November 2008

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November 30 - The Anti-Christmas

There is a weird sort of anomaly in the US system of holidays.  Thanksgiving, a day where families are to come together and express thanks about the good in their lives, begins the season leading up to Christmas day.  On that day Christians celebrate the birth of their messiah, Jesus Christ, while non-Christians share in the joy by celebrating the values that underlie the teachings of Jesus — love for others, principles like the meek will be strong, love your enemy as yourself, give unto others, do not desire wealth but focus on the spirit, be in this world not of it, etc.  For many of us who do not consider ourselves Christian the teachings of Jesus are nonetheless powerful and worthy of honor.  I have no problem wishing people “merry Christmas” and focusing on the ideals of love, good will, and joy, even as Christians focus on the birth of their spiritual founder.

Yet on the very day after the Christmas season begins Americans celebrate Anti-Christmas.  That is the Friday after Thanksgiving which this year was appropriately referred to as “Black Friday” (perhaps that isn’t a new label, but I can’t recall hearing it before this year).  On that day Americans give in to lustful greed and crass materialism, descending on stores and shopping malls in the wee hours of the morning to try to get the best deal possible.   Not everyone who shops early is motivated by lustful greed to be sure; many are simply trying to get a good deal.  Still, the day has come to symbolize people being pushed and tussled as they fight for a few remaining Wii games or the latest craze.

Symbolic of this was the death of a 34 year old Walmart employee in New York state who had the unfortunate job of opening the doors to the store at 5:00 AM.   Over 2000 people had gathered, beginning at 9:00 PM the night before, in order to try to get the best deals.  When he started to open the door a stempede ensued, trampling the man and sending others, including a woman eight months pregnant, to the hospital.   The doors themselves were damaged.  The crowd, however, presumably got some good deals on toys and electronics.

While most of the country was fixated on the on going crisis in India, where terrorists took over some top class hotels, I couldn’t get the Walmart death out of my mind.  What does this say about our culture?  Every year there are stories like this, and even though one could argue that this was one isolated incident, the pushing, shoving and frantic consumerism it represents gets reported from all over.

I refuse to go shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but people who were at the local Walmart here report that while traffic was bumper to bumper entering the parking lot near 5:00 AM, it was pretty orderly and people were generally not pushy or unfriendly.  I heard of people grabbing items (e.g., one case where after a woman got an employee to open the door for a laptop computer, someone reached in and grabbed it before she could — but that was OK, there was another one) and the like, and I suspect that’s what it was like most places.    So I’m not saying the greed and crass materialism is universal on Anti-Christmas any more than true love, good will and generosity are universal on December 25th.  Rather the two holidays symbolize two aspects of our culture: the crass, greedy, selfish materialist side, and the loving, generous, joyful spiritual side.

The Anti-Christmas of “black Friday” represents that part of the Christmas season which makes it a season of high stress, as people feel compelled to go to various Christmas parties, have lists of gifts to buy, and worry about getting out Christmas cards and decorating their house to impress others.  It is that part of the Christmas season which leads to high post-Christmas suicide rates, as the fake excitement, color, and mystique of the holidays give way to the grudgery of the ordinary every day set of problems.  The closeness of family and friends gives way to the alienation of the individual in a materialist rat race.   The Anti-Christmas is a reverse mirror image the good will of Christmas; rather than the meek shall inherit the earth, the aggressive will get the best deals.  Rather than generosity to the poor and giving to those who are needy, it’s about profits and the bottom line.   We learn early that while the spirit of Christmas is nice, the presents are what matters.

This juxtaposition between Christmas and Anti-Christmas is symbolic of a kind of cultural schizophrenia, where we veer from wanting the virtuous but cannot resist the base.   Much like how we embrace the evil and destruction of warfare in the name of freedom and human rights, we end up at cross purposes with ourselves as a culture, promoting values rhetorically that we quietly undermine with our actions.   If these were starkly different we’d be able to see and manage the contradiction better.  But Anti-Christmas is tied with Christmas in an intricate and hard to untangle manner.   The same is true with our wars (always fought with an honorable cause, hiding the horror they unleash), our economics (promoting a supposed ‘free market’ that creates a massive gap between the rich and the poor), our faithful folk (believing strongly in a religion of love and tolerance while condemning and sometimes hating those whose morals, religious beliefs or lifestyles are different) and our secular folk (condemning and mocking religion without realizing that atheism and secular approaches to reality rely just as much on a leap of faith concerning things about this world we do not know).

Moreover, since the real world is not black and white but shades of grey, the issues get blurry.  War may be evil, the rhetoric of freedom may often be overstated, but sometimes war may be necessary, sometimes violence is required to defend.    The person in line on Black Friday to get a special 5:00 AM deal may be trying to buy her sick daughter a game she can only afford if she sacrifices her own goods, and is able to get the best deal possible.  Symbolically the extremes and contradictions are clear; practically they merge together with complexity and ambiguity.

Perhaps the only way to deal with all of this is a kind of balancing act.  We in the west like our dualisms, but there is no reason to think that things like “Christmas” and “Anti-Christmas” are really stark opposites.  In fact, it could be that attributes of human personality can express themselves in ways that look dualistic, but are actually far more complex.    Would a non-materialist purely spiritual Christmas, whether worshipping the birth of Jesus or for non-Christians the ideals of love, good will and generousity really work?  Would that really be superior?  Probably not.   Even concepts like “good” and “evil” represent a kind of artificial dualism. Selfishness, anger, and envy are not always misplaced emotions; sometimes they may be necessary in particular contexts.  I recall when I read First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, who survived the Cambodian genocide as a child, I was intrigued by how at times hate and anger helped her survive.  In those circumstances, they were necessary.  Just as self-love is necessary before one can truly love others, selfishness is necessary before one can truly be generous.

So Anti-Christmas may be a misnomer.  The ideals of Christmas are beautiful, but in the abstract they have no meaning.  They are possible only in so far as they reflect an ability to control our human nature and act ethically, not denying our material, selfish, and competitive side, but reigning it in with a sense of purpose and perspective.    There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the post-Thanksgiving sales, only in letting the desire for a bargain cause one to see others as mere obstacles in the way of that great deal, pushing, shoving, and even trampling other humans.  Keep perspective — the ideals of the season balance the desire for material comfort.   We don’t need to strive for perfection, only a workable balance.   Now, let’s enjoy the holiday season!

November 28 - Creative Destruction

I have to admit to a kind of perverse satisfaction about the financial collapse taking place all around us.   Not that I like what is happening — it negatively effects me, my family and my children’s future.   Yet there seems to be some justice in having a distorted system finally start to rebalance.   Part of it is that I’ve been one of the Cassandras for so long now, I feel vindicated that gee, I called this right (along with quite a few others, to be sure).   But more importantly, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the system we had became a cancer to the body politic and even the spirit of the United States, and that as painful as it is, we’ll be better off if we can shed it and move a new direction.  The key will be, of course, where we go.

Other countries have been in positions like this and have not chosen wisely.  Germany in the late 20s found a broken and untenable Weimar Republic collapsing into depression and chose a way out which seemed to make sense at the time.  Adolf Hitler promised to unify the country, put people back to work, undo the disastrous Versailles Treaty that mistreated Germany and gave it second class status, and to make people proud to be German again.  For six years, he seemed like the real thing.  Germans were working, their economy was taking off (unlike the economies in the rest of Europe), and he ditched the Versailles Treaty with bold foreign policy strokes, all of them peaceful and successful.

By late 1938 Germans were convinced that fascism was the right approach.  They were proud again, their country stood tall, their factories were working, people had a strong sense of patriotism, and they were at peace.  Germans didn’t want war.  Sure, the intellectuals complained by authoritarianism, and the government came down on those who “weakened the country from within,” — the pacifists, socialists, liberals, internationalists and jews.  Yet the fear of Bolshevism was strong enough, and European anti-semitism intense enough that these were easy to ignore.  Ridicule the intellectuals, parade the plain spoken every day hero, and embrace German cultural values.  Gone were the “sex, drugs and cabaret” of the twenties, in were patriotic marches, youth camping and hunting adventures, and virtuous German activities.

Earlier Russia also saw its entire system break apart.  The Czar pushed the country into collapse in World War I.  The Empire was already weak and anachronistic.   When the war started Russian soldiers were only armed in the front lines, those behind would carry sticks and then pick up the dropped weapons of the soldiers who would fall in front of them.   The war broke the Russian economy.  People lacked food, villages lost a generation of young men, and the Russians won nary a battle against the Germans.  The people had enough.  They ultimately rallied around a leader who promised a new world, a utopia where all would share the fruits of their collective labor, and the state would wither away.  It rested on an rational, objectivist philsophy which posited itself as the true understanding of how society and history operates.  Within a decade this belief in having the “true, proper” understanding of politics and governance would lead to totalitarianism, tyranny, and poverty.  For awhile it appeared strong, a superpower challenging the United States.  But that was an illusion, the system rotted from within, destroying the economy and peoples’ spirits.

Humans create when things have been destroyed.   That creates opportunities and dangers.  We can avoid the lessons of the 20th century.

1) Avoid an emotional desire to create an artificial sense of nationalist unity, demonizing those voices who question the cause or the people, in a desire to create an order reflecting some kind of mythological sense of what society should be.  Fascism was like fantasy, a grotesque piece of social artwork, whereby the leaders built an narrative where their people were superior and strong, others were inferior and dangerous, and society was unified by a common ideal, culture, and support for the leader.  Fascism was about emotion, using rhetoric and propaganda to create a sense of unity and solidarity.  It appealed to the masses, it was anti-intellectual, sort of like talk radio on stereoids.  In essence, the fascist mantra is “we are great, all our problems are blamed on others.”  Fascism is a social manifestation of the same thinking that takes over an insecure individual who can’t accept that he or she screwed up and created problems and instead needs to feel the victim and lash out at others.  We are great, we just have problems because there are enemies who hate us!

2)  From Communism we need to distrust any ideology that promises a utopia, or claims to be the one, true, proper way to think about politics and the world.  In some ways, Communism and fascism represent truly opposite ends of the spectrum.  For fascism there was no truth but power; power forms truth, with power you can determine truth.  For Communism there was one true set of historical and social laws, and if you used reason and had the proper premises you would inevitably be drawn to the conclusion the Communism was the only system that promised true human liberty and an end to exploitation.   In the name of utopia and the “right” system government took all power.  After all, if you have the “right” ideology, shouldn’t you do what you can to make sure you have the power to implement it fully?   And, once that power was centralized it could be abused and freedom could be taken away in the name of a system.  Instead of utopia, it was tyranny.  It is the social manifestation of the perfectionist personality which wants to create the right system, and control it absolutely.

Ideologies are inherently vast simplifications of reality based on assumptions that can be questioned, and contestable definitions of terms.  If anyone claims they have the right ideological view, run away as fast as you can.  That kind of thinking becomes cultish, and rationalizes actions otherwise clearly irrational.   Appeals to emotion alone, however, can be manipulative.  In Consumerism and fascism I noted how similar the appeal of Madison Avenue is to that of fascist propaganda.  Finally, those who posit a utopia or a perfect world should not be trusted either.  If we build a society that looks utopian by today’s standards it will be through a long process of cultural transformation, it can’t be done on somebody’s masterplan, an ideology dreamed up by a human mind, abstract and absolute.

That said, America has built in advantages that Germany and Russia did not.  We have a strong tradition of individualism, democracy, and distrust of power.  While we have sections of society prone to militarism and nationalism (witness the hyper-emotional appeal of talk radio, which is reminiscient of fascist propaganda), and others that believe government can create the best and proper system (witness the strident appeal of far left blogs which belittle conservatives and claim to offer the only reasonable understanding of reality), most Americans are at heart pragmatic.   Americans have never given in to the ideological fervor that has too often driven European politics.  We prefer to problem solve, and hold close the notion that those who hold different opinions can talk and compromise.

But let’s not understate the danger either.  If we are facing a coming dollar collapse on top of the current set of economic woes, the infrastructure of our socio-political-economic system will be under seige.   The US was one of only a couple states that held on to a stable democracy during the Great Depression, our cultural values immunize us a bit from the appeal of utopian tyrants or blame hurling fascists, but the going could get tough.  We’ll have to hold on to the values in our constitution, the communities we have around us, and a belief that we look to each other to solve problems, not abstract philosophies or emotionally appealing rhetoric.

November 27 - Thankful

I’m going to do something different in my blog today: I’m going to open up completely into my heart and soul and say what I really believe.  My blogs usually offer political, economic, and sometimes social or psychological analysis, but rarely do I get into my deepest personal beliefs.  In part, it’s because in many ways I’m outside the norm of my culture and society.  But it also stems from my approach to discussion and dialogue.

To begin, I’m a perspectivist and a pragmatist.  That means I view the world as offering a variety of different perspectives or interpretations of reality, none of which can be posited as absolutely true.  However, as a pragmatist I recognize one has to “make one’s call” and act in the world, even if there is no way to know which actions are right.  Moreover, pragmatism for me is social; I am not alone in the world, I must take into account others.   I choose to try to find common ground with people and compromises ‘we both can live with,’ rather than adamantly and vehemently fight to try to promote my perspective.

To some, that’s a weakness, a lack of principle.  If I hold something as true, then shouldn’t I stand by it no matter what, refusing to compromise?  Indeed, isn’t it noble to stand by ones’ beliefs regardless of what the world says?  That’s where perspectivism kicks in — I know that the perspective of another should be treated with as much respect as my perspective.  Thus I can hold principles but compromise them for the sake of building a community or dealing with others.    I’m a fallible human with imperfect knowledge; it would be vanity for me to assume that somehow my views are superior to all others.

The natural reaction to that is for people to mistake it for nihilism, and assert that this makes me unable to stand against things like murder and rape.   Not at all.   Choosing when to compromise on principles, and what principles to compromise is a practical matter, one where I have to weigh the situation and make my best call.   In general, if my principles coalesce with those of the society around me, I feel comfortable promoting those social values.   We as a society believe murder, rape, and theft are wrong, and I’ll operate to try to stop or prevent such acts as much as I am able to.  When society is less clear — is taxation theft, is abortion or warfare murder, etc. — I’m less willing to simply act without regard to the perspective of others.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have a strong view, only that I have a sense of humility about my viewpoint — I may be wrong, I shouldn’t impose my beliefs on others.   Finally, when I have to choose to directly engage in or not engage in acts that reflect my own moral principles, I will choose to stick with my moral beliefs and act on them.  I will hold myself to my moral principles, even if I don’t believe I have the right to do so with others.

So here goes:  I believe mistreatment  of other humans is wrong, humans are ends themselves, not means to an end.  I believe that life is primarily spiritual rather than material.  I believe humans are essentially part of a unified whole, even if we experience reality differently (from different perspectives).  Therefore I believe that any act I take against or for another is the equivalent of someone doing that act against or for myself.  I believe that reality flows in response to our thoughts and beliefs, and this gives us an essential responsibility for our lives, even if it seems we are the victims of fates unseen.   Moreover, I believe we are eternal spiritual creatures, whose learning and choosing spans numerous lifetimes and kinds of existence.  Therefore I have an abiding faith that whatever happens will happen for the best, given the choices people have made, and there is always hope for improvement and the healing of wounds caused by poor choices.  Choice is our point of power, it is how we shape who and what we and our worlds are.   I believe the key to all of this is love and forgiveness; no force in the world is more powerful.  They are each part of the same essential force: grace.  A state of grace is a deep understanding that love and forgiveness are two sides of the same coin, reflecting recognition of the inner unity of humanity.

Whew, I’m weird, aren’t I?   Now, I could try to promote these beliefs as truth, persuade others, and use this blog to try to convince people that our world is not at all like we experience it.  But luckily I was born with a reasonably logical mind, and I realize very clearly that I am basing my beliefs on my subjective reflection on life, my emotions, and the various things I have read and heard over the years.  It is subjective.  It feels right to me, life seems to work for me when I live close to these beliefs, I have problems when I start losing myself in the world of appearances and forget these beliefs.

In other words, if other people have different subjective reactions to life than I, they have absolutely no reason to share my beliefs.   Just as a hard core Marxist materialist cannot demand I share her assumptions about reality and the nature of life, I cannot demand she share mine.   And, in fact, most people don’t share my beliefs, so I have to be especially modest about any claims that my beliefs are accurate.  I don’t know.  They work for me, but I could be deluded.  I’m OK with that, and that certainly keeps me from being dogmatic on most issues — this world could just be a meaningless materialist accident with spiritual beliefs relics of a past before we discovered science and rational thought.

What does this mean practically?  Well, for example:  if I followed my beliefs completely I would want to abolish the military, react to violence by doing as one wise man counseled ‘turning the other cheek,’ and respond to hate from enemies with love.  Yet I teach World Politics, US Foreign Policy, and next semester a class on “War and Peace.”  If I dogmatically took my beliefs into those venues, I’d be a rotten, intolerant teacher.   Most people believe war is often necessary, that real enemies are out there, and we need to be strong to have peace.   I have to be able to do justice to those perspectives, and spend very little time on the religious-spiritual-pacifist line of thought, because it’s not very common, and it comes from unprovable beliefs about the world.   I actually think my perspectivism helps my teaching; I can persausively give the realist, Marxian, neo-liberal or any other perspective because I try to approach them on their own terms, not through the lenses of my beliefs.  In fact, when I make policy recommendations as I did in “A New Foreign Policy,” I call for a smaller military focused on counter-terrorism, trying to figure out a way to compromise my core beliefs with ideas of others in society on what kinds of policies we should undertake.

But, one might ask, is that sincere?  If I really would prefer no military, shouldn’t I argue for that?   My response is that I have to take into account that my belief may be wrong, and therefore when arguing about public policy and actions taken by society, I have to adapt my beliefs to those around me — to compromise.  Now, if I were drafted and given a gun and told to kill, I think I would accept being killed before I would choose to kill.  Many people do make that choice.   (There are more complicated scenarios when I’m not sure how I would respond, to be sure, especially if my family was involved).  In other words, there is a difference between what I do to play my role in building a society, which is pragmatic compromise guided by principles I hold true but can’t prove true, and my own individual choices on the acts I undertake.

This also shows the limits of compromise.   I will compromise on shared policies which do not require me to act directly against my moral beliefs.   I’ll pay taxes I know will be used for things I think are wrong.  But paying taxes itself is not against my moral beliefs, so I’m willing to do that.   To those who look for a formula, or a logical conundrum of when I should or should not act, I have go back to my pragmatism.  Ultimately there is no clear formula to when compromise is best, in each instance I make my best call.

So, what am I thankful for?   I’m thankful right now that I can state what I think, and hopefully understanding people, even if they have a perspective very different than my own about life, can accept that I have my point of view, and engage in conversation and dialogue.  I am thankful that I have so many friends and colleagues with different perspectives than mine, but with whom I can debate and discuss without it becoming some kind of personal conflict.   I’m thankful for life, whatever its nature.   Happy Thanksgiving!

November 26 - What’s Up With the Dollar?

We have been spending a lot of time in my classes talking about the causes, consequences and possible cures for the current economic crisis.   It’s especially scary for students, realizing they are getting ready to enter the work world, and that they are being handed a debt of well over $10 trillion and an economy way out of sync.

Good students that they are, they maintain a bit of skepticism as to what their prof is telling them.  One astute student suggested that if my analysis was right, the dollar should be far weaker than it is.  The dollar, in fact, has been rallying.  Does that mean that perhaps our economy is better than many believe, and there is cause for optimism?  That is a very good and insightful question.

To be sure, I’m glad the dollar has shown strength recently.  We’re planning a travel course to Italy in February, and I hope the dollar rally lasts at least another quarter year.  We hope to offer a major travel course to Germany and Austria in May 2010, a high dollar then would be nice too.

Right now the dollar is at about $1.30 per Euro.   Historically, that is rather weak.  At one point back in 2000 it was 80 cents for a Euro, and for a long time a 1:1 ratio seemed like a relatively weak dollar.   Yet recently the dollar fall to about $1.60 per Euro, before the rally after the economic crisis began brought it up to almost $1.20 a Euro at one point.  At one level, given the bailout money, the weakened economy, and poor growth prospects looking forward, a strengthening dollar seems bizarre.  Can it last?

No.  The strong dollar is an illusion, a short term phenomenon caused by a variety of technical factors but most importantly the fact that the crisis is global and at least for now, dollars are trusted more than other currencies in a time of uncertainty.  There is also a belief by some that the US will actively pursue a strong dollar policy in order to spread the recession pain more widely.  However, when it comes to economics, the fundamentals can’t be denied.

First, the US still has a large current account deficit.  It is unlikely that foreigners will continue to finance that as American assets lose value.  A dirty little secret in the swiftness of Congress and the Executive to prop up many of these financials is the fear that if they are allowed to fail, foreign investors will be burned and start pulling out of the US, causing a run on the dollar.  Also, with investments declining and people selling, they needed to become liquid, and the dollar was a logical choice.  This points to a short term panic rally of the dollar, followed by a longer term dollar collapse.

So I have to say that I think the dollar’s current strength is, if not an illusion, a short term phenomenon.   At some point as the fed lowers rates, as US deficit spending grows, and it’s clear there isn’t going to be a sudden burst of economic activity in the US, there will be a dollar panic and we could see $2 to a Euro.   Now, the European economy isn’t exactly all sweetness and joy right now either, but they aren’t going to have to correct for a massive current accounts deficit like the US.

Practically, what does this mean?  First, oil will go back up in price when the dollar starts depreciating.  OPEC still prices oil in dollars, and if the dollar loses value, oil increases in dollar price (though  the increases are slower in other currencies).   The current drop in oil prices have been greater for us than the Europeans because of the dollars strength — it works both ways.  Second, we’ll get inflation.  Right now the concern is deflation due to decreased economic activity.  In a recession, with higher unemployment and decreased economic activity, inflation is usually not a problem.   Yet markets are now global, and so these things operate under different rules.   The only way to balance our current accounts is to depreciate the currency — the market will do that whether we like it or not.  Perhaps now is a good time to purchase some needed home goods or a new car, before inflation starts driving prices up.  If I had the money I’d dump dollars and American securities and go into foreign equities and currencies.  Oil stocks are a bargain now too — oil prices will go up.  Alternate fuels are being hit by current low oil prices, but they’ll come back too.

As investors decide to move from quick gain US investments in stocks and property (the ‘bubble investments’ of the last decade) to investments in actual production capacity and various global markets, the dollar has nothing to prop it up.   One student asked if all these massive bailouts might be setting up another bubble — throw so much money into the economy that credit remains cheap and speculators are able to find some new creative way to re-bubble the economy, lure in foreign capital to finance our trade and budget deficits, and keep the party going.

I think not — and I certainly hope not!  Every time we delay having to deal with the reality of our economic fundamentals, the ultimate price we’ll have to pay gets higher.  The higher the debt, the deeper the current accounts deficits, the more unstable both the dollar and the US economy becomes.  I think we were able to go from bubble to bubble in the last decade because the financial pundits and analysts never had a glimpse of the dark side of the economic illusion they were creating.  They convinced themselves that wealth creation was enough to offset debt, and wealth creation was measured in portfolio and investment values.  These were never real, they were artificially inflated buble values.  Now that it’s collapsed and people have been burned, I can’t imagine they’ll allow themselves to be burned again.  And even if enough short term greed were to allow some new bubble to form, peole would be quick to get out at the first sign of danger.

The fundamentals are clear and have been for about a decade.  We have been financing a life style beyond our means through unsustainable current accounts and budget deficits, using the power of our financial instutions and control of financial markets to allow this to be financed by foreign capital.   Such a situation cannot continue forever.   The painful rebalancing should have started with stock market crash, but after 9-11 credit was made so cheap and so much money poured into the system to prevent terrorism from bringing down the economy that we financed an even more dangerous bubble — a property bubble existing alongside bizarre financial instruments sold as investment grade securities.  Now, we pay the price.

If we’re entering a storm, we’re still at the outer bands, starting to feel the force of the winds, but with much more to come.   Once the dollar starts falling, foreign capital will bail from US markets quickly — as will American capital, since markets are global.  This will create a deep recession, accompanied by inflation, which will have the practical effect of lowering all our standards of living, and causing severe crisis to national, state and local budgets.   At some point, the storm will pass, and we’ll have to clean up the mess and find our place in a rebalanced world economy.

But there are two bits of good news here:  1)  We’ve been living in a kind of illusionary or fake economy for awhile now, the sooner we can get back to reality the better it will be in the long run; and perhaps the best news: 2) While I stand by analysis and note I’ve  been talking about the current accounts deficit, hyperconsumerism, and the ‘fake’ nature of our economy for years now, I’m a political scientist and not an economist.  I study political economy, but don’t get into the technical analyses.   So maybe I’m wrong.   I hope so.  I don’t think so, but I hope so!

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In the Hands of the Bureaucrats

Posted November 25, 2008 by Scott Erb
Categories: Barack Obama, US Politics
 

Many people, including legendary reporter Bob Woodward, were surprised and a bit upset that Barack Obama would consider Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State.  Others are worried that he’s choosing too many people with backgrounds in the Clinton Administration, softening his notion of change.  Never mind that the only exposure top Democrats have had to leading the country’s bureaucratic apparatus came in the Clinton years — the Republicans have held executive power for 20 of the last 28 years — somehow Obama was supposed turn everything around with new blood.

First, to Hillary (assuming all the rumors are accurate).  Obama knows that he is bringing an intelligent, strong willed woman into a position where she could do things that embarrass him.   Colin Powell and more importantly some of his staff were often doing and saying things that annoyed the first Bush Administration.  Going all the way back to Henry Kissinger one recognizes the possibility that a Secretary of State can sometimes outshine the President.   Obama no doubt knows that many President’s prefer a non-descript bureaucrat in the State position, so as to assert Presidential authority.  Obama’s choice of Hillary reflects a deep confidence Obama has in himself, and his ability to lead.  He is saying, essentially, that he can work with Clinton as a team, inspire her confidence, and give her space to operate within a framework the two of them agree upon.

Choosing former members of the Clinton team for other posts only makes sense.  Obama is a relative newcomer to Washington, but even if he wasn’t, he would be foolish to tap lots of academics and DC unknowns to come and run very politicized inside the beltway bureaucracies.  Bureaucracies by nature know how to evade control from above, often subverting the goals of the leadership through misdirection, standard operating procedures, or bureaucratic neglect.  Leaders can’t watch everything, after all.  A newcomer coming in to “shake things up” without knowledge of the players and the lay of the land will be distrusted and most likely disdained.   Such a person would end of fighting battle after battle to control his or her own agency, only to find at the end that it’s difficult to even figure out what the agency is doing.  This is true for just about every important government bureaucracy.

A bureaucracy needs a strong leader who knows how to get things done in a bureaucratic setting.  That means knowing the important mid-level players, inspiring loyalty, and understanding that you can’t upset the power structures too much unless you can generate real buy in.  A bureaucrat who deals with the day to day world can often ignore the commands of higher ups, realizing that no one really watches what he or she is doing.   That becomes more difficult if that rogue bureaucrat is outside the general consensus within his or her agency — people will be more likely to notice and act to limit such behavior.  If the consensus is to distrust the leadership and change, people will look the other way knowingly as change is sabotaged from below.

It’s still early, but it appears Obama plans to have the message of change come from the top, with the agents of change being those who understand power politics in the nation’s capital, and are able to effectively operate to make things happen.   This is important.

When Bill Clinton came to power in 1992, his efforts to find a cabinet suffered from a desire to have a cabinet “that looks like America,” and focus as much on symbolism of change as on power and experience.  He had some fine picks, but in others, like his effort to find an attorney journal, it looked haphazard.  The result was that during Clinton’s first two years he squandered opportunities for real accomplishments, thereby helping feed a backlash against his administration.  That caused a massive shift in Congressional power to the GOP in 1994.  From 1994 on Clinton was less about change than about bipartisan reform, making his administration not that much different than those of the twenty years of GOP governance.

Obama cannot afford to stumble his first two years on the job.  Clinton had the benefit of having his first term be a time when the economy was bouncing back and things were stable.  He could adapt, learn, and ultimately come up with a better team and more effective leadership.  Obama does not have that luxury.  With problems festering in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, while the economic crisis threatens the core strength of the country, he has to hit the ground running.

Yesterday he named his “economic team,” and his appointments so far reflect a real focus on expertise and continuity.  His message is clear: America will change directions, but we will do so with experienced hands on the helm.  Those doubting Obama’s experience can be heartened by the fact the government will be run by, and Obama advised by, people with extensive practical experience in government, business, finance and foreign policy.   In a sense he’s again following the Reagan example: set principles at the top, and find the right people to put them into effect below.

Obama’s confidence is important.  He’ll have to work fast, make tough decisions, and inspire the country to believe in what he’s doing.  We’re facing challenges that this country has not faced for a long time, we are vulnerable to real declines in both power and prosperity.  Over coming weeks I’ll write more about how we can adapt and some of the issues we face.  It is possible to turn this crisis into an opportunity.  We are literally at an important historical juncture.   And, while there is always a risk that “old faces” will maintain “old thinking,” I believe it’s really important to have experienced hands in charge of the various bureaucracies, people who understand how the system works and can be effective agents of change.  Ultimately, as good as Obama’s rhetoric may be, and as bold as his initiatives might be, whether they succeed or fail will depend in large part on how they are implemented.  That is something Obama cannot control, that will be in the hands of the bureaucrats.

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November 24 - Friendship

I am far behind in my correspondence to friends in Germany.   I have numerous excuses.  It’s difficult to write in German after being away from the language so long, I’m so busy I have even been late with birthday cards to family members, and Germany is so far away.  Yet back in the days of snail mail I was much better; letters crossed the Atlantic and it seemed I kept in contact with my European friends.  Because, the truth of the matter is that my closest friendships were forged in Germany between 1991 and 1992.

Making friends does not seem especially easy.  It’s not that there aren’t a lot of good people around me, or that I don’t want to spend time to get to know people well.  It’s just that time seems lacking.  With kids aged 5 and 2, a busy work schedule, and others with their own commitments and interests, time to really build a friendship is rare.  Instead I have numerous acquaintances, few real friendships.  And that gets me to think about my year in Germany.

I spent one year living in Berlin and mostly Bonn, from September 1991 to August 1992, working my dissertation with the help of a DAAD (Germany Academic Exchange Service) scholarship which paid me 1400 DM a month.  That was easily enough to live on, and much of the time I was in a dormitory in Bonn, on a “guest floor” on Endernicher Allee 17.    The guest floor was for scholars or students in town for a short while, not full time students of the University of Bonn.  Most were Germans doing practicums — Dorthe for the SPD, Ulli for the CDU, Volker in the press section of the Bundestag, and Claudia for law.  Some people came for a short time and would become full time students there, like Eric, who studied meterology.  We’d also get a few foreigners — no other Americans, but there was Helene from France, and Neil (a strange one) from Great Britain.

When I first moved in, most people were eating in their rooms (we had a kitchen for the entire floor, sharing cupboard space, a fridge, and cookware), and not interacting.  Each room had a bed, desk, and sink, and the floors shared two toilets and two showers.  I was in Germany not just to finish my dissertation, but to truly become fluent in the language.  I decided I had to change things up.  In early December I put up a sign in the kitchen:  “December 9, 1991 - Pizza Party, all invited!  Scott will provide pizza and beer!”  Having worked in a pizzeria much of my student life, I know how to make a mean pizza from scratch, the only difficult part was lugging a case of beer (a case of 30 half liter bottles) from the local store.   Not only did everyone show up, but that party changed the atmosphere of the floor.  Every night a group of us — different people every night, but I was always there — would meet and talk for hours over beers.  That was the way I became fluent in German, talking every night, day after day for hours.  When someone left or joined the floor we’d have a goodbye (or welcome) party, and the new person would be welcomed into the very social culture of our floor.  I found out later that after I left all that died, the head resident said the best times on that floor were when I was there because I constantly worked to bring the people together.

It was selfish, at first.  I needed to practice German!  But not since living in the college dorms had I spent so much time talking to people and getting to know them well.   We’d go to the movies, take walks, and as people moved out, I visited them.   Volker and Sonja in Muenster, Ulli moved on Dresden for government work (when I first visited him he was staying short term in a converted East German military baracks), Claudia In Goettingen, Eric in Saarbruecken, and Doerthe in Bremerhaven and later Sweden.   I also made friends with Tina from Passau (who I met on the plane flying over there - September 5, 1991) and had old friends, pen pals from my time in Bologna in 1982-83 - Gabi from Ingolstadt, Annemarie from Munich.

So I got close with a lot of people, and realize that even now as I count my friends here at UMF, I’ve not had near the conversations and shared experiences with them that I had in that year with my German friends, followed by extensive travels across Germany to visit people in the summers of 95 and 96.

Why is it that I can’t find time to cultivate friendships here like I did that year in Germany?  Part of it is that I now have family responsibilities — there I was alone in a dorm, with other people living right next door.  That’s a very different context!  But still, it seemed that during that year nothing was more important to me than the friendships I was building, the people I was getting to know.  It bled over to building friendships with Tina after meeting on the plane (I long lost track of her), and Gabi (we still exchange rare e-mails), who I first got to know as a pen pal back when I was 19.   That year was about friendships and thinking about life.  I wrote an unpublished novellette, and even got dissertation work done.  It was a special year, one of the most sacred times of my life.

Yet now, life is busy and interactions are brief and usually focused on a task.   Perhaps two of my closer friends at UMF show how this works.  I now co-teach with Steve, but until we worked together on a travel course to Italy, and were able to spend time in Italy eating and walking/talking with each other as well as students and other faculty, we had only brief conversations.  Even now, I daresay we talked more about life and things outside teaching during the Italy trip than in a year afterwards.    I also co-teach with Mellisa, who I got to know from Faculty Senate.  We worked closely together there, and when Natasha and I had our first child, Mellisa was a natural confidante.   Her oldest is four years older than ours, and she teaches Early Childhood; then she and Robert were having their second.  We exchanged a lot of e-mails, and actually found time to build a friendship.  But after that we each got busy doing other things, and though we still co-teach, we find it hard to find time to really talk.

And so it goes.  I don’t think it’s just me.  I think a lot of us in the US are caught up in that spiral of being so busy that we “don’t have time right now” to actually get together and just relax, talk, and get to know each other.  It seems all time must be productive, and there’s an elusive point in the future ‘when things aren’t so hectic’ which we believe is just around the corner, but never seems to arrive.

And so I think back on that time in Germany.  First, I have to catch up on my correspondence, with lengthy, personal letters that try to re-connect what we had.  That year was important, and those friendships special.  I know there is still something there, even after we’ve all moved on and in different directions.  I also need to make this a priority with the people in my life now.   Perhaps we’ll invite people over more often for just drinks or snacks, not having to have it be a full blown dinner or party.   The artists are investing in an espresso machine, I’m going to buy a share and then walk across campus to their building next semester and try to socialize more there.

That year in Germany stands out as something special.  Not just because it was an amazing year of travel, becoming fluent in a foreign language, and having a series of adventures.  But that year was devoted primarily to getting to know others and making friends.  The years since then have been a blurr.  Family has been important, and family experiences are strong in my mind, but relationships with others, even my very satisfying job seem to have been passing pay at light speed, one year after the other.

I have to focus on making time friends.  I need to make it a priority like I make taking time to write my blog a priority (and I probably blog because I need an outlet to communicate my thoughts beyond the daily work and family routine).  I need to slow down.  I need to really consider the people around me, take time to enjoy where I am, and connect with the people in my life now.

But first, I have some letters to write, auf Deutsch.

November 22 - A New Foreign Policy

One of the better political websites, politico.com, has a number of articles speculating that Obama will be hawkish in foreign policy.   The likelihood Gates will stay at defense, Clinton going to State, Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, etc., seem to indicate influence from the less dovish wing of the party.  That may be a premature assumption.

My colleague Steve Pane, an adept political commentator, music historian, professional pianist and pastry addict, noted that by putting ‘hawks’ in these positions it would make it easier for the US to leave Iraq more quickly — people who might have criticized it if outside would now be in the Administration.  That’s true, though I think the issue goes beyond Iraq.  If President elect Obama keeps Robert Gates as Defense Secretary, and puts Hillary Clinton in the State Department, he will have a credible team in place to create a new approach to foreign policy, one which likely could significantly cut military spending.   This defies conventional wisdom, as Gates is seen as a Bush holdover who  would seem to suggest some continuity, and Hillary Clinton ran as a hawk in her recent campaign.

Robert Gates was a leader in the Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton which advocated negotiations with other regional actors, including Iran and Syria.  By all accounts, Gates agreed with that recommendation.  When he joined the Bush Administration he could not advocate such positions publicly because he had to represent and implement Administration policy.   By keeping him on, Obama could move towards those aspects of the ISG findings which President Bush rejected.   It’s clear that as the US leaves, future Iraqi stability requires involving Iran and Syria, especially because of Iran’s intense influence on the Iraqi government and various militias.   Gates is a realist, not a neo-conservative.  Realists are less willing to use military means to achieve policy results, they focus on diplomacy, and in fact are willing to negotiate with enemies because that’s where you need diplomacy the most.   Gates thus serves two uses for Obama: a) his approach to diplomacy is likely similar to Obama’s, and b) because he was in the Bush cabinet he will help lend credibility to the Obama foreign policy from the right.

Hillary Clinton as a hawk reflects an amazing metamorphisis from her earlier career.   I have no reason to think that she really is a hawk, or truly supports large military budgets.  She was positioning herself for a Presidential run, and she knew that as a Democratic woman she needed to have credibility on security issues.  Moreover, those who opposed the 1991 Iraq war were hurt later by that opposition, so she figured that supporting President Bush was smarter politically.   Because of her recently won credibility on defense and security issues, she could also help Obama reshape American foreign policy.

So what needs to be done?  First, the US to accept the reality that we are no longer in a position to simply demand things be done our way or we’ll just not play.   If the US seriously negotiates and participates in efforts at creating international accords, we’ll have considerable influence on the outcome.  We should do that and make necessary compromises in order to develop solutions to global problems.   European and Asian states will embrace an America working for the collective good rather than focused solely on maintaining maximum independence and supporting a narrow national interest.

Second, the US needs to cut military spending and military commitments abroad.  This is not something Obama could say in the campaign, as he would have quickly been painted as weak, not understanding the threats of terrorism and Islamic extremism.   I would argue, however, that our military strength has been more a liability than an assett.  It lured us into thinking there was a military solution to the terrorist threat and made Iraq a tempting target for military aggression.  By some accounts the real cost of that war is now over $3.6 trillion, money which could have better been used to bring health to our economy.   Even those who try to say we’ve succeeded in Iraq because violence is down have to admit that overall as a country that war has hurt us on numerous fronts.   It does dramatically demonstrate that modern global problems defy military solutions.  Solutions are primarily political, while terrorism requires not a major military machine able to win large wars, but a well oiled counter terrorism policy with special operations and sophisticated intelligence.

Obama should shift the military from “a big 20th century mechanized machine designed to fight for control of Europe” to a “sophisticated, intelligent, versatile athlete able to make well targeted interventions when necessary against both state and non-state actors.”   Moreover, we don’t need to spend half the world’s military budget to achieve this; we can have an effective military option at a lower price, especially since no major power can seriously threaten our domestic security.  The threats are small terrorist groups that escape the grasp of a huge military machine; we must adapt.

Finally, the US to seriously address the need for a global set of standards on economic regulation and development, environmental issues, and energy — the three E’s.    Not only is there widespread agreement that action needs to be taken on these problems, but these are areas where real bipartisanship is possible.  They can help guide the US towards a consensus on a more internationalist policy perspective.  The US can show leadership and flexibility, compromising where in the past we’d have gotten up and gone home; leading where in the past we’d have avoided the issue.  None of those issues can be dealt with at a national level alone, and all of them are of vital importance to the future of the planet.   A cooperative and progressive America working with the rest of the world on these issues will symbolize a new era of American foreign policy, and play to the strengths of Hillary Clinton’s diplomatic skills in support of Obama’s vision.

So three major components: move towards a more internationalist approach, cut military spending and reorganize the military to be smaller and more nimble, and begin a major effort to build international agreements on energy, the economy and the environment.  Done right, such a policy could not move us into a truly stable post-Cold War system, and avoid the perils caused by the economic and foreign policy failures of the Bush Administration.

Some people will never agree for military spending cuts, and of course, nationalists will always distrust international institutions.  But the world is in crisis, Obama will have an overwhelming majority in Congress, and now is the time for some bold and decisive actions.  I suspect the economic crisis will force cuts across the budgetary board anyway, and military spending is one of the least effective ways to stimulate the economy.  Obama has proven that he will follow principle rather than political expediency; here he will have to show true leadership.

There are a couple biases about America.  The European left often sees the US as a force for militarism, exploitation and evil in the world, while the American right sees the US as superior in ideology and values to the rest of the world.  Both biases are absurdly off base, and represent caricatured views of a complex country with diverse opinions.   A new foreign policy can bury these biases, and help build the foundation for dealing with the vast problems of this new century.

November 20 - It’s Worse than You Think

Last month I proclaimed the “boom” of 1945-2008 to be dead.  That was an admittedly bold statement, in that recessions have come and gone for over sixty years, without a fundamental halt to the economic progress of the post-war era.  Now, as the stock market dips below 8000, jobless claims grew at a rate surprising even bearish economists, and the US is forced to consider whether or not to rescue the big three automakers, once the foundation of the US industrial base, people are dizzy from the array of bad news.

In other sectors as well, cuts are intense.   Universities, both private and public, are making painful cuts.  Hospitals are in crisis.  Here in Maine the state is seven years behind it’s medicare/medicaid payments, leaving hospitals to eat loses.  At some point, this becomes unsustainable.  Citbank is laying off over 50,000 workers, and companies around the country are shedding jobs as both profit and credit become hard to obtain.  Where will this all end?

Many people are hopeful that this is simply an adjustment to the popping of the property bubble and the wild speculation of the last decade.  To them, the problem is that Wall Street went on a binge, and that has to be fixed.  Others hope that Barack Obama will undertake fundamental changes to a system where deregulation and an unwarranted faith in the free market allowed business elites to run wild.   I think both of those camps are overly optimistic.  This crisis is worse than most people realize, and it is the result of long term policies by the United States which set up an unsustainable world economy.

It started after the Carter Administration’s “malaise” led to stagflation and economic recession.  In a desire to reassert the US economy the Reagan Administration began a strategy of lower taxes, higher spending, and persistent and growing trade deficits financed first by Japan, then countries like China and Saudi Arabia.  This meant that the US could consume more than it produced, and the government could spend more than it brought in.  Such a mix of budget and trade deficits would usually cause a currency to buckle and force economic adjustment.  The willingness of foreigners to finance this through investment in bonds, stocks, and other aspects of the American economy allowed us to escape that plight.

Thus we partied in the 80s, 90s and through this year, with only short, relatively mild recessions.  During  this time the trade deficit grew and grew, as did both governmental and private debt.   Moreover, Americans stopped saving — as our country became a debtor state, we became a debtor society.   This seemed to the experts to be OK.  First, foreign financing of the debt/trade deficit was called good — it’s great foreigners want to invest in America!  Wording it as a sign of confidence that future growth was assured, the imbalance this was causing could be ignored.  Second, people pointed to wealth creation — whether in the stock market, retirement accounts, or property values — as enough to easily overcome the problem of personal debt.  Sure, we have credit cards debt, but overall wealth was up.   It was ignored that this was paper wealth, able to disappear as quickly as it grew — and, in fact, it has done just that.

And what about this “foreign investment” in the US?  The reason Japan and China were so willing to finance our trade deficit is that we were giving the money back to them to purchase the goods they were producing.  It was a net win for them — they got the money back, and they got American assets.   Everyone seemed to benefit — we could have low taxes, high spending, cheap consumer goods and live above our means, while China, Japan and Saudi Arabia were funding our debt so we could buy their products and oil.  Everyone wins!

Some imbalances grew from this, however.   The dollar was kept artificially weak for much of this era, meaning that the US essentially de-industrialized, losing manufacturing jobs and replacing them with lower paying service sector jobs.  The result was the gap between the rich and the poor, narrowing until about 1980, has been widening for almost three decades, so that now the gap is as large as in the 19th century — the middle class has been disappearing.   Workers in China were hurt as well — because profits from Chinese export led growth were invested in the US rather than shared with Chinese workers, there hasn’t been the devleopment of a larger working middle class in China.

Ultimately, this was a bubble destined to burst.  High debt and cheap credit made speculation intense, with a stock market bubble followed by a property bubble.  As long as cheap credit could help fuel consumer spending, this illusion of wealth creation could continue.  As long as speculation continued, foreign money would still flow to the US.  Once it burst, the house of cards tumbled, financial companies saw their values collapse, credit tightened, and the ripple has unleashed a major economic crisis which, due to the size and importance of the US economy, is global in scale.

There is no way to fix this.  Repeat: there is no way to fix this.  There will not be a return to “business as usual” after a year or two long recession.   The old system does not work, it has collapsed.  With debt of $10 trillion we cannot spend our way out of the recession.   The good news is that with proper action we can create a stable global economy for the future — but not without feeling intense pain during the transition.

The system that can’t be fixed is the one where the US could live off foreign money while enjoying ongoing budget and trade deficits.  We have to get our economic house in order.   The key to doing this is to recognize that we need to have a manufacturing sector that can export, and we need to rebuild a middle class.  Yet we can’t do this by simply spending government money; with debt out of control, we need to actually spend less.  Yet we’re in a recession, spending less only intensifies a recession according to conventional economic wisdom.  Spending more only increases the debt and interest rates could start climbing, especially as foreign economies slow and money does not continue to get invested in the US.

Therefore, there is no solution to this that can be achieved at the national level.  There needs to be a global effort to create a new economic regime to replace the remnants of the old Bretton Woods system.   Questions of debt, currency valuation, regulations on finance and investment need to be addressed, and some radical changes might have to be made.  It won’t be easy.  The US will have to recognize that our old position as the dominant world economy is over.  We’re still the biggest and most important economy, but we can no longer call the shots.

One can’t fall for simplistic solutions like “let the market fix it.”  The market is not magic, and markets can fail.  The “true believers” in free markets are operating on undeserved faith.   We will need supranational and governmental intervention at all levels to reconstruct the global economy.  That said, the goal has to be to create conditions for markets to operate effectively.   Markets do operate better than planned economies, and governmental intervention to set up a system is different than intervention to run/control a system.  The former is needed, not the latter.  We don’t need a ‘new new deal,’ we need a ‘new Bretton Woods’ — a new approach to facilitating market driven economics at the global level.

Yet that is a vague solution, and it probably won’t be seriously considered until it becomes clear to everyone that the economic pain is not going to go away soon.   Once the credit rating on US bonds is cut, or governmental bailouts fail, or the US potentially defaults on its debt, then it will become clear that we need to fundamentally rethink the very nature of the global economic system.  One problem is that globalization has been taking place in a world economy defined by national regulatory and policy orientations.  This has created a loophole for international finance, and allowed the US to “enjoy” it’s credit and debt driven free ride.  Now that this has collapsed, it’s time to work for a regulatory system that is global, rather than national.

November 19 - Youth Power!

It never fails.  When I talk with my slightly older colleagues about today’s college students, they will often complain about the lack of engagement and energy by young Americans.  Rather than protest and idealistically seek some kind of alternative understanding of reality, they play gameboys or get lost in facebook and IM.   Yet something happened in this election campaign — the generation of 2008 handed the 1968s a lesson in political efficacy that can’t go unnoticed.

In 1968 the active, protesting youth gathered in Grant Park in Chicago to challenge Mayor Daley’s police and the Democratic convention, which had just nominated Minnesotan Hubert Humphrey for the Presidency.   The result was violence, injury and disorder, all of which combined with a year of protest and anger to create the impression that the country was on the verge of anarchy.   Young people were making themselves heard, and they had a political impact: the scared silent majority rushed to support Richard Nixon, and the Republican party appeared a safe alternative to this crazy new politics of radicalism and protest embraced by young activists.  Even after the 68ers settled down and became “establishment,” they held their own activism in a kind of romantic myth: they were the generation that rose up and made a statement.   Today’s youth are more interested in their future bank statements.

Yet the generation of 08 has accomplished something that the 68ers couldn’t.  They determined the winner of an American election, and put the country on a new path.  Rather than protesting in the streets, they were out volunteering and organizing.  Rather than scaring the middle class with radical attacks on the status quo, they inspired the middle class by working within the system to improve it.  This includes McCain supporters as well as Obama volunteers, though the latter were far more numerous.  Statistics show a sharp increase in voter turnout, and without the youth vote the election would have gone the other way.  Young people made a difference.

It’s common place for every generation to complain about the “youth.”  They are always considered lazier than the generation before, less engaged, and more prone to weird fads or strange music.  In the case of the current “millenial” cohort, the claim is that they are less self-motivated, more needy of instructions, and focused too much on internet style information — fast, bullet pointed, and less time and patience for context.  While there may be some truth to those criticisms, let’s put them in context.

The generation of the 68ers may have been willing to protest and embrace a counter-cultural approach, but their cohort had numerous failings as well.  Drug use and addiction grew, people disconnected from society, and the counter culture often developed without thoughtful reflection on  the culture they were rebelling against.   They emotionally connected with worthy causes — civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam war, and more individual freedom — but it was often reactive rather than thoughtful.   Not by everyone, but many simply went with the crowd, it was fun and ‘the thing to do.’

The 08ers are from a generation that is used to the internet.  Teaching at a university I’ve watched the subtle change in students from the early nineties to the present, as technology spread and the internet became ubiquitious.  At the same time, it’s interesting to see how “common knowledge” has changed as well.  It struck me in the election campaign that John McCain’s complaints about being compared to George Wallace, or arguments about Obama as ’socialist’ were totally meaningless to most young people.   William Ayres or Rev. Wright’s causes, which caused outrage amongst some of the 50+ crowd who remember those battles, were irrelevant side shows.  Their world is not the cold war world of communism vs. capitalism, or the left as some kind of radical “marxist” alternative.  Those things are no longer part of the culture, they are anachronisms that Obama knew to let go of, but the GOP did not.

All of this worries the older crowd, right and left alike.  The youth don’t have the depth of knowledge of the past that they should, don’t think about the ideological debates as much, and lack a sense of world history.  What they miss is that the youth replace what they lack with a new approach to thinking about politics and the world.  Ideology tends to bore them.  It’s dogmatic and their world is defined by multiplicity and overlapping perspectives.   They also have learned the hard way not to trust the emotions of nationalism and militarism.  Most were supportive of the Iraq war back in junior high, because that was simply the way everyone was.  They watched as the war went sour and moved almost completely to the anti-war camp.  They don’t trust dogmatic emotional politics, and they clearly see patriotism as being about engagement rather than simply supporting the state.

While this new mentality overwhelmingly supported Obama, young Republicans are also coming of age, recognizing that their party is in need of change.  Most were not impressed with Palin, and are skeptical of social conservatives.  They are worried about the size of government and tend to see the world as more dangerous than young Democrats.  They also share the dislike of ideology, and many seemed uninspired by McCain’s negative campaign, aimed at the older generation that still thinks socialists may be out to take over.  They want a positive, innovative voice for the GOP that shares Obama’s pragmatism, but emphasizes smaller government and effective reaction to global threats.

I suspect young Republicans will get their 21st century GOP.   The old crop of Republican leaders were deluded by the success of the past 25 years into thinking that the old formula for success could still work.  But Democratic and Republican alike, the youth is showing the country that they are ready to act and be heard.  They won’t be screaming in protests that much, or part of the “impeach Bush” or “Obama is a socialist” mutual hatred society that defines too much of the political spectrum.  They’ll be out organizing, fighting for causes, and working together, Republicans and Democrats alike, on shared causes like human rights, global warming and Darfur.  My generation has run up a massive debt, partied the economy away, and has left the country in a mess.  This generation seems ready to make a difference.

The older generation always underestimates the youth.   And no generation is perfect.  But now, 40 years after the protests of 1968, massive numbers of youth again met in Grant park in Chicago, but now peacefully to celebrate how their hard work created an major and powerful shift in American politics, with the vote and energy of the youth the key to Obama’s victory.   Symbolically they showed the 68ers that hard work is more effective than anger and screaming.   Watching an engaged campus, talking to Obama supporters, College Republicans, and other students, some starting groups like a campus chapter of Amnesty International, I am more confident of this generation of students to be a positive force for change than at any time I can remember.   That’s good — we need them!

November 18 - Afghanistan Dilemma

President elect Obama made hay with the argument that the war in Iraq had taken out focus off Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to be resurgent and creating a situation where NATO commanders even question whether or not a war can be won in Afghanistan.  This will be a major foreign policy test for soon to be President Obama, and one which, if he fails, could threaten his re-election prospects for 2004.

Assuming the US can get out of Iraq quickly — and all indications are that we can and will — a few lessons have to be taken from the misadventure in Iraq.  First, while no doubt the US will put the best face on leaving Iraq, it’s clear that we cannot by any reasonable definition call that war a “victory” for the US.  We will be leaving Iraq in a precarious situation, with the central government having limited power, and subject to significant Iranian influence.    Why did we fail in Iraq, and why does it look like we’ll be able to find a way to find a face saving way out?

The failure in Iraq was that we could not socially engineer Iraq into becoming a pro-western secular democratic state.  The dream of “Iraq the model” or “spreading democracy” was never realistic, and the effort to do so lengthened that war and cost untold hundreds of billions of dollars of extra money — not to mention lives.  In Afghanistan we have to resist the idea that we need to create a stable, functioning democratic polity.  That simply is not something we have control over, and the resources and military capacity available is far short of anything that could have a remote shot at creating a “new Afghanistan.”  It was assumed with both Iraq and Afghanistan that they’d rather naturally drift towards becoming a pro-American democracy — that was the fatal flaw of neo-conservative thinking.

Already corruption levels in Afghanistan are huge, opium production skyrocketing, and every obstacle standing in the way of rule of law and democracy is evident.  This cannot be fixed by military power or even economic aid.   Good intentions do not alter reality, and the reality this is Afghanistan’s problem and only Afghans can fix it over time.   The international community can help in coming years, but that’s outside of the current conflict.

So the goal in Afghanistan cannot be grandiose.  We can’t aim to bring the country prosperity and stable rule of law, as much as we’d like those things.  Ultimately the goal must be like that in Iraq: find a face saving way to leave.   There is only one way to do that: decouple the Taliban from al qaeda, and allow the Taliban to be part of a power sharing arrangement in Afghanistan.  Even then we probably can’t guarantee that the powersharing will work, we have to work to at least create the possibility of success, and then leave it up to the Afghans.

Many will blanche at the idea of allowing the Taliban, one of the most ruthless and despotic regimes in recent history, anywhere close to power.   However, not only do they already control strategic sections of Afghanistan, but they appear to be strengthening.  I doubt we can simply defeat them.  Nor do we need to.  We can turn our “Pakistani weakness” into a strength, and then engage the rest of the region.

One reason the US hasn’t caught Bin Laden or had more success against the Taliban is their ability to use parts of Pakistan for refuge.   The Taliban originally won power in Afghanistan with Pakistani support, and much of the ISI (Pakistan’s secret police) remains sympathetic to the Taliban.  Given the unpopularity of the US and US raids into Pakistan, there is little reason for the Pakistani military and government to do any favors for the United States.

However, Pakistan would prefer that the fighting end, and that the US leave the region.  They could entertain a deal where they help mold the remaining Taliban into a group more willing to cooperate with Karzai, less connected to al qaeda.   In exchange, the Taliban gets a seat at the table in Kabul, and the US might even get top al qaeda leaders, maybe  Bin Laden himself.  Obama would look like a mastermind if he could pull it off, the US could leave having “captured Bin Laden.”

However, the Taliban by this point may be resistant to Pakistani influence, so concurrently the US has to engage the rest of the region, and show it can provide a modicum of real security in Afghanistan.  Rather than engage in ’search and destroy’ missions against the Taliban, the US could embrace an enclave strategy in that heavily populated important cities (such as Kabul and Kandahar) to protect population centers.  This lack of US involvement in the tribal and ethnic battles outside the main cities would put pressure on regional actors to come up with a solution.

Besides Pakistan, Afghanistan borderes Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and in a very small section, China.  All of these states have an interest in the future of Afghanistan, which itself is a multi-ethnic state with variations between regions.  Pakistan wanted the Taliban in power in part to assure groups friendly to it were in charge, Afghanistan is in a strategically improtant position for the regional balance of power.  Iran and the Taliban almost went to war at one point; Iran is a Shi’ite fundamentalist state, the Taliban are Sunni extremists.  By expanding negotiations about Afghanistan’s future to regional actors, it could be possible to cobble together some kind of agreement.  It may not see Afghanistan emerge as a strong, centralized state — but then again, why should it?

If they can agree on powersharing at the national level, and various levels of autonomy at regional levels, the states surrounding Afghanistan could help support a fragile but potentially successful peace.   The US could leave (or keep a token NATO force in place), and then focus primarily on al qaeda and counter-terrorism world wide.

It is important that Obama not get caught up in the mentality that “we can go in and win.”  We’ve committed the same mistakes the Soviets made — and more.   After Iraq the public is in no mood to throw massive resources into yet another conflict with no clear purpose or plan for victory.  Instead, we need to focus on a political/diplomatic offensive, with a minimal military strategy of securing various enclaves in the country.   An offensive against the Taliban, even if we had more troops, is likely to fail.  Obama’s task is to fix the economy and put America on a new path — he can’t do it if we don’t find a way quickly out of both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Once the US is out of Iraq and Afghanistan, what’s left is the “war on terror,” or counter-terrorism.   President Obama will have to redefine the former and develop a clear strategy on the latter.  This will replace the failed military strategy of conquering ‘rogue’ states, and can set him up for foreign policy success.  Sometime soon I’ll write more on how to do that.

November 16 - Corso e Ricorso

If Giambattista Vico’s theory of history is even remotely accurate, we are now living at the end of a cycle of history, ready to see this era dissolve and a new cycle begin.   Vico, who lived from 1688 to 1744, published his work Scienza Nuova (The New Science) in 1725.   A Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Napoli, he was relatively unknown in his lifetime, but had a profound effect on 19th and 20th century thinkers.  Karl Marx, James Joyce (Finnegan’s Wake is an extended version of Vico’s cycles of history), Isiah Berlin, and pragmatist philosophy all look to Vico for inspiration.

An an enlightenment thinker he also recognized the now well known weakness of the enlightenment.   Skepticism, whether in its early Roman or current post-modernist forms, always undercuts arguments that try to prove anything from reason alone.  Vico’s approach, Verum Factum, was an alternate to both Cartesian rationalism and Lockean empiricism, arguing that anything human made could be known and understood scientifically by humans.  This means we can study history with scientific certainty, while in the natural sciences — when we’re studying a nature we’re simply born into — the best we can do is practical knowledge.   This line of thought would have a lot in common with later ideas, amongst them pragmatism and constructivism/social constructivism.

However, more interesting for me at this point is his actual theory of history, “Corso e Ricorso.”  For Vico, history unfolds in a series of cycles, each with three eras.   The driving force of this progressive development of history is class struggle and status inequities.   This is one of the first evolutionary theories of historical progression, pre-dating Marx, Darwin and Hegel.   Even human nature develops, and human ends and interests are social as well as individual products.  Essentially each era starts with imagination and superstition, moves towards rational and orderly thought, and then descends again into imagination.  Politically this goes from anarchy to oligarchy, to monarchy and democracy, and then a decline back to anarchy.  A devout Catholic, Vico considers the Hebrews to be outside this theory, as God direclty intervened on their history.

Vico posits humanity as emerging from an era when all were primitive and free, wildly procreating and living by their passions and superstitions.  Their beliefs about the world were imagination driven, and the first Gods were thunder Gods, reflecting peoples’ fear that the Gods disapproved of their behavior.  This motivated them towards monogamy and initial family structures.  At some point families developed religious beliefs and rituals of marraige and burial.  Burial plots brought private property into existence, and separated out the new ‘patriarchs’ who were developing stable family and clan structures from those who continued to live in anarchy.

Many remained in anarchy, but over time the weaker hunters started to move into the “asylums” — fields which surrounded the burial plots of the patriarchs.   The patriarchs formed an alliance with these security seekers to wipe out the “marauders” — those who remained in anarchy.  Once the marauders were eliminated, the patriarchs entered into a feudal relationship with the serfs who had sought their protection.  The patriarchs treated them as virtual slave labor, not allowing them to marry or have private property.  This was the aristocratic age of heroes, reflected in the first Greek city states.

Of course, the serfs soon rebelled against their condition and demanded basic rights, such as marriage and property rights.  This class became known as the ‘plebes,’ struggling constantly for increased social status.  Because their labor was needed and they outnumbered the aristocrats, they were able to slowly win practical rights, including the ability to marry and be part of society.  For Vico this coincides with the development of the Roman Republic.  Finally, internal divisions within the Republic gives way to Monarchy and organized rule, as the Roman Empire achieved its highest level of development, progressing in philosophy, the sciences, and political organization.  But Roman philosophy would become critical and skeptical, and soon Rome’s core values weakened, its virtues undercut by a decadent and skeptical public no longer unified by the heroic ideals of the past.  Rome weakened slowly from within until that great civilization collapsed, having run it’s course of history.

From there, a new course of history started, one destined to surpass the last.   The early Christian church became the new era of the Gods.  The feudal middle ages to the renaissance represented the new age of aristocratic heroes.  Finally the enlightenment and the rise of modernism was the development of the new age of man.  For Vico, writing at the dawn of the modern era, this was destined to lead to great advances, moving beyond anything that the Romans had discovered.  He also thought that the Christian faith was a true version of religious faith, showing  progress from Roman polytheism.  Vico predicted, however, that reason would again become overly critical and skeptical, and that this would lead to a society being self-questioning and self-absorbed.  The result would be another civilizational collapse, and yet another course of history.

For Vico the current era of hyperconsumerism and baseless materialism could be seen as a predicted break down of the accomplishments of the enlightenment.  Moreover, this is a necessary outcome of enlightenment thought, since modern rational thought can never escape skepticism and self-critical reflection; it in facts demands it.  Post-modernism, the current variant of age old skepticism, is simply that late Roman nihilist philosophy coming back — improved, as each era does progress, but destined to unravel the current civilization.

So from a Viconian perspective, we’re at the end of a third course of history, and are about to see our civilization unravel into anarchy, moving back to the age of Gods, although one progressed beyond the original thunder Gods or early Christian ideals of the last two cycles.  To be sure, Vico’s theory doesn’t work as well if one thinks about non-western cultures, and his interpretation of history is as poetic and imaginative as it is scientific.  But what if in broad terms he’s correct?

Reason and humanism seemed dominate Europe and the US by the 19th century, but then WWI and WWII showed how critical and skeptical reason could lead to ideologies and chaos.  While for Vico this chaos leads to Monarchy and a restoration of order (as in the Roman Republic to an Empire); we seem however to have moved towards more democracy.  Yet if you look at the post-WWII order, it is not truly democratic.  Power is held by bureaucratic and corporate elites, elections are primarily marketing campaigns, and one wonders how much control the people truly have.  If you look at consumerism and crass materialism defining our culture, we seem to have slipped into decadence.  The inability of so many to see the obvious economic imbalances leading to the current crisis also show a touch of delusion.

Skeptical and critical reasoning has taken to dominate our thinking.  Many of us, including myself, embrace that — thinking critically is a way to liberate ourselves from the chains of irrational tradition or control by those with power and propaganda.  Yet it also pushes us away from the traditions cultural norms that unify society, creating division and lack of coherence.  Add that to the consumer/material decadence, and perhaps we are drifting towards collapse.  Many have compared the United States to Rome.  And if the last few years have shown that we are not as invulnerable as we once thought.  With GM on the verge of failure and the economy looking as bleak as anytime since the Great Depression, one could imagine things falling apart further.  Michael Moore’s new movie project is supposedly about the “End of an Empire.”  You can guess which one.

Climate change, oil shortages, or increased violence from a Third World destroyed by colonialism and whose corrupt leaders have been enabled by western greed, could all push towards a new barbarism, with terrorism and other dangers hard to combat.   Perhaps we are simply living in the final days of this particular cycle of history.

Or perhaps not.  Even if Vico isn’t simply representing a misguided 18th century effort to make broad sweeping statements of history, even if he is on to something, there’s no reason we can’t break out of the cycle.  The way to do it would be to create a critical reasoning that does not undercut society and cultural coherence.   We’re part of the way there; the core values of the United States are based on reason but also the creation of a tradition that stresses tolerance, compromise, and pragmatism.  These values can compliment critical reasoning, and in fact be a culture that can be strengthened by such “post-modern” thinking.

The signs aren’t promising.  In recent years nationalism, jingoism, xenophobia about immigrants, and militarism have been strong.  Fear of Islam and terrorism fed a tendency for politics to seem more like holy war than rational discourse.  Instead of Madison and Jefferson, we get Limbaugh and Hannity.  Read blogs left and right, and it’s less about discussion, more about defending an orthodoxy on each side.  It’s better than the late Roman Empire, but Vico would expect that — each cycle progresses.  But perhaps this last election reflects an attempt to re-connect with our values.    If Vico’s on the right track (and for the sake of this post I’m playing the assumptiont hat he is) the way out of corso e ricorso is to construct a culture that can mesh with even critical and skeptical reasoning.  Are we there yet?

November 15 - Obama Mysogyny

Satire Alert: For those who are humor impared, this is a satire of the silly anti-Obama websites put up by so-called Hillary supporters who soldier on, despite failing to stop Obama.  The sites being satired: Hillbuzz, The Confluence, Noquarter and Texas Darling.  I am, for the record, an Obama supporter.  Start satire now:

Obama Mysogyny

Well, it had to happen, didn’t it.  For Barack Obama, it wasn’t enough to steal the election from first Hillary Clinton and then John McCain, now he has the unmitigated gall to foist the most shameful humiliation onto Hillary Clinton.  He must delight in demeaning women and sticking a fork into Hillary Clinton, despite the fact his minions like Howard Dean and Donna Brazile forced her to pretend to support him during the election campaign.  Now President Elect Barry Sorterobama wants the most distinguished Senator and should-be President Elect to become nothing but a mere Secretary.  Kicked in the shins so often by the party that they built from the ashes left by Obama’s intellectual mentor, Jimmy Carter, the Clintons seem willing to consider it.

Yes, word is that Hillary Clinton is being considered for the position of Secretary of state.   Can you believe it!  Clearly, Obama knows that his path to power is not complete.  There are law suits pending, proving that he was born in either Kenya, Indonesia, or that he renounced his citizenship and thus is not a legal American citizen.  That means that there are three other possibilities than his having been born in Hawaii as he claims.  That’s a one in four chance, only a 25% probability he’s a native born citizen.  That alone should get him disqualified.  Perhaps he knows that secret paperwork from Kenya is on its way, and he wants Hillary out of the way.

The electoral college has also not spoken.   What will happen when the video that the Obama campaign has paid Fox news millions of dollars not to release — the one showing Michelle Obama screaming “death to f***ing Whitie!” while wearing a T-shirt of Adolf Hitler in black face with the caption “we need one of these!” — finally gets released?  Will the electors still vote for this Muslim who worships in a racist Christian church?

Or, perhaps, he simply wants to prove to Hillary that he is dominant, and she is nothing but a Secretary.  Instead of chugging down Crowne Royal with the unemployed steelworkers of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, she’ll have to sip fine wine with French President Sarkozy and his model wife.  Yup.  Hillary will be forced to hobnob with women who defy her spunk and energy and instead simply want to be beautiful and snag a powerful husband.  Instead of beer in Columbus, it’ll be tea with the pinky extended with the Queen in Buckingham palace?  Can you think of anything more demeaning?

Recently an insightful Georgia Congressman compared Obama to Hitler.  Hitler should be the one feeling insulted.  Hitler was a courageous courrier in World War I, a job with 80% mortality rates.  He was an artist, a soldier and he suffered in prison for his political views.   If you doubt Obama is worse than Hitler, can you see Hitler embracing the teachings of Reverend Wright?  Obama, on the other hand, is an empty suit.  Moreover, he’s an obviously evil empty suit because he’s managed to fake accomplishments like graduating from Harvard Law school, serving as the first Black Harvard Law Review chief editor, working in community action, serving in the Illinois Senate and then moving on to the United States Senate.  All these “accomplishments”, as well as his campaign and debates have fooled Americans into not recognizing he’s just an empty suit.   Clearly, the media has been in on the scam from day one.

Why?  Well, it’s clear Obama is a Marxist.  He had classes with Marxist professors in college, and we know how hard you have to look to find a Marxist in academia!  He never came clean on his relationship with William Ayres, including the allegations that they have had a homosexual love affair for years, including a sado-masochistic ritual with the safe words “bomb the Pentagon!”  Clearly, this is a man bent on destroying America.

But most import to us Hillary Clinton supporters, he wants to destroy the one savior who could unite the country and bring us to a new paradise.  Instead of the gritty and determined heroine, we get this guy who people treat as the messiah, “the One,” adoring him and looking over obvious hypocrisies.  Hillary is honest and forthright.  Yeah, she told us she supported Obama and she campaigned for him, but that was because Howard Dean and Donna Brazile threatened her, and her loyalty to the Democratic party — a trait that shows strength — meant she felt she had to support a man she knows isn’t up for the job.  What a woman she is!  Can we have Hillary back, PLEASE?

I’m sure Obama is a decent father, his kids seem to like him, and I’m not saying he is himself fundamentally evil.  But we don’t know him.  We do know that he went to a racist church, likely muttering “Amen” to Rev. Wright’s continual calls to God to damn America.  Clearly he was raised on ‘black liberation theology,’ an obscure sixties movement that Rev. Wright was part of.  Since he went to the same church, he clearly holds all the views of that movement, from Marxism to anti-white racism.  To deny that would be irrational; the fact the media didn’t point this out shows they hate America so much they’d rather have a ‘big story’ then a good President.

And his clear sexism in wanting to make Hillary a Secretary should send up warning signals to women everywhere.  The way the Democrats and the media savaged Sarah Palin, that brilliant strong woman who gave us hope after Hillary was denied her destiny by the media-DNC partnership, shows that the elites in journalism and the Democratic party hate women.  What other explanation can there be?

Moreover, if Obama hadn’t bussed in tens of thousands of ACORN volunteers to Iowa, Hillary would have won those caucuses and gone on to vicotry.  And all the close states — the margins of a few hundred thousand voters easily could have been ACORN fraud.  Could have been?  Anyone who doubts it has obviously been sipping the koolaid, believing the preposterous claim Obama won fair and square.  When people start falling for outlandish things like Obama as a legitimate President, you know they’ve slipped off the deep end.

My friends (and we know that’s the proper way to address a collective mass, most of whom we know nothing about), Hillary Clinton should stand up and say what she really thinks about Barack Obama.   She should fight back against the abuse and say “I ain’t gonna be no Secretary!”  Because you know, if she accepts, the President of Ecador or somewhere will be visiting, and Barry will ring up the Old Executive Office building and say to Hillary, “Sweetie, I’m meeting with a foreign leader and I think you should be here…could you bake up some of those delicious oatmeal scotchies and bring them over too?…thanks.”

Only those completely out of touch with reality could possibly hold such bizarre views as those being shown in the mainstream media, the world press, public opinion, and especially on college campuses (those young snots don’t know what experience means, after all).  We see clearly the truth, that Obama is a false messiah, and Hillary needs to be raised from the dead!  Fight on!

(End of Satire)

November 14 - Obama and Iraq

As Americans bask in the historical victory of Barack Obama, and look forward to a new style of politics and a new direction for the country, GM stock is hitting 65 year lows, new jobless claims are at highs not seen since right after 9-11, and economic collapse that started in September continues apace, with no sign of a easy path out.  This is not a normal recession, this is far worse.

Yet even as we think about that, another chapter of recent history remains unfinished: the Iraq war.  The conventional wisdom is that the “surge” somehow put down the Iraqi insurgency, things are getting better, and the US is going to soon be able to leave.  It was a mistake, it cost far more than it was worth, we learned a few hard lessons, but at least it’s about to end.  Alas, that may not be the case.  Even now things in Iraq are precarious and the future is unclear.

Last June I wrote about the efforts of the United States to reach a status of forces agreement (SOFA) with Iraq.  In that piece I wrote:

“So watch this issue! If the US gets a favorable SOFA and there is little or no effective opposition, this means less violence and a greater chance that the next President might choose not to leave Iraq quickly. On the other extreme, massive violence in Iraq could develop in protest to SOFA giving the US most of what the Bush Administration wants. This could also increase the risk things could escalate into a conflict with Iran. If no SOFA is signed and instead a short term agreement to allow troops there until a comprehensive agreement is reached, that’s a tacit victory for Iran, and will increase the pressure on the US to withdrawal. Finally, if an extremely watered down SOFA is signed which satisfies the Iraqi opposition, that likely is also a benefit for Iran, and would likely also signal a hastened US departure.”

I also noted that the US wanted the SOFA by the end of July, and definitely before the election.  Now that the election has passed, there is a tentative deal, still to be considered by the Iraqi parliament.  It is the last version, a watered down SOFA which satsifies the opposition in almost every way.   American soldiers remain immune from prosecution, but it provides a timetable for the US to leave, and takes out language that the Iraqi government could ask the US to stay longer.  That language was seen as a backdoor for the US to engineer a government ‘blank check’ asking for longer US military presence.   It’s been removed.

As noted above, even this watered down version reflects a victory for Iran.  But beyond that, it’s still not clear if it will pass, and the Iraqi Kurds are warning of civil war if it does not get signed.   If no agreement is signed, then the US will lose the right to have troops in Iraq by the end of December, meaning that unless some short term agreement is reached, the US will have a more rapid withdrawal.   In other words, what now seems like an “old issue” could become hot again.

How should soon to be President Obama handle Iraq?  The answer: Get out fast. Look, our economy is falling apart, the deficit is being exploded by bailouts and tax revenues are sinking.  We’ve spent five years trying to create some kind of democratic stability in Iraq, and if what they now have can’t last, then it’s beyond our means to fix.

So what if the US leaves quickly, and Iraq disintegrates into violence?  What does Obama say when a grave faced John McCain accuses him of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?  Answer: throw it back in his face.  How can we continue to throw American lives and billions of dollars in a time of economic crisis into an Iraqi black hole when even after getting rid of Saddam and engaging in the surge, they still can’t keep order without us?  At some point we have to realize it’s not our problem and leave.  At some point we have to recognize that our own house is on fire, and that gets first attention.

It sounds cold — many think we owe it to the Iraqis to “fix” Iraq because we “broke” it.  And, to be sure, we set a spark to a situation that has at least once exploded into an orgy of violence, and could do so again.  Yet that doesn’t mean we can fix it.  We haven’t fixed it yet, and if violence re-appears at an intense level, there is no proof that we won’t be doing more harm than good to stay.   Moreover, while President Ford did lose to Jimmy Carter in 1976, it wasn’t because the US refused to go back to Vietnam when the North invaded the South.  Once out of an unpopular war the public doesn’t want back in — if we leave Iraq and things go bad, Obama will not be hurt politically.

Moreover, staying in Iraq and trying to fix it sets him and the US up for multiple failures.  Obama will disappoint the anti-war activists who helped get him elected, and may find himself in the kind of no-win situation President Bush found himself in in 2005.  This would also hurt the US economy, risk destabilizing the Mideast, and undo the good will the election of Barack Obama has generated world wide.  Recall, the surge only worked because Iran decided it was worth letting the US find a way to leave Iraq gracefully.  The current SOFA, even if it’s sign, completely gives up on the goals of democratizing, westernizing, and creating a pro-American presence in Iraq.  The US won’t even dominate the oil industry.  Iraq will be essentially three zones, with danger of a civil war if the Shi’ite zone wants to dominate.   The best option probably was to divide the country in three a couple years ago, but it may now be too late for that.

Iraq is Obama’s first test.  Many conventional, establishment types (perhaps including his Vice President) will tell Obama to be cautious, not leave too quickly, and look out for US prestige.  Obama should reject that.  The economic stakes at home are too high, the potential gains by staying in Iraq are too low.  We need to as quickly and completely as possible extricate ourselves from that conflict.

Still, that doesn’t solve problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.  Each of those three states have problems that pose unique threats to US interests and regional stability.  I’ll write more on those in coming days and weeks.  But Iraq should be an easy call: we’ve done all we can, after the surge there isn’t much more we can do to try to help them.  We probably actually have hurt more than helped over the last five years, and it’s time to get out as quickly as feasibly possible.  If Obama does this, he’ll send a strong signal to the American public and the world that the times, they are indeed a-changing.

November 12 - Obama, America and the Future

Today I was showing my two year old son a picture of Barack Obama, a name Dana knows well, hearing it on the news and in conversation. He also knows the name “John the Cain” (as he says it). While one can’t really explain to a boy almost three what the President does, it occurs to me that today’s children will see the pomp, ceremony and honor of the office given to a black man – and that can’t help but send a positive message to children. My white son will be used to seeing blacks as authority figures, respected and admired in society (and not just for sports and music). That is powerful.

I’ve waited a week before trying to figure out what the election of Barack Hussein Obama means for the United States and the world. Throughout this year, even as Obama battled Clinton, and even as McCain threatened a come back, there has been a sense of destiny about his candidacy. Back in May, in a blog entry entitled “The Obama Revolution,” I argued that his candidacy was changing American politics completely, focusing on fund raising, grass roots efforts, and a move away from the traditional way of running a campaign. However as President, he represents a more profound change.  Today I’ll focus on the US, soon I’ll look at implications of an Obama Administration on world politics.

I am about the same age as Obama, albeit I’m white, born in snowy Minnesota, and he’s black, born in balmy Hawaii. When he was born, the marriage of his mother to a black man would have been illegal in almost 20 states. It was looked down upon by most people, ironically because of how the children would allegedly suffer being from a mixed background. Segregationists tried to fight off change in the south, great civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, and riots and cities aflame towards the end of the decade showed a country divided completely along racial lines. I think that my generation – those of us who were old enough to understand a bit about what was going on the sixties, but young enough not to get too caught up in the conflict, who represent the first wave of an electorate really able to ignore race.

For all the drama of the civil rights battles, blacks didn’t really win a lot in terms of social status and prosperity right away. Rather, the seeds planted then germinated in the culture, as new generations grew up without the same sense that blacks were strange, scary, and perhaps inferior. Not that differences in culture, language and music weren’t evident. But these differences became interesting rather than frightening.

However, this election goes far, far beyond race. The United States is a country in transformation. There is a generational and demographic change underway which will alter the nature of American politics for decades. Twenty years ago the themes of American political competition were clear. It was socialism vs. individualism, big government and taxes vs. free enterprise, social welfare programs vs. a focus on volunteerism and personal responsibility. In that framework the Republicans patched together a pretty powerful argument: America must stand against socialism, should strive to promote individual responsibility, and focus on the market rather than the government to solve problems. The fundamental concept: freedom.

The Democrats from 1980 onward had trouble countering that. Talk about the real barriers keeping equal opportunity from the poor, or discussion of the danger of the quicklly increasing gap between the rich and the poor, led to accusations of socialism and ‘class war.’ Talking about an active role for government meant taking money from your wallet, and letting bureaucrats use it to try to simply stay in power and pay off special interests.

Yet those 20th century arguments now ring stale. Communism is dead, and socialism is an empty phrase. We’re moving beyond ideology to thinking pragmatically about solving problems and confronting reality. No one wants governmental control a la socialism, but as Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has noted, the collapse of financial markets in September is to free market capitalism and deregulation what the collapse of the Berlin wall was to communism. Ideology-driven understandings of reality simply do not work. The world is too complex to follow any ideology. Thus a decent pragmatic compromiser like John McCain wins out against the Republicans in the primary who were playing to an ideological base. And when, behind in the polls he and the right turned to bogeymen that would have been powerful in the past – William Ayres, Reverend Wright (to be sure, not by McCain himself, who properly avoided that subject) or just the strange foreign background of Obama – they were met with a collective yawn. WHO CARES!?

Joe the plumber never caught on, in part because his name wasn’t Joe and he wasn’t a plumber, but also in part because that whole focus on “they’re redistributors who are going to take your money” isn’t especially scary when the deregulated system is sucking money out of 401Ks and the economy at a rate few have seen before.

Obama’s election shows that this country is at a crossroads. We’ve fallen into a pit (which I’ve written about extensively in past blog entries) where economically, militarily and spiritually we’ve lost our way. Our core values are eroded, our moral authority lost, and our leaders too quick to use military power, not quick enough to try to work with others. We’ve also put power ahead of people; not just those poor or suffering here and abroad, but even in our military. We’ll pay for top support in the field, but not give soldiers the support long term they need after they are back home and the war is far away.

This gets mocked by the right, those who jeer Obama as “the One.” But given his intellect, ability to build compromise, and the image he conveys to the world from day one, he may be able to help this country move into a different sort of political and cultural reality. Perhaps I relate to him because he is of my generation, and his ideals and rhetoric reflect the views of those of us born in the early sixties.

Those reading this blog since I started posting it in May, probably have recognized that I’m very apprehensive about conditions in the world. I’ve felt our economy was in dire straights long before September, I’ve been concerned about coming oil shortages, and my posts on Spiritual Dehydration and Material Saturation react to what I see as a cultural malaise (we’re having trouble filling ‘the void’). We’re fat, spoiled, used to winning all the time, and have lost sight of what made us great as a country.

With the election of Obama, I realize that Americans at some level share this sense that we need a change, and are inspired by someone who urges us to look for something better. Perhaps he’s just another skillful politician who will disappoint. But somehow I think the American people have made a very wise choice about what is needed as we confront the challenges ahead.  Time will tell.

November 10 - Bin Laden Successful?

My class on the European Union is reading the book Europe at Bay: In the Shadow of US Hegemony by Alan Cafruny and J. Magnus Ryner.  The book presents a powerful argument that Europe is destined to play second fiddle to the US because of how the neo-liberal economic order supports an American “minimal hegemony.”   It’s a complex argument so I won’t go through the details.

Essentially, despite globalization US hegemony assures that neo-liberalism (an emphasis on trade, free markets, and limited regulation) will continue within a context where sovereignty remains a strong defining principle of the international system.  The reason for this is the strength of the US financial system and credit markets, which have found a way to turn debt into capital and allow the US to run high current accounts deficits and trade deficits without having to pay a large economic cost.  Those costs are borne by the rest of the world.  Moreover, this arrangement assures that Europe will continue to have to cut labor costs, thereby putting continuing strain on social welfare programs and the “European model” of the social welfare state.

What strikes me is how their analysis, which sees very clearly everything from the mortgage backed securities problem to the shockingly high trade and current accounts deficit, misses the fact that this would lead to the financial meltdown we are now witnessing.  Rather than a global recession, and possibly a kind of recession, they assume that the US can continue this hegemony and shift costs to Europe and Asia.  That no longer seems to be the case.   So what went wrong?

I believe that the US committed its most egregious and costly error when it responded to 9-11 with a policy that tried to find a military solution to a problem that was not fundamentally military in nature.  Terrorism is a security threat, it is not a military threat.  Afghanistan’s Taliban hosted al qaeda, but was not itself a military threat to the US.   Iraq was even less a threat.   Yet, rather than try to handle these problems through complex intergovernmental cooperative efforts, all of which would have been emotionally unsatisfying for a public demanding for revenge and for the President to “keep us safe,” the US tried to take on the problem by going to war.  It failed miserably.

Note first of all the situation on our battlegrounds.  In Afghanistan the situation is worse than ever since 2001, with many NATO countries both talking seriously about cutting their involvement and the possibility (likelihood) of NATO’s defeat.  If the US does not want defeat to be its legacy for the Afghan war, it will need a massive influx of power — but there is no public will for that influx, and it might not work anyway.  In Iraq everyone is happy because violence is down and it looks like we may be pulling our troops out soon.  In fact, the Iraqi government may push us out sooner than even Barack Obama wants to leave.   Yet the reason is not because Iraq is a stable functioning democracy.  Quite the contrary.  It is defacto three different states, which a huge chunk of the population forced to live under Islamic extremist law, harming especially women.  The central government and majority Shi’ite regions are heavily influenced and infilitrated by Iran.   In many these this is far more dangerous to US security than Saddam staying in power would have been.  Saddam was never likely to share WMD (which he was nowhere close to getting) with Islamic extremists.  Now Iran is one step closer to being able to do so, and being able to more effectively threaten Israel.

So Iran seems the real winner in Iraq, al qaeda is still active and strengthening, and the Taliban is emerging as a strong force again in war torn Afghanistan.  None of those wars helped stop terrorism.  We don’t know how much of a terror threat we face — a strike tomorrow and suddenly the feeling of safety we’ve developed could be gone in a minute — but any improvement in our situation is mostly from homeland security and counter-terrorism efforts, not the wars.   There has also been a multilateral effort to gather information on and share information about terror networks.  This has completely revamped the counter-terrorist effort and improved it dramatically.   There are still major holes and glitches, if you listen to the experts, and one wonders how much safer we might be if more money had been spent on actual security than military adventures that have yielded no benefit.

We have paid for these errors in two major ways.  First, the US has lost in real and material terms.  The cost of the two wars made it harder for the US to maintain its economy.  Moreover, fear that the economy had to keep growing after 9-11 or else it would benefit Bin Laden, led the Federal Reserve Board to feed rather than block the growing property bubble, thereby setting up a crisis that need not have happened, at least not so intensely.  Second, the desire of the rest of the world to support the US and willingly share the costs of America’s imbalances dissipated.  The world was willing to do so because they believed the US was the essential economic power, and as much as they would have preferred giving more regulatory power to multilateral institutions like the WTO, the US wouldn’t allow it.  With a mix of both anger at the US over Iraq and the growing fear that the costs being ’shared’ by Europe  and Asia would be higher than ever, states and international corporations became less willing to simply accept US hegemony.

The first sign was the declining dollar.  The dollar had remained strong despite high trade deficits, but after 2003 it was falling fast.  There were ups and downs, but mostly downs.   The second was the credit crisis, including early signals that banks were in trouble (though early on it wasn’t clear how much trouble).  The US ability to maintain hegemony had at its core US dominance of financial markets.  The US turned its debt, both public and private, into foreign capital available on credit markets.   As soon as this was brought into question, the entire American dominated system was too.  And though it’s in its early stages, don’t be surprised to see a much different system, with the US far less able to lead or control it, in place when all is said and done.

Would this have happened after 9-11?   Ultimately the US ‘minimal hegemony’ was probably unsustainable, though Cafruny and Ryner’s argument that it could persist can’t be dismissed.  But without the deficits, wasted money on war spending, and loss of international will and support for the US, it certainly could have lasted well into the next decade.  And if managed well, it might have morphed into a system less friendly to the US in a gradual manner.   Whether 9-11 and the US response caused this crisis or simply hastened its arrival, it seems clear to me that Osama Bin Laden got what he wanted on 9-11.  The US responded in a way that has undercut our economic power and standing on the world stage, and which has precipitated a crisis in the industrialized West which could be extremely painful and de-stabilizing.

And, of course, it isn’t that Bin Laden’s actions caused this.  It was instead our response to those actions.  But that’s the point of terrorism.  Nobody could seriously think al qaeda or Islamic extremism could bring down the West.  But in the emotional fearful days after 9-11 people acted like it could, and that the only way to stop it was to defeat it in military terms.  This led us to respond in a way that has ultimately proven self-defeating.  And terrorism as a strategy is designed to do just that — get a government or a people to do things to weaken themselves.

So whether by design or luck, Bin Laden’s attack on 9-11-01 is looking like a very successful effort to start an unraveling of American power.   Americans are resilient, however, and our political system functions.  We have chosen a new direction, one that hopefully will correct the disastrous mistakes of the past decade.  Nothing against President Bush — I understand why he reacted as he did, and his policies have changed since 2005 when it became clear the first path failed.    Right now, though, we need — and hopefully are about to get — a real change in foreign policy direction.

November 9 - Love

In teaching both my World Politics course and an honors course on “Children and War” I co-teach with an Early Childhood Education professor, I use the book War is a Force that Gives us Meaning by Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winning former New York Times war reporter, who has witnessed some of the worst conflicts of the late 20th century.  The book is an attempt to show the reality of war — to tear away the mythology of nationalism and the abstractions of honor, glory and service, and look at the human suffering war causes.     80% of casualties in modern war are civilians, many of them children.  There are also families broken apart, children who grow up in war zones, and the impact that has on a culture.  Even Americans families far from the battlefield suffer.  Besides the cases where people lose a father, mother, brother or sister, families are torn apart by multiple deployments, soldiers returning with PTSD, and stresses and traumas that often tear apart marriages and cripple family life.   Yet those things are rarely talked about.

Today, though, I want to think less about that entire argument than the closing quote in the book, where Hedges writes:

“To survive as a human being is only possible through love. And, when Thanatos is ascendant, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity, and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others – even those with whom we are in conflict – love that is like our own. It does not mean we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has the power to resist in our nature what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal.” - Chris Hedges, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Basic Books, 2002.

I’ve found that quote an amazing way to end a book on war, especially one that takes us through the hell of some of the worst of the Balkan, Palestinian, Iraqi, and Central American wars.   Hedges is neither naive nor soft, he has seen hell, and his book is an honest reflection on both what he observed and how he dealt with it.  Yet at the end there is only one answer: Love.

Love is not respected in modern academic discourse.  It is mushy, soft, and emotional.   We look for objective observations, hypotheses that can be tested, and rational arguments.  Love, if it means anything, is a psychological state responding to various stimuli.  Yet that misses something.

Life has to have meaning in order to be enjoyed.  We need to believe there is a purpose for this existence, otherwise we wander aimlessly, wondering what we can and how we should live.   People thus find it easy to get caught up into movements that provide a rush of excitement.  Cheering on the Red Sox to the pennant, fighting to elect Barack Obama, getting into the drama of who will be the next American Idol — all these are attempts to fill our lives with, if not meaning, at least something to distract us from the lack of meaning.

If Hedges is right, all these other attempts to give meaning to life, including the drama of nationalism, war, and conflict (which he compares to an addiction, one he himself succumbed to), are at best ways to fill time and hide lack of true meaning from oneself.  Even romance, often called love, gets elevated in ones’ mind to fill that lack of meaning, though romantic excitement is at best the first phase of a truly loving relationship.

Hedges’ quote, however, suggests love as something much more than romance, or even a long term loving relationship.   Love is, at base, the recognition that the other is not unlike the self.  It is to recognize in others the same emotions, drives, weaknesses and strengths that the self has.  To realize that others are just as human and just as valuable as oneself.   Why would that give one meaning?

First, think of what this entails.  If one is to be able to love others in this way, one must love oneself.  Without self-love, other-love is impossible, and thus love loses its capacity to give meaning.  By self-love, I don’t mean narcissism.  Rather I mean self-trust and the ability to forgive.  Self-trust is that capacity to look ones’ own weaknesses, be honest about them.  Often people get so torn apart by guilt that they avoid honest self-reflection.  Instead they blame others for their problems or refuse to think deeply about why they do what they do.   This makes it impossible to change, it leads people to protect and defend that which they should be trying to alter.   To know what drives ones’ life, one must be completely honest with oneself.  The ability to engage in non-judgmental and constructive self-criticism allows growth, forgiveness, and fosters the ability to truly love others.

Once one loves oneself, then we see others as like ourselves, and can relate to them.  When they do something mean spirited or careless, rather than think, “what a jerk,” we can respond as we would when we do something mean spirited or careless.  When we do something cruel or ignorant but are not yet capable of self-criticism, we make excuses and blame — we blame the situation or others to excuse our actions.   Psychologists call this the attribution error.  That tends to always work biased towards oneself and against others.  This isn’t usually conscious either — we actually believe that others are causing our negative moods or actions.

If we respond as self-critical humans we knowingly recognize that the negative behavior of others is something we engage in ourselves, and we recognize the factors that make us prone to that:  Stress, being tired, misunderstanding, getting defensive, or simply having a moment of extreme weakness.   I am convinced that if conditions were right, we all could find ourselves engaged in actions which would horrify us otherwise.

We can then understand the person who earlier would piss us off, and can not only avoid lashing back and starting a spiral of anger and emnity, but can instead respond positively and may even be able to help.

To me that’s the essence of love.  The other is a part of the self.  I should try to understand rather than just to judge, whether it is myself or someone else.   To look at another with all the caring and understanding I have when I examine myself — constructively critical, but also understanding.  If we could do that, think of how our relationships with friends and rivals would change.  Think of our own experience of everyday life could change.  Think of the world we could create!

OK, I think I’m in the mood to listen to some Todd Rundgren now…

November 8 - Obama vs. Clinton (Bill)

There is a lot of quick reaction to Obama’s landmark victory, ranging from those who think that the country is now going to be dragged down the path of socialism, to others who see a chance for a renewed and vibrant America.   We’ve been here before.

In 1992 there were similar hopes when a man about the same age, Bill Clinton, became President.  That election took place in a recession, and Republicans held out hope until the end that Clinton’s inexperience would combine with harsh negative attacks from the right (draft dodger, womanizer, anti-American, radical, liar, etc.) to cause Americans to choose to re-elect President Bush.  Bush had been commander in chief during a popular war and victory, and at one point had an approval rating over 90.  In fact the negative views about Clinton were so intense that the Republicans continually tried to defeat him, and in the 1994 off year election took control of Congress.

Clinton survived, and while the US enjoyed economic growth in the 90s, it ultimately wasn’t sustainable, and Clinton did not change the country in the ways many hoped for or many feared in 1992.   He not only did not introduce radical socialism as the right tried to claim he would, but he oversaw the biggest cuts in social welfare programs in history.  He involved the US in a risky war in Kosovo, though luckily he ignored neo-conservative calls for him to invade Iraq in 1998 to spread democracy and undercut terrorism.  He ended with high approval ratings, but only because the GOP overshot when they tried to remove him from office late in his term.  Ultimately Clinton’s Vice President Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in 2000 when Clinton left office.

So we’ve been here before.  A young, charming, agent of change elected because people think the country is headed in the wrong direction.  We really didn’t get much change last time; will this time be different?

I believe it will.  First, the world is different.  In 1992 we were facing record low oil prices, and the start of a globalization inspired stock bubble which would hide growing economic imbalances.   As bad as things seemed in 1992, the US current account deficit, total debt, and financial institutions were generally in good shape.  The Soviet Union had just collapsed, and the US appeared to be the unipolar power.  China’s economy was growing, but was still focused on generating cheap goods for the US.    Once the economy improved — and that started before Clinton came into office –  the desire for real change dissipated.   When the Republicans took Congress, in large part because a serious of missteps by an undisciplined President Clinton, Clinton was chastened.  His health care plan and other initiatives had failed.  He decided that rather than fight for change, he’d look out for his own political survival.  The result was a relatively effective centrist government.

The world now is different.   There is no quick economic fix, the need for change isn’t going to flitter away as the economic news improves.   Moreover, while oil prices now have been going downward, the long term prospects remain bleak.  All indications are that we are at a production peak of a non-renewable resource, and the recession only delays the coming oil crisis — and perhaps not by much.  It also could be that any sign of economic recovery will be met with sudden oil price increases, limiting the chances of sustained recovery.   The health care system, broken in 1992, is virtually in collapse by 2008.  Obama may not get his plan through, but something will need to be done.

Moreover, there are fundamental differences between Obama and Clinton.  Clinton, coming from an abusive household, seemed to use politics as a way to bolster self-esteem.  He loved being loved, and often let his personal needs lead him to political folly.   This made him less focused on the political result, and more on his own role and popularity.  Bluntly, it was more about him than the people.  This isn’t new — politics draws people like that, especially those willing to do what it takes to reach the Presidency — but it undercut his capacity to achieve greatness.

Obama is obviously quite disciplined.  His campaign was perhaps one of the best run ever, and that’s because the candidate stayed focused, avoiding sudden gambles or impulsive statements/actions.   The negatives used against him were mostly from past associations — ones that were politically useful in the past — and not anything done in his campaign.  He will no doubt take that discipline to the White House.

Moreover, Obama seems to be more concerned with results than just being liked.  He’s been criticized as too aloof and cool.  Unlike Clinton, he doesn’t seem to really care if he’s loved by the people, he just wants them to work with and for him.  I suspect this means he’ll won’t make the mistakes Clinton made the first year or two of his Presidency, and thus accomplish more.  Clinton’s early mistakes were to move quickly to advance his agenda: allow gays in the military, push a health care reform through, guided by his wife Hillary, and essentially ignore the Republicans to try to use his large Democratic majority to make change happen quickly.

It didn’t work.  Not only does Obama know his history, but his advisors include veterans from the Clinton years, who also recall how the bold ‘move quickly’ strategy failed.  It didn’t fail because it was too much too fast, it failed because it was too partisan.   Clinton didn’t think he needed compromise, he just needed a disciplined Democratic majority.  I suspect Obama realizes that while he may have a big majority now, to maintain it and to achieve results he has to be effective.  He can only do that through compromise and persuasion.  Ronald Reagan was effective in building coalitions with Democrats.  To be sure, many were southern conservative Democrats, but Reagan turned out to be far more centrist than his rhetoric and reputation coming into power.  Ultimately, he turned out to be an idealistic pragmatist.  Obama might be coming from the left, but he appears to share an idealist pragmatist mindset.

So I expect Obama to work with Republicans on his agenda items like health care reform, tax reform, and economic change.  He’ll use his majority to make sure what passes is closer to his preference, but he’ll recognize the need not to anger the other side or simply ride roughshod over them.   Some believe his choice of Rahm Emanuel to be chief of staff suggest a hyper partisan approach.  But others report that Emanuel talks to and works well with Republicans, and in fact he’s one of the best positioned to communicate and build coalitions with Republicans.  He had to be partisan when fighting for Congressional control in 2006, but I see choosing him as a sign that Obama will try to gain as much consensus as possible for major initiatives.  Given the state of the US and the economy, he’ll have a strong argument that something needs to be done.

I suspect those on the left who want a partisan Administration who will implement and fight for Democratic ideals will be disappointed.  That just doesn’t seem to reflect the kind of person Obama is, and more importantly, it doesn’t reflect the views of the advisors with which he has surrounded himself.   Unlike Bill Clinton, I doubt he’ll end up shifting to the right or find himself hemmed in by scandals of his own making.

I certainly hope he can build a center-left consensus for real, effective change.  The problems we face are immense, and we need a President who can effectively compromise and cooperate with the opposition to create change that is built on relatively broad support, and not on partisan ideology.

November 7 -The Coming Credit Card Crisis

When the stock market crashed in 1929, it took more than a year before it sunk in that the crisis was not a short recession or a major correction.  Analysts were hopeful, the public expected a return to the ‘roaring 20s’ style economy, and some thought it was necessary to break the speculative bubble that had engulfed the country.

As job loses escalate, foreclosures continue to increase, now due as much to job loses as bad loans.   Companies and businesses are being forced into painful cutbacks due to the shrinking economy.   And, of course, that feeds on itself.  Any effort the economy makes to come back gets hit by the fact the housing market remains weak and jobs continue to be lost.  The worst may be yet to come.

Right now the US public debt is well over $10 trillion.   That is mind boggling.  But credit card debt alone, owed by consumers is over $900 billion (up from only about $240 billion in 2002).  Think about that — during the property bubble we not only achieved the lowest equity in property ownership in history, but while doing that have gone into immense credit card debt.   The fact it jumped so far so fast shows that we’re in uncharted territory.  This also suggest that this shoe is yet to drop, the credit card crisis may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.   Oh, and about half this has been packaged as securities and sold as investment products.  Sound familiar?

The average household owes almost $10,000 in mostly unsecured credit card debt.  And as the economy slows, many people put off dealing with the pain by charging ever more to their credit cards hoping for a new job or something to save them from bankruptcy.   Almost a third of all those filing for bankruptcy have over a year’s worth of income in credit card debt.  Meanwhile, credit card companies continue predator style lending, urging people to increase debt, often with hidden clauses that assure that any late or missed payment — often on any debt owed anywhere they can track — will cause a massive increase in interest payments.

It’s no mystery why they do this — they’re in it for money.   And, as with mortgages and stocks, short term profits are good, even as the long term situation because unsustainable.  Rather than a speculation bubble we’re seeing the growth of an unsustainable debt bubble.  Debt is treated as an assett by the firms to which the debt is owed.  All this credit card debt thus inflates the value of banks and financial institutions which own it.  If the recession is even half as severe as expected there could be a massive increase in credit card defaults, sending a ripple through the financial markets as powerful as that as the subprime mortgage crisis.

In other words, our chickens are not yet done coming home to roost.

Capitalism needs credit to function.  Credit is the stuff that allows the economy to grow.  It is the life blood of a market economy.  If credit dries up or a crisis creates a collapse of credit markets, that’s the equivalent to a body being drained of blood.  It ceases to function.  Unlike human bodies, an economy can be restarted.  But the old economy will have died, and the new one will have to operate under new conditions, with much of the old wealth gone.  In that sense capitalism has a Hindu flair — the economy dies and then is reincarnated as something new, perhaps paying a kind of karmic debt for the imbalances of the last life.

Folks, this stuff is depressing.  Right now things look bleak, but if the credit card crisis becomes a reality — and there is no reason to think it won’t — then things will go south quickly.  Consumer spending will dry up, and the economic recession could spiral into itself so fast that it becomes a depression.  The $750 billion paid to try to prop up credit markets will be sucked away as well, and we’ll simply have even higher debt, making it almost impossible to spend our way out of the depression.  American capitalism could suffer a fate not unlike Soviet communism, an ironic twist of history.

Can this be avoided?   I’m not sure.  But one thing is certain: pretending this isn’t on the horizon and hoping for the best isn’t a good strategy.  That’s what people did in light of the warnings about the housing bubble, and look where that led!   Moreover, one reason credit card debt has grown so fast in the past years is government deregulation, and laws beneficial to credit card companies.   And for this we can’t blame the Bush Administration alone — Delaware has a huge credit card business, and Joe Biden has been protecting them over the years.  This is another bipartisan crisis in the making.

As individuals, we need to pay down credit card debt while we can.  I love credit cards, I hate cash.  Cash sits in my wallet because I pay for everything by credit.  Not those wimpy debit cards, credit cards offer much better protection in case of being stolen.  And we usually pay it back that month.  When we carry debt (and now we have minor debt for good cause), we’ve been able to keep our average interest rate below 4.0% by using special offers.  Now, though, while I will still use credit cards, I want to get that debt down to virtually zero.  Pay it off every month.

For government, we need proactive action.  Identify securities that are tied to risky credit card debt.  Stop predatory lending (it may be too late) and figure out just how fragile the system is.  But don’t bail out credit card companies.   I’m at a loss right now on how to deal with this.  I plan to learn more about this coming crisis.  The mountain of public and private debt that has bought us thirty or so years of illusionary wealth is falling apart, and the conquences have yet to be fully appreciated.

More than ever I think we’ll need Barack Obama’s ability to inspire as much as actual governmental action.  These problems stem from the fabric of our culture in recent decades.   We can’t fix things so we can live like we have been; how we’ve been living is the problem.  We will be forced to change fundamental aspects of our way of life in coming years.   And this process of death and renewal is only beginning.

November 6 - A New Conservatism?

NOTE: I am not a conservative.  But sometimes its easier to see problems and potential solutions from the outside looking in, not caught up in the rhetoric and conventional wisdoms of an existing perspective.  So here is some advice for conservatives trying to figure out how to adjust to the changing political climate:

Right now conservatives are trying to figure out which way to take the Republican party and conservatism in general.  Many believe that they have the right principles, but just didn’t live up to them.  Others fear that they are selling a brand that does great in the deep south and bible belt, but doesn’t have appeal across the country.  Still others worry that Democrats are winning the hearts and wins of the youth in a way not seen before.

First, consider why Barack Obama won the hearts and minds of so many people, especially the youth:
A)  He rejected an ideological message.   People did not back Obama because they were supporting ‘the left.’  Indeed, telling was how even many older Republicans came out in support of Obama.  He was reaching outside the traditional ideological base and talking a language that spoke about real people, not t;heoretical isms.  Bill Clinton did that too in 1992; Obama took it to another level.
B)  Obama focused on empowerment, making people part of the campaign.  It included e-mails, efforts to cajole donors and supporters to volunteer, and a strong sense of being part of history.  People who normally wouldn’t volunteer for political work eagerly made calls for Obama.  I was on both McCain’s and Obama’s e-mail list just to compare the two — McCain’s talked about ideology, Obama’s about working together.
C)  Obama cultivated a sense of community.   People felt part of something, they belonged — they weren’t just fighting for a cause.  Being part of the campaign was itself a joy, not a sacrifice of time and effort.

With that in mind, look at what didn’t work for conservatives.  Ideology certainly didn’t.   Calling Obama a socialist, tying him to William Ayres or Rev. Wright and black theology — stuff that really riled up older voters and the base — sounded empty and meaningless.   The result was a campaign focused on the GOP’s dwindling base, giving most voters nothing to vote for, only trying to give them someone to vote against.  That rarely works.  Young people get especially turned off by ideological fervor.  We really are moving into a post-ideological period, the age of ideologies is fading away.

So what can conservatives do?  I would suggest they focus on three core principles: 1) market economics; 2) small, effective government; and 3) power to states — strengthened federalism.   These could be bunched together under a broader theme: “Freedom, American style.”  (Well, something uniting the idea of American values/culture with freedom — that phrase got the old ‘Love American Style’ theme playing in my head).

Consider Sarah Palin.  Her choice really opened up the stark schism within the GOP.  The so-called “base” — the Sean Hannity listening hard core conservatives who see themselves as part of a movement against mindless godless elitist liberals — loved her.  They felt she shared their values, and her folksy manner (seen by us ‘elitist’ types as clumsy ignorance) proved she was an anti-politician.  But the moderate and libertarian wing of the GOP found her repulsive, and blame her for the loss.   She was unqualified and as one McCain aid put it, a “whack job.”

State power or a stronger federalism is a perfect way for the GOP to overcome the contradiction within their party.  They can claim “we don’t want to use big government to enforce Christian conservative values, rather we just want state governments to be able to reflect the cultural norms of that particular region.”  Their argument would be that if Alabama doesn’t want to allow abortions but Massachusetts does, let them chose their own approach.  That leaves open the opportunity for state activists to fight locally to try to change hearts and minds in Massachusetts, while shifting the issue from the emotional “you are all baby killers” attack to one of valuing regional cultural norms.

A focus on market economics would allow them to approach issues of taxation and regulations from a pragmatic rather than an ideological perspective.  Obama put his tax cuts this way: only those making over $250,000 will pay a slightly higher proportion of their wealth, which is fair since the system has worked well for them, and isn’t working the disadvantaged.  Furthermore, he stressed practical help not hand outs.  Thus when the right yelled “socialist” or “he wan’ts to *gasp* “redistribute,” the response was a collective yawn, especially from the youth.  The ideological stuff is a turn off.  Instead, he could have said, “certainly we need to expand opportunity, and I understand the argument that the wealthy should pay a bit larger share — they already do, we have progressive taxes.   But will this idea work?  Or will it stifle growth?  Raising taxes on those who can invest and build businesses is tricky; you might actually decrease revenues or risk job growth.   Right now, given the circumstances, my economic experts and I believe this would actually do more harm than good.  It sounds good rhetorically, but has consequences that will come back to bite us.”

That line of attack does not label, demonize or mock Obama.  What McCain actually did was show no respect for Obama’s view, sarcastically dismissing it.  “He wants to raise taxes in a recession, I can’t believe it!” and then hint that this was socialism or something from the ‘radical left.’   Talking pragmatically is more effective and would not have made him seem so bitter or angry.

Finally, emphasizing small and effective government allows them to recapture an issue Obama stole.  Obama was the one saying we had to stop federal programs that aren’t working, and that he’d go program by program and review and assess them.  This convinced many people that Obama’s plan might actually be more fiscally sound than McCain’s ’spending freeze’ without much regard to the program in question.  ‘Small but effective’ would allow the GOP to criticize Democratic program proposals, but at the same time try to figure out their alternative approaches — smaller, and with more of a state focus.

That kind of post-ideological pragmatic conservatism wouldn’t abandon conservative principles, but would lose the divisive and hyperpartisan rhetoric of ideology-guided politics.  Rather than a movement fighting liberals — folk somehow less rational and consistent than the “ideologically correct” conservatives — they would be a positive movement focused on a set of core beliefs.

If both left and right can move in that direction of principled pragmatism, we can break out of the kind of jihad politics of the last twenty years.  Obama spoke to so many because he offered a positive progressive vision that did not try to conjure up imagines of Republicans as wealthy, arrogant fat cats or poor, ignorant, bible thumpers.  Sure, he had his attacks on the “Republican economic philosophy,” but he even worded those in pragmatic terms.  “We tried that.  It didn’t work.”  What could be more practical — if something doesn’t work, try something else.

Obama hasn’t transformed the left completely to a post-ideological progressive pragmatism — any reading of partisan blogs will prove that.  Activists are especially loathe to break away from comfortable partisanship.   Conservatives are used to feeling themselves superior to liberals, especially those who listen to people like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter who create caricatured stereotypes of the left that conservatives love to mock.   But the gun tooting conservative mocking the effete liberal vs. the smug intellectual liberal mocking the hick conservative are caricatures that aren’t true, and have created the politics of illusion.

Freedom built on small, responsible government, a market oriented economy, and states making more decisions and doing more implementation of policy could be a pragmatic conservatism that would compete effectively against Obama’s style of pragmatic progressivism, and could yield a healthy and less shrill political debate and competition.

Democracies only function well when power regularly transfers from one group to another.  Obama seems to have helped begin a new kind of progressive movement, and has left the Republicans and conservatives tattered and dazed.   That is precisely the point when people are willing engage in novel and creative thought about what they can do differently.

November 5 - A New Era

Last night Barack Obama won an historic victory in the 2008 Presidential contest, defeating John McCain in a decisive fashion.  Obama didn’t win by quite as large a margin as I predicted.  I thought early voting would carry Georgia, and I was wrong about the Dakotas and Montana (and I knew that Arizona was a stretch).  Still, Missouri, Indiana and North Carolina still haven’t been called and Obama leads in two of them, so I’m not too far off.  It wasn’t as big a wave as I expected, but it was a wave, and the country showed that it wants a change in direction.

Now comes the hard part.  How do we deal with the financial crisis, globalization, continuing terror threats and the on going “war” in Iraq?  For all the joy some of us feel that the country has chosen a very different path forward, the reason for making this choice — real, intense and difficult problems facing the country — remains.  The challenge the Obama Administration will face is great.

Moreover, this is not a challenge that can be met just by having new policies, or through governmental action.  Our problems are deeper, and engrained in our very culture.  We seriously need a new way of thinking if we are to deal with a very different world.  The bad news is that changing how we think and shifting a culture is not easy, and is usually a generational process.  The good news is that the Obama election is a sign that this shift is underway.

One thing Obama tapped in to during the campaign is the desire of Americans to be involved in their country and its politics.  I have been amazed by the level of knowledge and action that young people have engaged in during this campaign, and that includes Republicans and McCain supporters.   Obama has to take that and use it positively to create a sense that the solution to our problems first has to come from our own actions, not just waiting for government to provide a fix.   There must be a shift from interest groups expecting government to do things to support them, to a cooperative effort where interest groups work together to solving their own and the nation’s problems.  The idea isn’t new.  George H.W. Bush called it “1000 points of light,” and Republicans have consistently called for more community action rather than government policy.  Obama might be able to make that a reality.

Internationally the time of American fancying itself as the ‘guarantor of global stability,’ above the rules other states play by, is over.  In Iraq and Afghanistan the US has learned humility, and recognized our limited capacity to shape world events.   George W. Bush has already acknowledged this and altered foreign policy greatly from his first term.  As President, Obama must build partnerships and chart a new identity for American foreign policy.  The Cold War created the notion that the US was the “leader of the West,” and thus had both superpower privileges and superpower responsibilities.  Unfortunately this became a rationalization to act too much the bully, and be too quick to reject international agreements or engage in military action.

George H.W. Bush tried with his notion of a “new world order” and emphasis on the UN approving military action in Iraq to counter aggression.  But with Kosovo, Afghanistan and then Iraq again, there was a sense that the US still saw itself as able to do whatever it wants, without regard for international law or the concerns of other states.  The problem is that the Cold War conception of American foreign policy is obsolete.  Policy makers have been slow to grasp that their way of perceiving and acting in the world no longer could work.   The illusion of economic vigor that the stock bubble followed by the property bubble gave made it possible for many to cling to the view that the US was a “unipolar power” or the “new Rome.”  Now, reality has brought home undeniably and very starkly the fact that the world will be very different in the 21st Century.  If we don’t adapt and change, we’ll fall farther and faster.

Later today or tomorrow I’ll write about what the election means in political terms — the GOP, the Democrats, and the balance of power.  But over the coming weeks this blog is going to switch attention from the blatantly political to the complex linkage between culture, politics and economics, and how the US can renew its ideals and meet the challenges we face.   The crisis is not just material, it’s also spiritual.  As a society and a culture, we have to examine ourselves and where we are going.   It’s a new era, yet undefined, and one we have the power to shape.

November 3 - Pre-Election Predictions and Analysis

(due to the length of this entry, please go to http://scotterb.wordpress.com by clicking the link above if you want to read it (Nov. 3 entry)

November 2 - Is McCain Surging?

To look at the Drudge Report, you’d think McCain has been steadily inching closer to Barack Obama, and is within striking distance of taking the popular vote lead and running the sweep of toss up states necessary to come from behind and win the election.  Last week it was a “shock Gallup poll” which showed the two within two points using the ‘traditional model’ for likely voters.  By Sunday it was a ten point race in that group again.  But no matter, Rasmussen showed it narrow to three points, so that was cited — well within the margin of error!  Alas, it expanded back to five points, and Rasmussen declares the race “remarkably stable” with Obama at about an 85% chance for victory.

Then it was the IBD/TIPP poll which has always showed a tighter race.  And finally on early Saturday morning Drudge screamed out that “McCain leads in overnight polling!”  Wow!  He must be zooming back.  For the Obama fans, this is their worst case scenario, another defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, an unexpected comeback.  For the McCain faithful this plus slightly tightening polls in Pennsylvania and Ohio shows that their come back scenario is on track — they can do it!

Of course, let’s get real.   The Zogby tracking poll surveys 1200 people over three days.  Gallup and Rasmussen survey 3000.  That means that the one day poll is of 400 people, a sample size that suggests a margin of error of 5%, rather than the tracking poll 3% (or 2% for Rasmussen and Gallup, who sample 1000 a night over three nights).  Remember, on average one in twenty polls will be outside the margin of errror.   Zogby could be detecting a trend, but unless it’s mirrored in other polls, it could also be Drudge and Zogby trying to drum up interest — why else leak one day’s numbers?

Back in 1996 near the election Zogby had a closer race than the others, and a late shock poll put Dole and Clinton even — but only for a day.  Moreover, the three night average for Zogby has Obama with a five point lead.  That means that the two nights before must have shown a significant Obama lead.  Gallup had gone from 5 to 7 to a 10 point lead in the traditional model in the last three days, suggesting they are not observing the trend Zogby claims exists.  Given they have 1000 interviews to Zogby’s 400, there is little reason to believe there is a national McCain surge.

Drudge used to be “king of the hill” for online news, but now Huffington Post gets double the traffic, and the blogosphere is leaning leftward, sort of a mirror image of how the right dominated talk radio in the 1990s.  Perhaps these kinds of teasers are a rather desperate effort to get hits.  I’ve also noticed that Drudge cherry picks only the McCain friendly polls.  To be sure, one of the best political websites, Realclearpolitics.com has a conservative bias, but unlike Drudge, you get the sense they are about giving the conservative perspective than promoting propaganda.

In Pennsylvania there is more reason to believe the race is tightening.  All polls show it going from double digit to single digit, and Pennsylvania politicians who know the state have said that they could not believe the 12 - 15% point leads polls had been giving them.   It now looks like the polls are putting Obama’s lead at about 5, probably still enough to hold the traditionally Democratic state, but definitely tightening.  Compared to the polls of 2004, it doesn’t seem particularly ominous.

In fact, looking at the early voting numbers, the widening of the polls in most cases, and the general tenor of the last days of the campaign, things are looking very, very good for Barack Obama.  Tomorrow I’ll have my prediction on the outcome (electoral votes, popular vote, and analysis of why I make that call), and then late Monday evening I’ll post my state by state predictions, with a bit about each state on what to watch for, and where one might see signs of either an Obama landslide or a McCain come from behind victory.  I’m going to post it in order of poll closing time, which may or may not be easier than alphabetical.  And, I’ll blog more if anything else warrants it.

But time is running short, the election is almost here!   I think the state of the election is clear.  Obama and Biden are buying time in states like Arizona, Montana, Georgia and North Dakota, and traveling a wide variety of states to try to pick up as many states as they can.  McCain and Palin are focusing on keeping the core they need: Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Indiana, while they try to flip Pennsylvania and hope enough red states resist the Obama onslaught and go for McCain.  (Do they really think they can win Pennsylvania, or do they just want to do whatever they can to keep the Democrats from expanding the map — goad them into making Pennsylvania a ‘battleground)?

This long, strange trip that started in 2006 was dominated in 2007 by the immigration issue, making McCain look defeated early.   Hillary was seen as the preemptive nominee, earning Time magazine cover stories and a large mass of early money and superdelegates.   Guiliani was the presumed Republican nominee.  Then Obama and McCain came on, McCain cinched early, and Obama and Clinton became locked in an historic struggle — either the first woman or the first black nominee from one of the two major parties would emerge.  The entire year has been exciting, hardly a week without some twist and turn.  And we near the end of this historic, exciting, and intensely emotional but fascinating campaign.

OK, time to start working on my final analysis and predictions…

Update: Obama has a 10 point edge in one night of polling the day after McCain’s one point edge.   Simply: there is no surge for McCain.

November 1 - Desperation Breeds Stupidity

Rarely in an election year does one ad stand out as being so utterly contemptible and rotten that all the other mud and slime out there glistens in comparison.  If all I knew about Elizabeth Dole was the ad that she ran in her North Carolina Senate race against Kay Hagan, I’d conclude that she was a mean spirited dishonest politician who would do anything for power.  Luckily, I know enough about Elizabeth Dole to know she’s a good person.  But her ad, which she continues to defend, is not.

In the ad a tough narrator notes that Kay Hagan held a fundraiser that was “hosted by the Godless Americans PAC,” showing clips of people from that group calling for God to be removed from the pledge of allegiance and from money, and in general dissing religion.  “What did she promise them” in exchange for the fundraising, the ad asks.  It ends with a close up of Kay Hagan and a voice saying “There is no God!”

Kay Hagan is a  Presbyterian elder in her church and Sunday School teacher.  The fundraiser was hosted by a number of different people, including Roman Catholic John Kerry, and did involve one member from the Godless Americans PAC.  It did not include anyone shown in the clips.   Moreover, it wasn’t a secret fundraiser, as the ad contends, and the voice saying “there is no God” is definitely not Kay Hagan’s, despite the way the film makes it appear.  Dole lamely defended her ad, saying that Hagan critized her for having a Bush sponsored fundraiser, and ‘being in the pocket of big oil.’

Well, I think questioning someone’s faith, and dishonestly making them appear to be atheist in a very Christian part of the country, is worse than accusing them of being led by “big oil.”  And is Dole saying it’s just as bad to be associated with President Bush, who is from her own party, as  with the ‘Godless Americans PAC?’

After the campaign, I expect that Dole will regret the ad, and realize that she crossed a line when she decided it was fair game to try to bring her opponent’s faith into question.  It was a very stupid thing to do.  It not only makes it more likely that a backlash against Dole will lead to her defeat, but her entire reputation of being a strong and effective leader will be tainted by this dirty last minute ad.   Top Republican strategists are roundly criticizing it, saying it reeks of desperation and that she should have known better.

I have a theory that 90% of human actions that do harm to oneself or others are because of evil intent or even anger.  Rather, I think stupidity born of desperation leads people to make bad, even horrible decisions.  For Dole, it probably appeared a necessary, rational step to take.  She’s down in the polls, her political career is on the line, she has plans and priorities she thought until recently were pretty secure — she’s a very respected Senator, not one who one would think would be at risk of losing.  She has staff who count on her, and a life style she no doubt enjoys.  Suddenly, unexpectedly, that’s all in danger — under threat from a political candidate who she believes is distorting her record and engaging in unfair arguments (every candidate does that to some extent, so every candidate is convinced the other candidate is unfair).  She has to fight back.  Time is running out.  All could be lost.  She needs to do something…but what?  “This might work.”  It’s repulsive, yet somehow it doesn’t seem so bad in the context of the moment.  She approves the ad, a stupid act which seemed at a time of desperation to be rational and necessary.

John McCain’s campaign is also one which is getting intense criticism for not only its negativity, but its personal ad hominems against Barack Obama.  Whether the socialist label, or robocalls making it sounds like Obama hangs around terrorist networks, or mailers that try to scare people with subtle messages that subtly appeal to racism, McCain is running an intensely negative campaign.   Many have expressed dismay that he is putting is solid reputation on the line, and might be remembered as a petty, meanspirited politician after this election.  Rather than the positive war hero maverick, he has become the robocall politician whose tone is mocking and sarcastic.

Obama supporters are increasingly incensed at McCain, and even in the press there is a strong sense that “this is not the McCain we know.”  I suspect, the same thing is happening to him.  He sees himself outspent by a guy who he doesn’t considered experienced enough to qualify for a job he is absolutely convinced he deserves (I’m sure Hillary can empathize).  Soon it makes sense that the “only way” to counter this “unfair advantage,” the fact that the media is “in the tank” for Obama, is to go negative.   Anything that will work.  The robocalls, ties to Ayres, socialism, falsely interpreting a 2001 interview…it’s necessary to stop someone with an unfair advantage from getting a job that McCain deserves and doesn’t think Obama is qualified for.  In the heat of the campaign, such negativity, even ad hominems, seems rational and necessary.

Yet, afterwards, if it works, his job to mend the country will be enormous, and he might ask if that campaign style did more harm than good, even if it gets him to 270.  If, as appears very likely, he loses, then his reputation will be defined less as being the Vietnam hero maverick of the Senate than having run a bitter, negative campaign.   He may regret not living up to the kind of standards he stood for in 2000.  In retrospect, this negative campaign may end up being seen as well as a stupid choice done out of desperation.

This isn’t limited to politics of course.  We read constantly of embezzlers and bankers who rob or cook the books in ways certain to be discovered someday because they are desperate, they don’t want to deal with whatever mess they find themselves in.  Students with a paper due the next day suddenly find plagiarism not such a bad thing.  Instead of a bad grade they may fail a course, and have a black mark on their record.  A driver with an invalid license out of desperation speeds away from a cop pulling him over for a burnt out taillight.  The result is a high speed chase, ending either in death or injury, or a massively increased amount of jail time.  In my First Year Seminar we watched the Italian movie The Bicycle Thief in which the father out of desperation about losing his job and the ability to feed his family tries to steal a bicycle to replace the one stolen from him, only to get caught and find out his son observed him becoming a thief himself.

Desperation breeds stupidity.  The best we can do is learn from that, and try to keep our heads on straight when we feel that desperation.  It’s also a cultural problem.  In a society where there are supports, one can admit being in trouble, having made a mistake, or needing help.  In our success-oriented individualist society, the support network isn’t as clear and strong, and people feel more of a need to take care of their problems completely on their own.   Someone with money problems who, say, is part of a close knit church where people look out for each other might be able to reach out for support.  But those kinds of groups are fewer and farther between; more than ever, we’re on our own.

Politicians are human.  What looks to us like a Machiavellian or cold hearted quest for power, often is just the sign of desperation and the kind of confused rationalizations it inspires.  Elizabeth Dole is a good woman, her career proves it.  John McCain is not nasty, mean or petty, even if the campaign sometimes sounds that way.  So perhaps the biggest lesson of this is one of forgiveness.  Desperate people do stupid things, and since we are all human, we need to understand and forgive when that happens.   Dole’s ad is one of the most despicable I’ve ever seen; but Elisabeth Dole is not.