorite atheist," Christopher Hitchens, has a review of Bernard-Henri Lévy's new book: Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism in the New York Times. Lévy is perhaps the most highly regarded philosophe in contemporary France, so much so that he is widely referred to there simply as BHL. When now President, then candidate Nicholas Sarkozy called him up to ask for an endorsement, BHL was in an awkward position. On the one hand, he considered the Left "his family," and felt obliged by filial piety to vote for the leftist candidate. On the other hand, Lévy was firmly committed to opposing totalitarianism and barbarism in all their forms, and it was hard not to think that the French right, led by Sarkozy, was more likely to take a firm stance against the one and the other than the French Left.
I haven't read the book, but from Hitchens' review, I gather it is a lengthy apology for the Left, combined with a serious critique of the Left. Here is a gem:
"I'm convinced that the collapse of the Communist house almost everywhere has even, in certain cases, had the unexpected side effect of wiping out the traces of its crimes, the visible signs of its failure, allowing certain people to start dreaming once again of an unsullied Communism, uncompromised and happy."
If this is not precisely true, even of those nostalgic for "Fidel," apologetic about Hugo Chávez, credulous about how "secular" the Baath Party was, or prone to sympathize with Vladimir Putin concerning the "encircling" of his country by aggressive titans like Estonia and Kosovo and Georgia, still it does contain a truth. One could actually have gone further and argued that the totalitarian temptation now extends to an endorsement of Islamism as the last, best hope of humanity against the American empire. I could without difficulty name some prominent leftists, from George Galloway to Michael Moore, who have used the same glowing terms to describe "resistance" in, say, Iraq as they would once have employed for the Red Army or the Vietcong. Trawling the intellectual history of Europe, as he is able to do with some skill, Lévy comes across an ancestor of this sinister convergence in a yearning remark confided to his journal by the fascist writer Paul Claudel on May 21, 1935: "Hitler's speech; a kind of Islamism is being created at the center of Europe."
That gives you a sense of the issues that BHL has with his "family." This is dead spot on. With so many communist regimes out of business, or having legalized business, it is possible for young Leftists, at least, to dream again of a red dawn.
And then there is the French Left's distaste for America, shared widely across Europe.
In his last book, a retracing of Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," Lévy appeared in the role of mediator at a time when French-American relations were in a sorry condition. Here, too, he takes a stand against the mindless anti-Americanism that is so prevalent among the lumpen intellectuals of Europe. In his view, the phenomenon has two highly unpleasant subtexts to it. The first is envy and resentment, deriving from the fact that the United States has several times intervened to save Europe from itself and from the consequences of its ideological dementias. The second, perhaps not unrelated, is a no-less-envious perception of America as a handmaiden and vassal of the Jews.
That is Hitchens' view of Lévy's take on European anti-Americanism. It would be entirely unfair of me to point out that these are the people who passionately hoping for Obama to win the American presidential election. So I will not mention that fact. I will only point out that, whether you are on the right or the left, you had probably better come to grips with the truth that Lévy points out.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Evolution & Creation, Science, Politics, & Schools
The Times of London has two stories that involve the issue of teaching evolution alongside creationism in public schools. One of them is about Governor Sarah Palin. The Times Sarah Ebner has a moderate essay about the latter, but it includes some strange thoughts. For instance, this:
There's little doubt that Palin, as evidenced by the birth of her son, Trig, and her daughter Bristol's pregnancy, is pro-life.
Is it really the case that only pro-life women are willing to carry a Down Syndrome child to term, or will not whisk their daughters off to an abortion clinic as soon as the pregnancy test forms an image? Given the astonishingly low birthrates in most of Europe, maybe only pro-life women have children over there. But Ms. Ebner is not unreasonable. She tells us what "fires people up," about Governor Palin.
It's not that Palin says only creationism - a belief that the world was entirely God's work, and evolved much as is laid out in the Bible - should be taught in schools. Nor is it that she would have any direct influence on school policy if she made it to the VP's office. What many people actually find inflammatory is that Palin, the daughter of a science teacher, says that creationism and evolution can be taught as different sides of the same debate. That's a tough call.
Now as I have pointed out, Governor Palin said this once in a debate. She has not pushed for it as Governor, nor does she stand in favor of it as a policy now. So it is not Governor Palin's public actions or intentions, but her beliefs that are objectionable. Apparently, one is fit for office only if one believes the correct things.
That, apparently, is the rule in Britannia. Here again from the Times:
Michael Reiss, a biologist and ordained Church of England clergyman, agreed to step down from his position with the national academy of science after its officers decided that his comments had damaged its reputation.
His resignation comes after a campaign by senior Royal Society Fellows who were angered by Professor Reiss's suggestion that science teachers should treat creationist beliefs "not as a misconception but as a world view".
Now I am not certain exactly what Reiss proposed, but is it really a firing offense at the British Academy of Science to suggest that science teachers shouldn't tell their students that their religious beliefs are wrong? Apparently so.
What is going on here has nothing to do with science. It has everything to do with politics. Those people are not allowed to participate. That is a perfectly political and perfectly intolerant position.
At the risk of ruining my chances of ever taking a position with the Royal Academy (the thought of daily access to pub conditioned ale is attractive), I will confess that I agree with Reiss. It's not that I think that evolution and Biblical creation should be taught alongside one another, as having equal status in a science class. I don't. Ms. Edner says this:
The major problem is that evolution can be proved (or at least explained), but creationism can't. It's akin, say some, to allowing children to debate if the world is flat or round, and giving both sides equal credence.
But that isn't the problem at all. It is that Darwinian Evolution is a theory, and the Biblical story of creation is not. A theory provides a model of some field of phenomena, and gives rise to a research program. A theory is constantly tested as it is applied to various sets of data. The Biblical story of creation has not, nor will it ever give rise to a research program.
Science and faith are two rather different approaches to grasping the truth about what is. A faith may be more or less reasonable, but it rests on the human capacity for commitment. Science rests on the human capacity for questioning and the appreciation of uncertainty.
Science class has to be about science. But that doesn't mean that religious belief has to be shut out of it. For many of the students, this class of ideas is what is really interesting. Here is Reiss again:
"I realised that simply banging on about evolution and natural selection didn't lead some pupils to change their minds at all. Just because something lacks scientific support doesn't seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from the science lesson . . . There is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have — hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching — and doing one's best to have a genuine discussion."
Closing the door on the questions that most important to students is a very bad strategy. Darwin himself frequently muses about Biblical explanations in his writings. Couldn't these passages be used in biology texts to bring students into the discussion? A clever writer could easily use such passages to focus the students attention on the specific questions of biology.
Maybe this could work out and maybe not. But apparently in England it is illegal to discuss it.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
SDP Jazz Note: Jazz Noire
Blanchard's theory of genres begins with the axiom that there is a
platonic idea at the bottom of every genre. With horror, it's the idea
of evil made physically
manifest. With science fiction, it's the idea that the physical laws
that govern the ordinary world can or soon will make the fantastic
possible. Some genres depend largely on a coherent image or set of
images. Give me hats, horses, and handguns, I'll give you a Western.
Musical genres are harder to pin down, largely because the "language"
of music isn't really language and doesn't translate into language.
It is very helpful, then, when a musical genre is somehow tied to a story-telling genre. Jazz is rather closely tied to the Noire genre, the school of film making that arose out of the collision between German cinematography and the "hard-boiled" American crime novel. And I would argue that the idea underlying the film noire is very simple: it is the idea of human loneliness and fear in a world without piety. Film noire characters are distinguished by the fact that they live without believing in anything. The police and politicians (higher levels of social organization are rarely mentioned) are corrupt. Goodness is possible; indeed, it frequently shines like a torch in a hero like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. But the hero is almost inevitably jaded, and with good reason. In the long run, his heroism is entirely hopeless. The most he can achieve are small acts of justice and mercy. Like everyone else, he lives without piety; but he has to go on living, and what makes it possible is observing. He finds his satisfaction in seeing things just the way they are.
Jazz
is born and grows in pretty much the same time period as the noire
genre, and I think it springs from much the same existential stance.
Classical music is unthinkable without God or (what is much the same
thing), an orderly universe. It's landscapes are those of the day, even
if the sky is full of dark clouds. And while it may be played in Paris,
it frequently finds itself recreating the countryside. Jazz begins and
perhaps ends with lonely human beings, walking down a city street at
night under no illumination other than that of a neon sign. I am of
course exagerating my case. To be sure, a lot of jazz is happy and a
lot of classical music stirs up existentially ambigous currents. But I
think I get the two genres right in general.
This doesn't mean, of course, that you have to lose your faith to enjoy jazz, any more than you have to be sad to enjoy sad music. It is just one way of appreciating the intense beauty of the human situation.
One of the best examples of the marriage between jazz and film noire is the French film Ascenseur pour l'echafaud, or Elevator to the Gallows. A young man commits a murder but gets stuck in an elevator while trying to leave the scene. His gorgeous accomplice and lover walks the streets of Paris, increasingly convinced that ... Watch it! Miles Davis created the soundtrack, playing while he watched the film projected on a wall. If you get the DVD, you can see a short clip of Miles in this process. Behind Miles was a group consisting of Barney Wilen ts, Rene Urtreger p, Pierre Michelot b, and Kenny Clarke d.
A
more recent example of jazz noire is Terrence Blanchard's marvelous
disc, Jazz in Film. All of the numbers are soundtracks, most of them
from straight noire films. Having listened to it a dozen times
recently, I now find myself looking for the DVDs.
Terrence Blanchard t, Donald Harrison as, Steve Turre tb, Kenny Kirkland p, Reginald Veal b, and Carl Allen d.
For samples from the music, visit my Jazz Note Site.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Blanchard Explains the Crisis on Wall Street
Banking and finance is one thing I know little about. But I heard someone say on NPR or somewhere that Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch got in trouble because they moved out of the kind of transactions they understood and began trading in types of loans they didn't understand. The result was that they honestly didn't know whether they were in a hole, or how deep the hole was, and they still don't know. Well, if those folks, with all their Harvard and Yale trained Wall Street Wiz kids don't understand this mess, I figure I can say anything I want to about it.
Being rather simple minded, I figure it's like this: if you loan someone a gob of money, and he defaults on the loan, you shouldn'ta give 'im the cash in the first place. If you loan lots of people lots of money, you aren't going to make the right call in every case. So the trick is to make sure that you make a lot more money from the people who pay off than you need to cover the people whose checks are always a day late and a few hundred short. When you can't cover your butt from day to day, it ain't workin'. That, apparently, is where Lehman and Merrill, and AIG and the two F-Macs are right now.
Liberals have a simple explanation for all this: Wall Street greed. And they are surely right. Big Wheelers don't loan people money because they think they will bring about a better society or stop global warming. They loan money because they think they will get a lot more money back. Corporations, like everyone else, get conned mostly because they are greedy and their greed makes them overly optimistic, and that's just as true when they con themselves.
Conservatives also have a simple explanation: government intervention that keeps market forces from working. And they're right too. Congress has tried to "encourage" the markets to make home ownership more available, so the 65% or so of Americans who live in houses nominally theirs but really owned by God knows who will be joined by another five or ten percent. But that means giving loans to people who wouldn't have got those loans before, and that probably means increasing the risk of a lot of foreclosures.
Both Barack Obama and John McCain are busy denouncing Wall Street, and who can blame them? Nobody really likes the guy who might be portrayed by Michael Douglas in Wall Street II. The Left, more than the Right, is calling for more regulation. Dubious as I am that Congress can understand what Merrill Lynch didn't, maybe some market regulation is in order.
But there is one thing I think we can all understand: making financial markets more stable means reducing loans to people and institutions more likely to default, and that means making money harder to get. When money is harder to get, a lot of people will stay stuck in their apartments and a lot of entrepreneurs won't launch the next big idea in sandwich shops. Conversely, helping more and more people to buy a house or start a business means more defaults and financial instability.
When someone calls for more regulation, we might want to know which side they wish to err on. Congress almost always acts at cross purposes in such matters. Clarity on such matters is what one would like to see in the candidates' speeches and interviews. Don't hold your breath.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
A Moment of Respect for Both Sides
The period between the national party conventions and the election does not bring out the best in people or in campaign organizations. There is too much at stake, and the urge to push a little harder is irresistible. I have long regarded Richard Cohen as a reasonable voice from the moderate left, but I see today that he has accused John McCain of "personal treason," whatever that is. The accusation produces two pieces of evidence: the "lipstick on a pig" charge, and the "teaching sex to kindergarten pupils" spot. I think he is right about the pig thing. Obama didn't call Palin a pig, he used a perfectly respectable metaphor to criticize McCain's policy. The kindergarten thing, despite how it's being treated in the media, wasn't a lie. Byron York at the National Review has actually read the legislation. But even if both charges were bald faced lies, does this deserve the word treason? Cohen has gone a bit off the rails.
The truth of the matter is that both sides are playing fast and loose with the truth. Did McCain really say that he wanted the Iraq war to last one hundred years, as Obama charged? Of course not. I saw an ad yesterday in which McCain was criticized for saying that the Social Security System is a disgrace. What he in fact said is that the system for funding it is a disgrace, which is a debatable but reasonable claim. The ad was a lie. Maybe we should be ashamed of seeing so many distortions peddled by both sides, but that might be the same thing as being ashamed of politics. Clearly the system doesn't reward a scrupulous attention to the truth.
Just right now, the Democrats have decided that half of America is despicable. I am not sure the Republicans are there yet. I don't see the kind of things that Democrats say about small town America being said by Republicans about city slickers. But maybe my bias is blinding me.
For the moment, let me offer some respect to both sides. I begin with Senator Clinton. For all the baggage that the Clintons carry, she did the hard work of politics. Unlike Jesse Jackson, for example, she found a state and won a Senate seat. She built a campaign organization that won almost half the votes cast in the Democratic primary season. Like her or not, that is worth some respect.
Barack Obama began his run with a smaller resume than one expects in a presidential candidate, and it is certain that half the Democratic Party fell in love with him before they knew anything about him. That is partly due to the Clinton baggage mentioned above. But in the very short time allotted he managed to build his own campaign organization and take the nomination. That is all the system requires. Maybe he will be our next President, and maybe not, but he has earned his place in our political history. He has also shown, beyond a reasonable doubt, that anyone's son has a shot at the White House. He deserves a large measure of national respect for that.
And then there is John McCain. Unlike Senators Clinton and Obama, he did not have to earn any special respect from his countrymen by running for the Presidency. He earned enough for any man by his service to his country. But he had earned that respect a second time by his campaign. McCain has clearly wanted to be President for a long time. A year ago his chances looked bleak. But he reorganized his campaign, and came roaring back to win the nomination. I have plenty of gripes with McCain. I still think his campaign finance legislation was a monumental failure. There were good reasons for a lot of Republicans to question their confidence in him. But he won over the most difficult block of support by his choice of running mates. That kind of judgment is what we need in a President.
Hillary Clinton may yet be back. She has earned a place in future contests. But we are now down to two choices. Both Obama and McCain have demonstrated a lot of political genius, and a magnificent force of will. Both have earned their shot at the prize. There is no reason to be contemptuous of either of them, or of either rough half of Americans who will no doubt line up on either side. If we don't always like the way they are behaving, we shouldn't let them off easy. But we should also remember that performers respond to the demands of their audiences. The American electoral system is giving us all that we could reasonably demand of it: the campaign we deserve.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Anti-McCain Pornography
Readers of this blog will guess that we are not supporters of Barack Obama. We are certainly a Republican-minded bunch, conservative in our view of politics. But we have tried to be fair. I for one would never argue that the Republican campaign for President has been scrupulously honest. I would point out, and I have pointed out, that Obama has not met that standard either. But I don't believe we have ever failed to respect Obama, or any other voice on the other side. Regardless of my differences with Obama and his supporters, he is already a part of the history of the American Republic, and he well deserves some measure of respect for the role he has played.
No doubt there are critics of Obama who have abused his person, and it is the job of the left wing blogosphere to point that out. But I think this abuse of McCain is worth mentioning. The Atlantic Magazine, to which I have subscribed for many years, is running a piece on McCain. The American Digest brings us the story about Jill Greenberg, whom the Atlantic hired to do the photography. Here is the Atlantic cover with Greenberg's photo.
Now that, frankly, is not bad. It gives us all the lines in McCain's face, but I think it leaves him looking rather stately. Of course, the words "porn" and "adultery" in the upper left hand corner suggest an absence of decorum on the part of the Atlantic editors. I would not go so far as to suggest that this is some kind of subliminal message on their part, but if a long established magazine is going to take part in an American election, maybe selling the issue with sex is not quite up to the task. Still, it's not bad.
But Greenberg apparently had a lot of fun with her images, altering some of them and posting them on the web. You can go to the American Digest for the set, but here is my favorite:
Now as a political cartoon, the worst you can say for this is that it is utterly puerile. A fourteen year old boy, maybe, could be proud of it. But as the work of an adult photographer who has a shot at an Atlantic cover? This is the work of someone who does not know how to be a grownup.
I gather than the Atlantic has chosen not to use Ms. Greenberg's public photo. I am kinda disappointed, as I liked it. But frankly, no serious publication should employ her again. To put this stuff out while a decision is pending suggests someone you cannot rely upon. And as for the larger political message, a minimum of respect for the other side is an important asset. We can't take the election seriously if we don't take each other seriously. Barack Obama and John McCain deserve to be taken seriously. Ms. Greenberg, and all those who see politics as she does, do not.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
The Ethereal Left & Its Contempt for Half of America
My spirited interlocutor, BB, sends me a note from Deepak Chopra, Guru and Wizkid economist, who is about to lead a "soul of healing" retreat in New York. What does Chopra think of Obama? "He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind." So Deepak and Barack are just two Gurus trying to raise our consciousness. Okay. And what about Sarah Palin?
Small town values — a nostaligic return to simpler times disguises a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
Well, it's nice to get things so clear. Obama is "high minded." Palin represents all those petty, small-minded rural voters. And besides, Palin was Governor of Alaska. How can you take that seriously?
Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure.
It's no wonder he decided to hold his "Soul of Healing" retreat in New York. Only there will you find creatures evolved enough to shell out, well, I couldn't find out how much it would cost me without giving Deepak my e-mail address. But I did get some idea of what wonders await me there.
In the soothing environment of the Chopra Center & Spa at Dream, you will receive daily Ayurvedic massage treatments – and rasayana, a powerful cleansing therapy that slows the aging process and revitalizes the body, mind and spirit.
I'm not sure what "Ayurvedic massage treatments" are, but I am sure they must feel very good.
I know a bit about Buddhism, which Chopra claims to channel on occasion, and I know that dividing the world into the high mind good people and the small-minded parochial people is the very disease that the Buddha thought lies at the root of human suffering. And besides, it's bad politics. If the election really comes down to a choice between "an ethereal atmosphere" at "discounted rates", and small town values, and it might, any guesses as to who wins?
Chopra is a joke. Unfortunately, his way of dividing Americans into the higher and lower types, the New Yorkers who count and the Alaskans and South Dakotans who have no business having opinions, is not confined to new age hucksters. Here is Bob Herbert in the New York Times:
While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I've gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.
So if McCain wins, it is not that a lot of Americans, thinking it through, disagree with Herbert. It's that "dimwittedness" has prevailed. My Keloland colleague and NSU colleague emeritus, David Newquist, certainly agrees. He sees the recent rise of McCain in the polls as "The Rule of Imbeciles."
In 2000 and 2004 the American electorate divided pretty evenly between two parties. Maybe this isn't because one side was stupid, but because reasonable people can disagree. And if you are trying to draw a few more people over to your side, maybe telling them they are dimwitted isn't the most intelligent strategy.
Recent Comments